Thrill the Wine

Kala Nila’s great post on the gift of tears really spoke to me; I’ve been known to shed a tear or two during Mass (don’t get my kids started on that subject). Hey, what’s odd about people tearing up when they find themselves face-to-face with the Creator of Heaven and earth present on the altar? The question isn’t “why do those people have tears running down their cheeks?” but rather “why don’t you have tears running down yours?” I realize that I am not the Lone Sniffler at Mass, but I have sometimes had to ask myself: Am I the only person who cries during the Offertory?

Perhaps an explanation is in order….

We Catholics pray the Lord’s Prayer many times during the day. When we pray the words “Give us this day our daily bread,” we’re not just asking for a 20% off coupon to Panera Bread. We’re asking that God provide for our physical needs, yes, like the food we eat. But we also ask that God provide for our spiritual needs by giving us the Eucharist, the true Bread from Heaven. And we are asking that God’s will be done (the first petition in the Our Father) in and through us because that, too, is our bread. How so? Remember the incident in which the disciples urged Jesus to eat something, and He told them that He had food that they didn’t know about, saying, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work”? Thy will be done – give us this day our daily bread – this is what we pray. God confronts us each day with His holy will – that, too, is our daily bread. That fulfillment of His will is my offering that I place among the gifts. As the collection basket is passed, I offer back to Him not only a couple of dollars, but also my thoughts and actions, my prayers and devotions, my pains and my cares, my joys and sorrows; I mentally place them in the hands of those bearing the gifts up to the altar. I do that so that Jesus can make those things HIS – HIS thoughts and actions, HIS prayers and devotions, HIS pains and HIS cares, HIS joys and sorrows.

Can it be?

This is how the Incarnation continues to work itself out in our world; as you and I offer up our “daily bread” to be united with His sacrifice, Jesus continues to live and act in His body, the Church. This “bread,” our works, taken up to the altar, is then no longer ours. It is offered up by Jesus to the Father, Who, looking down, sees only Jesus and what He has done in this world:

We are on the altar under the appearance of bread and wine, for both are the sustenance of life; therefore in giving that which gives us life we are symbolically giving ourselves. Furthermore, wheat must suffer to become bread; grapes must pass through the wine-press to become wine. Hence both are representative of Christians who are called to suffer with Christ, that they may also reign with Him.

As the consecration of the Mass draws near our Lord is equivalently saying to us: “You, Mary; you, John; you, Peter; and you, Andrew – you, all of you – give Me your body; give Me your blood. Give Me your whole self! I can suffer no more. I have passed through My cross, I have filled up the sufferings of My physical body, but I have not filled up the sufferings wanting to My Mystical Body, in which you are. The Mass is the moment when each one of you may literally fulfill My injunction: ‘Take up your cross and follow Me.'”

On the cross our Blessed Lord was looking forward to you, hoping that one day you would be giving yourself to Him at the moment of consecration. Today, in the Mass, that hope our Blessed Lord entertained for you is fulfilled. When you assist at the Mass He expects you now actually to give Him yourself.

Then as the moment of consecration arrives, the priest in obedience to the words of our Lord, “Do this for a commemoration of me,” takes bread in his hands and says “This is my body”; and then over the chalice of wine says, “This is the chalice of my blood of the new and eternal testament.” He does not consecrate the bread and wine together, but separately. The separate consecration of the bread and wine is a symbolic representation of the separation of body and blood, and since the Crucifixion entailed that very mystery, Calvary is thus renewed on our altar. But Christ, as has been said, is not alone on our altar; we are with Him. Hence the words of consecration have a double sense; the primary signification of the words is: “This is the Body of Christ; this is the Blood of Christ;” but the secondary signification is “This is my body; this is my blood.”

Such is the purpose of life! To redeem ourselves in union with Christ; to apply His merits to our souls by being like Him in all things, even to His death on the Cross. He passed through His consecration on the Cross that we might now pass through ours in the Mass. There is nothing more tragic in all the world than wasted pain.

Think of how much suffering there is in hospitals, among the poor, and the bereaved. Think also of how much of that suffering goes to waste! How many of those lonesome, suffering, abandoned, crucified souls are saying with our Lord at the moment of consecration, “This is my body. Take it”? And yet that is what we all should be saying at that second:

“I give myself to God. Here is my body. Take it. Here is my blood. Take it. Here is my soul, my will, my energy, my strength, my property, my wealth-all that I have. It is yours. Take it! Consecrate it! Offer it! Offer it with Thyself to the heavenly Father in order that He, looking down on this great sacrifice, may see only Thee, His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. Transmute the poor bread of my life into thy divine life; thrill the wine of my wasted life into thy divine spirit; unite my broken heart with thy heart; change my cross into a crucifix. Let not my abandonment and my sorrow and my bereavement go to waste. Gather up the fragments, and as the drop of water is absorbed by the wine at the offertory of the mass, let my life be absorbed in thine; let my little cross be entwined with Thy great cross so that I may purchase the joys of everlasting happiness in union with Thee.”

“Consecrate these trials of my life which would go unrewarded unless united with Thee; transubstantiate me so that like bread which is now thy body, and wine which is now thy blood, I too may be wholly thine. I care not if the species remain, or that, like the bread and the wine I seem to all earthly eyes the same as before. My station in life, my routine duties, my work, my family – all these are but the species of my life which may remain unchanged; but the “substance” of my life, my soul, my mind, my will, my heart – transubstantiate them, transform them wholly into Thy service, so that through me all may know how sweet is the love of Christ. Amen.” Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen

See why I’m crying? I will never perform a greater act than this offering of myself to be united with Jesus!

And lest anybody call these tears “feminine,” allow me to present a manly man who actually prayed that he might be no stranger to the tissue box!

Grant me that visible sign of Thy love, a cleansing ever-flowing fountain of tears, that these tears may also bear witness to Thy love in me, that they may show, that they may tell, how much my soul doth love Thee: that in the too-great sweetness of Thy love it cannot withhold its tears. St. Augustine of Hippo

Go ahead. I’ll share the Kleenex.

 

On the memorial of St. Giuseppe Moscati

Deo omnis gloria!

Rome Disease

Over the past 20 years or so, Protestant leaders have grown awfully uncomfortable with a growing trend: Protestant traffic heading in the direction of Rome. And not just any Protestants – while Joe and Jane Pewwarmer may be comfortably ensconced at the corner Baptist or Presbyterian church, Joe and Jane’s pastor and the theologians who taught him may very well be suiting up to swim the Tiber. Over the past few decades such Protestant theologians, philosophers and educators as Francis Beckwith, Thomas Howard, J. Budziszewski, Reinhard Hütter, Bruce Marshall, Trent Dougherty, Robert Koons, Jay Richards, R.R. Reno, Joshua Hochschild, Leroy Huizenga, Richard John Neuhaus, Robert Wilken, Paul Quist, Richard Ballard, Paul Abbe, Thomas McMichael, Mickey Mattox, David Fagerberg, Jason Stellman and many more have left Protestantism for the Catholic Church – and I know this from Protestant articles and websites expressing shock at their conversion. At a loss to explain the defection of these once solidly Protestant luminaries, and unwilling to admit that these people might be reconciling with the Church because they have found the fullness of the Truth therein, Protestant apologists have latched onto a common thread in many conversion stories. Converts to Catholicism often complain that as Protestants they were kept in the dark regarding Church history. Take as an example the tales of those who studied theology at Protestant seminaries:

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)

Occasional references to St. Augustine did not obscure the fact that the majority of church history was ignored. (“Anthony“)

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)

We had never been taught any church history between the time of the apostles and Luther. I first heard of the “Church Fathers” in a Greek class in college. As I translated Irenaeus’ writings from the Greek, the truth of what he had written amazed me. I wondered why I had never been told of him before. None of my theology courses in college ever mentioned the Church Fathers. We were never given any devotional readings beyond what Luther wrote. (Kathy McDonald)

Hmmm… so Church history is the virus behind Catholic fever? They’re demanding access to Church history? Can we manufacture some sort of vaccine against that?

And thus today’s Protestant apologists have to know not only their Augustine, but their Athanasius, their Cyril (of Alexandria and of Jerusalem), their Irenaeus and their Vincent of Lerins (okay, maybe not Vincent of Lerins – “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est” and all that). These brave souls familiarize themselves with the Fathers not so that they can explain the actual theology of the early Church to fellow Protestants (that would never do), but so that they can extract certain quotes from their writings and distill them into a “proof vaccine,” purporting to demonstrate that core Protestant doctrines were theological staples of the early Church, thereby inoculating potential upstarts (who then believe that they know what the Fathers taught) against Catholicism.

Epidemic contained.

