Presumptuous Is As Presumptuous Does

Pride

As my recent series on “Common Ground?” has demonstrated, Protestants and Catholics disagree on a great deal. Even when we use the same terminology, we oftentimes use those terms differently. Yet there are scores of issues upon which Protestants and Catholics truly agree. We agree, for example, on the necessity of being born again. We agree that we are saved by grace through faith. We agree that Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, true God and true Man. We agree on the subject of His Virgin Birth, His bodily resurrection and on the fact that He is coming again. We agree that the Bible is the infallible word of God. There are also those in-between subjects, the ones we can agree on in a certain sense, yet profoundly disagree upon at a deeper level. We agree that Jesus established His Church, yet we can’t agree on whether or not to capitalize the “c” in that word – is His “church” merely a body of believers called out from the world by God to live as His people under the authority of Jesus Christ, or is His “Church” also the “universal sacrament of salvation”? You’d certainly get some discussion going on that issue. We agree that Christians are Christ’s body, yet the Catholic understanding of that body as the Church Militant, Church Suffering, and Church Triumphant, with all that the “communion of saints” then entails, gives many Protestants the willies; they find it presumptuous of us to flesh out those doctrines to such an extent. “Presumption,” too, is an issue Protestants and Catholics agree on in one sense – we all believe that it is very wrong to be presumptuous (i.e., audacious, brazen, impertinent, cocky), especially when you are being presumptuous in matters of faith – yet when you get down to the details of that issue, our understanding could not be more different.

Protestants make no attempt to hide the fact that they find the Catholic Church to be somewhat lacking in humility. They find the Catholic Church presumptuous, for example, when she claims that the Holy Father, the pope, can teach infallibly. How can a sinful man claim to be so perfect that he can teach infallibly? How presumptuous to claim that your Church is led by some semi-divine bloke who never makes a mistake!! How awful to call a mere man “Holy Father!”

The Catholic answer to that is that it certainly would be offensively presumptuous to call a mere man “holy” if we meant by that what Protestants think we mean by that. It would be terrible to claim that a man could live without sinning, that he is “semi-divine” and never commits errors. That’s why we don’t do it.

Catholics call the pope “holy” because he is holy in one biblical sense of the word: Scripture speaks of “holy ground,” “the holy mountain,” “holy offerings,” “holy anointing oil,” “holy incense,” “the holy altar” – it even says that “Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to the LORD of hosts!” This sense of the word “holy” simply means “set apart.” If St. Paul advised the Colossians that they were “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,” then it’s not a far stretch to claim that the Pope, too, might legitimately be referred to as “Holy Father.” This in no way claims semi-divinity for him; it is simply a misunderstanding of terms on the part of Protestants. Catholics do not consider the pope to be incapable of making a mistake or incapable of sinning; that is simply not what the doctrine of papal infallibility teaches. Patrick Madrid, in his book Pope Fiction, explains it like this:

At this juncture, we should spell out exactly what papal infallibility is not. First, it doesn’t give the pope the answers to theological questions (as inspiration would), nor does infallibility guarantee that he will be proactive and teach what needs to be taught, when it should be taught, in the way it should be taught. Infallibility doesn’t mean that the pope is prompted by God to do or teach something. It doesn’t even guarantee that the pope, when he does teach, will be as effective or persuasive or clear as he should be in what he teaches. Papal infallibility guarantees none of these things. Rather, it is a guarantee that God the Holy Spirit will preserve the pope from formally teaching error.

Please note that this Catholic understanding of the doctrine of papal infallibility, far from being presumptuous, is actually a model of humility. We don’t believe that the Holy Father receives direct inspiration from God as the authors of Holy Scripture did. We don’t believe that the Holy Father will necessarily be a great evangelist, or teacher, or apologist. We don’t believe that the Holy Father will necessarily be kind, or good, or even smarter than the average bear. All that the doctrine of papal infallibility is claiming is that if the Holy Father is toying with the idea of formally teaching error as truth, or even if he is bound and determined to teach error as truth, God in His mercy will stop him. This is how Catholics know that they can rest easy, never awakening to find that a 2,000-year-old Church doctrine (like the universal condemnation of contraception as a sin and a crime against nature) has been overturned, as Protestants did in the 20^th century. The pope simply can’t overturn the constant teaching of the Church. The doctrine of papal infallibility, rather than granting the pope carte blanche, is severely limiting.

That really doesn’t say much about our Catholic confidence in the guy elected as the successor to Peter, and that’s the point. We are humbly recognizing the fact that human beings like the pope sin and err, yet Jesus PROMISED that “the gates of hell will not prevail” against His Church. Simply put, that means that He’s got to stop the Church from formally teaching error as truth, lest we fallible humans ruin the whole job. Praise God, He has remained faithful to His promise.

Well, it certainly is somewhat lacking in humility to claim to be able to make certain people into “saints” just because they advanced your cause! The Bible says that we are all saints, but the Catholic Church presumptuously claims to know who’s in Heaven and who isn’t!

Again, it would be presumptuous of the Church to claim that she can make or break saints! The process of canonization, though, is a process of discernment. In other words, the Church believes that God makes clear that miracles are being performed through the intercession of a given deceased person, indicating that that person is in the presence of God. The Church in no way “puts” the person in Heaven or “makes” that person a saint. She simply publicly declares what God has made evident: that that person is one of the saints in Heaven. The Church has never, on the other hand, publicly declared that any given person is not in Heaven, just as she has never taught that any given individual or group of individuals is in hell. She just doesn’t know those things.

Well, what’s more presumptuous than claiming that “the Church is the divinely appointed Custodian and Interpreter of the Bible”? That claim makes the church equal, if not superior, to Holy Scripture! Can the Catholic Church claim to possess even an ounce of humility if she continues to press this presumptuous claim??

