Book Review 1: Unintended Reformation

This week the Monday reading group read the first chapter of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation. His basic thrust, as I see it, is that one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation was the secularization of society. I suppose when you put it that way, it's not a very profound thesis.  Surely one consequence of dethroning a singular, dominating religious authority is that you not only create a plurality of other religious options, but you create a space for a non-religious option.

Gregory's thesis is more involved, however.  He probably goes a little too far--no surprise that he teaches at Notre Dame and I imagine is Roman Catholic.  I'm trying to work through some of the details in my mind, so let me merely provide some bulleted points of interest to me.

Introduction

• His writing is somewhat thick. It's a somewhat heavy style, long paragraphs, high vocabulary. It's not as bad as Christian Smith but reminds one of what I might call a faux-German style. :-)
• He says some of the right things about his sense of things. "This is neither a study of decline from a lost Golden Age nor a narrative of progress toward an ever brighter future, but rather an analysis of unintended historical consequences..." (20). So he says... not sure if he does.
• I'm less confident of this fundamental thesis: "Ideological and institutional shifts that occurred five or more centuries ago remain substantively necessary to an explanation of why the Western world today is as it is" (7).  I don't doubt that the present can take on a certain richness if we understand how we got here. I suspect the richness is primarily in knowing what the alternatives were.  He goes further, "we cannot understand the character of contemporary realities until and unless we see how they have been and are still being shaped by the distant past" (15). Hmmm.

Chapter 1: Excluding God

• Gregory starts with a quote from Max Weber (1864-1920) in which Weber argues that science is antithetical to religion.  According to Weber, you just can't have a religious worldview any more because the truth of science is "not an option."
• In effect, this chapter is Gregory arguing that this point of view is an unintended consequence of the Reformation. 
• The two biggest culprits for the chain of events, according to Gregory, are 1) the "metaphysical univocity" of nominalism and 2) Occam's Razor.  
• Metaphysical univocity, for Gregory, is a shift from thinking of God as genuinely "other" to thinking him as a being, the highest being.  He becomes a being (ens) rather than being itself (esse). Occam's Razor means that we look for the simplest explanation of data. Gregory believes this approach implies a "methodological naturalism," even if you believe in God. 
• I'm still processing these last points.  I believe in the otherness of God, not univocity. But make no mistake, there would be no scientific explanation of the universe if the mode of operation was not to look for natural explanations for the physical universe.  I consider Occam's Razor a fundamental principle of good data interpretation.
• What is peculiar about these culprits in Gregory's argument is that they are not products of the Reformation. They precede the Reformation. So I am unclear.  I think (and this is a point of investigation for me) it is generally accepted that nominalism was a basis for the Reformation. But if nominalism is the basis for the Reformation, then doesn't Gregory's argument fall apart?  The basis for secularism becomes nominalism, not the Reformation.
• Ultimately ideas are usually epiphenomena. They rarely are the actual causes of things. The real causes of things tend to be more fundamental human drives like power and economics.
• Another sense is that, without a commonly agreed Christianity, truth questers in the post-Reformation era could not look to religion for questions of truth. They rather sought for natural explanations and reason that they could count on for stability.

I really was not impressed with this first chapter. I do not agree with Weber, but I also don't think we can go back to "pre-critical," pre-modern times. The division of reality into natural and supernatural has been heuristically successful almost beyond comprehension.

I don't know whether God is directly pulling the strings beneath the quarks or if he has delegated that to natural laws of some sort.  But if he is directly doing it, he does it with overwhelming regularity (=natural). So it is not inaccurate heuristically to say that when God does something that is not the normal rule, it is a "supernatural" event. This distinction also allows for the most palatable solution to the problem of evil and suffering.

In short, the natural-supernatural distinction, whether it is literally the case or not, has been overwhelmingly fruitful and generative. Occam's Razor works, and we use it in common sense every day over and over.  Science works.

Happy Reformation Day

Today is Reformation Day.  495 years ago today, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg cathedral to start a debate.

Immense impact! It caused Roman Catholic political power over Europe to disintegrate. It led to political independence of individual nations like never before. It set in motion the tens of thousands of Christian splinter groups that exist today. It took rising individualism and put it into warp speed, democratizing religion. It would eventually facilitate the rise of secularism and higher criticism of the Bible.

