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				The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Geoffrey Moorhouse Edition: Paperback Price: $14.95 Availability: In Stock		40 used & new from $8.25
An excellent look at the Reformation from the perspective of the losers., July 29, 2012 This review is from: The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries (Paperback) The Last Office by Geoffrey Moorhouse examines a bit of history usually overlooked by historians and the popular media - the experience of the Catholic victims of the Protestant Reformation. Use a search tool to web search "persecution + catholics," you will end up with links to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. The impression often left by most history books is that Europe was waiting for the Reformation with bated breath and that once it was on offer, Europeans moved forward into their destiny, except for those areas where the reactionary Catholic Church prevented them from realizing their destiny. What is largely missing from most accounts is any sense of the social dislocation that the Reformation must have caused to those who were quite content with their religion unreformed. Moorhouse fills in this hole by examining the Dissolution of the Monasteries from the perspective of one of the oldest and most powerful and prestigious of the monasteries, the Benedictine Priory of St. Cuthbert's in Durham ("Durham.") Moorhouse divides his book between the history and working life of Durham and the Dissolution of the Monasteries; both are very interesting and well done. Durham housed the remains of St. Cuthbert and Venerable Bede, the father of English Church history. Durham had roots pre-dating the Norman Conquest, but after the Conquest, the Normans built the imposing structure of the Durham Cathedral by which the English monarchs consolidated power in their northern regions. Durham Cathedral was the nominal seat of the Bishop of Durham who uniquely exercised temporal power as the "Prince Bishop" in a "County Palatine." Moorhouse spends substantial time on the development of the architecture of the cathedral, the cult of St. Cuthbert, the life of the monks and other practical dimensions of life that makes history a lived experience. The second part of Moorhouse's book watches the dismantling of a system that had existed for over a thousand years and which had been thoroughly integrated into the life and economy of the country. In this section, the machinations of Thomas Cromwell who wired the Dissolution is fascinating. Cromwell initially went after the smaller monasteries - those making 200 pounds or less in income - before going after the larger monasteries. In fact, by the time that Cromwell got to the larger monasteries, the system had degenerated into a simple shake-down/protection racket where the holders of monasteries were "suggested" to simply hand their benefices over to the King. Since the monks had already seen Henry's willingness to liquidate those who stood in the way of his greed, they usually succumbed to the suggestion. The backdrop of the Dissolution was Henry's greed and willingness to use violence. Moorhouse points out that Cromwell was probably the mastermind behind the idea of appropriating the "untapped" wealth of the property of the Catholic religious orders. As a result, Cromwell became the second most powerful man in England, until he fell from power and was executed by Henry, allegedly for fouling up Henry's fourth marriage, but pace Machiavelli, tyrants often find it advantageous to eliminate those who do their dirty work. Henry comes out of this book as a real villain. Henry's greed and his willingness to judicially murder and extort his subjects for his financial gain is breath-taking. Likewise, the greed of those who did the dirty work, or simply wanted their piece of the action, nobility who because of their connections were able to appropriate a nice monastery that had belonged to a monastic order since the 8th Century is an unedifying spectacle. One gets the image of hyenas swarming to pick clean a carcass, not a great religious "reform." Moorhouse also discusses the often overlooked "Pilgrimage of Grace" which was a mass movement against Henry's "reformation." The Pilgrimage of Grace developed in the North and became a huge mass movement in opposition to Henry's break with traditional Catholicism. As is all too typical of such movements, the leaders were sweet talked into putting down their arms, which then permitted Henry to round up 700 or so of its leaders and have them executed. Other descriptions of the transition suggest how traumatic the transition must have been. Royal Commissioners desecrated the tomb of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede in their search for valuables. Icon-busting Calvinists priors destroyed ancient art in a destructive fury as senseless as the Taliban's dynamiting of the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan. These incidents must have been horrifying and incomprehensible to the monks who had begun their lives with the expectation that the routine of a thousand years would continue on unabated for another thousand. Moorhouse ends with Durham today. The monks are gone. The Cathedral remains. The last bishop and prior of Durham were able political players who managed to stay alive and generally in power despite the shifting religious tides. As other reviewers have noted, Moorhouse seems to find such pragmatism to have been a virtue in that it permitted the institution to salvage something of itself. It seems, though, that ultimately what it salvaged was only a shadow of what it had been, but as Moorhouse points out that "may be the genius of the Anglican way of dealing with awkward situations: the belief that if you patiently tried not to force a potentially divisive issue it just might run out of energy and cease to be troublesome." (p. 240.) This is an excellent book that I recommend for those interested in pre-Reformation English Religious History as well as an under-examined aspect of Reformation history.

Tolerance - the moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

Philip Jenkins writes:

While generations of Protestants have believed that the Catholic Church in 1500 (say) was irredeemably corrupt and widely hated, Duffy shows its remarkable vigor and popularity. Instead of being a closed and arcane business for clergy alone, church life involved virtually every lay person, through a complex network of fraternities and devotional societies. Destroying that structure took a couple of generations, and a great deal of state-directed armed violence, mainly motivated by royal and aristocratic greed. After reading Duffy, you will never again accept without question the standard mythology of the Reformation – in Britain at least – as a spontaneous popular revolution. It was a vast act of political and cultural repression and plunder, inflicted by a cynical elite, which may or may not have accepted the new theologies. Duffy’s other recent work includes The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village.

When we think of the Reformation in terms of Luther and the church door, it’s salutary to think of some very different images that reflect how the revolution affected everyday people. Duffy reports one incident that occurred in 1549, when the up and coming landowner Walter Raleigh was riding through a Devonshire village (this was the father of the famous explorer). Seeing an old woman carrying her rosary beads, he ordered her to get rid of them immediately under threat of criminal penalty. The woman told her neighbors that “except she would leave her beads and give over holy bread and water the gentleman would burn them out of their houses and spoil them”. The enraged people rioted, almost lynching Raleigh, and order was restored only when the forces of the state “ruthlessly butchered” the villagers. Liberty of conscience is a wondrous thing.

Does this guy hate all statues? Or is it just statues of the Mother of God that make him crazy?

