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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

When was Jerusalem sacked by the Babylonians? (A huge Jehovah's Witnesses apologetics find.)

I've been interacting with some Jehovah's Witnesses and I've focused most of our discussion on their key 1914AD Doctrine. The year 1914AD is important for world history because that was the year World War I began. The JWs claim that, decades earlier, they were able to use the Bible to know 'something big' would happen in 1914, and thus by accurately predicting WWI while everyone else was caught off guard, this signifies the JWs are God's true Christian body on earth. There is certainly some appeal to this claim, since if the Bible does predict such a major event, then those who were able to recognize this prophecy certainly hold some clout within Christian history. I've already spoken about this doctrine on a dedicated post a while ago (HERE - not a prerequisite for this article), but since my recent interactions I've learned about a more elegant, yet equally devastating argument which I'd like to present now. 

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Does falling away from the faith mean you were never really saved in the first place? (1 John 2:19)

Many Protestants teach that you cannot lose your salvation, so when a person "falls away" from the faith, some of these Protestants conclude that this person was never really saved in the first place. Their favorite prooftext for this claim is 1 John 2:19. Their interpretation is quite convenient, but is actually quite unreasonable, and it's is hurtful towards Christians who struggle with sin (thinking they might never have been saved). 

To begin, consider the context of 1 John 2:19,
18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
These Protestants read 2:19 as saying these people who "went out" of the community by apostasy demonstrate that they never really were saved, since true Christians remain in the community. This interpretation is somewhat understandable, but it is very weak when you consider the context, the Greek words themselves, similar verses, and theological coherence. 

Friday, February 3, 2017

This simple picture helps explain "Divine Simplicity" and God's many "attributes".

This post is more of a theological reflection rather than an apologetics argument. Oftentimes I've heard people talk about how God is "both infinitely Merciful and infinitely Just," or some similar comparison, as if God somehow was able to hold together many conflicting "attributes" at the same time. I think the answer to these kinds of questions is to recognize that what we think of as God's "attributes" are only half the picture. Consider the following diagram:

This is a picture of White Light (sunlight), which is invisible to the human eye, but when this White Light hits a Glass Prism, the White Light reflects off it and result is the spectrum of the colors of the rainbow. (This is real science you can do at home.) 

The analogy to draw from this example is that God is similar to the White Light in that He is normally invisible to us, while the Prism is similar to Creation, and when God interacts with Creation we see Gods many beautiful attributes throughout nature and in divine revelation. The point being that the colors of the rainbow represent God's attributes, such as Justice, Mercy, etc, and these are truly distinct from Creation's point of view, but in reality these terms are only human terms to describe an ultimate reality (White Light) that is far beyond our mind's ability to grasp. This is one reason why Christian theologians throughout history have described God as "simple," not to suggest God is easy to understand, but rather to say that God isn't composed of many 'parts'. We cannot really fathom or understand God directly, but we can still understand Him 'indirectly' in a real and true manner.

Friday, January 20, 2017

He who sees Mary sees the Father. A simple yet mind-blowing insight to increase Marian devotion.

Marian Devotion is hard for a lot of people, both Catholics and Protestants. This usually stems from the Protestant tendency to denounce the Blessed Virgin as a way to take a swipe at Catholicism. The poison that is usually introduced comes in the form of fear of idolatry, fear of elevating Mary too high, thus detracting from the honor and devotion due to the Trinity alone. But the greatest of Catholic saints, those who were very close to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, got that way through their closeness to and high esteem of Mary (and Joseph, but that's for another time). This post is intended to break through that fear, and come out on the other side as madly in love with Mary as your actual mother and not fearing to use very flowery language in honor of Her. I want to keep this post short and hopefully follow it up with other reflections as I am able. 

To get the ball rolling, I want to begin with a profound insight I heard in a homily by Fr Ryan Erlenbush (I highly recommend following his blog and hearing all his sermons). I will summarize what he said and add my own thoughts: Jesus famously said of Himself that "He who sees me sees the Father" (John 12:25). This is one of the most astonishing claims ever made. You can hardly take it in. There's something so beautiful and simple about it, yet so mysterious and mind-blowing. You really have to be a spiritual master to even begin to break this down into digestible pieces for the rest of us. One such profound insight on this is that there is a real sense in which we can say the same thing of the Blessed Virgin Mary: he who sees Mary sees the Father. This is so outrageous sounding that you should be uncomfortable at first just hearing it, and yet it's so eye-opening once you see it that you can never unsee it. 

Friday, January 13, 2017

Countering the Protestant claim that "Oral Tradition" was invented to justify unbiblical teachings.

Protestants are understandably concerned when Catholics appeal to "Tradition" when justifying certain teachings. There is a certain objectivity, and thus safety, about having a written document like the Scriptures. Indeed, that's one of the reasons why Catholics believe God gave us the Scriptures in the first place. Too often, appeals to Tradition are framed in terms of "Catholics cannot justify this teaching from Scripture, so they must turn elsewhere," and that "elsewhere" is seen as some secrete list of teachings passed on orally, from one bishop to another, even though nobody knows when or where. If this is what "Tradition" refers to, then this should be troubling to any Catholic. But fortunately, that's not the case, and in fact the answer is deceptively simple: Oral Tradition within historical Christianity is basically synonymous with the Liturgical Life, that is how the Sacraments are celebrated, the Liturgical Calendar, etc. These are very 'public' sources to consult, and more or less objective as well, so there is no hiding things and then randomly appealing to some unwritten unverifiable "tradition" when need be. 