I am a Protestant.  I think Popes and cardinals can be very spiritual people, but no more than any other Christian.  I believe God can raise up prophets from nowhere and the Spirit can reveal himself directly to anyone. I'm not fond of doctrines like purgatory, and I'm glad ministers can marry like everyone else.

Having said that, I hope we Protestants are allowed to be objective about our own tradition as well.  Is it not possible that the Roman Catholics scored some points in the debate or were more right than Luther in some areas? I come from the Wesleyan tradition, which came out of Anglicanism. I view Anglicanism as somewhat of a moderating form of the Reformation, somewhere in between the high Protestantism of the Lutherans/Reformed and Catholicism. As a Wesleyan I am more apt to critique Luther than some other Protestants are.

So despite the longstanding arguments between Wesleyan-Arminians and Calvinists, the Lutheran tradition is actually further away from us in some key respects than the Calvinist. For example, Luther drove an incredibly sharp wedge between faith and works, so much so that Lutherans don't like to talk about sanctification, about becoming more holy in this life.

By contrast, the Wesleyan tradition is closer to the catholic on this issue.  We believe not only that God wants to make us more and more righteous in this life.  We believe that you can walk away from God after he forgives you by deliberate acts of defiance.  With Paul, we believe that "We all must appear before Christ in court so that each person can be paid back for the things that were done while in the body, whether they were good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10).

Do we believe in sola fide, "by faith alone"?  We would say we do. Lutherans and Calvinists might say we don't.  We would say we do because works never help a person become justified. They might say we don't because we believe that human will (by God's grace) cooperates with God's will in faith, and because our lack of cooperation with God's will, which leads to sinful deeds, can "unjustify" us. (By the way, Paul is on our side)

I would say that all Christians today believe in sola gratia (by grace alone) and sola Christi (by Christ alone), including the Roman Catholic Church.  This is an area where the RCC has itself reformed its understanding.  It is only by the grace of God that anyone can be saved.  No human could ever have enough merit on his or her own to deserve God's favor.  It is purely a matter of God's grace and anything we do is in response to that grace.

Similarly, it is only through Christ that anyone can be saved, by God's design.  Although the Roman Catholics have priests, sacraments, and heavenly intercessors like Mary, they are all understood to be channels through which Christ's merits flow.  The RCC today would agree that salvation is through Christ alone, mediated further through other channels.

Sola scriptura (by Scripture alone) is another one where the Wesleyan-Anglican tradition is more open to tradition, experience, and reason as channels of truth than some versions of Protestantism (the so called Wesleyan Quadrilateral).  Prima scriptura (Scripture first) might be a better designation.  Of course Luther and Calvin freely engaged the church fathers, so Wesley is probably not much different than them on that score.

But he lived during the Enlightenment, and so reason of that sort arguably flows in his veins more than them. Similarly, he was influenced by Pietists and was accused of being an "enthusiast," so experience of that sort arguably also flows in his veins more than them.  Can we just say that a Wesleyan might be more open to natural revelation and pneumatic exegesis than your average evangelical or fundamentalist?

So Happy Reformation Day!  Three cheers for Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Zwingli, Knox, Zinzendorf, Arminius, and Wesley!  [Add the fountain head of your Protestant group here]

Happy Luther Day

Happy Reformation Day! ;-)  I'd post the picture of my family in front of the Wittenberg door but can't at moment.  Some of you may know that October 31 is not only Halloween but the day Luther nailed his famed 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral.  I first learned about Reformation Day when a church didn't want to celebrate Halloween and found another reason to do something when all the other kids in town were having fun.

My kids have about an hour and a half a week in the German gymnasium on religion, and I put them in "evangelisch" or the Protestant (which means the Lutheran/Reformed) section.  For the last two weeks they've watched American movies on Luther (which they couldn't understand because they were translated into German ;-) 

Luther's legacy is often formulated in terms of the Protestant "sola's": sola gratia, solus Christus, sola fide, sola scriptura.  Sometimes a fifth is added but it is more Reformed and less Luther.  One of the things McKnight is treating in his book is the fact that these origins have sometimes led Protestants to focus too much in their thinking on individual salvation, as if we are the center of what it's all about.  

sola gratia: "by grace alone"  On this one I think everyone (including Catholics today) agrees.  It is only because of God's grace that anyone can come to be in right relation with God.  No one can earn salvation.  It is a gift from God.  A good understand of grace in the NT, I would add, implies the necessity of an appropriate response to God's grace, which has been a weakness of Luther's system.

