Tag Archives: sin

Intermission: Luther v Zwingli on the Eucharist

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Lutheranism, Salvation

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Phillip mentioned yesterday that Lutherans have a very clear doctrine of the Eucharist, which is certainly true, and that the controversy between Luther and Zwingli highlighted the differences. That too is true. I didn’t want to go into it on his post, it is a bit far off topic. It is interesting, though, and last night I found a concise summary of the differences by Trevin Wax. It also highlights how it differed from Luther’s contemporary Catholic experience.

Luther’s view

In the medieval period before the Reformation, the mass formed the centerpiece of Christian worship and devotion. Three centuries before Luther began teaching in Wittenberg, the fourth Lateran council of 1215 established the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that upon the priest’s consecration of the bread and wine, the accidents (according to the senses) remain the same, but the substance (the internal “essence”) is miraculously transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ.

The implications of this doctrine were widespread. Laypeople began to adore the bread and wine from afar or superstitiously carry pieces of bread back home to plant in the garden for good crops or to give to an ailing animal for good health. To avoid an accidental spilling of the wine, the priests began giving only the bread to parishioners, keeping the cup for themselves. By the 1500’s, even the bread was withheld in most churches.

The mass had turned into a show instead of a sacrament. Some parishioners feverishly hurried from church to church to obtain the blessing of seeing more than one host in a given day.

Luther objected to the extreme practices brought by medieval superstition, but he continued to regard the “images, bells, Eucharistic vestments, church ornaments, altar lights and the like” as “indifferent.”

Two things in particular bothered Luther about the Roman Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper. First, he disagreed sharply with the practice of withholding the cup from the laity. So strongly did Luther believe in the laity’s participation in the mass that he condemned the Roman Catholic practice as one way that “Babylon” holds the church “captive.” (It should be noted however that Luther did not believe that withholding the cup necessarily invalidated the sacrament or that the Christians who were denied the cup during the previous centuries had not received sacramental benefits.)

Secondly, Luther believed that the Roman Catholic understanding of the sacrament as a “good work and a sacrifice” was the “most wicked abuse of all.” Luther argued forcefully that the mass must be seen as a testament – something to receive, not a good work to perform. The only sacrifice at the Lord’s Table is the sacrifice of ourselves. The idea that a priest could sacrifice the body and blood of the Lord was especially appalling to Luther and he considered this belief the most abominable of Roman errors.  […]

Another area in which Luther remained close to Roman doctrine is in the doctrine of the “real presence.” Up until 1519, it appears Luther agreed with the official doctrine of transubstantiation. In 1520, he criticized the idea quite forcefully, painting it as needless speculation based on Aristotelian thought.

A popular misconception among Reformation students is that Luther affirmed and promoted “consubstantiation,” but neither Luther nor the Lutheran church ever accepted that term. Luther simply refused to speculate on how Christ is present and instead settled for affirming that he is there. The presence of Christ in the Supper is miraculous and thus defies explanation.

Roman Catholic theologians strongly emphasized the moment of consecration, when the priest would lift the bread and say “Hoc est corpus meum.” At that moment, bells would be rung and all eyes would be on the elevated host, which had magically been transformed into Christ’s body.

Luther similarly emphasized the words of institution, but only because Christ’s command leads to the change, not because the priest has made a special utterance. In this and other practices, Luther was content to alter the understanding behind Roman Catholic practice without feeling the need to actually change the tradition itself.

Luther believed that the fruit of the Lord’s Supper is the forgiveness of sins. Roman doctrine held that Communion was for the righteous, those who have confessed their sins to the priest. Luther believed Communion was for sinners, those who needed Christ’s incarnation the most.

 

Zwingli’s view

 

Zwingli did not see the need for a “sacramental union” in the Lord’s Supper because of his modified understanding of sacraments.

According to Zwingli, the sacraments serve as a public testimony of a previous grace. Therefore, the sacrament is “a sign of a sacred thing, i.e. of a grace that has been given.” For Zwingli, the idea that the sacraments carry any salvific efficacy in themselves is a return to Judaism’s ceremonial washings that lead to the purchase of salvation.