Which is more presumptuous, to say “I can understand the Bible all by myself,” or “I need help! Lord, send me Your Church as you sent St. Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch, who in his humility insisted ‘How can I understand unless someone explains it to me?'” (Acts 8:31) You see, the Bible must be interpreted, and somebody’s got to do the interpreting. St. Philip didn’t lay hands on the eunuch and pray that God would explain the Scriptures to him – St. Philip, as a representative of the Church, did it himself. God could have made each individual believer an infallible interpreter of Scripture, in which case all Protestants would agree on the interpretation of each verse of the Bible. We all know that is not the case. God chose, in reality, to make His Church the Custodian and Interpreter of the Bible, because without an authorized interpreter, no one can be sure his own personal understanding of a given verse or doctrine is an orthodox one. In other words, God made His Church to be “the pillar and foundation of the Truth” (1 Tim 3:15). Far from being an audacious claim, there is nothing presumptuous about the Church’s claim at all.

Those charges of presumption commonly made against the Catholic Church simply won’t stick. God delegated special authority to certain people not because they or the Church as a whole are so great, but because we’re NOT. We need special help! He has provided it.

While we’re on the subject of presumption, though, Catholics have a few questions of their own:

• The Catholic Church does not claim to know a great deal about the End Times. “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end” is about as much as she’s ever officially stated on the subject. Evangelicals, on the other hand, presume to know a great deal. The Evangelical doctrine of the pre-tribulational rapture is made an Article of Faith in some churches; they are leaning on their own understanding, and yet making it binding upon believers. “Prophecy conferences” with self-proclaimed “prophecy experts” draw large crowds, as these men teach doctrines unknown to the early Christians. “We are in the last days!” they pontificate, and have been pontificating for generations now. Yet, no man knows the day nor the hour? How is this not presumptuous?
  

• Catholics do not presume to declare that a given deceased person is not in Heaven. The Church does not claim to possess that knowledge. Yet Evangelicals claim to know that millions upon millions of people who never heard the Gospel are without a doubt in hell, in strange opposition to the teaching of St. Paul:
  

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. …
For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. …
for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation. (Rom 1:20, 2:12-16, 4:15)

Because this teaching appears to contradict the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone, Evangelicals disregard St. Paul and presume to proclaim that every individual who dies without praying the Sinner’s Prayer will without a doubt go to hell. When one of the Apostles made it clear that “it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,” how can insisting otherwise not be presumptuous?

• Protestants will be the first to tell you that they are not infallible – that no one is. You will struggle to find a Protestant church where the pastor claims that his teaching on a given subject is the only correct understanding (he may hint at this, claiming that his understanding is “the clear teaching of Scripture,” but the majority of pastors will shy away from making claims of infallibility for themselves). That said, many, many Evangelical Bible teachers will claim to KNOW which verses of Scripture are meant to be taken literally, and to KNOW which are meant to be taken figuratively. Genesis 1 and 2, for example, MUST be taken literally (ask Ken Ham!); John 6:41-71, on the other hand, MUST be taken figuratively (ask any Evangelical pastor). How can they know this? Yet their understanding of which verses were meant literally and which verses were meant figuratively has become for them, just like the pre-tribulational Rapture, an Article of Faith. Tell a 6-Day creationist that you don’t believe that the first two chapters of the Bible have to be taken literally. He will tell you that you are not a Christian, because you reject his entirely arbitrary understanding of which verses need to be taken literally. Ask him how he knows that his understanding of this issue is the correct one. He will tell you that it is OBVIOUS to real Christians….
  

When the Catholic Church claims infallibility for her Pope, she is admitting a fault – Catholics are so prone to fail their Lord that He had to build safeguards into the system to prevent His people from sinking His ship. To claim that the Church is protected from error is an act of humility. Protestants who would never claim infallibility for their own private interpretations of Scripture, yet nevertheless assert their own opinions as non-negotiable, are making some pretty cheeky claims. Presumptuous is as Presumptuous does.

 

On the memorial of Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta Marto

Deo omnis gloria!

Common Ground? The Second Coming

Common ground on the subject of the Second Coming of Christ? Hmm… let’s see, do Evangelical Christians believe that Jesus is coming again? YES! Do Catholics believe that Jesus is coming again? YES! Is “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end” a line from the Creed that all of us can recite in hearty, full-throated unison? YES!!

I don’t usually get to line up that many yeses….

However (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?), the Second Coming is a subject that has given rise to more confusion between Evangelicals and Catholics than almost any other, with neither side really clear on what the other side believes. Why in the world would that be?

Blame the secret rapture doctrine.

Christians for 1800 years were agreed upon the subject of the Second Coming. It was one of the truths of the Faith that Protestants appropriated when they severed their ties with the Catholic Church. Christians agreed that of course the Lord Jesus would return at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead. Martin Luther knew nothing about a “rapture;” his understanding of the Second Coming was the traditional interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18:

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

From that passage Luther understood that at the Second Coming, Jesus will descend from Heaven to judge the living and the dead, who will rise to meet Him. Like Luther, John Calvin taught his fellow believers to await the Second Coming, when the Lord will descend from Heaven with a shout, and the dead in Christ will rise first. He anticipated no separate “rapture” event of believers seven years before the Second Coming. Neither did Zwingli, or Knox, or Wesley. When Handel composed “The Messiah,” the stirring lyrics to “The Trumpet Shall Sound!” conjured up no visions of anybody getting “left behind,” for the simple reason that the doctrine of the secret rapture hadn’t been invented yet!

It wasn’t until the 19^th century that the concept of a separate “rapture,” a secret one in which Christians are caught up out of the chaos unleashed in Revelation 6, began to be promoted by a Protestant group known as the Plymouth Brethren. While mainline Protestant denominations distance themselves from the secret rapture, the idea did catch on among the Baptists, charismatics and nondenoms. Many American Evangelical denominations have made it an integral part of their theology (Corrie ten Boom went so far as to decry it as “the American doctrine.”) Evangelicals are serious about it. At the Baptist academy my children attended, teachers were required to sign a statement declaring themselves to be in agreement with this belief. Literally millions of Evangelicals believe that one day they will disappear, leaving the rest of humanity – those “left behind” – to face the horrors of the Anti-Christ’s rule. The fact that the secret, pre-tribulational rapture is a novel theological proposition does not faze Evangelicals one whit, for to them it is “the clear teaching of Scripture” – not as clear as they might like, though, for Evangelical pastors are badly divided over the specifics of the doctrine which is supposedly so clear. Prophecy conferences are held to indoctrinate believers into all the various nuances of the theory, books are written to popularize the notion, and movies are made, to the embarrassment of more traditionally-minded Christians.

