In the debates surrounding the Blessed Virgin Mary, Protestants often react to the Catholic Christian doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (which states that by God's grace, Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin from the moment of her conception in her own mother's womb) by claiming that the Bible says that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Ergo, Mary sinned.
The intention is understandable, since they often argue that Jesus's sinlessness was a proof of His divinity. Thus, the claim that anyone else lived a sinless life smacks of idolatry, since it seems to claim that, in this case, Mary is also a god.
It should be stated straight-away that this argument falls to pieces when we recognize two things:
1. Romans uses the word "all" in a figurative, not absolute sense, to mean the vast majority of humans. In fact, if we read the verse in context and look at the psalm from which it is taken, the psalmist himself is drawing a distinction between those who are "not righteous" (the "all" who have sinned) and God's chosen people, whom God has rescued from the bondages of sin and death. Thus, there is even room in the Bible to draw a distinction between the sinful proclivities of man apart from God and the special grace God gives to Christians to live a holy life, not by their power but by His. All the same, I, a Christian, am still a sinner, though I look forward to the day where I (like Mary was from her conception) made by God's grace a spotless member of Christ's mystical body.
2. More practically, even the most strident anti-Catholic would admit that certain people on this planet die without ever committing a personal sin a day of their lives. Young children die all the time before reaching an age where they can choose to sin. People with severe mental handicaps also die as perfect souls. Angels are creatures like we are, but they do not sin. Adam and Eve were created sinless as well. Yet, babies, people with mental disabilities, angels, Adam, and Eve were not gods because of a sinlessness they each attained. Two points follow: the claim that Mary was conceived without sin and lived a sinless life in no way is tantamount to claiming Mary was divine. In fact, it gives greater glory to God to acknowledge how effectively he revealed his saving plan (which is to free everyone one of us 100% from sin) in his own mother. Secondly, the word "all" simply can not be taken consistently to literally mean "every other human being besides Jesus."
Yet, the word "all" is often taken this way as the basis for an argument that Mary sinned.
I'd like to turn the tables on this argument by challenging my Protestant brothers and sisters in Christ to prayerfully consider the implications of making this argument as a way of refuting the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
First, this argument is founded on a specific claim: Mary sinned. Every Protestant who makes this argument does so by publicly (or perhaps privately before God) casting a specific accusation at a specific person, the accusation being that at some point in her life, Mary intentionally acted against God's will. All of our sins are small moments of atheism; they are actions that say I want to be God in my life at this moment, and I don't want the true God's desire for my life at this moment to be realized. Sin - even the smallest sin - is a very serious, very malignant spiritual cancer, and we should hope to contract the worst possible physical cancer before ever choosing to sin even in the smallest way. Thus, the assertion that Mary sinned is a very strong claim to make. It is an accusation, and it is an accusation of sin that dances with the favorite activity of the great accuser himself, Satan. Thus, let us be spiritually wary of the stones we are throwing at our spiritual mother in Christ.
Second, we are claiming that Mary sinned without a single shred of documentary evidence that she did. We are making a claim that we would never be able to prove in a court of law. (But judge, the Bible says that "all have sinned," doesn't it?...see above.) Yet, certain people make this claim about Mary seemingly oblivious that every word we utter and every thought we think will be tried in God's courtroom at our deaths. Do we really think that God will chalk these accusations of sin up as religious rhetoric, no harm no foul? These arguments presume greatly on the mercy of God and completely ignore God's divine justice. Indeed, most human beings do sin. This blog author sins every day, and I throw myself on God's mercy for my salvation (as did Mary). But is it spiritually safe or wise to be accusing another Christian--especially the Theotokos, the God-bearer--of sinning when we have absolutely no evidence of such a sin whatsoever?
Third, the two arguments above would hold true in accusing any person of sin. But the person we are talking about here is THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY!! We are talking about the one person in salvation history whom God chose to bear the Second Person of the Trinity in her womb, to be a tabernacle for God Himself, to be the Mother of God by giving birth to Jesus, who was fully God and fully Man. Mary is considered the New Eve, because it was through her obedience that the disobedience of the first Eve could be undone. Mary was full of grace; the Hebrew word here not only describes Mary, but is actually used by God through the angel Gabriele to name Mary. Further, the Hebrew word provides a temporal dimension, such that it says that Mary was specially graced by God from the beginning of her existence through the time that word was spoken by Gabriele. Mary is considered the New Ark. The Old Testament Ark, which bore the manna, Aaron's rod, and the Ten Commandments, was built at God's instruction our of perfect gold, and any person who touched the Ark was immediately killed by God himself. The OT ark was "overshadowed" by two angels. Where is the next time we see the word "overshadowed" in the Bible? When Gabriele says that the spirit of the Lord will "overshadow" Mary. Luke also points out how the "mother of my Lord" visits the hillside of Judah, just like the "ark of the Lord" did during its visit to David in 1 Samuel. When David came before the ark, he danced. When Mary came to Elizabeth, John the Baptist "danced" in his mother's womb. If Mary is the ark of the New Covenant (which the Bible clearly evidences) who bears the New Manna, the New Rod, and the New Commandments (Jesus is our Bread of Life as our High Priest, our Prophet, and our King), HOW MUCH MORE would God smite the hand of Satan who would try to touch Mary to cause her to sin? Jesus is God and Mary is Jesus's mother. Jesus loved his mother more than any human ever loved their mothers. Jesus, out of love for His mother, lavished out the more graces on her than he did on any one else. Contrary to the health and wealth preachers, these graces weren't to come in the form of large mansions and expensive botox treatments. Rather, Jesus gave Mary the grace to live a sinless life, a life completely in union with God. Mary's fiat--her yes to God--was a yes she lived every moment of her existence. Moreover, Mary received a special grace from God to be free of the stain of original sin (exactly like the first Eve) from the moment of her conception. Was immaculate conception necessary for Jesus to conceived in her womb? No, the church emphatically declares. The immaculate conception is not necessary, but it is fitting, and it is consistent with the scriptural evidence with implicitly, if not explicitly, teaches the doctrine.
Ironically, the doctrine of the immaculate conception says way more about Jesus than it does about Mary. After all, Jesus's plan is for all of us to be immaculate some day, hopefully sooner than later by His grace. The only thing special about Mary was that he allowed her--and chose her--to be conceived immaculately. Whereas God needed to wash us all of original sin when we became Christians, God saved Mary from the muck of this sin before she fell into it. Just like I can say that God has saved me from drugs, adultery, idolatry, etc. because he has given me the grace to avoid these sins, Mary can (and did) rejoice in "God my savior," who saved her from original sin by preventing her from contracting it. Thus, the immaculate conception is the working of God's grace, not Mary's, and thus to God alone goes the Glory. All Mary's soul can do, being so perfectly united with God, is "to magnify the Lord." And, it was because of her perfect union with Him that "all generations shall call me blessed." That was not an act of pride on Mary's part, but an act of humility. As Christians, we are the greatest when we are the smallest, humble "handmaid of the Lord." Mary is the greatest creature of God precisely because she is the lowliest. Satan, the mighty angel, couldn't accept that God would take his lowliest creatures and raise them up higher than the angels. But as Mary understood, God "casts down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly. Holy is His Name!" (Can you imagine the breathless excitement with which Mary proclaimed this most beautiful prayer, known as the Magnificat?)
Not only does the immaculate conception say more about how powerful Jesus's love is for us (and especially His mother) than it does about who Mary herself, but it is also a doctrine that is meant for our own edification. Through the immaculate conception, Jesus shows us exhibit A of what he has promised for us in our own lives, should we also choose to become humble "handmaids of the Lord." Of course, many of us do not really choose to be saints. We could, but we just don't will it. Willing to be a saint means saying a radical "yes" to Jesus and a radical "no" to everything that would keep us from Him, and there are many things that compete for our affection in this life. How much easier it is to open ourselves to God's grace having seen in Mary the fruits of God's promises for all who love and serve Him completely.
Sadly, to deny the immaculate conception is not just to deny all the Biblical evidence for the doctrine. Mary is God's greatest masterpiece, and she is a masterpiece wrought by the fire of God's love. She was anticipated as far back as the first Eve, and the protoevengelium in Gen. 3:15 that prophecies that the God will place "enmity" between the serpent and the "woman," and the "woman" will strike at the head of the serpent. "Enmity" means complete separation, or being completely and actively opposed to something. Mary is that women; Mary is God's masterpiece. To deny this quality is not to insult Mary, it is to deny God, and thus it is to diminish the full glory of God's work in salvation history. To deny the immaculate conception is to throw dung on God's work of art by saying that Mary sinned, and that God could not protect his greatest masterpiece from being successfully attacked by Satan.