It’s kind of funny, and it’s kind of sad. Because Protestants have their own version of what they think the Catholic Church teaches (you know, works-righteousness, Mary worship, a sinless pope, the Bible is wrong when it contradicts Holy Mother Church, etc.), they believe that by finding remarks in the Church Fathers which indicate that we are indeed “saved by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (which the Church has been insisting for, oh, about 2,000 years or so now), or that “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (there’s never been any argument from the Church on that, either), they have proved Catholicism wrong. It is this fundamental refusal to hear what Catholics are saying when we profess that we can’t work our way to Heaven or that “the Sacred Scriptures contain the Word of God and, because they are inspired they are truly the Word of God” that causes Protestants wielding the Church Fathers to make themselves look so silly. The Fathers were Catholic, you know. There’s just no getting around that point.

Consider the writings of the Church Fathers on the subject of the Holy Scriptures. Modern-day Protestant authors, believing that it is Catholic Church policy to hide the Bible under a bushel whenever it “contradicts” Catholic doctrine, will gladly dish up quotes which are supposed to “prove” that the Fathers were every bit as “sola Scriptura” as Luther or Calvin, quotes like these:

Since, therefore, the entire Scriptures, the prophets, and the Gospels, can be clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood by all, although all do not believe them; and since they proclaim that one only God, to the exclusion of all others, formed all things by His word, whether visible or invisible, heavenly or earthly, in the water or under the earth, as I have shown from the very words of Scripture; and since the very system of creation to which we belong testifies, by what falls under our notice, that one Being made and governs it,—those persons will seem truly foolish who blind their eyes to such a clear demonstration, and will not behold the light of the announcement [made to them]; but they put fetters upon themselves, and every one of them imagines, by means of their obscure interpretations of the parables, that he has found out a God of his own. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, 2^nd century Church Father

Scripture can indeed be understood by Luther’s proverbial ploughboy – so says Irenaeus!

Hmm… then why did Irenaeus even bother writing his monumental “Against Heresies” if everyone could just pick up a copy of the Scriptures and understand them? Sure, there were bad guys who twisted the perspicuous Scriptures to their own ends:

Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skillful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. St. Irenaeus of Lyons

So, when heretics twisted the Scriptures, Irenaeus advised 2^nd-century Christians to just pull a copy of the KJV out of their hip pocket and set the losers straight, right?

As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world. But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition. For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it. St. Irenaeus of Lyons

That quote from Irenaeus demonstrates Sacred Tradition in action. Note the unity of the Faith that Irenaeus is touting; exactly the opposite of the divisions that plague sola Scriptura adherents running around with KJV’s in their hip pockets. That’s because the Church that Irenaeus defended did NOT believe in sola Scriptura – all believed the same thing because all were taught the same thing by the authoritative Church which “clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood” the Scriptures according to the Tradition handed down by the apostles!

The Catholic Church’s point exactly: Scripture? YES! Tradition? YES! Quotes 1 and 2 and 3? YES! YES! YES!

Undaunted, many Protestant authors trot out St. Athanasius in defense of the indefensible doctrine of sola Scriptura, using this quote:

The holy and inspired Scriptures are fully sufficient for the proclamation of the truth. St. Athanasius of Alexandria, 4^th-century Church Father

Sounds pretty “sola!” Yet this was the same Athanasius who thundered:

But beyond these sayings [of the Bible], let us look at the very tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers kept. Upon this the Church is founded, and he who should fall away from it should not be a Christian, and should no longer be so called. St. Athanasius

So, the Scriptures, rightly understood through Sacred Tradition, are fully sufficient for the proclamation of the truth – hardly a Protestant sentiment. When you harmonize ALL that a particular Church Father wrote, rather than pulling statements out of context, there’s simply no way you end up with a proto-Protestant 2^nd-, 3^rd, or 4^th-century Church. Athanasius himself grumbled about the cherry-picking of the Fathers who had gone before him:

Yes, [Church Father Dionysius] wrote it, and we too admit that his letter runs thus. But just as he wrote this, he wrote also very many other letters, and they ought to consult those also, in order that the faith of the man may be made clear from them all, and not from this alone. St. Athanasius

Selective quoting got mighty tiresome even back in those days….

Protestant apologists will earnestly endeavor to persuade you that the Church Fathers held Scripture in high regard, proclaimed the authority of the Bible and believed Scripture to be sufficient in itself, citing passages such as “How can we adopt those things which we do not find in the holy Scriptures?” and “The sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth” and “There is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of whom we gain from the Holy Scriptures and no other source.” If you look into this, you will find that it is certainly true – the Fathers held Scripture in high regard, proclaimed the authority of the Bible, and believed Scripture to be sufficient in itself. Those same Protestant authors will, however, decline to inform you that those same Fathers held Holy Tradition in equally high regard, proclaimed the authority of the Church, and declared that when heretics came up with novel approaches to the interpretation of Scripture, Tradition was essential to protect the orthodox interpretation of those Scriptures. Holy Tradition, the Fathers claimed, makes it possible for the Church to say, “THIS is the interpretation of Scripture that the apostles taught and which has been handed down to us – that’s why your interpretation of Scripture is wrong” when heretics twist the Scriptures and devise new doctrines.

Which doesn’t stop Protestant apologists from propping the Fathers up like ventriloquists’ dummies to mouth the Reformers’ doctrine of sola fide (faith alone). As Frank Beckwith pointed out in his Return to Rome, St. Augustine is often pressed into the service of Martin Luther’s pet doctrine:

St. Augustine of Hippo: [Grace] is bestowed on us, not because we have done good works, but that we may be able to do them – in other words, not because we have fulfilled the Law, but in order that we may be able to fulfill the Law.

See? St. Augustine was Protestant in his understanding of justification!

Or, as Beckwith puts it:

Now, if that’s all one read from the Fathers, one may be led to think that the Reformation attempted to restore what the Church had once embraced, or at least implicitly held, from its earliest days.

And that is, obviously, the fervent hope – that that’s all a questioning Protestant will bother to read of the Fathers – the “proof-texts.” As Dr. Beckwith points out, the understanding of “grace” which St. Augustine propounded is consistent with Protestant theology as well as with Catholic theology. No Catholic would find that quote on the subject of grace at all disturbing, because justification by faith is what Catholics believe. Protestants, however, have a tough time reconciling other quotes from that same Church Father with the Protestant belief system:

St. Augustine of Hippo: We run, therefore, whenever we make advance; and our wholeness runs with us in our advance (just as a sore is said to run when the wound is in process of a sound and careful treatment), in order that we may be in every respect perfect, without any infirmity of sin whatever result which God not only wishes, but even causes and helps us to accomplish. And this God’s grace does, in co-operation with ourselves, through Jesus Christ our Lord, as well by commandments, sacraments, and examples, as by His Holy Spirit also; through whom there is hiddenly shed abroad in our hearts . . . that love, “which makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered,” . . . until wholeness and salvation be perfected in us, and God be manifested to us as He will be seen in His eternal truth.

As Dr. Beckwith points out, the sentiments in this quote from Augustine are reflected, not in Protestant theology (Calvin forbid!), but in a very Catholic statement on justification:

Now they (adults) are disposed unto the said justice, when, excited and assisted by divine grace, conceiving faith by hearing, they are freely moved towards God, believing those things to be true which God has revealed and promised,-and this especially, that God justifies the impious by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; and when, understanding themselves to be sinners, they, by turning themselves, from the fear of divine justice whereby they are profitably agitated, to consider the mercy of God, are raised unto hope, confiding that God will be propitious to them for Christ’s sake; and they begin to love Him as the fountain of all justice; and are therefore moved against sins by a certain hatred and detestation, to wit, by that penitence which must be performed before baptism: lastly, when they purpose to receive baptism, to begin a new life, and to keep the commandments of God. Concerning this disposition it is written; He that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him; and, Be of good faith, son, thy sins are forgiven thee; and, The fear of the Lord driveth out sin; and, Do penance, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; and, Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; finally, Prepare your hearts unto the Lord.

This disposition, or preparation, is followed by Justification itself, which is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just, and of an enemy a friend, that so he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting. The Council of Trent on justification

Oops….

The point is that St. Augustine can get an “Amen!” from Catholics on both quotes 1 and 2. Protestants, on the other hand, would much prefer that St. Gus had quit while he was ahead, so to speak. From a Protestant standpoint, the “proof-text” was nifty; the other stuff, not so much….

This kind of proof-texting is inflicted upon the writings of numerous Fathers. The moral of the story: Catholic fever is going around. If you have a vested interest in remaining Protestant, for Luther’s sake don’t sit down and actually read the Church Fathers to learn what they really thought! Get your vaccination against Rome disease: read a few quotes meticulously compiled by Protestant apologists and leave it at that. It’s safer, like a vaccine made of dead cells is a whole lot safer than the real living deal. Catholicism can be highly contagious; get your inoculation today, lest you come down with a bad case of the fullness of the Truth.

 

On the memorial of St. Isaac Jogues and Companions

Deo omnis gloria!

