Outside the Canon and Judged Apocryphal

Reformers at Marburg

This is Part 7 of my series on the canon of Scripture. In order to follow this mystery story, you need to begin here.

Protestants have propagated many myths concerning the canon – our protagonist has just shattered Major Myth #1: “The Catholic Church ADDED 7 books to the Bible at the Council of Trent.” As our hero has discovered, John Wycliffe included the Apocrypha (with even more books than in the Catholic Bible) in his English translation of Holy Scripture 150 years BEFORE the Council of Trent supposedly added the books to the Catholic Bible. Was this a one-off? Hardly – Martin Luther insisted on including the Apocrypha in his Bible translation, although he placed those books in a special section at the end of the Old Testament, just as he placed Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation in a special section at the end of the New Testament!
ALL the early Protestant Bibles included the Apocrypha – pretty strange if those books were added to the Bible by the Catholic Church in 1546 as many Protestants claim.

Thus far, our hero has attempted to determine why the books of the Apocrypha were included in a section behind the Old Testament in all the 16^th-century Protestant English Bibles, and why some of those same Bibles shunted Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation to a section behind the New Testament. His quest has led him to Martin Luther, who initiated these practices, and started a trend that others continued and expanded upon….

Delving deeper, you determine that Wycliffe apparently translated the Scriptures into English from the Vulgate version of the Bible. Luther, on the other hand, translated the Old Testament into German from the Soncino Hebrew Bible used by the Jews of his day – the Apocryphal books were not in that version, and they had to be translated from the Septuagint (a Greek manuscript) and the Vulgate (a Latin translation). But why did Luther see fit to drag the Apocryphal books into his Bible at all??

The common explanation of the presence of the Apocrypha in Protestant Bibles (when you can find mention made of this at all!) seems to be that those books were there for “historical reasons,” to “provide historical background….” In the Geneva Bible you find the statement that the Apocrypha is included “as books proceeding from godly men” which “were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of the history and for the instruction of godly manners, etc.” But you can’t find that “historical background” reasoning in other versions, for example, in Luther’s German Bible which predates the Geneva. Why exactly would Martin Luther go out of his way to include the Apocrypha in his German Old Testament when those books weren’t present in the Hebrew text from which he translated the canonical books? He said that he included the Apocrypha because it was “useful and good to be read.” Okay, that could be said about a lot of books… but why include them between the covers of the Holy Bible???

You find that various 16^th– and 17^th-century Bibles give differing reasons for the presence of the Apocrypha between their covers:

The Apocrypha was included in the Zurich Bible “so that no one may complain of lacking anything, and each may find what is to his taste” (which sounds to you like the smorgasbord approach to Bible publishing!)

The 1551 French de Tournes edition of the Scriptures puts the Apocrypha in a separate section, à la Luther. It goes on to inform the reader that these books are rejected by the Jews. No matter, the editor assures us: “Wherefore, reader, seeing that from all flowers the fly may draw liquor to make honey, without regarding where it is planted, whether in the field or in the garden, so from all books thou shalt be able to draw matter suitable to thy salvation without being guided by the Jews. …. Since, therefore, all have the same source and wholesome root, in spite of any
pruning the
Jews may have made on them, do not fail to read them and to take from them doctrine and edification.”

Becke’s Bible seems to indicate that the Apocryphal books are inferior to canonical books simply because they were written in the wrong language: “And although these books be not found in the Hebrew nor in the Chaldean and for that do not take of so great authority as be the other books of the Holy Bible, yet have the holy fathers always so esteemed them and worthily they call them … books of the church, or books mete to be read among the whole congregation namely for that they do agree with the other books of the Holy Bible and contain most godly examples and precepts of the fear and love of God and our neighbor. Wherefore they are diligently to be read, and the learning in them earnestly to be followed that by our good example of living our Heavenly Father throughout all nations may be praised and glorified….”

