A Very Lumpy Rug

Susanna and the Elders

This is Part 32 of my series on the canon of Scripture; we began way back here.

We are approaching the moment of truth – the discernment of the canon by Catholic bishops at the end of the fourth century A.D. There are still some loose ends to tie up before that. As you may have noticed, when counting up votes in favor of the 66-book canon, popular Protestant authors have an awful lot to ignore. Take St. Athanasius as an example. Protestants often cite his 39^th Festal Letter as proof that he rejected the deuterocanonical books:

“There are, then, of the Old Testament, twenty-two books in number; for, as I have heard, it is handed down that this is the number of the letters among the Hebrews; their respective order and names being as follows. The first is Genesis, then Exodus, next Leviticus, after that Numbers, and then Deuteronomy. Following these there is Joshua the son of Nun, then Judges, then Ruth. And again, after these four books of Kings, the first and second 1 being reckoned as one book, and so likewise the third and fourth 2 as one book. And again, the first and second of the Chronicles are reckoned as one book. Again Ezra, the first and second 3 are similarly one book. After these there is the book of Psalms, then the Proverbs, next Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Job follows, then the Prophets, the Twelve [minor prophets] being reckoned as one book. Then Isaiah, one book, then Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations and the Epistle, one book; afterwards Ezekiel and Daniel, each one book. Thus far constitutes the Old Testament.”

As you can see, Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah are included with the book of Jeremiah, a discrepancy from the Protestant canon. A minor detail, the popular authors will tell you. As they try to hurry you along, you might ask them where the book of Esther went – it’s not in Athanasius’ list. In fact, Esther is lumped in with the deuterocanonical books. Athanasius writes:

But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of necessity; that there are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being [merely] read; nor is there in any place a mention of apocryphal writings.

Notice what he said – the deuterocanonicals are NOT Apocrypha! Yet this is exactly what popular Protestant authors insist that they are! St. Athanasius is instructing us that there are canonical books as well as ecclesiastical books, just as many other Fathers admit. Their canon is NOT the canon of the Jews, those Fathers say – it is the Christian canon, which contains both canonical and ecclesiastical books!

As further evidence, note the following quotes from St. Athanasius’ writings. Remember, the formula “It is written” was used to indicate that the subsequent quote came from Scripture.

And they are not ashamed to parade the sacred mysteries before Catechumens, and worse than that, even before heathens: whereas, they ought to attend to what is written, `It is good to keep close the secret of a king [Tobit 12:7];’ and as the Lord has charged us, `Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine [Mt 7:6].’

I congratulate the most excellent Sarapion, that he is striving so earnestly to adorn himself with holy habits, and is thus advancing to higher praise the memory of his father. For, as the Holy Scripture somewhere says, `though his father die, yet he is as though he were not dead: for he has left behind him a memorial of his life [Sirach 30:4].

Since, however, after all his severe sufferings, after his retirement into Gaul, after his sojourn in a foreign and far distant country in the place of his own, after his narrow escape from death through their calumnies, but thanks to the clemency of the Emperor,-distress which would have satisfied even the most cruel enemy,-they are still insensible to shame, are again acting insolently against the Church and Athanasius; and from indignation at his deliverance venture on still more atrocious schemes against him, and are ready with an accusation, fearless of the words in holy Scripture, `A false witness shall not be unpunished [Proverbs 19:5];’ and, `The mouth that belieth slayeth the soul [Wisdom 1:11];’ we therefore are unable longer to hold our peace, being amazed at their wickedness and at the insatiable love of contention displayed in their intrigues.

That’s something the popular Protestant authors aren’t going to tell you. They want to chalk St. Athanasius up as another Church Father “vehemently opposed” to the deuteros. Take such claims with the giant grain of salt they deserve.

It occurs to you that the question of the canon appears to have been quite open until the fourth century! That means that Christians lived and died for over 350 years after the Resurrection without ever knowing for sure which books were God-breathed! In that period of time, Christianity conquered the Roman Empire! How could it happen that Christians, who weren’t exactly sure which books were a part of the Bible and which weren’t, managed to convert the known world? It must have been a reliance on the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the teaching of the Christian leadership – it could have been nothing else!

