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+ the Church Fathers (Especially St. Augustine) on the Question of the Perspicuity (Clearness in the Main) of Scripture

Photo credit: Janeke88 (8-7-15) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

Edward Josiah Stearns (1810-1890) was an Episcopal clergyman from Maryland and author of several books. His volume, The Faith of Our Forefathers (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1879), was a reply to The Faith of Our Fathers (1876), by James Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1921), one of the best and most well-known Catholic apologetics works, with an emphasis on scriptural arguments and replies to Protestant critiques of Catholicism. It had sold over 1.4 million copies by the time of its 83rd edition in 1917 and was the most popular book in the United States until Gone With the Wind was published in 1939. This volume highly influenced my own development as a soon-to-be Catholic apologist in the early 1990s: especially with regard to my usual modus operandi of focusing on “biblical evidence” for Catholicism.

The words of Rev. Stearns will be in blue, and those of Cardinal Gibbons in green. I use RSV for biblical citations.

***

A word of introduction is in order before we begin.

Catholics hold that Scripture is a fairly clear document and able to be understood by the average reader, but also that the Church is needed to provide a doctrinal norm, an overall framework for determining proper biblical interpretation. I’ve always found Holy Scripture to be clear in my many biblical studies, but Church history shows us that it isn’t clear enough to bring men to agreement. Catholics don’t think Scripture is nearly as unclear and obscure as we are often caricatured to supposedly believe. But we know that heretics throughout the centuries have distorted the Scripture, for whatever reason, so that an authoritative statement of orthodoxy becomes practically necessary in order to preserve unity as well as orthodoxy.

It’s often stated that Scripture is “perspicuous” (clear) and able to be understood in the main by the committed, regenerate layman, and that by comparing Bible passage with Bible passage, the truth can always be found. But the rub is that there are different ways of harmonizing the Scripture. There is the Calvinist way and the Arminian way and the Baptist way, the Lutheran, Anglican, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Methodist, Plymouth Brethren, 7th-Day Adventist, Mennonite, Church of God, Church of Christ ways, etc., etc. ad infinitum. Simply invoking the principle does not solve the problem in the least.

Catholicism doesn’t require a totally obscure Bible at all. This is a myth. But could virtually the entire Bible be understood without the need of authoritative teachers? No. And that’s rather obvious to this day. Protestants continue to absurdly claim that the Bible is perspicuous, yet fail to agree amongst themselves. And their reasons for why this is (stupidity or sin on the other guy’s part) are as absurd and silly as the original false premise.

One can arrive at any number of true doctrines by reading Scripture alone. I pretty much did that in a number of cases, when I was a Protestant. The problem, however, comes with the Jehovah’s Witness (an Arian) on the next block, who reads the same Scripture that we do and concludes that Jesus was created. It’s with the Mormon two blocks over who believes that God was once a man and that men can become gods. It’s with the Christian Scientist and the Sabellian (Jesus Only) and the Unitarian and Moonie and Scientologist and snake handlers and Name-it-Claim-it heretics, etc., etc., etc. They’re all operating on the principle of Scripture Alone, just as the ancient Arians and virtually all heresies did, too.

The Catholic view of authority and Holy Scripture is not about some ubiquitous churchman looking over everyone’s shoulder so that they would interpret each and every verse exactly as the Church says it ought to be interpreted (in fact, less than ten Bible verses are “officially” interpreted by the Catholic Church). People can read the Bible and it was largely clear; just not always, and it is not self-interpreting enough to prevent heresy without the Church intervening on behalf of orthodoxy. This is the Catholic rule of faith.

The Protestant rule of faith, sola Scriptura, on the other hand, cannot pronounce on orthodoxy, except on a denominational level only. All it can do is appeal back to the individual and claim that Scripture is perspicuous (clear) and formally sufficient and that no Church council has binding authority if an individual sees otherwise in Holy Scripture. That can never bring about unity, and never has in fact, because it is inadequate for establishing orthodoxy as applying to all Christians across the board.

“A competent guide must be clear and intelligible to all, so that every one may fully understand the true meaning of the instructions it contains. Is the Bible a book intelligible to all ? Far from it; it is full of obscurities and difficulties not only for the illiterate, but even for the learned.” (p. 104.) [cited on p. 84]

That there are hard places in Scripture nobody denies, but they are not those necessary to salvation. (p. 84)

This is one of those maxims of Protestantism that are easy to state, but much more difficult to prove (especially in actual practice). To give just two examples: baptism is said in Scripture several times to be necessary to salvation, yet Protestants can’t agree on whether this is true or not, and separate into five major camps regarding baptism.  Secondly, the Eucharist is said to be necessary for salvation as well (Jesus states this repeatedly in John 6), but Protestant can’t agree on that, either. Therefore, I submit, judging by Protestantism’s various and contradictory conclusions, the Bible must not be clear — in and of itself without authoritative interpretation –about what is necessary for salvation.

The “things hard to be understood,” which ”St. Peter himself informs us” of, ” in the Epistles of St. Paul,” are, as the connection shows, certain prophecies, particularly about the “times and seasons,” which are purposely left in uncertainty, that we may be always watching for the coming of the Lord. (p. 85)

Okay; let’s take a closer look at this passage:

2 Peter 3:15-17 . . . So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, [16] speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. [17] You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability.

It’s indeed true that earlier in the chapter, St. Peter wrote about the coming of the Lord: the specific time of which we don’t and can’t know (“the day of the Lord will come like a thief”: 3:10). Verse 16 at its beginning appears to refer back to this theme, but then St. Peter moves on from it and makes a general statement: “There are some things in them [Paul’s letters] hard to understand.” In other words, he doesn’t write something to the effect of, “and this teaching [about prophecies, etc.] is hard to understand.” He is now expressing himself in broad terms. Then he notes that these “things . . . hard to understand” [in Paul] are what “the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction”.

If there is any doubt that he is thinking in general terms at this point, there can be none when we see that he writes, “. . . “as they do the other scriptures”. So now Peter is saying that many scriptures — not necessarily even those written just by Paul — are “twist[ed]” by the ignorant and unstable. And this, of course, proves the Catholic point and disproves the Protestant one about the perspicuity of Scripture: supposedly sufficient enough as to preclude a binding, authoritative interpretation from the Church. Note also that Peter ends with a warning: “lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability.” In other words, he thinks the problem is sufficiently serious to warn every reader to be vigilant and to not be led astray.

A comeback may be that Peter is only teaching that Pauline and/or other portions of Scripture are difficult only for the “ignorant and unstable.” The problem with that is that many people are “ignorant” (i.e., simply lacking knowledge of Scripture, or its exegesis, and the nature and exercise of hermeneutics: systematic interpretation of Scripture). Anyone who has spent much time at all in Christians circles (Protestant and Catholic alike; and I’ve been in both for many years) knows full well of the massive amount of biblical illiteracy.

That’s all it takes to distort the Bible, even before we get to deliberate heresy or spiritual, emotional, or theological instability. Needless to say, the endless internal Protestant disagreements do not give one much confidence at all in the Protestant assertion of “perspicuity of Scripture”. All that the denominationalism and division show is that excessive private judgment and rejection of a binding teaching authority as to orthodox theology leads to ecclesiological chaos and theological relativism, ending up in confusion and lack of certainty.

The passage the Archbishop quotes from 2 St. Peter 1:20, ”that no prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation,” refers, not to the explanation of it, but to the making of it, as the very wording of it shows; and if it did not, the next verse would make it plain. (p. 85)

Let’s look at this one, too:

2 Peter 1:20-21 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, [21] because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Rev. Stearns’ exegesis is too simple and incomplete. The overall point Peter is making is that prophecy can’t be understood as a matter of private interpretation, because it’s spiritually discerned: having come from God the Holy Spirit in the first place. The more spiritual and less carnal a thing is, the more we need an authoritative Church to interpret and apply it, because the Church is the accumulated wisdom of spiritual persons for 2,000 years, which is far superior to anyone’s own specific understandings. But Rev. Stearns vainly contends that this has nothing to do with “explanation.”

I don’t see how that could be, because the word “interpretation” doesn’t refer to “the making of” prophecy. It refers to the understanding of it, and that leads us back to the discussion at hand: how clear Scripture is to the individual without any aid of a Church and a Sacred Tradition, or even matters such as cross-referencing from Scripture itself. Rev. Stearns is doing very poor exegesis and winds up special pleading.

To nail down his point, St. Peter goes on (originally the New Testament had no verses or chapters) to warn of the bad effects of erroneous private interpretation of Scripture:

2 Peter 2:1-3 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. [2] And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. [3] And in their greed they will exploit you with false words; . . .

St. Paul warns about the same sort of thing:

2 Timothy 4:3-4 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, [4] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.

These factors are some of the many reasons why it’s a dangerous thing for individuals to think that they understand all of Scripture, and — in the final analysis, or bottom line — need no assistance from an authoritative Tradition and/or Church: the latter being “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).

What the ”certain man” wanted of St. Philip (Acts 8:31) was something to aid his private judgment, not to supplant it; and the explanation that St. Philip gave of the prophecy commended itself to the man’s private judgment, else he would not have asked to be baptized. (p. 85)

I don’t think this flies, either. Let’s look at it:

Acts 8:27, 30-35 . . . behold, an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of the Can’dace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship . . . [30] So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” [31] And he said, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. [32] Now the passage of the scripture which he was reading was this: “As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. [33] In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth.” [34] And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, pray, does the prophet say this, about himself or about some one else?” [35] Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news of Jesus.

Rev. Stearns tries to make out that the eunuch had sufficient understanding, and only needed an aid for relatively better understanding. But that’s not how the text reads, prima facie. He’s asked if he understands what he is reading, and the eunuch answers, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” How clear can something be?!  This is precisely what Catholics contend: it’s good to have an authoritative guide to help any given individual understand Scripture. The eunuch had an apostle. We have the Holy Church and Holy Tradition and other passages in the Holy Bible (cross-referencing). The eunuch was reading Isaiah 53, a well-known messianic passage. He didn’t even know that it applied to the Messiah, and thought it might be Isaiah writing about himself.  And so Philip shared with him that it was referring to Jesus the Messiah.

Rev. Stearns makes a great deal out of the eunuch asking to be baptized, as if this confirmed that he had a solid, reliable “private judgment“.  But the text informs us that, right after Philip started sharing the gospel, “they went along the road” and “came to some water” (8:36). We know that they were on “a desert road” (8:26), so it may very well have been some time before they arrived at water. And during that time, in Philip’s sharing of the gospel, he very likely would have proclaimed the necessity of baptism.

This is, after all, what St. Peter did in the first Christian sermon, recorded six chapters earlier in Acts. After proclaiming the gospel (Acts 2:22-36), the very next thing he did was to say, “”Repent, and be baptized every one of you” (2:38). So it’s more likely that Philip told the eunuch about baptism than it is that the eunuch already knew about its importance and necessity (although that’s certainly possible, too). But even if the eunuch did know that much, it has no bearing on his overall knowledge of Scripture. He surely didn’t know much about biblical theology, if he wasn’t aware that Isaiah 53 was a messianic passage. And this is precisely why he asked to be guided and instructed in biblical exegesis.

St. Augustine wrote about this passage:

And we know that the eunuch who was reading Isaiah the prophet, and did not understand what he read, was not sent by the apostle to an angel, nor was it an angel who explained to him what he did not understand, nor was he inwardly illuminated by the grace of God without the interposition of man; on the contrary, at the suggestion of God, Philip, who did understand the prophet, came to him, and sat with him, and in human words, and with a human tongue, opened to him the Scriptures. [Acts 8:26] Did not God talk with Moses, and yet he, with great wisdom and entire absence of jealous pride, accepted the plan of his father-in-law, a man of an alien race, for ruling and administering the affairs of the great nation entrusted to him? [Exodus 18:13] (On Christian Doctrine, Preface, 7)

The highly educated Augustine even wrote that he himself — like the Ethiopian eunuch — did not understand the book of Isaiah, which was recommended for him to read by his mentor, St. Ambrose, shortly after his conversion:

I, not understanding the first portion of the book, and imagining the whole to be like it, laid it aside, intending to take it up hereafter, when better practised in our Lord’s words. (The Confessions, ix, 5, 13)

St. John Chrysostom also preached about it:

Even as the eunuch of Candace read, but until one came who instructed him in the meaning of what he was reading he derived no great benefit from it . . . we must not attend to the words merely, but turn our attention to the sense, and learn the aim of the speaker, and the cause and the occasion, and by putting all these things together turn out the hidden meaning.  (Homily on Matthew 26:19,  Against Marcionists and Manichæans)

Rev. Stearns doesn’t discuss other biblical passages directly relevant to the question of the clearness or perspicuity of Scripture. But I will, because I think people deserve a much fuller biblical explanation:

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 7-9, 12 And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate; and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the LORD had given to Israel. [2] And Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, . . . [3]  And he read from it . . . [7] Also Jesh’ua, Bani, Sherebi’ah, Jamin, Akkub, Shab’bethai, Hodi’ah, Ma-asei’ah, Keli’ta, Azari’ah, Jo’zabad, Hanan, Pelai’ah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, . . . [8] And they read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. [9] . . . and the Levites who taught the people . . . [12] . . . they had understood the words that were declared to them.

Mark 4:33-34 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; [34] he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

Luke 24:25-27, 32 And he said to them, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! [26] Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” [27] And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. . . . [32] They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?”

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus later marveled at how Jesus “opened to us the scriptures”. In other words, those prophecies were not understood until Jesus explained them, and in fact, most of the Jews did not see that they were fulfilled. Thus, Old Testament Scripture was insufficient for these messianic truths to be grasped simply by reading them. One could retort that the Jews were hardhearted and thus could not understand since they had not the Holy Spirit and God’s grace to illumine their understanding. But that proves too much because it would also have to apply to these two disciples, and indeed all of the disciples, who did not understand what was happening, even after Jesus repeatedly told them that He was to suffer and to die, and that this was all foretold.

The Phillips Modern English translation renders Luke 24:32 as, “he made the scriptures plain to us.” The Greek word for “opened” is dianoigo (Strong’s Concordance word #1272). According to Joseph Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1977 reprint of 1901 edition, p. 140), it means “to open by dividing or drawing asunder, to open thoroughly (what had been closed).” This meaning can be seen in other passages where dianoigo appears: Mark 7:34-35, Luke 2:23, 24:31,45, Acts 16:14, 17:3.

Obviously, then, Holy Scripture is informing us that some parts of it were “closed” and “not plain” until the “infallible” teaching authority and interpretation of our Lord Jesus opened it up and made it plain. This runs utterly contrary to the Protestant notion of perspicuity of Scripture and its more or less ubiquitous self-interpreting nature, at the very least as regards salvation. In this instance, it did have to do with salvation, because Jesus was talking about “all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” They hadn’t understood those passages until Jesus “opened” them up to them. It’s hard to imagine a clearer refutation of the Protestant notion of perspicuity.

Shortly after in the text, Jesus appears to the eleven disciples and reiterates the same teaching:

Luke 24:44-47 Then he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” [45] Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, [46] and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, [47] and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Note again that they didn’t understand the Old Testament Scriptures simply by reading them. Nor did they understand the gospel itself (thus Scripture wasn’t clear about even the gospel and salvation, for them to grasp it: directly contrary to what Protestants assert). It was necessary that Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” If this was true of the disciples who lived with Jesus for three years and had innumerable discussions with Him, how much more is it necessary for us today and for men and women all through time? We don’t have Jesus to explain all of this, but we have the Church that He left, which was to be guided by the Holy Spirit and protected by Him from error (see, e.g., Acts 15:28: “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”).

The great Protestant theologian G. C. Berkouwer (1903-1996) wrote very helpfully about this issue of perspicuity:

An attempt has often been made to solve this problem by referring to the ‘objective’ clarity of Scripture, so that every incomplete understanding and insight of Scripture is said to be due to the blinding of human eyes that could not observe the true light shining from it . . .

In considering this seemingly simple solution . . . we will soon discover that not all questions are answered by it . . . An incomplete understanding or a total misunderstanding of Scripture cannot simply be explained by blindness. Certain obstacles to understanding may also be related to Scripture’s concrete form of human language conditioned by history . . . Scripture . . . is tied to historical situations and circumstances in so many ways that not every word we read is immediately clear in itself . . . Therefore, it will not surprise us that many questions have been raised in the course of history about the perspicuity of Scripture . . . Some wondered whether this confession of clarity was indeed a true confession . . . The church has frequently been aware of a certain ‘inaccessibility.’

According to Bavinck . . . it may not be overlooked that, according to Rome . . . Scripture is not regarded as a completely obscure and inaccessible book, written, so to speak, in secret language . . . Instead, Rome is convinced that an understanding of Scripture is possible – a clear understanding. But Rome is at the same time deeply impressed by the dangers involved in reading the Bible. Their desire is to protect Scripture against all arbitrary and individualistic exegesis . . .

It is indeed one of the most moving and difficult aspects of the confession of Scripture’s clarity that it does not automatically lead to a total uniformity of perception, disposing of any problems. We are confronted with important differences and forked roads . . . and all parties normally appeal to Scripture and its perspicuity. The heretics did not disregard the authority of Scripture but made an appeal to it and to its clear witness with the subjective conviction of seeing the truth in the words of Scripture. (Studies in Dogmatics: Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1975, translated from the Dutch edition of 1967 by Jack B. Rogers, 268-271, 286)

See Related Reading

Is the Bible in Fact Clear, or “Perspicuous” to Every Individual? [2007]

Luther: Scripture Easily Grasped by “Plowboys” [11-1-08]

Erasmus’ Hyperaspistes (1526): Sola Scriptura and Perspicuity of Scripture [2-12-09]

The Perspicuity (Clearness) of Scripture: A Summary [1-22-10]

The Anglican Newman (1833-1838) on the Falsity of Perspicuity (Clearness) of Holy Scripture [3-7-11]

Bible: Completely Self-Authenticating, So that Anyone Could Come up with the Complete Canon without Formal Church Proclamations? (vs. Wm. Whitaker) [July 2012]

Perspicuity (Clearness) of Scripture (vs. Wm. Whitaker) [July 2012]

The Bible: “Clear” & “Self-Interpreting”? [February 2014]

The Clearness, or “Perspicuity,” of Sacred Scripture [National Catholic Register, 11-16-17]

Is Inspiration Immediately Evident in Every Biblical Book? [National Catholic Register, 7-28-18]

“Difficulty” in Understanding the Bible: Hebrew Cultural Factors [2-5-21]

Irish Ecclesiastical Record vs. Anti-Catholic George Salmon, Pt. 6: The Innumerable Perils of Perspicuity of Scripture and Private Judgment [3-16-23]

Rev. Stearns then produces many citations of the Church fathers (on pp. 87-95) in support or alleged support of Protestant perspicuity. Many simply say that it’s good and profitable to read Scripture, a thing that the Catholic Church has never denied. As an editor of three books of patristic quotations, I can present several, too, that support the Catholic position on this and are quite contrary to the Protestant view. Anglican patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly wrote:

So Athanasius, disputing with the Arians, claimed that his own doctrine had been handed down from father to father, whereas they could not produce a single respectable witness to theirs . . .

The ancient idea that the Church alone, in virtue of being the home of the Spirit and having preserved the authentic apostolic testimony in her rule of faith, liturgical action and general witness, possesses the indispensable key to Scripture, continued to operate as powerfully as in the days of Irenaeus and Tertullian . . . Athanasius himself, after dwelling on the entire adequacy of Scripture, went on to emphasize the desirability of having sound teachers to expound it. Against the Arians he flung the charge that they would never have made shipwreck of the faith had they held fast as a sheet-anchor to the . . . Church’s peculiar and traditionally handed down grasp of the purport of revelation. Hilary insisted that only those who accept the Church’s teaching can comprehend what the Bible is getting at. According to Augustine, its doubtful or ambiguous passages need to be cleared up by ‘the rule of faith’; it was, moreover, the authority of the Church alone which in his eyes guaranteed its veracity. . . . 