Whereas Luther sought to prune the bad branches off the tree of Roman Catholic sacramentalism, Zwingli believed the problem to be rooted at least partly in sacramentalism itself. […]

What Zwingli could not accept was a “real presence” that claimed Christ was present in his physical body with no visible bodily boundaries.

“I have no use for that notion of a real and true body that does not exist physically, definitely and distinctly in some place, and that sort of nonsense got up by word triflers.”

Zwingli’s theology of the Lord’s Supper should not be viewed as an innovation without precedent in church history. Zwingli claimed that his doubts about transubstantiation were shared by many of his day, leading him to claim that priests did not ever believe such a thing, even though “most all have taught this or at least pretended to believe it.”

Had Zwingli’s modified doctrine of the “real presence” been an innovation, it would probably not have been so eagerly accepted by his parishioners. The symbolic view spread rapidly because Zwingli had given voice and legitimacy to an opinion that was already widespread.

In Zurich, the mass was abolished in 1525. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated with a new liturgy that replaced the altar with a table and tablecloth.

The striking feature of the Zwinglian observance of the sacrament was its simplicity. Because the bread and wine were not physically transformed into Christ’s body and blood, there was no need for spurious ceremonies and pompous rituals. The occasion was marked by simplicity and reverence, with an emphasis on its nature as a memorial.

Zwingli’s denial of the “real presence” did not result in the neglecting of the sacrament that would characterize many of his followers in centuries to come. He saw seven virtues in the Lord’s Supper that proved its importance for the Christian life.

Do read the articles linked above. While what he says on Lutheran doctrine is in accordance with what I know and believe, and what I know of how it was derived, and I am sort of assuming that as an Evangelical he knows a fair amount about Zwingli, I don’t know enough to comment intelligently about it. My original church had a fair amount of Reformed in it, but it was long ago, and I’ve long since come to believe in The Real Presence myself, actually before I became a Lutheran. It is just more consonant with the Lord’s words and the disciples’ reaction to them.

Ps, the short form

Is the Pope Catholic?

27 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Heresies, Lutheranism, Pope

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Time for me to post something here, I reckon, and I think might do. The other day a document called “Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis“ (if your Latin is as bad as mine that translates as “A filial correction concerning the propagation of heresies”) was served on the Pope. What that document does is accuse him of teaching seven heresies. Not the kind of stuff that usually happens in the Catholic Church. In fact, the last time it happened was in 1333 to Pope John XXII. He later recanted his errors. I can’t really say that I see Francis doing that. I’m rather glad I’m not the recipient of that 25-page letter though.

Gene Veith over at Cranach spells out some of it, no doubt some of you know more than I do. He talks about the charges (for lack of a better description) and there is a link to the English translation of the document, I’ve only read the summary, so far. It’s copyrighted so I can’t give you much, but it concerns mostly this,  “It lists the passages of Amoris laetitia in which heretical positions are insinuated or encouraged, and then it lists words, deeds, and omissions of Pope Francis which make it clear beyond reasonable doubt that he wishes Catholics to interpret these passages in a way that is, in fact, heretical.”

[Emphasis in the original]

Lots of this has to do, I gather, with giving communion to the divorced and remarried, and beyond that I’m not prepared to go. We’ve discussed this at great length. Search for COMMUNION FOR THE REMARRIED in the search box above if you don’t already know what most of us think. It always leads to much heat and some hurt feelings, so let’s not overly rehash it still again.

The one count that Dr. Veith and I both found a bit amusing is that they are accusing him of being Lutheran, or at least under Luther’s influence. Part of the reason I find that a bit amusing is that so few Lutherans could actually be convicted of that. Dr. Veith adds this,

I tend to have sympathy with the conservative side of theological controversies, though not on this issue.  The sacrament is given specifically to sinners for the forgiveness of their sins (Matthew 26:28), and is not to be reserved only for those in a state of moral perfection. But that is one of the “Lutheran” teachings that Pope Francis has approximated and which the signers consider heretical.

But I still have sympathy for those who wrote and signed this letter.  Conservative Catholics, almost by definition, revere and obey the papacy.  To come to the conviction that the Pope is teaching heresy must be agonizing.