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Why Protestants reject the Council of Nicaea.

The Council of Nicaea is a very useful apologetics tool beyond just discussing matters of the Trinity. What most people don't realize is that Nicaea produced more than just a Creed, it also issued 20 canonical laws which were binding on all Christians living at that time. The information contained in these Canons is just as useful (if not more so) as any Church Father when it comes to evaluating Protestantism against the bar of Church history. Below, I will mention why each of the 20 Canons are incompatible with all Protestantism in one way or another. This leaves Protestantism in a significant bind, because virtually all Protestants wholeheartedly affirm the Creed and deem the Council to be an orthodox testimony in early Christianity. After reading these Canons, the Protestant must recognize that they cannot embrace the Creed without also embracing the Canons, because if the Canons teach heresy and error, then the Protestant has no business at all embracing the Creed which this same Council produced. Protestants have no problem affirming the Catholic Church is correct on a lot of things, but they say the Catholic Church is false and cannot be trusted because it also teaches many errors. By this same logic, a Protestant must reject Nicaea as well, for Nicaea teaches many "errors" in its Canons and binds all Christians to these "errors" as well.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Love this quick yet effective refutation of sola fide (which the Protestants didn't see coming).

I think I've come upon a devastating yet subtle 'quickie' argument against the Protestant (especially Reformed) notion of justification by faith alone. Catholics will often point out that "faith that works through love" is what Paul meant when he spoke of the essence of a justified believer (Gal 5:6), and that without love we are told by James that "faith is dead" (James 2:24-26). Protestants think they have an answer for this, by insisting (without proof) that "true faith always comes with love" with it. This seems like a save at first, but thinking about this means the Protestant is saying that when a person receives the gift of faith prior to justification, they also receive the gift of love along with it. That's a problem, and here's why. 

If a person receives faith and love prior to justification, it means the unsaved individual loves God already, prior to even accepting the Gospel message! This cannot be, and thus the Protestant must reject this and say faith doesn't automatically include love along with it prior to justification. This leads to a few significant but plain conclusions:
(1) Faith prior to justification lacks love, and thus this faith must start off 'dead'. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just an incomplete thing, which is why justification is still needed. 

(2) Justification must be what bestows love, and this seems confirmed by Scripture (e.g. Romans 5:5), and thus the Protestant can no longer say justification is purely forensic, but rather infuses divine gifts into the soul.

(3) Dead faith prior to justification becomes living faith after justification by the addition of love to faith, and herein is the essence of a justified believer. This would mean it isn't Christ's Imputed Righteousness that makes all the difference, but rather the presence/absence of love, and thus suggests your justification (salvation) hinges upon what you do with that love. This is why texts like Revelation 21:8 list "unbelief" as one of the many sins that can damn a person, because it's possible to have faith and be damned by other grave sins.
Given the above, when Paul says we are "justified by faith," he isn't saying we are "eternally saved by faith," rather he's saying that we receive God's love within us by believing in the Gospel, and that this is just the beginning of our salvation (Rom 13:8-14; Gal 5:13-14).

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

How Protestants completely botch the Biblical teaching on what being "Born Again" means (a.k.a "Regeneration" in Calvinism)

As I looked upon the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on "Regeneration," I was fascinated by what I saw. Below I will quote from the entry, but trim it down for brevity and to highlight some key points:
Regeneration is a Biblico-dogmatic term closely connected with the ideas of justification, Divine sonship, and the deification of the soul through grace. Confining ourselves first to the Biblical use of this term, we find regeneration from God used in indissoluble connection with baptism, which St. Paul expressly calls "the laver of regeneration" (Titus 3:5). In His discourse with Nicodemus (John 3:5), the Saviour declares: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The idea of "birth from God" enjoys a special favor in the Joannine theology. Outside the Fourth Gospel (Jn 1:12 sq.; 3:5), the Apostle uses the term in a variety of ways, treating "birth of God" as synonymous now with the "doing of justice" (1 John 5:1, 4 sq.), and elsewhere deducing from it a certain "sinlessness" of the just (1 John 3:9; 5:18), which, however, does not necessarily exclude from the state of justification the possibility of sinning. It is true that in all these passages there is no reference to baptism nor is there any reference to a real "regeneration"; nevertheless, "generation from God", like baptismal "regeneration", must be referred to justification as its cause. Both terms effectually refute the Protestant notion that there is in justification not a true annihilation, but merely a covering up of the sins which still continue (covering-up theory), or that the holiness won is simply the imputation of the external holiness of God or Christ (imputation theory).

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Was the 'one bishop per city' model of church leadership an unbiblical corruption by Catholicism? (A brief look at the monespiscopate)

One anti-Catholic argument I'm seeing come up more and more frequently is the claim that Scripture describes church governance (polity) as done by a plurality of elders/bishops who are co-ruling over a city/church, whereas the notion of authority concentrated into the hands of one elder/bishop ruling over a city/church is a later invention. The goal of this anti-Catholic argument is to suggest the office of Papacy grew out from this earlier one-bishop (monepiscopacy) corruption of true Biblical polity.

The Protestant/Liberal argument is basically this: in the New Testament, the term "bishop" ("elder") is always used in the plural, and that it wasn't until AD150 that the monepiscopate (i.e. one bishop per city) model arose in some places. At first, this claim seems to have some plausibility, but looking at it with the right glasses on will reveal the desperation of these Protestant/Liberal folks to do whatever they can to smear Jesus' one and only Catholic Church.