    

Photo credits: Woman receiving rubella vaccination, School of Public Health of the State of Minas Gerais (ESP-MG), Brazil, by Sandra Rugio/Wikimedia Commons

Accounting for the Whole

If it is not your habit to read the combox, you are missing the delightful remarks of Joseph Moore, who blogs over at Yard Sale of the Mind (best blog title ever!). His ideas are so entertaining, I am tempted at times to turn this blog over to him and to consign my material to the comments section. He has some really interesting theories on the connection between UC Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union and the Gates of Hell (something about coupons), the advisability of naming one’s offspring after St. Mesrop and/or St. Chrodegang(!), and Joseph Smith’s selfless act of public service. His musings on the subject of albino assassin monks had me waking up in the middle of the night giggling a few months back….

Anyhoo, recently Joseph, a cradle Catholic, was commenting on a Protestant acquaintance of his who has authored a book on historical criticism. Joseph opined:

that somebody can be brilliant enough to achieve what Dr. X has achieved and yet NOT pick up on – getting technical here – the radical decontextualization that is at the root of Protestantism, even to the point of writing a book about historical context while admitting such context has proved ‘challenging’ to Evangelicals over the years – well, THAT is, if not willful ignorance, at least culpable blindness.

Ya know?

Honey, I don’t just know – I lived it. Not to say that I was a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal – the prevailing Protestant outlook seems very plausible when you play by their rules. Strangely though, or perhaps not so strangely, Protestant heresies don’t have a corner on the plausibility market. Escapees from the Jehovah’s Witness belief system will tell you the same thing, that their doctrine seemed 100% biblical. After all, Witnesses will come to your door (usually at the dinner hour) with their materials in one hand and a Bible in the other, begging you to verify whether or not their ideas all come straight from Scripture. If you bother to oblige them, you’ll find out that they are right about that (if about nothing else) – they have drawn every one of their heretical doctrines from the pages of the Holy Bible. Because, hey, if you want to invent a viable heresy, it has to be rooted in Sacred Scripture. And when it comes to the Bible, it seems as if every other verse lends itself to more than one interpretation, leading St. Jerome to quip, “If we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the Church!”

St. Augustine argues with the Donatists

Take some of the better known heresies down through the years. Gnosticism is as old as Christianity – St. Paul (Col. 2:8-23; 1 Tim. 1:4; 2 Tim. 2:16-19; Titus 1:10-16) and St. John (1 Jn 2:22, 1 Jn 4:1-3) issued warnings aplenty against Gnostic beliefs. The Novatianist heresy, on the other hand, was unknown to the first Christians, as it developed in the third century. Gnosticism was a real threat; it boasted St. Augustine as a convert (to Manichaeism, a variation on Gnostic themes, before he later reverted to Catholicism). Novatianism, not to be outdone, threatened to split the Church, with its founder becoming one of the first antipopes. Yet the two heresies were very different – Gnosticism was the grand-daddy of all the “matter is evil, spirit is good” Christian heresies like Docetism, Manichaeism and Catharism, while the Novatianists were rigorists – they objected strenuously to the mercy shown to those who apostatized during persecution, insisting that anyone who turned traitor had committed the unpardonable sin. Their rigorism influenced the Donatists, who postulated that the working of the sacraments must be “ex opere operantis” – so if your priest isn’t holy, your sacraments won’t “work.” St. Augustine wrote apologies for the Catholic faith directed against his former co-religionists the Manichaeians, as well as against the Donatists, yet variations continued on both themes. The Cathars of the Middle Ages exhibited both Gnostic and Novatianist traits, and today you find a distinctive Gnostic tang to certain Evangelical doctrines – the refusal to believe that grace can be conferred through matter, for example, and therefore the necessarily symbolic nature of baptism, anointing with oil, and Holy Communion – as well as a penchant for rigorism which hearkens back to Novatian.

As you can see, there have been various “flavors” of Gnosticism and Novatianism morphing their way down through the centuries. This fact should not be lost on us, because this is a distinctive mark of heresy: the inability of heretics to agree amongst themselves. Their doctrine changes, and competing denominations develop. St. Irenaeus, who composed his “Against Heresies” with the Gnostics in mind, pointed out:

Let us now look at the inconsistent opinions of those heretics (for there are some two or three of them), how they do not agree in treating the same points, but alike, in things and names, set forth opinions mutually discordant.

St. Epiphanius of Salamis used the passage from Song of Solomon 6:8-9 to describe the difference between the many heresies he decried in his Panarion (Medicine Chest) and the teaching of the Church:

There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, And maidens without number! But my dove, my perfect one, is unique: She is her mother’s only daughter. 

Irenaeus again contrasted the various and sundry doctrinal stances of the heretics with the one faith of the true Church which

…believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth.

Even as St. Paul admonished the Ephesians:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

In other words, Jesus established the Church to make possible the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. Disregard the “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers” of the 2000-year-old Church, pick up a Bible (which isn’t even mentioned in this recipe for attaining to the “unity of the faith”) and start winging it, and you’ll sprout the “opinions mutually discordant” that set Irenaeus to fretting….

And once you’ve got a little nest of opinions mutually discordant, the critters can be devilishly difficult to exterminate. Gnosticism is a good example, but we can see this with one of the tamer heresies as well: Quartodecimanism. It refers to the insistence on the part of some early Christians that Easter must be celebrated on the same day that the Jews celebrate Passover. This meant of course that Easter might be celebrated any day of the week, just as Passover occurs on a different day each year. The rationale for this was the passage in Exodus 12:14 in which the Lord establishes the celebration of Passover as a “perpetual ordinance.” By the mid-second century, many churches of the East were Quartodeciman, while the churches of the West took to heart St. Paul’s statement that “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast.” They declared that because it is Him Whom we eat and drink in Holy Communion at every Mass, thus fulfilling the “perpetual ordinance” command, Easter was a Christian observance which could be celebrated independently of the Jewish Passover, and which should be celebrated on “the Lord’s Day,” Sunday. The bishops meeting in council standardized this practice. A pretty wimpy heresy, pretty easily extinguished, right?

Jehovah’s Witnesses are Quartodecimans.

You see, the Bible still says what it said in the mid-second century, and folks still pick up a copy of the Bible and interpret it according to their own lights, and they keep stumbling into the same heresies over and over and over. Viewed individually, Gnosticism, Novatianism and Quartodecimanism seem to have little in common. Viewed collectively, however, the family resemblance gives them away: they are the offspring of the mother of all Christian heresies – the notion that any given person has the ability to pick up a copy of the Scriptures and, operating independently of the Church which Jesus established to be the “pillar and foundation of the truth,” decide for himself what a given verse means and what he should do about it.

Sola Scriptura is the Ur-Heresy. Once you’ve bought into sola Scriptura, every other heresy becomes plausible.

Francis Beckwith, erstwhile president of the Evangelical Theological Society and revert to the Catholicism in which he was raised, reminds us that people aren’t Protestant just because they are two tacos short of a combo plate. As he explains the Protestant devotion to the doctrine of sola fide:

…I do not think that the Reformed Protestant view of justification is obviously unreasonable or that one cannot make a biblical case for it that some will find persuasive. Some of the brightest people I know are Reformed theologians, and I have great respect for the work they do. But what I am suggesting is that for me, all things considered, the Catholic view has more explanatory power than the Protestant view. This is why it made sense to me that the Early Church Fathers… were so Catholic in their teachings. They held to the view that, I believe, does the best job of accounting for all the New Testament’s passages on justification and sanctification.

And that explains the situation nicely. Sola fide is biblically plausible – you can pick up a Bible, select certain verses, ignore others, and propose the doctrine of justification by faith alone. You don’t have to be crazy to believe it. The Catholic faith and works theology, however, does a better job of explaining St. Paul AND St. James, without making either man stand on his head, cross his eyes and recite the Creed backwards. This is, of course, because this Catholic doctrine is the correct understanding of what Paul and James meant to say. But since resilient heresies like “faith alone” are not totally off-the-wall, they have the sticking power necessary to survive more than a few generations. This is why I am convinced that there will always be Protestants, or something like Protestants. The longevity of the “justification by faith ALONE” heresy is guaranteed by the fact that the Bible can be interpreted to say that justification is solely by faith. But now Joseph Moore’s observation comes into play – in order to make the Protestant system work, you don’t have to be crazy, but you do have to make like an ostrich….

Fourth-century Arianism is alive and kicking in 2013. Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you that they are God’s people, the church that Jesus established. Besides being Quartodecimans, Jehovah’s Witnesses are Arians, denying the doctrine of the Trinity and declaring that God (Jehovah) created Jesus, a superior being, a “god,” if you will, but certainly in no wise “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father.” The longevity of the Arian heresy is attributable to its Scriptural plausibility – one can read Scripture through an Arian lens and feel justified in taking an Arian position, which strikes me now as quite funny considering that as a Protestant I used to shake my head and mutter, “If Jehovah’s Witnesses would just read the Bible!” thinking that picking up a copy of the Scriptures and reading them independently of the Church which Jesus established to be the “pillar and foundation of the truth” – exactly what I was doing – could somehow usher in a heresy-free world, rather than the opposite.