It should be unnecessary to accumulate further evidence. Throughout the whole period Scripture and tradition ranked as complementary authorities, media different in form but coincident in content. To inquire which counted as superior or more ultimate is to pose the question in misleading terms. If Scripture was abundantly sufficient in principle, tradition was recognized as the surest clue to its interpretation, for in tradition the Church retained, as a legacy from the apostles which was embedded in all the organs of her institutional life, an unerring grasp of the real purport and meaning of the revelation to which Scripture and tradition alike bore witness. (Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978, 45, 47-48; italics my own)

Let’s go right to the teaching of St. Augustine — virtually the “patron saint” of Protestantism — on how clear Scripture is, and whether it’s necessary to have the Church as its authoritative interpreter. I have seven pages of his citations on this topic, in my book, The Quotable Augustine: Distinctively Catholic Elements in His Theology (Sep. 2012, 245 pages). Here is a heavy sampling:

Let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church, . . . (On Christian Doctrine, 3, 2, 2)

For many meanings of the holy Scriptures are concealed, and are known only to a few of singular intelligence . . . (Explanations of the Psalms, 68:30 [68, 36] )

For every one with average intelligence can easily see that the explanation of the Scriptures should be sought for from those who are the professed teachers of the Scriptures; and that it may happen, and indeed always happens, that many things seem absurd to the ignorant, which, when they are explained by the learned, appear all the more excellent, and are received in the explanation with the greater pleasure on account of the obstructions which made it difficult to reach the meaning. This commonly happens as regards the holy books of the Old Testament, . . . (On the Morals of the Catholic Church, 1)

But hasty and careless readers are led astray by many and manifold obscurities and ambiguities, substituting one meaning for another; and in some places they cannot hit upon even a fair interpretation. Some of the expressions are so obscure as to shroud the meaning in the thickest darkness. And I do not doubt that all this was divinely arranged for the purpose of subduing pride by toil, and of preventing a feeling of satiety in the intellect, which generally holds in small esteem what is discovered without difficulty. . . . the Holy Spirit has, with admirable wisdom and care for our welfare, so arranged the Holy Scriptures as by the plainer passages to satisfy our hunger, and by the more obscure to stimulate our appetite. For almost nothing is dug out of those obscure passages which may not be found set forth in the plainest language elsewhere. (On Christian Doctrine, ii, 7-8)

There are some passages which are not understood in their proper force, or are understood with great difficulty, at whatever length, however clearly, or with whatever eloquence the speaker may expound them; and these should never be brought before the people at all, or only on rare occasions when there is some urgent reason. (On Christian Doctrine, iv, 22-23)

I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I perceive something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, but lowly as you approach, sublime as you advance, and veiled in mysteries; and I was not of the number of those who could enter into it, or bend my neck to follow its steps. . . . nor could the sharpness of my wit pierce their inner meaning. (The Confessions, iii, 5, 9)

For not in vain have You willed that the obscure secret of so many pages should be written. The Confessions,  xi, 2, 3)

Those who are able commentators on the Scripture, . . . notwithstanding their common loyalty to the one true faith, must often bring forward various opinions on account of the obscurity of many passages; although this difference of interpretation by no means involves departure from the unity of the faith; just as one commentator may himself give, in harmony with the faith which he holds, two different interpretations of the same passage, because the obscurity of the passage makes both equally admissible. (Ep. 82 [5, 34]: to St. Jerome [405] )

Without doubt in that sentence of the Apostle [1 Corinthians 3:11-15] we must look for another interpretation, and we must account it among those things, whereof Peter says, that there are certain in his writings hard to be understood, which men ought not to pervert unto their own destruction, . . . Here perhaps I may be asked, what my own sense is of this same sentence of Paul, and in what way I think that it ought to be understood. I confess that on this point I should rather hear men of more understanding and learning than myself speak, . . . (On Faith and Works, 26-27)

There is a third class of objectors who either really do understand Scripture well, or think they do, and who, because they know (or imagine) that they have attained a certain power of interpreting the sacred books without reading any directions of the kind that I propose to lay down here, will cry out that such rules are not necessary for any one, but that everything rightly done towards clearing up the obscurities of Scripture could be better done by the unassisted grace of God. . . . No, no; rather let us put away false pride and learn whatever can be learned from man; . . . lest, being ensnared by such wiles of the enemy and by our own perversity, we may even refuse to go to the churches to hear the gospel itself, or to read a book, or to listen to another reading or preaching, . . . Cornelius the centurion, although an angel announced to him that his prayers were heard and his alms had in remembrance, was yet handed over to Peter for instruction, and not only received the sacraments from the apostle’s hands, but was also instructed by him as to the proper objects of faith, hope, and love. (On Christian Doctrine, Preface, 2, 5-6)

If you acknowledge the supreme authority of Scripture, you should recognise that authority which from the time of Christ Himself, through the ministry of His apostles, and through a regular succession of bishops in the seats of the apostles, has been preserved to our own day throughout the whole world, with a reputation known to all. There the Old Testament too has its difficulties solved, and its predictions fulfilled. (Against Faustus the Manichee, xxxiii, 9)

What, moreover, shall I say of those commentators on the divine Scriptures who have flourished in the catholic Church? They have never tried to pervert these testimonies to an alien sense, because they were firmly established in our most ancient and solid faith, and were never moved aside by the novelty of error. (On Marriage and Concupiscence, ii, 51)

Likewise, St. John Chrysostom, whom Rev. Stearns cited at great length, taught the same thing:

If anyone unpracticed in the art undertake to work a mine, he will get no gold, but confounding all aimlessly and together, will undergo a labor unprofitable and pernicious: so also they who understand not the method of Holy Scripture, nor search out its peculiarities and laws, but go over all its points carelessly and in one manner, will mix the gold with earth, and never discover the treasure which is laid up in it. I say this now because the passage before us contains much gold, not indeed manifest to view, but covered over with much obscurity, and therefore by digging and purifying we must arrive at the legitimate sense. . . . we rest not in the mere words; for thus the heretics err, because they enquire not into the object of the speaker nor the disposition of the hearers. If we add not these and other points besides, as times and places and the opinions of the listeners, many absurd consequences will follow. (Homily XL on John, v. 5:31-32)

If in things of this life a man can gain no great profit if he conduct them in an indifferent and chance way, much more will this be the case in spiritual things, since these require yet greater attention. Wherefore Christ when He referred the Jews to the Scriptures, sent them not to a mere reading, but a careful and considerate search; for He said not, “Read the Scriptures,” but, “Search the Scriptures.” Since the sayings relating to Him required great attention, (for they had been concealed from the beginning for the advantage of the men of that time,) He biddeth them now dig down with care that they might be able to discover what lay in the depth below. These sayings were not on the surface, nor were they cast forth to open view, but lay like some treasure hidden very deep. Now he that searcheth for hidden things, except he seek them with care and toil, will never find the object of his search. (Homily XLI on John, v. 5:39-40)

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Summary: Reply to Anglican Edward Josiah Stearns regarding the supposed total clearness of the Bible, pertaining to matters of salvation, and lack of necessity for a Christian authority.

2025-02-27T11:32:57-04:00

Last updated on: February 27, 2025 at 11:32 am   By
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Language of “bread” & “wine” after consecration; transubstantiation and transformation: compendium from the Church fathers 

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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 portions of a section of Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Vol. 3, 19th Topic: The Sacraments / 27th Question: Transubstantiation). 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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Third, the testimony of faith bears specially upon this subject, which confirms the testimony of the senses and of reason and teaches that the invention of transubstantiation is no less repugnant to Scripture and the analogy of faith than to the senses and reason. Here belong all those arguments adduced from the Scriptures in the preceding question. To them we add the following. First, from the passages where the Eucharistic symbols retain the same name after the consecration which they had before (namely, the name of bread and wine). This would not have been done if in virtue of the consecratory words they had ceased to be bread and wine and were changed into the body and blood of Christ.

St. Paul refers to “eat this bread and drink the cup” (1 Cor 11:26) but in the same context also expresses himself literally: “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. . . .  For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (11:27, 29). He speaks in both ways, here and in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 (“The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”).

Jesus did the same in John 6:51 (“if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh”) and in Matthew 26:26 (“Jesus took bread, and . . . gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body”). The metaphorical use refers to the accidents of outward appearance, while the literal use refers to transubstantiation and the body and blood of the Lord. It seems to me the only way to interpret these two complementary motifs is as I have done (or else as Lutherans do: with bread and wine and the body and blood both continuing to be present after consecration). Otherwise, we are left with mere bread and wine being passed out, and no body and blood of Christ at all, or Jesus ludicrously being equated with mere bread and wine, and the Bible disallows that.

Note also that Paul’s use of “drink the cup” (1 Cor 11:26-27). No one can literally “drink a cup” and must drink what it contains. But how do we know what is in this cup? We know by the context and in this instance it highly suggests, or, I submit, virtually demands, a reading that it contains Jesus’ blood. (“In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood . . .'”: 1 Cor 11:25). Again, Paul writes in the previous chapter, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16). It’s the same scenario at the Last Supper (“And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, . . .”: Mt 26:27-28). Thus, three times, it’s made crystal clear that we drink Christ’s transubstantiated blood, just as He repeatedly said that we must do to be saved, in John 6.

Beyond these factors, we could also say that general use of “bread” and “wine” after consecration is simply referring to the appearance, which is what Catholics refer to when we say that these are the “accidents” of the body and blood of Christ.

But to what purpose would Paul so often without any limitation call it bread, if it was no longer bread?

To call it what it looked like. In effect, he — like Jesus — was describing the accidental properties, since in context he also refers to “the body” and/or “the blood.” The latter fact can’t be ignored by Protestants bent on a wrongheaded, eisegetical symbolic interpretation.

Would he not on this point have afforded to believers an occasion of erring by believing that to be true bread which was anything else than bread?

No; he avoids giving that impression by also mentioning “body” and “blood” in the same context. Jesus does the same, as shown above.

The eighth class is drawn from the testimony of a purer antiquity. That the dogma of transubstantiation was unknown to it, both their writings testify (as we have seen) and many of our opponents are compelled to confess, however they may try to draw them over to their side. Peter a Marca, Archbishop of Paris, yields to us the suffrages of most of the fathers, especially of Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Theodoret, . . .

If it is afterwards inquired when and how this monstrous dogma was introduced into the church, the answer is easy. It is recent and newfangled, not a trace of it occurring among the ancients even down to the eighth century. . . . 

It is evident that it was not settled before the Council of Trent. Now let our opponents go and glory in its antiquity.

Glad to do so! One wearies of having to prove the same obvious thing over and over, but here goes. First, here are two prominent Protestant historians of Christian doctrine, providing an overview of patristic belief regarding the Eucharist:

In general, this period, . . . was already very strongly inclined toward the doctrine of transubstantiation, and toward the Greek and Roman sacrifice of the mass, which are inseparable in so far as a real sacrifice requires the real presence of the victim…… (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, A. D. 311-600, revised 5th edition, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, reprinted 1974, originally 1910, p. 500)

Theodore [c. 350-428] set forth the doctrine of the real presence, and even a theory of sacramental transformation of the elements, in highly explicit language . . . ‘At first it is laid upon the altar as a mere bread and wine mixed with water, but by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into body and blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment.’ [Hom. catech. 16,36] these and similar passages in Theodore are an indication that the twin ideas of the transformation of the eucharistic elements and the transformation of the communicant were so widely held and so firmly established in the thought and language of the church that everyone had to acknowledge them. (Jaroslav Pelikan [at this time a Lutheran], The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 236-237)

And here is just a small representative sampling of the fathers themselves:

St. Ignatius of Antioch: They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, ch. 7)

St. Justin Martyr: Likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. (First Apology, chapter 66)

St. Irenaeus: . . . the bread which is His body. . . .  the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ . . . (Against Heresies, V, 2, 3)

Tertullian: He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed “in His blood,” affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh.  (Against Marcion, Book IV, chapter 40)

Origen: You know how, when you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise care lest a particle fall, and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. . . .  you observe such caution in keeping His Body, and properly so, . . . (Homilies on Exodus, 13, 3)

St. Cyprian: And therefore we ask that our bread—that is, Christ—may be given to us daily, that we who abide and live in Christ may not depart from His sanctification and body. (On the Lord’s Prayer / Treatise IV, 18)

St. Hilary of Poitiers: As to the verity of the flesh and blood there is no room left for doubt. For now both from the declaration of the Lord Himself and our own faith, it is verily flesh and verily blood. And these when eaten and drunk, bring it to pass that both we are in Christ and Christ in us. Is not this true? (The Trinity, Book VIII, 14, 17)

St. Athanasius: You will see the Levites bringing loaves and a cup of wine, and placing them on the table. So long as the prayers and invocations have not yet been made, it is mere bread and a mere cup. But when the great and wondrous prayers have been recited, then the bread becomes the body and the cup the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . When the great prayers and holy supplications are sent up, the Word descends on the bread and the cup, and it becomes His body. (Sermon to the Newly-Baptized)

St. Basil the Great: It is good and beneficial to communicate every day, and to partake of the holy body and blood of Christ. . . . once the priest has completed the offering . . . (Letter XCIII, To the Patrician Cæsaria)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem: For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of the Holy and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, while after the invocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ . . . (Catechetical Lecture XIX, 7)

Having learnt these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ . . . (Catechetical Lecture XXII, 9)

J. N. D. Kelly summarizes Cyril’s eucharistic theology:

Even the pioneer of the conversion doctrine, Cyril of Jerusalem, is careful to indicate that the elements remain bread and wine to sensible perception, and to call them ‘the antitype’ of Christ’s body and blood: ‘the body is given to you in the figure of bread, and the blood is given to you in the figure of wine’. (Cat. 22, 9; 23, 20; 22, 3)

. . . He uses the verb ‘change’ or ‘convert’, pointing out that, since Christ transformed water into wine, which after all is akin to blood, at Cana, there can be no reason to doubt a similar miracle on the more august occasion of the eucharistic banquet. (Cat., 22, 2)

Chrysostom exploits the materialist implications of the conversion theory to the full . . . Thus the elements have undergone a change, and Chrysostom describes them as being refashioned or transformed. In the fifth century conversionist views were taken for granted by Alexandrians and Antiochenes alike. According to Cyril . . . the visible objects are not types or symbols . . . but have been transformed through God’s ineffable power into His body and blood. Elsewhere he remarks that God ‘infuses life-giving power into the oblations and transmutes them into the virtue of His own flesh.’ (Chrysostom: In prod. Iud. hom. I, 6; in Matt. hom. 82, 5; Cyril: In Matt. 26,27; In Luc. 22, 19) (Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 5th revised edition, 1978, 441, 443-444)

See also:

John Calvin and St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Comparative Eucharistic Theology [6-14-04]

Dialogue on Calvin’s & Patristic Eucharistic Theology (Especially St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Theology of the Eucharist) [6-19-04]

St. Gregory of Nyssa: So nourishment (bread and wine) by becoming flesh and blood gives bulk to the human frame: the nourishment is the body. Just as in the case of other men, our Saviour’s nourishment (bread and wine) was His Body; but these, nourishment and Body, were in Him changed into the Body of God by the Word indwelling. 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. (The Great Catechism, chapter XXXVII; the footnote in NPNF 2 for this passage states: “Gregory distinctly teaches a transmutation of the elements very like the later transubstantiation: he also distinctly teaches that the words of consecration effect the change. There seems no reason to doubt that the text is correct.”)

St. Ambrose: We observe, then, that grace has more power than nature, and yet so far we have only spoken of the grace of a prophet’s blessing. But if the blessing of man had such power as to change nature, what are we to say of that divine consecration where the very words of the Lord and Saviour operate? For that sacrament which you receive is made what it is by the word of Christ. But if the word of Elijah had such power as to bring down fire from heaven, shall not the word of Christ have power to change the nature of the elements? You read concerning the making of the whole world: “He spake and they were made, He commanded and they were created.” Shall not the word of Christ, which was able to make out of nothing that which was not, be able to change things which already are into what they were not? For it is not less to give a new nature to things than to change them. . . . The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims: “This is My Body.” Before the blessing of the heavenly words another nature is spoken of, after the consecration the Body is signified. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before the consecration it has another name, after it is called Blood. (On the Mysteries, Chapter IX, 50, 52-55)

St. John Chrysostom: It is not a man who makes the sacrificial gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ, but He that was crucified for us, Christ Himself. The priest stands there carrying out the action, but the power and grace is of God. “This is My Body,” he says. This statement transforms the gifts. (Homilies on the Treachery of Judas, 1, 6)

St. Augustine: For not all bread, but only that which receives the blessing of Christ, becomes Christ’s body. (Sermons, 234, 2)

J. N. D Kelly states (citing Ennar. 98):

One could multiply texts like these which show Augustine taking for granted the traditional identification of the elements with the sacred body and blood. There can be no doubt that he [Augustine] shared the realism held by almost all of his contemporaries and predecessors. (Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978, 447)

See also:

St. Augustine’s Belief in the Substantial Real Presence [1996]St. Augustine’s Eucharistic Doctrine and Protestant “Co-Opting” [9-25-10]

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St. Cyril of Alexandria: He states demonstratively: “This is My Body,” and “This is My Blood“(Mt. 26:26-28) “lest you might suppose the things that are seen as a figure. Rather, by some secret of the all-powerful God the things seen are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, truly offered in a sacrifice in which we, as participants, receive the life-giving and sanctifying power of Christ. (Commentary on Matthew [Mt. 26:27] )

Moreover, the belief of these same Church fathers, en masse, in the Sacrifice of the Mass attests to their eucharistic realism, over against Calvin’s and Turretin’s mere mystical symbolism and denial of the substantial, bodily Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

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Summary: Calvinist theologian François Turretin says transubstantiation is impossible due to post-consecration biblical references to “bread” & “wine” & alleged absence in the fathers.

2025-02-13T11:46:11-04:00

Last updated on: February 13, 2025 at 11:46 am   By
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. . . Concentrating on the New Eve Analogy in the Church Fathers and its Full Implication Regarding Mary’s Freedom from Actual and Original Sin

Photo credit: self-designed cover of my self-published book (2015)

 

This is a follow-up to my previous articles, Mary’s Sinlessness & the Fathers (vs. Javier Perdomo) [2-5-25] and Patristic Development of a Sinless Mary (Cdl. Newman) [2-6-25], and responds to a further counter-reply from the Lutheran apologist and YouTuber, Javier Perdomo, on his own thread, Church Fathers & Medievals on the Immaculate Conception [2-4-25]. His words will be in blue.

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Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully interact with my article.

My pleasure. Same back to you.

ON YOUR USE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN’S QUOTES

Surely, Cardinal Newman (as well as yourself) would have a deeper familiarity with the full extent of Mariology in Church History than I do since, at least at the time of writing this comment, I haven’t yet embarked on a deep-dive into all facets of historical Mariology. That being said, I see quite a few problems with Cardinal Newman’s approach to this issue (at least in the quotes you’ve provided).

Newman seems to equate patristic assertions of the Blessed Virgin (B.V. from henceforth) “being without sin” as to her “being conceived and born without sin.”
Surely, we can see that there’s a gap between those two ideas which hasn’t been bridged yet.

He does not do so. Rather, he argues it as follows (which was in my reply):

As to the antiquity of the doctrine. In the first ages original sin was not formally spoken of in contrast to actual. . . . Not till the time of St Augustine could the question be mooted precisely whether our Lady was without original sin or not. Up to his time, and after his time, it was usual to say or to imply that Mary had nothing to do with sin, in vague terms. . . . This does not go so far as actually to pronounce that she had the grace of God from the first moment of her existence, and never was under the power of original sin, but by comparing her with Eve, who was created of course without original sin, and by giving her so high an office, it implies it. (The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 22; To Lady Chatterton, 2 Oct. 1865)

For example, say that one of your friends has just watched Forrest Gump for the first time and approaches you to talk about the movie. He talks about the different characters and eventually makes his way to Lieutenant Dan, starting off saying something like, “Man, it makes sense that he was so bitter and despondent. I mean, just imagine being without legs.” If you then responded to your friend by saying, “Man, yeah, I would be pretty despondent too if I had been born without legs.” Your friend would likely look at you with a puzzled look on his face. Why? Lt. Dan wasn’t born without legs; in fact, he has both of them in an earlier point in the movie.

To say that someone “was without [INSERT THING HERE]” does not necessitate that said person was without said thing from the moment of their birth or conception — that would require additional supporting context or arguments to help bridge the gap.