Coverdale, in his preface to the Apocrypha, states that in his opinion the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men do not belong in the Bible; “Nevertheless, both because of those that be weak and scrupulous, and for their sakes also that love such sweet songs of thanksgiving, I have not left them out, to the intent that the one should have no cause to complain, and that the other also might have the more occasion to give thanks unto God in adversity, as the three children did in the fire.”

The 1611 KJV included the Apocrypha with no comment at all concerning why it was there.

The fifth edition of the Great Bible calls the books, not Apocrypha, but merely “the fourth part of the Bible.”

Apparently the memo that the Apocrypha was being included to provide “historical background” hadn’t reached everyone yet!

So Luther was in essence a “trendsetter” – he had two “special” sections in his German translation, one in the Old Testament (for the 7 books you know are Apocrypha) and one in the New (for the 4 books you know and love as Holy Scripture!). Now you understand the references concerning “Luther’s arrangement of the New Testament canon” that you read in connection with the old English Bibles – some of the English were following Martin Luther’s lead in shunting Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation to the back of the Bible. Luther’s example started the ball rolling. In fact, the reference books tell you that low German Bibles around the year 1600 actually went so far as to label Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation “apocryphal” or even “noncanonical,” “that is, books which are not held equal to other holy Scripture.” The Swedish Gustavus Adolphus Bible of 1618 does the same, calling those books “Apocr(yphal) N.T.” The Canon of the New Testament tells you that this “threefold division of the New Testament: ‘Gospels and Acts’, ‘Epistles and Holy Apostles’, and ‘Apocryphal New Testament,” was “an arrangement that persisted for nearly a century in half a dozen or more printings.”

That’s horrible! How could such a thing be allowed to happen? Four books of inspired Scripture were presented to a generation of Bible-readers as “apocryphal,” all because Luther felt that they were somehow substandard. Who was he to sit in judgment of Holy Scripture, anyway?

Dismayed, you read on concerning the other Reformers to see if their beliefs on the NT canon were any more orthodox than Luther’s! You find that:

John Calvin called 1 John “THE Epistle of John,” and did not write commentary on the other two epistles of John the Apostle.

Ulrich Zwingli declared concerning Revelation: “With the Apocalypse we have no concern, for it is not a Biblical book” after it was used in a debate against him to support the invocation of angels. (This sounds a great deal like Luther and his rejection of 2 Maccabees!)

Luther’s colleague from Wittenburg, Andreas Karlstadt, thought that SEVEN New Testament books (Hebrews, James, II Peter, II John, III John, Jude and Revelation) were questionable, adding that there was really very little reason to include Revelation in the canon. He declared both the Epistle to the Laodiceans and the ending of the Gospel of Mark (Mk 16:9-20) to be apocryphal. He also divided the Apocryphal books of the Old Testament into two categories, declaring Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, and I and II Maccabees to be “holy writings,” while 1 and 2 Esdras, Baruch, Prayer of Manasseh, and the additions to Daniel were “obviously apocryphal.”

“The second Martin,” Martin Chemnitz, also declared the books of Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation to be disputed, insisting that they be used “for edification,” but that “no dogma ought to be drawn out of these books which does not have reliable and clear foundations in other canonical books.”

Johannes Brenz calls the seven books “apocryphal,” asking by what right they should be put on the same level as the canonical Scriptures. He considered them, however, “valuable for reading.”

Mathias Haffenreffer, in speaking of the seven disputed New Testament books, said, “These apocryphal books, although they do not have canonical authority in judging of doctrine, yet because they make for instruction and edification, contain many things and can be read privately and publicly recited in the church with usefulness and profit.”

Andreas Osiander insisted that the seven books “do not have in themselves value for establishing doctrine.”

Johannes Oecolampadius had no problem with Hebrews, but stated that “we do not compare the Apocalypse, the Epistles of James and Jude, and 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John with the rest.”

Aegidius Hunnius remarked that the seven disputed NT books “are outside the Canon and are judged apocryphal.”