The downfall of Witness theology is that while Arianism may appear to do the best job of explaining isolated verses, it does a lousy job of accounting for The Whole – the witness of Scripture, the testimony of the early Christians (the Church Fathers), and history. Jehovah’s Witnesses are forced into the contorted position of claiming that Christianity fell away from the real teachings of the apostles very early on. They maintain that God, Who promised that His Church would NEVER fail (Mt 16:18) and that He would be with us ALWAYS (Mt. 28:20), reneged on His promise and wandered off, allowing her to fail for centuries until someone (in their case Charles Taze Russell, but it could just as easily be Joseph Smith or even Martin Luther) came along to help Jesus out of the embarrassing quandary His lame Church had gotten Him into. This leads otherwise normally developed adults to feel led of the Lord to start buying into those “albino assassin monk” theories that Joseph was babbling about, because otherwise how can you explain the total absence of distinctive Jehovah’s Witness/Baptist/Presbyterian beliefs in the early church??

Which brings us full circle to Joseph’s observation that “radical decontextualization” is the only environment in which plausible Biblical heresies can possibly survive. You can, if you insist, pick the Bible up and interpret it any way that strikes your fancy; as a charismatic Protestant I was not only allowed but encouraged to do that under the guise of “being led by the Spirit.” As a Baptist my mantra was “the Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it!” meaning that as long as I stayed within the boundaries of Baptist interpretation of doctrine (doctrine which is of necessity about 80% ahistorical) I was being faithful to “what the Bible teaches.” Had I become a Presbyterian, I might have been persuaded to include some of the decisions of certain ecumenical councils in my Bible-evaluation equation, but only those which affirmed rather than contradicted Presbyterianism’s determination of “Biblical truth.” Thus, when exploring the writings of the Church Fathers, evaluating archaeological evidence or investigating Biblical languages and cultures, my findings – intrabiblical or extrabiblical – would always be forced to conform to the constraints of the foregone conclusions. Calvin had to insist that none of the disputed writings of Ignatius of Antioch could possibly be genuine (proving as they do that the very early Church had a very set hierarchy), and J.I. Packer has been forced to make the case that the Church Fathers were nice guys but weirdly dim bulbs when it came to understanding core Biblical truths:

… apart from Augustine none of them seemed to be quite clear enough on the principle of salvation by grace and not even Augustine had fully grasped imputed righteousness.

Willful ignorance? Culpable blindness? Certainly more so in some cases than in others. The average believer who is counting on the pastors, theologians and historians of her denomination to determine the truth is certainly less guilty than someone who boasts an M.Div. or a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies. After all, these highly degreed folks have the diplomas to prove that they know what St. Paul meant when he wrote the words “the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.” Right? As St. Augustine warned the Manichaean heretic Faustus, who placed great emphasis on the authority of the Scriptures from which he drew his heretical doctrines:

I close with a word of counsel to you who are implicated in those shocking and damnable errors, that, if you acknowledge the supreme authority of Scripture, you should recognize that authority which from the time of Christ Himself, through the ministry of His apostles, and through a regular succession of bishops in the seats of the apostles, has been preserved to our own day throughout the whole world, with a reputation known to all.

You don’t have to be crazy to subscribe to Bible-based heresies, but you do have to turn a blind eye to a whole lotta stuff – in other words, there’s hope for you, but your doctrinal system cannot be salvaged. Until you recognize that “authority,” also known as “the church of the living God,” your theology will always be a couple fleas short of a dog.

 

On the memorial of St. Anthony Maria Zaccharia

Deo omnis gloria!

Tom, Dick and Teri Think Things Through

Tom, Dick and Teri are employed by a large corporation. They meet in the lunchroom every day to encourage and pray for one another. Today, Teri is running late. She enters with a large salad, and seats herself next to Dick, who is discussing something earnestly with Tom.

“I’m so hungry, I could bury my head in this salad and eat my way to the bottom of the bowl! Move over, guys. What are you talking about? Not me, I hope!”

Dicks smiles and obligingly scoots to the right. He waits while Teri prays over her food.

“Tom’s just thinking way too much, as usual. He’s all twisted out of shape over Christian history.”

Teri chews on a carrot. “Christian history? You mean, like Martin Luther?”

Tom shoots Dick a “see what I mean?” look. “Yeah, in a way, Teri, that’s exactly what I mean.” Tom glumly slurps his soup, till Dick feels obliged to explain.

“Tom’s worried about people becoming Catholic. For some reason he thinks Christians just don’t know enough about Christian history, and he thinks if we were better informed we wouldn’t be tempted to become Catholic.”

Teri looked shocked. “Who’s tempted to become Catholic? Protestants don’t become Catholic – it’s the other way around! My church is full of ex-Catholics!”

Dick continues to speak for Tom, who is staring down at his soup bowl.

“Yeah, mine too. But he thinks a lot of theologically astute Protestants have become Catholic, and that worries him.” Dick peers skeptically at Tom.

“Name one!” Teri challenges belligerently.

Tom sighs. “Thomas Howard, Robin Maas, Reinhard Hütter, Bruce Marshall, Trent Dougherty, Robert Koons….”

“Who?” Teri asks.

“…J. Budziszewski…”

“Who??” Teri repeats.

“… Jay Richards, R.R. Reno, Joshua Hochschild, Leroy Huizenga, Richard John Neuhaus, Robert Wilken…” Tom drones on.

“Who are these people?” Teri asks. “Do they go to your church?”

“…Paul Quist, Richard Ballard, Paul Abbe…”

Dick speaks up as Tom adds to his list.

“No, they are apparently well known, well respected Protestant scholars – theologians, philosophers, seminary professors, pastors – who have turned Catholic! Tom’s all upset because he thinks this proves something.”

“…Thomas McMichael, Mickey Mattox, David Fagerberg…”

“I haven’t heard of any of these guys!” Teri asserts as she bites into a tomato.

Dick, who has apparently finished his burger, says he knows a few of them.

“I know J. Budziszewski – he was a prominent Protestant philosopher. I heard about Joshua Hochschild getting kicked out of Wheaton when he turned Catholic.”

“…Philip Max Johnson, Michael Root, David Mills…”

Dick perseveres. “And Thomas Howard, he’s Elizabeth Elliott’s brother.”

Teri looks shocked. “THE Elizabeth Elliott?”

“Yep,” Dick continues. “He was a professor at Gordon College before he became Catholic.”

“…Douglas Farrow, Gerald Schlabach…”

“We get the picture, Tom!” Dick cries in exasperation. “What do you think it proves?”

It is Tom’s turn to look exasperated. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about Frank Beckwith!”

Teri opens her mouth, but thinks better of it.

Dick explains. “Beckwith was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He reverted to Catholicism.”

“And then there was the Geisler/Betancourt fiasco!” Tom blurts out. “Norm Geisler and Joshua Betancourt wrote a book trying to put Beckwith’s reversion into proper perspective from a Protestant point of view. Then, Betancourt becomes Catholic!”

Dick looks shocked. Teri looks bewildered. She stabs at her salad as she speaks.

“Well, I don’t see where it’s a big deal. I’ve never heard of any of these people except Elizabeth Elliott, and she’s not Catholic. So what if these guys wandered off? I mean, it’s tragic, but Catholics become Protestant every day. I mean, Catholics are converting to Protestantism in droves!”

Tom stares out the window.

Dick leans back in his chair. “Tom’s point is that these guys he’s talking about are theologians and professors, the cream of the crop who’ve been recognized by other Protestants as excelling in their fields. You can hardly say that they never really understood what the Bible teaches. So why are they going over to the other side?”

“To the Dark Side, you mean,” Teri snorts.

Tom glowers at her. “A well-known Reformed pastor said that all those former Catholics you’re talking about, the ones who are filling our pews, wouldn’t be welcome at his church because they’re ‘religious consumers’ who don’t care about doctrine! After saying that, HE became Catholic!”

“Look,” Dick says to Tom, who is slumped over his minestrone. “So a bunch of well-known Protestant thinkers defected. Teri’s right. Catholics become Protestant every day. I bet they’re losing their theologians and philosophers to us at 10 times the rate we’re losing ours to them!”

“Oh, yeah?” Tom queries, turning to look at his friend. “Name one.”

“I can name five!” Dick asserts, “Chris Castaldo, Josh McDowell, Rick Warren, James McCarthy, and Tim LaHaye – all well-known Protestants who are former Catholics. I’m sure there are dozens more.”