The additional “context” would be the sufficiently full development of the doctrine of original sin. Cdl. Newman says this didn’t occur until the time of St. Augustine: some 350 years after the death of Jesus at a minimum. Accordingly, Anglican J. N. D. Kelly (Early Christian Doctrines, HarperSanFrancisco, rev., 1978, 172) writes about St. Irenaeus, that he “nowhere formulates a specific account of the connexion between Adam’ guilty act and the rest of mankind.” In the earlier Justin Martyr, we find — as we would expect —  an even simpler conception. Kelly describes it as “the sin of Adam and Eve . . . is the prototype of our sin” (p. 167).

Likewise, Tertullian’s view “can hardly be read as implying our solidarity with the first man in his culpability (i.e., original guilt) as well as in the consequences of his act” (p. 176), and Origen’s position “entails . . . the abandonment of any doctrine of corporate sinfulness” (p. 181). Conclusion: the doctrine was still developing, so that a fully developed view of the immaculate conception (presupposing corporate original sin) couldn’t occur until the 4th or 5th century.

Thus, Newman was making no false equation or committing equivocation; rather, he was simply pointing out the history of the development of the doctrine of original sin. He also notes the implications of analogizing Eve and Mary, since Eve was indeed created without original sin and was sinless before the fall. So this implies a sinless Eve by analogy, and this comparison occurs early and widespread in the fathers, which was Newman’s main patristic argument in this respect.

In the case of the B.V., even if someone makes a statement about her being sinless in some sense, there’s a range of options to choose from as to what that means: 1. She may have been conceived literally without sin, 2. She may have been hyperbolically “without sin” in a particular instance (denoting how righteous and pleasing to God a particular decision/action was), 3. She may have been generally “without sin” in a hyperbolic sense (denoting how particularly righteous her heart and actions were as a whole in comparison to other people), 4. She may have been literally without sin after a particular event or point in time (such as the annunciation or her being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, for example) despite having been sinful prior, or 5. She may have had sinful flesh but never chosen to act upon the flesh’s sinful desires (i.e. – having original sin, but no actual sin). The context is really important for determining which of these is meant by the person making the statement.

I agree; but in the pre-Augustinian fathers, all of this was formulated with an insufficiently developed understanding of original sin, and you still have to face the fact that if Mary is directly compared to the pre-fall Eve, then she must have been sinless as Eve was, which was an actual, pure sinlessness, from before the fall of mankind: as God originally intended it to be for all of us.

The way Newman attempts to bridge the gap is through a typological argument with the B.V. being the New Eve. For the sake for the argument, let’s grant that typological connection. Why should we assume that this means Mary was sinless from conception?

It strongly implies it, by the reasoning I just provided. Let me try to explain it some more. Eve was the one person, along with Adam, who was absolutely pure and without sin. This has implications for original sin, too, since Eve totally lacked that before her rebellion and fall; hence, Mary would have to possess the same traits in order to do better than Eve did, and to be the New / Second Eve. But the earlier fathers wouldn’t have a full understanding of that because they didn’t yet grasp original sin in its fullness.

Does everything about Eve transfer on to Mary? We know that, even prior to the Fall, God commanded Eve to be joined to her husband, and to be fruitful and multiply to replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28)… but, you wouldn’t agree that this aspect of Eve transfers to the B.V. (since you affirm her perpetual virginity). Pre-Fall, Eve felt no shame and wore no clothes everywhere she went… but you don’t believe that transfers over to the B.V.. Pre-Fall, Eve wouldn’t have experienced natural death… but you don’t believe that transfers over to the B.V.

An analogy on one sense has nothing logically to do with possible additional analogies, so this is a non sequitur.

It would seem as arbitrary to me to try to pass along Eve’s sinlessness from conception to the B.V. as it would be to pass on any of the aforementioned attributes to her.

That doesn’t follow logically, if the topic at hand is sinlessness and freedom from original sin. Catholics don’t dogmatize about whether Mary died or not, though most believe that she did (including myself), since the analogy there is to her Son.

This is especially the case when even some of the Church Fathers that Newman relies on do not speak of the B.V. in terms of having always been sinless, or anything of the sort, when discussing her as the New Eve.

They don’t technically have to, because the one-to-one comparison is being made, and we all agree that Eve was sinless and without original sin before the fall. I already noted that different doctrines develop at different rates. And with some doctrines, there are relatively more exceptions than with others. That’s the case with this. It’s not fatal to our view at all, because it’s simply the reality that we observe in studying the fathers and examining any given doctrine throughout its history.

If Protestants want to claim that the patristic facts you collect disprove Mary’s Immaculate Conception or even a Mary free of actual sin only, then you are in a world of trouble when it comes to the two “pillars” of Protestantism: sola Scriptura and sola fide. I myself have collected dozens and dozens of proofs showing that virtually no Church father — perhaps literally none — believed in either one (see the categories “VII. Bible / Tradition / Sola Scriptura” and “XXIV. Salvation / Justification / “Faith Alone” on my Fathers of the Church web page).

Irenaeus, in particular, applies the typology simply to say that Eve chose to disobey God when approached by Satan (which brought about humanity’s Fall), whereas the B.V. chose to obey God when approached by Gabriel (which would bring about humanity’s Redemption).

As I already showed from Kelly, Irenaeus didn’t understand original sin as the Church later did from the 4th century onward.

Here is the full quote from Irenaeus that Newman made reference to:

That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself when He hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was unhappily misled,—was happily announced, through means of the truth [spoken] by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused] to a man. For just as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain (portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin of the first created man (protoplasti) receives amendment by the correction of the First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death. (ANF01, Against Heresies: Book V, Chapter XIX) 

Again, if Mary was the New Eve because she said yes to God, then she had to be without sin because the analogy was to the pre-fallen Eve who was without actual or original sin at the time when she was called upon to choose God or herself. Mary said yes, and so she had to be at least as “high” in the scheme of things as the unfallen Eve in order to do so.

This is how and why the New Eve analogy implies both a sinless Mary (free from actual sin) and by extension, with a fuller understanding, a Mary free from original sin as well. Far from being a disproof of Newman and development of doctrine, what we see in earlier fathers like St. Irenaeus is exactly the sort of thing that we would expect to find according to Newman’s theory of development.

For Newman to stretch out this account of one pivotal moment of obedience to somehow mean that Mary always chose to obey God in every single other instance of her life is an unjustified leap, if I’ve ever seen one.

It’s not at all, seeing that Adam and Eve’s decision involved the entire human race (standard original sin theology, based on 1 Corinthians 15:22: “in Adam all die”: RSV; and a few other passages). Thus, if Mary undid what Eve did, as many many fathers taught, then it would likewise have enormous implications for the history of redemption (since she bore our savior and Lord) and also, by straightforward extension, for her own sinlessness, because in effect, she was put back in Eve’s position of choosing between God (sinless original state) and herself (sin after willfully rebelling).

At this point, one may be tempted to counter by saying something along the lines of: “But wait, wouldn’t these same sorts of arguments cast doubt upon Christ’s sinlessness and status as the New Adam also?” The short answer to that is, simply: no. We have warrant from the Biblical text itself explicitly calling Jesus sinless (See: 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 2:22, 1 John 3:5, Hebrews 4:15, etc…). When it comes to how to best understand these verses, the fact that Jesus is the God-Man (that there is a hypostatic union between Christ’s divine nature and human nature) easily bridges the gap and provides sufficient context and warrant for us to assert that the incarnate Christ was without sin from His very conception.

We have Luke 1:28 and kecharitomene to establish that Mary was without sin as well. I’ve written several articles consisting of entirely biblical arguments for  Mary’s sinlessness. Here are two:

Luke 1:28 (“Full of Grace”) & Immaculate Conception [2004]

Mary’s Immaculate Conception: A Biblical Argument [2010]

Here, one may be tempted to respond to this rejoinder by saying something like, “Well, Mary had a very personal and intimate connection to God when she bore Him in her womb. Surely that’s enough to establish her sinlessness also!” But… was she bearing Christ in her womb at the moment of her own conception? No, she wasn’t.

Actually, Catholics don’t believe that it was absolutely necessary for her to be sinless in order to bear Christ. Rather, we say that it was “fitting” or proper, and this is based on much biblical data regarding the notion of fittingness.

Additionally, I would also contest Newman’s contention that, “Now, as to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it was implied in early times, and never denied.” For that, I would present a myriad quotes from this very article.

It certainly wasn’t denied early on, because it would have required an understanding of original sin to do so, which was absent. But it was implied on the basis of what I have been explaining.

ON YOUR OWN POINTS

You echoed several of Cdl. Newman’s points which I addressed above, so I won’t rehash my response to those points here.

Nor will I rehash my replies!

However, I do want to address an additional statement you made:

Assume for the sake of argument that Mary actually inherited original sin for a nanosecond before God performed His special act of grace. Whether that happened or not, still we know that she definitely would have inherited it had God not acted. The very act on His part shows that it was necessary to prevent such an inheritance. In this specific sense one can incorporate all of the statements from the fathers saying that inheritance of original sin was universal, without any harm to the Catholic doctrine.

This would be like if someone said, “Every single one of my pets has been fed today”… despite knowing that when they tried to feed their smaller cat, their bigger cat stepped in and bullied the smaller one out of its food. Would the person’s claim that “every single one of my pets have been fed today” be rendered true by fact that the food would have made it to the smaller cat were it not for the bigger cat preventing it from happening? I can think of at least one very hungry kitty who’d object to that being the case.

This attempted disproof fails because it actually supports my point. The smaller cat would have eaten (analogy to the fall and entrance into sin) but for the fact that another cause (the bigger cat; analogy to God’s intervention in the Immaculate Conception) intervened and prevented it from that eventuality. Likewise, Mary would have inherited original sin like all of us because her Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with her mother and everything to do with God’s special miraculous act of grace. This is how she can call God her savior. God prevented her from sin, which has the same effect as someone else being rescued from the pit of sin after having fallen into it.

To keep things brief in regards to the doctrinal development arguments, I will simply point the following out: the frustrating bit here is that Roman Catholic apologetics makes much use of the “consensus of the Fathers” when RCs believe said consensus to be in their favor. However, when the tide turns the other way, and the consensus is against a given RC position… well, an untold number of Fathers can just be wrong, and we can just appeal to doctrinal development. It really feels like: “Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.”

That may be how it seems to you and who knows how many Protestants, as well as legions of Catholics who haven’t studied the history and nature of doctrinal development, but the facts of history are what they are. And what we find is that some doctrines develop very fast (e.g., baptismal regeneration, Real Presence in the Eucharist, episcopal Church government) and others very slowly (the Holy Trinity, original sin, the full understanding of the papacy, trinitarianism, the communion of saints, Christology, the canon of the Bible, Mariology).

Meanwhile, some doctrines prove themselves — after closer examination — to be corruptions of what came earlier or outright novelties, and so are virtually universally rejected by the fathers, till being resurrected in the 16th century (sola Scriptura, sola fide, symbolic Eucharist and baptism, denominationalism, etc.). Those are the facts of patristic history and I have backed all of them up, myself.

I would keep going on, but I promised to keep things brief so that I could offer a response within a reasonable amount of time from your own response to me.

I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity to further explain my Catholic views, and how I believe development of doctrine has functioned in actual Church history.

Again, thanks for your thoughts and for a respectful back and forth.

Same to you. This is enjoyable, constructive dialogue and I believe that it will be instructive and edifying to readers.

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Practical Matters:  I run the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site: rated #1 for Christian sites by leading AI tool, ChatGPT — endorsed by popular Protestant blogger Adrian Warnock. Perhaps some of my 5,000+ free online articles or fifty-six books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them. If you believe my full-time apostolate is worth supporting, please seriously consider a much-needed monthly or one-time financial contribution. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV).
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You can support my work a great deal in non-financial ways, if you prefer; by subscribing to, commenting on, liking, and sharing videos from my YouTube channel, Catholic Bible Highlights, where I partner with Kenny Burchard (see my own videos), and/or by signing up to receive notice for new articles on this blog. Just type your email address on the sidebar to the right (scroll down quite a bit), where you see, “Sign Me Up!” Thanks a million!
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Summary: I argue, following Cdl. Newman’s reasoning, that Mary’s sinlessness was strongly implied in the widespread and early patristic motif of Mary as the New Eve or Second Eve.

2025-02-06T00:20:10-04:00

Last updated on: February 6, 2025 at 12:20 am   By
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Including a Turn the Tables Argument Regarding Protestant Doctrines Virtually Nonexistent in the Fathers (Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide)

Photo credit: Sistine Madonna (1513-1514), by Raphael (1483-1520) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]
Javier Perdomo, who recently became a Lutheran (I believe, from another Protestant denomination), and who runs an active YouTube channel, with 289 videos, wrote the very lengthy article, “Church Fathers & Medievals on the Immaculate Conception: An EXTENSIVE list of 150+ Patristic & Medieval quotes undermining the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception” (2-4-25). It was on his substack, that I subscribe to, so I received it in my email. His words will be in blue below. I replied underneath his article, and we have since engaged in a very pleasant dialogue. I hope it continues indefinitely, on this and other topics.
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I received this article in my email today. I sincerely commend you for the tremendous amount of research that went into this. As a Catholic apologist myself, I seriously considered making a long, in-depth reply, which I would consider enjoyable and challenging in roughly equal measure, but ultimately decided not to, for several reasons:
1) virtually no one, Protestant or Catholic, cares about such an exhaustive treatment of the Fathers;
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2) very few in either group care about, or even understand in the most rudimentary way, development of doctrine (my favorite topic in theology, by the way, and the biggest factor in my becoming Catholic), that this subject necessarily involves;
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3) I know that it’s exceedingly unlikely, based on almost universal past experience of thirty years, that you or any other Protestant apologist, would reply and interact with anything I might produce by way of counter-reply. So, e.g., Jordan Cooper tells me he has no time to counter-reply to my 18 or so critiques of his videos. Gavin Ortlund has only replied once to over 30 critiques. He, too, says he has no time for it and cites priorities, etc.
It’s fine to be good stewards. I do the same thing. But what I’m saying is that for me to undertake a project this huge, which virtually no one would care about or read, and which would almost certainly receive no reply back, is, in the end, not worth the huge amount of time and effort this would require, seeing that there are hundreds of other things in apologetics and theology to write about or discuss (on my new YouTube channel with Kenny Burchard).
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In the meantime, my analogical mind immediately thought of a similar situation that is the Protestants’ “problem” just as this is ours to work through. Protestants, too, claim that the Church fathers are more on their side than ours. Luther, Melanchthon, and Chemnitz certainly thought that, and non-Lutherans like Calvin did as well, and I hear this repeated times without number by Protestant apologists, such as Cooper and Ortlund, Jason Engwer, and many others. In other words, judging by the grandiose patristic claims that also regularly come from your side (largely in reaction to us), you, too, have the intellectual burden of having to demonstrate that the fathers espoused your distinctive (and I say, novel and late-arriving) views. Thus, I could paraphrase your own words as follows:
“Our Protestant friends are as fond as we are of making grand appeals to history and the consensus of the Church’s theologians down through the ages. But could they truly argue that the consensus of the theologians is on their side when it comes to their two “pillars”: sola Scriptura and sola fide?”
When it comes to these two “pillars” of the Reformation, it’s exceedingly difficult to demonstrate virtually any patristic espousal at all, let alone a supposed “consensus.” I contend that it’s much more difficult than our task with regard to Mary’s sinlessness, as developed over a long period into the Immaculate Conception. I myself have — through many hundreds of hours of work — collected scores and scores of evidences that the Church fathers en masse rejected both. But I can also draw from Protestant experts on the topic. Hence, Alister McGrath, widely considered the foremost authority on the history of justification, made the following observation:
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)
Protestant apologist Norman Geisler makes an even more striking observation:
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! . . . . . (Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, with Ralph E. MacKenzie, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1995, 222)
In other words, goose and gander, pot calling the kettle black, etc. You guys make your arguments against Marian doctrines and other distinctively Catholic positions, and we offer similar ones back, about distinctively Protestant positions. Yet Protestants only very rarely are willing to produce any counter-replies when we make our arguments along these lines, which in turn is one of the reasons why I’m disinclined to reply to this article of yours. “No one” would read it or care about it, and almost certainly no one — who is able to — would reply to whatever I came up with.
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We all must be wise stewards of our time and efforts. In an ideal world, where everyone loved debate and dialogue and the exchange of ideas, and loved to back up their own opinions under intense scrutiny, I would like few things more than to discuss this and many other theological topics for months on end, with able and willing dialogue opponents, but I don’t expect that that will ever happen, because it takes two . . .
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Thank you for your reply. I’m sorry you haven’t been able to have the robust back-and-forths that you’ve been wanting to have with Protestant apologists.
I can certainly understand how much of a bummer it is to put a lot of effort into a robust response while receiving no interaction in return. I, myself, am also very busy spinning a lot of plates (with my YT channel, my job, other projects, family, etc…), but at the very least, I would like to interact with your comment here.
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I haven’t done a deep-dive into all the relevant sources regarding Justification yet, so I can’t provide a lengthy, in-depth analysis of the historical data at the moment. That being said, I wouldn’t agree with the idea that the Lutheran understanding of Justification is a clear break with the past. Alister McGrath isn’t the only Protestant scholar who has done work on this issue. Additionally, McGrath also didn’t survey every single Patristic writing (realistically, who could though!) and his analysis of the sources isn’t uncontested. See here for a brief interaction with McGrath by a fellow Lutheran:
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Do you have an article detailing your case for doctrinal development? If so, I’d like to read it. When it comes to understanding the Roman Catholic understanding of doctrinal development, what are some of your favorite resources (books, videos, articles) that you would recommend?
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Delighted to see your reply!

There are always, of course, other scholars who disagree with any given scholar. That’s where it gets fun! I think it’s striking that statements such as the ones I cited from McGrath and Geisler exist at all. I believe that Jordan Cooper said in one of his videos that I’ve critiqued, if I recall correctly (and I think I do), that the Lutheran conception of justification was only fully developed in the 16th century (and that this was okay). I’m sure you could find bits and pieces of imputed justification here and there in the fathers and medieval theologians, but nowhere within a million miles of a consensus, even if McGrath’s views aren’t entirely accurate.

Also, our view of what we call initial justification is essentially the same. In this respect, even Trent allows some degree of imputation. Initial justification is entirely monergistic. Trent is very explicit and clear about that. Our concern is with the post-regenerate person’s life, and what he or she is responsible for then (and good works are a necessary part of that).

And so, if I’m correct about that, you’re basically in the same boat that you claim we’re in: you firmly believe a doctrine that is hard to find before Melanchthon (not even fully in Luther, who talked about theosis), just as you would say our Marian doctrines are late-arriving, and corruptions rather than developments. And the same goes for sola Scriptura. So that is one turn-the-tables reply. I’m not saying it nullifies your argument against us; just that Protestants also have similar “problems” in locating their distinctive views in historical theology.

As for resources on development, I have a web page devoted to it, including several introductory treatments and more in-depth stuff. I also wrote a book on the topic, way back in 2002. I’ll send you a free e-book version of that if you like (pdf, mobi, or ePub). Cardinal Newman’s essay on development is the classic treatment, and it’s free online. Nothing else comes to mind, but on Amazon, these three looked interesting:

A Brief Introduction to the Development of Doctrine: According to the Mind of St. Thomas Aquinas (Fr. Thomas Gilby, March 2023)

Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Thomas G. Guarino, May 2013)

St. Vincent was basically Newman’s jumping-off point, as he developed his theory.

The Development of Dogma: A Systematic Account (Guy Mansini, Jan. 2024)

Here are five meaty and good Catholic articles:

What Does it Mean for Doctrine to Develop? (Fr. Thomas Weinandy, Catholic Answers, 5-2-20)

The Difference Between Development and Change (Eduardo, Echeverria, Catholic Answers, 6-15-20)

Newman, Aquinas, and the Development of Doctrine (Joshua Madden, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, 6-30-21)

Development of Doctrine and St. Vincent of Lerins (Joe Heschmeyer, Catholic Answers, 12-29-22)

On the relevance and reality of the development of doctrine today (Fr. Thomas Weinandy, The Catholic World Report, 1-18-24)

I will at least do a partial reply-article consisting of Newman’s thoughts on the patristic and later development of the belief in Mary’s sinlessness and Immaculate Conception, drawn from one or more of my three quotations books devoted to St. Cardinal Newman.