Heinrich Bullinger was the first major Reformer to write a commentary on the book of Revelation as other Reformers considered the book to be either substandard or outright unbiblical. (Calvin’s position on Revelation is unclear – he may simply have died before he could write any commentary on it, or he may have concurred with other Reformers and considered it apocryphal.)

In the years following the Reformation, various individuals questioned the presence of the Song of Solomon, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Luke, and Acts in their Bibles….

And you note that several German Bible editions of the 16th century included the “Epistle to the Laodiceans” in their New Testament, as did editions of Wycliffe’s translation, as well as Czech Bibles….

You cradle your aching head in your hands. You don’t even know who some of those guys were, but you get the main idea: the Reformers had no more of a clue concerning what was Scripture (and what wasn’t) than Wycliffe and Luther did. So many of them treated Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation as if they were Apocrypha – placing them in a “special” section, with no “canonical authority in judging of doctrine” but “valuable for reading,” just like Luther’s “useful and good to be read.” How did they justify this unholy nonsense?

Luther used his “true touchstone,” his system of which books “preached Christ” to determine which New Testament books to segregate, a rather subjective system that seems pretty dangerous to you. It seems obvious that Luther decided his doctrine FIRST based on his understanding of “the just shall live by faith,” then looked for it in the books of the New Testament. Whenever he couldn’t find this doctrine explained as clearly as he would have liked in certain books, he declared them deficient, perhaps not even really Scripture. In fact, the Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, in discussing Luther’s system, says as much:

Thus the doctrine of justification by faith is not accepted because it is found in the Bible; but the Bible is accepted because it contains this doctrine.

You shake your head. This is backwards – we don’t form our theology first and then pick and choose among the books of Scripture! That makes US the final arbiter of truth, doesn’t it? Let’s say you started pondering New Testament truths such as Jesus’ statement “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you,” and then began noticing Old Testament passages which seemed to preach a different message. If you went into your church on Sunday and announced to the pastor that you had decided, based on your reading of the Gospels, that God is love and therefore the Old Testament is obviously not really Scripture – after all, it presents God as telling Israel to wipe the Canaanites off the face of the earth! Your pastor would sit you down and have “a little talk” with you! We do not sit in judgment of the Scriptures, he would insist – we allow Scripture to teach us! If sections of Scripture seem to be in conflict with each other, there are whole reference books devoted to harmonizing them! Once we know that a book is Holy Scripture, we must acknowledge that any discrepancies or “errors” in that book can be reconciled with what we find in the rest of Scripture. That is apparently what Protestants who lived after the Reformation eventually did; ignoring Luther’s qualms, they reconciled James’ insistence that “by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” with Paul’s “we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law,” because both of these books are Holy Scripture!!!

Why did the Reformers feel the need to fiddle with Scripture???

The question remains, did the other Reformers follow Luther’s “true touchstone,” his odd justification for cutting and pasting books of the Bible into his own little arrangement using the criterion of how well a given book “preached Christ,” or did they have their own justifications for cobbling together their custom-made canons?

Do you really want to know?

For Part Eight, please click here

 

On the memorial of St. Anthony of Egypt

Deo omnis gloria!

Something Very, Very Strange

I was born and raised a Protestant. One question I never asked myself was “Where did the Bible come from?” I mean, I knew that God inspired men to write historical accounts, songs and letters that have been collected together in the Book that we call the Bible. But what was the collection process like? Who did the collecting, and how did they know which books belonged in the Bible, and which did not? I just never bothered my pretty little head about it….

This is Part Five of my series on the canon of Scripture (Part One is here), and fortunately our hero has a better head on his shoulders than I did as a Protestant! In his search for the answers, he has come across some very disturbing information concerning the presence of the Apocrypha in early Protestant Bibles….

