This is part III of a four part series. The previous parts are The Road from Unbelief and Time in the Evangelical Church .
Perhaps
the first nudge God gave me to move me towards the Catholic Church was my
coming across the towering figure of John Henry Newman. Educated in the works
of people like Thomas Paine and David Hume young in his life, Newman became a
Christian at the age of 15, an Evangelical Calvinist who thought of the Pope as
the Antichrist. He worked for the Church Missionary Society (CMS – still very
much alive today), and during this time began to move towards a High Church
view of ecclesiology. He visited Rome, which he thought of as a delightful city,
but hated the Roman Catholic Church, describing it as “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous.” Returning to Oxford, he
started the “Tracts for the Times,” sparking what was known as the Tractarian
(or more commonly, “Oxford”) movement, together with various other notable
figures, including the son of the English Evangelical Protestant abolitionist
William Wilberforce.
The Catholic Church is the only one that can reasonably claim to have existed since the time of Christ.[10] Nonetheless, it is common in any movement with Christian roots (Protestants being the closest to these roots, but Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses are also Christian derivatives) to have some sort corruption theory, by which the Church began to decay after the Apostles died or sometime after that, and the leader of the new movement brings undefiled and true Christianity back again.[11] The Mormons have such a prophet in Joseph Smith Jr., who claims to restore Christianity to the apostolic church; Protestants have similar figures in Martin Luther and other reformers. There are Catholic restorationist movements, of course, but they (since they are Catholic ones) do not break from the Church, instead they attempt to restore if from within. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement probably falls into this category. Having said that, not only are the break-away restorationist movements dubious simply because of their lateness, but they end up being mostly unlike the early Church anyway.
I said I would not attack sola Scriptura as being unbiblical and ahistorical, but I ought to make one point: if one is to bow down solely to the Word of God, one better have a good idea what that Word is. Even if I grant that the consensus of the faithful is essentially enough to establish which books are inspired and which are not, it remains to be seen why one can simply remove seven books from the canon. Those who desire to be faithful to the Bible must, I imagine, be faithful to what the Bible is without making it what one would like it to be – because if one crafts one’s own Bible, one does not believe God but simply in oneself. The Bible throughout all Church history, however, by overwhelming consensus of the Church Fathers is that the deuterocanonical books are part of Scripture.[13] I mention this because one rather important step for me was first seeing how much the Church Fathers quoted these seven mysterious “other” books as authoritative, and then also reading from the second chapter of the book of Wisdom. The account is eerily similar to Matthew’s gospel’s account of the passion. Wisdom 2 is the sort of incredibly Christological part of the Old Testament that makes it clear that truly, the Scriptures testify about Jesus.
 |
| Jesus calls his disciples to go into the deep with him. |
Deciding to
become Catholic was the most difficult decision I have ever taken and the
second most difficult decision I have ever needed to make. I have spent a year
and a half hearing how heretical Catholics are, how pagan they are in practice,
how ritualistic they are in their deed, how legalistic they are in their
teachings and how hypocritical they actually are. Throughout my time in the
evangelical church community, it was clear that if anyone had a false gospel,
it was those darn Catholics. They never read the Bible, because if they did,
they would stop trying to pull themselves up by their own moral bootstraps,
stop relying on their works and efforts to gain salvation as if they could
twist God's arm, and stop their blasphemous practices of ritualism and idolatry.
And I agreed with all of this, because I had lived for six years in one of the
most Catholic countries in the world – Spain – and not once was I brought the
message of the Gospel. It was there that I developed my anti-religious
sentiment, and more particularly, anti-Catholic. Of what use are old rituals
that do nothing? And truly, of what use are those old rituals when they change
nothing in a person’s life? According to the census, I was surrounded by almost
100% Catholics – but I only ever met a handful, and they did not seem much
different to anyone else.
I write this
post with some sadness, therefore, as I know it is controversial. I suspect I
will lose friendships over this matter, though I suppose I will gain others. I
have come to see that all my criticisms of ritualism, idolatry, Pelagianism and
so forth are false. With my writing this, it becomes public, and with my
confirmation in the Catholic Church it will become official. But it is a short-term
sadness, because I know also that to do as God wills is infinitely more
important than to concern oneself with maintaining an image of conforming to a
manufactured standard of theological orthodoxy given by Protestantism.
Before I give
my reasons and tell my story, let me say something to my beloved Protestant
brethren: and I know many of you love Christ Jesus our Lord.