“You’ve got it exactly backwards,” Tom retorts sourly. “I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill Catholics who converted and then went on to become well-known Protestants. I’m talking about well-known, well-respected, theologically astute Catholics who converted to Protestantism – whether they then became well known as Protestants isn’t my point. And you can’t name anyone like that, can you?”

Dick frowns. “What difference does it make?”

“We’re losing our best and brightest!” Tom laments. “We’re losing our teachers – our leaders! Why? How? These people certainly understand the Bible – a lot of them were seminary professors; they taught the Bible!”

“My pastor didn’t go to seminary,” Teri chimes in. “He studied the word of God for 7 years before he founded our church. He’s like the apostle Paul; he learned the Gospel from no man.”

Dick senses the need to keep Teri on track. “Tom thinks the problem is Christian history.”

Tom becomes animated. “If we could just do a better job of teaching Christian history, I think that would help. I mean, the average Christian thinks that Christian history begins in 1517! People need to know what Christians were doing before the 16^th century! A lot of these Protestants-turned-Catholic quote a 19^th-century Protestant-turned-Catholic who said, “To be deep in history is to cease being Protestant.” We just do a lousy job of teaching Christian history!”

Dick looks thoughtful. “Well, yeah, but it’s pretty hard to teach about an underground church that left no records! I mean, after Constantine took over the church, the real Christians moved up into the mountains. Our minister explained that the last real Christians produced the Nicene creed in the 4^th century, and from that point on the church basically lived in hiding. You know, Augustine, Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome,” he eyes Teri, but decides not to explain,” they were still Christians – the Reformers referred constantly to their writings. But the reason no one hears about the Christians between the 4^th century and the Reformation is that they went underground! There’s no way to tell the story of those people.”

Tom looks skeptical. “Actually, the ‘church fathers’ you’re talking about were already apostate. Augustine said things like “Faith without works is not sufficient for salvation,” and “Mortal sins are forgiven through repentance, prayer and almsgiving.” Athanasius, too, believed that a Christian could lose his salvation through “mortal sin.” He called Mary “the Mother of God” and believed in her perpetual virginity. He believed that the bread and the wine really become Jesus’ body and blood. I mean, seriously, the men who formulated the Nicene creed were Catholic bishops! No, Christianity went off the rails earlier than the 4^th century. My pastor read to us from Fox’s Book of Martyrs about Ignatius and Polycarp dying for the faith in the 2^nd century – they were real Christians. But after that, it was all downhill. That story about the true Christians going into hiding bothers me, though….”

Dick is about to ask Tom about this, but Teri pipes up.

“I know who those guys are!”

“What guys?” Dick asks.

“Ignatius and Polycarp!” Teri proclaims. “My pastor warned us about them!”

“He did?” Dick asks.

“Yeah, he warned us about the writings of the so-called ‘Christians’ who lived after the apostles. Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna were two of the names he mentioned. They were the false teachers mentioned in 2 Peter 2! As soon as the apostles were out of the way, those false teachers commandeered the “Church.” It’s all there in the writings of the “church fathers”! My pastor said there was a first-century document called the DDK which told people to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day, and that gave prayers unknown in the New Testament as a pattern for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper! That’s not Christianity! Ignatius of Antioch called his church “Catholic” – that really oughtta tell you something! He said that communion bread really WAS “the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ”! That’s cannibalism, not Christianity! Polycarp – he is supposed to have been the disciple of John the apostle, but he went off the rails preaching works-righteousness. He wrote that the Lord Jesus will raise us from the dead IF we do His will and walk in His commandments and love the things He loved, abstaining from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, and false witness. That’s WORKS! And both of those men insisted that Christians must submit themselves to the “presbyters and deacons” as to God and Christ! “Look upon the bishop even as upon the Lord Himself,” is what Ignatius said. My pastor told us to run screaming if anyone tried to get us to read the writings of the ‘church fathers.’ There wasn’t a Christian among them! The true Christians went into hiding just as soon as the apostles died!”

Dick and Tom stare at Teri, and then look at each other.

“So, what’s your problem with the true Christians going into hiding?” Dick asks Tom.

Tom shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. That’s the story that I’ve heard all my life – that true Christians were driven out of the “Church” and were persecuted for their beliefs. So they took their Bibles and went up into the mountains, living in their own communities and teaching their children to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.”

“Right…” Dick says leadingly.

“Well,” Tom admits, “I can think of a few reasons why that seems… implausible.”

“You think too much,” Teri tells him.

Tom continues. “I mean, what if Teri’s version is true – what if the apostasy happened almost immediately? Then there couldn’t have been all that many Christians, but they were scattered over a broad area, from Jerusalem to Antioch to Rome. So those Christians went into hiding in “the mountains” where they would escape notice. So that means no one was left in society to give a faithful witness to the truths of the Gospel. Isn’t that the opposite of what Jesus commanded? Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature was the commandment! If they were hiding, how did they do that?”

Dick frowns. “I’ve always assumed that when they went into hiding, they converted the people they came into contact with. I mean, it’s not like they would have refused to share the Gospel. They were running from the Catholic Church that wanted to silence them. Of course they would have converted the people in the areas they settled.”

Tom nods. “Okay, then who did they convert?”

Dick snorts.

“I’m serious!” Tom asks earnestly. “Who did they convert? If they were really fleeing from the reach of the Catholic Church, they would have gone out into barbarian territory, right? Well, who did they convert? Which pagan people groups were ever converted by Bible-believing Christians before the Reformation?”

Teri and Dick stare at Tom, thinking this through.

“The Catholic Church did not control the whole world – far from it! Those people most likely would have moved to other lands to get away from the Catholics, to places where their proclamation of the Good News would have set things on fire! Right? Where did that ever happen??

Tom is not done. “And another thing. My pastor preached a sermon on the canon of Scripture. He told us that the New Testament canon of Scripture wasn’t even decided until the 4^th century. So if I’m right, or if you’re right, Teri, then those real Christians fled to “the mountains” without Bibles! I mean, I suppose they would’ve had the Old Testament, but not the New! How did that work??”

Tom is looking genuinely disturbed. “Seriously, are we talking about a tiny, inbred group of Bible-believing Christians living up in “the mountains” for centuries without Bibles? A group that went unnoticed by Catholic Europe because they were so ineffectual, so silent, so withdrawn, so invisible that no one knew or cared that they were there, until Martin Luther rediscovered the Gospel and they could come out of hiding? Seriously???”

Dick shakes his head slowly. “That doesn’t sound right….”

Teri stands up to go back to work. She scowls at Tom. “You think too much.”

 

On the sixth Sunday of Easter

Deo omnis gloria!

That Principle Is Tradition

Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes

Here is Part Thirty-Six of my series on the canon of Scripture. You can begin at the beginning, or just jump in here as we begin to wrap it all up!

A new day begins for our Protestant protagonist. As he lays his books and notes aside, he mentally runs through his conclusions concerning the canon of Scripture. He recognizes that for a Bible-only Christian, the prospect of a fallible canon is an unimaginable disaster….

You are standing in your living room with a cup of coffee in one hand and a piece of toast in the other, watching the dawn illuminate the eastern sky. You were up all night, but you know it was worth it. All the research that you have put into this subject of the deuterocanonical books and the canon of Scripture has made clear to you that there are two basic approaches to this question among Protestants:

First of all, there is the assertion by R.C. Sproul that Protestants must content themselves with a “fallible collection of infallible books.” When you first heard your pastor say that, you nearly keeled over! But now it has become clear to you why Dr. Sproul insists that this is the best that Protestants can hope for.

You understand now that the question of the canon boils down to the issue of authority. Who has the authority to discern which books are inspired Scripture and to proclaim that discernment? In order to preserve the Reformation pillar of ‘sola Scriptura’ (that is, Scripture and only Scripture is the authoritative basis for all our beliefs), Dr. Sproul feels that Christians must admit that there is no way we can claim to know for sure that our canon is infallible! Think about it – if Scripture alone is the only infallible, authoritative source of our beliefs, then in order for us to have an infallible canon, Scripture would have to include an inspired ‘table of contents’ (something along the lines of some extra verses at the end of the Gospel of John perhaps that read “And Jesus said unto his disciples, ‘Verily, these shall be the books which ye shall regard as Holy Scripture, namely, ….'”). Since we have no such thing, Dr. Sproul logically concludes that we will never know for sure.

So, in order to keep the principle of sola Scriptura in working order – you have to resort to the “fallible collection of infallible books” assumption! If your ‘life verse’ is Revelation 1:5, you just have to say “I’m hoping and praying with all my heart that Luther and Zwingli were wrong – that the book of Revelation and this verse upon which I’ve based my Christian walk are actually, really and truly Holy Scripture!”

After all, the belief that there are 66 and only 66 books in the Bible is an extra-Biblical belief!

That’s not good enough for you. A lot of folks who believe that we cannot know that the 66-book canon is the correct one then go on to state that they derive a sense of security from ‘providence’ – in other words, the idea that God could not leave His church adrift in a foggy sea of ignorance, so OF COURSE the Protestant canon must be the right one – we just can’t ‘prove’ that!