What questionable tactics the popular authors employ! “MANY individuals… vehemently opposed” the deuterocanonical books, they cry – they then list four individuals. Hardly impressive when you can quickly find 26 others who accepted the deuterocanonical books, and can’t quite even make the case that the four listed by Geisler and Nix really definitely rejected the deuteros, considering that they quoted from them and called them “divine Scripture!”

You make a mental note not to be fooled by vague claims that include phrases like “many,” “few,” “almost always,” “hardly at all…” – from now on you are taking a head count!!

Some authors try to make it sound like it was a case of the poor benighted Christian church gradually realizing that they had been wandering in a desert of ignorance for more than three hundred years, when some of the ‘more scholarly’ Church Fathers began to wake up to the fact that – oh my gosh! – the Hebrew canon doesn’t contain Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Judith, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees or the extra parts of Daniel and Esther! But Christians as far back as the 2nd century noted that the Jews had a different canon! Justin Martyr in his “Dialogue with Trypho” (c. 150 A.D.) complains that he has to be careful which passages of Scripture he cites as proof of doctrine when he dialogues with Jews:

But I am far from putting reliance in your teachers, who refuse to admit that the interpretation [the Septuagint] made by the seventy elders who were with Ptolemy [king] of the Egyptians is a correct one; and they attempt to frame another. And I wish you to observe, that they have altogether taken away many Scriptures from the translations effected by those seventy elders who were with Ptolemy, and by which this very man who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God, and man, and as being crucified, and as dying; but since I am aware that this is denied by all of your nation, I do not address myself to these points, but I proceed to carry on my discussions by means of those passages which are still admitted by you.

And the notion that the ‘more scholarly’ Christians gradually began to realize that the Jewish canon was the ‘real’ one doesn’t jibe with what Origen said, does it? Hardly an intellectual slouch (his claim to fame was his Hexapla, the Old Testament written in six parallel columns consisting of the Hebrew, the Hebrew transliterated into Greek characters, the Greek translation of Aquila, the Greek translation of Symmachus, the Septuagint translation, and the Greek translation of Theodotian), Origen knew very well that there were many differences between the Hebrew and the Christian Old Testament; in fact, he writes to Julius Africanus:

I have to tell you what it behooves us to do in the cases not only of the History of Susanna, which is found in every church of Christ in that Greek copy which the Greeks use, but is not in the Hebrew, or of the two other passages you mention at the end of the book containing the history of Bel and the Dragon, which likewise are not in the Hebrew copy of Daniel; but of thousands of other passages also which I found in many places when with my little strength I was collating the Hebrew copies with ours…. Nor do I say this because I shun the labor of investigating the Jewish Scriptures, and comparing them with ours, and noticing their various readings. This, if it be not arrogant to say it, I have already to a great extent done to the best of my ability, laboring hard to get at the meaning in all the editions and various readings; while I paid particular attention to the interpretation of the Seventy [the translators of the Septuagint], lest I might to be found to accredit any forgery to the churches which are under heaven, and give an occasion to those who seek such a starting point for gratifying their desire to slander the common brethren, and to bring some accusation against those who shine forth in our community. I make it my endeavor not to be ignorant of their various readings, lest in my controversies with the Jews I should quote to them what is not found in their copies, and that I may make some use of what is found there, even although it should not be in our Scriptures. For if we are so prepared for them in our discussions, they will not, as is their manner, scornfully laugh at Gentile believers for their ignorance of the true reading as they have them. So far as to the History of Susanna not being found in the Hebrew.

So Origen knew perfectly well what the Hebrew canon consisted of, but he defended the Christian canon of the Old Testament just the same as the one handed down to the church.