To believe that the Pope has violated the teachings of the Church Universal, that the papacy is not the protector of orthodoxy as has been assumed but a means of introducing innovative and problematic doctrines into the Church, can be a traumatic realization.  And to take a stand on this conviction shows great integrity and courage.

The signers may consider Luther to be a heretic.  But at least they know now how he felt.

Good thing it’s mostly bishops and academics signing this though. Henry VIII burned a few folks for that very thing, before he married one, of course. It was far from the longest marriage of his.

Indeed it must be a horrendous nightmare for any churchman to come to that feeling about any of his bishops, but the Pope! I don’t envy them, but I too admire them greatly. It must take great courage to put your name on that document.

They (whoever they may be) say that “May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. I suspect we all understand why.

Terrorism and The Exhausted West.

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences

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Yesterday, I wrote at NEO about the terrorist attack in London. If you read me, you will know that I am becoming increasingly frustrated by Europe’s (including the UK in this instance) complete unwillingness to face the truth. 90% + of all terrorists are some variant of Islamic, even if only in their mind. We do our citizenry a major disservice when we fail to acknowledge that, and act to secure the rule of law. In my article, I quoted the great Russian writer Alexander Solzenitsyn’s famous commencement address at Harvard in 1978.

It struck a chord with me, and it did my astute readers as well. They dug around in my archives and found what I half-remembered. We had spoken of that address before, in a post of Jessica’s from 2013 while I was off for Christmas. It was an amazing post then, and it still is, and so I’ll share it with you today. Here’s Jessica, in one of her best.

The Exhausted West?

The title is not mine and it is not new. It was the title used by one of the last century’s greatest writers and spirits, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for his 1978 Commencement speech at Harvard. This came as a shock to the West at the time. Here was a man whom it had lauded as a hero of the Cold War, a moral giant who had exposed and condemned the Stalinist regime and its successors; in the face of his writing, the Left which liked to appease Communism fell silent, and the Right which loved to excoriate it celebrated him. But after his Harvard speech, his admirers were puzzled. Instead of thanking them and saying how wonderful the West was, Solzhenitsyn could not have made it clearer that he did not think that the best alternative to Communism was individualistic, humanistic capitalism. Any system which saw man as instrumental in a materialistic sense missed the point of human life: we are not here to be parts of the economic utopia or to consume, we are not an economic animal whose main point is to accumulate as much wealth as we can, or to consume as much as we can; there is nothing wrong with creating wealth, or even accumulating it – unless it is an end in itself. After all, the Good Samaritan could not (as Lady Thatcher once reminded us) have done any good had he not had the money with which to do it. Jesus did not condemn wealth, he feared its effects on the rich man, and he wanted it, like all of God’s good things, to be used rightly. A society which pursued wealth for its own sake and which makes money (or celebrity) an end in itself is not a good one.

America was founded on noble ideals, including the pursuit of happiness. Our wealth has become such that many citizens can get an unimaginable amount of material wealth, but, as he noted:

the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life, and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. 

He saw a society in which:

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. 

It is hard to see that nearly forty years later, things are any better; here, as elsewhere, Solzhenitsyn  prophesied aright. He identified the reasons for this very well:

Without any censorship, in the West, fashionable trends of thought are carefully separated from those that are not fashionable. Nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally, your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day 

The West was, he said, ‘spiritually exhausted’. The ‘human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.’

The origin of this decadence lay, Solzhenitsyn suggested, in the anthropocentric views of man’s destiny which came in with the secular thinking of the Enlightenment. Man was at the centre of all things, and the ends for which he was meant were material ones:

Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our day there is a free and constant flow. Mere freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones. 

But these are not the ends for which man is made, and so even if he reaches them, he is dissatisfied and his spirit unsatisfied. So it is that even in the richest society the world has ever known, even the rich lack what is needed to heal what ails them?  We can reject God and make gods of ourselves. But Solzhenitsyn did not see that as bringing us what we needed; and forty-five years on, we can see, even more clearly, that like Jeremiah, he was a prophet to whom few wanted to listen.