The people who developed this theory of the secret rapture found it plausible because they found implausible the concept of the Lord allowing His people to undergo the suffering of the Last Days. They then read Scripture through this “God would never allow His people to suffer through the Tribulation” lens, and concluded that the verses in 1 Thessalonians 4 must refer to an event prior to the Second Coming. Reading the rapture into all passages dealing with the End Times, they found what they thought was the “comfort” that St. Paul was referring to: “comfort one another with these words.” This is why Corrie ten Boom, Holocaust survivor and Christian evangelist, so hated the doctrine; she felt that believers were being misled into thinking that they were among some privileged group who would not be allowed to suffer. When suffering eventually reared its ugly head, especially in the form of persecution in countries where Evangelical missionaries taught the secret rapture doctrine, shocked adherents apostatized, thinking that they had been deceived by what they thought was the Christian message.

Ask a believer to show you where the Bible teaches the rapture doctrine, and you will be showered with verses; Matthew 24:30-36 and 40-41, John 14:1-3, Acts 1:9-11, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, Philippians 3:20-21 and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 will most likely be presented. Look those verses up, and you’ll note that all of them seem to be referring to the Second Coming. That’s because they are. Adherents are taught to read the secret rapture doctrine into these verses; once they do, those verses are supposed to “prove” that the secret rapture will occur 7 years (or 3-1/2 years – depends on who’s doing the preaching) before Christ comes again in glory.

The important thing to remember when discussing the Second Coming with an Evangelical is that when you express doubts concerning the secret rapture of believers, he will most likely hear you saying that you do not believe that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and dead. It is far more productive, in this case as in most cases, to explain to your friend what Catholics DO believe, rather than what we don’t, since he has probably heard a lot of hogwash concerning Catholic teaching. Catholics believe, and have always believed, that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead! The Second Coming is a doctrine that Catholics and Protestants can agree on, even if the secret rapture theory – mere theological speculation, heavy on eisegesis and devoid of historicity – is not. Jesus is coming again – this is glorious, sobering news!
Catholics and Protestants need to take this seriously, join forces, and proclaim it to the world – leaving the secret rapture doctrine behind.

 

On the memorial of St. Blaise of Sebaste

Deo omnis gloria!

If I Could Change the Creed

If I could change the Creed – don’t worry, I wouldn’t. That sounds more like something I might have been talked into in my Protestant days, reciting the Creed with a “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” in mind, trying to make sure everyone understood that I meant “catholic” and not “Catholic.” No, I would not dream of attempting to change the words of the Nicene Creed that we recite every Sunday. But I would like to suggest a gesture that I believe might greatly enhance our Creedal Experience….

I’ve been a Catholic now for 10 years. Assuming that I attended 52 Sundays and 6 additional holy days of obligation per year, along with the odd daily Mass whenever I don’t have to work, I’ve recited the Creed publicly around 600 times (my math is probably off – it usually is). The words to our English version of the Nicene Creed have changed over those years – we now say “consubstantial” and “incarnate of the Virgin Mary” – instead of “one in being” and “born of the Virgin Mary” – the meaning is the same, but more faithful to the original. Why have I been asked to stand and recite this Creed at Mass after Mass after Mass? The Creed is a vitally important statement of what we are asked to believe as Catholics. By standing and making a solemn profession of the Creed at Mass, we aren’t just blabbering Catholic theo-speak; we are binding ourselves before God. “I believe!” we all proclaim. Do we?? By those creedal statements which we profess at Mass, we will be judged….

That’s what the Solemnity of Christ the King is all about. As Catholics we proclaim to the world that Jesus is coming back! He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end! Good news!!

Have you ever noticed the rubrics (the red writing) that accompany the Creed? They instruct us that when we come to the line in the Creed that says “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man,” we are to bow. You see, St. Louis of France used to genuflect during the Nicene Creed to show reverence to the awe-inspiring fact that God became man. The king’s practice became widespread and is now observed in the universal Church. That’s why we bow upon the recitation of that line of the Creed – to acknowledge that this Incarnation is something that should inspire reverence. Any non-Catholic who observes this action of ours knows without asking that the Incarnation must be some kind of big deal.

Far, far be it from me to tinker with the wording of the Creed, but I would like to propose that the faithful be instructed to perform another gesture – that we should fall to our knees at the words: “He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

Why?

Because we live like we don’t believe it.

We are proclaiming in the Creed that we will be judged. We Catholics are solemnly professing that we believe all this stuff about God Incarnate suffering and dying for us, conquering sin and death so that we might have life eternal. We are claiming to believe that. God will take us at our word. We will be judged for every action, every word, every thought that demonstrates our refusal to live as we believe.

St. Peter wrote that judgment begins with the house of God. That’s us. And that’s a huge concern, because we don’t live like we believe that, either. Rather, we hear the word of God preached to us at Mass, and immediately forget what we heard, like the man St. James warns us about, the one who “looks at his natural face in a mirror; he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.” Yet we will be held accountable as ones who were privileged to receive biblical instruction. We have been baptized! We have been confirmed!  Have we changed? These privileges bring with them great responsibility in the Kingdom of God!

The more you know and the better you understand, the more severely will you be judged, unless your life is also the more holy. Do not be proud, therefore, because of your learning or skill. Rather, fear because of the talent given you. Thomas á Kempis

I don’t know about you, but I live every day as if there were no God – in the things I say, and in the things I do. My actions won’t land me in jail, which is probably a contributing factor – since I know no one is going to call me on the fact that I act like everybody else, I forget that while there may be no judgment of my actions in this life, there certainly will be a Judgment. How can I continue to live like an unbeliever when imminent judgment, the reality of which I solemnly profess before God every Sunday, stares me in the face?