But isn’t that what this whole Apocrypha question is about? Did God leave His church adrift in a foggy sea of ignorance for 1500 years after the Resurrection, until the Reformers came along to straighten things out?? The argument from “providence” runs into one great big difficulty: either the canon that included the Apocrypha for 1500 years was right, and the Protestant canon of the past 500 years is wrong, or the canon that included the Apocrypha for 1500 years was wrong, and the Protestant canon of the past 500 years is right. God either abandoned His church to the errors of the Apocrypha for hundreds and hundreds of years, or Protestants have been limping along with amputated Bibles since the Reformation! Unless you’re willing to say that there were NO Christians on earth for 1500 years before the Reformation, you’re claiming that God did leave His church adrift with a bungled canon for centuries and centuries….

Does it matter? It most certainly does! Everything Protestants believe hinges on the testimony of Holy Scripture, and on the answer to the central question which reverberates down through the ages: “Who do you say that I am?” There is simply no way to answer Jesus’ question with anything approaching certainty if we cannot say that we know that the books we consider to be Holy Scripture actually are Holy Scripture, and that we can be certain that no books of Scripture somehow got left out of that catalogue. Whether Protestants proclaim that Jesus is (in the words of C.S. Lewis) a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord, we must do so based on the evidence presented in the Scriptures, with the confidence that there are no other books of Scripture out there which would cause us to modify our position! The same goes for every other doctrine we place our faith in – we can be fully assured of the correctness of our beliefs only when we are fully assured that there is no other ‘Scripture’ out there which would cause us to change our mind! We can’t cut our canon to fit our theological bed! Our ‘Scriptures’ cannot be determined by our pre-existing convictions – if all our beliefs have to come from the Scriptures, it is ESSENTIAL that we know which books are in the Bible.

So, if the ‘fallible canon’ proposition isn’t good enough for you (and it’s apparently not good enough for many Christians), then you fall back on the second Protestant option: the urban legend (propagated by the popular authors) of a mythical land where all the Christians woke up one morning and just KNEW which books were Holy Scripture – no Church council told them this, because there is no authority for the Christian other than the authority of Holy Scripture! These Christians unanimously accepted the Hebrew canon, and rejected the deuterocanonical books. Christians spontaneously recognized New Testament Scripture when they heard it read to them in their churches and rejected anything spurious. “We can discern which books are Scripture by relying on the theology that we get from the books we have decided are Scripture!!” is the motto of this happy land – a land which can be found nowhere in the historical record….

Then, of course, there’s the inconvenient issue of the confusion among the Reformers concerning the canon. That has to be MAJORLY downplayed to make it sound like it was just a few minor questions that troubled a few folks for a few years, rather than over 100 years of ‘every man for himself’ as far as which books belonged in the Bible. According to this part of the fable, the spiritual descendants of the Reformers apparently just woke up one morning and KNEW which books belonged in the Bible– just as the first Christians had.

At that point, of course, you have to start making up criteria to explain the inclusion or exclusion of books, criteria like “was the book written by a prophet of God?” or “was the writer confirmed by acts of God?” Criteria such as these look so convincing at first glance, and yet upon further examination they prove to be completely unworkable. You have noticed that many different Protestant scholars point out the logical inconsistencies inherent in these ‘tests of canonicity.’ They note the heavy reliance on assumption. There is no way to know, they stress, if these criteria were actually consciously employed by the folks who determined the canon since there is no documentation of these criteria in the historical record. The well-respected Herman Ridderbos writes about this:

As their artificiality indicates, these arguments are a posteriori in character. To hold that the church was led to accept these writings by such criteria, in fact to even speak here of a criteria canonicitatis is to go too far. It is rather clear that we here have to do with more or less successful attempts to cover with arguments what had already been fixed for a long time and for the fixation of which such reasoning or such a criterion had never been employed.

In plain English, these ‘criteria’ are all after-the-fact attempts at explaining something that can’t be explained otherwise, at least not unless you are willing to admit that the first Christians devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles which were preserved in the ‘tradition’ – and reliance on this ‘tradition’ broke the stalemate of “the doctrine I read in the book of Romans appears to conflict with the doctrine I read in the book of James, so one of these books has got to go!” The Christian church didn’t solve this conundrum using ‘criteria’. Relying on the deposit of faith, they realized that both Romans and James agreed with the doctrine of the apostles, that is, with the tradition handed down from the apostles to the leadership of the church, and therefore both could be recognized as Holy Scripture.

Some popular authors go so far as to claim that Augustine used the criterion “of extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs” to prove that 2 Maccabees was canonical. But Augustine didn’t rely on such ‘criteria’ – as you have noted, Augustine declared that if you wanted to know which books were in the canon, you needed to rely on the judgment of the churches (which was informed by the tradition handed down to them from the apostles!) Lutheran scholar Édouard
Reuss, in his History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Church, admits:

Whatever merit there may be otherwise in these remarks, they will do good in reminding our Protestant theologians that in any case the collection has been formed in accordance with a principle foreign to our church. That principle is tradition, the succession and authority of the bishops…. Thus, at all periods, under all regimes, for discipline as for dogma, hence also for the canon which is connected with both, tradition ruled the Church, inspired the doctors, opposed the strongest bulwark to heresy; tradition also undertook the task of directing the choice of the holy books. This choice, though its results have not been always and everywhere the same, may have been excellent, at least as good as was possible with the means and material at its disposal; but Protestant theology, which has no desire to elevate tradition, and professes in every other respect to insist on having it first verified, is bound to do the same with regard to the canon of Scripture; it is bound to seek out some other standard than the process which is the very thing to be verified.

“Tradition ruled the church, inspired the doctors, opposed the strongest bulwark to heresy; tradition also undertook the task of directing the choice of the holy books” – not the ‘traditions of men’ but “the tradition which you have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.” You have found quotes from the Church Fathers showing that they believed the promise made by the apostle Paul that the Holy Spirit would “guard the good deposit” through the leaders of the church. Irenaeus’ guiding principle from the second century still rings true: “Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important questions among us…. Should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question?… Would it not be necessary to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches?” Rufinus, following this reasoning, insisted that the “divine record” had been “handed down to the churches by the apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit.” Origen was sure that the Jewish leadership had no right to determine the canon for Christians – the Christians lacked for nothing that was necessary for their salvation, he wrote, and that included the knowledge of the canon of Scripture! In fact, he insisted that “as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved,
that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.” Athanasius, too, followed the principle of reliance on the tradition handed down from the apostles: “But beyond these sayings [of the Bible], let us look at the very tradition, teaching and faith of the catholic church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers kept. Upon this the church is founded, and he who should fall away from it should not be a Christian, and should no longer be so called.” Augustine stated that the bishops of the Christian churches, and most especially the bishops of the churches founded by the apostles, could unite and discern what was God-breathed Scripture, and what wasn’t, based on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the tradition that had been handed down from bishop to bishop to bishop…. And you note that down through the ages following the councils of Hippo and Carthage, council after council ratified the decision of Hippo and Carthage, which is – there are 46 books in the Old Testament.

Since Protestants have rejected that possibility, all of these ‘criteria’ had to be invented to explain something that just can’t be explained otherwise….

For Part 37 please click here

 

On the third Sunday of Easter

Deo omnis gloria!

In Regard to the Canonical Scriptures

Susanna and the Elders

Welcome to Part 30 of my series on the discernment of the canon of Scripture. Please begin with Part One here.

We are examining the views of the 3^rd– and 4^th-century Christians as regards the canon. While the Christians of the 1^st and 2^nd century had no qualms about calling the deuterocanonicals Holy Scripture, 3^rd and 4^th century Christians had begun to question the discrepancy between the Hebrew canon and the Christian canon. Several Church Fathers of this era call the deuterocanonical books “ecclesiastical” rather than “canonical.” However, Church Fathers who suggest that the deuterocanonicals should be counted among the ecclesiastical (Church) books are not saying that they are not inspired Scripture (see the quotation from Rufinus below) – they are merely recognizing that while these books are not found in the Hebrew canon, they ARE found in the Christian canon. The arguments of the popular authors on this subject are very misleading.

The previously quoted assurance by Origen that God would never leave His Church in the lurch really says it all: “And, forsooth, when we notice such things [like the story of Susanna not being found in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament], we are forthwith to reject as spurious the copies in use in our churches, and enjoin the brotherhood to put away the sacred books current among them, and to coax the Jews, and persuade them to give us copies which shall be untampered with, and free from forgery? Are we to suppose that that Providence which in the sacred Scriptures has ministered to the edification of all the churches of Christ, had no thought for those bought with a price, for whom Christ died; whom, although His Son, God who is love spared not, but gave Him up for us all, that with Him He might freely give us all things?”