Coasting to the Well

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith

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I get the feeling that AATW is coasting lately. Yes, Jessica has retired, Chalcedon is overbusy, I too am busy with diverse things, one of which is rebuilding my own blog, Philip Augustine has been carrying us, and as fascinating as his articles are, there is a spark missing.

Perhaps, as we’ve said before it is the touch of a woman. Our longtime commenter and friend Annie reblogged an article the other day that moved me, as so many here have over the years. Here is a bit of it.

First, I didn’t know what to write in this blog, so I remained silent for a time and asked the Spirit to lead me. This is the title that came out, and I had to ponder why. And this blog is filled with whys. But the Spirit answers them all by revealing the intention of Jesus in this story.

Whenever I’m in confusion or doubt, I always look to Jesus’ words and actions to inform me and enlighten me. I opened my Bible to review the familiar red-letter words in order to read them again and digest them in light of the leading I received. Since I believe the Bible is the living word – the Living Water and Nourishment – of God, it always has a different meaning depending on where you might be at the moment you read it.

As I read the words of the woman at the well (John 4:4-42), it came to me slowly and certainly. I think as I explain it, the meaning will come to you too.

The first thing Jesus says to the woman is in the form of a request: “Please give me a drink of water.”

The Samarian woman is shocked he is talking to her. After all, she has been treated as unworthy all her life by her kinsmen and her Hebrew neighbors, and she now believes it. Why does he ask the woman for a drink? Does he want something from her? Yes, he does. He wants her to ask him for a drink. He wants her to open her heart and receive.

Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you Living Water.”

All he wants is for her to see she has immeasurable value, for her to attain what she thinks is unattainable, for her to accept the unconditional love and grace he offers. Yet she does not understand the gift. She looks at life literally, and measures what she can see and touch.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL IS ME

It’s very very good, do read the whole thing.

It’s also something we have spoken of here, Philip here, Jessica here, but the memory that was triggered for me by Susan’s lovely article was also one from Jessica, one which moved me deeply when she wrote it, and moves me still. It is here. Here is a little bit of that.

I am the woman at the well.

I see someone I fear to approach; what would one like him have to do with one like me? But he speaks to me. I do not want to speak back. I am a sinner, I am an outsider; who am I that he should speak to me? When I do, I do not know what to say that will not condemn me. I am working. The man needs the water from the well, and my job, among many, is to get it for him; he will be waiting; he may be angry with me if I am late. Yet this man insists on engaging me in conversation. He wants water from me too; another man who wants something from me?

But as I talk to him it is not what I think. I cannot take in all his words. What is this water he has? How can he offer it to me when he wants something from me? What is it he really wants? He seems to be offering me something; he wants something from me, but it is something good for me. I don’t understand. Then he asks me what I had feared.

Jessica ended with this, and there is no answer to it, for we are all the woman at the well. But it is true, and for me, part of it has been AATW.

It was all long ago now, and I tell my grandchildren of him. We worshipped him before he was crucified; we worshipped him after the Resurrection. He is God. His Spirit is with me. That moment at the well changed my life; it changed the world. Though I was a sinner He loved me; that opened my heart to something which bubbles up in it even this day.

Two Babylons?

25 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Blogging, Faith

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Our friend Bosco is fond of writing about Catholicism as the ‘religion of Nimrod’ and calling Catholics worshippers of Semiramis. He seems not to know that such stuff, which nowadays tends to be spread by Jack Chick and his devotees, derives from an early nineteenth century Scottish clergyman, Alexander Hislop, who wrote an anti-Catholic book called ‘The Two Babylons’. Whilst seldom recommending Wikipedia as a source to my students, I did ask Bosco to look it up, as it contains helpful comments and links which, essentially, show that the book is based on out-dated ‘scholarship’ that was not strong when it was written, and which has been comprehensively debunked since. To take one example, key to Bosco’s views:

Lester L. Grabbe  [an expert of Judaisim and ancient history] has highlighted the fact that Hislop’s entire argument, particularly his association of Ninus with Nimrod, is based on a misunderstanding of historical Babylon and its religion.[1] Grabbe also criticizes Hislop for portraying the mythological queen Semiramis as Nimrod’s consort, despite the fact that she is never even mentioned in a single text associated with him,[1] and for portraying her as the “mother of harlots”, even though this is not how she is depicted in any of the texts where she is mentioned.[1]