Honestly, I'm fascinated by this Youtube video as a bit of cultural anthropology. This black pastor - who has a congregation that dresses like Muslims, nothing wrong with that, except to ask if they have adopted a Muslim attitude on iconophobia, and, besides, but what gives with his sect? - takes a hammer to a statue of St. Therese of Lisieux on the grounds that it is really a statue of Mary, Jesus's mom.

Are all statues bad to this guy - even statues of human beings, such as St. Therese and/or Mary?

If his rule is to destroy statues that he thinks people worship, does it matter if it can be shown that there are people who don't worship the statue, or is it his view that any statue that is being worshipped has to be destroyed?

What about non-religious images - team mascots, for example - are they the object of worship and subject to the hammer treatment?

Here's the video.



Also, the dramatic reading at the end was interesting.

Calvin and the Development of Freedom of Conscience.

The usual narrative is that Americans owe their ideas of Freedom of Conscience to their Protestant heritage.  I think that there is a great deal of truth to this, inasmuch as Freedom of Conscience seems to be an implicit value in democracy and grass-roots democracy was nurtured in many ways in the tradition of electing pastors and self-government in the congregational and presbyterian ecclesiastical systems.

But sometimes the case gets overstated.  The Protestant Reformation was not about a universalized right of the average person to Freedom of Conscience.  Rather, it was about the right of some people - Luther, Calvin, etc. - to their Freedom of Conscience, with everyone else going along for the ride.

This is a very interesting essay at Called to Communion by Dr. David Anders about how learning about John Calvin made the author Catholic.  Dr. Anders writes:

Calvin’s most important contribution to Geneva was the establishment of the Consistory – a sort of ecclesiastical court- to judge the moral and theological purity of his parishioners. He also persuaded the council to enforce a set of “Ecclesiastical Ordinances” that defined the authority of the Church, stated the religious obligations of the laity, and imposed an official liturgy. Church attendance was mandatory. Contradicting the ministers was outlawed as blasphemy. Calvin’s Institutes would eventually be declared official doctrine.


Calvin’s lifelong goal was to gain the right to excommunicate “unworthy” Church members. The city council finally granted this power in 1555 when French immigration and local scandal tipped the electorate in his favor. Calvin wielded it frequently. According to historian William Monter, one in fifteen citizens was summoned before the Consistory between 1559 and 1569, and up to one in twenty five was actually excommunicated.1 Calvin used this power to enforce his single vision of Christianity and to punish dissent.

And:

Calvin took very seriously the obligation of the laity to submit and obey. “Contradicting the ministers” was one of the most common reasons to be called before the Consistory and penalties could be severe. One image in particular sticks in my mind. April, 1546. Pierre Ameaux, a citizen of Geneva, was forced to crawl to the door of the Bishop’s residence, with his head uncovered and a torch in his hand. He begged the forgiveness of God, of the ministers and of the city council. His crime? He contradicted the preaching of Calvin. The council, at Calvin’s urging, had decreed Ameaux’s public humiliation as punishment.


Ameaux was not alone. Throughout the 1540s and 1550s, Geneva’s city council repeatedly outlawed speaking against the ministers or their theology. Furthermore, when Calvin gained the right to excommunicate, he did not hesitate to use it against this “blasphemy.” Evangelicals today, unaccustomed to the use of excommunication, may underestimate the severity of the penalty, but Calvin understood it in the most severe terms. He repeatedly taught that the excommunicated were “estranged from the Church, and thus, from Christ.”4

It wasn't burning at the stake, but, then, neither was the Roman Inquisition for the most part.

Holding Paper - R.C. Sproul.

R. C. Sproul is one of the big names in Reformed theology/apologetics.  Unfortunately, as David Meyer - who is leaving the Reformed PCA for Catholicism after engaging some theological heavy lifting - points out, Sproul is not above "playing to the base" by setting up strawmen to knock down.  Meyer's writes:

On May 14, I received one of R.C. Sproul Jr’s “Kingdom Notes” in my inbox that all but said that it was written to me. The Kingdom Notes are sent out by R.C. once or twice a week and just give a little thought from R.C. or they answer one of the “Ask R.C.” questions. A whole string of emails with Keith Mathison began by me asking R.C. a question about Sola Scriptura which he forwarded to his friend and co-worker Keith Mathison. (Who has been very helpful and treated me as a brother in Christ)In RCJr.'s seeming response to me he discarded my specific question about Sola Scriptura and made it into something he could answer easier.)


I was disappointed at what he said. Not only with the attitude displayed, but also with the seeming lack of knowledge of Trent and just plain poor argumentation. I guess I expected better from him. He seemed to have the attitude of his (and his father’s) mentor Dr. John Gerstner in his screed A Primer on Roman Catholicism which is the apologetic equivalent of “Catholicism is bad, everyone who is smart knows it, and anyone who disagrees with me does not deserve respect, neener neener Catholics are evil.” (I would recommend this booklet by Dr. Gerstner by the way for anyone that wants reasons to convert to Catholicism.)

Apart from the overall tone that Meyer describes, here are some problematic passages from Sproul's e-mail:

Their worship may have pleasing smells and bells, but it culminates in an abomination, the immolation of the Lord Jesus Christ in the mass

This is, of course, a classic 17th Century trope, which "plays to the base."  As Meyer explains:

This is unfair. You should know better that this is not how Catholics would describe their position. They say that the Mass is the same moment in time as Christ's immolation at Calvary. You believe as much about the worship we offer in church in the sense of being lifted up to heaven during worship. (I have heard as much from listening to you in dozens of "basement Tapes") We are then "outside time" in a sense when we participate in Christs body and blood.

So why falsely characterize Catholics as participating in an "abomination"? They see themselves as being at the foot of the cross and at Jesus side as he offers a pleasing sacrifice to the father. Was Jesus not immolated? I don't get your position.

Here's another - worse - problem with Sproul's e-mail. Sproul writes:

Which brings us to the theological. I typically direct these folks to the sixth session of the Council of Trent. Trent was convened to deal with issues arising out of the Reformation. It is, as even Vatican II and the current Roman Catechism affirm, unchangeable dogma not just for the church, but for all within its pale. And it, the sixth session, says that those who affirm that a man is justified apart from the works of the law should be damned. I have yet to meet a potential or actual convert to Rome who is willing to agree with this bald damning of the Biblical doctrine of how we have peace with God. And yet, by joining Rome they formally confess the truth of this damnable doctrine.