solus Christus: "Christ alone"  Again, I think everyone (including Catholics) would agree that it is only through Christ that anyone can be reconciled to God.  The debate is over what this means.  Two key debate points are over how this works (is God a slave to his justice or did he freely choose this path) and whether God saves through Christ many who have never heard of Christ.

sola fide: "by faith alone" Lutherans and Catholics have come a long way toward common ground on this topic as well.  The point at which Lutherans and Catholics have tension is exactly the point where Lutherans and Wesleyans have tension.  What do we say about those passages where God judges even believers according to their deeds (e.g., Rom. 2:6 and 2 Cor. 5:10), not to mention James 2:24?  For the Wesleyan tradition, deeds do not justify but they can be a key indicator of un-justification in progress.

sola scriptura: "by Scripture alone" What this really amounted to was "back to the Bible."  Luther only turned back the church about a 1000 years.  He didn't touch doctrines that reached their current form in the 300s and 400s, beliefs about things like the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ.  And of course, he felt free to decide which books belonged in Scripture in the first place.  2 Maccabees was rejected; James almost didn't make it; Romans is great.

This was, in my opinion, a high moment in Christian history, October 31, 1517.  There are important discussions and nuances to be made about all of these.  But Luther accomplished his initial goal: perhaps the best "discussion starter" in all history!

Quote on Protestantism and the problem of biblical theology

What do you make of this quote?

"The Protestant Reformation rejected allegorical interpretation because allegory had allowed the medieval church to go beyond the original meaning in ways they rejected.  The Reformers wanted to peel back developments in the catholic tradition and used sola scriptura as the method.  But what they really wanted to do was peel back developments to about 450CE, and their sola scriptura unintentionally set Protestantism on a trajectory that would eventually undo the glue of the first five centuries and, after the Enlightenment, the books of the Bible began to fall apart from each other.  This is the problem of biblical theology."

Friday Review: Is the Reformation Over?, Chapter 5

In chapter 5 of Noll's book, he discusses "The Catholic Catechism." This is a 756 page document commissioned by Pope John Paul II in 1986 and completed in 1992. The length of it is a reflection of the difference between Protestant traditions and the Catholic tradition. The Wesleyan Articles of Religion are dramatically short in comparison.

Roman Catholics know what they believe. It is spelled out clearly. This is a compendium based on 2000 years of tradition. Catholic priests know the Fathers, they know the literature, they know it in Latin. There is no changing of their Discipline in the way you can, admittedly with some difficulty, change the faith of my denomination. They can only reinterpret and wiggle narrowly around a tradition that is pretty much set in stone.

That last paragraph is of course me rather than Noll and Nystrom.

To me this is the best laid out and written chapter thus far. It is mainly divided into 1) areas of agreement, 2) understanding differences, and 3) Catholics and the church.

1. Areas of Agreement
a. orthodoxy
In a powerful layout, Noll and Nystrom present quotations from the Catholic Catechism that together form a kind of creed in outline. In other words, they excerpt what looks pretty much like the faith statement of any Protestant denomination.

Here are a few of excerpts that caught my attention:

1. "God is the author of sacred Scripture ... the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures." http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/107.htm

2. "Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven" http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/618.htm

3. "Our justification comes from the grace of God." http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1996.htm

4. "Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man." http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/162.htm

b. devotion to God
Apparently, the Catholic Cathecism reads like a devotional book. Here is a Byzantine prayer of ordination that Noll and Nystrom cite as an example.

c. holy living
In this section Noll and Nystrom talk about Catholic expectations with regard to things like Sabbath, respect for human life, sexual ethics, marriage and divorce, social ethics, and sin. My parents' generation would resonate strongly with almost everything here. Ironically, the current state of my church, the Wesleyan Church, is far more liberal than anything here.

2. Understanding Differences
a. Authority
Perhaps the key difference between the RCC and most Protestant traditions is in the relationship between Scripture and tradition. Most Protestants at least claim (I deny that it is as much the case as they think) that for them Scripture is the supreme authority for doctrine and practice. Scripture is to interpret tradition rather than tradition interpreting Scripture.

By contrast the RCC not only sees tradition to be accepted and honored "with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence," but further, "the task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.