The first thing I noticed about this anti-Catholic argument is that it claims this major heresy arose as "late" as 75 years after the Apostles died, around AD150. It is unlikely that such a significant error would arise that early on, only to be universally embraced by even the great Church Fathers, and nobody to oppose it. Further, this small window of time doesn't leave much room for a fair look at the evidence, since the early Christian writings for this period are minimal. This kind of argument is essentially based on the Liberal/Protestant notion that Christianity as we know it was invented over the centuries by the workings of men, who corrupted Christ's simple teachings early on and invented basically every doctrine we now affirm. If it can be argued that Christianity is a series of inventions, like the monespiscopate, then this leaves Christianity with little credibility before the world. It's sad that Protestants would want to go there, but Liberalism is quite literally an outworking of this kind of Protestant thought. Just looking at the Council of Nicaea in AD325, which historically Protestants pretend to accept when Catholics aren't looking, in Canon 6 it explains there is a head bishop in Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome - the three biggest Christian metro areas. Are these Protestants seriously going to say Nicaea espoused both orthodoxy and heresy? Sadly, many Protestants would rather throw out Nicaea than grant any points to Catholicism. I call this the ABC mindset - Anything But Catholic - wherein an opponent of Catholicism would rather accept the most absurd conclusions (e.g. throwing out Nicaea) rather than admit Catholicism got something right.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

What the Quran says about Jesus - One of the strongest apologetics on Islam I've ever seen.

A priest had shared a fascinating video of a convert to Christianity from Islam. I looked up the details, and it turns out this convert named Mario Joseph (probably his conversion name) was not only an Imam, but he also converted to Catholicism (see Here)! I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention, and I'm also surprised what Mario said hasn't gotten more attention within Christian apologetics. 

Mario's claim was pretty simple: What does the Quran say about Jesus? Here are some things Mario discovered while still a Muslim:
  • The name "Jesus" appears in the Quran in about 25 verses, while "Mohammed" appears in only about 4 verses of the Quran. [This is significant because even though Mohammed is "mentioned" under different names, the name itself barely appears in 114 chapters of Islam's holy book (more on this later).]
  • The only woman mentioned in the Quran is "Mary the mother of Jesus". There is no other woman mentioned, including no mention of Mohammed's mother. On top of this, two chapters of the Quran are named after Mary. The Quran also says that Mary was born without sin, that Mary never sinned, that Mary was ever virgin, and that Mary was Assumed into Heaven. [This is obviously significant because the Quran repeatedly honors Mary and no other woman!]
  • The Quran says Jesus is "Word of God" and "Spirit of God" and "Christ".
  • The Quran says Jesus (1) spoke normal sentences a few days after his birth, (2) He created a bird out of clay and breathed life into it, making it a real bird, (3) He cured leprosy, blindness, and brought back people from the dead.
  • The Quran says Jesus was taken to Heaven, is still alive, and will come again.
  • The Quran does not say any of these or similar things about Mohammed. Mohammed never performed miracles, never healed anyone. Islam teaches Mohammed is not alive, he died and his tomb is still here, and that he will not come again. 
While Jesus doesn't get much attention in the Quran overall, and in fact is presented in a very shallow way as a mere prophet, it is fascinating that these details are in there (and that Muslims don't even object)! So what does this all mean? A few things. 

First of all, it means that the Quran definitely testifies to Jesus in a way that puts him beyond a mere prophet. This should get any Muslim thinking about why this is. Imagine if the Bible said all kinds of fascinating things about Joseph Smith, that would definitely startle a lot of Christians. 

Second of all, there is a growing scholarly consensus that the man we call Mohammed never actually existed. Catholic author Robert Spencer wrote a book recently called "Did Mohammed Exist?" The question is outrageous on it's face: of course Mohammed existed, there's all kinds of evidence, and no scholar in history has ever doubted it. But wait, it really wasn't until modern times when scholars have even dug into the question! 

The thesis that Robert Spencer holds is that Mohammed never actually existed, and instead Islam was originally a heretical Christian sect and the Quran was originally a Christian Liturgy book. Now when you compare all of what was said about Jesus in the Quran above, this starts to make a lot of sense! The name "Mohammed" means "The Praised One," which is precise who Jesus is. So to go full circle, the evidence suggests that Jesus was "Mohammed" the whole time in that Mohammed ("The Praised One") is another of many titles for Jesus. 

Over time, the heretical Christian sect was taken over by successive warlords, and these warlords started to weave together a new narrative, similar to how Joseph Smith weaved together a narrative of Jesus coming to America.

I know it all sounds outrageous, but as secular scholars become less afraid for their life, this critical scholarship will show more and more a consensus that Mohammed Never Existed. Even those scholars like Bart Ehrman who love to trash Christianity have said he hasn't equally applied his critical scholarship to Islam "because I value my life too much". I hope to write another post soon from more proofs from Robert Spencer's book.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Was there really no Bible until the year AD381?

I'm writing on an urgent matter that I think needs to be addressed within Catholic apologetics, namely the widespread Catholic claim that there was no Bible until Pope Damasus gave us the canon of Scripture in AD381. At best, this is a half truth, and at worst this is an implicit heresy and undermines Christianity. While it might score points against Protestants during a Sola Scriptura discussion, it's a bad argument that does far more harm than good. 