Seeing your faith is much like seeing the faith of the centurion in Matthew 8,
who was supposedly an outsider, yet nonetheless had a faith that surpassed
God's own people – similarly, though outside the visible confines of the
Church, it is faithfulness to Christ that justifies and therefore you are
perhaps in better communion with the Church than many Catholics. I have no
pretence of somehow having been enlightened by my own wisdom to some higher
level of understanding and orthodoxy, nor that I am better, more pious, holier
or anything in myself because of this - though the grace of God has nonetheless
moved me in this direction. Thanks be to him who calls the ungodly! Therefore,
I do not boast of this change – for who may boast of grace? – instead ask that
you would consider what I say, one beggar to another, testifying of his way not
just to bread but to the bread of life of our Lord, given for our salvation.
For
some, no reason could possibly suffice to become Catholic. The attitudes I
mentioned above, ones I held myself, are so engrained that some may think my
reasons well thought out and sound, yet nonetheless reject the conclusion. To
such people one may truly only say “God help you!” For Catholics are the
true Bible-believers, who worship by the Spirit of
God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in our own
versions and interpretations of the Bible – though I myself have reason for
confidence in my own interpretation also. If anyone else thinks he has reason
for confidence in their interpretation, I too have reasons: converted to the
very strongest form of inerrancy and infallibility, of the Evangelical
church, a Bible believer of Bible believers; as to reading of the
Scriptures, relentless; as to zeal, a detester of the Catholic
Church; as to orthodoxy under the guidance of the Reformers, blameless.
But whatever
gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ as he truly is. Indeed,
I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord. I consider all else as rubbish, in order that I may gain
Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that
comes from knowing and merely believing the Bible, but that which comes
through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on
faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection,
and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by
any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I
have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to
make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own, calling me to his
Church and uniting me to his Body. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made
it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining
forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize
of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who
are mature think this way, and if in anything you think
otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to
what we have attained.
I
have not attempted to engage in an apologia
here in any substantial way – I will develop my reasoning elsewhere,
including why I think Apostolic Tradition – comprising both written and
unwritten teachings of the Apostles – is the correct basis for the Christian
faith in its fullness. Additionally, why the stories of profoundly Catholic
saints seem to point to the Catholic Church, from Justin Martyr to St Augustine
(in whose writings the Catholic understanding of justification is to a large
degree explained), from St Thomas Aquinas to St Bonaventure…and St Francis of
Assisi, St Ignatius of Loyola and St Francis Xavier…I’m also quite fond of
Blessed Peter Favre and many other saints of his order – more on that later. The
list is truly quite long. Other pointers include certain texts in the Bible
which are better explained within a Catholic context, a stronger stability of
doctrine, as opposed to the enormous novelty that appears in other churches,
and tens, perhaps even a hundred other reasons. I will focus on ones that led
me to the Catholic Church as opposed to ones that now cement me in her embrace.
Perhaps
the first nudge God gave me to move me towards the Catholic Church was my
coming across the towering figure of John Henry Newman. Educated in the works
of people like Thomas Paine and David Hume young in his life, Newman became a
Christian at the age of 15, an Evangelical Calvinist who thought of the Pope as
the Antichrist. He worked for the Church Missionary Society (CMS – still very
much alive today), and during this time began to move towards a High Church
view of ecclesiology. He visited Rome, which he thought of as a delightful city,
but hated the Roman Catholic Church, describing it as “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous.” Returning to Oxford, he
started the “Tracts for the Times,” sparking what was known as the Tractarian
(or more commonly, “Oxford”) movement, together with various other notable
figures, including the son of the English Evangelical Protestant abolitionist
William Wilberforce.
How
did this figure become Cardinal
Newman, and Blessed John Henry
Newman? What did he see or learn? His own account of his Christian life is
recorded in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua,
and I do not seek to summarize that presently. It is of far more importance at
this point to ask what exactly I found in Cardinal Newman that put me on the
path to the Catholic Church, and it can be summed up in a quote:
And Protestantism has ever felt it so. I do not
mean that every writer on the Protestant side has felt it; for it was the
fashion at first, at least as a rhetorical argument against Rome, to appeal to
past ages, or to some of them; but Protestantism, as a whole, feels it, and has
felt it. This is shown in the determination already referred to of dispensing
with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity from the
Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired of
it. It is shown by the long neglect of ecclesiastical history in England, which
prevails even in the English Church. Our popular religion scarcely recognizes
the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and
Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild
interpretations of certain prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is
melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has
any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever
Gibbon. To be deep in history is to
cease to be a Protestant.