And my gossiping, my whining, my lying and my cheating aren’t the half of it. I avoid the Cross like nobody’s business. Chances to die to myself come thick and fast, especially during the workweek, which finds me plotting my strategy for surviving the workweek, rather than planning how these opportunities can bring me closer to the One Who said “Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.” And I’m not alone. Creed-reciting Catholics contracept just like unbelievers. We take our wedding vows with a grain of salt. We place our hand on a Bible in a court of law and pronounce those awful words “So help me God” as if we were reading out of a phone book. We feel free to disagree with Church teaching and flaunt the calls of our bishops as if we believed that the Catholic Church were just another Protestant denomination. We receive the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, carelessly, the same way we would eat mere bread and wine. Creed-reciting Catholics feel free to ignore the plight of “the least of these” in this world, the mentally ill, the working poor, the displaced, the drug-addicted, the widow and the orphan just as unbelievers do, as if we hadn’t heard that we will be judged:

Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’

Which part of “Depart from Me” isn’t getting through to us?

People are starving, they are watching their children starve, they are dying of preventable diseases, they are dying alone on the street, they are filthy when they could be clean, they are ignorant when they could have received an education, they are terrified when they could live in peace – if the 160 million Christians in the US did what Jesus told us to do. We, for our part, stuff our faces, we squander fortunes on “entertainment,” we pay to be brainwashed with filth, we spend our money on that which is not bread, and our labor on that which does not satisfy, as if we weren’t Christians at all. No matter! We’re not footing that bill. Our brothers and sisters, the least of these, are paying the price….

And I’ve only scratched the surface….

This news that Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, which every confessing Catholic professes to believe, should be the most jolting wakeup call ever, and we are sleeping through it. He WILL come again in glory to judge the living and the dead! Every deed, every word, every thought, every missed opportunity, every blind eye….

Which is why I think adding this gesture to our recital of the Creed might help things “click.” Throwing ourselves to our knees, as we will certainly do on that Day as we beg the Divine Mercy to have mercy upon us, might help us to hear the words we speak, and connect those words to our actions when we go forth from Mass to live out our Christian calling. He WILL come again. He WILL judge me. Who can stand?

May we kneel now?

 

On the Solemnity of Christ the King

Deo omnis gloria!

Serious Lipstick

Everybody’s got a favorite TV detective. I grew up watching Mannix and Jim Rockford. Kojak was popular in those days. Magnum was huge in the 80s, and Monk broke the mold in the New Millennium. But I’ve got a real soft spot in my heart for one special lieutenant – Columbo, the disheveled, distracted, disarming homicide detective who never, never gave up. He lulled his suspects’ suspicions, apparently accepting whatever story they cared to dish out, but then spent the next 50 minutes making Swiss cheese of that story, at which point the perp invariably decided that coming along quietly was really the only option left to him. I loved it. Some commentators have made the case that the show was a classic portrayal of class struggle – Columbo was a working-class kinda guy patronized by all the high society murderers, and the audience loved to watch him cut them down to size. I think most of us fancied that we saw ourselves in him. He wasn’t all perfectly pulled together. He was disheveled. One eye wandered. People tended to underestimate him, and he was okay with that. To this day, when 2 and 2 just don’t make 4 in my life, I tend to go into Columbo mode, determined to get to the bottom of things.

Channeling our inner Columbo can be something of a challenge, however, when it comes to getting to the bottom of our own religious beliefs. I should know – I was raised as a Protestant, and it took me 45 years before I was ready to investigate the strange goings-on that occurred every time my church expounded on verses like “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” or “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained,” or “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” We all admire Ginger Rogers for being able to do everything Fred did, backwards and wearing high heels. The song-and-dance my denomination did around these verses made Ginger look like an amateur – we were dancing on our heads trying to make these verses say something, ANYTHING, other than what they actually said. Finally, one day I stopped dancing, sat down, and asked myself, why? It turned out that there was a fatal flaw in our theology, one which we covered up by suppressing various verses. The clues had been there all along; it just took me 45 years to decide to investigate.

There was a pretty basic explanation for my reluctance. We all know that someone who just doesn’t want to know will selectively filter information in or out of the picture to come to his or her foregone conclusion. Take the example of a wife who dearly loves her husband – when confronted with mysterious business trips, late nights at the office and lipstick on his collar, she will see nothing more than an overworked, underpaid hero who needs a better laundry detergent. The opposite is of course true – a jealous wife reads betrayal into every innocent pastime her husband enjoys, certain that everything he does is proof of adultery and grounds for divorce. Evidence is twisted, misused, overlooked – whatever it takes to uphold preexisting beliefs. We see this clearly in the debate over abortion – intelligent, thoughtful adults who have bought into the notion of a woman’s “right to choose” pretty much have to stumble into the illogical insistence that a baby on this side of the womb is a human being entitled to the full protection of the law, while a baby on that side of the womb is not a human being and can be murdered at will – the evidence is forced to fit the pre-existing conclusion. Conservative “right to life” Protestants wonder how anyone could be so foolish. And yet, those same Protestants who are taught that “justification by faith ALONE” is the key to interpreting the Scriptures (rather than “justification by faith,” which is the teaching of both the Bible and the Church) will then find themselves forced into the predicament of denying a literal understanding of verse after verse of Scripture which teaches the necessity of perseverance in the faith, of a genuine concern for the least of these, of obedience to God’s commandments, of baptism for the remission of sins, etc., etc. – these verses cannot be saying what they appear to be saying because they contradict the foundational assumption which shapes the denomination’s teaching. All of us are in this same boat – when we go into any experience with a grab-bag of assumptions, we risk assuming all sorts of untenable positions, until we dispassionately prove or disprove those assumptions and get our feet on the solid ground of the truth.

One day it dawned on me that there is some serious lipstick besmirching the collar of Protestantism. As a female I was aware that various shades of lipstick go by creative names like “Wild Child” and “Candy Yum-Yum.” This shade of lipstick had a name that was really far-out: “Historical Evidence.” Everyone who gives their heart to Protestant interpretations of Scripture must sooner or later ask what this tattletale lipstick betokens. Is it something that I need to investigate?