God bless!

Thank you for the lengthy reply!

Part of my interest in this article was in asking the question: Does every Roman Catholic dogma pass the “consensus of the fathers” check? (With the Immaculate Conception as a case study); especially since that check is very often levied by RC laymen against all sorts of Protestants on all sorts of issues (whether accurate or not). As such, it was intended to be a bit of an internal critique of sorts. I need to do a lot more reading before I make up my own mind on the subject of doctrinal development and put forth my own positive construction on the issue (and the ways it may relate to doctrines such as Sola Fide).

In line with that, I will certainly check out the resources you’ve linked (probably a little later once I’m done working on a few projects I have going at the moment). If you do write an article on this, I’ll also try to make time to read it as promptly as my schedule allows.

Thanks again for the charitable interaction.

Well, the short answer to your question is that we think doctrines develop at different rates. The Immaculate Conception obviously developed very slowly. The first motif was “New Eve” or “Second Eve”. Newman notes that pre-fallen Eve — like Adam — was a sinless person; therefore the patristic analogy, which he describes as “explicit” presupposes a sinless Mary. If that’s true, then it’s present in that sense every time we see this common theme in the fathers.

On a broad scale, Catholics agree that Jesus was front and center, both in the NT and in the fathers. That’s our answer if asked why there is so little about Mary in the NT. Trinitarianism was still being importantly developed in the 6th and even 7th centuries. The Christological heresy of Monophysitism was still present in the 6th century, and Monothelitism extended all the way to the Third Council of Constantinople in 681, where it was condemned. So we’re talking about some 650 years after Christ just to get trinitarianism and the deity of Christ right once and for all. A lot of folks (including in vast areas in the East, still didn’t fully get it) Once that was established, folks thought relatively more about Mary and many other topics of theology, and development quickened as a result. First things first, in other words.

By the time of III Constantinople, Germanus, from the same city was alive (c. 634-c. 733), and he even taught the doctrine of Mary Mediatrix. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1983, ed. Cross), stated that “Mary’s incomparable purity, foreshadowing the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception” was a “frequently recurring” theme in his writing (see p. 561).

Likewise, Andrew of Crete (c. 660-740) wrote about how “human nature . . . regains in her person its ancient privileges and is fashioned according to a perfect model truly worthy of God” (Homily 1 on Mary’s Nativity) and described Mary as “alone wholly without stain” (Canon for the Conception of Anne).

Marian scholar Hilda Graef, a source that appeared once in your article, noted that “according to John of Damascus [c. 675-749], even the ‘active’ conception of Mary was completely without stain . . .”: a position that even goes beyond what the Catholic dogma holds (which is that her immaculate conception had nothing to do with her parents at all). Thus, these last two writers express pretty much the fully developed doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, around the same time as trinitarian debates were wrapping up, or only shortly thereafter.

So Catholics ask Protestants, in Newmanian analogical style: “if even trinitarianism was fully developed as late as 681, why is it an issue that Mary’s Immaculate Conception was first explicitly expressed (as far as we know) around the same time?” If one thing is okay, so is the other. One can’t accept late development only of Protestant distinctives or doctrines where we agree. The same analysis and standard has to be used across the board.

What I’ve always argued is that the sinlessness of Mary (which is the essence of her immaculate conception) is biblical, based on Luke 1:28 (“full of grace” / kecharitomene“) and the analogies of others also sanctified in the womb (John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Paul). Sinlessness is the original essential kernel. The thought then developed over many centuries, just as almost every other doctrine did. But a few doctrines seem almost fully developed early on; for example, baptism and the Real Presence in the Eucharist, where Lutherans and Catholics agree. Others, like original sin or the Two Natures of Christ, took many centuries.

But some fathers are simply wrong about things. St. Augustine was wrong about double predestination (again, we agree there). Even “unanimous consent” doesn’t literally mean that, in the Latin. It means “overall consensus.”

There are many relevant factors concerning Mary’s sinlessness in the fathers that I will at least briefly allude to in my reply paper, that will primarily concentrate on Newman’s thoughts.

This whole thing interested me because my two favorite topics in theology are development of doctrine and Mary.

Thanks for your charitable demeanor as well.

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Practical Matters:  I run the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site: rated #1 for Christian sites by leading AI tool, ChatGPT — endorsed by popular Protestant blogger Adrian Warnock. Perhaps some of my 5,000+ free online articles or fifty-six books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them. If you believe my full-time apostolate is worth supporting, please seriously consider a much-needed monthly or one-time financial contribution. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV).
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PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: [email protected]. Here’s also a second page to get to PayPal. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing (including Zelle and 100% tax-deductible donations if desired), see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information.
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You can support my work a great deal in non-financial ways, if you prefer; by subscribing to, commenting on, liking, and sharing videos from my YouTube channel, Catholic Bible Highlights, where I partner with Kenny Burchard (see my own videos), and/or by signing up to receive notice for new articles on this blog. Just type your email address on the sidebar to the right (scroll down quite a bit), where you see, “Sign Me Up!” Thanks a million!
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Photo credit: Sistine Madonna (1513-1514), by Raphael (1483-1520) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: I respond to Lutheran apologist Javier Perdomo’s claim that the Church fathers taught many things that run contrary to Mary’s sinlessness and/or her Immaculate Conception.

2025-02-06T20:00:22-04:00

Last updated on: February 6, 2025 at 8:00 pm   By
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Photo credit: self-designed cover of my self-published book (2008)

NOTE: see also my video with Kenny Burchard, that discusses these points and adds additional information about Martin Luther: Luther’s Shocking Catholic Confessions: Ten Catholic Truths Martin Luther Embraced!!! [Catholic Bible Highlights, 2-6-25]

1) Catholic Church’s Authority and Christian Status

We on our part confess that there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy; indeed everything that is Christian and good is to be found there and has come to us from this source. For instance we confess that in the papal church there are the true holy Scriptures, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys to the forgiveness of sins, the true office of the ministry, the true catechism in the form of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the articles of the creed . . . I speak of what the pope and we have in common . . . I contend that in the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity and many great and devoted saints. . . . The Christendom that now is under the papacy is truly the body of Christ and a member of it. If it is his body, then it has the true spirit, gospel, faith, baptism, sacrament, keys, the office of the ministry, prayer, holy Scripture, and everything that pertains to Christendom. So we are all still under the papacy and therefrom have received our Christian treasures. (Concerning Rebaptism, written against the Anabaptists in January 1528; in Luther’s Works, Vol. 40, pp. 229-262; this excerpt from pp. 231-232)

2) Infant and Regenerating Baptism

Little children . . . are free in every way, secure and saved solely through the glory of their baptism . . . Through the prayer of the believing church which presents it, . . . the infant is changed, cleansed, and renewed by inpoured faith. (The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, October 1520, from the translation of A. T. W. Steinhauser, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, revised edition, 1970, 197)

The power, the effect, the benefit, the fruit and the purpose of baptism is to save. . . . Through the Word, baptism receives the power to become the washing of regeneration, as St. Paul calls it in Titus 3:5 . . . Faith clings to the water and believes it to be baptism which effects pure salvation and life . . . When sin and conscience oppress us . . . you may say: It is a fact that I am baptized, but, being baptized, I have the promise that I shall be saved and obtain eternal life for both soul and body . . . Hence, no greater jewel can adorn our body or soul than baptism; for through it perfect holiness and salvation become accessible to us . . . (Large Catechism, April 1529, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1935, sections 223-224, 230, pages 162, 165)

3) Apostolic and Catholic Tradition

This article [the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist] has been unanimously believed and held from the beginning of the Christian Church to the present hour, as may be shown from the books and writings of the dear fathers, . . ., — which testimony of the entire holy Christian Church ought to be sufficient for us, even if we had nothing more. For it is dangerous and dreadful to hear or believe anything against the unanimous testimony, faith, and doctrine of the entire holy Christian Church, as it has been held unanimously in all the world up to this year 1500. Whoever now doubts of this, he does just as much as if he believed in no Christian Church, . . . to which Christ bears powerful testimony in Matt. 28.20: ‘Lo, I am with you alway, to the end of the world,’ and Paul, in 1 Tim. 3.15: ‘The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth.’  (Letter to Albert, Margrave of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, dated between February and April 1532; cited in Philip Schaff, The Life and Labours of St. Augustine, Oxford University: 1854, p. 95. Italics are Schaff’s own; cf. abridged [?] version in Preserved Smith, The Life and Letters of Martin Luther [Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911], pp. 290-292. Renowned Protestant historian Schaff, on the same page, stated that in this letter, Luther “declares the importance of tradition in matters of faith, as strongly even as any Catholic.”)

4) Works: Supreme Importance of, as Proof of an Authentic Faith

Where is the fruit that shows you really believe? . . . Christ has not died so that you could remain such a sinner; rather, he died so that sin might be put to death and destroyed and that you might now begin to love God and your neighbor. Faith takes sins away and puts them to death so that you should live not in them but in righteousness. Therefore demonstrate by your works and by your fruits that you have faith . . . [Whoever believes] will say it with his deeds – or forget about having the reputation of being a believer . . . Love follows true faith . . . One should do everything that is good so that faith does not become an empty husk but may be true and genuine. (Sermon on 1 John 4:16 ff., 1545; original in Weimar German edition of Luther’s Works, Vol. 49, 783; from Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, translated by Robert C. Schultz, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, 448-449; this sermon is included in Vol. 78 of Luther’s Works [2015])

5) Holy Eucharist: Real Presence

I have often enough asserted that I do not argue whether the wine remains wine or not. It is enough for me that Christ’s blood is present; let it be with the wine as God wills. Sooner than have mere wine with the fanatics, I would agree with the pope that there is only blood. (Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, February 1528, in Luther’s Works, Vol. 37, 317)

This is clear, plain, and unconcealed: “I am speaking of My flesh and blood.” . . . There we have the flat statement which cannot be interpreted in any other way than that there is no life, but death alone, apart from His flesh and blood if these are neglected or despised. How is it possible to distort this text [John 6]? . . . You must note these words and this text with the utmost diligence . . . It can neither speciously be interpreted nor avoided and evaded. (Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 6-8; 16th Sermon on John 6, 1 April 1531; in Luther’ Works, Vol. 23, 133-135)

6) Images of Saints

According to the law of Moses no other images are forbidden than an image of God which one worships. A crucifix, on the other hand, or any other holy image is not forbidden. . . . Where however images or statues are made without idolatry, then such making of them is not forbidden. . . . My image breakers must also let me keep, wear, and look at a crucifix or a Madonna . . . as long as I do not worship them, but only have them as memorials. . . . But images for memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated . . . And they are not only to be tolerated, but for the sake of the memorial and the witness they are praiseworthy and honorable . . . (Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments, January 1525; in Luther’s Works, Vol. 40, 85-86, 88, 91)

7) “In Partu” Birth of Jesus

[The Catholic Church has interpreted Mary’s virginity (in partu) as a physically miraculous birth of Jesus rather than a natural one. This is part of being “ever-virgin”: before, during, and after the birth of Christ]

She remained a virgin after the birth of Christ because Scripture does not state or indicate that she later lost her virginity. . . . the Scripture stops with this, that she was a virgin before and at the birth of Christ; . . . (That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, May 1523; in Luther’s Works, Vol. 45, 206; my emphasis)

She brought forth without sin, without shame, without pain and without injury, just as she had conceived without sin. The curse of Eve did not come on her, where God said: “In pain thou shalt bring forth children,” Gen. 3:16; otherwise it was with her in every particular as with every woman who gives birth to a child. (Sermon for Christmas Eve; Luke 2:1-14, translated by George H. Trabert, 24 December 1521; in Vol. 1 of Sermons of Martin Luther, The Church Postils; edited and partially translated by John Nicholas Lenker, 8 volumes. Volumes 1-5 were originally published in Minneapolis by Lutherans of All Lands, 1904-1906; my emphasis)

8) Opposition to the Contraceptive Mentality / Procreation the Purpose of Marriage

The rest of the populace is more wicked than even the heathen themselves. For most married people do not desire offspring. Indeed, they turn away from it and consider it better to live without children, because they are poor and do not have the means with which to support a household. . . . But the purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. . . . Those who have no love for children are swine, stocks, and logs unworthy of being called men and women; for they despise the blessing of God . . . (Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 26-30; c. Autumn 1542; ch. 30, in Luther’s Works, vol. 5, 363)

In the human race there are few who regard a woman’s fertility as a blessing. Indeed, there are many who have an aversion for it and regard sterility as a special blessing. Surely this is also contrary to nature. (Ibid., 325)

9) Sinless Mary

In [Christ’s] conception the flesh and blood of Mary were entirely purged, so that nothing of sin remained. Therefore Isaiah says rightly, “There was no guile found in his mouth”; otherwise, every seed except for Mary’s was corrupted.” (Disputation On the Divinity and Humanity of Christ, 27 February 1540; “translated from the Latin text Weimar edition, 39/2.92-121” by Christopher B. Brown, and available online [see also a much snazzier PDF version]) 

[Mary was] “saved and purified from original sin through the Holy Spirit” . . . (Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi [Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ], 1543, Weimar edition, 53, 640; cited by Beth Kreitzer, Reforming Mary: Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century [Oxford University Press: 2004], p. 124)

10) Eucharistic Adoration

Where worship is offered from the heart, there follows quite properly also that outward bowing, bending, kneeling, and adoration with the body. . . . 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, April 1523; in Luther’s Works, vol. 36, 293-294)

One should not withhold from him such worship and adoration [in the Holy Eucharist] . . . One should not condemn and accuse of heresy people who do adore the sacrament. (Ibid., 294-295)

NOTE: see also my video with Kenny Burchard, that discusses these points and adds additional information about Martin Luther: Luther’s Shocking Catholic Confessions: Ten Catholic Truths Martin Luther Embraced!!! [Catholic Bible Highlights, 2-6-25]

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Summary: I collect the words of Martin Luther (1483-1546), the founder of Protestantism, in ten major areas where he — surprisingly and shockingly — agrees with Catholic positions.

2025-01-09T17:18:20-04:00

Last updated on: January 9, 2025 at 5:18 pm   By
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De Fide Dogma on Communion in One Species Only; Theological Discord; Sola Scriptura
Photo credit: 1679 edition of Gerhard’s Confessio Catholica (Frankfurt) [public domain / Internet Archive]
Many Lutheran scholars and apologists consider Johann Gerhard (1582-1637), a Protestant scholastic, to be the most knowledgeable Lutheran apologist in history. What’s particularly notable about him is that he actually directly interacted with the best Catholic apologetics and theological sources (such as St. Robert Bellarmine: 1542-1621). According to the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Gerhard, he was “regarded as the greatest living theologian of Protestant Germany.” And it described his multi-volume book, “the Confessio Catholica (1633–1637)” as “an extensive work which seeks to prove the evangelical and catholic character of the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession [1530, written by Philip Melanchthon] from the writings of approved Roman Catholic authors.”
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Gerhard’s words will be in blue. The first volume of this work is 1008 pages, and is in the public domain. I will be utilizing Google Translate to render the original Latin into English (with my own slight modifications to make it more readable). I use RSV for scriptural citations.

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Since they demonstrate the uncertainty of the very papal dogma that we are attacking, they thereby confirm our opinion opposed to the same papal dogma. But since those differences argue the uncertainty of papal dogmas, the matter itself is proved, and can be confirmed in detail from Bellarmine himself. For he, in Book 4. On the Eucharist, Chapter 23, Prop. 4, forms the following proposition: “No spiritual fruit is taken from two kinds, which is not taken from one”; he adds: “this proposition is not at all certain, since theologians think variously about it, nor does the Council openly define it.” Therefore, transferring the hypothesis to the theory, we can say that those statements, about which theologians variously argue, either before or after the definition of the Council of Trent, are not really certain, and therefore those differences of theologians and pontiffs are not to be rendered by the papal dogmas, which confirm our opinion opposed to them.

He’s either citing St. Robert Bellarmine out of context or erroneously  or interprets him wrongly, since Trent was clear on this point. In its 21st session in 1562, in the Decree on Communion Under Both Species, chapter 3, it stated:

That Christ whole and entire, and a true Sacrament are received under either species.

It moreover declares, that although, as hath been already said, our Redeemer, in that last supper, instituted, and delivered to the apostles, this sacrament in two species, yet is to be acknowledged, that Christ whole and entire and a true sacrament are received under either species alone; and that therefore, as regards the fruit thereof, they, who receive one species alone, are not defrauded of any grace necessary to salvation. (my italics and bolding; Denzinger 1729; p. 415 in the 43rd edition, 2012)

Moreover, in its session 13 in October 1551, the Council had also declared in the Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist:

Wherefore it is most true, that as much is contained under either species as under both; for Christ whole and entire is under the species of bread, and under any part whatsoever of that species; likewise the whole (Christ) is under the species of wine, and under the parts thereof. (Chapter 3; Denzinger 1641, p. 394)
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If any one denieth, that, in the venerable sacrament of the Eucharist, the whole Christ is contained under each species, and under every part of each species, when separated; let him be anathema. (Canon 3; Denzinger 1653, p. 397)
The Council of Florence had stated the same doctrine in November 1439, in the Bull of Union with the Armenians: Exsultate Deo:
The whole Christ is contained under the species of bread and the whole Christ under the species of wine. Further, the whole Christ is present under any part of the consecrated host or the consecrated wine when separated from the rest. (Denzinger 1321, p. 341)
So had the Council of Constance in its session 13 on 15 June 1415: Decree on Communion Only under the Species of Bread: “The whole Body and Blood of Christ are truly contained under both the species of bread and the species of wine. . . . It should be held as a law . . .” (Denzinger 199, p. 326)
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Moreover, Ludwig Ott’s widely used reference work, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (2018 revision), asserts (p. 409) that these doctrines are classified as de fide; that is, the very highest level of dogmatic certainty. Lastly, the Lutheran belief in some sort of “divided Christ” in Holy Communion (if one form is received, as I always do, myself) is theologically, philosophically, and logically inadequate, as well as unbiblical:
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The Host and Chalice Both Contain Christ’s Body and Blood [National Catholic Register, 12-10-19]
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Giovanni Pico della Mirandola states the same thing in different words in his Apology, writing: “Discord in writers is an argument for falsehood, when it is necessary that what one of the disagreeing parties says is false, because necessarily the other part of the tradition is false.” For this reason Augustine, in book 16 of the City of God, proves the truth of Scripture from the mutual concord of its writers, in which all agree and none disagree with another, which is attested by the fact of Scripture, to indubitable and infallible truth.
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It’s pretty humorous and the very height of irony when a Lutheran cites a Catholic philosopher talking about discord and contradictory opinions, and seeks to (wrongly) apply that against Catholicism, rather than addressing the innumerable contradictions inherent in Protestant denominationalism, which will never be — and never could be — resolved, due to the fundamentally flawed nature of their rule of faith. This is certainly the sort of approach that Jesus condemned, when He said,
Matthew 7:3-5 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? [4] Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? [5] You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

The beginning of the truly Catholic religion is this, that the word of God, contained in the prophetic and apostolic writings, should perfectly inform us of all things necessary for faith, and consequently be the only norm and rule of all controversies of faith which are discussed in the Church. Therefore, the first principle is that Scripture is perfect. For example, 1. By the praise of perfection attributed to Scripture, we understand this, that it fully and perfectly informs us of all things which are necessary for faith and morals. 2. We do not call Scripture perfect because all things which are necessary for faith and morals are contained in the Scriptures in a large number of letters and in as many words, but we say that some are contained explicitly, some implicitly in them, so that they can be deduced from them by legitimate and immutable confluence.

He offers a fairly standard definition of sola Scriptura: the historically novel and unbiblical Protestant rule of faith.

Rev. 22. v. 18. & 19. wherefore the Apostle warns, that no one should do more than what is written 1. Cor. 4. v. 6.