I remember wondering what that meant, what history had to say about being Christian and why it would stop me from being Protestant.
Meanwhile, before setting about this work, I
will address one remark to Chillingworth and his friends:—Let them consider,
that if they can criticize history, the facts of history certainly can retort
upon them. It might, I grant, be clearer on this great subject than it is. This
is no great concession. History is not a creed or a catechism, it gives lessons
rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching in this
matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad masses of
colour rise out of the records of the past. They may be dim, they may be
incomplete; but they are definite. And this one thing at least is certain;
whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or
extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history
is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.
I remember wondering what that meant, what history had to say about being Christian and why it would stop me from being Protestant.
History
was going to be one very key point of evidence, but at the time it was
completely unconceivable for me to be Catholic. God was going to have to work
through the thing I valued most in theology: the Bible. In particular, God
worked through the Apostle Paul’s epistles, and concretely in this case, the
epistle to the Ephesians.[1]
If Protestantism has a patron saint, it is St Paul of Tarsus, so he was certain
to have my ears listening. He wrote:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord,
urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have
been called, with all humility and gentleness,
with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to
maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one Body and one Spirit—just as
you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of
all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:1-6, ESV)
St
Paul informs us that there is one Body, that is, one Church (cf. Ephesians
1:22-23), just as there is one God. For all this, I could not even conceive of
the idea of calling my church the only church, and nor would any in it, and yet
there was supposed to only be one Church.[2] Even
if we include all Evangelicals, which spread across various Protestant
denominations, they amount to only 90 million of an alleged 2.18 billion strong
Christendom.[3]
Now, it is true that Christianity is not a democracy – indeed, truth is not
democratic – and so mere numbers cannot settle theological disputes. Nonetheless,
one can hardly claim there is one Church when 4.5% of Christians belong in very
broad and loose terms to one’s own creed.
Very
broad and loose terms indeed, because according to the Center for the Study of
Global Christianity at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, there are
approximately 41,000 denominations in worldwide Christianity. Many of these
differences are probably geographic or liturgical, but by any reasonable estimate
there are tens of thousands denominations that have begun over doctrinal
disputes, and where some may be relatively minor, others concern the big
questions of Christology, soteriology, and so forth. This hardly seems to be in
keeping with the ecclesiology which was developing quickly in the early Church,
the seed of which is given in the first epistle to Timothy, chapter 3, where
Paul (or Pseudo-Paul) says to Timothy:
I hope to
come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am
delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is
the Church of the living God, the pillar
and bulwark of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:14-15, RSV, emphasis mine)
In
what way can this be said to be “one Body,” when so many mutually exclusive
claimants exist? This first question, which came to me one day whilst reading
Ephesians, has been raised by many others before me, and various Protestants
have tried to answer it; indeed, it has been a problem since the very
beginning. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, disagreed
with the next two biggest contributors, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. For
instance, Calvin laments in his Advertissement
contre l’astrologie (1549):
Every state [of life] has its own Gospel,
which they forge for themselves according to their appetites, so that there is
as great a diversity between the Gospel of the court, and the Gospel of the
justices and lawyers, and the Gospel of merchants, as there is between coins of
different denominations.
To
deal with this, Calvin established the Consistory in Geneva, which was set up
to determine the theological purity of the members of his church in the style
of an ecclesiastical court of sorts. In 1555 he was granted the power to
excommunicate unworthy members, and in only ten years (1559-1569) one in
fifteen were summoned, one in twenty five excommunicated.[4] Historian
David Anders also tells of an incident with Jerome Bolsec, a convert to
Protestantism who challenged Calvin’s views on one theological topic, and
argued that he too was a Christian, he too had the Holy Spirit and
consequently, he had as much right as Calvin to interpret the Bible – Calvin
would have none of it. Private interpretation of Scripture is simply not in
line with Calvin’s theology.[5]
The
Protestant tradition is, in reality, an enormous spectrum of doctrines united
not even under the Five Solas in its modern form, but holding loosely to Sola
Scriptura for matters of Christian doctrine (Calvin himself arguably had a more
"ecclesial" doctrine on revelation than this, but that is irrelevant
at present) – I think, and this is my second point, that this is the problem.