This is why I pray fervently for my dear brothers and sisters in Christ who (often through no fault of their own) remain separated from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I trust in God's mercy that he will not hold them accountable for casting stones at Mary with good intentions and in a state of invincible ignorance. At the same time, I am sad that these same brothers and sisters may one day find themselves before Jesus having to face the reality that they calumniated Jesus's mother without a shred of evidence of her wrong doing, and did so in opposition to the very Church that Jesus established so that He could teach all generations His saving truths.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if you have been raised to think of the doctrine of the immaculate conception as a wedge of division to separate you from Catholics, please pray fervently about whether or not this is a good reason to believe (or deny) a doctrine. Jesus loves His mystical body, the Church, and wants her to be completely united. Jesus also loves His mother, and gave Mary to us from the cross to be our mother. Rather than hold Mary at a distance as the icon of false doctrines, get to know her. Love her; you won't outdo Christ's love for her, and will actually be imitating Christ who loves her more profoundly than words can describe. Ask Mary to pray for you. Mary is not God; she can not answer your prayers. But through the sole mediatorship of Christ, we the members of his Body can mediate and pray for one another. So, I ask you to pray for me (and in doing so, I'm not worshiping you). And we can both ask Mary, who resides so closely to her Son in Heaven, to pray for us without worshiping her. We can call her blessed and give her great honor without ever surpassing the honor God himself has shown Mary. We can say "I love you, Mother Mary" many times without once mistaking Mary for God. Our God is not a God who wants all the love for himself. Rather, our God has shared his love with us precisely so that we can be enabled to share that love with each other, including Mary. The more we love Mary and each other, the more we are loving God and obeying his commandments. There is no opposition between loving Mary and loving God. Love itself does not allow such false divisions and silly dichotomies.
Let us join our heart's with God's voice, who once sent the following love letter to Mary:
Hail, full of Grace,
the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
and Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
And, let us ask her to pray for us:
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
Pray for us Sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Response to First Baptist Church of New Castle, Delaware Ron Sears December 19, 2010 Service on the Virgin Mary
Thanks to the wonderful world of podcasts, I've continued to branch out and learn about more Baptist churches in the Northern Delaware area. First Baptist Church of New Castle, Delaware has a podcast that can be subscribed to through the iTunes store. Ron Sears, the pastor of this church, has a background in Christian counseling, an area in which he has published at least one book. Having listened to various sermons from his recent "Spiritual Adulthood" and "Faith and Doubt" series, I can attest that this is a man who seems to be in love with God and to have a genuine concern for the well-being and growth of his congregation. In reaching out to Pastor Sears and his congregation through this blog post, I hope the words below are not taken as an attack but rather as a loving correction offered out of a spirit of Christian charity. The purpose and goal of my comments is not division but unity, the unity that Christ prayed for in John 17. For us as Baptists and Catholics to open the door for the Holy Spirit to reunite us in perfect faith (including but not limited to perfect doctrine), then it is important that we lay our objections on the table, discuss them openly and honestly, and as St. Paul instructs: "test everything, holding onto what is good" (1 Thess. 5:21).
As a Catholic, I was very interested when I got to Pastor Sears comments made on Dec. 19, 2010 (this is the release date of the podcast, which I assume is the date of the sermon) about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is a person in salvation history who is very near to the hearts and spirituality of Catholics across space and time; she continues to be honored as the spiritual mother of Christians in every part of the world, as she has been since the birth of Christianity (John 19:27). Sadly, Mary, who is really a model for Evangelicals in how her entire being points to and magnifies Christ, has been used by these same Evangelicals to strike a note of division with Catholics (and the Orthodox, and any other Christian group that venerates Mary beyond the point Evangelicals feel is appropriate). Sadly, Mary, who really is the spiritual mother of all Christians who claim to be brothers and sisters with Christ and members of his mystical body the Church, should be a source of unity within the family, much like the grandparents of a large family provide a cohesion to the all the children, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.
So, in this blog entry, I'd like to seriously consider what Pastor Sears has to say about Mary, and especially the way he understands Catholics' devotion to Mary, so that the sad divisions that separate us Christians can be overcome. In launching into this subject, we must remember that Mary is not a battleground where Catholics and Protestants go to war. Let us remember that Catholics and Protestants (at least those Catholics and Protestants who put Jesus first in their lives), are on the same side of the only real battle: the battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, which includes all the untruths, misunderstandings, and lies that Satan has tried to sow between Christians. Satan has been successful at this for so long that it will occasionally be important, as we consider the teachings of the Catholic Church, to place these teaching into a larger historical perspective, so that a teaching made 500 years ago in one historical context is not interpreted in a different historical context to draw even more false, divisive conclusions. In other words, as I dialogue with Ron Sears's sermon about Mary, let us first submit all of our thoughts to Christ, that we may think as charitably as possible, so that the natural fleshly, human instincts to defensiveness and suspicion can be melted away by the Christian virtues of charity and forgiveness and a deep, abiding desire for unity with one another on this issue, at least wherever Christ will allow it for now. Every unity is to be rejoiced over; every continuing division a call to continue the discussion with even more prayer to the Holy Spirit for guidance.
To make it easy for the reader/listener to follow this dialogue, I have provided a link to an mp3 recording of the sermon (see below). Then, in my comments, I will provide minute markings to the places that my comments address.
Before we begin, I'd like to point out a few things to keep in mind:
Here is a link to the sermon. Please download the sermon, begin listening to the first 4-5 minutes, and then press pause and begin reading my comments. As a reminder, I'll give some minute markings so that you can keep my comments aligned with the sermon. I will also put comments that summarize or quote Pastor Sears in blue font.
(0:00-1:00) Introduction and first part of the sermon (Isaiah 7).
:45 Point of sermon: "to take a look at doctrine that surrounds her" by seeing what the Bible has to say about "who she is and what she is."
Many Protestant sermons start off with a similar line: "let's see what the Bible has to say about that." It is important for the reader to note that the pastor can never really provide just "what the Bible says" about something. The pastor will provide some of what the Bible says about Mary as interpreted by the Pastor in the context of the interpretive tradition of Baptist beliefs and practices. In other words, almost every Baptist who hasn't been in a coma their entire life knows that--unless Pastor Sears has lost his marbles--he is going to preach that Mary was a sinner (and not immaculately conceived), that Mary had children after Jesus, and that Mary should not be worshiped. These are things that float in the Baptist air, and they will definitely influence the verses Pastor Sears chooses, the way he reads those verses to apply to Mary, and these preconceived notions will also cause Pastor Sears to not focus on other verses or even to share with the congregation what verses Catholics use to support the doctrines they believe in.
What I am saying here is that the idea that this sermon is going to present "what the Bible says about Mary" is a bit far-reaching. Again, what you will hear is some of what the Bible says as interpreted by Pastor Sears. This point is SO critical, yet many listeners miss this interpretive sleight of hand because it is couched in such innocent sounding language. "I just want to...take a look at what the Bible says...." Yet, as innocent as this sounds, the Bible is a book that needs to be interpreted for its meanings to be acquired. Thus, it is Pastor Sear's very act of "just taking a look at it" which is going to be conditioned by the ways Pastor Sears has been trained to "look" at Scripture. So, we can never get pure, unadulterated access to the Scriptures. We always read the Bible through an interpretive lens that highlights certain verses and hides others. This will be particularly true of Pastor Sears's treatment of the Virgin Mary.
Pastor Sears starts by talking about the Virgin Birth, which he has many beautiful and true things to say about over the course of the sermon. He begins by citing Isaiah 7, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive..."
(1:00-2:30 ) Gives short introduction to OT prophecy, noting that many OT prophecies have already been fulfilled in history. Prophecies have 100% accuracy, or they are not speaking for the Lord.
All of this is excellent, though it is not directly focused on Mary.
(2:30-5:40) Talks about different translations of this verse from Isaiah 7 (v. 14-15). Then, unpacks what these verses mean as a composite of the different translations. Points out that young, unmarried Jewish women would have wondered in hope if they were the virgin that would conceive....
5:45-7:15 We know from the NT that Mary was engaged to Joseph. Being betrothed, they had the responsibility of marriage but not the privilege of the Marriage bed. In choosing to get married, Mary had evidently decided (or given up on?) the idea that she would be the virgin by deciding to get married, knowing that she would eventually consummate her marriage.
Earlier, Pastor Sears mentioned a "young Mary and young Joseph." It seems here that Pastor Sears is unaware of the ancient idea that Mary and Joseph had entered into what is called a "Josephite marriage," one in which two people would marry but would live celibately. This arrangement, though rare, was not uncommon in Biblical times. Further, ancient writers believed that Mary had consecrated her virginity to the Lord at a young age, and thus would not have chosen to enter into a regular marriage. Further still, early Christian writers note that Joseph was actually much older than Mary when they were betrothed, and that he was himself a widower. That Joseph was significantly older than Mary means that he likely died before Jesus began his public ministry, which explains why he does not appear in any of the scenes during the last three years of Jesus's life. Because we are 2,000 years removed from these events, and because the Bible says so little about Mary before the annunciation, the only evidence we have to go on to draw any conclusions about Mary's virginity in relation to her engagement to Joseph are the ancient traditions passed down to us from writers who lived within a few centuries of the events in question. Whether or not Pastor Sears believes these or not is an open question; they are not matters of faith, so we as Christians have a certain amount of freedom in whether we accept the historical evidence as accurate. Still, it is important to note that the picture Pastor Sears paints is apparently based on no evidence, since the Bible doesn't tell us anything about Joseph's age. In fact, as we shall see, Mary's response to the angel Gabriel at the annunciation actually supports the ancient Catholic understanding that Mary was a consecrated Virgin, and hence would remain a virgin perpetually, even after she gave birth to the Messiah.
more to come...