In 2011 a critical edition was published.[13] Although Hislop’s work is extensively footnoted, some commentators (in particular Ralph Woodrow) have stated that the document contains numerous misconceptions, fabrications, logical fallacies, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and grave factual errors.[14]

Woodrow is an interesting case, as his Christianity occupies the same end of the spectrum as Bosco’s, and he published a book based on Hislop. He, however, had the grace and the guts to (at some cost to himself as the book sold well) to withdraw the book when he realised how baseless its claims were. I wonder if Bosco has the same intelligence, humility and honesty? After 5 years of experiencing him, I am, sadly, betting that he will simply ignore all of this and then repeat the same of script. He has no argument left, just an immovable prejudice against the Catholic Church, which only a miracle can shift; but miracles happen.

As Wiki puts it in relation to the nonsense about Nimrod and Semiramis:

Much of Hislop’s work centers on his association of the legendary Ninus and his semi-historical wife Semiramis with the Biblical Nimrod. Hellenistic histories of the Ancient Near East tended to conflate their faint recollections of the deeds of ancient kings into legendary figures who exerted far more power than any ancient king ever did. In Assyria, they invented an eponymous founder of Nineveh named Ninus, who supposedly ruled 52 years over an empire comparable to the Persian Empire at its greatest extent. Ninus’s wife Semiramis was in turn a corruption of the historical figure Shammuramat, regent of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 811 BC.[7] Hislop takes Ninus as a historical figure, and associates him with the Biblical figure Nimrod, though he was not the first to do so. The Clementine literature made the association in the 4th Century AD. An influential belief throughout the Middle Ages was that Ninus was the inventor of Idolatry,[8] a concept that Hislop clearly drew upon. However, Hislop wrote before the historical records of the ancient near east had been thoroughly decoded and studied, and it became apparent in the decades after he wrote that there never was any such figure as Ninus, and that the Greek authors whom he quotes were without credibility on the subject.[9]

And yet it is on such stuff Bosco relies. Why, you might ask, waste time on such poor stuff? The answer is simple. If you look on Amazon, which is still selling the book, you will see hordes of people praising it to the skies. some even saying that if it were not true, why has the Catholic Church not responded to it? That is a bit like saying why has it not responded to David Icke’s claims that the world is ruled by reptiles? Incidentally, and coincidentally, Wiki adds this:

Author and conspiracy theorist David Icke incorporates Hislop’s claims about Semiramis into his book The Biggest Secret, claiming that Semiramis played a key role in the establishment of a global conspiracy run by Reptilian aliens, whom he asserts is secretly controlling humanity.[18]

There is something heartbreaking about the thought of human beings so adrift from the real message of Christ’s Gospel, and the truth about His Church, that they find refuge and a truth they can believe in such sources. St Paul’s verdict applies:

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

The good news, for Bosco and for all who are misled by such toxins, is that the Church is there, opening its arms, which are the arms of God, and has the power of Christ to forgive all our sins and to help guide us on the road to Heaven.

Atonement: a Good Friday meditation

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Atonement, Easter, Faith

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crucifix

It is not fashionable in polite Christian circles to talk about judgement. That, we are told, implies a God who is capable of wrath. In which case, one wonders what Good Friday is actually about? We know God is love, men say, and therefore He does not require a propitiation. God is love, says the Bible ,and therefore he provides a propitiation. To take away the notion that Christ is the propitiation for our sins is to empty the Bible of its import, and to rob Christ’s stoning sacrifice of meaning. As one author put it many years ago:

Nobody has any right to borrow the words ‘God is love’ from an apostle, and then to put them in circulation after carefully emptying them of their apostolic import. . . . But this is what they do who appeal to love against propitiation. To take the condemnation out of the Cross is to take the nerve out of the Gospel . . . Its whole virtue, its consistency with God’s character, its aptness to man’s need, its real dimensions as a revelation of love, depend ultimately on this, that mercy comes to us in it through judgment. (James Denney, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Expositor’s Bible, Hodder, 1894, p. 221f.)