The entire Protestant argument is based on the insistence that Origen was wrong – that God did allow Christians, for hundreds of years, to use a Bible that had been “tampered with” and was full of “forgeries.” They insist that, yes, we are to suppose that that Providence which in the sacred Scriptures ministered to the edification of all the churches of Christ, had no thought for those bought with a price, for whom Christ died; whom, although His Son, God who is love spared not, but gave Him up for us all, that with Him He might freely give us all things!

Like Origen, I don’t buy that….

Hmm…. Many sources cite Geisler and Nix’s objection to the Deuterocanon:

There were many individuals who vehemently opposed them [the deuterocanonicals], for example, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Origen, Jerome.

So Geisler and Nix think that Origen “vehemently opposed” the deuterocanonicals, along with three other Fathers. That’s odd, considering his spirited defense of the story of Susanna that you just read. But again, according to the principle set forward by Irenaeus, one man’s objection meant very little – no one could authoritatively discern the canon except the bishops meeting in council, in union with the bishop of Rome. Still, you decide to take a head count of Church Fathers from the 1st century through the 4th to determine who actually spoke out against the deuterocanonicals and who accepted them. After all, by now you’re getting pretty tired of these claims made by the popular authors – they rarely seem to pan out!

It is kind of hard to pin some of these Fathers down when it comes to the deuterocanonicals. Some of them will make statements in one place that seem to dismiss the deuteros, and then in another place they quote from them in ways that show that they considered them to be Holy Scripture! (You also note that when a Church Father vacillates like this, the Protestant popular sources tend to only mention the apparent rejection of the deuterocanonicals – you have to keep checking all by yourself to find any positive remarks that the Father in question might have made. Even when what the Father in question said was mostly positive, the popular authors cling to the negative!) You count up 29 early Christian sources who, by quoting from deuterocanonical books in the same manner that they quote from Scripture, or by making comments that indicate their belief in the canonicity of the deuterocanonicals, or both, apparently believed those books to be Holy Scripture:

– the author of the Didache

– the author of the Shepherd of Hermas

– the author of the Epistle of Barnabas

– Clement of Rome

– Polycarp

– Athenagoras

– Irenaeus

– Tertullian

– Hippolytus

– Clement of Alexandria

– Cyprian of Carthage

– Origen (despite what Geisler and Nix claim, you find that Origen actually calls the deuterocanonicals “Divine Scriptures,” “Holy Scripture,” and “the divine word,” as well as using the formula “It is written…” before quotations from deuterocanonical books – pretty odd if he rejected their inspiration. )

– Dionysius of Alexandria

– Archelaus

– Methodius

– Lactantius

– Aphraates

– Alexander of Alexandria

– Cyril of Jerusalem (Cyril lists the canonical books of the Old Testament, and includes among them Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah. He himself quoted from Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach and the deuterocanonical sections of Daniel in his Catechetical Lectures, citing the latter with the formula “It is written….” No real “vehement opposition” here…).

– Athanasius (again, despite Geisler and Nix’s insistence that Athanasius “vehemently opposed” the Apocrypha, he places Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah in his list of the “canon.” He says that the other deuterocanonicals and the book of Esther are books which “are not placed in the canon, but which the Fathers decreed should be read to those who have lately come into the fold and seek to be catechized, and who study to learn the Christian doctrine.” Athanasius then establishes a third category for “Apocrypha” – the deuterocanonicals and Esther are not among them.)

– Hilary of Poitiers (who in his defense of the doctrine of the Trinity actually writes “Such suggestions [as the heretics make] are inconsistent with the clear sense of Scripture. ‘For all things,’ as the Prophet says, ‘were made out of nothing’….” That “prophet” he refers to is the author of 2 Maccabees!)

– Basil the Great (a 4th-century bishop of Caesarea, Basil quotes from Baruch, Wisdom, Judith, and the extra parts of Daniel as Holy Scripture, and holds up the Maccabean martyrs as an example to be followed by Christians.)

– Gregory of Nazianzus (he apparently rejected the book of Revelation as well as Esther. While excluding the deuterocanonical books from “the most ancient Hebrew wisdom,” he still quotes from Baruch, Wisdom, Judith, Sirach and the extra parts of Daniel as Holy Scripture, and holds the Maccabean martyrs up, as did so many Church Fathers, as “men of old days illustrious for piety… brave to the shedding of blood” in the same roll call of faith with the patriarchs of the Old Testament.)

– John Chrysostom (he considered Baruch to be part of the book of Jeremiah, and he quotes from the extra parts of Daniel as well as passages from the books of Wisdom and Tobit as Scripture.)

– Ambrose

– Rufinus (he did separate the books of the Old Testament into the “canonical” [meaning the ones he knew were accepted by the Jews] and the “ecclesiastical” [meaning the ones accepted by the Christians, “ecclesia” meaning “church”]. You note that many popular authors seize upon this to show that he and others like him “knew” that the ecclesiastical books didn’t belong in the Bible! However, Rufinus objected to the rejection of the deuterocanonicals by pointing to Jewish converts to Christianity, none of whom tried to remove the deuteros from the Christian Bible to make it more like the Hebrew Bible. In his words, “In all this abundance of learned men, [Jews who have converted to Christianity], has there been one who has dared to make havoc of the divine record handed down to the churches by the apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit?” And note what he said: Rufinus is falling back on what has been handed down to the churches by the apostles, and the deposit of the Holy Spirit! Those Christians really did believe that God the Holy Spirit was supernaturally aiding them in guarding the good deposit!)

– Augustine of Hippo (This Church Father even outlines the process he recommends for discerning the canon: “Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical epistles he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive.” Wow! This sounds like what Irenaeus insisted upon nearly 200 years before Augustine’s time! – “Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches?”)

– John Cassian

– Theodoret of Cyrus

The popular authors try really hard at this point to make it look like a lot of Church Fathers accepted the modern-day Protestant canon. They have to fudge quite a bit, though, because even the Fathers who endorse a minimalist, pared-down canon of the Old Testament all “slip up” on a few books of the Deuterocanon like Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, or subtract a few books from the New Testament in their zeal to downsize, or state, like Rufinus, that the deuterocanonical books are ecclesiastical (used by the church) and therefore part of “the divine record handed down to the churches by the apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit”! But you have to give the popular authors credit for trying – they try really, really hard to shoehorn the oversized canons of the Fathers into the Protestant 66-book Bible!

The writings of Origen are a good case in point. When Origen and other Christian writers proclaim that there are twenty-two books in the Hebrew canon, the popular authors insist that this means that the Hebrew canon is the correct one! A few comments from Protestant scholar F.F. Bruce say otherwise:

…it was plain to him [Origen] that, when dealing with the Jews, he could appeal to no authoritative scriptures but those which they acknowledged as canonical.

But in replying to Julius Africanus [who questioned Origen’s use of the story of Susanna as if it were inspired Scripture] he points out that there are many things in the Greek Bible which are not found in the Hebrew text, and the church cannot be expected to give them all up.

He [Origen] is certainly unwilling to deviate from the regular practice of the church.

And H.B. Swete makes the same case when speaking of Augustine:

From the end of the fourth century the inclusion of the non-canonical books in Western lists is a matter of course. Even Augustine has no scruples on the subject. He makes the books of the Old Testament forty-four…. His judgement was that of his Church.

So, you’ve counted up 29 Fathers who endorsed the deuterocanonical books. The popular authors seem to pounce on any whiff of indecision, whereas you’ve tried to give these men’s views a fair hearing. Again, why are the popular authors so keen on proving their point? A little objective scholarship would be a real breath of fresh air, but these guys are more like salesmen moving in for the kill! The quote from Geisler and Nix is a fine example of hyperbole:

There were many individuals who vehemently opposed them [the deuterocanonicals], for example, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Origen, Jerome.

Many?? As far as you can tell, Athanasius, Cyril and Origen did no such thing. Yet Geisler and Nix exaggerate these Fathers’ objections out of proportion, AND try to make it sound like they are just the “tip of the iceberg!”

So, how many Fathers really did oppose the deuterocanonical books?

For Part 31 please click here

 

On the memorial of St. Josef Bilczewski

Deo omnis gloria!

Because He Said So

So here we are, on our knees singing the Agnus Dei:

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, grant us peace!

You, my Evangelical friend, recognize this as the most solemn point of the Mass, as we kneel to ask Jesus to “only say the word” and our souls shall be healed. In a moment we will rise to go forward and receive our Lord in Holy Communion.