As you sort back through what you have learned, you feel the frustration mounting. So far your Protestant sources have told you that at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) seven books were added to the Catholic version of the Bible. The Catholics call these books “deuterocanonical” – Protestants call them the Apocrypha. However, all the Bible encyclopedias that you have checked assure you that the early English-language Bibles, from Wycliffe’s translation in 1384 to the KJV, all contained an Apocryphal section, although those sections varied in content – all with more Apocryphal books than are found in Catholic Bibles!

This makes no sense!!! If the Catholic Church ADDED books to the Bible at the Council of Trent, what in heaven’s name were Protestants doing when they also added these books to their Protestant Bibles??? Come to think of it, Wycliffe’s translation predates the Council of Trent by some 160 years – so he had this odd idea to add the Apocrypha to the Bible WAY before the Catholics thought of it! Something very, very strange was going on with the Apocrypha back in 14^th, 15^th, 16^th and 17^th-century England!

What you find particularly frustrating is that when you search online at Protestant sites that allow you to view English Bibles from the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, it’s hard to find a site that mentions the Apocryphal books that were included in those Bibles, let alone includes them for viewing. It’s as if the online Bibles have been “sanitized”. It’s as if it all never happened….

What’s up with that? Those Bibles did contain Apocryphal books – it’s a historical fact mentioned in Bible encyclopedia after Bible encyclopedia! At least some mention should be made of that on the websites….

And then there’s the New Testament problem. The Apocrypha is a collection of Old Testament books purporting to be Holy Scripture. But in your reading you’ve come across Wycliffe’s Protestant New Testament translation containing the book of “Laodiceans” – supposedly an epistle written by Paul! How did that get in there???

Wycliffe’s Bible at least keeps a normal New Testament order of the books, but you’ve found several 16^th-century Protestant New Testaments in which Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation have been segregated from the rest of the books in a separate section at the end, as if the editors felt that they weren’t “ready for prime time!” For Heaven’s sake, what was up with that???

In frustration, you try a change of tack. You’ve already got your library’s copy of Metzger’s Canon of the New Testament, and you begin to search through the your Bible reference books while trying to remember everything you know about Martin Luther. Fortunately only a few weeks ago your church celebrated Reformation Sunday, and your pastor preached on the Great Reformer. He spoke glowingly of how Luther rescued the Christian Church from the darkness of the Middle Ages, from the clutches of the pope, and brought the church back to its original form (hence the term “Reformation”). He did issue a disclaimer, warning you that Luther was no “saint” – he was criticized by his fellow Reformers for his uncontrolled ego, his bad temper, and his foul language (the pastor said he couldn’t even repeat to you some of the things Luther said in his sermons). And Luther certainly espoused some odd doctrines, such as a belief that the Bible sanctioned polygamy (which Luther himself felt couldn’t be forbidden in certain situations!). But sola fide (faith alone!) and sola Scriptura (Scripture alone!), the rallying cries of the Reformation, are something that all Protestants owe to Martin Luther. It just goes to show, your pastor emphasized, how God can use anyone.

“Scripture alone!” sounded so great when you heard it several Sundays ago, but now somehow it rings slightly off-key when compared to what these Bible encyclopedias are saying. “Sola Scriptura” sounds wonderful – but only if you know what is Scripture and what isn’t – and the English Protestants of the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries certainly seem to have had no idea, with their Apocryphal books and their “segregation” of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation in the back of their Bibles! How could they have fallen into such serious error?

Well, hopefully Martin Luther can shed some light in this darkness!

You remember your pastor telling you that, while there had been 18 previous Catholic translations of the Bible into German, Martin Luther’s translation into his native language was so beautifully done that it set the literary standard for hundreds of years. You begin to search for articles on Luther in the Bible encyclopedias you have spread out on your library table, and in the books on the Reformation that you’ve found. You learn that he translated the New Testament into German in a version that was published in 1522. Luther’s theology could be summed up in the Reformation’s battle-cry of “justification by faith alone!” Luther derived this understanding of Scripture from the apostle Paul’s declaration that “the just shall live by faith” in Romans 1:16-17. The Hastings Dictionary of the Bible describes it this way:

With Luther the Reformation was based on justification by faith. This truth Luther held to be confirmed (a) by its necessity, nothing else availing, and (b) by its effects, since in practice it brought peace, assurance, and the new life. Then those Scriptures which manifestly supported the fundamental principle were held to be ipso facto inspired, and the measure of their support of it determined the degree of their authority. Thus the doctrine of justification by faith is not accepted because it is found in the Bible; but the Bible is accepted because it contains this doctrine.