The notion that God reacts to wickedness by in effect saying: ‘Oh well, don’t worry, I will love you and forgive you anyway’, belittles His love for us. What Father could be indifferent to the suffering of a child? Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal, God watches for us far off, ready to embrace us –  but first we must repent. That is what God is looking for. But the evil that sin has done needs to be redeemed, as we do, and so we get the supreme sacrifice this day marks.

On the first Good Friday, Jesus fulfilled the words of the prophet:

He was wounded for our transgressions
and bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that brought us peace
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one to his own way;
And YHWH has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah 53:5-6.)

Our sins were laid upon Him. As St. Paul told the Corinthians: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.The author of Hebrews says: Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. St Peter tells us: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. He died for our sins.

There are many theories of the atonement, but only we moderns have managed to pretend we don’t need it. It is sin which angers God, and in His love for us He sent Christ to bear our sins. Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s justice. ‘One died for all, therefore all died,’ he wrote in 2 Corinthians 5.14; and thus, seven verses later, ‘God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,’ he concluded seven verses later, ‘so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (5.21). And it is within that argument that we find the still deeper truth, which is again rooted  in the Old Testament: that the Messiah through whom all this would be accomplished would be the very embodiment of YHWH himself. ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Corinthians 5.19).

Theories of the atonement may vary, but they have been there from the beginning. It is sin which arouses God’s wrath, and we have sinned. We can (and do) argue over who was saved in this way`, but I prefer the plain reading – Christ died for us all. He suffered there for you and for me – for all who will receive Him. Those who chose not to receve Him, well, they make their choice and must abide by it.

Good Friday is our day of Judgement before the Last. We who were lost are found, we who deserve naught but chastisement receive mercy, we are redeemed in that precious blood. We gaze with awe upon the Cross through which we have received salvation.

Sin and wrath

31 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Faith, Politics

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In terms of the responses to yesterday’s post on the west and Islam, I am left a trifle puzzled. Our old friend Scoop commented:

So a different opinion might say that the “lazy thinking” (C alluded to in his post) is to limit one’s analysis to a single precedent action (our reactionary involvement in the Gulf Wars) and of course blaming ourselves (or more specifically the U.S. – the victims of their preemptive violence) for the refugee crisis resulting from these Middle East conflicts. Of course, we do not mention the unprecedented attacks of Bin Laden’s group on the World Trade Center, the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam, the failed attempt some years before on the World Trade Center, or the Iranian hostage crisis some years before . . . not to discount the sporadic terrorist attacks on planes and ships.

Try as I might, I can’t see what 9/11, Kuwait or the Iranian hostage crisis contributed to the current refugee crisis. That was, like it or not, the consequence of our actions. The lives people were living were disrupted by the actions of an American-led coalition, and to indulge in ‘whatabouterry’ evades the issue of what should be done with the human victims. The same is true of the distinction without a difference between ‘refugee and economic migrants’. If we look back to the European settlement of North America, were the Pilgrim Fathers refugees or economic migrants, and would the distinction have mattered? As Christians Christ does not tell us to draw such distinctions – or perhaps I am misreading the parable of the Good Samaritan?

When Mrs Merkel accepted so many refugees her motives were not purely humanitarian. She knew that German population growth has fallen below replacement level, and saw here an easy source of new, cheap labour. As a society we contracept and abort to such a degree that across the West we are not replacing ourselves. I am not quite sure that turning aside refugees or economic migrants will aid in the slightest in defusing this demographic time-bomb?

Behind all of this lies something we are unwilling to confront – the reality of sin and wrath. For all the talk of a Christian society, our invasion of Iraq and behaviour in Libya and Syria has had nothing to do with Christianity; it is equal parts hubris, false confidence and ignorance. That sinful behaviour has created the current problems. No one made us abort of contracept to the degree we do; we created the demographic time-bomb. Do we, as Christians, not recognise that sin has consequences? Sure, we can retreat into the privacy of our ‘Benedict option’, but there may not be much left if we decide to come out of it later.