-------
As a Catholic, I was very interested when I got to Pastor Sears comments made on Dec. 19, 2010 (this is the release date of the podcast, which I assume is the date of the sermon) about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is a person in salvation history who is very near to the hearts and spirituality of Catholics across space and time; she continues to be honored as the spiritual mother of Christians in every part of the world, as she has been since the birth of Christianity (John 19:27). Sadly, Mary, who is really a model for Evangelicals in how her entire being points to and magnifies Christ, has been used by these same Evangelicals to strike a note of division with Catholics (and the Orthodox, and any other Christian group that venerates Mary beyond the point Evangelicals feel is appropriate). Sadly, Mary, who really is the spiritual mother of all Christians who claim to be brothers and sisters with Christ and members of his mystical body the Church, should be a source of unity within the family, much like the grandparents of a large family provide a cohesion to the all the children, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.
So, in this blog entry, I'd like to seriously consider what Pastor Sears has to say about Mary, and especially the way he understands Catholics' devotion to Mary, so that the sad divisions that separate us Christians can be overcome. In launching into this subject, we must remember that Mary is not a battleground where Catholics and Protestants go to war. Let us remember that Catholics and Protestants (at least those Catholics and Protestants who put Jesus first in their lives), are on the same side of the only real battle: the battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, which includes all the untruths, misunderstandings, and lies that Satan has tried to sow between Christians. Satan has been successful at this for so long that it will occasionally be important, as we consider the teachings of the Catholic Church, to place these teaching into a larger historical perspective, so that a teaching made 500 years ago in one historical context is not interpreted in a different historical context to draw even more false, divisive conclusions. In other words, as I dialogue with Ron Sears's sermon about Mary, let us first submit all of our thoughts to Christ, that we may think as charitably as possible, so that the natural fleshly, human instincts to defensiveness and suspicion can be melted away by the Christian virtues of charity and forgiveness and a deep, abiding desire for unity with one another on this issue, at least wherever Christ will allow it for now. Every unity is to be rejoiced over; every continuing division a call to continue the discussion with even more prayer to the Holy Spirit for guidance.
To make it easy for the reader/listener to follow this dialogue, I have provided a link to an mp3 recording of the sermon (see below). Then, in my comments, I will provide minute markings to the places that my comments address.
Before we begin, I'd like to point out a few things to keep in mind:
- The sermon is 37 minutes. This may give the impression that there is not much to say about Mary from the Bible and Sacred Tradition (authoritative teachings of Jesus and the apostles passed down from the beginning of the Church). Many books have been written unpacking the depth of what the Bible alone has to say about Mary, and Biblical scholars and theologians have not yet plumbed the depths of the Biblical passages on our Blessed Mother. I say this only because Evangelical sermons on topics like Mary tend to be reductionistic; whereas pastors will expand upon many other verses of Scripture, they tend to put verses about Mary into a straitjacket, such that they are not taken to offer the same depth of meaning. To the Catholic listener, this tendency of some pastors makes it seem like the pastor has put limits on what these verse could possibly say before he has even read the verses themselves. We must be careful as Christians not to let our prejudices against other Christians (in this case, against Catholics' devotion to Mary) to create a blinder to all the Bible has to teach us about Mary.
- Also, I'd like to clarify from the get-go the following points: Catholics do not worship Mary. Worship is due to God alone. Catholics do not "pray to" Mary in the more modern sense of the expression. We do ask Mary to pray for us. (NB: "Pray" has an older connotation meaning a something like a "kind request," as in the English expression "Pray tell..." So, if an elderly Catholic or older Catholic text speaks of praying to Mary, it is ALWAYS using this expression in the older sense of requesting Mary's intercession.)
- Finally, it is important for the reader to know that everything Catholic's believe about Mary is found either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture, and nothing contradicts Scripture when properly interpreted. Remember: Protestants in theory don't claim to be infallible interpreters of Scripture. Thus, it is important for Protestants in practice to consider when considering certain teachings of the Catholic Church that maybe their interpretation of Scripture is incorrect at certain places.
- At the same time, the Bible was never intended to be read in a vacuum, where Christians must lock themselves in a room away from every non-Biblical influence to try to decipher the meaning of this complicated text. No - rather, the Bible was always meant to be read in context of the living, breathing, 2,000 year old Sacred Tradition of the Christian, Catholic Church. The fullness of God's Word comes down to us today not only in written form but is also communicated (though not in an inspired, God-breathed manner) through the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church, teachings that have protected and delivered the Good News (much like a mailman protects and delivers the mail without opening it and changing its message) twenty centuries. The Catholic Church was there from the beginning, and never has the Church changed one of her doctrinal or moral teachings (the same cannot be said about any other Christian group). For 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has passed on truths about Mary, and these truths are all found in the Bible, but they are also found in the Church's ancient liturgies, her prayers, her artwork, the names of her ancient churches, ancient (yet ever new) doctrines formulated in councils such as the one held in Ephesus in 431 A.D. The Bible's rich meanings--when correctly understood and interpreted--resonate with the rich historical evidence that the Church holds dearly in her memory. While Catholics and Protestants agree that the Bible is divinely inspired, God-breathed, and carries a unique kind of authority within Christianity, the idea of going by the Bible-alone--besides for being an unBiblical concept--is itself a reductionistic doctrine, in that it severs the Bible from the rich historical tradition, and most importantly, from the living Sacred Tradition protected by the Holy Spirit through the Church. It is this Sacred Tradition that helps guide our reading of Scripture.
- Even though most Protestants would disagree with much found in the above bullet point, I'd finish these points by reiterating that everyone has a tradition they use to read and interpret the Bible. Catholic Sacred Tradition hasn't been done away with for the "Bible Alone." Rather, Catholic Traditions have been replaced by Baptist tradition, Methodist tradition, Adventist tradition, etc. Read through the lens of these traditions, the Bible will read as a very Baptist, Methodist, or Adventist book. The question is not, then, what does the Bible say. Rather, the real question should be, whose tradition is the one that was passed down from the apostles? Which tradition is the Tradition of God, and which are mere traditions of men. (Granted, many aspects of Baptist, Methodist, and Adventist traditions are Traditions of God, but we can only measure this against the objective standard of the full Tradition of God, which is found only in the Catholic Church that Christ founded on Peter and the apostles almost 2,000 years ago.)
Here is a link to the sermon. Please download the sermon, begin listening to the first 4-5 minutes, and then press pause and begin reading my comments. As a reminder, I'll give some minute markings so that you can keep my comments aligned with the sermon. I will also put comments that summarize or quote Pastor Sears in blue font.
(0:00-1:00) Introduction and first part of the sermon (Isaiah 7).
:45 Point of sermon: "to take a look at doctrine that surrounds her" by seeing what the Bible has to say about "who she is and what she is."
Many Protestant sermons start off with a similar line: "let's see what the Bible has to say about that." It is important for the reader to note that the pastor can never really provide just "what the Bible says" about something. The pastor will provide some of what the Bible says about Mary as interpreted by the Pastor in the context of the interpretive tradition of Baptist beliefs and practices. In other words, almost every Baptist who hasn't been in a coma their entire life knows that--unless Pastor Sears has lost his marbles--he is going to preach that Mary was a sinner (and not immaculately conceived), that Mary had children after Jesus, and that Mary should not be worshiped. These are things that float in the Baptist air, and they will definitely influence the verses Pastor Sears chooses, the way he reads those verses to apply to Mary, and these preconceived notions will also cause Pastor Sears to not focus on other verses or even to share with the congregation what verses Catholics use to support the doctrines they believe in.
What I am saying here is that the idea that this sermon is going to present "what the Bible says about Mary" is a bit far-reaching. Again, what you will hear is some of what the Bible says as interpreted by Pastor Sears. This point is SO critical, yet many listeners miss this interpretive sleight of hand because it is couched in such innocent sounding language. "I just want to...take a look at what the Bible says...." Yet, as innocent as this sounds, the Bible is a book that needs to be interpreted for its meanings to be acquired. Thus, it is Pastor Sear's very act of "just taking a look at it" which is going to be conditioned by the ways Pastor Sears has been trained to "look" at Scripture. So, we can never get pure, unadulterated access to the Scriptures. We always read the Bible through an interpretive lens that highlights certain verses and hides others. This will be particularly true of Pastor Sears's treatment of the Virgin Mary.
Pastor Sears starts by talking about the Virgin Birth, which he has many beautiful and true things to say about over the course of the sermon. He begins by citing Isaiah 7, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive..."
(1:00-2:30 ) Gives short introduction to OT prophecy, noting that many OT prophecies have already been fulfilled in history. Prophecies have 100% accuracy, or they are not speaking for the Lord.
All of this is excellent, though it is not directly focused on Mary.
(2:30-5:40) Talks about different translations of this verse from Isaiah 7 (v. 14-15). Then, unpacks what these verses mean as a composite of the different translations. Points out that young, unmarried Jewish women would have wondered in hope if they were the virgin that would conceive....
5:45-7:15 We know from the NT that Mary was engaged to Joseph. Being betrothed, they had the responsibility of marriage but not the privilege of the Marriage bed. In choosing to get married, Mary had evidently decided (or given up on?) the idea that she would be the virgin by deciding to get married, knowing that she would eventually consummate her marriage.