Because of his belief that justification was by faith alone, Luther felt compelled to actually add the word “alone” (“sola” in Latin) into the text of his German translation in Romans 3:28 to cause it to read “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith alone without the deeds of the law.”

What???

You quickly grab the KJV you have lying on the table. Romans 3:28 reads “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”

You feel a sudden chill. Luther added a word to his German translation of Holy Scripture to prove his doctrinal point? You read his justification for this in his Open Letter on Translating (1530):

Let this be the answer to your first question. Please do not give these donkeys any other answer to their useless braying about that word sola than simply this: ‘Luther will have it so, and he says that he is a doctor above all the doctors of the pope.’ Let it rest there…..

Boy, your pastor wasn’t kidding about Luther’s ego problems! Mr. Humility continues:

I know very well that in Romans 3 the word solum is not in the Greek or Latin text — the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text — if the translation is to be clear and vigorous, it belongs there. I wanted to speak German, not Latin or Greek, since it was German I had set about to speak in the translation.

Luther goes on to insist that the German version just sounds better with the word “alone” in the passage in question, and then states:

However, I was not depending upon or following the nature of the languages alone when I inserted the word solum in Romans 3. The text itself, and Saint Paul’s meaning, urgently require and demand it. For in that passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the Law..

The text itself, and St. Paul’s meaning, urgently require and demand it?

“The matter itself and the nature of language requires it,” Luther assures you later in the text.

So Luther knew that the word “alone” was not in the original text, but because he considered “justification by faith alone” to be, as he put it “the main point of Christian doctrine,” he convinced himself that “the matter itself and the nature of language requires it.”

That’s news to you – you were under the impression that no one is ever allowed to ADD words to Scripture, no matter how strongly they feel that the addition proves the point that the Bible is trying to make! After all, isn’t that what the Apocrypha problem is all about – books being ADDED to the Bible?

The temperature in the library seems to have dipped precipitously. You shiver. You decide to wrap this investigation up quickly and head home. You’ve already made too many unpleasant historical discoveries….

 

For Part Six, please click here

On the feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Deo omnis gloria!

My, How Things Haven’t Changed!

Over the years I have read claims that Catholic teaching has changed, that it has “learned from Protestant doctrine” over the nearly 500 years since the Reformation, becoming more “Biblical.” “Pope Benedict admits that Luther was right!” people crow, (pretending that the Holy Father said “Luther was right – period!” rather than “Luther was right, IF….). This reasoning originates with people who have bought into standard-issue anti-Catholic propaganda, along the lines of: “Romanists believe that you have to work your way to heaven, worship the Pope, the saints, and Mary, and pretend that a flat, tasteless wafer is God.” They then hear the Holy Father say something that sounds suspiciously “Christian” and, stymied, can only attribute the Pope’s “change of heart” to Protestant influence. Catholic doctrine is changing, they assume. Assumption is so much less trouble than research. I know that from first-hand experience….

Take the subject of justification. If you had asked me back when I was a Protestant why Catholics don’t agree with the Protestant doctrine of “faith alone,” I would have explained to you that the pernicious doctrine of justification by works had wormed its way into Church doctrine as man-made “wisdom” superseded the preaching of the Gospel. The clergy and religious brothers and sisters of the Middle Ages were steeped in ignorance of the Scriptures and in the traditions of men. That’s why God raised up Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who came to realize that the Catholic Church was teaching error concerning justification. God called this simple monk to lead people back to the Bible, to teach them to have faith, and trust in the blood of Jesus Christ for their salvation!