If the Lord Jesus had wanted us all to retreat to monasteries or small, pure, private communities, I suspect He would have told us that. We could ‘send back’ every refugee and every economic migrant, but I am unsure what that would accomplish. These people would simply be going back to an unviable situation, but with a motive for revenge on those who had rejected the. It would do nothing t solve the problems created demographically by our hedonism, indeed, in some ways, it would be in the spirit of modern hedonism – all too much trouble for us to cope with, leave us alone, let us get on with enjoying ourselves, or praying in a corner for things to improve. None of these seem very Christian options. We have brought upon ourselves the wrath that is the consequence of sin – so we could at least accept our guilt and repent. But as I have commented before, for followers of a faith founded on repentance, Christians often have a real problem with the concept. The correct respons eto a sense of sin is not ‘what about that lot over there?’ It is to repent and follow the Gospel message. None of that involves easy options.

Battle lines?

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Faith

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sin

The battle lines are what they have always been. The world wants a church which endorses what it wants to do and is impatient with talk of sin; the Church is the custodian of the ‘faith once revealed’. As the current fracas in the Church of England over gay relationships shows, once again, the world will be satisfied with nothing more than capitulation: love is love, it says, so allow it. Of course, at this point it does not accept that ‘love is love’ when it comes to what the rigid among us call incest or adult child sexual relations, but those barricades will be the next to be stormed. In the mean time, those Christians with a same sex inclination who adhere to the teaching of the Church and resist their temptations must sometimes wonder why they bother?

Make no mistake, it is not that the Anglican Church, or any other Church, is obsessed with sex – the pressure on this comes from those who are – that is those who want their sexual preferences to receive acceptance from the Church. There is no stopping point on this journey, as the Anglicans can bear witnessed to. The world will have its way. That there are those in the Church who have broken their vows, gives the world an easy target at which to aim its cries of hypocrisy – with the implication that if a few break their vows that should, somehow, justify everyone having the right to do so.

As a society we are not big on our duty, preferring, instead to assert our ‘rights’. But the plain fact is there are no ‘rights’ that inhere to us as human beings. What goes by that name are hard-won concessions which could easily be lost. Having eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, we do, alas, think ourselves as wise as God, when we are simply fallen and fallible creatures. It is one of the devil’s better tricks to make us think we are at the centre of the universe, and that all that matters is our feelings and what we want; the egotism of the infant is encouraged – the self-restraint usually associated with adults is not. Indeed it is frowned upon – who, after all, in this one brief life would want to pass up on a pleasurable feeling? There is no tomorrow, so eat, drink and be merry, for it is then that we die. Children? Why bother? They cost money which could be much better spent on yourself. Take no thought for the morrow, as it takes no thought for you. We are taught we are alone in the universe, although the ‘proof’ for this is, at best sketchy; it is, in fact the new faith, based solely on our mistaken estimate of our wisdom.

To none of this can the Church assent. We are passing through here, this world is not our home, it is but a preparation for it. We are citizens of an Eternal place and, of course, the World hates us, as it hated the Word.

Sola Scriptura or Solo Scriptura

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Lutheranism, Reading the BIble

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blog-solo-scriptura-4Gene Veith of Cranach reported an article the other day by Mathew Block, Communications Director of the Lutheran Church of Canada. I think it has bearing on the ongoing dialogue with Bosco, in which as we all know, he continually inveighs against the Church, usually the Catholic Church specifically, but in truth, all churches. Most of us realize as Chalcedon has said many times, “Christ founded a church”. And he did, Chalcedon’s definition differs a bit from mine as a Lutheran, but as America came from a reformed Great Britain, so too did Lutheranism come from a reformed Catholic Church. You could say much the same for all the other churches, in some form or another. We all hold some truths self-evident, for instance:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

That’s all that is required to be a Christian really. All the rest is mostly about how to live that Creed, which we all do imperfectly.

But Veith’s opening perfectly summarizes Bosco, and probably many like him. “[…] He argues that part of the problem is a misunderstanding of the authority of the Bible.  People say the Bible is their authority, then consider that to be a license to interpret scripture any way they want to.  Instead of sola scriptura, we have solo scriptura.”