And what about John Chrysostom, whom the History of the Christian Church calls “the soundest and worthiest representative of the Antiochian theology,” who “still enjoys the highest honor in the whole Christian world”? He certainly appears to have embraced at least four deuterocanonical books as Scripture. And since when is Augustine of Hippo not numbered among the ‘more scholarly’ of the Church Fathers, the man The History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures proclaims “undoubtedly the greatest theologian of the early church”?? You find his list of the canon:

Now the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised, is contained in the following books: Five books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; one book of Joshua the son of Nun; one of Judges, one short book called Ruth, which seems rather to belong to the beginning of Kings; next four books of Kings, and two of Chronicles – these last not following one another, but running parallel, so to speak, and going over the same ground. The books just mentioned are history, which contains a connected narrative of the times, and follows the order of the events. There are other books which seem to follow no regular order, and are connected neither with the order of the preceding books nor with one another, such as Job, and Tobias, and Esther, and Judith, and the two books of Maccabees, and the two of Ezra, which last look more like a sequel to the continuous regular history which terminates with the books of Kings and Chronicles. Next are the Prophets, in which there is one book of the Psalms of David; and three books of Solomon, viz., Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. For two books, one called Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, are ascribed to Solomon from a certain resemblance of style, but the most likely opinion is that they were written by Jesus the son of Sirach. Still they are to be reckoned among the prophetical books, since they have attained recognition as being authoritative. The remainder are the books which are strictly called the Prophets…: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; then there are the four greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. The authority of the Old Testament is contained within the limits of these forty-four books. That of the New Testament, again, is contained within the following: Four books of the Gospel, according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John; fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul – one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, one to the Colossians, two to Timothy, one to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews: two of Peter; three of John; one of Jude; and one of James; one book of the Acts of the Apostles; and one of the Revelation of John.

Augustine’s canon contains exactly the same books as you find in your great-aunt’s Catholic Bible. (He does not mention Lamentations, Baruch or the Letter of Jeremiah, but Protestant scholars assume that at that time they were considered to be part of the book of Jeremiah as a matter of course).

What you’re having trouble finding is a canon that agrees with the one in your own Bible. Jerome’s seems to match – it depends on whether you take him at his word when he waffles to exclude certain deuterocanonicals or to include them. No Church Father in the first four centuries unequivocally embraces the Protestant canon, and yet many popular authors at this point begin to make misleading comments like Westcott’s in The Bible in the Church: “the Bible of Athanasius is essentially identical with our own” – NOT!!! Your Bible doesn’t contain the book of Baruch or the Letter of Jeremiah! In fact, both F.F. Bruce and Edward Reuss claim that Athanasius’ canon must have also included the extra chapters of the book of Daniel as well! And what about Esther, which Athanasius left out of the Old Testament to include among the books “appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness”? Athanasius’ Old Testament canon is NOT the canon of 21st-century Protestants! The popular sources are just trying to sweep under the carpet all the differences between these conflicting canons, and they are getting a very lumpy rug.

Westcott candidly lists some of these differences in a comment on the books of Esther and Baruch:

Esther is omitted by Gregory of Nazianzus, Amplochius (doubtfully): admitted by Cyril of Jerusalem. (Council of Laodicea), Epiphanius. Baruch and the Letter are admitted by Cyril of Jerusalem. (Council of Laodicea), Epiphanius (once): Baruch is omitted (silently) by Gregor. Naz., Amphilochius ; and, as not in the Hebrew canon, by Epiphanius (once). But it may be added that the writers who omit Baruch also omit Lamentations, which was reckoned with it as an appendix to Jeremiah ; and there can be little doubt that from a mistake as to the extent of the Hebrew book of Jeremiah, dating from the time of Origen, Baruch and the Letter were generally received in the Greek Church in the 4th and 5th centuries. Didymus (De Trin. I. p. 80) expressly says that the book ‘of Jeremiah and Baruch is one.’

And Reuss states bluntly:

Up to this point I have been collecting the testimonies of the principal Greek Fathers of the second half of the fourth century. We have seen that these testimonies do not at all agree with one another, neither regarding the canon of the Old Testament nor regarding the elements of which the sacred collection of the New Covenant ought to be composed. In other words, we have seen that regarding several writings, the general opinion was not at all fixed.