If you believe it is, you can start by investigating the common Protestant assertion that the first Christians believed and preached exactly whatever the Protestant church you happen to attend believes and preaches. This claim is more important than it appears. Those first Christians were taught by the apostles, so if your church believes and preaches doctrines that the first Christians disagreed with, it is pretty likely that your 21^st-century church is preaching “a different Gospel,” the very thing St. Paul warned the Galatians against in no uncertain terms. All Protestant churches therefore will insist that their doctrine reflects the beliefs of the first Christians. Even a cursory inspection of this assertion should set off warning bells, for the Lutherans practice, for example, infant baptism while the Baptists decry it. The Baptists insist that a Christian cannot lose his salvation while the Lutherans insist that he can. The Baptists as a rule wholeheartedly embrace the “secret rapture” doctrine; the Lutherans as a rule think that’s kinda nutty. When you attend a Baptist church they will assure you that the first Christians believed and preached exactly what Baptists believe and preach. This is also the foundational assumption at your friendly neighborhood Lutheran church. Somebody’s wrong – the first Christians simply could not have been taught by the apostles that it was appropriate to baptize infants AND NOT appropriate, that Christians can lose their salvation AND definitely cannot, or that they should be expecting to be raptured out of this world AND that no such thing was to be expected. And these are but a few of the beliefs over which Protestant denominations in good standing disagree vehemently. While the “secret rapture” is a secondary issue, baptism and eternal security are most definitely not – they are essential doctrines, for they inform the believer what he must do to be saved….

Reading one’s Bible cannot straighten this issue out, for the Bible does not tell us what the first Christians believed. It gives us the teaching of the apostles, but then we must understand that teaching. The $64,000 question is: are we understanding that teaching the way the first Christians understood it? The only way to know that is to read the writings of the first Christians – what were the first-generation Christians teaching the second-generation Christians? This will make clear to us what they understood the apostles to say. It will solve the nagging questions of infant baptism vs. believer’s baptism/eternal security vs. you can lose your salvation/imminent secret rapture vs. secret-rapture-my-foot! To find the writings of the first and second generations of Christians, though, we must look outside the Bible. We must go to the historical record.

When I was a Protestant, I really had no idea what a wealth of documents sprang from the pens of 1^st- and 2^nd-century Christians. We didn’t talk about those writings at the nondenominational and Baptist churches that I attended. The “fact” that the first Christians believed and taught exactly what we believed and taught was just assumed. Had we looked into the writings of the early Christians, we would have found that they were united in their belief that baptism is for regeneration and that it is appropriate to baptize infants, that they insisted on the necessity of final perseverance, and that no one ever even hinted at the doctrine of the “secret rapture.” Score 3 for Team Lutheran! Either the first Christians all apostatized immediately after the death of the apostles (something groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Latter-Day Saints may try to tell you), or the Lutherans may be onto something here!

Investigating further, we nondenoms and Baptists also would have found that the 1^st– and 2^nd-century Christians considered the Virgin Mary to be the second Eve (as Christ was the second Adam), and taught that the Mass was a sacrifice, and that Jesus was actually physically present in Holy Communion, with the bread and wine actually becoming His Body and Blood. St. Justin Martyr’s description of the Sunday gathering of Christians circa 150 A.D. is Catholic to the core. Now, that’s not exactly what the Lutherans want to hear….

Upon further study it would have become clear to us that the 1^st– and 2^nd-century Christians unanimously supported the idea that after the free, unmerited gift of initial justification, works were necessary for salvation. You know Luther must be spinning in his grave right about now.

And those first Christians were, according to their writings, committed to the idea of there being only one Church, a visible Church gathered around the bishops, and that the church of Rome was accorded “the primacy of love.” They claimed that St. Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and they wrote about the apostolic succession which gave the bishops their authority. Those Christians called their Church Catholic. No, that really doesn’t sound like the kind of doctrine Lutherans propound. It doesn’t really sound Protestant at all….

Which helps to explain the experience of so many students in Protestant seminaries when it comes time to study early Christian history. Lest they should start questioning the lipstick evident on the collar of whatever denominational doctrine they espouse, these students are taught ABOUT the early Church and the writings of the 1^st– and 2^nd-generation Christians, as opposed to being given a copy of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and asked to read what those men actually wrote. This limited exposure suffices to convince them that they know what the first Christians believed and that it was exactly what their seminary teaches. Four quotes from former students:

My theological roots were at most only 150 years deep. Contrary to what I had been taught, my version of Christianity didn’t go all the way back to the New Testament. Not even close.

From that point on I had a deep desire to understand historic Christianity. I borrowed Paul Johnson’s book, The History of Christianity, from a missionary friend. Over the next year I read several books on Church history. I read the works of men I had never heard of before: Anthony of the Desert, Cyril of Jerusalem, Clement of Alexandria, Basil, Ambrose, Eusebius, Ignatius of Antioch. It felt like finding new friends, Christians who knew my Lord so intimately. But their words also profoundly shook my Evangelical theology. The fact that these men were Catholic made me embarrassed and indignant. In all my years as a Christian I had never heard of these people, let alone studied their writings. I didn’t know much about the early Christian Church. In seminary (we attended Biola, in Southern California) we had been taught to believe that after the death of the Apostles, the Church slid immediately into error and stayed that way until Luther nailed his Theses to the door, and then the “real” Christians came out of hiding. (Kristine Franklin)

Like many young evangelicals I had little denominational loyalty, but the Southern Baptists had a fantastic seminary and missions program. After delaying my entry into seminary for a year after graduation, I finally started classes in early January. The troubles didn’t start until the second week. We were learning about spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting and I was struck how often the professor would skip from St. Paul to Martin Luther or Jonathan Edwards when describing admirable lives of piety. Did nothing worthwhile happen in the first 1500 years? The skipping of history would continue in many other classes or assigned textbooks. Occasional references to St. Augustine did not obscure the fact that the majority of church history was ignored. (“Anthony“)

That’s when I did something really dangerous. I started reading the early Church Fathers firsthand. I had studied some early Church history, but too much of it was from perspectives limited by Protestant history textbooks. I was shocked to discover in the writings of the first-, second- and third-century Christians a very high view of the Church and liturgy, very much unlike the views of the typical Evangelical Protestant. (Steve Wood)

In the first year of seminary, we studied church history, one of my favorite fields of study. I went beyond the required readings and explored the writings of the early Church Fathers. In their writings, I found a world very different from that of the Evangelical and Reformed Christianity of my experience. (Ed Hopkins) 

And so, folks, we have evidence of a deception and a cover-up. That’s some pretty serious lipstick. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Buy some industrial-strength laundry detergent and scrub harder? Send the shirts to a high-priced dry cleaners and hope for the best? Or follow the lipstick trail and see where it leads?

The writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers can be read online, or are available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many other booksellers. Channel your inner detective.

Make Lt. Columbo proud.

 

On the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Deo omnis gloria!

Surprise!

One item of profound concern to me back when I was contemplating entering the Church was the note of dire warning in the collective voice of Protestantism. No daughter was ever more seriously cautioned against rash elopement – he’s not serious about you, he’ll mistreat you, he’ll get tired of you, he’ll leave you, you’ll come crawling home, you’ll rue the day…. The gloom-and-doom prognostication is enough to give any would-be convert grave pause; after all, conversion is a serious step, and anyone who undertakes it lightly has no real comprehension of the potential eternal consequences. I was worried, especially since I was bringing children into the Church with me. What if the warnings proved true?

Next Easter will mark our 10^th anniversary as Catholics, and after nearly 10 years I think I can speak with some authority on this subject. Did the Protestant misgivings hold water? Let’s examine them one by one – you might be surprised:

Protestants warned that by submitting myself to the teaching of the Church I would make of myself an intellectual slave.

Surprisingly, since proclaiming that “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God,” I have been freed to ponder and explore doctrine like never before, securely tethered to “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).

Protestants warned that by using set prayers, I would be putting a chokehold on my devotional life.

Surprisingly, written prayers proved to be the trellis upon which my frail prayer life has grown and borne fruit.

Protestants warned that by participating in the liturgy I would lose any sense of a personal relationship with Christ.

Surprisingly, by participating in the Church’s worship at Mass, my personal relationship with Jesus has been greatly strengthened, as I now have the assistance of the Church teaching me how better to pray and to worship my Lord, and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist to change me from the inside out.

Protestants warned that when I began striving to obey the commandments of Christ, I would become bound up in works and lose sight of grace.

Surprisingly, in attempting to obey Christ’s command to love God and love my neighbor as the Church teaches us to do, I have been overwhelmed by the necessity of God’s grace to fit me for this otherwise impossible task.

Protestants warned that by embracing a belief system that proclaimed the existence of a ministerial priesthood, I would betray my understanding of the “priesthood of the believer.”

Surprisingly, when I accepted the idea of priests who offer up the once-for-all sacrifice of the Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, I became profoundly aware of my own responsibility as a member of the priesthood of believers, most especially when I assist at Mass, and when I pray, “Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.”

Protestants warned that by confessing my sins to a mere man, I would forget that only God can forgive sins.

Surprisingly, by taking seriously my responsibility to confess my sins to a priest, I have become profoundly convinced of God’s love and forgiveness in the confessional.

Protestants warned that by forsaking their “once-saved/always saved” theology, I would lose all sense of “blessed assurance” and live in constant fear of hell.

Surprisingly, by admitting that the Bible does teach that we can lose our salvation, I have been freed to embrace a constant, trust-filled reliance on the only One Who can keep sin from ruling over me (Ps 119:133, Rom 6:12) rather than pretending that this One will turn a blind eye no matter what I do….

Protestants warned that my Christian walk would suffer as I embraced the notion of “a second chance” at salvation after death known as Purgatory.

Surprisingly, as I came to understand that the doctrine of Purgatory proclaims a final, thorough cleansing for those already headed to Heaven, I began joyfully offering up my sufferings in this life in cooperation with the God Who loves me too much to leave me the way He found me.

Protestants warned that I would be taught to consider 7 uninspired books to be Holy Scripture, books that the Church added to the Bible after the Reformation in support of false doctrines.

Surprisingly, the historical truth turned out to be the opposite of what I had been warned, and I began studying the 7 inspired books that Protestants removed from Holy Scripture, books that had been there since the New Testament canon was settled.

Protestants warned that I would end up praying to Mary and the saints rather than to God.

Surprisingly, as a faithful Catholic I have been taught to ask Mary and the saints to pray for me to the Lord our God that I would love Him above all things.

Protestants warned that I would lose sight of Christ when I cultivated a devotion to Mary.

Surprisingly, by drawing closer to Mary, my relationship to Christ has become deeper and wider and more profound than ever, as I ponder the events of her Son’s life through her eyes.

Protestants warned that I would become disillusioned with Catholicism when I found out what Catholics were really like.

Surprisingly, as I receive my Lord in Holy Communion Sunday after Sunday, I have been given special insight into the sins and failings of one Catholic in particular – myself. I am far too busy fighting to overcome that which displeases God in my own life to worry about what other Catholics are really like, although I suspect that they are for the most part a lot like me. “What is that to you? You follow Me.”

Protestants warned that I might get “left behind.”

Surprisingly, it turned out that the novel doctrine of the “secret rapture” so dear to Evangelical hearts is nothing more than theological speculation on their part, heavy on eisegesis and devoid of historicity. As a Catholic I await with the Church the glorious Second Coming of our Lord.

Protestants warned that I was leaving the Truth behind.

When I entered the Catholic Church, I left behind nothing that was true in all the Protestant denominations I had loved throughout my life. I entered into MORE truth, into the very Fullness of the Truth, when I was reconciled to the Church. After all, the Catholic Church is the Church established by Jesus Christ the Lord, and so there is

no surprise about that at all!

On the memorial of St. Francis Xavier

Deo omnis gloria!

We Agree!