The problem with the "no Bible until 381" claim is that those who make the claim typically have in their mind that in the early Church - sometime after the Apostles died (~AD80) and up to 300 years later (~AD380) - there was mass confusion as to what books were Scripture and what weren't, such that the Pope had to call a Council to settle the matter by sifting through a massive pile of books, some which were inspired and some which were uninspired, and the "result" was the canon of Scripture. This mindset suggests that the Bible wasn't something passed onto us by Tradition, but rather something that was basically invented. The Pope most certainly did not walk into a library and start reading random books and try to "detect" if this or that book should be in the Bible.  In fact, this false 'personally feel out if this book is inspired' method is closer to the Protestant and Mormon approach to the canon of Scripture.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Why Head Coverings blind Protestants.

I think I've formulated a new apologetics argument that should prove fun and (hopefully) fruitful when talking with Protestants. Basically, the way Protestants view the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist is similar to how Paul describes the reason for Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11. The result of this line of thinking would not only force Protestants to make Baptism indistinguishable from Eucharist, but also to 'raise' Head Coverings up to the level of a new Sacrament in itself. Let's see where this goes. 

Monday, June 6, 2016

As (Not So) Often As You Do This - another round of the crushing Protestant liturgical dilemma

Though I haven't had much time to blog recently, I wanted to show people a beautiful real-life example of the crushing effectiveness of the Ultimate Catholic Apologetics Argument (UCAA) against Protestants (which I posted about previously). 

A "Reformed Baptist" pastor named Ken at the Protestant apologetics site Beggars All had a post focused on criticizing Catholics for following "traditions of men" rather than the Bible, which turned out to be highly ironic shortly after I brought up the UCAA in the combox. There's no need to read the post or most of the comments, but if you're interested just see the last ten comments or so for how effortlessly the UCAA can take down the most committed "Bible Christian" (see THIS link to take you straight to the last few comments). 

The key post is when I responded to Ken saying, 
[Pastor Ken said]: None of what you say really carries any weight with me, since you are right in the sense that that an order of worship is not laid out word for word, but the general idea is for us to worship God by Scripture, prayer, singing, teaching, etc. and we can arrange the order however we want to and that is not a big deal to me.

[Nick's response]: The main problem I have here is that you haven't actually given any Scriptural verses that say what the "general idea" is for Christian Liturgy. The closest thing you've listed is the Lord's Supper, which you say you only do once a month. I don't even think you've given a verse that says singing is supposed to be done during liturgy.

As for your admission that you only celebrated the Lord's Supper once a month, this is astonishing because either it is part of liturgy or it isn't. If it is part of liturgy, you have no right to only do it 25% of the time. This suggests a person can celebrate the Lord's Supper as rarely as they feel like it, and by extension they can leave out Scripture, prayer, etc, as often as they feel like it. All this reduces down to a liturgical relativism, which really isn't liturgy at all, but more and more a man-made event according to personal taste.
As you can see, Ken was pretty trapped here, because while the Bible does indicate the Eucharist is the essential part of the liturgy, and thus is done "often" (1 Cor 11:26), both Ken and most Evangelicals do not do this that often. And as I also point out, to compound the dilemma they are in, that line of thinking means there is nothing actually essential to the Christian Liturgy, which is ridiculous, and results in the Protestant being able to leave out anything they want on any given Sunday.

Now, it's important to note that while this massive problem didn't bother Ken nor will it trouble most other Protestants, the fact is it should, and I believe that it eventually will bother them. For now, it's great that some seeds were planted. I strongly believe that if more Catholics would start using the UCAA, I swear that this will be the downfall of Westminster Seminary in a few short years.

Monday, April 25, 2016

The ultimate and most effective Catholic apologetics argument against Protestantism.

I have come to the conclusion that the most powerful apologetics argument that a Catholic can make against Protestantism is that their Sunday Liturgy is actually man-made and thus blatant idolatry. Let me explain this more.

The most important duty a human has, regardless even of whether they are a Christian or not, is to worship God. This should be - without a doubt - an obvious truth that everyone can agree upon. Given this, a person must not only worship God, they must do so properly, i.e., they must worship as God has instructed them to do. This means that Liturgy requires divine revelation, because otherwise the person is "worshiping" God based on what sounds good to their human mind...but there is a word for worshiping according to what sounds good to you: it's called idolatry. So the only way to escape idolatry is to worship according to how God has divinely revealed it. Which leads us to the key problem which all Protestants face.

Friday, March 11, 2016

A powerful OT foreshadowing of the Papacy.

A friend of mine pointed out an amazing Old Testament foreshadowing of the Papacy that I'd like to share (and I think it's as important as Isaiah 22:22-23). The passage comes from the conclusion of Genesis, where the Patriarch Jacob (later renamed "Israel," Gen 32:28) was on his deathbed and giving each of his 12 sons (the Twelve Tribes of Israel) a specific blessing. When it came to his son Judah (Genesis 49:8-12), this is part of what Israel said to him:
Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your father's sons shall bow down before you. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Here Jacob (Father Israel) predicts that the Tribe of Judah would one day come to lead the Twelve Tribes of Israel. As you can probably guess, a Catholic should see a parallel here for the Papal Office, with Peter being one of the Twelve Apostles being selected to be the leader of the other Apostles.