Revelation 22:18-19 I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, [19] and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

This has nothing do do with the question of whether legitimate unwritten traditions exist. It simply warns about adding to or taking anything away from the one book of Revelation. Once we enter into Protestant defenses of sola Scriptura, non sequiturs are ubiquitous. They never cease to amaze me, in their wrongheadedness and argumentative bankruptcy. I’ve already dealt with the failure of 1 Corinthians 4:6 as an alleged prooftext, so it need not detain us any further.

From a perfect voluntary cause, willing and not hindered to produce a perfect effect, a perfect effect proceeds. Such is the cause of Scripture, since He willed that the Scriptures should be written and come forth for that end, that from His own power and will they should fully lead us to faith, and no impediment to the production of this effect intervenes or could intervene.

This is clearly untrue (and equally as clearly, silly), and it is because human free will can and does interfere with God’s will for His inspired Scripture. Hence St. Peter wrote about St. Paul’s writings: “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Pet 3:16). And Paul refers to those who “will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim 4:3-4).

Thus, the perfect effect” of the truth of Scripture is and always can be prevented by willful human obstinacy and pride. A perfect Scripture doesn’t guarantee that all will accept and understand and follow this perfect Scripture and come to total agreement because God wills that. Any three-second pondering of Protestant division proves this.

Rom. 1:1-2, explains all the parts of Christianity, so that from it we may have faith in Christ and the doctrine of good works.

It does no such thing:

Romans 1:1-2 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God [2] which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures,

This refers only to the gospel. St. Paul defines the gospel in Acts 13:30-33 as the resurrection of Jesus and as His death, burial, and resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. Therefore, Romans 1:1-2 does not explain “all the parts of Christianity.”

nothing should be added or taken away, Deuteronomy. 4. v. 2. chap. 12. v.32. (which is to be understood of the word written is evident from Deuteronomy. 28. v. 58. &  Jol. i. v. 8.) Prov. 3o. v.5. Galatians .i .v. 8.

This is the same repeated fallacy dealt with in regard to Revelation 22:18-19 above.  Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 teach that Scripture (at that time, the Torah, or the first five books of the Old Testament) shouldn’t be added to or subtracted from. It’s very simple. This is not the same thing as saying that “no oral tradition can also exist.” In the same book, after all (8:20-22) it’s stated that prophets speak the “word” of the Lord, “in the name of the Lord.” Such prophecies go beyond Scripture itself. Thus, Deuteronomy doesn’t prove sola Scriptura; it disproves it.

Proverbs 30:5-6 states that “Every word of God proves true . . . Do not add to his words.” It’s the same concept again. Protestants assume that “word of God” is the equivalent of “Bible.” But it’s not. It (like “word of the Lord”) also refers to God’s personal revelation to prophets: “the word of God came to Shemai’ah” (1 Kgs 12:22); “the word of God came to John the son of Zechari’ah in the wilderness” (Lk 3:2). 1 Corinthians 14:30 even refers to extra-biblical continuing new covenant prophecy as “revelation.”

Galatians 1:18 is about false gospels, not about whether Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith. It gets very wearisome having to point out these obvious things. But it happens in every discussion about sola Scriptura because Protestants have no genuine biblical proof of it at all, let alone compelling ones. So instead we get irrelevant nonsense such as the above, even (the most amazing thing) from brilliant minds and scholars like Gerhard.

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Photo credit: 1679 edition of Gerhard’s Confessio Catholica (Frankfurt) [public domain / Internet Archive]

Summary: Second of two replies to the “Confessio” of Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard (1582-1637), in which he sought to confirm Lutheran doctrines by various Catholic statements.

2025-01-09T00:53:52-04:00

Last updated on: January 9, 2025 at 12:53 am   By
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Ecclesial Infallibility; Trent: Protestants Are Regenerated Christians By Virtue of Baptism; Total Clearness of Scripture?; St. Bernard & the Catholic Church on Meritorious Works

Photo credit: Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) [public domain / Internet Archive Open Library: Confessio Catholica]
Lutheran scholars and apologists widely consider Johann Gerhard (1582-1637), a Protestant scholastic, to be the most knowledgeable Lutheran apologist in history. What’s particularly notable about him is that he actually directly interacted with the best Catholic apologetics and theological sources (such as St. Robert Bellarmine: 1542-1621). According to the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Gerhard, he was “regarded as the greatest living theologian of Protestant Germany.” And it described his multi-volume book, “the Confessio Catholica (1633–1637)” as “an extensive work which seeks to prove the evangelical and catholic character of the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession [1530, written by Philip Melanchthon] from the writings of approved Roman Catholic authors.”
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Gerhard’s words will be in blue. The first volume of this work is 1008 pages, and is in the public domain. I will be utilizing Google Translate to render the original Latin into English (with my own slight modifications to make it more readable). I use RSV for scriptural citations.

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Paul the Apostle, arguing against the Gentiles, produces testimony from three gentile poets, . . . First, he opposes the philosophers of the Athenians from the Phenomena of Aratus [Acts 17:28] . . . The Corinthians, some of whom deny the flesh, adduce a different refutation from . . . Menander [1 Cor 15:33]. . . . The third is . . . Epimenides of Crete [Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12]. . . . Moses, Christ, and Paul . . . bring to light the power of truth from the fact that it bursts forth even from the mouths of the unwilling.

Gerhard is explaining how one can appeal to certain portions of one’s opponents’ views (in this instance, Catholics) in order to bolster one’s own arguments, and how St. Paul used the same technique in his preaching and epistles. I fully agree with the principle, insofar as it is applicable in a given case. I edited an entire book consisting of “traditional / Catholic” utterances of Martin Luther.

I deny, of course, that Lutheran doctrine is entirely in accord with Catholic doctrine (so would, I’m pretty sure, the vast majority of Lutherans today), as Melanchthon seems to have vainly imagined in 1530; and that will be the thesis lying behind my replies in this series. But it’ll be fun to see Gerhard reiterate Melanchthon’s endeavor and give it the old college try.

Gerhard will be citing arguments from Catholics that he deems to be in harmony with Lutheran doctrine, just as I often happily note many points of teaching of Luther and Calvin that are perfectly consistent with our view. Truth is truth, wherever it is found (and unity is always to be sought as much as possible), and there is a lot of truth in Protestantism, unfortunately mixed with significant error.

Bellarmine, . . . Book 4, on Ecclesiastes, chapter 16, § 1, among the notes of Ecclesiastes, in the thirteenth place, refers to the confession of adversaries, and adds: “Such is the force of truth, that it sometimes compels even adversaries to give their testimony.”

He shows that Catholics like St. Robert Bellarmine also argue in the same fashion: citing opponents in agreement on particular points. I think virtually any good debater would be found doing the same.

The papal writers are fond of boasting the most. 1. Of the infallibility of the Roman Church. Our argument is, writes Bellarmine, lib. 3. de Ecclesiastes, chap. 14, “The Church cannot err absolutely, neither in absolutely necessary things, nor in others, which it proposes to us to believe or do, whether they are expressly stated in the Scriptures or not.” . . . We do not construct such an argument against this boasting. When the sons of the Roman Church bring forth such things in controversial dogmas, which confirm our belief, then they either err or do not err. If the former is stated, the boasting of the Pontiffs that the Roman Church does not err is false. If the latter, the accusation of the Pontiffs that our churches are promoting erroneous dogmas is false.

The famous baseball pitcher of the 1930s, Dizzy Dean, once remarked that “it ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” The first task in this discussion is to determine what the Bible teaches about the Church. Is it infallible in matters of doctrines made binding on Christian believers? And of course we argue that it is, and we do because we believe that the Bible teaches it.

The two clearest reasons why are the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), in which a decision was made — confirmed by the Holy Spirit Himself (15:28) which makes it not only infallible but inspired — that was binding on Christians many hundreds of miles away, in Asia Minor (Turkey: see Acts 16:4). The second compelling prooftext is 1 Timothy 3:15 (“. . . the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”), which, when analyzed deeply enough, strongly asserts ecclesial infallibility.

Once this is determined, then the relevant question is how to locate and identify the one true Church that is assumed to be in existence in Holy Scripture, as opposed to whether this Church is infallible or not. Gerhard assumes that the very claim is ridiculous “boasting” out of necessity, because, I submit, no Protestant can dare assert an infallible Church, lest their own claims become immediately ridiculous: seeing that in their relentless divisions, they can never completely agree with each other on doctrine. In that profoundly unbiblical scenario of denominationalism, infallibility isn’t even on the radar screen, since Protestants can’t even agree on things as basic as baptism and the Holy Eucharist. I have pointedly described this tragi-comic state of affairs as “the Protestant quest for uncertainty.”

Therefore, rather than seriously grapple with the biblical teaching regarding the Church, they must belittle one of our self-consistent claims to be in adherence to that same biblical teaching. This argument (or, rather, accusation, I should say) is just plain silly and unserious. It’s also fascinating and telling that Gerhard uses the term “our churches” — whereas Bellarmine is presupposing and discussing the biblical terminology of “the Church” and (for many and various other reasons) identifying this with the Catholic Church.

2. On the denial of the truth of our Churches. Bellarmine, book 4, on Ecclesiastes, chapter 16, writes: “Catholics are nowhere found praising the doctrine or life of any heretics.” Therefore, if it were demonstrated that the sons of the Roman Church in many ways praised and approved our doctrine, differing from the common confession of the Roman Church, and indeed in those very chapters about which there is controversy between us and the Pontiffs, Bellarmine would be forced to admit that either that boasting was vain and futile, or that we were not heretics.

There is a middle position here, which I think is the actual true state of affairs. Catholics don’t assert that Protestants are utter heretics in the sense that, say, Arians and Sabellians (those who deny the Holy Trinity) are. It’s a mixed bag of many lesser errors, but not the most dangerous and heretical ones, that remove one from the category of Christian altogether. And in fact, most Lutherans (including Luther and Melanchthon in the beginning) believe the same about Catholics. We hold that Protestants are partially heretical in those instances where they depart from constant apostolic tradition, passed down in the Catholic Church from the beginning.

The Council of Trent (which occurred before Gerhard was born), in its Canon IV on baptism stated that “baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the Church doth, is . . . true baptism” and even anathematizes those who would deny this. It inexorably follows that Protestants are fellow Christians in the Body of Christ. Contrary to a widespread myth, these notions were not invented in Vatican II in the 1960s. They are actually rooted in St. Augustine, who argued that Donatist baptisms were valid.

The Catholic Church has always taught that baptism regenerates; brings about the new birth (Council of Florence, 1439: “Through baptism . . . we are reborn spiritually”: Denzinger 1311; cf. 239). Trent itself  in a different section (Decree on the Sacrament of Penance, ch. 2: Denz. 1671-1672, plainly states, by logical deduction (by the nature of baptism), that Protestants are fellow Christians in the Body of Christ:

The Church exercises judgment on no one who has not entered therein through the gate of baptism. . . . It is otherwise with those who are of the household of the faith, whom Christ our Lord has once, by the laver of baptism, made the members of His own body . . . For, by baptism putting on Christ, we are made therein entirely a new creature, obtaining a full and entire remission of all sins . . .  baptism itself is for those who have not as yet been regenerated.

So, going back to Gerhard’s argument, Protestants are regarded as fellow Christians by Catholics because of baptism. We agree with Lutherans and some other Protestants, too, that baptism brings about spiritual regeneration and ushers one into the kingdom of God, in a state of good graces and initial total forgiveness of sins. Agreeing on this is highly significant, but it doesn’t follow that we deny that Lutherans are heretical in several other particular areas. Gerhard offers a false a vs. b choice of how to classify Lutherans from a Catholic perspective. The anathemas of Trent are complex as well, and do not sweepingly condemn all Protestants, let alone Lutherans. Even Pope Benedict XVI, when he was a theologian before becoming pope, confirmed that.

Bellarmine, in lib.3. on the Word of God chapter 1, argues among other things that the obscurity of Scripture is proved.

I’m sure he wasn’t contending that all Scripture is utterly obscure, but rather, that parts of it are obscure enough to require an authoritative interpreter, in order to bring about doctrinal unity. Protestants lack that very thing, and claim that Scripture is perspicuous (clear) enough for any layperson to understand it. Bellarmine had good solid scriptural grounds to argue in that way. When Ezra read “the book of the law of Moses which the LORD had given to Israel” to the people (Neh 8:1), note that reading / hearing alone wasn’t sufficient. Levites “helped the people to understand the law, . . . and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (8:7-8).

St. Peter described St. Paul’s letters as follows: “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Pet 3:16). And he stated, “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation” (2 Pet 1:20). St. Philip heard the Ethiopian eunuch “reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How can I, unless some one guides me?’ ” (Acts 8:30-31). The risen Jesus’ encounter with the two men on the road to Emmaus is also very instructive in this regard:

Luke 24:25-27, 32, 45 And he said to them, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! [26] Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” [27] And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. . . . [32] They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” . . . [45] Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,

St. Paul noted how learning the Scripture and the Christian faith itself properly takes time; it’s not a simple process: “I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready” (1 Cor 3:2). The writer of Hebrews reiterates the same point:

Hebrews 5:11-14 About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. [12] For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; [13] for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. [14] But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

St. Paul warns about people who are “burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 3:6-7) and those who “will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim 4:3-4).

Jesus also warned about the potential dangers of following one’s own inclinations in theological matters, rather than true spiritual leaders in the Church: “many false prophets will arise and lead many astray” (Mt 24:11); “if any one says to you, ‘Lo, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. [24] For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (24:23-24). Jesus even rebuked Nicodemus, a Pharisee sympathetic to Him, who would have been a teacher, in the matter of baptismal regeneration: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?” (Jn 3:10).

This is why we need the Church to guide us. The Bible is clear that it’s not always clear just by reading it. If we try to do it on our own, much error will be present in too many people, and that’s exactly what we observe in Protestantism, where innumerable internal contradictions mean that either both or one of the parties who disagree with and contradict each other in any given instance are believing in falsehood. And that’s not good. It’s the devil who is the father of lies and all false doctrine. Erasmus, the great Catholic scholar, in opposing Martin Luther in 1526, wrote brilliantly about the shortcomings of perspicuity:

And then, as for what you say about the clarity of Scripture, would that it were absolutely true! But those who laboured mightily to explain it for many centuries in the past were of quite another opinion. (p. 129 of Hyperaspistes)

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? (pp. 130-131)

Nor did I say that some places in Scripture offer difficulties in order to deter anyone from reading it, but rather to encourage readers to study it acutely and to discourage the inexperienced from making snap judgments. (p. 135)

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)

You quarrel so much among yourselves, each of you claiming all the while to have the Spirit of Christ and a completely certain knowledge of Holy Scripture, how can you still . . . be outraged that an old man like me who knows nothing of theology should prefer to follow the authoritative consensus of the church rather than to join you, who dissent no less from the church than you dissent from each other? (p. 144)

You offend precisely in that you continually foist off on us your interpretation as the word of God . . . in interpreting Scripture I prefer to follow the judgment of the many orthodox teachers and of the church rather than that of you alone or of your few sworn followers . . . (pp. 180-181)

And so away with this ‘word of God, word of God.’ I am not waging war against the word of God but against your assertion; nor is the word of God inconsistent with itself but rather human interpretations collide with one another. If you are influenced by the judgment of the church, what you assert is human fabrication, what you fight against is the word of God. (p. 181)

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. (pp. 219-220)

You say this as if I said that all Scripture is obscure and ambiguous, though I confess that it contains a treasure of eternal and most certain truth, but in some places the treasure is concealed and not open to just anybody, no matter who. (p. 223)

For which of them [the Church Fathers], in explaining the mysteries in these volumes, does not complain about the obscurity of Scripture? Not because they blame Scripture, as you falsely charge, but because they deplore the dullness of the human mind, not because they despair but because they implore grace from him who alone closes and opens to whomever he wishes, when he wishes, and as much as he wishes. (pp. 244-245)

Bernard . . . rejected . . . the merits of works . . . 

Not at all. He taught precisely that which the Catholic Church teaches about merit (“both/and”), in harmony with 50 Bible passages: all the grace that alone and necessarily brings about good works comes from God, Who works with the person, who in turn cooperates with God; then God crowns His own gifts, in regarding the resultant voluntary good works as meritorious (as Augustine said). This is what the Catholic Church has always taught.

Hence, Trent, in its Decree on Justification, chapter 16, stated, “Jesus Christ Himself continually infuses his virtue into the said justified, — as the head into the members, and the vine into the branches, — and this virtue always precedes and accompanies and follows their good works, which without it could not in any wise be pleasing and meritorious before God . . .” (Denz. 1546). St. Bernard of Clairvaux [1090-1153] agrees:

If both the words and the works are not Paul’s, but God’s, Who speaketh in Paul or worketh through Paul; wherefore, in such case, are the merits Paul’s? Wherefore is it that he so confidently affirmed: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day”? Was it, perchance, that he was assured that the crown was laid up for him, because it was through him that those deeds were done?

But many good things are done by means of the wicked, whether angels or men; yet they are not reckoned unto them as meritorious. Or was it rather because they were done with him, that is to say, with his good will? “For,” saith he, “if I preach the gospel unwillingly, a stewardship hath been entrusted to me, but if willingly, I have whereof to glory.”

Moreover, if not so much as the very will, on which dependeth all merit, is from Paul himself; on what ground doth he speak of the crown, which he believeth to be laid up for him, as a crown of righteousness? Is it because whatsoever is even freely promised is yet asked for justly and as a matter of due? Finally he saith: “I know Whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have intrusted unto Him.” The promise of God he calls his deposit; and because he believed Him that promised, he asketh for the fulfilment of the promise. What was indeed promised in mercy is yet due in justice. Thus it is a crown of righteousness that Paul expecteth; but of God’s righteousness; not of his own. It is forsooth just that God should pay what He oweth; but it is what He hath promised that He oweth.

This then is the righteousness upon which the Apostle presumeth, namely, God’s fulfilment of His promise; lest, if, disdaining this righteousness, he would establish his own, he be not subject to the righteousness of God; when it was all the while God’s will that he should be partaker of His righteousness, in order that He might also make him meritorious of a crown. For He constituted him partaker of His righteousness, and meritorious of a crown, when He deigned to take him as His fellow-worker in the works as a reward for which the crown of righteousness was laid up. Further He made him His fellow-worker, when He made him His willing worker, that is to say, consentient with His will. Accordingly the will is held to be God’s aid; the aid it gives is held to be meritorious. If then, in such a case, the will is from God, so also is the merit. Nor is there any doubt but that both to will, and to perform according to the good will, are from God. God therefore is the author of merit, who both applieth the will to the work, and supplieth to the will the fulfilment of the work. (Concerning Grace And Free Will, chap. 14)

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Photo credit: Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) [public domain / Internet Archive Open Library: Confessio Catholica]

Summary: First of two replies to the “Confessio” of Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard (1582-1637), in which he sought to confirm Lutheran doctrines by various Catholic statements.

2025-01-02T16:48:28-04:00

Last updated on: January 2, 2025 at 4:48 pm   By
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Reply to Jordan Cooper’s Miscomprehensions of St. Cardinal Newman’s Views on the Development of the Papacy & the 1870 Dogma

Photo credit: cover of my book (2012), designed by Caroline McKinney.

 

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 19th 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 Jordan Cooper” section at the top of my Lutheranism web page. Thus far, he hasn’t responded to any of my critiques, for reasons that he explained on my Facebook page on 17 April 2024:

I appreciate your thoughtful engagement with my material. I also appreciate not being called “anti-Catholic,” as I am not. Unfortunately, it is just a matter of time that I am unable to interact with the many lengthy pieces you have put together. With teaching, writing, running a publishing house, podcasting, working at a seminary, and doing campus ministry, I have to prioritize, which often means not doing things that would be very much worthwhile simply for lack of time.

In an article sent to his readers on 1-2-25 regarding social media (I receive this, too), a further relevant explanation was made:

As you may have noticed with my writing, podcasting, and YouTube content, I don’t tend to address controversies. Further, those occasional times that I do, I merely use that controversy as a springboard to talk about something more universal. This has all been purposeful, . . . The mystical union will matter to Christians a century from now. Whatever current controversy Doug Wilson is involved in will not.