As Reformation Sunday approaches, most of us will be dwelling on the issues that divide Catholics and Protestants. “Catholics believe one thing, and Protestants believe something completely different!” – this is where the emphasis will be. I think it is beneficial to try to be fully aware of the many, many areas in which Protestants and Catholics are in agreement, and then go from there in explaining our differences. The following is a partial list of some of those areas:

WE AGREE that we as Christians have been saved! (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8)

We also believe, in accordance with 1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12, Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15, Mt 10:22, Mt 24:13, Mk 13:13, Lk 21:19, Rev 2:26, and Phil 2:12 , that we who are working out our salvation with fear and trembling are being saved and will be saved if we persevere to the end.

WE AGREE that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, that none should boast! (Eph 2:8-9)

We also believe, in accordance with James 2:17 and 2:24, that we are justified by our works, and not by faith alone, because faith without works is dead.

WE AGREE that there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus! (1 Tim 2:5)

We also believe, in accordance with 1 Tim 2:1, James 5:16 and Heb 12:1, that the saints in Heaven and on earth can intercede for us.

WE AGREE that only God can forgive our sins! (Mt 9:2-3, Mk 2:7)

We also believe, in accordance with John 20:22 and 2 Cor 5:18, that God forgives sins through His priests.

WE AGREE that the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness! (2 Tim 3:16)

We also believe, in accordance with 1 Timothy 3:15, that the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth.

WE AGREE that Jesus Christ is the Foundation of the Church! (1 Cor 3:11)

We also believe, in accordance with Eph 2:20, Acts 1:15-26, and 2 Tim 2:2, that the Apostles are also the foundation, and that they passed on the authority of their office to their successors.

WE AGREE that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth! (Gen 1:1)

We also believe, in accordance with 2 Peter 3:8, that one need not embrace 6-Day Creationism to be a real Christian.

WE AGREE that relics possess no magical powers!

We also believe, in accordance with 2 Kings 13:21, Acts 19:11-12 and Acts 5:15-16, that God can and does use relics to effect miracles.

WE AGREE that marriage is a very, very good thing! (1 Cor 7)

We also believe, in accordance with Mt 19:12 and 1 Cor 7, that celibacy is even better.

WE AGREE that it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment! (Heb 9:27)

We also believe, in accordance with Heb 12:14, that after death comes purification (Purgatory) so that we can see God.

WE AGREE that the writings of the Church Fathers were not divinely inspired nor were they infallible!

We also believe that they are the best witness to the earliest Christians’ understanding of the teachings of the Apostles.

WE AGREE that the Church of the 16th century was in need of reform!

We also believe that the Reformers introduced novel doctrines that have led many Christians into serious error.

WE AGREE that Jesus Christ suffered, died and was buried, rose again on the third day, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, from whence He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end.

AMEN!

Deo omnis gloria!

Conflation

“The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it!”

That was how I began and ended the story of my conversion to Catholicism. As a Bible-believing Evangelical Christian, Biblical inerrancy was a hot-button issue as far as I was concerned. I was convinced (and as a Catholic still am convinced) that the Scriptures do not err. As a group, we Evangelicals despised “liberal theologians” who taught gullible Christians that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead – His disciples supposedly just couldn’t deal with the guilt of having abandoned Him to His enemies, so they collectively hallucinated His Resurrection. Any semi-intelligent, modern-day Christian knows that people don’t rise from the dead!

Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? we cried! Of course He did! How many different ways did the writers of the inspired Scriptures assure us that He did? Are we supposed to follow the lead of those liberal theologians and believe that all the witnesses to the Resurrection were delusional – and willing to die for this Resurrection delusion??? And liberal believers call Evangelicals gullible!

Yet, about 10 years ago, I had a close encounter with John chapter 6 – the chapter in which Jesus explains that He is the Bread which came down from Heaven. He says that this bread is His flesh which He will give for the salvation of the world, and that he who does not eat His flesh and drink His blood has no life in him. An unanticipated light began to dawn in my consciousness as I grasped that Jesus could not be speaking any more clearly if He was trying to say that the bread and wine on the communion table actually do become His Body and His Blood – something that we Baptists found ludicrous in the extreme. From our viewpoint it was OBVIOUS that Jesus COULD NOT change crackers and grape juice (our communion materials) into His Body and His Blood – OBVIOUS. At that moment I realized that our insistence on this put us in the same skeptical boat with the liberal theologians who denied the Resurrection – we reserved the right to take figuratively the parts of the Bible we didn’t have the faith to believe.

That was the beginning of my journey into full communion with the Holy Catholic Church, a journey on which I was made aware of the many, many verses that I as an Evangelical had discounted, overlooked or spiritualized away in order to make my theology work. Evangelicals tend to lump Catholic teaching in with liberal theology and are convinced that only those of the Evangelical persuasion take the Bible at its word. The hypocrisy of this viewpoint became clear to me as I examined verses like 1 Peter 3:21– “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you” – and Philippians 2:12 – “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” – verses which the Catholic Church takes quite literally, but which we as Evangelicals insisted on explaining away because they contradicted our beliefs.

Hen, by Filip Maljković

It became apparent to me that Evangelical theology does not take the Scriptures more literally than Catholic theology. Despite our insistence that we Evangelicals were “the good guys” who stick to a literal understanding of Scripture, we told jokes about people who believe in the Real Presence. “They probably think God is a celestial chicken!” we would say, referring to a goofy literal interpretation of Psalm 91:4: “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” In other words, if you as a Catholic or Orthodox Christian put John 6:22-71, Luke 22:19, and 1 Corinthians 11:29 together and come up with a literal understanding of the Real Presence, you are just too dumb to understand that some things in Scripture are meant to be taken figuratively. We had you in a box; if you didn’t understand Scripture the way we understood it, you were damned one way or the other. If you didn’t take literally what we took literally, you were a dastardly liberal. If you didn’t take figuratively what we took figuratively, you were a superstitious Catholic. Only Evangelicals struck the right balance.