The problem is that Trent no where anathematizes the doctrine of salvation apart from "works of the law." In fact, this is a pretty stupid thing for Sproul to write inasmuch as Trent didn't require circumcision or kosher laws as a requirement for salavation. Trent says in relevant part:

Canon 1.


If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law,[110] without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

So works alone won't do it.

Canon 9.


If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone,[114] meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema.

So faith alone without cooperation with grace - i..e., without "faith working through love" as St. Paul put it - won't do it either.

And:

Canon 19.


If anyone says that nothing besides faith is commanded in the Gospel, that other things are indifferent, neither commanded nor forbidden, but free; or that the ten commandments in no way pertain to Christians, let him be anathema.

Canon 20.

If anyone says that a man who is justified and however perfect is not bound to observe the commandments of God and the Church, but only to believe,[122] as if the Gospel were a bare and absolute promise of eternal life without the condition of observing the commandments, let him be anathema.

Again, faith alone - for even the demons believe that Christ is the Son of God - isn't sufficient.

None of this talks about "works of the law."  It does talk about the 10 Commandments, which presumably even R.C. Sproul considers to be God's law that muct be obeyed, unless Sproul is fully into anti-nomianism, which is certainly not the case.

This is really poor stuff for a person who has written as many books as Sproul has.

Modern Pharaisaism - Calvinist Division

Alistair Begg - a pastor and broadcaster of "Truth for Life" - explains why he can't sign the Manhattan Declaration, notwithstanding his attendance at the conference that gave rise to the declaration:

Why then have I chosen not to append my name as one of the initial signers? Because of my convictions about the nature of the Gospel, and the importance of Christian co-belligerency being grounded in it. The activity of the Christian as a citizen engaging in co-belligerency over civic and moral issues is not the same as the declaration of Christians mutually recognizing the reality of each other’s faith. This is what I wrote to Chuck Colson:

“Thank you for sending me the amended document. I care deeply about these issues, but I cannot in conscience sign on with those with whom I have fundamental disagreements on the nature of the Gospel. (I just re-read Calvin in the Institutes, Book IV, section 18.)”

This particular section of Calvin’s Institutes provides us with his response to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass.

It was maintained at the meeting in New York that this document was not to be viewed as a product of ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together). However, in light of the evangelical leadership behind the declaration, it is hard not to take into consideration the most recent ECT paper on “The Blessed Virgin Mary in Christian Life and Faith”. In examining the place of Mary, the writers “acknowledge the primary authority of Holy Scripture.” This at least gives the impression of a concession to Roman Catholicism. Protestant theology affirms the sole authority of Scripture. Sadly contemporary evangelicalism seems little concerned with the solas of The Reformation and is therefore susceptible to initiatives, which make something other than the Gospel, the basis of unity and the focus of our declarations.

I am reminded in this connection of the declaration of Jude.

“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”

It is quite common for people to view The Reformation as simply a disagreement between two groups of men. The protestant martyrs and their monuments testify to the fact that they died, not on account of ecclesial differences, but because the issue was the way of salvation. (Interestingly, exactly the same was true of the Roman Catholic martyrs!)

Are we wise to lay aside crucial historical differences of eternal significance so as to secure temporal advantages? George Smeaton, in his classic work on the atonement observes, “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of a whole kingdom from temporal evil.”

I do not believe it is possible to embrace the premises of ecumenical strategy and still draw the conclusions of evangelical orthodoxy.

In accord with others who have chosen not to sign, my reservation is not with the issues themselves, or in standing with others who share the same concerns, but it is in signing a declaration along with a group of leading churchmen, when I happen to believe that the teaching of some of their churches is in effect a denial of the biblical gospel. I wonder whether it might not have been more advantageous for evangelicals to unite on this matter, rather than seeking cooperation with segments from Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Latter Day Saints. The necessary co-belligerence, as far as I’m concerned, can never be rooted in a Gospel other than that which has been given to us.

Here are some comments on his blog:

Alistair, I agree with you that the Roman Catholic Church isn't of Christ. However, I believe that all Christians should band together against this legislative onslaught! All churches, pulpits & preachers are under attack. If you don't believe that listen to some of your own preaching about the empty churches of Europe! Europe has become a mission field! The United States is next. Even Calvin fled to Switzerland rather than take up the struggle. Is this what we're supposed to do?

And:

While the patriotic side of me, which mourns the passing of our great nation's Judeo/Christian heritage, yearns to take action with those who share my political leanings, I must regroup and remember that God has already told us who we are to partner with, or not. We are not to be yoked together with unbelievers, which most certainly would include the Roman Catholic Church, who, by her own admission, has condemned Protestants as 'anathema'. What communion has light with darkness? None, no matter what that darkness is called. By signing that document, however politically beneficial it may seem, it would still be partnering with the aspostate Roman Catholic Church. The gospel must come first, before our political desires, and the true Church must never yoke herself to any other but Christ Himself.

This provides an interesting insight into a mindset that still exists.

This kind of Christian sectarian in-fighting has a long history.  In fact, this kind of thing led to the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul.  We can see this alluded to in the First Epistle of Clement:

But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours; and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience.

Some scholars argue that this is a reference to the possibility that Peter and Paul were betrayed by Christian sects that were hostile to the church headed by Peter and Paul.

Christians clearly still have a lot of work to do in order to advance the message and reality of Christ's love, which involves the ideal of Christian unity.

For Some People it is Always the 19th Century

Francis Beckwith linked this series of talks by Pastor Tony Bartolucci that critique Beckwith's book on his return to Catholicism, "Return to Rome."  Beckwith is very charitable in saying that he is honored by the attention paid to his work, even thought the attention is critical.

Pastor Bartolucci begins his talk with this story from a slightly older pastor, the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen as a way of setting up what he sees is the problem. Pastor Bartolucci observes:

During his introduction Dr. Bahnsen states:

I am going to preach a sermon to you . . . that in all honesty I never in all my life thought that I would do. I cannot imagine needing to preach this sermon. But I must. . . . I must preach, and others as well must preach, about a problem we are facing in our day and age that really is quite unexpected.