It’s funny – your Protestant sources seem to have all the evidence in front of them – but they are looking for something else, so they just don’t see it! As an Evangelical, you realize that when scientists begin their investigation of the origin of the universe convinced that ‘There is no God; therefore, the universe was not created’ and proceed from there, it’s not surprising that they just can’t see the evidence for creation. Could the same principle be at work here? The Protestant sources BEGIN with the belief that ‘The Apocryphal books are not Holy Scripture’ and proceed from there; in other words, they are assuming what has yet to be proven! Then, any inconvenient historical facts are obligingly ‘tweaked’ to fit what the investigator already believes! You remember how Josh McDowell opined that there has been “no serious questioning of the twenty-seven books accepted books of the New Testament” since the fourth century – you really have to have some BIG BLINDERS on not to see the serious questioning that went on in the 16th and 17th century! In the same way, Westcott admits that the canons of the 4th century differed from one another and from the modern-day Protestant canon, and yet he so badly wants to find a Protestant canon that he would have you believe that “the Bible of Athanasius is essentially identical with our own”! These folks really, really want the sum of all of these conflicting canons to somehow add up to the 66 books Protestants use today! The fact that no individual unhesitatingly promotes a canon identical to ours is simply unacceptable to them – therefore, it cannot be. But you must beg to differ – the majority of Church Fathers, erudite and otherwise, appear to have accepted at least some of the deuterocanonical books as inspired Scripture, and none of them categorically promoted a canon identical to the Protestant 66 books – some came close, but they always included Baruch in with Jeremiah, or left out Esther, or 2 Peter, or Revelation, or included Wisdom, or the Shepherd of Hermas or the Didache…. That a Hebrew canon existed – that was a fact that many Fathers pointed out, but those same Fathers believed that the ‘ecclesiastical’ books were a part of the “divine record handed down to the churches by the apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit!” Only one Christian championed a canon identical to the Protestant 66 books, but his commitment to it left something to be desired….

For Part 33 please click here

 

On Wednesday within the Octave of Easter

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!

Bible Surgery

Warning: The following contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of surgical procedures performed on Holy Scripture – not for the squeamish or the easily disquieted.

One of the reasons I became Catholic was because of the incredibly wonderful way the Holy Scriptures fit together when read in a Catholic context. As a Protestant, I was used to choppy doctrines – things that sounded good but didn’t quite fit together, verses that had to be ignored because they contradicted our doctrines, doctrines that couldn’t be taken to their logical conclusion because then they would teach something other than what we believed….

I was so impressed by the fact that Catholic doctrine was truly organic; Catholic doctrine fits together and works together the same way living human body is expected to fit together and work together. I started asking myself why Protestant doctrine seemed “chopped up” in places.

One of the things I hadn’t realized as a Protestant was that I was constantly performing outpatient surgery on the Scriptures in an effort to make my doctrinal presuppositions more plausible. In this I was not alone; my spiritual forebears, the Reformers, had at different times and in different places performed major surgery on the Bible in an effort to improve their doctrinal circulation. These surgical experiments did not end well….

Protestants are of course very aware of the dangers of taking Biblical passages out of context. “A text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext” is a favorite saying, invariably quoted when a Christian of a different denominational persuasion is presenting a doctrinal view contrary to that held by the speaker. So much of Protestant apologetics, though, is an unconscious surgical procedure in which passages that one is using to build a case for a given doctrine are removed from their context.

The most common form of Biblical outpatient surgery goes by the technical term “versectomy,” and is generally performed using a surgical instrument called a “tract.” Tracts are used to carefully align chosen verses to make Scripture say something appropriate to the point the surgeon is trying to make. Take, for example, tracts addressing the subject of salvation. Based upon the Evangelical premise that salvation is entirely contingent upon “believing” and “confessing,” tracts of this sort lead the unsuspecting through verses which emphasize the need for these two things to occur, verses such as Romans 5:8, 3:23, 6:23,10:9-10, and 10:13 and very often parts of John 3. The tract will assure you that these verses sum up “what you need to know about salvation.”