Those who know my hermeneutic will see an attempt to find a middle way between these two extremes. The typical Protestant equation is Scripture only (with unacknowledged traditions governing the way in which that Scripture is processed). The Catholic equation is Scripture and tradition as co-equal, with the Magisterium serving to arbitrate. My equation is to read Scripture with the eyes of the consensus of the church, with an eye to its original meaning and the moving of the Holy Spirit.

Where I thus differ from most Protestants is my acceptance that Scripture alone has no organizing principle by which to speak with a single voice. Further, we will not arrive at a Christian understanding of important doctrines like the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ without much that is not in Scripture.

I differ from Catholics in that the Western Church has not represented the church catholic for a 1000 years. Further, the Holy Spirit has seen fit to reverse consensus on a number of issues in the Reformation, using a crude yet appropriate measure of Scripture's original meaning. The consensus of the church is thus not static or absolute. Christ is the ultimate point to which reform might theoretically reverse before Christianity itself would deconstruct (at which point Christianity would revert to Judaism).

b. Mary
I will confess that I do not identify with the RC adoration of Mary. They do not worship Mary. She herself, though sinless, without original sin, and assumed directly to heaven, is these things because of the merits of Christ.

I'll need someone to show me why it is so bad to ask saints to help us. I don't do it. I don't feel the need to do it. I feel quite comfortable praying directly to the Father through Jesus. But prayer to Mary and saints seems more quirky to me than dangerous. Thoughts?

c. baptism
RCs of course baptize infants. Justification is a function of baptism. Faith follows rather than precedes. Baptism is considered essential for salvation, however, the current Catholic understanding holds out hope for unbaptized children. Limbo is not a current RC belief and never was an official belief.

Certainly the longest standing Protestant churches baptize infants: Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, Methodists. It is allowable even in the Wesleyan Church. However, it is allowable for Wesleyans on the assumption that baptism itself does not save. No Protestant would make a strict equation between baptism and justification.

d. salvation by works or grace
In this section Noll and Nystrom discuss the RC belief that a justified person might end up spending eternity in hell. They note that Wesleyan-Arminians agree. Calvinists of course disagree on this point.

Another point of difference is the typical Protestant sense that justification is an individual affair, while Catholics see the Church the way through which God justifies.

e. celibacy and saints
These are well known points of difference between Protestants and Catholics. Noll and Nystrom point out, however, how little is said in the new catechism about celibacy, almost as if it is something the Church has to live with because of the positions past Popes have taken.

The Catholic position on saints is also difficult for Protestants (and of course from a NT point of view). All Christians are saints, according to the NT.

f. sacraments
We've already mentioned transubstantiation and the sacraments in last Friday's post. There were some memorable lines in this section of this chapter, however:

"Many Catholics see Protestant worship services, when Communion is not celibrated, as little more than light religious entertainment accompanied by a motivational speaker" (144).

:-)

3. Catholics and the Church
Noll and Nystrom begin with what was apparently a common saying by Protestants in ecumenical dialog with Catholics: "The main difference between us and the Catholics is ecclesiology. They have one and we don't" (145). N & N end the chapter with this question: "Why do we not possess such a thorough, clear and God-centered account of our faith as the Catechism offers to Roman Catholics?" (150).

Here's my answer: Barth has written his; Tom Oden has written his; Jurgen Moltmann has written his. There is no single Protestant authority to write one. Of course the purist might say--we have had one for 2000 years... it's called the Bible. But as fun a retort as this is, I believe it is misguided. The Bible requires synthesis, interpretation, and appropriation such as the Catholic Catechism does for RCs.

However, I await someone to write an equivalent of the RC catechism that sets out the real consensus of the church with its variations. As usual, I am not qualified to write one, although I think I have some sense of what it would look like. It would sketch out all the areas that the vast majority of Christians have and continue to be in agreement. Then under each discussion it would catalog the points of disagreement.

This last paragraph suggests my agreement and disagreement with Catholic ecclesiology. The RC church considers itself the body of Christ. Its structure, its Pope and sacerdotal structure are the ligaments of that body. I am a separated brother.

With the smallest of changes, a perspective very similar and yet more appropriate comes into view. If the church be not identified with a specific ecclesiastical body on earth, we can nevertheless see the visible churches on earth as the visible body of Christ and the path through which God has primarily chosen to minister to His people.

That's this week's chapter review.