I would
object nowadays to the possibility of claiming infallibility for a fallible
collection of books, as RC Sproul does[6]
- especially in light of pseudonymity of various New Testament books, and the
exclusion of various others, particularly the Protestant rejection of the
deuterocanonical books. I would also
defend nowadays that sola Scriptura is unsound biblically and almost
nonsensical in the early church, though I understand that this view is not
without its critics. However, my second
point is instead that “sola Scriptura” removes any semblance of the
Church as a unity.[7] It
is private interpretation of the Bible which largely produces the tens of
thousands of Protestant denominations which fragment Christianity. Except some
form of the Church must be visible, because if it is invisible, then it cannot
be the city on the hill which brings glory to God (cf. Matthew 5:13-16, and see
my commentary here, where I suggest that the Church is the city mentioned), and it cannot
be the pillar and bulwark (“guardian”) of truth. The point I seek to make is
somewhat less logical (in the sense of being the result of a chain of
syllogisms or the like) and more a matter of faith: can I trust God to bestow upon the Church the
grace to remain intact and so enable her to actually be what the Scriptures say
she is? If it is the case that the Church is the Body of Christ, that there can
only be one and that the Church was to be the guardian of truth, then I think
that I should be able to trust God to keep some kind of existent Church which is
not made up of mutually exclusive parts.
This leads me back to my first point about
history and John Henry Newman. The point was very well put by Peter Kreeft, and
I am going to borrow his thought experiment in the modified way that I found
convincing: on the Presbyterian view, the Church may have started off as “the
Catholic Church” (see writings of Ignatius of Antioch for first recorded use in
110 AD, which is even before the finishing of the canonical books by the dating
of some scholars), but it slowly picked up more and more heresies until Luther
came along and “got rid of barnacles,” so to speak. Luther then returned
Christendom to the undefiled days of the early church without any later
Catholic additions. All one would have to do, therefore, to assess whether the
real Church is Catholic or Protestant, would be to check out whether the early
church was Catholic or Protestant.[8]
To my mind, this matter is settled conclusively: every distinctively Catholic
“heresy,” either existed in the Church or the seed was unmistakably there.[9]
The Catholic Church is the only one that can reasonably claim to have existed since the time of Christ.[10] Nonetheless, it is common in any movement with Christian roots (Protestants being the closest to these roots, but Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses are also Christian derivatives) to have some sort corruption theory, by which the Church began to decay after the Apostles died or sometime after that, and the leader of the new movement brings undefiled and true Christianity back again.[11] The Mormons have such a prophet in Joseph Smith Jr., who claims to restore Christianity to the apostolic church; Protestants have similar figures in Martin Luther and other reformers. There are Catholic restorationist movements, of course, but they (since they are Catholic ones) do not break from the Church, instead they attempt to restore if from within. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement probably falls into this category. Having said that, not only are the break-away restorationist movements dubious simply because of their lateness, but they end up being mostly unlike the early Church anyway.
Why bother with the early Church, though?
The theology of the early Church is important to me because it was the church
in the first four centuries of Christianity which changed the Western world.[12]
It was the kerygma of that Church which led to the incredible and
unparalleled evangelisation, which suffered under various Roman persecutions
(even if the idea of constant persecution from Jesus’ death to
Constantine is somewhat mythical) and endured the scorn of Jews, Greeks and
Romans alike. This was the Church which, once being fed to the lions in Rome,
came to non-violently conquer Rome spiritually. Therefore, this is true
Christianity, which transforms sinful persons into willing servants of God, at
least by the criteria of “bearing good fruit” that Jesus gives. If that
transforming Gospel was Catholic – and I contend the early Church’s Gospel was
effectively the Catholic one – then as far as I am concerned, that is the true
Gospel.
I said I would not attack sola Scriptura as being unbiblical and ahistorical, but I ought to make one point: if one is to bow down solely to the Word of God, one better have a good idea what that Word is. Even if I grant that the consensus of the faithful is essentially enough to establish which books are inspired and which are not, it remains to be seen why one can simply remove seven books from the canon. Those who desire to be faithful to the Bible must, I imagine, be faithful to what the Bible is without making it what one would like it to be – because if one crafts one’s own Bible, one does not believe God but simply in oneself. The Bible throughout all Church history, however, by overwhelming consensus of the Church Fathers is that the deuterocanonical books are part of Scripture.[13] I mention this because one rather important step for me was first seeing how much the Church Fathers quoted these seven mysterious “other” books as authoritative, and then also reading from the second chapter of the book of Wisdom. The account is eerily similar to Matthew’s gospel’s account of the passion. Wisdom 2 is the sort of incredibly Christological part of the Old Testament that makes it clear that truly, the Scriptures testify about Jesus.