Of course, this versectomy provides a very skewed version of salvation. Verses such as John 3:3 (…unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God) and John 3:16 (For God so loved the world…) are used to present some very beautiful truths – that God sent His only Son, that one must believe on Him in order to have everlasting life, and that one must be born again. These three truths are certainly better than none, but the context in which they were uttered, the context of Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus in John 3, gets left behind. Jesus explains that we must be born “of water and the Spirit” and lest anyone misunderstand this, St. John the Evangelist ends the passage by telling us that “After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing.” No connection, Evangelicals will tell you – baptism is something you do AFTER you get saved, not something you do to start the process of salvation.

Surgically removed from their setting, the verses in John 3:7-21 are used to persuade potential Christians that being born again is a mere matter of “believing and confessing.” Note that not only are these verses lifted out of the context of John 3:1-36, but also out of the context of the four Gospels, each of which tells us the story of the baptism of Christ, how the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, and how He was proclaimed God’s beloved Son. Our baptismal experience mirrors Christ’s – as the Spirit descends upon us, we are adopted as God’s own children:

–    For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:13)

–    For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Gal. 3: 26-27)

–    For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. (Rom 8: 15-17)

The verses in John 3:7-21 are taken out of the context of the book of Acts as well, and therefore out of the context of the experience of the early Christians:

Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and
each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:37-38

A certain Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard of the Law, and well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, came to me, and standing near said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very time I looked up at him. “And he said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the Righteous One and to hear an utterance from His mouth. ‘For you will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard.’ Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.’ Acts 22: 12-16

The verses in John 3:7-21 are taken out of the context of the entire New Testament, which teaches us:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. Eph 5:25-27

For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Col 2: 9-14

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3: 4-7

God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 1 Pet 3:20-21

The verses in John 3:7-21 are taken out of the context of the Bible as a whole. In the Old Testament we read these promises:

I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. Ezek 36:23-27

On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness. Zech 13:1

The verses in John 3:7-21 are taken out of the context of Christian history (the medical term for this being a “historectomy”). The first-century Christians wrote:

And let none eat or drink of your Eucharist but such as have been baptized into the name of the Lord, for of a truth the Lord hath said concerning this, Give not that which is holy unto dogs. (Didache: The Teachings of the Apostles)

And the second-century Christians wrote:

I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, “Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter into their mothers’ wombs, is manifest to all. And how those who have sinned and repent shall escape their sins, is declared by Esaias the prophet, as I wrote above; he thus speaks: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from your souls; learn to do well; judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow: and come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white like wool; and though they be as crimson, I will make them white as snow. But if ye refuse and rebel, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” (St. Justin Martyr)

And the third-century Christians wrote:

Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal… This work is variously called grace, and illumination, and perfection, and washing. Washing, by which we cleanse away our sins; grace, by which the penalties accruing to transgressions are remitted; and illumination, by which that holy light of salvation is beheld, that is, by which we see God clearly. (St. Clement of Alexandria)

And the fourth-century Christians wrote:

For prisoners, baptism is ransom, forgiveness of debts, the death of sin, regeneration of the soul, a resplendent garment, an unbreakable seal, a chariot to heaven, a royal protector, a gift of adoption. (St Basil the Great)

Thus a simple versectomy can remove a passage very far indeed from its original context, resecting verses not merely from their Scriptural surroundings, but from their traditional cultural and historical understanding as well. As a “Bible-believing Christian” I was strangely unperturbed by this, more interested in the operation than in the body of truth that I was operating upon.

Of course, versectomies are elective outpatient procedures performed by clergy and laity alike. Old hands at minor operations, most Reformers were up for a challenge. Their Surgeon-in-Chief experimented with epistlectomies, removing entire books from the New Testament because those books did not “preach Christ” (meaning that they preached strange doctrines like “Faith without works is dead.”) The “ecclesiectomy” (also known as a “Church bypass procedure”) was a standard operation in the Reformed operating theater, surgery in which the notion of an authoritative, Spirit-empowered, Tradition-preserving, apostolic Church was excised from Scripture. This operation was followed invariably by concomitant “solafidepexy” and “solascripturapexy” – suturing the doctrines of faith ALONE and Scripture ALONE into the gaping cavity formed by the resection of the Church (necessary to prevent the chest of Protestant doctrine from collapsing altogether). Santificotomies were also performed, in which the delicate doctrinal tissue of sanctification was carefully separated from the organ of justification, lest anyone take literally the words “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father….” Doctrinorrhaphies became commonplace, the surgical suturing of weak evidence for novel doctrines with the catgut of questionable exegesis, appeals to the Greek, and when all else failed, vituperative ranting.