I grew up in a Roman Catholic community. . . . The vast majority of people around me who were religious . . . were not very much Evangelical Bible-believing Christians, they were Roman Catholics. . . . I knew what it meant for them to fornicate, to swear, to be drunk, to go to confession, have their mass, and to repeat it week after week after week. I knew what it was for them to adore Mary, to learn in their Missals how to pray to her. . . .

I didn't think people found Roman Catholic theology all that credible. When I saw people changing religiously it was in two ways as, I grew up. They either were converted--they left the Roman Catholic way of looking at things, or paganism, and came into the church of Jesus Christ believing that their sins were forgiven by the grace of God through the intercession of Jesus Christ and his substitutionary atonement--they either became converted and Christians as we understand that born-again experience, or they left the Catholic Church and became even more pagan.

The problem according to Pastor Bartolucci pace Dr. Bahnsen is the inexplicable and mysterious phenomenon of apparently normal Protestants exchanging their living faith for the dead faith of Catholicism, filled as it is with unregenerate sinners of the kind that Dr. Bahnsen, and it seems Pastor Bartolucci, grew up with.

To which I noted in Beckwith's comments, "Wow!"  You just don't expec that kind of screed to be actually uttered by people living today.

Which lead commenter "Paul" to post: 

Peter, I have listened to all of part 1. I'm looking at the transcript now and I'm having trouble finding the "anti-catholic diatribe". Maybe you could provide an example or perhaps define "anti-catholic diatribe"?

To which I responded, after picking out some of the obvious statements made by Pastor Bartolucci (in italics):

With all due respect, are you serious?

I hate to say this , but if a person can't see that Pastor Baroloucci's plays on classic Anti-Catholic tropes, that person needs to take the beam out of hi own eye before ever complaining about the mote in his neighbor's eye.

The difference between playing the bigot card and making a non-bigoted, reasoned argument for the superiority of one system over another in general turns on the extent to which one makes an appeal to the themes and tropes of bigotry. Such tropes are invariably used to trigger sub-rational emotional responses of agreement rather than to advance a reasoned argument. We know, for example, that one such silly anti-catholic trope among Protestants is the notion that Catholicism is a dead religion of works. Protestants have essentially read Catholics into the role of Jewish legalism in their misreading of Paul.

So, not even dealing with Pastor Bartoloucci’s many strawmen arguments, but focusing on his use of subrational tropes that appeal to traditions of Protestant bigotry, we see:

(Quoting Dr. Bahnsen:) I knew what it meant for them to fornicate, to swear, to be drunk, to go to confession, have their mass, and to repeat it week after week after week.


Now, isn’t that a classic? Those Catholics, drinking and fornicating all week – unlike the upscale and well-behaved Protestants – only to go to confession on Saturday, just to start over again like the foreign riff-raff that they are.

Because, obviously, no properly American Protestant would ever fornicate and drink during the week.

Come one, this one goes back to the 19th Century. I’m amazed that it is still being recycled in the 21st. It’s such a cliché that it is painful to read.

This isn’t quoting Father Flannery over a drink at the local bar.

I’m sorry was that an Irish priest? Drinking? At a bar?

How like them Irish Catholics with their weekly fornicating and drinking.

Because, again, we know that a good reformed Presbyterian would never go to a bar for a drink.

But them Irish with their priests, you know how they are.

Seriously?

In fact, as a new Christian I held the Roman Catholic Church in contempt. Not the rank and file of the people mind you, but the system and those that promoted it. I looked at it as a false religion that promised heaven but delivered hell.


Yup, he’s got no problem with the rank and file, except for their weekly fornicating and drinking and going for drinks with Father Flannigan at the local bar to talk about Nostra Aetate.

But, heck, it’s not anything that having the “true gospel” won’t fix, because no one with the “true gospel” ever goes out and drinks or fornicates because all saved Protestants are going to Heaven and never misbehave.


So sorry, Francis, they could not have stayed within the stench of dead religiosity, and those that go back to that prove that they were not regenerate in the first place.

Right, so those like me are just plain idiots who can’t smell the stench of dead religiosity. How weird that I don’t find it dead.

Hey, I guess I’m one of those weekly fornicating, drinking and swearing guys.

The American Episcopal Church is to Rome what marijuana is to heroin. It serves as a nice stepping stone to a greater high (or a greater evil)

Nothing hateful, bigoted or anti-catholic in that analogy.

You have to admire Pastor Bartoloucci's willingness to smear the the Episcopalians with the anti-catholic brush.


Regarding the singer Dion’s return to Catholicism: I sat there staring at the computer in dismay. I literally felt the blood run from my face. How could he do such a thing?

Perhaps, Dion maturely found a more complete truth in the Catholic Church?

Nah, that's not possible. The answer must be that Dion's been perverted by Satan, like all those "rank and file" Catholics, with their weekly drinking and fornicating and confessions, but likes the rank and file.

At some point it all begins to sound like the Left who will describe American soldiers as rapists and murderers, but will always emphasize that they "support the troops."

No one was more key in that regard than a man that I would later weep over (along with his wife) for his defection to Roman Catholicism.

And that wasn’t when he was a child. But, then, who can blame him when his former church leader starts to run around with drinkers and fornicators.

Hey, what was wrong with Pastor Bartoloucci if he only learned that one of his major supporters had never been regenerated until after that man had left for Catholicism. What if everyone in his congregation is like this man and isn't entirely regenerated?
 
Cue spooky music.


There is no life-saving Gospel in Rome!

That simply hasn’t been my experience, but what do I know, I'm Catholic and so by definition part of that weekly drinking and fornicating and confessing crowd that takes the old Irish priest out to get bombed.

Hey, and I'm Irish also, so obviously I'm an alcoholic.

I've jokingly stated that Pope Benedict should award him a plenary indulgence for what he has done to advance the Church's efforts to bring Protestants "back home to Rome!"

Stop it, Pastor, you're killing me!

There's nothing that doesn't bring a bunch of 17th Century Protestants a good belly-laugh like an indulgence joke.