Some might object that if an OT image is not explicitly called out in the New Testament, then the OT image cannot really be said to be a prefigurment/prophecy. But this "rule" simply isn't valid, for the Early Church Fathers were steeped in OT typology, and even though texts such as Genesis 3:15 are never directly quoted in the New Testament, nobody would deny this text is the Proto-Evangelium (i.e. First Gospel). And given that the Twelve Apostles are most certainly premised on the prefigurement of the Twelve Tribes (Matt 19:28; Rev 21:12-14), the notion that there would be other prefigurments is not at all a stretch. 

Another parallel to note is that even after the united 12 Tribes later fell into sin, idolatry, and broke into two kingdoms (the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah), it was clear that God's favor and chosen kingly lineage still remained with Judah (Micah 5:2; Rev 5:5). From this analogy we can gather that even if a Pope were to fall into sin, this in no way entails the Papacy somehow loses it's authority or that schism is ever justified. It was no accident that Saint Paul told the Holy Roman Church, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." (Rom 16:20; cf Gen 3:15)

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Is sinfulness what prevents "Works" from saving us?

I'm glad to say this blog is not dead. I did take a break, but mostly because I was busy with life and didn't have anything new/original to share. I never wanted this blog to be about posting for the sake of posting, so I deliberately limited my number of posts and only would post when I felt I had something worthwhile to share that wasn't the same old apologetics you read anywhere else. 

For this post I want to discuss an interesting twist on the "not saved by works" discussions a Catholic will typically get into with a Protestant. First, the Catholic must understand that, in the Protestant mind, man is absolutely saved by his own works apart from faith and God's grace, but because of sin man is now unable to save himself and must have Jesus do those works for man in man's place. Human works alone (apart from faith and grace) are still what save us in the Protestant mind, the only thing that changes is that now Jesus does that work in man's place. This is completely contrary to the Catholic understanding of salvation, in which man can only be saved by faith and grace, never by his own works no matter how good those works are. I discuss this more HERE

This leads me to the main focus of this post: Did Paul say that the reason why "works" cannot save us is because those works are 'tainted by sin'? That's certainly the typical Protestant answer, but as you will see, that's not the 'plain teaching' of Paul at all. For this post I will look at some of Paul's key salvation 'apart from works' texts. 

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Penal Substitution is the key to understanding Protestant Evangelicalism.

Over at the CCC Blog I recently posted "Understanding Christ's Cry of Abandonment" and I began by 'predicting' that by Good Friday we'd see a flood of posts from well-educated Protestants (mostly Calvinist/Reformed) who were going to completely botch the meaning of "My God, Why have you abandoned me?" And it turned out, a number of Protestant outlets posted on precisely this.

As you read the following quotes, take note of how the Protestant understanding of the Cross (Penal Substitution), in which they openly speak of "Christ being damed to hell in our place," is directly linked to Justification by Faith Alone and is the heart of the Gospel as Protestants understand it. So if you want to improve your apologetics and dialogue with Protestants, you should be ready to talk about this issue. Even the average Evangelical you run into believes this stuff, they just don't realize this is what they're espousing with their "Just say the Sinner's Prayer" theology.

And now the quotes from famous conservative Protestant ministry blogs (with my highlights). Since it's about 2.5 pages of quotes, I have trimmed them only to cut down on size:

How much did prayer cost God?
March 30, 2015 by Justin Taylor [The Gospel Coalition blog network],

[Quoting Reformed Pastor Tim Keller:] The only time in all the gospels that Jesus Christ prays to God and doesn’t call him Father is on the cross, when he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus lost his relationship with the Father so that we could have a relationship with God as father. Jesus Christ bore all the eternal punishment that our sins deserve. That is the cost of prayer. Jesus paid the price so God could be our father.
“My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?”  
Mar 30, 2015 by Dr. Pastor Joel Beeke [Ligonier Ministries],
Experiencing the full brunt of His Father’s wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable. All the sins of the elect, and the hell that they deserve for eternity, are laid upon Him. With Jesus as our substitute, God’s wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God’s anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. 
This is a beautiful summary of the Protestant understanding of the Gospel. Jesus died in our place, we accept this by Faith Alone, and we can never lose our salvation.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Problems with the Reformed view of Federal Headship and problems with the Reformed view of Liturgy.

I have two new guest posts up at [old deleted blog]. Since the blog was deleted I will have to post them here: 

THE REFORMED DOCTRINE OF FEDERAL HEADSHIP:
The Reformed notion of Federal Headship states that all of mankind lives under the representative umbrella of a father figure, namely Adam or Jesus. They say the reason why God can consider all men subject to the consequences of Adam’s deliberate sin, even though we didn’t personally sin, is because God judges us ‘in Adam’. Likewise, when a person is saved, the Reformed say that person is worthy of the blessings of salvation, not for anything they did, but because of the perfect obedience of Christ, with God judging them to be ‘in Christ’. To put it crudely, it’s as if all mankind were placed in one of two boxes, one labeled “Adam”, the other labeled “Jesus”. God doesn’t judge you personally, only by proxy, only based upon the box you’re in.

With that imagery in mind, popularly termed “Imputation,” it can be easily seen why Protestants believe salvation cannot be lost and why they shudder to hear Catholics teaching that our works play a role in our salvation: If we are ‘covered up’ (hidden) in the box labeled “Jesus,” and that’s all God judges us worthy of heaven or hell based upon, then obviously God wont be judging us based on our personal sins (causing us to deserve hell) or on our person good works (causing us to deserve heaven). This is what Protestants mean by “Christ Alone” and “Grace Alone”.