I appreciate the explanations and the expressed principled resolve as to the stewardship of time, but I continue to think we could have some good and constructive — and civil – discussions. In the meantime, I will continue to try to write what Jordan himself regards as “thoughtful” and “worthwhile” responses because the issues we disagree on within the Body of Christ still remain, and I’m committed to both defending the Catholic view as long as I continue to adhere to it (no end in sight!) and seeking and following truth as best I can, by God’s grace. But in the final analysis I think interaction and serious dialogue and interaction with serious critiques of our views are crucial and indispensable and not things to be regarded as a low priority or even unnecessary altogether. Both Jesus and Paul vigorously argued and defended their viewpoints and they are our models.

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This is a reply to the first third of Jordan’s video, “John Henry Newman on Papal Infallibility” (12-28-24). My last response to him was on a closely related topic: “Papal Infallibility: Reply to Lutheran Jordan Cooper (Including Documentation of Popes’ Massive Consultation with Bishops and Others Before Declaring Dogmas, and Particulars of the Voting at Vatican I)” [8-7-24]. Part II of this reply continues my analysis. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s words will be in green.

1:56 we are going to look at what is sometimes termed [a] more moderate form of papal infallibility from John Henry Newman 

I would simply call it “orthodox Catholicism” or what was actually decreed by Vatican I. If Jordan considers that to be “moderate” then he thinks the dogma is “moderate” because Cardinal Newman had believed in it for many years before it was made, as I have documented in several of my articles, going back at least 19 years, and in my book, The Quotable Newman: A Definitive Guide to His Central Thoughts and Ideas (Catholic Answers, 2012).

9:32 Newman is very well read in history. He’s very well read in the church fathers and he’s very well read in the medieval sources

Indeed he was.

11:05 though he is clearly sympathetic to Rome in a lot of ways from pretty early on, he does refer to the pope as the Antichrist and things like that

. . . which he later retracted, of course. But this proves that he was very much a zealous “classical” Protestant, as both Luther and Calvin used the same sort of derogatory language.

11:54 he has this he has this letter to Bishop Ullathorne which is written just prior to the Vatican Council. He talks about some of his kind of concerns or fears or worries about the dogma of papal infallibility and he is really so concerned with trying to get Protestants into Rome, and because of that he feels like Vatican I —  if it declares this as dogma is really going to put up this really significant barrier to to to Protestants coming into Rome

Cardinal Newman was what is called an “inopportunist.” Thought he personally believed in papal infallibility, and essentially in the particular viewpoint of it that became dogma in 1870 at Vatican I, as I have documented in three articles (one / two / three), he thought it wasn’t yet time to define it as dogma, at the highest level of magisterial authority.

His stance is exactly analogous to my own regarding the question of Mary as Mediatrix: a doctrine I believe in and have vigorously defended many times, but one which I think shouldn’t be defined as a dogma at the highest levels in the near future. But if it is defined, I will wholeheartedly accept it, since I hold to the doctrine itself, just as Newman accepted the decree of Vatican I when it defined a doctrine that he had already held for many years.

Secondly, Newman’s primary concern was with the extreme ultramontane (that is, ecclesiastically “far right”) advocates like Manning and Ward, whose view went far beyond what the Council at length decreed. He feared that this view might predominate in the Council. But, as the Holy Spirit would have it, it did not.

It’s true Newman did express some concern to Bishop Ullathorne in a letter to him dated 28 January 1870, but it was not in the sense of disagreeing with the doctrine per se. Hence he wrote, “I cannot help suffering with the various souls which are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions, which may not be difficult to my private judgment . . .” When he first saw the decree (Letter to Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle, 24 July 1870), he wrote that he was “pleased at its moderation” and that “I have no difficulty in admitting it.” Three days later he wrote in a letter:

For myself, ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope’s infallibility as a matter of theological opinion; at least, I see nothing in the Definition which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History; . . .

And I confess, the fact that all along for so many centuries the Head of the Church and Teacher of the faithful and Vicar of Christ has been allowed by God to assert virtually his own infallibility, is a great argument in favour of the validity of his claim. (A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation [Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching] – online; Chapter 8: “The Vatican Council”, [book and chapter both linked to the left], Volume 2, 1874; reprinted by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1900, 299, 301-305, 308-315, 339-340; see also Chapter 9, “The Vatican Definition,” for an excellent discussion of many epistemological and ecclesiological aspects of infallibility)

The remarkable thing is that Cardinal Newman believed in papal infallibility as early as June 1839 (!), as he reported in 1843, while still an Anglican:

In June and July 1839, near four years ago, I read the Monophysite Controversy, and it made a deep impression on me, which I was not able to shake off, that the Pope had a certain gift of infallibility, and that communion with the See of Rome was the divinely intended means of grace and illumination. . . . Since that, all history, particularly that of Arianism, has appeared to me in a new light; confirmatory of the same doctrine. (Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and Others, 1839-45 [edited at the Birmingham Oratory, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1917], 219; Letter to John Keble, 4 May 1843)

We have much similar documentation of his views prior to 1870:

Popes, . . . are infallible in their office, as Prophets and Vicars of the Most High, . . .  (Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England [1851; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908], Lecture 8; cf. Note 1)

As to the Infallibility of the Pope, I see nothing against it, or to dread in it, . . . (cited in Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman [vol. 2 of two volumes: London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912], 101; Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 17 November 1865)

Applying this principle to the Pope’s Infallibility, . . . I think there is a good deal of evidence, on the very surface of history and the Fathers in its favour. On the whole then I hold it; . . . (in Ward, ibid., 220-221; Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 23 March 1867)

I hold the Pope’s Infallibility, not as a dogma, but as a theological opinion; that is, not as a certainty, but as a probability. . . . To my mind the balance of probabilities is still in favour of it. There are vast difficulties, taking facts as they are, in the way of denying it. . . . (in Ward, ibid., 236; Letter to Peter le Page Renouf, 21 June 1868)

I agree with you that the wording of the Dogma has nothing very difficult in it. It expresses what, as an opinion, I have ever held myself with a host of other Catholics. (in Ward, ibid., 310-311; Letter to O’Neill Daunt, 7 August 1870)

As I have ever believed as much as the definition says, I have a difficulty in putting myself into the position of mind of those who have not. (in Ward, ibid., 308-309; Letter to Mrs. William Froude, 8 August 1870)

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12:28 prior to this the idea of papal infallibility [it] was often — by Roman Catholic apologists — . . . spoken of as this Protestant invention; this total caricature of what Roman Catholics believed, and so it was often viewed as this really extreme idea that Protestants just kind of — I don’t know — make up in order to make Rome look bad or something

That wasn’t Newman’s view, as I just proved. I can’t respond to whoever held such views unless Jordan identifies them. As I documented in my first book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism (completed in May 1996), on pages 212-213, St. Francis de Sales wrote something remarkably similar to the definition, 275 years earlier, in 1596:

When he teaches the whole Church as shepherd, in general matters of faith and morals, then there is nothing but doctrine and truth. And in fact everything a king says is not a law or an edict, but that only which a king says as king and as a legislator. So everything the Pope says is not canon law or of legal obligation; he must mean to define and to lay down the law for the sheep, and he must keep the due order and form.

We must not think that in everything and everywhere his judgment is infallible, but then only when he gives judgment on a matter of faith in questions necessary to the whole Church; for in particular cases which depend on human fact he can err, there is no doubt, though it is not for us to control him in these cases save with all reverence, submission, and discretion. Theologians have said, in a word, that he can err in questions of fact, not in questions of right; that he can err extra cathedram, outside the chair of Peter. that is, as a private individual, by writings and bad example.

But he cannot err when he is in cathedra, that is, when he intends to make an instruction and decree for the guidance of the whole Church, when he means to confirm his brethren as supreme pastor, and to conduct them into the pastures of the faith. For then it is not so much man who determines, resolves, and defines as it is the Blessed Holy Spirit by man, which Spirit, according to the promise made by Our Lord to the Apostles, teaches all truth to the Church. (The Catholic Controversy, translated by Henry B. Mackey, Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1989, 306-307)

In other words, this was nothing new, even in the form that Vatican I codified in 1870.

12:50 something kind of like you know if I were to just grab on to the most extreme forms of Marian devotion: those who talk about Mary is kind of a co- mediatrix and co-redemptrix

In other words, views that I hold myself and that are already long established as Catholic beliefs. What Jordan classifies as “most extreme forms of Marian devotion” are in fact, considered “probable” and “pious opinions in agreement with the consciousness of the faith of the Church” (see Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 1952; revised edition by Dr. Robert Fastiggi — a good friend of mine, who has been in my house many times — Baronius Press, 2018, pp. 11, 229). But I don’t expect most Protestants to understand fine points of Catholic Marian teaching.

13:02 and say “look how wild Rome is with their Marian claims”, you know the response is always going to be, “well, that’s not the teaching of Rome, that’s just these extreme people and that was kind of the response of the Roman apologists of this time to those who taught people infallibility,

Again, who are these people Jordan refers to? They sound like theological liberals to me: the types that might follow the excommunicated Joseph Dollinger, who denied the defined doctrine and formed — as a good Protestant would — another sect (called the Old Catholic Church, major portions of which now ordain women as priests and conduct same-sex “marriages”). The belief in Mary as Mediatrix has a long and respectable pedigree.

St. Ephraem of Syria (c. 306-373) taught that Mary is the only virgin chosen to be the instrument of our salvation [Sermo III] and called her the “dispensatrix of all goods” (in William Most, Mary in Our Life, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1954, p. 48). The expression Mediatrix or Mediatress was found in two 5th-century eastern writers, Basil of Seleucia (In SS. Deiparae Annuntiationem, PG 85, 444AB) and Antipater of Bostra (In S. Joannem Bapt., PG 85 1772C).  St. John of Damascus (c. 675-c. 749) spoke of Mary fulfilling the “office of Mediatrix.” (Hom. S. Mariæ in Zonam, PG 98, 377). St. Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090-1153) stated that “God wished us to have nothing that would not pass through the hands of Mary” (Sermon on the Vigil of Christmas; PL 183, 100).

Vatican II, Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, §62), acknowledges this legitimate strain of Marian theology in stating, “the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix. This, however, is so understood that it neither takes away anything from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator”. Are people like St. Bernard and councils like Vatican II also to be tarred with the charge of advocating “the most extreme forms of Marian devotion”?

This overall teaching is even more explicitly laid out in the encyclicals of several popes, thus is far from being “novel”:

1) Benedict XIV (Gloriosae Dominae, between 1740-1758),

2) Pius IX (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854),

3) Leo XIII (Iucunda semper, 1894 / Adiutricem populi, 1895),

4) St. Pius X (Ad diem illum, 1904),

5) Pius XI (Explorata res, 1923 / Miserentissimus Redemptor, 1928),

6) Ven. Pius XII (Mystici Corporis, 1943 / Munificentissimus Deus, 1950 / Ad Caeli Reginam, 1954),

7) St. Paul VI (Signum magnum, 1967 / Marialis Cultus, 1974),

8) St. John Paul II (Redemptor Hominis, 1979 / Salvifici Doloris, 1984 / Redemptoris Mater, 1987 / Veritatis Splendor, 1993).

It’s also reiterated in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church (#410-411, 488, 494, 502, 511, 529, 964, 967-970, 973, 975, 2618), which quotes frequently from Lumen Gentium. Pope Francis holds these views as well. See:

Pope Francis’ Deep Devotion to Mary (Esp. Mary Mediatrix) [12-23-19]

Pope Francis vs. the Marian Title “Co-Redemptrix”? (+ Documentation of Pope Francis’ and Other Popes’ Use of the Mariological Title of Veneration: “Mother of All”) [12-16-19]

Pope Francis and Mary Co-Redemptrix (Robert Fastiggi, Where Peter Is, 12-27-19)

Pope Francis and the coredemptive role of Mary, the “Woman of salvation” (Mark Miravalle & Robert Fastiggi, La Stampa, 1-8-20)

13:59 Newman wrestles with this issue of papal infallibility largely because he knows that historically it’s it’s pretty much impossible to defend

That’s precisely the opposite of the truth, as I have already shown above. Jordan misunderstands and presents with (to put it mildly) incomplete selectivity the historical record of Cardinal Newman’s actual views on papal infallibility. I’ll return to this issue below, as I delve deeply into and actually document what Newman believed was the view of the early Church regarding the institution of the papacy, grounded in Holy Scripture and guided by the Holy Spirit.

14:43 Newman knows that if you’re really engage with the fathers you’re not going to find papal Supremacy; you’re just not

What Newman “knows” is that we won’t find a fully developed papacy in the first few centuries, because, well, it required a lot of time to develop, just as every other doctrine did, including, notably, even trinitarianism and Christology: aspects of which were still being actively developed as late as the 6th and 7th centuries, in response to Christological heresies; monothelitism being the last major heresy in this respect. It was condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681. Newman wrote famously about the development of the papacy in the early centuries (note how he casually refers to “papal supremacy”: the exact opposite of what Jordan claims that he believed):

Let us see how, on the principles which I have been laying down and defending, the evidence lies for the Pope’s supremacy.

As to this doctrine the question is this, whether there was not from the first a certain element at work, or in existence, divinely sanctioned, which, for certain reasons, did not at once show itself upon the surface of ecclesiastical affairs, and of which events in the fourth century are the development; and whether the evidence of its existence and operation, which does occur in the earlier centuries, be it much or little, is not just such as ought to occur upon such an hypothesis.

. . . While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope; their power had no prominence, as being exercised by Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope . . .

. . . St. Peter’s prerogative would remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters became the cause of ascertaining it. While Christians were “of one heart and soul,” it would be suspended; love dispenses with laws . . .

When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred. It is not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century, than that there was no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doctrine is defined till it is violated . . .

Moreover, an international bond and a common authority could not be consolidated, were it ever so certainly provided, while persecutions lasted. If the Imperial Power checked the development of Councils, it availed also for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined. The Creed, the Canon, the Papacy, Ecumenical Councils, all began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church. And as it was natural that her monarchical power should display itself when the Empire became Christian, so was it natural also that further developments of that power should take place when that Empire fell. Moreover, when the power of the Holy See began to exert itself, disturbance and collision would be the necessary consequence . . . as St. Paul had to plead, nay, to strive for his apostolic authority, and enjoined St. Timothy, as Bishop of Ephesus, to let no man despise him: so Popes too have not therefore been ambitious because they did not establish their authority without a struggle. It was natural that Polycrates should oppose St. Victor; and natural too that St. Cyprian should both extol the See of St. Peter, yet resist it when he thought it went beyond its province . . .

On the whole, supposing the power to be divinely bestowed, yet in the first instance more or less dormant, a history could not be traced out more probable, more suitable to that hypothesis, than the actual course of the controversy which took place age after age upon the Papal supremacy.

It will be said that all this is a theory. Certainly it is: it is a theory to account for facts as they lie in the history, to account for so much being told us about the Papal authority in early times, and not more; a theory to reconcile what is and what is not recorded about it; and, which is the principal point, a theory to connect the words and acts of the Ante-nicene Church with that antecedent probability of a monarchical principle in the Divine Scheme, and that actual exemplification of it in the fourth century, which forms their presumptive interpretation. All depends on the strength of that presumption. Supposing there be otherwise good reason for saying that the Papal Supremacy is part of Christianity, there is nothing in the early history of the Church to contradict it . . .

Moreover, all this must be viewed in the light of the general probability, so much insisted on above, that doctrine cannot but develop as time proceeds and need arises, and that its developments are parts of the Divine system, and that therefore it is lawful, or rather necessary, to interpret the words and deeds of the earlier Church by the determinate teaching of the later. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878 edition, Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989, pp. 148-155; Part 1, Chapter 4, Section 3; my bolding and italics)

15:03 Newman doesn’t want this to get out. This is just a private discussion private letter

Exactly! Who in the world wants their private letters to be exposed to the public? It doesn’t follow, however, that Cardinal Newman was trying to keep it private because he was special pleading and denying the obvious facts of history, as Newman’s innumerable detractors often try to vainly argue.
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15:14  I don’t think I’d be too happy if that happened to me, either
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Yes, of course; so don’t try to make rhetorical hay out of it and build a mountain out of a molehill. There is nothing here suggesting that Newman was playing games of historical revisionism or engaging in some sort of nefarious cover-up. He simply expressed his personal inopportunism (which is not the same as disagreeing with the doctrine!) and concerns about ultramontane excesses that wound up being voted down at the Council.
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15:26 Newman had this conception that that there has to be or should be at least some kind of unanimous consent that a council is actually declaring something which which is dogmatically true and there’s not the kind of consent among among theologians among Bishops among Cardinals that he sees in Trent 
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Really? In my previous reply to Jordan (which he very well may not have even read), I noted the overwhelming vote counts:
Encyclopaedia Britannica (“First Vatican Council of Pius IX”) reports:
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. . . The decisive vote came on July 13 when 451 voted for it, 88 against it, and 62 in favour of some amendment. . . . the final definition was carried on July 18 by 533 votes to 2. Infallibility was confined to those occasions upon which the pope made pronouncements ex cathedra.
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So even the initial vote of 601 participants was 75% in favor (451), with 62 (only 10%) in favor of amendment. Even if we discounted 120 whom Jordan (perhaps following the reasoning of disgruntled former Catholics like Dollinger) claims were mere hacks and bootlickers appointed by the pope because they agreed with him, it would still be 55% in favor. Those against (88) constituted only 15% of those who voted. That sounds like pretty strong consensus to me. The final vote was then 99.63% in favor. If we take away the “120” the vote would be 413 to 2. So how are they relevant at all to the final outcome? This is straining at gnats.