Earlier, Pastor Sears mentioned a "young Mary and young Joseph." It seems here that Pastor Sears is unaware of the ancient idea that Mary and Joseph had entered into what is called a "Josephite marriage," one in which two people would marry but would live celibately. This arrangement, though rare, was not uncommon in Biblical times. Further, ancient writers believed that Mary had consecrated her virginity to the Lord at a young age, and thus would not have chosen to enter into a regular marriage. Further still, early Christian writers note that Joseph was actually much older than Mary when they were betrothed, and that he was himself a widower. That Joseph was significantly older than Mary means that he likely died before Jesus began his public ministry, which explains why he does not appear in any of the scenes during the last three years of Jesus's life. Because we are 2,000 years removed from these events, and because the Bible says so little about Mary before the annunciation, the only evidence we have to go on to draw any conclusions about Mary's virginity in relation to her engagement to Joseph are the ancient traditions passed down to us from writers who lived within a few centuries of the events in question. Whether or not Pastor Sears believes these or not is an open question; they are not matters of faith, so we as Christians have a certain amount of freedom in whether we accept the historical evidence as accurate. Still, it is important to note that the picture Pastor Sears paints is apparently based on no evidence, since the Bible doesn't tell us anything about Joseph's age. In fact, as we shall see, Mary's response to the angel Gabriel at the annunciation actually supports the ancient Catholic understanding that Mary was a consecrated Virgin, and hence would remain a virgin perpetually, even after she gave birth to the Messiah.
more to come...
Sunday, November 14, 2010
See you at the Tent! Visiting Fairwinds Baptist Church on November 14, 2010
This morning, I greeted folks as they were driving home from Fairwinds Baptist Church in Bear, DE with a homemade sign reading: "Catholics Come Home .org" and "Google: Ready with a Reason."
The idea is simple: I would like to invite Catholics who have left the church to come home to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, the church founded by Jesus Christ on Peter and the apostles, the only church that has been around since the beginning, and the church in which the fullness of truth subsists.
Although standing outside a church with a sign may be perceived as an attack, I can assure you that this was not my intention. My intention was to invite: to invite former Catholics to return, or at least to get them to ask why they should even want to return. (In this regard, my visit was a success. One man stopped to ask why I was holding this sign near a Protestant Church. I responded that there were many former Catholics who attended Fairwinds and that I was inviting them to come home to the Catholic Church. The gentleman asked a good question: "Why would they want to do that." I told him to Google "ready with a reason" and that I would be happy to let him know. There are a thousand reasons, all of which are summed up in one word: Jesus. The fullness of Christ is found in the fullness of His Bride, the Church of the Living God. In this church are found all--not some--all of the gifts. And Jesus himself is the most unspeakable gift of them all, as he communes with us through the Most Holy Eucharist.)
My intentions for visiting can summarized by a story told by former Baptist preacher Stephen K. Ray. Imagine that you are a member of a large extended family that all dwells together in a giant mansion. God has richly blessed this family with everything it needs: a father figure to unite the house, an pantry stocked with a seemingly endless supply of food, a first-aid clinic for healing any sort of ailment, a family history book recording the history of the family, and rich oral tradition that had been passed down to every family member explaining everything about what the family history book meant. While this family has had its problems (what family doesn't), it is still, above all, a family, in good times and in bad. It is a community of love, a community of the Father who founded her, and it has stood the test of time; your family has safely dwelt in this mansion for over a thousand years.
Sadly, divisions have recently begun threatening the family. Some family members are dissatisfied with the family's head and have stopped trusting that it is ultimately God who protects the family gathered in the mansion, despite the flaws of the authority figures who dwell in it. And so these family members decide one day to leave the family. They pack a tent and head for the backyard. In this tent, they have some of the food from the mansion, but not all of it. They took a copy of the family book, but not all the chapters, and once they left the mansion, they lost the family tradition that explained what the book actually meant.
As a result, the group that left quickly splintered. Now there were two tents in the back yard, and every day and every night, the family members looked out the window and saw more and more bickering and dividing among the people in the tents. One week, there were two tents, then four, then sixteen, then over two hundred tents. The only thing the people in the tents could completely agree on was that they refused to join the family in the mansion. And so the people in the tents developed many reasons not to go back to the mansion. Some of the original people to leave the mansion even spread lies regarding the family in the mansion and what they believed, just so that future generations would not think of returning.
All the while, the people in the mansion continue to look on with sadness, sadness that the family is divided and that those outside the tent no longer have all the gifts that God has left in the mansion. As time has goes by, many people both inside and outside the mansion have forgotten what it was like to live in perfect unity. They forgot that the Father intended the family to live united in the mansion. Even though many people in the tents still love the father, and even try to serve him more faithfully than some of the people in the mansion, the Father's will remains that all his children receive all the gifts, and these gifts are only found in full in the mansion.
So, very recently, the Father placed men in charge of the mansion who began inspiring members of the house to go visit the fallen-away brothers and sisters living in the tents. The message was a simple one: we love you and we want you to come home. Come inside the family. Come enjoy the fullness of all God wants to give to you. You know all those things that you love in the tent -- the family book and the occasional family meal? While in the mansion, we not only have the full family book but we even have the interpretation of the book that was passed down from the Father. You know that meal that you enjoy once a month or once a quarter? We have an even more abundant meal every single day, just like the earliest members of the family when it was united (see Acts 2). Those things you enjoy in the tent are good precisely because they come from the mansion! Unfortunately, a lot of things have crept into the tents from outside the mansion--false teachings, traditions of men, and the like--and those living in the tent are missing many of the gifts that exist for everyone in the mansion.
And so I, like many others living in the mansion, decided this morning to visit my family members living in the backyard. That is why you saw me outside your tent. I was there out of love and out of a desire for unity in the family--a unity that Jesus fervently prayed for the night before he gave his life for you and for me. Jesus prayed in his high priestly prayer in John 17 that we "may be one." Jesus wants us to be one. But we are not.
I stand with mind, heart, and arms open to welcome you back into the mansion, or even just to chat about what keeps us separated. So please, if you look up churches in the yellow pages and are disturbed to see so many tents in the backyard, might you consider at least knocking on the door of the mansion, that beautiful, well-stocked mansion that has existed since Jesus built her 2,000 years ago? Please leave a comment on this post or email me. I'd love to get reacquainted!
May God be praised now and forever!
The idea is simple: I would like to invite Catholics who have left the church to come home to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, the church founded by Jesus Christ on Peter and the apostles, the only church that has been around since the beginning, and the church in which the fullness of truth subsists.
Although standing outside a church with a sign may be perceived as an attack, I can assure you that this was not my intention. My intention was to invite: to invite former Catholics to return, or at least to get them to ask why they should even want to return. (In this regard, my visit was a success. One man stopped to ask why I was holding this sign near a Protestant Church. I responded that there were many former Catholics who attended Fairwinds and that I was inviting them to come home to the Catholic Church. The gentleman asked a good question: "Why would they want to do that." I told him to Google "ready with a reason" and that I would be happy to let him know. There are a thousand reasons, all of which are summed up in one word: Jesus. The fullness of Christ is found in the fullness of His Bride, the Church of the Living God. In this church are found all--not some--all of the gifts. And Jesus himself is the most unspeakable gift of them all, as he communes with us through the Most Holy Eucharist.)
My intentions for visiting can summarized by a story told by former Baptist preacher Stephen K. Ray. Imagine that you are a member of a large extended family that all dwells together in a giant mansion. God has richly blessed this family with everything it needs: a father figure to unite the house, an pantry stocked with a seemingly endless supply of food, a first-aid clinic for healing any sort of ailment, a family history book recording the history of the family, and rich oral tradition that had been passed down to every family member explaining everything about what the family history book meant. While this family has had its problems (what family doesn't), it is still, above all, a family, in good times and in bad. It is a community of love, a community of the Father who founded her, and it has stood the test of time; your family has safely dwelt in this mansion for over a thousand years.
Sadly, divisions have recently begun threatening the family. Some family members are dissatisfied with the family's head and have stopped trusting that it is ultimately God who protects the family gathered in the mansion, despite the flaws of the authority figures who dwell in it. And so these family members decide one day to leave the family. They pack a tent and head for the backyard. In this tent, they have some of the food from the mansion, but not all of it. They took a copy of the family book, but not all the chapters, and once they left the mansion, they lost the family tradition that explained what the book actually meant.
As a result, the group that left quickly splintered. Now there were two tents in the back yard, and every day and every night, the family members looked out the window and saw more and more bickering and dividing among the people in the tents. One week, there were two tents, then four, then sixteen, then over two hundred tents. The only thing the people in the tents could completely agree on was that they refused to join the family in the mansion. And so the people in the tents developed many reasons not to go back to the mansion. Some of the original people to leave the mansion even spread lies regarding the family in the mansion and what they believed, just so that future generations would not think of returning.
All the while, the people in the mansion continue to look on with sadness, sadness that the family is divided and that those outside the tent no longer have all the gifts that God has left in the mansion. As time has goes by, many people both inside and outside the mansion have forgotten what it was like to live in perfect unity. They forgot that the Father intended the family to live united in the mansion. Even though many people in the tents still love the father, and even try to serve him more faithfully than some of the people in the mansion, the Father's will remains that all his children receive all the gifts, and these gifts are only found in full in the mansion.
So, very recently, the Father placed men in charge of the mansion who began inspiring members of the house to go visit the fallen-away brothers and sisters living in the tents. The message was a simple one: we love you and we want you to come home. Come inside the family. Come enjoy the fullness of all God wants to give to you. You know all those things that you love in the tent -- the family book and the occasional family meal? While in the mansion, we not only have the full family book but we even have the interpretation of the book that was passed down from the Father. You know that meal that you enjoy once a month or once a quarter? We have an even more abundant meal every single day, just like the earliest members of the family when it was united (see Acts 2). Those things you enjoy in the tent are good precisely because they come from the mansion! Unfortunately, a lot of things have crept into the tents from outside the mansion--false teachings, traditions of men, and the like--and those living in the tent are missing many of the gifts that exist for everyone in the mansion.