But if this Federalism/Imputation framework is true, then why does the Bible frequently speak of our personal sins being forgiven and our personal sins being the basis of our damnation? Why is God concerned about our personal failings if He is judging us solely based on the failings of Adam? If we are in the box labeled “Adam,” and that’s all God looks at, why does God care or judge us according to the box of our own sins? The only answer I can envision is that Federalism/Imputation must wrong (or only half-true). It is wholly inconsistent and even equivocal for a Protestant to say Jesus as Federal Head represents the believer entirely but Adam as Federal Head represents us only partially. Just as “Jesus plus our works” is anathema to Protestant ears, by the same logic, so must “Adam plus our works” must be rejected…and yet the latter is contrary to Scripture’s frequent claims of our personal sins being the object of God’s wrath and forgiveness (Romans 1-3).

This is not to say that Adam and Jesus are not ‘heads of humanity’ in a real and crucial sense, because Catholicism certainly believes they are heads. The point is that it cannot be Sola Headship as the Reformed teach, but rather (somehow) a combination of headship and our personal living.


REFORMED APPROACH TO LITURGY:

Is a Christian free to worship God however he pleases? I think all of us would intuitively answer “No” to that question. Man’s duty to worship God is too important to just be a free-for-all. This is especially true for Christians who have God’s Revelation, particularly the Bible. The Confessional Reformed tradition (rightly) understands that man is not only not free to worship however he pleases (since this would ultimately tend towards man worshipping himself), but in fact man should not worship in any way not clearly laid out in God’s Word. This notion is known in the Reformed tradition as the “Regulative Principle of Worship” (RPW), wherein man must worship God how God has revealed He wants to be worshiped. The goal of this post is to show that while the RPW sounds good on the surface, I think it quickly runs into some serious problems.

Most non-Reformed Protestant traditions (especially Evangelicalism) take a more ‘lax’ approach to Christian worship, generally holding to the idea that many forms of worship are acceptable so long as they don’t contradict Scripture. That view doesn’t see the Bible as prescribing a specific form of worship, but rather only ‘ruling out’ unacceptable practices (e.g. the use of images). Clearly, the ‘worship question’ is not trivial, yet Sola Scriptura has led to a more relativistic, human-centered approach to Christian worship, as each believer is seen as autonomous, not having to be subject to any specific pastor/congregation and having the ‘right’ to worship however he pleases (including simply sleeping in on Sunday). Rather than go on a tangent about Sola Scriptura in general though, I think the Confessional Reformed RPW view should be analyzed in light of what Scripture says, because it seems to me the RPW has little to no Scriptural support – which is quite ironic.

The most obvious starting point in discerning whether the RPW is actually Biblical is to find whether Scripture lays out any specific example of Christian liturgy. Some Evangelicals will say they base their Christian liturgy off of “The Acts 2 Church,” but at that point in the Church (Acts 2:42-47) there wasn’t even a book of the New Testament written yet, so “The Acts 2 Church” couldn’t even have been a Sola Scriptura based Christian liturgy. Moreover, there aren’t really any details here or anywhere else in Scripture of what precisely early Christian liturgy looked like. (Such information comes mostly from inspired Apostolic oral teaching, which Protestants reject.) So given this lack of specific Biblical testimony, from what I’ve been able to gather, the RPW is really a bunch of verses strung together to ‘form a principle’ (hence the name RPW), which ironically leads Reformed liturgy becoming more a work of men than a command of God.

To see this problem more clearly, consider John Calvin’s official liturgy which he instituted in Geneva in 1542 [1]: The liturgy begins with Confessing Sins, Prayer for Pardon [2], then goes on to Scripture Readings [3], a Sermon, a Collection of Alms, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, Words of Institution, Consecration of the Bread and Wine, and concludes with the Aaronic Blessing (Num 6:22-27). Now we can all agree that none of this is necessarily a bad thing when considered individually. The problem is that this “liturgy” is nowhere instituted in the Bible. Is man really free to just lift the Aaronic Blessing from the OT and append it to the Christian Liturgy and call this approved by God? Not if they are being honest. And as anyone can see, a whole host of liturgies can be invented using this cut-and-paste method. [4] This is clearly an unacceptable position for a Christian to take.

Given this brief look at Reformed Liturgy, it seems to me that the RPW not only is self-refuting (since it’s not a specific principle taught in Scripture, just a gathering of verses here and there), it also exposes one more flaw in Sola Scriptura, since it makes liturgy more or less relative to the whims of the individual (guided at most by some generic ‘principles’). So while it is good that the Reformed take worship of God seriously, they unfortunately find themselves in a conundrum wherein as hard as they try to “worship God as He has commanded in His Word,” they end up worshiping God according to blatant traditions of men. Only an appeal to inspired Apostolic oral teaching and Apostolic Succession (both of which Catholicism has) can ground a Christian in true worship and prevent a slide into man-centered relativistic “worship”.

 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulative_principle_of_worship#John_Calvin.27s_Liturgy

[2] It’s not clear to me how the Confession of Sins and Prayer for Pardon is compatible with the Reformed idea that man’s sins are completely forgiven at the moment of Justification and that God only views man in light of the Righteousness of Christ imputed to him. Why ask for forgiveness of sins every Sunday if you believe all your sins were already forgiven and that God never counts your sins against you?