I thus far
have, I think, established that sola Scriptura leads to disunity in the Church
(a problem since the beginning of this doctrine) and have argued that this lack
of unity invalidates Protestant claims to being a proper church. Though I
myself have not included all of the discussion of these issues, anyone who
bothers to read the works I have cited will understand, at least, my position. Furthermore,
I proposed that true Christianity was that Christianity which transformed the
West, and that it was quite clearly Catholic.
One final
point remains for me indispensable: any real Evangelical Christian places a
great emphasis on doctrinal purity,[14]
and earnestly seeks answers either from their pastors or from the Bible. Now,
being a highly individualistic person (unfortunately, I might add) and since I
believed fervently, before the vaguest idea of my entering the Catholic Church
had passed through my mind, in the doctrine of sola Scriptura, I had to
check out all these claims for myself. For this reason, I have spent long
nights reading the Scriptures, I have spent great lengths of time engaging with
Biblical scholarship and more academic forms of theology. In the process I have
learnt an enormous deal, I can understand far more ancient Greek than is normal
(though I still do not understand very much at all), I am somewhat able to date
the books of the New Testament by the usual critical methods scholars use
today. I became relatively proficient in historical and form criticism – though
any scholar would of course surpass me. More in the realm of theology, I
discussed and argued endlessly with whoever would talk to me about it on issues
of theological interest to me, ever wishing to ground my theological views in
the very words of the Bible. Nothing was assumed, everything could be
challenged and had to live up to what the Bible said.
By all
accounts I have heard, though I am no expert on the person, there has been
another figure that experienced something analogous though not identical to me:
Martin Luther. The basic understanding I have been given tells of a man, an
Augustinian monk, who could not keep the requirements imposed upon him, who was
unable to “meet the Law’s demands.”
Though he tried, though “his zeal no
respite [knew]” he could not live up to the standard. Then he discovered he
did not have to, in fact, that the Gospel essentially said he could not be good
no matter how hard he tried – though he could through God’s grace. Certainly,
he could do good things,[15]
but being good is more than doing good things – being good refers to essence,
not actions.
This
experiential aspect is my third point, succinctly stated thus: by my own
actions and zeal, I still seem incapable of being doctrinally orthodox. I can
try and try, but I will probably always be wrong on many core issues on my own
strength – something problematic if salvation involves a cognitive aspect. It
seems to be the case that Luther understood salvation erroneously as an
Augustinian monk, as if he had to earn his way to heaven, in short, a
works-centred salvation. The analogy is particularly poignant because in many
ways Protestantism (at least the form in which I was immersed) has a very
orthodoxy-centred view of salvation: you could not be saved if one believed the
wrong things, for instance –atheists could
not be saved, people who denied the divinity of Christ (like Jehovah Witnesses,
or other Unitarians) could not be saved…one is required to believe “the Gospel”
to be saved, and that is, in my view, an orthodoxy-centred view of salvation.
For this reason, I suspect I will receive objections to my coming to the Church
that are doctrinal in nature.[16]
Nonetheless, I cannot on my own strength know what the Gospel is: I need
someone to tell me.