And so I, like many others living in the mansion, decided this morning to visit my family members living in the backyard. That is why you saw me outside your tent. I was there out of love and out of a desire for unity in the family--a unity that Jesus fervently prayed for the night before he gave his life for you and for me. Jesus prayed in his high priestly prayer in John 17 that we "may be one." Jesus wants us to be one. But we are not.
I stand with mind, heart, and arms open to welcome you back into the mansion, or even just to chat about what keeps us separated. So please, if you look up churches in the yellow pages and are disturbed to see so many tents in the backyard, might you consider at least knocking on the door of the mansion, that beautiful, well-stocked mansion that has existed since Jesus built her 2,000 years ago? Please leave a comment on this post or email me. I'd love to get reacquainted!
May God be praised now and forever!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
More Anglicans Sailing on the Barque of Peter
Here are clips from the story:
.- With “overwhelming support,” a recent meeting of leaders in the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) voted to unite with the Roman Catholic Church through the Apostolic Constitution created by Pope Benedict XVI.
The synod then passed a resolution enabling Bishop Wilkinson, with the advice and consent of the Provincial Council, to enact the necessary canonical ordinances and rules to establish the Ordinariate.
The House of Clergy elected members of the Interim Governing Council, which nominated and elected Bishop Wilkinson as the first Bishop Ordinary of the proposed Ordinariate.
According to Dean Janzen’s letter, the Diocesan Council also made financial changes to ensure that the diocese’s restricted funds are protected from “any potential litigation.”
Dean Janzen wrote that the focus of the synod was “the worship and praise of Almighty God; the proclamation of Christ's saving Truth; and faithful witness to the faith, order and discipline to Christ's one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”
He reported that attendees left with “a renewed sense of optimism for the future and a clear vision for the present.”
“With the overwhelming support of clergy and laity for unity with the See of Peter and the establishment of a Canadian Anglican Catholic Ordinariate, our Diocese is now able to move forward united, renewed, and hopeful,” his letter read, according to VirtueOnline.Read more here!
Saturday, July 10, 2010
July 10, 2010 Response to Pastor Tobe's Pastor's Heart Blog Comment
Over the last few months, Pastor Tobe Witmer from Lighthouse Baptist Church (Newark, DE) and I have been in dialogue, both privately, through this blog, and also occasionally on his blog, "The Pastor's Heart." A few days ago, in response to one of my comments, Pastor Witmer made this comment (click he link to go to the post and then scroll down). Since my response is not actually related to the topic of Pastor Tobe's own blog post, I'm posting my response below, here on my own blog:
Hi Pastor Tobe,
Thanks for making that clarification for your readers, and for pointing them to the Catholic Catechism. I encourage your readers, of course, to study these passages carefully and in context so that they do not misunderstand what they are saying.
In my previous comment, I was simply responding to the relationship of the three divine persons, and how, through being drawn into the relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is able to minister through his mystical body, the Church, to you and to me.
As far as your comments on the Eucharist and the Mass, I would simply state the following points:
1) Jesus's sacrifice is one sacrifice, but this sacrifice has three parts: the Upper Room, Calvary, and the alter in the New Jerusalem (heaven) where Jesus is seen by John as a "lamb standing as though slain" offering himself sacrificially to God (Rev. 5:6). There is no other sacrifice for the salvation of man than this sacrifice, which plays out in three parts. The sacrifice of Calvary is the sacrifice of the Upper Room is the sacrifice being offered eternally before the Father in heaven. There is only one sacrifice by which man can be saved, and that is it.
2) Jesus's sacrifice occurs in two temporal dimensions: time (i.e. human history) and eternity. Thus, we can locate the sacrifice offered on Calvary (which actually began in the Upper Room) 2,000 years ago in human history. But also, we know that Christ was chosen as the Paschal Lamb of God "before the creation of the world." (1 Peter 1:20-21), and we can see Jesus offering himself as the Lamb standing as though slain in heaven, whose temporality is not that of human history but is eternal. When we are saved and forgiven of our sins, it is as if Calvary itself pierces through time and is made present to our souls so that its grace can save us.
3) In the Mass, we enter into the New Jerusalem, just like John did in the book of Revelation on "the Lord's Day" (Rev. 1:10). Through the Mass, we join with Christ, our mystical groom, in His once for all (eternity) offering of Himself before the Father for the sake of his bride, the church.
4) Hebrews makes the point over and over that Christ is a "priest forever in the order of Melchizedek" (5:6, 6:20, 7:17, and elsewhere). This not only reaffirms that Christ's priesthood exists "forever," but that his offering does as well, since Priests offer sacrifice. There is only one sacrifice, but it is being offered by our High Priest forever. The Melchizedekian priesthood was the only undefiled priesthood of the OT, and Melchizedek offered his sacrifice in the form of BREAD and WINE (Gen. 14:18). The psalms prophecy that Jesus would be of this priestly order (Psalm 110:4). The idea that Jesus is forever offering a sacrifice in the form of bread and wine fits perfectly with how Christians have always (since the Church's beginning) understood the Mass.
5) Malachi prophecied of a pure sacrifice that would be offered from the rising of the sun to its setting - in all times and places (Mal. 1:11). There is only one perfect sacrifice that has ever been offered: Christ's sacrifice. (All former sacrifices were but shadows of this one perfect sacrifice.) It is this one High Priest's one eternal offering that we enter into during the Mass, which has occurred from the rising of the sun to its setting in the Church since the beginning. Through the Mass, we mystically join Christ at table in the Upper Room, at Calvary, and also in Heaven before the throne of God.
6) So, we see that Christ offers his sacrifice eternally before the Father, but that this sacrifice is made present in human time through a sacrifice under the form of bread and wine, which Jesus claims in John 6:51 as "the flesh he will give for the life of the world."
7) Christians for two-thousand years, going straight back to the students of the apostles and their successors, have taught the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist and the Mass. Christians, for two thousand years, have celebrated the Lord's Supper, the "breaking of bread," on the Lord's Day (Acts 2:42) at Jesus's explicit command and modeling (Luke 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:23, Luke 24:1-35).
I'm uncertain how the above points could be considered Heresy, since they are straight out of the Bible and align perfectly with the teaching of the early church. The difficulty that you seem to have is the idea of Christ's sacrifice has an eternal dimension. No one denies that Christ's sacrifice had a once for all (time) component on Calvary. Christ will never have to endure a bloody sacrifice on the cross for our salvation ever again. However, your denial that this sacrifice has a once for all (eternity) component that Christians enter into during their worship seems contrary to Scripture and to the teachings of the early church, at least as I read them.
Can you point out anyone in the first five hundred years of Christianity that denies the Catholic understanding of the Mass and the Eucharist? Readers can begin their own investigation here:
http://tinyurl.com/ECF-eucharist
Yours in Christ,
Ready
-----------------
Hi Pastor Tobe,
Thanks for making that clarification for your readers, and for pointing them to the Catholic Catechism. I encourage your readers, of course, to study these passages carefully and in context so that they do not misunderstand what they are saying.
In my previous comment, I was simply responding to the relationship of the three divine persons, and how, through being drawn into the relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is able to minister through his mystical body, the Church, to you and to me.
As far as your comments on the Eucharist and the Mass, I would simply state the following points:
1) Jesus's sacrifice is one sacrifice, but this sacrifice has three parts: the Upper Room, Calvary, and the alter in the New Jerusalem (heaven) where Jesus is seen by John as a "lamb standing as though slain" offering himself sacrificially to God (Rev. 5:6). There is no other sacrifice for the salvation of man than this sacrifice, which plays out in three parts. The sacrifice of Calvary is the sacrifice of the Upper Room is the sacrifice being offered eternally before the Father in heaven. There is only one sacrifice by which man can be saved, and that is it.
2) Jesus's sacrifice occurs in two temporal dimensions: time (i.e. human history) and eternity. Thus, we can locate the sacrifice offered on Calvary (which actually began in the Upper Room) 2,000 years ago in human history. But also, we know that Christ was chosen as the Paschal Lamb of God "before the creation of the world." (1 Peter 1:20-21), and we can see Jesus offering himself as the Lamb standing as though slain in heaven, whose temporality is not that of human history but is eternal. When we are saved and forgiven of our sins, it is as if Calvary itself pierces through time and is made present to our souls so that its grace can save us.
3) In the Mass, we enter into the New Jerusalem, just like John did in the book of Revelation on "the Lord's Day" (Rev. 1:10). Through the Mass, we join with Christ, our mystical groom, in His once for all (eternity) offering of Himself before the Father for the sake of his bride, the church.
4) Hebrews makes the point over and over that Christ is a "priest forever in the order of Melchizedek" (5:6, 6:20, 7:17, and elsewhere). This not only reaffirms that Christ's priesthood exists "forever," but that his offering does as well, since Priests offer sacrifice. There is only one sacrifice, but it is being offered by our High Priest forever. The Melchizedekian priesthood was the only undefiled priesthood of the OT, and Melchizedek offered his sacrifice in the form of BREAD and WINE (Gen. 14:18). The psalms prophecy that Jesus would be of this priestly order (Psalm 110:4). The idea that Jesus is forever offering a sacrifice in the form of bread and wine fits perfectly with how Christians have always (since the Church's beginning) understood the Mass.