Compared with such major surgical undertakings, modern-day procedures seem tame. Beliefoplasties are all the rage these days among aging mainline denominations trying to stir up interest. The Church that Jesus established views her natural beauty as a gift from her Beloved, and forgoes these “faithlifts.” The faith once delivered to her two millennia ago by her Divine Spouse is something with which she is not free to tamper. She cherishes her body of doctrine and faithfully preserves it as it was entrusted to her. A wise bride, she understands the dangers inherent in every procedure in which a surgical scalpel is substituted for the sword of the Spirit. Scripture is divided, all right – but not rightly.

Yet the popularity of strange Bible surgeries persists. They say that after you’ve had a few versectomies, they don’t even hurt that much. Of course, after you’ve had a few too many, a good old-fashioned lobotomy wouldn’t hurt, either.

On the memorial of St. Paul of the Cross

Deo omnis gloria!

Peace With All Men

“I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God” – this is what many converts, former mavericks finally on the path home, recite as they saddle up for that wild ride known as Catholicism. And we mean it – we truly do believe and profess all the teachings of the Church… inasmuch as we have heard and comprehended those teachings. But we usually aren’t entirely aware of the burrs of Protestant thought that cling to our understanding, as much a part of our lives as the language we speak and the thoughts that pop unexpectedly into our minds. We sometimes lumber along with these undiscovered burrs for years before we recognize them for what they are.

A good example of this was an experience I had after I had already gone through RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) and been reconciled to the Church. My kids and I were at Mass one Sunday morning when Father Jim, midway through his homily, said something about obeying the Ten Commandments. My eyes flew open and my jaw dropped. “We have to obey the Ten Commandments????”

I know what you’re thinking – what kind of a doofus can be a Christian for 45 years and not figure out that we’re supposed to obey the Ten Commandments! My confusion was due to the fact that as a Protestant I had been attending churches that preached justification by faith ALONE and once-saved, always saved. Those churches taught that, according to the book of Romans, we as Christians don’t have to obey the Old Testament law because we are saved by faith ALONE. So stuff like the Ten Commandments is just not for us Christians (they would then go on to say that of course we good Christians would all end up obeying the Ten Commandments inadvertently out of sheer love for God, BUT WE DIDN’T HAVE TO. They put so much emphasis on the DON’T HAVE TO part that that, I’m afraid, is what sticks with the average believer.) It was a real news flash when Father matter-of-factly commented that obeying the Ten Commandments was something that, yes, we were supposed to be doing.

Now, mind you, this was AFTER I’d gone through RCIA. You would think that a topic like this would be considered kind of important, something along the lines of “What must I do to be saved?” and therefore something we might talk about in RCIA. Not necessarily. My RCIA was run by cradle Catholics who could not possibly have known what doctrinal deviations a former Protestant might have been exposed to. They just took it for granted that, this being the 21st century, everybody must have gotten the millennia-old memo that they were supposed to obey the Ten Commandments. I mean, really, why did God even bother issuing them??

It took me a long time to iron out the kinks in my theology, and after nearly 10 years as a Catholic I still check obsessively whenever I approach a new Catholic subject to make sure that I’m aware of orthodox Catholic teaching on that subject – I don’t trust myself because I can’t know what I don’t know! (This is one reason I believe that converts should not expect to be granted positions of theological influence in the Church immediately upon conversion.)

Another one of these pesky burrs would be the Protestant tendency to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think almost all former Protestants bring this attitude with them when they become Catholic – I know I did. It can be a shock when you’re sitting in Mass and the choir starts singing “Amazing Grace.” What??? Is this a Catholic church or a Protestant church??? If I wanted to sing Protestant hymns, I would have stayed Baptist!!!