Not that I actually did any research on this – I was just buying into the prevailing Protestant wisdom that permeated the teaching of the churches I attended. I now wish that I had actually tested these assumptions against the historical record. Here are some quotes taken from the High Middle Ages, the 11th to the 13th century. Is prevailing Protestant wisdom correct? Did Catholics know anything about salvation by grace through faith before the time of Luther?

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090- 1153) What I need to enter Heaven, I appropriate from the merits of Jesus Christ who suffered and died in order to procure for me that glory of which I was unworthy.

St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) Christians must lean on the Cross of Christ just as travelers lean on a staff when they begin a long journey.

St. Bernadine of Siena (1380-1444) The Church is indeed built on the Name of Jesus which is its very foundation, and hence it is the greatest honor to cleave through faith to the Name of Jesus and to become a son of God.

These men all lived and died before Luther’s time. These are the guys your Protestant mother warned you about: medieval priests and monks. But those quotes sound suspiciously “Christian.” Is that a fluke?

Martin Luther lived from 1483 to 1546. Here is a sampling of quotes from the Catholic writings of that era:

St. Thomas of Villanova (1488-1555) Fear not to approach Him with confidence, for He is called by the name of Jesus. He is the Savior and will not reject those whom He ought to save. If a man is condemned to hell, it is not because he has sinned but rather because he has rejected this so abundant and certain source of salvation.

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) Not for ourselves, Lord, for we do not deserve to be heard, but for the blood of Your Son and for His merits.

St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) In His infinite love for us, though we were sinners, He sent His only Son to free us from the tyranny of Satan, to summon us to heaven, to welcome us into its innermost recesses, to show us Truth itself, to train us in right conduct, to plant within us the seeds of virtue, to enrich us with the treasures of His grace, and to make us children of God and heirs of eternal life.

St. Thomas of Villanova’s timeline runs almost exactly parallel to that of Luther. St. Thomas was an Augustinian monk, as was Luther. Luther suffered from scrupulosity, and was plagued by doubts that his sins could be forgiven. Surely these words of St. Thomas, “If a man is condemned to hell, it is not because he has sinned but rather because he has rejected this so abundant and certain source of salvation,” address Luther’s fundamental concern. Yet Luther claimed that the Catholic Church knew nothing of salvation by grace through faith. It’s certainly hard to believe that St. Thomas was the only man of his time who preached these things….

St. Charles Borromeo, too, was a contemporary of Luther’s, and one of his fiercest critics. Borromeo seems to be awfully interested in Jesus and “the treasures of His grace” for someone who is trying to teach “works-righteousness” instead of salvation by grace through faith. Kind of counter-productive reasoning….

The Council of Trent, perhaps the heyday of anti-Protestantism, took place between 1545 and 1563, with its decisions being codified in the Roman Catechism (1566), the revised Roman Missal (1570), and a revised edition of the Vulgate Scriptures (1592). What were Catholics declaring about justification during that time period?

Council of Trent – But when the Apostle says that man is justified by faith and freely, [Rom 3:24, 5:1] these words are to be understood in that sense in which the uninterrupted unanimity of the Catholic Church has held and expressed them, namely, that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God [Heb 11:6] and to come to the fellowship of His sons; and we are therefore said to be justified gratuitously, because none of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification. For, if by grace, it is not now by works, otherwise, as the Apostle says, grace is no more grace. [Rom 11:6]

That bears repeating: None of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification!

Some well-known Catholic saints lived at this time. What were they saying?

St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) It is by the merits of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that I hope to be saved.

St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622) He leaves us for our part all the merit and profit of our services and good works, and we again leave Him all the honor and praise thereof, acknowledging that the commencement, the progress and the end of all the good we do depends on His mercy by which He has come unto us and prevented us, has come into us and assisted us, has come with us and conducted us, finishing what He has begun.