5) Malachi prophecied of a pure sacrifice that would be offered from the rising of the sun to its setting - in all times and places (Mal. 1:11). There is only one perfect sacrifice that has ever been offered: Christ's sacrifice. (All former sacrifices were but shadows of this one perfect sacrifice.) It is this one High Priest's one eternal offering that we enter into during the Mass, which has occurred from the rising of the sun to its setting in the Church since the beginning. Through the Mass, we mystically join Christ at table in the Upper Room, at Calvary, and also in Heaven before the throne of God.
6) So, we see that Christ offers his sacrifice eternally before the Father, but that this sacrifice is made present in human time through a sacrifice under the form of bread and wine, which Jesus claims in John 6:51 as "the flesh he will give for the life of the world."
7) Christians for two-thousand years, going straight back to the students of the apostles and their successors, have taught the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist and the Mass. Christians, for two thousand years, have celebrated the Lord's Supper, the "breaking of bread," on the Lord's Day (Acts 2:42) at Jesus's explicit command and modeling (Luke 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:23, Luke 24:1-35).
I'm uncertain how the above points could be considered Heresy, since they are straight out of the Bible and align perfectly with the teaching of the early church. The difficulty that you seem to have is the idea of Christ's sacrifice has an eternal dimension. No one denies that Christ's sacrifice had a once for all (time) component on Calvary. Christ will never have to endure a bloody sacrifice on the cross for our salvation ever again. However, your denial that this sacrifice has a once for all (eternity) component that Christians enter into during their worship seems contrary to Scripture and to the teachings of the early church, at least as I read them.
Can you point out anyone in the first five hundred years of Christianity that denies the Catholic understanding of the Mass and the Eucharist? Readers can begin their own investigation here:
http://tinyurl.com/ECF-eucharist
Yours in Christ,
Ready
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Response to Tobe Witmer, Lighthouse Baptist Church June 20, 2010 Service - On the Catholic Mass, Romans 6
This post is one of an ongoing series of Catholic responses to Pastor Tobe Witmer's (Lighthouse Baptist Church, Newark, DE) series on Romans. The original sermons can be listened to at Lighthouse Baptist's website.
Pastor Witmer begins by asking: "Would it be okay with you if Jesus returned to the cross, was recrucified, and rose again?" He proposes this question a few times in a row. I have heard non-Catholic preachers use this question so many times to critique the Catholic Mass that I figured Pastor Witmer might take this opportunity to do the same.
In this case, I was right.
Before answering his own rhetorical question and getting into his exposition of Romans 6, we get this bit of anti-Catholicism:
Clip 1 On the Catholic Mass You can also watch the clip in context on YouTube (it begins at 7'47" and ends around 8'30").
Let's take a look at Pastor Witmer's claims:
This is a false statement. The Roman Catholic Church does NOT put Jesus back on the cross and recrucify him. Jesus was crucified once for all, as Hebrews says. However, Jesus's sacrifice did not end on the cross, because his sacrifice was a fulfillment of the Passover. Thus, while Jesus finished the bloody part of the sacrifice on the cross, he completed that sacrifice by offering it to the father on the altar of heaven. Heaven is the New Jerusalem, and its temple is Jesus himself. John witnesses this very altar when he enters the temple of heaven on the Lord's Day in the book of Revelation. In Revelation, we see John taken up into the heavenly liturgy taking place in the New Jerusalem. In this liturgy, this banquet feast of the Lamb, Jesus offers his sacrifice once and for all ETERNITY, in a single eternal moment--a single "now"--before the Father.
As Catholics, we enter into the New Jerusalem when we worship on Sunday mornings, and thus we participate in the offering of the once for all sacrifice of Jesus to the Father. After all, the Passover not only demanded that the Lamb be killed, and it not only demanded that the Lamb be offered by the Father/Priest in the temple. The family had to eat the Lamb (see John 6, which specifically takes place at Passover a year before the last supper when Jesus said "take...this is my body.") Jesus invites us to commune with his glorified Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity by taking us up mystically during the Mass into the New Jerusalem. He offers us His Body and Blood hidden under the appearance of bread and wine. In doing so, Jesus perfectly fulfills the prophecy that he is a "priest forever in the order of Melchizedek" (see Genesis, the Psalms, and Hebrews). He is a PRIEST (priests offer sacrifice) FOREVER (we see him offering himself as the "Lamb standing as if slain" in heaven) in the ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK. When we go back to Genesis and see this first and only unblemished Old Testament priesthood, what did Melchizedek offer? Bread and wine! Through the Mass, then, Jesus communes with us, and in communion with him, Jesus offers his sacrifice before the Father.
I hope the reader can see that Pastor Witmer's claim is a far cry from the Catholic Church actually teaches. Which leads me to ask, where(!) did Pastor Witmer get this idea? Did he consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Did he consult a credible, official source such as a church council or papal encyclical?
"I took time to study this through again, because I knew this was true, and it is true that they, in the Mass, are saying that they are recrucifying Jesus Christ, that the atonement is being made again, that they are reenacting bloodlessly exactly what Jesus did THE FIRST TIME [Pastor Witmer's emphasis]."
This is such a vivid, strong, straight-forward point Pastor Witmer is making. While I trust that Pastor Witmer did take time to study the issue, I'm confused about how he could claim that Catholic are saying that we recrucify Christ in the Mass. The only place I have heard this claim made about the Mass is from anti-Catholic apologists. Having read many books on Catholicism written by Catholics, I have never heard one Catholic even imply that we are recrucifying our Lord.
I am requesting (here on this blog and by email) that Pastor Witmer, having publicly, strongly, and harshly attacked the Roman Catholic Church (and by extension, the Orthodox churches as well), that he actually tell us the sources he studied before making this attack. If he can show me an official source (Catechism, papal encyclical, church council, and the like) that says we "recrucify" Christ during the Mass, I will grant his point. But in all of my studies, and in all of my reading of anti-Catholic materials, I've never actually seen someone produce a quote where the Catholic Church teaches what she is being accused of.
-------------
"The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different. And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner... this sacrifice is truly propitiatory" (Doctrina de ss. Missae sacrificio, c. 2, quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1367).
Notice, however, that the above quote does not speak of recrucifying Jesus. In fact, it specifically identifies the offering that takes place during the Mass with the offering of Christ upon the Cross. The offering is the exact same offering. Only the manner is different. There is only one offering, but as I explain below, this offering has an eternal dimension to it, not only a temporal one. Through the Mass, we enter into the eternal offering of Jesus before the Father. More below....
[end update]
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Rather, as I explained above, we do speak of the sacrifice as being presented anew during the Mass, because from a human perspective (living in time as we do), we do enter into Christ's offering of the sacrifice at periodic intervals, either once a week, or as many faithful Catholics do, once a day. But when we say the sacrifice is re-presented on the altar, we do so with the understanding that it is really WE who are being re-presented around the altar on heaven on which Jesus continually offers his one sacrifice, his one act of atonement, for our sins.
Because Pastor Witmer doesn't hold the mystical understanding of time and space that Catholics (and Orthodox Christians as well) bring to the Mass, he is virtually incapable of correctly explaining what Catholics actually believe occurs during the Sacred Liturgy. (The reader may be interested to know that the early church actually patterned their liturgy on that cosmic liturgy found in the book of Revelation. For the early church, as for the Catholic/Orthodox Church today, the liturgy always culminates in the wedding banquet of the Lamb, which we celebrate in anticipation of the final coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.)
Still, it is one thing to misunderstand what another Christian believes. It is another thing to forcefully misrepresent the beliefs of another Christian with the claim that you have studied the issue. I will share with the reader the books Pastor Witmer studied if he shares them with me.
Ironically, Pastor Witmer currently has in his possession two books by former Baptist preachers and converts to Catholicism that specifically discuss the Eucharist! Both of these former Baptists recount how they had been taught errors about the Catholic Church's understanding of the Mass, and that when they learned what the Catholic Church actually taught, they found it to be MORE in accord both with the Bible and also with the students of the apostles, those early martyrs who learned the faith at the feet of those who wrote the Bible.
Sadly, there are many non-Catholic Christians who hate what they believe to be the Catholic Church. In reality, the church they so vehemently oppose is only a figment of their imaginations. Again, to show that Pastor Witmer's claims are anything more than a figment, I invite him to charitably back up his assertions with citations. (Teachers--would you let your students make wild claims in written essays without providing a single footnote?)
Next, Pastor Witmer uses the word "reenacting." This word does get used by Catholic theologians (though not with great frequency) because the liturgy is something that humans do--it is an act we accomplish over and over again. We "do" the liturgy because Jesus commanded us to. And the liturgy that we offer is the sacrificial liturgy that we enter into by "[doing] this in memory of [him]." (The word "memory" here should not be read with the connotations provided it by our 20th-century English dictionaries. Was this word written in the Bible with these dictionaries in mind, or with the centuries of Jewish experiences of Passover memorials in mind? Turns out, the Hebrew word for memorial was rich with Passover connotations (connotations that very few Christians in the 20th century even know a thing about). As any faithful, orthodox Jew could tell you, when you celebrate a memorial, you MAKE PRESENT (Catholics now say re-present, or "present again") the thing memorialized. This is how God taught the Jews to understand the memorial of the Passover, and God's divine pedagogy was ultimately completed so that you and I today would know how to read the words "do this in memory of me." To many people consult Merriam-Webster to understand "memory" rather than consult the Jewish undderstanding of the Passover. Since the Lord's Supper, death on the cross, and offering of the sacrifice in heaven together fulfill the Jewish Passover, we have very good reason to ask how the Biblical authors who recorded the phrase "do this in memory of me" would have understood Jesus. During the Mass, we enter into the one continual offering of Jesus before the Father, which constitutes the last part of the once for all sacrifice that began in the upper room. Jesus wants to celebrate the Last Supper personally with every single Christian, and he loves us so much that he instituted a ministerial priesthood so that through these "priests in the priest [Jesus]," Jesus could sit at table with us--you and me--and say "take this and eat - this is my body given for you." In Jesus's sermon in John 6, given at Passover time exactly one year before the Last Supper, Jesus told Christians that unless we must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life. The apostles had to wait a year before they would fully understand how Jesus planned to make his body and blood available for Christians. As we know from reading the early fathers of Christianity who learned the faith from the apostles, the early church unanimously understood Jesus to be speaking literally in John 6.