These are all very, very old anti-catholic tropes. I have no problem with anyone celebrating the strengths of Protestantism. Give me a few seconds and I could dash out my paean of praise to Protestantism. But this one sided appeal to the popular prejudice of Protestants is unchristian to say the least.

Paul, of course, could not see why these statements weren't merely fair and true expressions of plain-to-see facts.  So, I explained, and then Paul wanted to bring up ghastly things said by Catholics, to which I asked if that made it "all good" for Pastor Bartolucci to say.  On reflection, I guess this means that Paul is able to spot bigotry when he wants.

Anyhow, for a ride through the 19th Century, take a look at the comments, particularly when the uber-Calvinist shock cadre arrive.

Recreating the History of Early Christian Theology in 40 Comments.


Victor Reppert at Dangerous Ideas posts a comment about whether Marian devotion does not constitute "worship"simply because the Catholic Church says so.


 Dialogue ensues.  The logic of the comment thread requires those who want to depict Catholics as "idolatrous" are subsequently forced to deny that Mary is the "Mother of God" and eventually to recreate the Nestorian position that Mary was the mother of a human Jesus but not of a divine Jesus. This, of course, is an unwinding of basic Trinitarian and Christological doctines held by virtually all Western Christians from the 5th Century and thereafter.

My mission completed, I abandon the field.

Update:

Mark Shea offers his pithy Marian analysis.

Thoughts on Reformation Day

I've often been puzzled by the odd coincidence of Reformation Day - which commemorates the anniversary of Luther's nailing of the "95 Theses" to the Wittenburg church door - falling on Halloween. Odd timing,  I would normally think.

Then, this year it dawned on me: "95 theses"...protest against indulgences...indulgences for those in purgatory....prayers for the dead...Feast of All Souls....Halloween.

D'oh!

Sometimes it takes a while.

Called to Communion has Stanley Hauerwas' essay on Reformation Day up.  Hauerwas makes a number of points that seem to connect with a book I've recently read by Pamela Eisenbaum entitled "Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle."  Eisenbaum is a Jewish professor of Bible Studies at a Christian seminary.  Her thesis is that Luther severely distorted Paul into an anti-semitic, Torah-hater by ignoring the pro-law statements in Paul's letters and by being ignorant of the world view that Paul was writing from.  Our view of the stark dichotomy of Law v. Grace comes from Luther, not Paul, who would have seen grace in the law, which incidentally St. Thomas Aquinas taught in his Commentary on Romans:

For even in the Old Law faith was necessary, just as it is in the New: “You who fear the Lord believe him” (Sir 2:8); “I believed; therefore I have spoken” (Ps l16:l0). And indeed, works are required in the New Law, namely, the works of certain sacraments, as commanded in Luke 22(:19), “Do this in memory of me” and of moral observances: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only” (Jas 1:22).

According to Hauerwas, Luther's polemical approach had a rhetorical objective of making a caricature of Jews in order to have Catholics take the place of Jews in Luther's reading of the New Testament:

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Later, Hauerwas explains what this has done to Christian-Jewish relations:

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther — at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

Hauerwas' observation is that Luther turned Jews into Catholics, but the buried lede is that Luther turned Catholics into Jews by the same caricaturization.  This caricature lives on: within the last several weeks, at a Protestant theology discussion group, I heard one Protestant member casually describe Catholicism in terms no different than those which St. Paul is supposed to have used for the "Jews": legalistic, ritualistic, without grace, etc.

Of course, this rhetorical approach by which one Christian group plays the "they are more Jewish than we are game" has a long provenance.  Another Jewish professor (of history), Paula Fredriksen in her very excellent "Augustine and the Jews" points out that it was a common trope of internecine Jewish "slanging" for one Jewish group to accuse another of being "legalistic", "carnal" and "sinful", which the Christians were more than happy to pick up on in their dispute with the Jews.  On the other hand, when Christian heretical groups used those tropes to undermine the Old Testament in order to argue that the God of Christ was not the God of Moses, then the stakes involved in bad-mouthing the Jews reached a new high because the game was no longer a "zero sum" game of Christian v. Jew, but was one were everyone could lose when it was Christian and Jew v. Manichee. Thus, according to Fredriksen, Augustine had to re-order the game by defusing as best he could the casual anti-semitism that had - and, unfortunately, continued to - plague Christian apologetics.

It is interesting how a Jewish re-assessment of Reformation approaches to Paul and Augustine may further intra-Christian dialogue.

Faith and Works

Ken Pulliam, Ph.d. - a "deconverted" Evangelical - writes:

Another reason for my de-conversion from evangelical Christianity was my realization that the Bible is a very ambiguous book, i.e., subject to many different interpretations.

Kevin Bauder, the President of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, would certainly disagree with me. He has written an article on the Perspicuity of Scripture available online. Perspicuity, which means “clearness or lucidity, as of a statement” was a major tenant of the Reformation. The Reformers argued that one could read and understand the major teachings of the Bible without any help from the Roman Church. The RCC, on the other hand, maintained, that they, and only they, could properly interpret the Scriptures.

So which is it? Is the Bible unambiguous or is it open to a variety of opposing interpretations?

Parenthetically, it is interesting how often it is over-emphasizing a particular issue that pushes people into crises of faith. I know a former Seventh Day Adventist for whom it was the incoherent dating of the years from something like the fall of Jerusalem to the birth of Christ that caused him to leave the SDA. For others, it is the clearly insupportable claim that the Bible is not ambiguous.

Obviously, it is ambiguous. Why shouldn't it be? It was written over hundreds of years by a plethora of authors who wrote from the background assumptions of cultures long vanished. Again, why shouldn't it be ambiguous? Heck, Shakespeare is ambiguous.

Pulliam also notes this bit of dissent on the issue of the role of faith in salvation:

1. What exactly is faith?

a. Is it merely intellectual assent? Members of the Grace Evangelical Society answer in the affirmative. On their website, one reads:

Faith is the conviction that something is true. To believe in Jesus (“he who believes in Me has everlasting life”) is to be convinced that He guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him for it (John 4:14; 5:24; 6:47; 11:26; 1 Tim 1:16).