He repairs all, modifies and vivifies; loves in the heart, hears in the mind, sees in the eyes, speaks in the tongue; does all in all, and then it is not we who live, but Jesus Christ who lives in us.

That could be a Protestant preacher talking! But St. John of the Cross was a Catholic mystic, and St. Francis de Sales was a Catholic bishop who, by God’s grace, brought some 70,000 converts to Protestantism back into the Catholic fold! Could it be that those reverts realized how wrong they had been about actual Catholic teaching on justification?

If the Catholic Church taught “salvation through works,” the saints of the 17th, the 18th and the 19th centuries seem not to have realized it:

St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617) Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.

St. Claude de la Colombiere (1641-1682) It is yours to do all, divine Heart of Jesus Christ. You alone will have all the glory of my sanctification if I become holy. That seems to me clearer than the day.

St. Louis de Montfort (1673-1716 ) Pray with great confidence, with confidence based upon the goodness and infinite generosity of God and upon the promises of Jesus Christ.

St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775) I hope that God will save me through the merits of the Passion of Jesus. The more difficulties in life, the more I hope in God. By God’s grace I will not lose my soul, but I hope in His mercy.

St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696- 1787) And when the enemy represents to us our weakness, let us say with the Apostle: I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. Of myself I can do nothing, but I trust in God, that, by His grace I shall be able to do all things.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821) I will go peaceably and firmly to the Catholic Church: for if faith is so important to our salvation, I will seek it where true Faith first began, seek it among those who received it from God Himself.

St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!

This all seems a far cry from the perception of Catholics trying to earn Heaven through worthless good works, with no reliance on faith or trust in Christ’s blood. It seems to be a continuous stream of reliance on grace and faith in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. The 20th-century saints speak:

St. Edith Stein (1891-1942) His blood is the curtain through which we enter into the Holiest of Holies, the Divine Life. In baptism and in the sacrament of reconciliation, His blood cleanses us of our sins, opens our eyes to eternal light, our ears to hearing God’s word.

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938) I fly to Your mercy, Compassionate God, who alone are good. Although my misery is great, and my offences are many, I trust in Your mercy, because You are the God of mercy; and from time immemorial, it has never been heard of, nor do heaven or earth remember, that a soul trusting in Your mercy has been disappointed.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) Keep the light of faith ever burning, for Jesus alone is the Way that leads to the Father. He alone is the Life dwelling in our hearts. He alone is the Light that enlightens the darkness.

“Catholics sure have changed their tune!” is what a lot of folks claim when they read comments like the following from Pope Benedict:

Benedict XVI (1927- ) “Luther’s expression ‘by faith alone’ is true if faith is not opposed to charity, to love. Faith is to look at Christ, to entrust oneself to Christ, to be united to Christ, to be conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence, to believe is to be conformed to Christ and to enter into his love.”

“Paul knows that in the double love of God and neighbor the whole law is fulfilled. Thus the whole law is observed in communion with Christ, in faith that creates charity. We are just when we enter into communion with Christ, who is love.”

You see, this is no capitulation to Protestant doctrine – it’s just the Catholic Church teaching what’s she’s taught all along. If by “faith” you mean “faith that creates charity,” then you understand the subject of justification the way the Council of Trent proclaimed it – faith without works is dead.

Realize, please, that the above-quoted individuals (Benedict XVI excepted – for now) aren’t just anybody; they are saints and blesseds. This means that the Catholic Church has set them up on a pedestal with a flashing neon sign proclaiming, “Pay attention to this person! Imitate her life! Listen to what he said!” Kind of counter-productive if the Church has secretly been cherishing the works-righteousness heresy all these centuries….

But as a Protestant, I didn’t know any of this, basically because I didn’t bother to do research on the subject. Prevailing Protestant wisdom was good enough for me. Little did I realize that Catholic doctrine cannot change!

Next time we’ll examine the prevailing Protestant wisdom on the subject of the Catholic Church and the Bible.

On the memorial of St. Robert Bellarmine

Deo omnis gloria!