This of course presupposed that we had infallible knowledge of what God meant to be taken literally in Holy Scripture and what God meant to be taken figuratively – and there’s the rub. No Evangelical pastor will tell you that he is rendered infallible when he preaches that the secret rapture can occur at any moment. No liberal theologian will tell you that he is rendered infallible when he writes books explaining that there is no hell. No Protestant (in his right mind) claims infallibility. Yet by stigmatizing or anathematizing anyone who takes literally what they take figuratively, or takes figuratively they take literally, both conservative and liberal Protestants are claiming that that they do have infallible knowledge of how Scripture is to be understood. And this has consequences.

The story of Joshua Horn is a case in point (h/t: Russ Rentler at Crossed the Tiber!). Horn was raised Southern Baptist. Most Southern Baptists are proud to point out that they take the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 quite literally. They believe in a literal 6-day creation and in an Earth that is 6,000 years old. The belief in an imminent, secret, pre-tribulational rapture of believers is another non-negotiable in Baptist circles (substitute teachers at our local Baptist school have to sign a statement declaring their agreement with this doctrine). While not every Southern Baptist is ready to die for these beliefs, to most the theory of evolution, with its corollary that the Earth is billions of years old, is anathema. Young Earthism not optional in this setting – it has become an Article of Faith. Real Christians, the reasoning goes, will hold to a Young Earth understanding of Genesis, just as surely as they will hold to a belief in the secret rapture doctrine. Josh Horn’s family was dead-set against the notion of evolution, to the point of forbidding him to watch episodes of Pokémon (since the little critters “evolve”). As a high school student, Horn began to examine the evidence for and against evolution. He began questioning the “left-behind” soteriology. He began questioning everything he had been taught in the Southern Baptist setting, and he left Christianity altogether, eventually becoming president of his university’s Secular Free Thought Society (read how this all turned out here).

Deconversions like Horn’s are all too often the unintended consequence of the Evangelical insistence that their interpretation of the word of God IS “what the Bible says.” Renowned evangelist Charles Templeton experienced the same kind of deconversion when he began to question the 6-Day creation model. Templeton, once more famous than his friend and fellow evangelist Billy Graham, left Christianity for agnosticism when he found himself unable to believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days. Interviewed shortly before his death, he admitted poignantly how much he missed the Jesus of his youth, the Jesus he had preached to large crowds, the Jesus he felt he could not possibly reconcile with a figurative understanding of the first two chapters of Genesis.

From a Catholic standpoint this tragedy makes no sense. Templeton was convinced that to reject 6-Day creationism was to reject Christianity. Because he found the assertions of Young Earthism untenable, he could no longer in good conscience consider himself a Christian. Templeton wrote that when he discussed his doubts concerning a literal understanding of Genesis 1 and 2 with his old friend Billy Graham, Dr. Graham said to him:

I believe the Genesis account of creation because it’s in the Bible. I’ve discovered something in my ministry: When I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power. When I stand on the platform and say, ‘God says,’ or ‘The Bible says,’ the Holy Spirit uses me. There are results.

Fine and dandy – as a Baptist, Billy Graham believes in a literal understanding of the first chapters of Genesis “because it’s in the Bible.” And yet, he as a Baptist obviously discounts a literal understanding of John 6:22-58 – also “in the Bible” –because he does not believe that it is appropriate to understand this passage literally. Baptists would never claim to be infallible interpreters of Scripture, but those Christians who interpret Scripture differently with respect to the creation narrative can find themselves “excommunicated” nonetheless. Young Earthers have made the insistence on a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 a stumbling block, and believers fall away from Christianity because of this.

When I was a Baptist, I knew what the verb “inflate” meant. When I was looking into Catholicism, I learned the meaning of the verb “conflate.” It means “to blow together.” When you conflate two different subjects, you blow them together until it looks like they are one and the same. Baptists are conflating their literal understanding of the creation narrative with a belief in Biblical inerrancy. This conflation is a stumbling block to many who then feel honor-bound to leave Christianity when they find what looks to them to be insufficient evidence for 6-Day creationism. Evangelicals have introduced a false connection between believing that the Bible is inerrant and believing that Genesis 1 and 2 must be taken literally. If someone questions the literal interpretation of Genesis, he is told that he is questioning the word of God itself. What he is actually questioning is the Evangelical interpretation of the word of God.

Here’s a quote which was produced by a popular 6-Day creation speaker when he was asked to explain the equivocal support for Young Earthism in the writings of the Church Fathers. He called upon Martin Luther to defend his position, and Dr. Luther provides us with an excellent example of conflation:

That Adam was created on the sixth day, that the animals were brought to him, that he heard the Lord giving him a command regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that the Lord sent a sleep upon him – all these facts clearly refer to time and physical life. Therefore it is necessary to understand these days as actual days, contrary to the opinion of the holy fathers. Whenever we see that the opinions of the fathers are not in agreement with Scripture, we respectfully bear with them and acknowledge them as our forefathers; but we do not on their account give up the authority of Scripture. …we dare not give preference to the authority of men over that of Scripture! Human beings can err, but the Word of God is the very wisdom of God and the absolutely infallible truth. (Martin Luther, “Lectures on Genesis”)

Luther made a career of conflating the inerrancy of Scripture with the inerrancy of HIS UNDERSTANDING of Scripture. In HIS OPINION, the 6 days of Genesis were 6 literal days. What sounds like a noble defense of Biblical inerrancy (“the word of God is the very wisdom of God and the absolutely infallible truth”) is twisted into a defense of Luther’s OPINION, HIS INTERPRETATION of Holy Scripture. Disagree with that, Luther warned, and you are disagreeing with the Bible itself!

Only the Catholic Church claims to have an infallible teaching office. The existence of this infallible teaching office, based upon the promises of Christ to the Church He established, means that only as a Catholic am I safe from the subjectivity of both Evangelicalism and liberalism, whose only criterion for declaring that certain disputed passages must be taken literally is their own strangely high opinion of their understanding of Scripture, and whose only criterion for declaring that certain disputed passages must be taken figuratively is their own sad lack of faith. Buy a ticket into their belief systems, and you risk shipwreck. Until they can produce an infallible Magisterium, let the buyer beware.

On the memorial of St. Louis Bertrand

Deo omnis gloria!

Postscript: This was not intended as a post on creationism vs. evolution – you can read a Catholic discussion of those topics here.