Block makes several points, which are applicable here.

Because they privilege their own personal understanding of Scripture over the historic witness of the Church, it’s not surprising that Evangelicals deny that their congregation should have any meaningful authority over them: For example, 57 percent denied that their local church should have “the authority to withhold the Lord’s Supper from me and exclude me from the fellowship of the church.” In other words, Evangelicals believe the Bible is authoritative; and that authority is mediated by individual believers, rather than the church (even though the Bible explicitly says that authority is to be exercised by the church—e.g., Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 5:11-13, Titus 3:10-11, etc.) […]

If instead we ignore the ways in which the Church has expressed its beliefs—if we ignore the ways in which God has shaped the faith of the Church historic through His Word—then we are really denying that the Scriptures are authoritative at all. We are in effect saying that we do not trust God’s Word to have acted on any Christians other than ourselves. Instead, we are elevating ourselves—our own hearts—as the ultimate judge, both over Scripture and the God who has shared that Word with the Church down through history. And that is heresy of the highest degree.

via: EVANGELICALS, HERESY, AND SCRIPTURE ALONE. Do read the whole thing.

I’m reminded that the Rev Dr. Martin Luther in his Homily for Trinity XIX, Church Postils said that, “God does not desire the Christian to live for himself.” I also doubt that he really intended us to live by ourselves either, without the community to keep us in check, and our pastors should be of large account in that community, otherwise we will undoubtedly come to see ourself as the final authority, supplanting God Himself in that role. And that is always the sin of pride showing itself.

There is something else here also, that G.K. Chesterton phrased far better than I can.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

The Faith and politics

19 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Abortion, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith

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vatiarms

In the latest Catholic Herald our good friend Francis Phillips tackles the thorny question of how the Church should react when Catholic politicians in powerful places (in this case, the current VP, Joe Biden, and the likely next one, Tim Kaine) say or do things which create scandal in the minds of the faithful – such as blessing a gay marriage or endorsing abortion: the Church does not support either of these things. The obvious response is that these men have a right to advocate what they do – ‘it’s a free country’ after all. That is perfectly true, and as an ardent defender of the right to free speech (not only on ideological grounds, but also on the grounds that I have always been sure that I’d be one of the first to be silenced), I would never suggest that they should not have the right to do and say what they want. Of course, you might respond, ‘but what if they were acting illegally?’ My response would be twofold: if anyone knows a way of preventing people doing illegal acts, let us all know; and we have a thing called the Law, which provides appropriate penalties for those committing them. Thus, as in any balanced society, rights come with responsibilities, and actions have consequences. You have the right to say and do what you want, but the responsibility to do so within the Law; go beyond that and there will be consequences.

We might, perhaps, expect the same set of principles to apply in the Church. Of course, Scripture advises us against getting the secular authorities involved in disputes between Christians (a sensible precaution even now, but an essential one when the New Testament was being written), and states that we should take the matter up, first with the individual, and should that fail, we should go via the Church. Francis quotes Cardinal Burke’s sensible words on the issue of what to do about those who take a stand against the teaching of the Church. They should, he suggests, be told

“to make their public actions consistent with the moral law taught by the Church; otherwise it would no longer be possible for them to receive Holy Communion.”

But this has been something no Bishops’ conference has been willing to do. This raises a question not considered by the writers of Scripture – what do you do when you take it to the Church and get no reaction?

It might, of course, be the case that a ‘private word’ has been had with the erring politicians; it might equally be the case that there is some good reason (unfathomable to the rest of us mere mortals) why nothing is said or done to indicate disapproval. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that the failure to take any action is, itself, a further cause of scandal to ‘we the people’. But it might, perhaps be said that ‘we the people’ don’t really care and we’re happy to let our politicians go with the zeitgeist, perhaps even in the hope that Tim Kaine has that it will help bring the Church into the modern era. So much the worse for ‘we the people’. The Church did not invent its dogmatic teaching, it defined it from what it has received from the Apostles, and if every Catholic in the world agreed that Jesus was just a very good man but not the Son of God, that would not alter the fact He is the Son of God. The same is true of popular views on issues where they conflict with Church teaching.