No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life (Rom 4:5; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5). This saving transaction between God and the sinner is simply the giving and receiving of a free gift (Eph 2:8-9; John 4:10 ; Rev 22:17 ).

b. Is it intellectual assent plus submission to the Lordship of Christ? John MaCarthur and many strict Calvinists would say, Yes.

MacArthur writes that faith ‘encompasses obedience,’ and that obedience is ‘an integral part of saving faith.’ Indeed, obedience is bound up in the very 'definition of faith,’ being a constitutive element in what it means to believe.’ Thus any ‘concept of faith that excludes obedience’ must be rejected because obedience is ‘indivisibly wrapped up in the idea of believing.’ In fact, ‘the character of true faith’ is nothing less than the ‘higher righteousness’ of the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-11.8. MacArthur even suggests that obedience is ‘synonymous with’ faith. (See The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith?, pp. 173-176)

McArthur's definition of faith is a most Catholic understanding. Faith means a "living faith" means "faithfulness." Father William Most makes this point in a number of writings, including this one on Paul:

Paragraph in Context:

[P.15] Further, we must understand faith as Paul means it. It is not, as Luther thought, just confidence that the merits of Christ apply to me, or taking Christ as your personal Savior, so that after that one can sin freely and it will not hurt him. If we read all places where Paul speaks of faith, keep notes, add them up, the result is this: 1)If God speaks a truth, in faith we believe it in our minds; 2)If God makes a promise, in faith we are certain He will keep it; 3)If God tells us to do something, we do it, we obey. Paul thus speaks (Rom 1:5) of the "obedience of faith", the obedience that faith is; 4)all is to be done in love. (A standard Protestant reference work, Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement,p.333, gives the same picture of faith as we have just done). This is vastly different from Luther's mistake. He thought after getting faith, one can sin freely. He told his lieutenant Melanchthon (Epistle 501): "Even if you sin greatly, believe still more greatly." No, faith includes obedience. So it does not exempt from obedience. In Gal 5:19-21 (cf. 1 Cor 6:9-10; Eph 5:5) Paul gives a list of the most important great sins, and adds that those who do these will not inherit the kingdom of God. When we inherit from parents, we have not earned it, but we could have earned to lose it, to be disinherited.

Again, I'm surprised to see MacArthur's take line up with Father Most's. Given the venting on by some in the Reformed camp about "works righteousness," you'd think there would be more distance.

Great Moments in Christian Love

A "Truly Reformed" guy is upset that various Calvinist publications dare to think that Anne Rice's turn away from atheism isn't a bad thing:

Puzzlingly, Anne Rice continues to get a "pass" from Christian/oid writers. I remarked on this phenomenon once here, at its most baffling (WORLD magazine). Now up it comes again here, in a conversion story that, strikingly, features no conversion. Not to Christ, anyway, though it's titled "An atheist returns to Christ." It's really "An atheist returns to Romanism," with its ritualism and false gospel of works. The article is an interesting-enough read, but a sad one. Here's the puzzling punchline: "[Rice] describes sensing with her entire being that she was surrounded by God's love. The next day she went to Mass for the first time in 38 years. Her re-commitment to Christianity began with that miracle shortly before Christmas of 1998, but was not completed until 2002." No, I didn't delete anything. Going to the blasphemous re-sacrifice of Christ = "re-commitment to Christianity." There is nothing in that about the Biblical Christ who saves. But we read that God talks to Rice, tells her to write more books. Not very good books, though, judging by the one I read (to be reviewed later). Towards the end of the article, we read that "to be a Christian is ...to act differently." Well. There y'go. It's all about works after all!

He links to an earlier post, wherein he reported the reason he was allowing his World subscription to end:

Then there was the interview with "convert" Ann Rice, best known for her Interview with a Vampire series, her baldly immoral storytelling.

The article was titled Into the Light, and subtitled "Novelist Anne Rice leaves the vampire Lestat and embraces Christ, 'the ultimate supernatural hero'." You may know the story; Rice became a Roman Catholic. That's right, a Roman Catholic.

Note very carefully: the title and subtitle express a spiritual evaluation of Rice's spiritual condition.

Now, I don't doubt that there are Roman Catholics who do not understand and do not believe the RCC's damning dogmas, and are genuine, if mistaught, Christians. WORLD is ostensibly coming from a Reformed perspective, and its writers and reporters presumably know this also. So naturally, with their readership in mind, the interviewer is going to ask Rice about her conversion, right? What is Rice's understanding of the Gospel, what does it mean to her to be saved, to be a Christian? What drew her to Rome? Just the natural, basic questions every Christian will wonder, all perfectly capable of being asked in a friendly, respectful way.

No. Not at all. Not even close.

Follow-up: in WORLD 's blog's post on this article, I object in posts 3 and 6. In #10 the reporter herself, Lynne Vincent, gives the most clueless sideways response (around me, not to me) that I can imagine, sniffing that it is a "turn off" to examine a testimony when you're reporting on a testimony.

Read that again. Then say it with me: "Huh?" You make sense of that.

But again I note: WORLD had no trouble concluding in its title that Rice had indeed gone "into the light," and had indeed embraced the Lord Jesus Christ. It is just that readers are denied information that would help us understand the basis for that evaluation. Every Roman Catholic -- in fact, let's broaden that and say every "Christian" cultist -- will claim to have embraced Jesus Christ. Mormons, Oneness Pentecostals, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses. We can only understand what folks mean by asking questions. It isn't rude, it isn't loveless -- in fact, it is respectful. It is saying, "I respect you enough not to assume that I know what you mean without asking."

But it's a "turn off." To a reporter. One can only sigh and shake one's head.

Putting aside this homage to the 17th Century, the Anne Rice story ought to be significant to all believers.

For example, it is instructive that Rice wrote her vampire stories during a time when she was a committed athiest. With a true atheist mindset, she posited people with superhuman existence - immortality, power, the ability to define their own morals - and what she came up with was a picture of nihilistic, frustrated, bored, empty people ineffectually looking for redemption from their near-godlike existence. She writes on her blog:

Interview with the Vampire, the novel that brought me to public attention, is about the near despair of an alienated being who searches the world for some hope that his existence can have meaning. His vampire nature is clearly a metaphor for human consciousness or moral awareness. The major theme of the novel is the misery of this character because he cannot find redemption and does not have the strength to end the evil of which he knows himself to be a part. This book reflects for me a protest against the post World War II nihilism to which I was exposed in college from 1960 through 1972. It is an expression of grief for a lost religious heritage that seemed at that time beyond recovery.