As we come to the climax of our worship service, I think you can see that our emphasis and yours coincide – Jesus Christ is the entire focus of the Mass, just as He is the entire focus of your Protestant worship service. This is a great point of agreement between Catholics and Protestants. And yet, ironically, we have just come to our biggest point of disagreement. The fact that Catholics believe that Jesus is really present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Holy Eucharist strikes many Protestants as odd. Not grossly offensive – more of a small, peculiar irritant than a major provocation. It’s weird, all this Body and Blood stuff, you admit, but there are other Catholic doctrines a lot more objectionable. Actually, from the Catholic perspective, you’re wrong about that. The Real Presence is the watershed doctrine separating Catholics and Protestants – not “faith ALONE,” not “once-saved/always-saved,” not Mary’s place in the divine scheme of things, not the Pope’s authority or infallibility…. It’s Christ Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. A Catholic who believes that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist can wholeheartedly confess with the likes of Flannery O’Connor that the Eucharist “is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.” It’s THAT important.

Why in the world do Catholics believe in the Real Presence?? I used to think I knew exactly why the Catholic Church taught that Jesus is really present in Holy Communion. I believed it was a doctrine developed in the Middle Ages to keep believers chained to the Church. If you can convince people that Jesus really is present in Holy Communion, and if only a priest can preside over the Mass that makes Jesus present, then obviously the priest, and by extension the Church, has power over all Catholics. If you don’t toe the line, they withhold Communion – and you think you’re gonna die and go to hell. Brilliant power play – deceive the masses by teaching them that Jesus actually meant what He said at the Last Supper, “This IS My Body” and “This IS My Blood,” as well as in His sermon in John 6, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” They’ll be slaves of the Church, because only the Church has this Body and Blood. Sheer genius!

Then I began doing a little research on that hypothesis, testing out my theory. When exactly did the Church hatch this diabolical plot and start teaching that Jesus is really physically present on the altar?

Well, going back to the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a prayer to be recited before reception of Holy Communion:

Almighty and Eternal God, behold I come to the sacrament of Your only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. As one sick I come to the Physician of life; unclean, to the Fountain of mercy; blind, to the Light of eternal splendor; poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth. Therefore, I beg of You, through Your infinite mercy and generosity, heal my weakness, wash my uncleanness, give light to my blindness, enrich my poverty, and clothe my nakedness. May I thus receive the Bread of Angels, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, with such reverence and humility, contrition and devotion, purity and faith, purpose and intention, as shall aid my soul’s salvation.

Grant, I beg of You, that I may receive not only the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also its full grace and power. Give me the grace, most merciful God, to receive the Body of your only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, in such a manner that I may deserve to be intimately united with His mystical Body and to be numbered among His members. Most loving Father, grant that I may behold for all eternity face to face Your beloved Son, whom now, on my pilgrimage, I am about to receive under the sacramental veil, who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

The Angelic Doctor obviously believed in the Real Presence. Slightly earlier, St. Albert the Great wrote:

I adore You, Blood of the new, eternal Testament, flowing from the veins of Jesus in Gethsemane, from the flesh torn by scourges in the Praetorium, from His pierced hands and feet and from His opened side on Golgotha. I adore You in the Sacraments, in the Eucharist, where I know You are substantially present….

All right – this proves my point! These two conspicuously medieval Catholic priests proclaimed the literal interpretation of Matthew 26 and John 6. See? The doctrine was invented in the Middle Ages to enslave the faithful!

Hang on a second…. Going back a little earlier in time, to the eighth century, St. John Damascene wrote:

How can this come about?” Mary asked. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” the angel answered, “and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow.” And now you are the one who puts the question: “How can bread become Christ and wine His Blood?” I answer: “The power of the Holy Spirit will be at work to give us a marvel which surpasses understanding.

Okay, the eighth century, that’s still the Middle Ages, right? But wait a minute, the roots of the nefarious plot stretch back farther still…

St. John Chrysostom (5th century):

How many of you say: I should like to see His face, His garments, His shoes. You do see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him. He gives Himself to you, not only that you may see Him, but also to be your food and nourishment.

St. Augustine (5^th century):

Your eyes are looking at bread and cup. This is the evidence before your physical sight. But your faith must be instructed concerning it- this bread being Christ ‘s Body and the cup containing His Blood. Though perhaps these words may be enough to initiate faith, faith must be further instructed in accordance with the Prophet’s words: ‘Believe that you may understand’ ( Is 7:9).

Now that’s pushing it – my “medieval myth of the Real Presence” is beginning to fray around the edges. This idea of the bread and wine actually becoming the Body and Blood of Christ was clearly propagated at the very dawn of the Middle Ages, even as the Roman Empire wheezed its last. And look at what St. Ambrose prayed in the fourth century:

I beg of you, O Lord, by this most holy mystery of Your Body and Blood, with which You daily nourish us in Your Church, that we may be cleansed and sanctified and made sharers in Your divinity. Grant to me Your holy virtues, which will enable me to approach Your altar with a clean conscience, so that this heavenly Sacrament may be a means of salvation and life to me, for
You Yourself have said: “I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. If anyone eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Most Sweet Bread, heal my heart, that I may taste the sweetness of Your love. Heal it from all weakness, that I may enjoy no sweetness but You. Most pure Bread, containing every delight which ever refreshes us, may my heart consume You and may my soul be filled with Your sweetness. Holy Bread, living Bread, perfect Bread, that has come down from heaven to give life to the world, come into my heart and cleanse me from every stain of body and soul. Enter into my soul; heal and cleanse me completely. Be the constant safeguard and salvation of my soul and body. Guard me from the enemies who lie in wait. May they flee from the protecting presence of Your power, so that, armed in soul and body by You, I may safely reach Your Kingdom.

And St. Ambrose’s contemporary, St. Basil, prayed these words:

We give Thee thanks, O Lord our God, for the Communion of Thy holy, pure, deathless and heavenly Mysteries, which thou hast given for the good, the hallowing, and the healing of our souls and bodies. Do Thou, O Sovereign of the world, cause this Communion in the Holy Body and blood of Thy Christ to nourish us in unashamed faith, sincere charity, ripe wisdom, health of soul and body, separation from all ills, observance of Thy Law, and justification before His awful Judgment Seat. O Christ our God, the Mystery of Thy Providence has been accomplished according to our ability. We have been reminded of Thy Death and we have seen a figure of Thy Resurrection; we have been filled with Thine Infinite Life, and we have tasted Thine inexhaustible joy; and we pray Thee to make us worthy of these things in the life to come, through the grace of Thine Eternal Father and of Thy holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and forever, eternally: Amen.

And St. Cyril of Jerusalem obviously believed along the same lines:

Even of itself the teaching of the Blessed Paul is sufficient to give you a full assurance concerning those Divine Mysteries, of which having been deemed worthy, you have become of the same body and blood with Christ. For you have just heard him say distinctly, That our Lord Jesus Christ in the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks He broke it, and gave to His disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is My Body: and having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, Take, drink, this is My Blood. Since then He Himself declared and said of the Bread, This is My Body, who shall dare to doubt any longer? And since He has Himself affirmed and said, This is My Blood, who shall ever hesitate, saying, that it is not His blood?

…Do not, then, regard the eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as He Himself has declared. Whatever your senses may tell you, be strong in faith.

You have been taught and you are firmly convinced that what looks and tastes like bread and wine is not bread and wine but the body and the blood of Christ.

And St. Athanasius – Athanasius contra mundum – remember him? He put it very clearly:

…after the great and wonderful prayers have been completed, then the bread is become the Body, and the wine the Blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ….

Let us approach the celebration of the mysteries. This bread and this wine, so long as the prayers and supplications have not taken place, remain simply what they are. But after the great prayers and holy supplications have been sent forth, the Word comes down into the bread and wine – and thus His Body is confected.

So, the hoax known as the Real Presence began with the Church Fathers??? Well, Constantine had by this time legalized Christianity – could creeping pagan influence have had something to do with this?

Yet going back even farther in time, to the third century – that is, nearer to the time of Christ – St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote:

And therefore we ask that our bread— that is, Christ— may be given to us daily, that we who abide and live in Christ may not depart from His sanctification and body.

St. Justin Martyr wrote in the second century A.D. to a Roman emperor, explaining Christian beliefs:

This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.

Medieval conspiracy, my foot! Pagan influence – puleezze! This literal understanding goes back as far as 120 years after the Resurrection, and even farther back….

St. Ignatius of Antioch (between 98 and 117 A.D.):

They (the heterodox) abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.

Less than 100 years after the Resurrection, the very Real Presence of Christ Jesus was being proclaimed by the martyrs who went to their death for their Christian beliefs! This was no medieval priest conspiracy, and it wasn’t a case of half-baked believers sliding down the pagan slope, either! This was the belief of Christians from the very beginning! This was a faith literally worth dying for, a faith in the literal meaning of Christ’s words, a faith that cried out in blood the words that still reverberate in our souls: Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable!

A faith that my Protestant belief system proudly rejected.

And yet He said what He said:

In John: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”

In Matthew: While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”

In 1 Corinthians: For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Why, oh why do Catholics believe that it’s His actual, real, literal Body and Blood??

Because He said so….

On the memorial of St. Catherine Labouré

Deo omnis gloria!