Now, if that
person is a Bible study leader or pastor, then that person must have some sort
of teaching authority – which is effectively the Catholic Church’s claim in her
Magisterium. If one rejects all such authorities except for the Scriptures, the
Gospel can and does become a matter of personal interpretation. The
obvious response is that the required guiding voice is the Holy Spirit – and indeed it is. Yet
the Holy Spirit, I think, has used the Catholic Church as her means, and though
the Holy Spirit obviously acts outside the Church, the diversity of theological
views on any given topic clearly testifies that there is no clarity or
infallibility guaranteed outside the Church. The words of St Augustine ring extremely true for
me when he says that he would not have believed the Gospel except on the
authority of the Catholic Church.[17]
I require a living voice to tell me
“this is what is true” and
distinguish it from my own “this is what I think
may be is true.”[18]
This living
voice is actually also a voice against relativism. In what can perhaps aptly
(though dramatically) be called doctrinal angst, I began to wonder whether I
can be certain about anything at all in Christianity. Even if I thought that
the Bible was infallible and inerrant, it seems that there is no mutual basis
for agreement on what that implies: there were some who originally denied that
Christ was equal and “ὁμοούσιος”
(consubstantial) with the Father apparently on biblical grounds, and various scholars of
the New Testament say this is the teaching of St Paul. How do I declare this a
heresy? I can find support for such a position in the Bible (see Romans 1, or
John 14:28, 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, etc.), yet I have been repeatedly told that
Christ is not only divine but equal with the Father. It is not even by
overwhelming consensus of the Church Fathers that one may hold to the commonly
held Trinitarian view, as before the Council of Nicea which formally defined
the doctrine of the Trinity, it is unclear whether the Church as a whole
believed such a dogma, and almost certain that she did not believe it in the refined Nicene form. [19]
Most, though
not all, seem to agree on the Nicene formulation of the doctrine of the
Trinity, yet if I appeal solely to the Bible, how am I to know that there will
not be a new interpretation of the Bible that completely overthrows traditional
Christian understandings? If I rely simply on my ability to exegete, then
perhaps there will be somebody who convinces many that their interpretation is
correct. Whether or not such a person shall come is beside the point, what matters
is that such a person could come – and if they could (the Reformation and
subsequent history being a demonstration that it can) then I cannot be certain of anything in Christianity, not
even what the precepts of Christianity are even if it were not true. I would
instead have to remain in the realm of “probably” and “that is my current
understanding” – even about the Trinity, since there are various ‘Christian’
groups which advocate some form of Arianism or Semi-Arianism.
Thus, it is
within a Catholic context that I may bridge the “interpretive gap” – the
Scripture is a true authority only when there is some means by which truth can
be extracted from it, or in other words, some reason why the interpretation is
just as divine as the divine words themselves. If the Word of God was, for
instance, in Swahili, it would be of no use to me without an interpreter or
translator: and in the analogous case we have in reality, the Holy Spirit
acting through the Church is that interpreter.
In summary,
my reasons have been essentially three: the Catholic Church provides unity and
certainty by means of the Apostolic Tradition (both written in Scripture and
orally transmitted), dates back to the first century and is thus, with the
Eastern Orthodox Church, the only candidate for being the true “One Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church,” and because having a clear certainty arising
from the Magisterium of the Church in interpreting the Scriptures, I no longer
have to feel the weight of remaining orthodox of my own accord and can indeed be
certain of the Christian faith. I shall be confirmed, God willing, into the
Catholic Church on the 27th of October, 2013 AD, and from thence I
will be a Catholic Christian. In the much more succinct words of my brother in
the Lord, St Augustine of Hippo:
"[T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in
[the Catholic Church's] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me
here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by
love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from
the very see of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection,
gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15-17], up to the present
episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without
reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics,
so much so that, although all heretics want to be called 'Catholic,' when a
stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would
dare to point out his own basilica or house"[20]
Promulgated on the Feast of St Jerome,
30th of September 2013 AD,
Brisbane, Queensland.
[1] Strictly
speaking, since I do not think the epistle to the Ephesians was written by St
Paul, I should refer simply to “the author of Ephesians” – but I will
substitute Paul instead of that cumbersome phrase. It does not change my point
about him being patron saint, since the Calvinist version of the doctrine of
predestination can be read into Ephesians 1, and Ephesians 2:1-10 has a strong
statement of salvation by grace alone which is sometimes used against straw-men
of Catholic teaching.
[2]
Though the New Testament uses the word “Church” in plural at times, it does not
mean there are many Bodies of Christ. I suggest that the term “congregation” is
a better translation in many instances of the Greek ekklēsia.
[3] Statistic
taken from the Pew Forum report accessed: [http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/]
[4] “The Consistory of Geneva, 1559-1569,” Bibliothèque
d’Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976): 467-484, cited in Anders, accessed
16/09/2013 <http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/how-john-calvin-made-me-a-catholic/#identifier_0_4918>
[5]
Anders, ibid.
[6]
R.C. Sproul, Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, p. 58.