Yes, there is only one sacrifice for sins: Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. But that sacrifice began in the upper room and isn't complete until every Christian enters into the sacrifice both through the Mass (where we enter into the offering of the sacrifice in heaven) and through our suffering. That is why St. Paul can say that "I rejoice in my sufferings because they make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ."(Col. 1:24) Our suffering gains meaning and spiritual efficacy when it is united through the mystical bride with Christ's own sacrifice. Yes, Christ's sacrifice is complete, but the groom is not complete without his bride. As the bride of Christ, Christians must "take up" their crosses. We are made ultimately for the divine life, so the bride of Christ participates in the offering of the groom.
Finally, Pastor Witmer emphasizes three simple words that actually reveal the reason he fails to properly convey the Catholic position. "...the first time." Because Pastor Witmer only sees the Mass through the eyes of the flesh, it appears to him that we have a new sacrifice at every single Mass after "the first time" that Jesus went to the cross. Since these Masses appear to be separated in time from the cross (as humans experience time), it seems that there are many sacrifices rather than one sacrifice. Please know that I greatly appreciate and share Pastor Witmer's desire to defend (as he does later in the sermon) the absolute necessity and sufficiency of Christ's one sacrifice. As we proclaim at every single Mass, "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again." That's it. It is over, finished. From here on out, all that occurs is the offering of the sacrifice on the altar in heaven, which Catholics mystically enter into during the Mass.
Ironically, even non-Catholics use the idea of offering God a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" and offering themselves as "living sacrifices before the Lord." In doing so, they are actually simply repeating the language used by the Bible without once fearing that these sacrifices are "another" sacrifice than Jesus's on the cross. Jesus commands us to make these sacrifices because we make them in union with Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. Yet, we as living sacrifices are ultimately imperfect. Our praise is ultimately imperfect. Only Jesus is perfect, and so, ironically, it is the Mass ultimately that allows us to offer to the Father, in union with Christ's own eternal offering, the only perfect sacrifice for sins that has ever existed. It is also interesting to note that the Greek word for "thanksgiving" is "eucharistia." The Mass is ultimately a sacrifice of Thanksgiving. Before Christ came, there existed a saying among the Jewish rabbis that "in the coming Messianic age, every sacrifice will cease except the Todah." The Todah was the the Jewish sacrifice of Thanksgiving, what Catholics call the Eucharist. This is the perfect sacrifice--the only perfect sacrifice possible--prophesied in Malachi 1:11. But this sacrifice, according to Malachi, will be offered in ALL TIMES and in ALL PLACES. Only in the framework of the ancient universal ("catholic") faith does this prophecy not only make sense but also find its fulfillment.
Seeing the Mass with eyes of faith, it becomes possible to understand how thousands of Masses each day do not constitute thousands of new sacrifices. It becomes possible to see how only through the Mass does Malachi's prophecy make sense--that after the coming of the Messiah, "a perfect offering will be made from east to west." In other words, all day, every day, from sunrise to sundown, a perfect sacrificial offering will be made. Catholics enter into that one sacrifice through the Mass. There is only one perfect sacrifice, which is that of Jesus Christ. In the Mass, time itself is "caught up in the clouds" with Jesus, our savior, in his sacrificial offering. Oh, how I pray that Pastor Witmer's heart be opened to this amazing and wonderful truth!
If what Pastor Witmer says about the Mass actually was true, then the stream of invectives he utters would be entirely appropriate. As Catholics, it is important to recognize when people make harsh attacks that these statements come from an honest desire to protect the truth from heresy. We should be sure to commend the zeal of our non-Catholic brethren while at the same time, correcting their misunderstandings. Some of the most effective defenders of the Catholic faith today are former Protestants who finally learned what the Catholic Church actually believed.
As a follow-up, readers may also be interested to check-out Pastor Witmer's own take on why Jesus is seen by John in heaven as the "lamb standing as if slain."
(Also, my apologies to all. I wrote this completely off the cuff, so please excuse the absence of chapter and verse references. I'll get them in sooner or later! Feel free to email me if you can't find a reference.)
Stay tuned for more comments on this (and earlier) sermons in the Romans series.
-------------
Pastor Witmer begins by asking: "Would it be okay with you if Jesus returned to the cross, was recrucified, and rose again?" He proposes this question a few times in a row. I have heard non-Catholic preachers use this question so many times to critique the Catholic Mass that I figured Pastor Witmer might take this opportunity to do the same.
In this case, I was right.
Before answering his own rhetorical question and getting into his exposition of Romans 6, we get this bit of anti-Catholicism:
Clip 1 On the Catholic Mass You can also watch the clip in context on YouTube (it begins at 7'47" and ends around 8'30").
Let's take a look at Pastor Witmer's claims:
"This is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church does in the Mass."
This is a false statement. The Roman Catholic Church does NOT put Jesus back on the cross and recrucify him. Jesus was crucified once for all, as Hebrews says. However, Jesus's sacrifice did not end on the cross, because his sacrifice was a fulfillment of the Passover. Thus, while Jesus finished the bloody part of the sacrifice on the cross, he completed that sacrifice by offering it to the father on the altar of heaven. Heaven is the New Jerusalem, and its temple is Jesus himself. John witnesses this very altar when he enters the temple of heaven on the Lord's Day in the book of Revelation. In Revelation, we see John taken up into the heavenly liturgy taking place in the New Jerusalem. In this liturgy, this banquet feast of the Lamb, Jesus offers his sacrifice once and for all ETERNITY, in a single eternal moment--a single "now"--before the Father.
As Catholics, we enter into the New Jerusalem when we worship on Sunday mornings, and thus we participate in the offering of the once for all sacrifice of Jesus to the Father. After all, the Passover not only demanded that the Lamb be killed, and it not only demanded that the Lamb be offered by the Father/Priest in the temple. The family had to eat the Lamb (see John 6, which specifically takes place at Passover a year before the last supper when Jesus said "take...this is my body.") Jesus invites us to commune with his glorified Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity by taking us up mystically during the Mass into the New Jerusalem. He offers us His Body and Blood hidden under the appearance of bread and wine. In doing so, Jesus perfectly fulfills the prophecy that he is a "priest forever in the order of Melchizedek" (see Genesis, the Psalms, and Hebrews). He is a PRIEST (priests offer sacrifice) FOREVER (we see him offering himself as the "Lamb standing as if slain" in heaven) in the ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK. When we go back to Genesis and see this first and only unblemished Old Testament priesthood, what did Melchizedek offer? Bread and wine! Through the Mass, then, Jesus communes with us, and in communion with him, Jesus offers his sacrifice before the Father.
I hope the reader can see that Pastor Witmer's claim is a far cry from the Catholic Church actually teaches. Which leads me to ask, where(!) did Pastor Witmer get this idea? Did he consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Did he consult a credible, official source such as a church council or papal encyclical?
This is such a vivid, strong, straight-forward point Pastor Witmer is making. While I trust that Pastor Witmer did take time to study the issue, I'm confused about how he could claim that Catholic are saying that we recrucify Christ in the Mass. The only place I have heard this claim made about the Mass is from anti-Catholic apologists. Having read many books on Catholicism written by Catholics, I have never heard one Catholic even imply that we are recrucifying our Lord.
I am requesting (here on this blog and by email) that Pastor Witmer, having publicly, strongly, and harshly attacked the Roman Catholic Church (and by extension, the Orthodox churches as well), that he actually tell us the sources he studied before making this attack. If he can show me an official source (Catechism, papal encyclical, church council, and the like) that says we "recrucify" Christ during the Mass, I will grant his point. But in all of my studies, and in all of my reading of anti-Catholic materials, I've never actually seen someone produce a quote where the Catholic Church teaches what she is being accused of.
-------------
UPDATE: Pastor Witmer informed me that he began by studying a Wikipedia entry on the Mass and Eucharist, and that this entry led him to the following quote from the Council of Trent:
Notice, however, that the above quote does not speak of recrucifying Jesus. In fact, it specifically identifies the offering that takes place during the Mass with the offering of Christ upon the Cross. The offering is the exact same offering. Only the manner is different. There is only one offering, but as I explain below, this offering has an eternal dimension to it, not only a temporal one. Through the Mass, we enter into the eternal offering of Jesus before the Father. More below....
[end update]
-------------
Rather, as I explained above, we do speak of the sacrifice as being presented anew during the Mass, because from a human perspective (living in time as we do), we do enter into Christ's offering of the sacrifice at periodic intervals, either once a week, or as many faithful Catholics do, once a day. But when we say the sacrifice is re-presented on the altar, we do so with the understanding that it is really WE who are being re-presented around the altar on heaven on which Jesus continually offers his one sacrifice, his one act of atonement, for our sins.