[3] It’s also not clear to me if the Scripture reading is taken from a fixed lectionary of readings (if so, where did the Bible teach this?), or if the Scripture reading is a randomly chosen text (and if so, where does the Bible say we worship God by randomly selecting which texts we feel like reading?).

[4] Note that in the Wiki link above, Calvin had noticeably modified this 1542 liturgy from his 1540 liturgy, including removing Psalm 124:8 from the start, removing the recitation of the Ten Commandments (with each Commandment followed by Kyrie Eleison) and removing the Nunc Dimittis before the conclusion. Did the Bible tell him he could make such revisions? Does he not realize a whole host of liturgies can come about by this mixing/cutting/pasting?

Monday, February 2, 2015

Biblical proof that being "Clothed in Christ" has nothing to do with Protestant Imputation.

[Old deleted blog guest post I made, now posted in full here] I show St Paul certainly did not have the Protestant dogma of "Christ's Imputed Righteousness" (by faith alone) in mind when he said we are "Clothed in Christ."

I have often heard Protestants explain the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness in terms of the believer being “clothed in Christ’s righteousness,” which they take to mean our sinfulness is covered over by Christ’s perfection, causing us to appear pure and holy before God (though ‘underneath’ the clothing we remain sinful). But as I came to look at how the Bible speaks of “clothing” I came to realize something very different than the Protestant notion of Imputation was being taught. What I came to realize was that what the Bible was describing was actually the Catholic view of grace and salvation, not the Protestant view.

Generally speaking, Protestants understand the saving “grace” of justification as a disposition of God, wherein God knows He doesn’t have to save anyone, but He ‘graciously’ (undeservingly) sends Jesus to fulfill the law and die on the Cross (all in place of the believing sinner’s inability to do these things). This is where the Protestant notion of being “clothed in Christ’s righteousness” comes in, because even though God knows the sinner is ‘beneath the clothing’, God ‘graciously’ (mercifully) overlooks this and instead focuses on the clothing (i.e. what Christ did).

On the other hand, Catholics understand the saving “grace” of justification to refer to God’s divine life and power (2 Cor 12:9) acting upon the sinner, causing the sinner to be transformed. As the Catechism puts it: “Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life.” (CCC#1997) In this view, “grace” is what gives spiritual life to one who is spiritually dead (i.e. those in mortal sin), somewhat akin to the electrical charge that enters into a dead battery to recharge it.

In both viewpoints, grace is absolutely necessary, and in fact we could say both the Catholic and Protestant views believe man is saved ‘by grace alone’. But the radically different views of grace entail radically different views on salvation, which means this dispute must be settled beyond the semantic level. And this is where a study of the Biblical notion of “clothing” comes in.

Catholic theology has traditionally viewed saving grace from three perspectives: building, elevating, and perfecting. I believe these three aspects of grace are clearly found in how the Bible uses the Greek verb endyo, which literally means “to put on clothing,” and if this holds true then the Protestant equating of Imputation with that of “being clothed” must be abandoned (in fidelity to God’s Word).

The first claim to look at is the Catholic notion that grace ‘builds upon our human nature’. That which is natural to a being pertains to its own inherent abilities and qualities. That which is super-natural literally refers to those abilities and qualities that go beyond nature (since ‘super’ means ‘beyond’). When it comes to salvation, there are certain things we cannot do precisely because they require abilities that go beyond our natural abilities. I recall St Augustine using the analogy of seeing in the dark, saying that it doesn’t matter how good our eyesight is, the only way we can see in the dark is from the special assistance of a torch. We see this concept found when Paul speaks of “putting on the armor of God,” for example: “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess 5:8; see also Rom 13:12). In Ephesians 6:11-18, Paul speaks of this “putting on the armor of God” again, including putting on the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, and helmet of salvation, as well as taking up the shield of faith and sword of the Spirit. And before Jesus Ascended into Heaven, He told the Apostles to “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24:49), speaking of the divine gifts (e.g. tongues) which the Holy Spirit would pour out on Pentecost. In all these texts the clothing analogy is clear: these divine gifts equip us, building on our nature, to enable us to fight the good fight and do God’s work, which we otherwise couldn’t do by our natural human powers.

The second claim to look at is the Catholic notion that grace ‘elevates our human nature’. It is universally understood that certain people and places demand a certain elevated level of respect. We know that this means you must dress appropriately for certain events and have your house neat and orderly to properly welcome special guests over. Beautifully capturing this notion is the way the Old Testament describes Jewish Temple: For God to be able to dwell there, the Temple had to be ‘elevated’ beyond that of a regular building (by using the finest gold and decorations), and that the High Priest had to be ‘elevated’ beyond that of a lay person (by using many fancy garments instead of regular clothing, e.g. Lev 16:23). This is precisely why Churches should be beautifully adorned and why parishioners should dress up for Mass, because anything less is quite insulting to God’s Divine Majesty.

Hidden in his earthly Temple analogy is actually the more profound reality of the Christian having the Trinity dwell within us. As Paul says, Christians are “Temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 3:16-17), and as Jesus says in John 14:23 that ‘anyone who loves me, the Father and I will come make our dwelling within him’ (see also Eph 3:17). With this in mind, grace is what elevates us to become a welcoming and worthy home for the Trinity to come and dwell within us. Such a task requires a thorough ‘renovation’ of our souls and especially an adornment of love, as Paul says: ‘Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together’ (Col 3:9-14). And elsewhere, “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24).