And:

The existence of my Goth audience continues to create misunderstanding. Yet I remain convinced that many of the young “Goth” readers who write to me are hungering for transcendence. They gravitate to these books because they find their environment sterile, secular, and materialistic and to a large extent unsatisfying. They “identify” with my heroes as my heroes search for beauty and for truth. These young readers have deluged me with poems and paintings in past years. They, as well as other readers, express openness to the painting, music, history and philosophy discussed in my books. These readers are looking for something enduring and something meaningful, and I cherish their response to these books.

And:

For me, the entire body of my earlier work, reflects a movement towards Jesus Christ. In 2002, I consecrated my work to Jesus Christ. This did not involve a denunciation of works that reflected the journey. It was rather a statement that from then on I would write directly for Jesus Christ. I would write works about salvation, as opposed to alienation; I would write books about reconciliation in Christ, rather than books about the struggle for answers in a post World War II seemingly atheistic world.

It is interesting that some of the best books about the shallow trap of atheism are written by atheism. For example, when I read Ian McEwan's "Atonement," it was clear to me that the author was an atheist and that he had accurately described the experience of an atheist who needs forgiveness and redemption and has no way to get the redemption and forgiveness he desperately needs. "Atonement" is in its way a persuasive description of the trap that atheism puts its true adherents - at least those who are not unconsciously positing a way out of their materialims - into self-deception.

So, Rice ought to be recognized as a person on a quest - as are all people in her who find themselves in her situation. She, at least, recognized the problems inherent in materialism and nihilism and moved forward and out of it; we can pray and hope that her legions of Gothic fans can realize that the 'vampire' lifestyle is the problem and not the solution.

Things I’ve learned about Calvinism

Pastor Jason Stillman at De Regnis Duobus has been doing a compare and contrast study of Catholic and Reformed theological positions concerning evergreen topics like “sola fide” and “sola scriptura.” Most of these discussions turn into polemical food fights pretty quickly, but Jason’s blog has kept to a pretty high level of discussion, with one or two notable exceptions.

Most discussions about sola fide – faith alone – focus on “justification,” which Calvinism and, so far as I know, every other version of Protestantism, teaches is only the initial step of the process which leads the believer to the Beatific Vision, Glory or Heaven. The focus on justification leads to the arguments whereby some Protestants favorably compare their doctrines to Catholicism, which is described as a “works righteous” system where the believer is on a constant treadmill trying to “earn” Heaven. In these dialogues, Protestantism is presented as being all about faith where the believer by faith alone is guaranteed salvation without regard to their conduct because good works are the fruit of faith.

What gets left out of the stereotypical presentation is the process of “sanctification” where works do play a role in the believer’s entry into the Beatific Vision, glory or heaven. To the extent that sanctification is acknowledged, it is treated as something pro forma – like the senior year of High School. In fact, one commenter on De Regnis Duobus likened all of life after "justification" to "running out the clock."

The actual creedal statements of Confessional Protestantism are not so dismissive of sanctification. For example, the Lutheran Book of Concord reads:

[32] Thus, also, Holy Scripture testifies that God, who has called us, is so faithful that, when He has begun the good work in us, He also will preserve it to the end and perfect it, if we ourselves do not turn from Him, but firmly retain to the end the work begun, for which He has promised His grace, 1 Cor. 1, 9; Phil. 1, 6 [1 Pet. 5, 10]; 2 Pet. 3, 9; Heb. 3, 2.

And the Calvinist Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 11 reads:

V. God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified; and although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may by their sins fall under God's Fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of his countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.

Now, certainly, we can finesse these statements, but they imply that we have to do something to maintain a perfect righteousness with God and that the state of perfect righteousness can be lost, regained or maintained by what we do, i.e., by our works.

Needless to say, this doesn’t square with the conventional account I have heard in person and read on the internet.

Although it was hard to focus the discussion off of the favored ground of justification onto sanctification, I made some headway at De Regnis and learned that according to Calvinism (a) it is necessary for us to work at good works in order to enter heaven and (b) that Calvinism can be described as involving putting a person on a “treadmill” of works.

I never received a satisfactory answer on how “sola fide” plus sanctification departed in substance from the Catholic position - except insofar as Calvinism teaches that justification cannot be lost - because the discussion would always get jerked back to justification by faith and how our works were dirty rags, etc., etc., etc.

I also learned that Calvinist theology posits that God is actually and truly in fact limited by an external covenant, which has the effect of denying the classic definitions of God, namely his immutability, infinity, oneness and simplicity. The effect of this conception is conceive of God as being potentially subject to change because He is composed of different wills and nature that seem to conflict with each other, such that His justice, which would damn everyone, conflicts with His mercy, which would forgive everyone. (See here and here among other spots. (On further reflection, the last linked comment that says God cannot breach the covenant He owes to Christ is suspiciously Arian in suggesting that God is somehow not consubsantial with the Son.)

I saw the same approach being taken in another Calvinist blog, but I wrote that off as being based on their confusion. Apparently, though, this approach is conventional Calvinism.

What I’ve taken away from the discussion is that the evergreen issue of salvation is an exercise in semantics, but that there are some real issues buried elsewhere.

And now for something completely different.

I think that going after televangelists is like going after low hanging fruit or fishing with dynamite. It's just way too easy.

But it's easy for reason, and here is a video that does a good job of it.




And, hey, want to spice up your ministry? How about raising the dead?!?!!!



This video - particularly the weird enthusiasm of the main speaker, Melissa - is unintentionally hilarious, it's almost like a Saturday Night Live spoof, but real.

As Melissa says, "hey, the dead's not going to raise themselve unless we do it for them."

I also liked the bit mortuary owners saying that they don't get a lot of requests from people to try and raise the dead.

It would have been funnier, though, if the mortuary owners said something about their contract being to plant the corpses and not have them walk out the front door on their own power.

Spiritual Battle

Something that my partner and I see in our church-property litigation is the odd way in which the theologically liberal, uber-tolerant hierarchies literally demonize the conservative local churches who insist on holding to moral and faith positions that were mainstream not less than a decade ago.