Because Pastor Witmer doesn't hold the mystical understanding of time and space that Catholics (and Orthodox Christians as well) bring to the Mass, he is virtually incapable of correctly explaining what Catholics actually believe occurs during the Sacred Liturgy. (The reader may be interested to know that the early church actually patterned their liturgy on that cosmic liturgy found in the book of Revelation. For the early church, as for the Catholic/Orthodox Church today, the liturgy always culminates in the wedding banquet of the Lamb, which we celebrate in anticipation of the final coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.)
Still, it is one thing to misunderstand what another Christian believes. It is another thing to forcefully misrepresent the beliefs of another Christian with the claim that you have studied the issue. I will share with the reader the books Pastor Witmer studied if he shares them with me.
Ironically, Pastor Witmer currently has in his possession two books by former Baptist preachers and converts to Catholicism that specifically discuss the Eucharist! Both of these former Baptists recount how they had been taught errors about the Catholic Church's understanding of the Mass, and that when they learned what the Catholic Church actually taught, they found it to be MORE in accord both with the Bible and also with the students of the apostles, those early martyrs who learned the faith at the feet of those who wrote the Bible.
Sadly, there are many non-Catholic Christians who hate what they believe to be the Catholic Church. In reality, the church they so vehemently oppose is only a figment of their imaginations. Again, to show that Pastor Witmer's claims are anything more than a figment, I invite him to charitably back up his assertions with citations. (Teachers--would you let your students make wild claims in written essays without providing a single footnote?)
Next, Pastor Witmer uses the word "reenacting." This word does get used by Catholic theologians (though not with great frequency) because the liturgy is something that humans do--it is an act we accomplish over and over again. We "do" the liturgy because Jesus commanded us to. And the liturgy that we offer is the sacrificial liturgy that we enter into by "[doing] this in memory of [him]." (The word "memory" here should not be read with the connotations provided it by our 20th-century English dictionaries. Was this word written in the Bible with these dictionaries in mind, or with the centuries of Jewish experiences of Passover memorials in mind? Turns out, the Hebrew word for memorial was rich with Passover connotations (connotations that very few Christians in the 20th century even know a thing about). As any faithful, orthodox Jew could tell you, when you celebrate a memorial, you MAKE PRESENT (Catholics now say re-present, or "present again") the thing memorialized. This is how God taught the Jews to understand the memorial of the Passover, and God's divine pedagogy was ultimately completed so that you and I today would know how to read the words "do this in memory of me." To many people consult Merriam-Webster to understand "memory" rather than consult the Jewish undderstanding of the Passover. Since the Lord's Supper, death on the cross, and offering of the sacrifice in heaven together fulfill the Jewish Passover, we have very good reason to ask how the Biblical authors who recorded the phrase "do this in memory of me" would have understood Jesus. During the Mass, we enter into the one continual offering of Jesus before the Father, which constitutes the last part of the once for all sacrifice that began in the upper room. Jesus wants to celebrate the Last Supper personally with every single Christian, and he loves us so much that he instituted a ministerial priesthood so that through these "priests in the priest [Jesus]," Jesus could sit at table with us--you and me--and say "take this and eat - this is my body given for you." In Jesus's sermon in John 6, given at Passover time exactly one year before the Last Supper, Jesus told Christians that unless we must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life. The apostles had to wait a year before they would fully understand how Jesus planned to make his body and blood available for Christians. As we know from reading the early fathers of Christianity who learned the faith from the apostles, the early church unanimously understood Jesus to be speaking literally in John 6.
Yes, there is only one sacrifice for sins: Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. But that sacrifice began in the upper room and isn't complete until every Christian enters into the sacrifice both through the Mass (where we enter into the offering of the sacrifice in heaven) and through our suffering. That is why St. Paul can say that "I rejoice in my sufferings because they make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ."(Col. 1:24) Our suffering gains meaning and spiritual efficacy when it is united through the mystical bride with Christ's own sacrifice. Yes, Christ's sacrifice is complete, but the groom is not complete without his bride. As the bride of Christ, Christians must "take up" their crosses. We are made ultimately for the divine life, so the bride of Christ participates in the offering of the groom.
Finally, Pastor Witmer emphasizes three simple words that actually reveal the reason he fails to properly convey the Catholic position. "...the first time." Because Pastor Witmer only sees the Mass through the eyes of the flesh, it appears to him that we have a new sacrifice at every single Mass after "the first time" that Jesus went to the cross. Since these Masses appear to be separated in time from the cross (as humans experience time), it seems that there are many sacrifices rather than one sacrifice. Please know that I greatly appreciate and share Pastor Witmer's desire to defend (as he does later in the sermon) the absolute necessity and sufficiency of Christ's one sacrifice. As we proclaim at every single Mass, "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again." That's it. It is over, finished. From here on out, all that occurs is the offering of the sacrifice on the altar in heaven, which Catholics mystically enter into during the Mass.
Ironically, even non-Catholics use the idea of offering God a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" and offering themselves as "living sacrifices before the Lord." In doing so, they are actually simply repeating the language used by the Bible without once fearing that these sacrifices are "another" sacrifice than Jesus's on the cross. Jesus commands us to make these sacrifices because we make them in union with Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. Yet, we as living sacrifices are ultimately imperfect. Our praise is ultimately imperfect. Only Jesus is perfect, and so, ironically, it is the Mass ultimately that allows us to offer to the Father, in union with Christ's own eternal offering, the only perfect sacrifice for sins that has ever existed. It is also interesting to note that the Greek word for "thanksgiving" is "eucharistia." The Mass is ultimately a sacrifice of Thanksgiving. Before Christ came, there existed a saying among the Jewish rabbis that "in the coming Messianic age, every sacrifice will cease except the Todah." The Todah was the the Jewish sacrifice of Thanksgiving, what Catholics call the Eucharist. This is the perfect sacrifice--the only perfect sacrifice possible--prophesied in Malachi 1:11. But this sacrifice, according to Malachi, will be offered in ALL TIMES and in ALL PLACES. Only in the framework of the ancient universal ("catholic") faith does this prophecy not only make sense but also find its fulfillment.
Seeing the Mass with eyes of faith, it becomes possible to understand how thousands of Masses each day do not constitute thousands of new sacrifices. It becomes possible to see how only through the Mass does Malachi's prophecy make sense--that after the coming of the Messiah, "a perfect offering will be made from east to west." In other words, all day, every day, from sunrise to sundown, a perfect sacrificial offering will be made. Catholics enter into that one sacrifice through the Mass. There is only one perfect sacrifice, which is that of Jesus Christ. In the Mass, time itself is "caught up in the clouds" with Jesus, our savior, in his sacrificial offering. Oh, how I pray that Pastor Witmer's heart be opened to this amazing and wonderful truth!
If what Pastor Witmer says about the Mass actually was true, then the stream of invectives he utters would be entirely appropriate. As Catholics, it is important to recognize when people make harsh attacks that these statements come from an honest desire to protect the truth from heresy. We should be sure to commend the zeal of our non-Catholic brethren while at the same time, correcting their misunderstandings. Some of the most effective defenders of the Catholic faith today are former Protestants who finally learned what the Catholic Church actually believed.
As a follow-up, readers may also be interested to check-out Pastor Witmer's own take on why Jesus is seen by John in heaven as the "lamb standing as if slain."
(Also, my apologies to all. I wrote this completely off the cuff, so please excuse the absence of chapter and verse references. I'll get them in sooner or later! Feel free to email me if you can't find a reference.)
Stay tuned for more comments on this (and earlier) sermons in the Romans series.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Welcome home, David Meyer!
Francis Beckwith, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society and convert to the Catholic Church, brought to his readers' attention David Meyer's announcement that he is becoming a Roman Catholic.
I find this paragraph at the end very compelling, though it is best to put it in context by reading David's rather succinct explanation of why he felt compelled to swim the Tiber:
Welcome home, David!
As a follow-up, I have since found another link to David's conversion at Principium Unitatis, where a link is given to Christopher Lake's reversion back to the Catholic faith.
David Meyer's original announcement can be read here.
Christopher Lake's announcement is found embedded in the combox at Called to Communion. (The article and comments are worth reading!)
I find this paragraph at the end very compelling, though it is best to put it in context by reading David's rather succinct explanation of why he felt compelled to swim the Tiber:
The Catholic Church is the only option left. In many ways it is a bitter pill to swallow for me. I have been very critical of Catholic doctrine as a Protestant. Much that they believe I am not inclined to believe. But I will have to submit to the mind of what I must believe is the church Christ founded.Faith, as David has discovered, is not about believing whatever we as individuals are inclined to believe. That is not true faith in God; it is merely faith in oneself. Humans, left to their own devices, are inclined to believe any number of things. Faith, as St. Paul points out at the beginning and ending of Romans, is inseparably tied to obedience. And faithful obedience means "to submit to the mind of...the church Christ founded." Jesus himself once told this Church, "he who hears you, hears me."
Welcome home, David!
--------------------------
As a follow-up, I have since found another link to David's conversion at Principium Unitatis, where a link is given to Christopher Lake's reversion back to the Catholic faith.
David Meyer's original announcement can be read here.
Christopher Lake's announcement is found embedded in the combox at Called to Communion. (The article and comments are worth reading!)
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