18:19  So eventually Newman does come to the conclusion that the word of the Pope can determine the veracity of a Dogma rather than just the council itself and he’s really forced into that position. I don’t think Newman would have come to that position were it not for the just necessity in doing so after the council 

This is not at all how Newman viewed the matter, long before the Council and during it. It’s certainly not, for example, what Newman believed regarding Pope Leo the Great and his famous, majestic Tome at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, nor about Pope Gelasius in 493. He wrote about both when he was still an Anglican in 1845, not as a Catholic “after the council” 25 years later:
How was an individual inquirer, or a private Christian to keep the Truth, amid so many rival teachers? . . .
[In the fifth and sixth centuries] the Monophysites had almost the possession of Egypt, and at times of the whole Eastern Church . . .
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The divisions at Antioch had thrown the Catholic Church into a remarkable position; there were two Bishops in the See, one in connexion with the East, the other with Egypt and the West with which then was ‘Catholic Communion’? St. Jerome has no doubt on the subject:
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Writing to St. [Pope] Damasus, he says,
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“Since the East tears into pieces the Lord’s coat . . . therefore by me is the chair of Peter to be consulted, and that faith which is praised by the Apostle’s mouth . . . From the Priest I ask the salvation of the victim, from the Shepherd the protection of the sheep . . . I court not the Roman height: I speak with the successor of the Fisherman and the disciple of the Cross. I, who follow none as my chief but Christ, am associated in communion with thy blessedness, that is, with the See of Peter. On that rock the Church is built, I know.” [Epistle 15] . . .
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Eutyches [a Monophysite] was supported by the Imperial Court, and by Dioscorus the Patriarch of Alexandria . . . A general Council was summoned for the ensuing summer at Ephesus [in 449] . . . It was attended by sixty metropolitans, ten from each of the great divisions of the East; the whole number of bishops assembled amounted to one hundred and thirty-five . . . St. Leo [the Great, Pope], dissatisfied with the measure altogether, nevertheless sent his legates, but with the object . . . of ‘condemning the heresy, and reinstating Eutyches if he retracted’ . . .
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The proceedings which followed were of so violent a character, that the Council has gone down to posterity under the name of the Latrocinium or ‘Gang of Robbers.’ Eutyches was honourably acquitted, and his doctrine received . . . which seems to have been the spontaneous act of the assembled Fathers. The proceedings ended by Dioscorus excommunicating the Pope, and the Emperor issuing an edict in approval of the decision of the Council . . .
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The Council seems to have been unanimous, with the exception of the Pope’s legates, in the restoration of Eutyches; a more complete decision can hardly be imagined.
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It is true the whole number of signatures now extant, one hundred and eight, may seem small out of a thousand, the number of Sees in the East; but the attendance of Councils always bore a representative character. The whole number of East and West was about eighteen hundred, yet the second Ecumenical Council was attended by only one hundred and fifty, which is but a twelfth part of the whole number; the Third Council by about two hundred, or a ninth; the Council of Nicaea itself numbered only three hundred and eighteen Bishops. Moreover, when we look through the names subscribed to the Synodal decision, we find that the misbelief, or misapprehension, or weakness, to which this great offence must be attributed, was no local phenomenon, but the unanimous sin of Bishops in every patriarchate and of every school of the East. Three out of the four patriarchs were in favour of the heresiarch, the fourth being on his trial. Of these Domnus of Antioch and Juvenal of Jerusalem acquitted him, on the ground of his confessing the faith of Nicaea and Ephesus . . . Dioscorus . . . was on this occasion supported by those Churches which had so nobly stood by their patriarch Athanasius in the great Arian conflict. These three Patriarchs were supported by the Exarchs of Ephesus and Caesarea in Cappadocia; and both of these as well as Domnus and Juvenal, were supported in turn by their subordinate Metropolitans. Even the Sees under the influence of Constantinople, which was the remaining sixth division of the East, took part with Eutyches . . .
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Such was the state of Eastern Christendom in the year 449; a heresy, appealing to the Fathers, to the Creed, and, above all, to Scripture, was by a general Council, professing to be Ecumenical, received as true in the person of its promulgator. If the East could determine a matter of faith independently of the West, certainly the Monophysite heresy was established as Apostolic truth in all its provinces from Macedonia to Egypt . . .
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At length the Imperial Government, . . . came to the conclusion that the only way of restoring peace to the Church was to abandon the Council of Chalcedon. In the year 482 was published the famous ‘Henoticon’ or Pacification of Zeno, in which the Emperor took upon himself to determine a matter of faith. The Henoticon declared that no symbol of faith but that of the Nicene Creed, commonly so called, should be received in the Churches; it anathematized the opposite heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, and it was silent on the question of the ‘One’ or ‘Two Natures’ after the Incarnation . . . All the Eastern Bishops signed this Imperial formulary. But this unanimity of the East was purchased by a breach with the West; for the Popes cut off the communication between Greeks and Latins for thirty-five years . . .
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Dreary and waste was the condition of the Church, and forlorn her prospects, at the period which we have been reviewing . . . There was but one spot in the whole of Christendom, one voice in the whole Episcopate, to which the faithful turned in hope in that miserable day. In the year 493, in the Pontificate of Gelasius, the whole of the East was in the hands of traitors to Chalcedon, and the whole of the West under the tyranny of the open enemies of Nicaea . . .
A formula which the Creed did not contain [Leo’s Tome at the Council of Chalcedon in 451], which the Fathers did not unanimously witness, and which some eminent Saints had almost in set terms opposed, which the whole East refused as a symbol, not once, but twice, patriarch by patriarch, metropolitan by metropolitan, first by the mouth of above a hundred, then by the mouth of above six hundred of its Bishops, and refused upon the grounds of its being an addition to the Creed, was forced upon the Council . . . by the resolution of the Pope of the day . . . (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845, 6th edition, 1878, reprinted by Univ. of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1989, 251, 274, 282-3, 285-6, 299-300, 305-6, 319-20, 322, 312)
13:59 Newman wrestles with this issue of papal infallibility largely because he knows that historically it’s it’s pretty much impossible to defend

14:43 Newman knows that if you’re really engage[d] with the fathers you’re not going to find papal Supremacy; you’re just not

The record shows that the converse of this opinion is the historical truth. The following (bolding and italics again my own) shows what Newman actually believed about early Church belief in Petrine primacy, the primacy of Rome, and papal supremacy (even using the latter phrase many times):

I found the Eastern Church under the superintendence (as I may call it) of Pope Leo. I found that he had made the Fathers of the Council to unsay their decree and pass another . . . I found that Pope Leo based his authority upon St Peter. I found the Fathers of the Council crying out ‘Peter hath spoken by the mouth of Leo’, when they altered their decree. (Letter to Mrs. William Froude, 5 April 1839)

I certainly do think the Pope the Head of the Church. Nay I thought all churchmen so thought; . . . (Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 16 October 1842)

Again it has pressed most strongly upon me that we pick and choose our doctrines. There is more, I suspect, in the first four centuries, or as much, for the Pope’s Supremacy, than for the Real Presence, or the authenticity of certain books of Scripture. (Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 14 March 1845)

And do not the same ancient Fathers bear witness to another doctrine, which you disown? Are you not as a hypocrite, listening to them when you will, and deaf when you will not? How are you casting your lot with the Saints, when you go but half-way with them? For of whether of the two do they speak the more frequently, of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, or of the Pope’s supremacy? You accept the lesser evidence, you reject the greater. In truth, scanty as the Ante-nicene notices may be of the Papal Supremacy, they are both more numerous and more definite than the adducible testimonies in favour of the Real Presence. The testimonies to the latter are confined to a few passages . . . a cumulative argument rises from them in favour of the ecumenical and the doctrinal authority of Rome, stronger than any argument which can be drawn from the same period for the doctrine of the Real Presence. . . . If it be said that the Real Presence appears, by the Liturgies of the fourth or fifth century, to have been the doctrine of the earlier, since those very forms probably existed from the first in Divine worship, this is doubtless an important truth; but then it is true also that the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries fearlessly assert, or frankly allow that the prerogatives of Rome were derived from apostolic times, and that because it was the See of St. Peter. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845, Part I: Introduction)

“On this rock I will build My Church,” “I give unto thee the Keys,” “Feed My sheep,” are not precepts merely, but prophecies and promises, promises to be accomplished by Him who made them, prophecies to be fulfilled according to the need, and to be interpreted by the event,—by the history, that is, of the fourth and fifth centuries, though they had a partial fulfilment even in the preceding period, and a still more noble development in the middle ages. (Ibid., Part I: ch. 4, sec. 3)

The Emperor Gratian, in the fourth century, had ordered that the Churches which the Arians had usurped should be restored (not to those who held “the Catholic faith,” or “the Nicene Creed,” or were “in communion with the orbis terrarum,”) but “who chose the communion of Damasus,” the then Pope. (Ibid., Part II: ch. 6, sec. 3)

Cannot I bring as strong passages [in the Fathers] against original sin as you against the Papal Supremacy? . . . What are your grounds for holding the necessity of Episcopal Succession, which may not be applied to Papal Supremacy? (Letter to Henry Wilberforce, 8 June 1846)

If the Roman Church be the Church, I take it whatever it is – and if I find that Papal Supremacy is a point of faith in it, this point of faith is not to my imagination so strange, to my reason so incredible, to my historical knowledge so utterly without evidence, as to warrant me in saying, ‘I cannot take it on faith.’ . . . I believed that our Lord had instituted a Teaching, Sacramental, organized Body called the Church, and that the Roman communion was as an historical fact its present representative and continuation – and therefore, since that communion received the Successor of St Peter as the Vicar of Christ and the Visible Head of the Church, such he was. (Letter to Henry Wilberforce, 4 July 1846)

It is not a greater difficulty to suppose that the patriarchal theory developed into or (if you will) [was] superseded, I should rather say overgrown by, the Papal, than to admit that the Apostles’ Creed has been developed into the Athanasian. The Athanasian is at first sight as different from the Apostles’, as the Papal Church from the primitive. If the primitive Church can be proved to be anti-papal, it can as easily (I should say as sophistically) be proved to be Arian. (Letter to Lord Adare, 31 August 1846)

I saw that, from the nature of the case, the true Vicar of Christ must ever to the world seem like Antichrist, and be stigmatized as such, because a resemblance must ever exist between an original and a forgery; and thus the fact of such a calumny was almost one of the notes of the Church. (Apologia pro vita sua, 1864, ch. 3)

Nor is the point which is the direct subject of your question much or at all less an elementary difference of principle between us; viz. the Pope’s jurisdiction:—it is a difference of principle even more than of doctrine. That that jurisdiction is universal is involved in the very idea of a Pope at all. I can easily understand that it was only partially apprehended in the early ages of the Church, and that, as Judah in the Old Covenant was not duly recognised and obeyed as the ruling tribe except gradually, so St. Cyprian or St. Augustine in Africa (if so) or St. Basil in Asia Minor (if so) may have fretted under the imperiousness of Rome, and not found a means of resignation in their trouble ready at hand in a clear view (which they had not) that Rome was one of the powers that be, which are ordained of God. It required time for Christians to enter into the full truth, . . . there is no use in a Pope at all, except to bind the whole of Christendom into one polity; and that to ask us to give up his universal jurisdiction is to invite us to commit suicide. (Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 23 March 1867)

I think it was generally received before the Vatican decrees (vid. eg. Perrone), that the confirmation of the pope was necessary for a Council being held as Ecumenical, and therefore infallible in its definitions of faith. (Letter to William Maskell, 15 February 1876)

It seems to me plain from history that the Popes from the first considered themselves to have a universal jurisdiction, and against this positive fact the negative fact that other sees and countries were not clear about it, does not avail. The doctrine doubtless was the subject of a development. There is far less difficulty in a controversial aspect in the proof of the Pope’s supremacy than in that of the canon of Scripture. (The Via Media of the Anglican Church: Illustrated in Lectures, Letters and Tracts Written Between 1830 and 1841, vol. 1; aka Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church [1837 / revised in 1877] Lecture 7; footnote 14 from 1877)

20:24  we’re all going to have a tendency to read more of our views into the sources than probably is merited, and that’s just the bias of reading things and wanting to see what we want to see 

Exactly! But this is why we must document our opinions about what someone else thinks to a tee, in order to avoid the natural bias for our own views that we all have. I’ve done that; Jordan has not, and this is — I find all the time — the habitual shortcoming of videos. They have infinitely less substance than copiously documented writing does.

21:02 Newman himself has been on both sides. He was an Anglican, saying, “I can defend Anglicanism through the fathers”; now he’s a Roman Catholic and saying, “I can defend Roman Catholicism through the fathers.” How the heck do we know who actually is correct in their use of the fathers?

We do so by doing exactly what Newman did: relentlessly and comprehensively detailing what the fathers believed. As I just demonstrated in my collection of his utterances on the papacy (many written as an Anglican, and most of the rest from prior to 1870), the general drift of his Catholic views was already firmly present in his views as an Anglican, because he simply followed the facts of patristic teachings where they led and applied analogical argument, showing — again and again — that Protestant arguments about the history and development of various doctrines that they accept also support Catholic views, by analogy. This was arguably the primary insight that led him to Catholicism.

21:52 the greatest of the second generation of Lutheran theologians, Martin Chemnitz engages with the Council of Trent and compares the Council of Trent to what was actually written in the writings of the church fathers . . . Rome didn’t respond to Chemnitz by saying, “well, the fathers hadn’t yet developed their dogma. Instead they say, “no, actually the fathers agree with us” and you have basically these competing works that are being written and this happens for a couple hundred years. You’ve got all these competing works being written.
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It’s true that Trent didn’t emphasize development of dogma.  It’s emphasis was, rather, on contrasting true Christian doctrines with the various false doctrines that Protestantism had invented 15oo years after Christ. All ecumenical councils have particular emphases and problems that they are focusing on. It doesn’t follow, however, that development of doctrine was absent from Catholic historical analysis of theology until 1845 when Newman supposedly came up with the idea out of whole cloth. I thoroughly proved this over 22 years ago in my lengthy article, Development of Doctrine: Patristic & Historical Development (Featuring Much Documentation from St. Augustine, St. Vincent of Lerins, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vatican I, Popes Pius IX, Pius X, Etc.) [3-19-02].
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St. Vincent of Lerins (d. c. 450) was the father who wrote most specifically and in great depth about development of doctrine, and his outlook is remarkably similar to Newman’s. But I found much more than merely his thoughts, citing in addition to the figures named in the subtitle, St. Irenaeus, Origen, and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Recently I compiled a collection of 80 Bible passages that arguably, teach development of doctrine and theological thought in some form. That’s where it really comes from.
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It’s not “either/or” to claim that “the fathers agree with us [Catholicism]” and at the same time assert that early doctrine on the papacy developed just like all other doctrines. The Protestant critique of Newmanian development very often foolishly regards it as mere special pleading and desperate historical revisionism. It’s not at all. Newman actually makes serious arguments, relentlessly backed by ascertainable historical facts about patristic beliefs. He doesn’t just come up with dismissive slogans and highly selective “prooftexts” that ignore a much larger number of relevant passages in support of Newman’s view, as is usually the case in Protestant contra-Newman analysis: sadly including Jordan’s presentation here.
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I would reply that (to use fellow Detroiter Joe Louis’s famous phrase about his boxing opponents), “they can run but they can’t hide.” Jordan can try to avoid and ignore all of this relevant information that refutes his view, but people like me can and will present the much wider array of relevant facts that must necessarily be honestly grappled with.
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Summary: Lutheran pastor and apologist Jordan Cooper falls into the sadly common practice of misunderstanding St. Cardinal Newman’s true opinion regarding papal infallibility.

2025-07-05T10:13:30-04:00

Last updated on: July 5, 2025 at 10:13 am   By
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Photo credit: cover of my 2013 book (self-published).

 

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God’s “Fellow Workers” Help Spread Salvation & Grace (We “Impart Grace”, “Save” Others, Win Souls, Help Them “Obtain Salvation”, Etc., In Our “Work of the Lord”) [55 passages] [10-29-21]

Refutation of Atheist Paul Carlson’s 51 Bible “Contradictions” [4-6-21]

Final Judgment & Works (Not Faith): 50 Passages [2-10-08]

Meritorious Works: 50 Biblical Proofs [10-4-24]

Bible on Faith / Belief, etc. “Alone” [?] for Salvation (Fifty Bible Passages Stress Faith or Belief, Regarding the Question of Salvation, Compared to a Hundred that Emphasize or Highlight Works) [10-11-24]

Jesus Had No Siblings: 50 Biblical Arguments [7-1-25]

St. Paul on Grace, Faith, & Works (50 Passages) [8-6-08]

50 New Testament Proofs for Peter’s Primacy & the Papacy [1994]

Reply to Critique of “50 NT Proofs for the Papacy” [3-14-02]

50 Biblical Indications of Petrine Primacy and the Papacy [National Catholic Register, 11-20-16]

Jason Engwer, Trent Horn, & My 50 NT Petrine Proofs [7-28-22]

Honoring Jesus Thru Mary: 50 Biblical Reasons [4-21-15]

50 Biblical Reasons to Honor Jesus Through Mary [National Catholic Register, 7-24-19]

50 Bible Passages on Purgatory & Analogous Processes [2009]

50 Biblical Indications That Purgatory is Real [National Catholic Register, 10-24-16]

50 OT Messianic Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus [initial research from 1982; slightly revised in 1997; revised and reformatted for RSV edition in 2012; separated from the larger article on 11-26-24]

50 Ways In Which Luther Had Departed From Catholic Orthodoxy by 1520 (and Why He Was Excommunicated) [3-29-06]

50 Reasons Why Martin Luther Was Excommunicated [National Catholic Register, 11-23-16]

50 “Catholic” John Calvin Views [3-18-10]

50 Biblical Proofs That Jesus is God [National Catholic Register, 2-12-17]

50 Biblical Evidences for the Holy Trinity [National Catholic Register, 11-14-16]

Moses Wrote the Torah: 50 External Evidences [12-14-22]

Evangelist Luke & Archaeology & History (50 Separate Extrabiblical Verifications of Luke’s Historical Accuracy) [2-4-22]

Reply to Seidensticker’s 50 “2-Minute” Anti-Christian Arguments [12-15-22]

Isaiah’s Catholic & UnProtestant Soteriology [45 passages] [8-1-23]

Jeremiah’s Catholic & Very UnProtestant Soteriology [44 passages] [7-31-23]

44 Possible NT Deuterocanonical References (Acts to Ephesians) [7-27-05]

“Blameless” & “Pure” in the Bible (Sinless?): 40 Passages [12-12-24]

Works & Sanctification Partly Cause Salvation: 34 Passages [1-30-25]

33 Empiricist Christian Thinkers Before 1000 AD [8-5-10]

Limited Atonement Biblical Arguments Refuted (33 NT Passages Against Limited Atonement and in Favor of Universal Atonement) [11-21-24]

Bible On Mortal & Venial Sin (vs. Anglican Stearns #5) [31 passages] [3-20-25]

Church Fathers vs. “Faith Alone”: Handy Capsule Proofs [30 Church Fathers] [4-9-24]

Apostolic Tradition: 28 Passages in Paul’s Epistles (Including Incisive Commentary from the Anglican Tractarian John Keble: 1792-1866) [1-29-25]

Pearce’s Potshots #11: 28 Defenses of Jesus’ Nativity (Featuring Confirmatory Historical Tidbits About the Magi and Herod the Great) [1-9-21]

The Deuterocanon: 27-Point Catholic Summary [3-19-02]

Salvation and Eternal Afterlife in the Old Testament [26 passages] [8-31-19]

25 Bible Passages on Purgatory [1996]

25 Descriptive and Clear Bible Passages About Purgatory [National Catholic Register, 5-7-17]

The “Catholic-Sounding” Luther: 25 Examples [6-16-08]

25 Arguments Regarding Binding Church Authority [1-13-09]

25 Brief Arguments for Binding Catholic Tradition [2009]

25 Brief Arguments Regarding Biblical “Clearness” [2009]

25 Brief Arguments on the Biblical Canon & Protestantism [2009]

OT & Archaeology: 25 Fascinating Confirmations [9-21-21]

Pearce Pablum #72: Flood: 25 Criticisms & Non Sequiturs [3-8-22]

The Sacrifice of the Mass in Hebrews & Revelation [25 passages] [3-6-25]

24 Biblical Passages on Meritorious Works [National Catholic Register, 9-30-24]

23 Catholic Medieval Proto-Scientists: 12th-13th Centuries [2010]

22 Reminders That St. Augustine Was 100% Catholic [National Catholic Register, 4-23-20]

Salvation and Justification in the Gospels and Acts [21 passages] [1996]

Invocation of Saints: 20 Biblical Proofs [1-15-24]

Top 20 Biblical Proofs of the Papacy [12-12-15]

Top 20 Biblical Evidences for the Primacy of St. Peter [National Catholic Register, 1-8-18]

Defending 20 Biblical Proofs for the Papacy (vs. Lucas Banzoli) (two parts) [2-13-23]

Star of Bethlehem & Magi: 20 Fascinating Aspects [1-22-21]

St. Paul’s Use of the Term “Gift” & Infused Justification [19 passages] [2013]

Salvation: By Grace Alone, Not Faith Alone or Works [19 passages] [2013]

Gospel of John & Archaeology & History (17 Extrabiblical Verifications of the Gospel of John’s Historical Accuracy) [2-8-22]

Worshiping God Through Images (vs. Anglican Stearns #4): Including the Biblical Case for Icons  [17 passages] [3-20-25]

16 Church Fathers vs. Faith Alone [National Catholic Register, 4-23-24]

15 Theistic Arguments (Copious Resources) [11-3-15]

15 Times Martin Luther Sounded Surprisingly Catholic When Talking About Suffering [National Catholic Register, 2-25-21]

Top 15 “Catholic” Beliefs of John Calvin [8-22-15]

Defending John Calvin’s “Top 15 ‘Catholic’ Beliefs” [9-2-15]

John Calvin’s 15 Surprisingly Catholic Views [National Catholic Register, 10-10-17]

15 Archaeological Proofs of Old Testament Accuracy (National Catholic Register, short summary points from my book, The Word Set in Stone) [3-23-23]

15 Archaeological Proofs of New Testament Accuracy (National Catholic Register, short summary points from my book, The Word Set in Stone) [3-30-23]

Perfectly Keeping the Law: 15 Bible Passages [12-12-24]

Biblical Evidence: Personal Relationship with Jesus [14 passages] [2013; expanded on 1-18-19]

14 More Church Fathers vs. Faith Alone [National Catholic Register, 4-30-24]

14 Bible Verses That Show We’re Saved Through Baptism [National Catholic Register, 11-30-21]
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14 Proofs That St. Athanasius Was 100% Catholic [National Catholic Register, 6-4-20]
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13 Church Fathers Defend the Catholic Teaching on Baptism [National Catholic Register, 8-26-24]
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Top Ten Questions Catholics Are Asked [OSV pamphlet, July 2002]