Normally, though, you don't see it put as baldly as Washington's D.C. Bishop Chane puts it:

A leading Anglican bishop has condemned conservatives as "demonic" for using his church as a punch bag.

The Bishop of Washington, the Right Rev John Chane, a leading liberal in the Episcopal Church in the United States, accused conservatives of leading the church in a "dangerous" direction.

Bishop Chane, whose diocese covers the American capital, said: "I think it's really very dangerous when someone stands up and says, 'I have the way and I have the truth and I know how to interpret holy scripture and you are following what is the right way.'

"I think it's really very, very dangerous and I think it's demonic ... the Episcopal Church has been demonised. It has been a punching bag and I'm sick of being a punching bag as a Bishop and I'm sick of my church, my province being a punching bag. Do we deserve criticism, absolutely. No question about it."

This is funny in part because I'd bet that Chane doesn't believe in "demons" - given that he thinks that the Resurrection is largely unimportant to his Christian witness, although he is open to the idea that the Koran is the inspired word of God.

The only part of Chane's hilarious sermon that I excerpted was this:

To be an Easter people means claiming a relationship with Jesus Christ that is based very little on history and a lot on the intangibles of relationships, the unknown mystery of unconditional love and the active presence of God in our current world. It means, "fessing" up to not having all the answers, theologically or otherwise. It means standing up and saying, "I don't have a clear understanding of the resurrection…how it happened or what, ultimately, did occur."

So, according to Chane, we can be very open minded about the Resurrection and not be overly concerned with history, but if you don't accept the most current interpretation offered by liberal Bishops like Chane that active homosexual practice is perfectly consistent with Christianity, then you are "demonic."

Weird. Don't these people ever listen to themselves.

On the other hand, Paul VI's Humanae Vitae is really standing the test of time according to First Thing's Mary Eberstadt. Paul predicted that normalizing contraception would break apart the traditional connection between procreation, marriage, the family, sexual activity and sexual morality.

As Eberstadt points out, Paul's prophetic encyclical is 10 for 10. Ironically, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Wilson could not make the prophetic insight of Humanae Vitae any clearer:

However, in an exchange of letters with an evangelical Christian, written eight years ago when he was Archbishop of Wales, he described his belief that biblical passages criticising homosexual sex were not aimed at people who were gay by nature...In his 1989 essay The Body’s Grace, Dr Williams argued that the Church’s acceptance of contraception meant that it acknowledged the validity of nonprocreative sex. This could be taken as a green light for gay sex.

Paul VI's encyclical looks more inspired all the time, which in its own way, to my surprise, attests to something more significant.

Of course, Paul was villified at the time. Those bad things weren't going to happen. We are all too smart for that.

But it happened, and it was obvious now that it would happen, which leads me to ask again, why is "two" so special when it comes to the number of "spouses"?

Faith Based Initiatives

I just noticed this link on "You are Cephas" to a story about a PCA-affiliated adoption agency that refused to place children with Catholic families.

The MSNBC article pointed out that the Bethany Christian Services adoption agency is funded in part from money collected through the Mississippi "Choose Life" license plate program.

Too funny. Too sad. Too embarrassing for those of us who believe that there ought to be more provision of social services through voluntary organizations.

The story is from 2005. I'm inclined to think that pressure was applied to Bethany Christian Services to rethink its position in the interim.

Here is some more on the subject (also from 2005.)

Let's chalk this one up to the fact that a free society means that people on occasion are allowed to be their small and narrow selves if that is what their conscience dictates.

Update:

According to this July 20, 2005 press release, it took the Bethany Christian Services Board of Directors less than a month to change their policy.

Apparently, getting hit with a ton of bad press made them realize that their policy was arbitrary and irrational.

Good. That's the way it ought to work.

Extra Ecclesia, Nula Salus.

The paper by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith defining Protestant denominations as not being "churches" had a number of ecumenically minded Protestants up in arms.

So, this post at former PCA blogger "You are Cephas" was interesting. Apparently, the majority position of a committee appointed by the PCA held for the doctrine that Catholic baptisms were invalid because ministers of the Catholic church were appointed by a corrupt and non-christian church, i.e., a church that denies "salvation by faith alone."

Now to be fair, that was the majority position; the minority position was that Catholic baptisms were valid, and the PCA General Assembly "punted" the issue to the local churches for their independent determinations.

In the comments, I asked whether - assuming that baptism had any effect on salvation - this wasn't contrary to the core Protestant doctrine of "salvation by faith alone." After all, if baptism bears any relation to salvation, and baptism can only be valid when performed by a minister who believes in salvation by faith alone, it sort of sounds like salvation is no longer by "faith alone" but by "faith plus being baptized by the right person."

I was directed to the Westminster Confession of the Faith by a helpful PCA member.

At the WCOF site, I found this:

I. Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life.

So, it seems that baptism is the means for admission into the "visible church."

Then, I learned this about the "visible church":

II. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

So, baptism is ordained for admission into the "visible church" and "there is no ordinary possiblility" outside of "the visible church"

In other words, the Second Century doctrine of "extra ecclesia, nula salus" ("Outside the Church there is no salvation") lives on in the sola fide heirs of the Reformation.

There is no reason why it shouldn't, but I'm not sure how that squares with "sola fide," although I'm sure that there must be some kind of explanation.

It also seems that some members, and former members, of the PCA didn't know this wrinkle in the WCOF.

Othodoxy and Authority

Boarshead Tavern has a new Catholic contributor, so it's time to play the game of denying that there is any such thing as "orthodoxy" or arguing that a Church that is now castigated for not changing its positions on a variety of traditional Christian positions that have been abandoned by virtually all Protestant denominations couldn't be recognized as "orthodox" by earlier versions of the same church.

Such arguments seem pretty silly in the face of the fact that where Anglican priests can also be Muslim and the Lutheran church may elect an active homosexual bishop.

But the church that is still debating how much of a dead language should be used in liturgy is the one that can't be recognized as orthodox?

"Spot the orthodox Anglicans in this story" update:

NRO reports on how the African Anglican Church is trying to retake their church from decadent Westerners.