This ties into yet another burr issue. When I was in the process of becoming Catholic, I started to get angry. After doing some serious reading, I realized that so much of what Protestants teach and repeat about Catholicism is flat-out false. There are two obvious reasons for this. One is ignorance. After all, every Protestant trusts his pastor – if you begin to feel that you can’t, you leave that pastor’s church and find one pastored by someone you can trust. So when your pastor tells you from the pulpit that Catholics believe that they must work their way to heaven – well, of course it must be true. What Protestants don’t realize is that their pastor picked up that theological turd from people he trusted, people like his seminary professors, who themselves picked it up from people they trusted, and so on. Nobody’s deliberately falsifying anything , but nobody’s doing any fact-finding, either. The other explanation for stinkbombs like the “Catholics are working their way to Heaven” fallacy is, unfortunately, ill will and sometimes outright deceit. And that made me angry. When I first became Catholic I loved (still do) to read Catholic apologetics. My only complaint was that so many of the former Protestant/now Catholic apologists were so darn irenic. Sheesh, guys, don’t you know there’s a war on? The anti-Catholic apologists are a bunch of fire-breathing dragons!!! Instead of countering them with Catholic fire-breathing dragons, we have soppy olive-branchers who preface all their apologetic efforts with assurances of how much they love their former Protestant churches and how much they learned there, praising all the great things those churches have done and will do. That really rubbed me the wrong way. Protestants are wrong, you could hear me muttering. Case closed! No further comments allowed! Let’s just show ’em where they’re wrong so they can convert!

Fortunately, over the years I have figured out that my aggressively anti-Protestant attitude was very… Protestant! After all, it’s Protestants who, in many cases, refuse to believe that Catholics could even possibly be Christians. It’s Protestants who “re-baptize” Catholics when they convert to one of the Protestant denominations. It’s Protestants who very often think they need to stay as far away as possible from anything or anyone not affiliated with their denomination because their pristine doctrine might become contaminated by exposure to heresy. It’s Protestants who have a reputation for shooting their wounded, because when those wounded folks go “astray,” they become an embarrassment and a supposed threat to the faithful.

This is not a Catholic perspective on faith.

Catholics sing “Amazing Grace” because there isn’t anything in that hymn that contradicts Catholic theology. Of course it was written by an Anglican evangelical, and of course his church’s theology differs from ours in key respects, but the sentiments expressed in that particular hymn are orthodox and encouraging to Christians trying to fight the good fight. After all, the Catholic answer to “sola fide” was a resounding “SOLA GRATIA!” We don’t throw Amazing Grace out just because a Protestant wrote it. Taking things on a case-by-case basis, we say “This hymn is good – we’ll use it. The Protestant doctrine of ‘faith alone’ is bad – we’ll avoid it.” As St. Justin Martyr, an apologist himself, put it: “Whatever all men have uttered aright is the property of us Christians.”

Protestants are correct about wanting to keep our pristine doctrine uncontaminated by heresy – the Church is committed to doing that. I think, though, that because the Church is an authoritative source of truth, Catholics can be a little less hypersensitive. Lacking an authoritative source of truth (each Protestant’s interpretation of Holy Scripture can hardly be depended upon as an authoritative source of truth!), Protestants feel very insecure when exposed to denominations which teach differently, leading in many cases to a bad allergic reaction. But this is not Christ-like or even sensible. Steve Ray, in his phenomenal Crossing the Tiber, writes a lot about the insistence on an “either/or” attitude in Evangelical Protestantism that messes up a lot of their theology. The Catholic attitude is more of a “both/and.” Anything that is good, even if it was written or designed by a Protestant, is praiseworthy from a Catholic perspective. We don’t reject it out of hand “because it comes from those contaminated Evangelicals!” It was hard for me to drop my Protestant, hypersensitive, “but this isn’t Catholic!” attitude and do what the Church does: sift through everything and keep what is good – with charity.

So, nowadays I try with the help of God the Holy Spirit to emulate those darn irenic Catholic apologists. For, by the grace of God, it has dawned on me that the world doesn’t need more “fire-breathing dragons.” What it needs are more knights doing battle against those dragons, their hearts bowed in prayer, and their feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

On the Feast of St. Monica

Deo omnis gloria