James White’s Top Ten Questions for “Romanist” Converts Answered [9-4-07]

Top Ten Remarkable “Catholic” Beliefs of Martin Luther [1-19-15]

10 Remarkably “Catholic” Beliefs of Martin Luther [National Catholic Register, 10-6-17]

Martin Luther’s Ten Important “Catholic” Views [2-2-25]

John Calvin’s Ten Striking “Catholic” Views [2-11-25]

Critique of Ten Exaggerated Claims of the “Reformation” [10-31-17]

Archaeology & Ten (More) Kings of Judah & Israel [4-20-23]

Ten Church Fathers & Sola Scriptura: Reply to anti-Catholic Protestant apologist Jason Engwer’s Catholic But Not Roman Catholic Series on the Church Fathers [8-1-03]

Quick Ten-Step Refutation of Sola Scriptura [10-10-03]

10-Point Biblical Refutation of Sola Scriptura [National Catholic Register, 12-11-16]

Nutshell Biblical Intercession of the Saints & Angels [10 Points] [2-3-24]

9 More Church Fathers Explain the Catholic Belief About Baptism [National Catholic Register, 8-30-24]

9 Ways Jesus Tells Us He is God in the Synoptic Gospels [National Catholic Register, 10-28-20]

Svendsen’s Dissertation on Mary: 2. “Brothers” of Jesus (Including a Handy, Nine-Point Summary of Solid Exegetical Arguments for the “Cousins” Theory of Jesus’ “Brothers”) [2-2-23]

Patristic Eucharistic Doctrine: Nine Protestant Scholars [12-1-96]

Did St. Augustine Accept All Seven Sacraments? [National Catholic Register, 11-15-17]

St. Augustine Accepted All Seven Catholic Sacraments [9-25-10]

7 Takes on Satan’s Persecutions and the Balanced Christian Life [National Catholic Register, 11-24-18]

Papal Participation in the First Seven Ecumenical Councils [4-22-09]

Seven Replies Re Interceding Saints (vs. Lucas Banzoli) [5-25-22]

Veneration of Human Beings: Seven Biblical Examples (Apostles Paul and Silas, Kings David and Saul, Prophets Daniel and Samuel, Patriarch Joseph) [3-4-19]

Prayers to Saints & for the Dead: Six Biblical Proofs [6-8-18]

My First Six Christmas Poems [1996-2003]

5 Replies to Questions About Catholic (and Biblical) Prayer [National Catholic Register, 11-30-22]

CARM Forum Wrong About Biblical Prayer to Creatures (Five Biblical Examples Provided) [11-21-24]

Archaeology Confirms Dates of Five Biblical Battles: Battles at Beth She’an (c. 926 BC), Beth Shemesh (c. 790 BC), Bethsaida & Kinneret (732 BC), and Lachish (701 BC) [2-6-23]

4 Biblical Proofs for Prayers to Saints and for the Dead [National Catholic Register, 6-16-18]

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Photo credit: cover of my 2013 book (self-published) [see book and purchase information].

Summary: Compilation of my own articles that feature a large number of arguments (e.g., “Bible vs. ‘Faith Alone’: 100 Proofs”), including also a few books and one bestselling pamphlet.

Updated on 5 July 2025

2024-11-18T18:01:13-04:00

Last updated on: November 18, 2024 at 6:01 pm   By
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Featuring Liturgy and the Sacrifice of the Mass in the Church Fathers

Photo credit: cover of my self-published 2011 book

I am replying to the first portion of the video, Why you should be Lutheran INSTEAD of Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox (w/ Pr. Will Weedon) [8-9-24], on the YouTube channel of Javier Perdomo: who recently converted to Lutheranism from another form of Protestantism.

William Weedon has served as a parish pastor for 26 years and served as Director of Worship and Chaplain for the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod from 2012-2019 (a traditional Lutheran communion for which I have a great respect). He is the author of the books Celebrating the Saints, Thank, Praise, Serve and Obey and See My Savior’s Hands. Pastor Weedon holds a Master of Divinity and a Master of Sacred Theology degree from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

His words will be in blue.

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6:37  you can see why Lutherans would be more inclined toward Orthodoxy maybe than toward Rome. You don’t have indulgences

. . . which has an explicit biblical basis and a history that has often been distorted by Protestants for polemical purposes, or out of sheer lack of knowledge.

you don’t have Purgatory

. . . which has at least 110 Bible passages pointing to, and in complete harmony with essential aspects of it . . .

you don’t have any of the the weird stuff that uh that Lutheran struggled with across across the centuries with with Rome

“Weird” is often in the eye of the beholder and works both ways.

7:28 Orthodoxy has a perfect solution to this . . . the church can’t be wrong and therefore if we’ve been teaching this for any number of years it’s got to be the truth of God and you just need to learn to submit to that; you know that’s the way to go

The indefectibility of the Church is biblical teaching. See also:

1 Timothy 3:15 = Church Infallibility (vs. Steve Hays) [5-14-20]

So is apostolic succession:

Biblical Arguments for Apostolic Succession [9-9-09]

The Bible on Submission to Church & Apostolic Tradition + Biblical Condemnation of the Rebellious & Schismatic Aspects of the Protestant Revolt [8-27-11]

Apostolic Succession: More Biblical Arguments [1-6-17]

Apostolic Succession as Seen in the Jerusalem Council [National Catholic Register, 1-15-17]

Answers to Questions About Apostolic Succession [National Catholic Register, 7-25-20]

A New Biblical Argument for Apostolic Succession [National Catholic Register, 4-23-21]

“New” Apostle Matthias: Proof of Church Infallibility [12-31-21]

Lutherans are bound to the teachings of their own confessions: compiled in the Book of Concord. It’s not that different. But Orthodoxy and Catholicism can trace themselves back to the early Church and Jesus Christ, whereas Lutheranism only goes back to Martin Luther in the 16th century. Our views are both more coherent and consistent. Lutheranism tries to establish itself as uniquely consistent with patristic teachings, but fails every time, excepting cases where it already agrees with Catholicism or Orthodoxy (e.g., regarding baptismal regeneration or the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist). I’ve documented this many times in my own research.

7:44 but what do you do with Mary?

You do what Martin Luther did (assuming he was a good, orthodox Lutheran). He believed that she was a perpetual virgin (even during birth: i.e., a miraculous in partu birth), and held to a form of her Immaculate Conception, and believed in her Assumption, and that she was the Mother of God the Son (Theotokos), and in venerating her, within certain definite limits.

8:02 He cites a typical “flowery” Marian prayer from the Orthodox. I have dealt with this many times, in terms of similar Catholic language of veneration and intercession:

St. Alphonsus de Liguori: Mary-Worshiper & Idolater? [8-9-02]

Catholics Think Mary is “Co-Creator”? (vs. T.F. Kauffman) (Refuting a Distortion of What St. Alphonsus de Liguori Actually Teaches in The Glories of Mary) [7-17-23]

Mary, Not Jesus, is the Catholic “Savior”? (Response to More Misrepresentation of St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Book, The Glories of Mary) [7-21-23]

Was St. Louis de Montfort a Blasphemous Mariolater? (cf. abridged, National Catholic Register version) [2009]

Maximilian Kolbe’s “Flowery” Marian Veneration & the Bible [2010]

8:51 they’ll always say, “hey we ask fellow Christians here on earth to pray for us.” I don’t ask a fellow Christian here on earth to grant me tears of repentance

We obviously ask other believers to pray to God that we would be granted tears of repentance by God’s grace. It’s the same with Mary, just on a larger scale, because she was so honored by God to be the mother of Jesus.

8:56 I don’t ask them to to grant me mercy . . .  I just can’t square [that] with the Bible

Then why did the rich man in Hades, say, “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” (Lk 16:24, RSV)? That was recounted in a story (not a parable) by Jesus Himself. The rich man petitioned Abraham in three different ways. Abraham never told him that he mustn’t do so; only that the answer to his requests was no: just as God sometimes doesn’t answer our prayers. Then we are told that this is merely a parable. Even if it were, Jesus couldn’t teach theological falsehood in it. Or we’re told that this doesn’t “count” because it’s after death. That’s irrelevant, too, because if it is intrinsically impermissible to make petitions of anyone besides God, that would hold in Hades as well as on earth, and Jesus couldn’t and wouldn’t affirm the practice.

13:29 you cannot start reading the early church fathers before you encounter what a big deal the mass or The Divine Liturgy [is]: what we Lutherans often call the common service or the Divine service. It confronts you all over the place, right away. It’s there already [in] 150 AD. Read St Justin Martyr’s first apology and you you can clearly recognize, “that’s the same service we use.”

Lutherans thankfully retain the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist (though not transubstantiation), but they ditched the belief in the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass, which the Church fathers believed in.  So they aren’t following the fathers with regard to the essence of the Mass: that Jesus’ one-time sacrifice on the cross is made supernaturally present to us. See:

Transubstantiation & Church History: Dialogue w Lutheran [2-12-05; abridged on 10-23-18]

Eucharistic Sacrifice: The Witness of the Church Fathers [9-12-05]

Sacrifice of the Mass: Reflections on Theology & Patristics [9-22-05]

Development of Sacrifice of the Mass: Dialogue w Lutheran [9-22-05]

Sacrifice of the Mass / Cyprian’s Ecclesiology (vs. Calvin #11) [5-19-09]

Church Fathers and the Sacrifice of the Mass (Thoroughly Catholic!) [12-11-09]

Justin Martyr, Real Presence, & Eucharistic Sacrifice (vs. Lucas Banzoli) [9-13-22]

Lucas Banzoli Misrepresents Chrysostom’s Eucharistic Theology (+ An Overview of St. John Chrysostom’s Catholic View of the Eucharistic Sacrifice) [9-14-22]

Tertullian’s Eucharistic Theology: Lucas Banzoli vs. J.N.D. Kelly [9-15-22]

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Pr. Weedon brought up St. Justin Martyr. Was he a good proto-Lutheran? Hardly. J. N. D. Kelly is a very well-known Anglican church historian. Here’s what he believes about Justin’s views:

Justin speaks [Dialogue with Trypho, 117, 1] of ‘all the sacrifices in this name which Jesus appointed to be performed, viz. in the eucharist of the bread and the cup, . . .’. Not only here but elsewhere [Ib., 41, 3] too, he identifies ‘ the bread of the eucharist, and the cup likewise of the eucharist’, with the sacrifice foretold by Malachi. (Early Christian Doctrines, HarperSanFrancisco, revised edition of 1978, p. 196)

Here are the two passages from St. Justin Martyr referred to:

Accordingly, God, anticipating all the sacrifices which we offer through this name, and which Jesus the Christ enjoined us to offer, i.e., in the Eucharist of the bread and the cup, and which are presented by Christians in all places throughout the world, bears witness that they are well-pleasing to Him. But He utterly rejects those presented by you and by those priests of yours, saying, ‘And I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among the Gentiles (He says); but you profane it.’ Malachi 1:10-12 (Dialogue with Trypho, 117, 1)

Hence God speaks by the mouth of Malachi, one of the twelve [prophets], as I said before, about the sacrifices at that time presented by you: ‘I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord; and I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands: for, from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, My name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure offering: for My name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord: but you profane it.’ Malachi 1:10-12 [So] He then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to Him, i.e., the bread of the Eucharist, and also the cup of the Eucharist, affirming both that we glorify His name, and that you profane [it]. (Dialogue with Trypho, 41, 3)

Kelly continues his lengthy commentary on Justin’s views:

It was natural for early Christians to think of the eucharist as a sacrifice. The fulfilment of prophecy demanded a solemn Christian offering, and the rite itself was wrapped in the sacrificial atmosphere with which our Lord invested the Last Supper. The words of institution, ‘Do this’, must have been charged with sacrificial overtones for second-century ears; Justin at any rate understood [1 apol. 66, 3; cf. dial. 41, 1] them to mean, ‘Offer this’. . . . Justin . . . makes it plain [Dial. 41, 3] that the bread and wine themselves were the ‘pure offering’ foretold by Malachi. Even if he holds [Ib., 117, 2] that ‘prayers and thanksgivings’ are the only God-pleasing sacrifices, we must remember that he uses [1 apol. 65, 3-5] the term ‘thanksgiving’ as technically equivalent to ‘the eucharistized bread and wine’. The bread and wine, moreover, are offered ‘for a memorial of the passion’, a phrase which in view of his identification of them with the Lord’s body and blood implies much more than an act of purely spiritual recollection. Altogether it would seem that, while his language is not fully explicit, Justin is feeling his way to the conception of the eucharist as the offering of the Saviour’s passion. (Kelly, ibid., pp. 196-197)

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd edition, 1983, 475-476, 1221, wrote:

It was also widely held from the first that the Eucharist is in some sense a sacrifice, though here again definition was gradual. The suggestion of sacrifice is contained in much of the NT language . . . the words of institution, ‘covenant,’ ‘memorial,’ ‘poured out,’ all have sacrificial associations. In early post-NT times the constant repudiation of carnal sacrifice and emphasis on life and prayer at Christian worship did not hinder the Eucharist from being described as a sacrifice from the first . . .

From early times the Eucharistic offering was called a sacrifice in virtue of its immediate relation to the sacrifice of Christ.

Jaroslav Pelikan [Lutheran at the time of this writing, and later Orthodox], The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 146-147, 166-168, 170, 236-237:

By the date of the Didache [anywhere from about 60 to 160, depending on the scholar]. . . the application of the term ‘sacrifice’ to the Eucharist seems to have been quite natural, together with the identification of the Christian Eucharist as the ‘pure offering’ commanded in Malachi 1:11 . . .

The Christian liturgies were already using similar language about the offering of the prayers, the gifts, and the lives of the worshipers, and probably also about the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, so that the sacrificial interpretation of the death of Christ never lacked a liturgical frame of reference . . .

. . . it does seem ‘express and clear’ that no orthodox father of the second or third century of whom we have record declared the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic (although Clement and Origen came close to doing so) or specified a process of substantial change by which the presence was effected (although Ignatius and Justin came close to doing so). Within the limits of those excluded extremes was the doctrine of the real presence . . .

Liturgical evidence suggests an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, whose relation to the sacrifices of the Old Testament was one of archetype to type, and whose relation to the sacrifice of Calvary was one of ‘re-presentation,’ just as the bread of the Eucharist ‘re-presented’ the body of Christ . . .

As John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

15:23  our Lutheran liturgy really is overwhelmingly the same heritage 

It’s not, because it denies the very essence of the Mass: the eucharistic sacrifice.

15:28 Luther and the reformers were anything but revolutionaries on this question

Really? In 1525, Luther wrote his treatise, The Abomination of the Secret Mass (found in Luther’s Works, vol. 36, pp. 311-328). In it he calls the Catholic Mass “disgraceful,” “abominable,” “idolatries” (all on p. 311), “shameful,” “plague,” “deliberate blasphemies” (p. 312), “insults God,” “they deny God and insult the sacrifice that Christ has made and disgrace his blood” (p. 313), “the blasphemy is so great that it must simply wait for eternal hell-fire” (p. 320), etc. ad nauseam.

All through the diatribe he shows himself perfectly ignorant of the fact that we hold that it is a supernatural re-presentation of the one true Sacrifice on Calvary, not a repeated sacrifice (e.g., “they . . . offer him up more than a hundred thousand times throughout the world. They thereby deny . . . that Christ . . . has died and risen again”: p. 320). This is elementary, and was explained long since in the Church fathers. But once Luther got on his soap box, mere things like accuracy and fairness to opponents always quickly went by the wayside.

But he was undeniably a liturgical revolutionary because he “gutted” the Mass of its most essential element. In no way can he be viewed as consistently following the liturgical understanding of the Church fathers.

15:34  they kept whatever they could from the ancient tradition that was not contrary to the Bible

Ah, so now it’s at least qualified.

16:28 our churches are falsely accused of abolishing the mass 

The problem is that if one omits what is essential and “non-negotiable” / “non-optional” in an ancient view, one can’t be said to be continuing the same ancient view, or call it their “heritage.” It’s a basic question of both fact and logical consistency. Catholicism and Orthodoxy continue what the fathers believed about liturgy. Lutheranism does not, nor does any form of Protestantism, save for possibly a few Anglo-Catholics.

17:29 in a Lutheran Church . . . the historic liturgy is being used

It certainly is not, with all due respect. It’s “historic” only back to Luther’s time. The Church fathers wouldn’t recognize it. They would say it is gutted, as we do.

35:55 Lutherans do teach that there is a sacrifice in the Eucharist. The sacrifice is a noun, not a verb. The sacrifice is the body and the blood which Christ once offered on the tree, [which] he now reaches to you to seal that salvation to you, so that you might know that your sins are forgiven, and that that sacrifice was offered on your behalf. He continually gives it to you
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That’s exactly what we believe: so far . . .
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36:26  we do not offer it up to him that is a big difference in perspective 

The Council of Trent, in its Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass (September 17, 1562), explains why we do:

He offered up to God the Father His own Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine . . . and by those words, “Do this in commemoration of me” (1 Cor. 11:24), He commanded them and their successors in the priesthood to offer them . . .

And this is indeed that clean oblation, which cannot be defiled by any unworthiness or malice of those that offer it; which the Lord foretold by Malachi was to be offered in every place, clean to his name (Mal. 1:11) . . . This, in fine, is that oblation which was prefigured by various types of sacrifices (Gen. 4:4; 8:20, etc.), during the period of nature and of the law; inasmuch as it comprises all the good things signified by those sacrifices, as being the consummation and perfection of them all.

We’re following the example of Our Lord at the Last Supper, as set down in inspired revelation. For more on this, see;

The Sacrifice of the Mass: A Lamb . . . Slain [3-8-92; rev. May 1996]

The Sacrifice of the Mass: Classic Catholic Reflections [1994]

Sacrifice of the Mass & Hebrews 8 (vs. James White) [3-31-04]

Passover in Judaism & a Mass that Transcends Time (“Past Events Become Present Today”/ Survey of “Remember” in Scripture) [7-7-09]

The Timeless Crucifixion & the Sacrifice of the Mass [9-25-09]

Is Jesus “Re-Sacrificed” at Every Mass? [National Catholic Register, 8-19-17]

39:05 this sacrifice once offered on the cross takes place continually in an unseen fashion in heaven

Catholics believe that in the Mass we are supernaturally included in this offering.

39:11 by way of commemoration when Christ offers to his father on our behalf his suffering

It’s not merely commemoration if we are supernaturally transported back to Calvary and Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. In Revelation 5:6, St. John saw Jesus in a way that is very much like the Sacrifice of the Mass: “I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.” Yet in 5:9 and 5:12 the text notes that Jesus “wast slain” and “was slain.”  And we all know that Jesus rose from the dead and was resurrected. So the Bible teaches that there is a quality of the Mass and Jesus’ one-time sacrifice that transcends time. “Lamb” referring to Jesus occurs 28 times in the book of Revelation in RSV.

39:23  this is the unbloody sacrifice which is carried out in heaven

But it’s not unbloody because it is the one sacrifice that occurred in time in Jerusalem, and this is more or less proven by Revelation 5:6. At the very least, that passage is perfectly consistent with what we say about the Mass: especially since it occurs in the context of a massive worship service in heaven.

39:37 If we view the matter from the material standpoint the sacrifice in the Eucharist is numerically the same as the sacrifice that took place on the cross 

Exactly! Now if Lutherans could only figure out that we agree on this point!

44:13 when we read the fathers, number one, we don’t burden them with infallibility. There’s going to be stuff in the fathers that they get wrong and we know that . . . the fathers are not the inspired and inherent scriptures

So do we. We don’t believe that the Church fathers collectively or individually are infallible. We think the Church and the pope are granted that gift, in carefully specified circumstances. What we look to is patristic consensus on issues, which we believe indicates or exhibits the scope and nature of the apostolic tradition that was passed down. We don’t even hold that St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas were infallible.

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Photo credit: cover of my self-published 2011 book [see book and purchase information]

I critique Luther pastor Will Weedon’s rationale for remaining Lutheran, over against Catholicism. Highlights include the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Church fathers.

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