What is also fascinating is that this ‘putting on of the new self’ is identified in Romans 13:12-14 as “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, making no provision for the flesh,” telling us what being “clothed in Christ” really refers to in Paul’s mind! This fits precisely with Paul’s concluding thoughts of Galatians 3, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (3:27), since Scripture describes Baptism as a cleansing, image renewing, and regenerating bath (e.g. Acts 22:16; Titus 3:4-7; Romans 6). Notice that according to the plain reading of this verse, we become “clothed with Christ” by Baptism, not by faith alone.

The third claim to look at is the notion that grace ‘perfects our human nature’. Closely related to the last two aspects of grace is the notion that grace perfects us, meaning it takes us to a place where our human nature was supposed to be (and hence why Adam ‘falling from grace’ was such a tragic, devastating fall from a super-natural state to a merely natural one). To help get this concept across, is interesting to note is how those in heaven (both humans and angels) are described as being “dressed in (white) robes” (e.g. Rev 7:9-14, 15:6). One would think that a person in heaven should be described as naked, since nudity (ideally) is supposed to signify innocence and purity. Since we know nudity itself isn’t bad, the presence of “robes” would suggest that human nature itself isn’t enough to experience heaven, human nature must be ‘perfected by grace’. Indeed, St Paul tells us that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” meaning our natural bodies aren’t naturally made to live in heaven anymore than we can just go live in outer-space. The body must be glorified by grace, which is why Paul follows this up by saying: “this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Cor 15:50, 53; see also 2 Cor 5:1-5) – verses clearly referring to the perfecting work of grace.

With all this in mind, a final thought: It is common for people to say, “I don’t need Christianity to get to Heaven. I’m a good person, so I’m sure God will let me in.” The problem with that logic is that getting into heaven is far more than about being a ‘good person’. If you ask these people if you can come to their wedding, they’ll respond by saying: “No, I don’t know you.” Exactly, because wedding invitations aren’t based on who in the public is a ‘good person’, but rather on who is a friend of the Bride and Groom. Similarly, you must be a friend of God, having a relationship with Him, to be invited to His Wedding. God has no reason to invite you to His wedding feast if you never really cared about being in relationship with Him. A person needs the (super-natural) “love of God within them” (Jn 5:42; cf 1 Jn 2:5; Mt 24:12) if they are going to in relationship with God. This is how the parable of Matthew 22:10-13 is to be understood, where the man not clothed in the symbolic “wedding garment” was not welcome at the wedding feast. As noted in prior articles, this helps explain that the Catholic view isn’t about ‘working our way into heaven’ as it is about being properly disposed (i.e. in a state of grace) to be in a relationship with the Trinity, starting now.

Protestants like to quote Zechariah 3:3-7 which speaks of Joshua having to put on clean garments as proof of Imputed Righteousness, but this interpretation is presupposed and really has no merit from what has already been shown. The story fits quite well with the Catholic view of grace, especially the concluding verse which in which God warns: “If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access.” This indicates that sins can cause him to lose his rights, which makes no sense in the Imputation view (since God overlooks your personal sins). In fact, using the principle of Scripture-interprets-Scripture, we see the Catholic view vindicated in Revelation 3:3-5, where Jesus says: “Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment.” These garments these saints are wearing cannot be referring to Christ’s righteousness Imputed, since Jesus speaks of them as taking care not to defile the garment (which is impossible if it’s Christ’s righteousness), so it can only refer to sanctifying grace gained, with the potential of it being lost through sin (cf James 1:12; 2:5). The parable of the Prodigal Son should be understood in a similar manner, wherein the father order the servants to “clothe” the returned son with a new expensive robe, signifying a reconciled status after being “dead” in sin (Lk 15:22-24).

In conclusion, we have seen the Catholic understanding of grace beautifully captured in the Bible’s use of the analogy of being “clothed”. Further, it was shown that being “clothed in Christ” and “clothed in righteousness” (as used in the Scriptures) cannot refer to the Protestant notion of Imputation, meaning they should avoid such terminology out of fidelity to God’s Word and orthodox theology.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Traditionalism is the 'right wing' of AmChurch


The "American Catholic Church" (or "AmChurch" as some call it) refers to the Catholic experience in America of practicing the Faith with a "don't tell me what to believe" type attitude that is characteristic of Protestantism. The term is typically used by Traditionalists when speaking of “Liberal Catholics” in America, but the problem is much more serious because the Tradosphere is actually founded upon essentially the same erroneous (Liberal) principles as the AmChurch’s 'left wing'.

Long ago Rome saw these dangers creeping in, and so Pope Leo XIII issued an Encyclical against "Americanism" in which he singled out three big dangers we face:
These dangers are: (1) the confounding of license with liberty; (2) the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject; (3) the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases and to set them forth in print to the world. (Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae)
The first error is the chief characteristic of Liberalism, which states that man is not bound to any law beyond himself, including not bound to Natural Law. The result is that "Liberty" becomes defined as “the right to do or say whatever you want” - which is not true Liberty at all, since it lacks restraints.

Building on the first error, the second and third AmChurch errors listed above immediately find their justification. They now think they have the right to discuss, criticize, pour out contempt upon, and especially publish anything he pleases. This "assumed right" states that one can even smear the reputation of another, protected under the guise of "free speech" (another Liberal error).