[7]
For
an Evangelical treatment of the topic, particularly using a case study in South
Africa:
Dreyer, Y., Zeindler, M., Case-Winters, A., Sadananda, R. & Weinrich, M., 2013, ‘Sola Scriptura: Hindrance or catalyst for church unity?’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 69(1), Art. #2000, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v69i1.2000
Dreyer, Y., Zeindler, M., Case-Winters, A., Sadananda, R. & Weinrich, M., 2013, ‘Sola Scriptura: Hindrance or catalyst for church unity?’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 69(1), Art. #2000, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v69i1.2000
For a more scholarly treatment of Protestantism’s issues
surrounding unity, again from a Protestant perspective, I have been recommended
Alister McGrath’s Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, though I cannot myself
recommend it as I have not read it.
[8] It
is important to address why Eastern Orthodoxy does not feature in this
dichotomy, for without the Eastern Church(es) this dichotomy is a false one: I
am presently recounting my “road to
Rome,” not giving a watertight argument for the Catholic Church. In my view,
Roman primacy is sufficiently apostolic and the Catholic faith internally more
coherent, as well as possessing more signs of being the Church of Christ, that
it is the correct one above the claims of the Eastern Orthodox one. But I
freely grant that the Eastern Orthodox Church possesses a powerful claim to the
title of “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,” the marks of the Church
given by Nicea. Perhaps erroneously, I am grouping the Anglican Communion with
Protestantism for now, though Anglicans too deserve separate treatment, and
also have an interesting claim to be considered.
[9] Accessible
modern defences of the “historicity” of the Catholic Church tend to be popular
and hence not entirely scholarly. Having said that, for an excellent scholarly
treatment of the role of Mary in the early church, see Hugo Rahner SJ’s “Our
Lady and the Church,” and for the Catholic understanding of Sacred
Tradition and its basis in history see Yves Congar OP’s “Tradition and
Traditions” and his “The Meaning of Tradition” For an introductory
but still scholarly treatment of the role of the Church as authoritative, see “The
Magisterium” by Avery Dulles SJ. It suffices to read the works of St
Augustine whilst trying to remain unclouded by one’s own desire to read in
Protestant soteriology to see the Catholic view of salvation contained in his
writings. JI Packer, an Evangelical theologian, has noted that the Catholic
view of justification is essentially the Augustinian one.
[10] This is the point in my journey where, I
must admit, for the sake of rationality I ought to have included consideration
of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but I did not. I will only consider Catholic
claims because this is my “Road to Rome,” and I only paid proper attention to
the Eastern Orthodox Church “once in Rome,” so to speak.
[11]
The Mormons have the death of the last apostle, usually said to be St John, as
that date of definitive corruption, others leave it as late as Constantine. One
reason I find the Constantine cut off point interesting is that the Council of
Nicea, where the orthodox understanding of the Trinity was established in
creedal form, got given conciliar authority is after that historical fact.
[12]
It has almost undoubtedly been the Catholic Church which shaped the Western
world from then onwards, but since we are concerned presently with the myth of
a Protestant church with heresies slowly being incorporated, I use this
narrower timeframe.
[13]
Though the consensus was overwhelming, it was not quite unanimous: St Jerome is
a notable exception, and an exception that Martin Luther relied upon to rid
himself of the books which he seemed to dislike. They probably had too much
free will in them.
[14] This
is deemed unfortunate by some who prize orthopraxis over orthodoxy, but I still
maintain that truly believing the orthodox Gospel necessarily produces
orthopraxis. Whether good or bad, however, it is true that Evangelical
Protestantism is so. Various passages in Scripture, too, highlight the
cognitive aspect, such as Romans 10:9-10:
"If
you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that
you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your
faith and are saved."
[15] On
many readings of Luther, particularly later in life, he seemed to think that
practically all actions that we were able to do were sin – the best we could muster
is to only sin venially. But that is irrelevant at present.
[16]
There is no denial of grace here. I affirm that classical Protestant teaching
and modern Evangelical doctrine both teach that faith, belief, and orthodoxy
are all gifts of God’s grace.
[17]
Augustine of Hippo, Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus.
[18]
Whenever I make potential claims to truth, people point out that truth claims
are dangerous. This seems to be a good objection only if one is somehow bound
to only believe things which are practical, harmless, nice or useful. On the
other hand, the truth (whatever it is), seems to be ignorant of any problems it
might cause: whatever is true is true independent of its utility.
[19]
The Trinity is a clear case of a doctrine maturing before being defined infallibly,
in this case at Nicea. For an excellent study of how doctrines develop over
time, becoming more explicit, see John Henry Newman’s “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.”