Friday Review: Is the Reformation Over? Chapter 4

At long last I have finished chapter 4 of Mark Noll's book, Is the Reformation Over? By the way, Noll and Nystrom give their answer to the title question in this chapter: "On the basis of the ecumenical dialogues, can it be said that the Reformation is over? Probably not. But a once-yawning chasm has certainly narrowed" (114).

This chapter, "Ecumenical Dialogues," catalogs the dialogs between Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Evangelicals, Disciples of Christ, Methodists, Anglicans, Reformed, and Pentecostals over the years since Vatican 2. The results are increased understanding, even significant movement on the Catholic side, while of course each of these groups at the same time has retained its unique identity. No surprise there.

This is a long chapter and one not set out in a way that works well for me. Let me reformulate it for you.

Smaller Disagreements
Despite theological agreements and disagreements, we all know that division is often more a matter of little things that loom disproportionately large on the street.

Mary
Mary remains a point of contention between Protestant and Catholic. At the same time, Catholics have clarified these years that Mary is not a co-redeemer alongside Christ. She is not on a level with the three persons of the Trinity. She herself needed to be redeemed (although such redemption for them did not involve the forgiveness of sins--immaculate conception and all).

To me this is a small thing, no larger than my disagreement with Baptists over eternal security. I find RC (Roman Catholic) views here a historical eccentricity, but nothing to hate over or rail against.

Other Points of Disagreement
RC don't use birth control. They don't ordain women. Priests must remain celibate. Divorce is much more strictly regulated, as is marriage within Catholicism. They pray to saints to help them (they do not worship saints). On all these issues I disagree with the RCC along with most Protestants.

However, only the issue of women's ordination seems a point of serious difficulty to me. Because I believe the RCC is part of God's Church, I believe they will eventually ordain women, as will all other denominations eventually. These differences seem no greater than differences between various Protestant groups.

Significant Disagreements
Authority of the Pope
The authority of the Pope remains perhaps the most significant point of disagreement between Protestant and Catholic, in my view. On the one hand, the RCC has clarified that the Pope is not always authoritative. It is only when he speaks ex cathedra ("from the chair") in relation to matters of salvation. If I remember correctly, the previous Pope never spoke in this manner during his entire papacy. In other words, the RCC does not consider anything said or enacted by the previous Pope to be infallible.

Interestingly, the Anglican-Catholic dialog aimed at complete reunification, which of course did not take place. Issues like women in ministry, birth control, and divorce sunk the discussion. Interestingly enough, however, the Anglican Church was willing to say the following on the authority of the Pope:

"a primacy of the bishop of Rome is not contrary to the New Testament and is part of God's purpose regarding the Church's unity and catholicity, while admitting that the New Testament texts offer no sufficient basis for this ... We nevertheless agree that a universal primacy will be needed in a reunited Church and should appropriately be the primacy of the bishop of Rome" (quoted in Noll and Nystrom, 88).

The Role of the Bible
I have long gone on record in saying that the "emperor is wearing no clothes" when it comes to the issue of sola scriptura. John Piper clearly follows his own "magisterium" when it comes to interpreting the Bible--one that involves the Council of Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards.

The issue of the role of the Bible is thus not what so many Protestants beat their chests over. The issue is in reality two fold: 1) who decides what the authoritative interpretation of the Bible is and 2) to what degree do we allow for development of doctrine and practice beyond the Bible?

The RCC thus accepts the authority of the Bible just as sola scriptura Protestants do (which is not all Protestants--prima scriptura would be a better description of my own tradition). Where they differ is 1) where they locate the "magisterium" of interpretation and 2) the room they make for certain developments beyond the New Testament.

Agreement and Disagreement
Not all Protestant groups agree with one another. We thus find that on various issues some Protestants agree more with the RCC than others.

Justification
The single most significant document to be produced from the ecumenical discussions of the last forty years is the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification," signed October 31, 1999 between the RCC and the Lutherans. In it, Lutherans and Catholics agree on the doctrine of justification by faith! In other words, we can seriously ask whether the Protestant Reformation would have even happened if the RCC had been willing to accept this document 500 years ago!

Both sides agree:

"By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit ... Faith itself is God's gift ... Our new life is solely due to the forgiving and renewing mercy that God imparts as a gift and we receive in faith, and never can merit it in any way" (quoted on 109).

For any Wesleyans reading, it is noteworthy that on the points of tension that remained, our tradition sides more with the Catholics than with the Lutherans on the place of works in the life of a believer. We also disagree with both sides on the role of sin in the life of a believer, since we are more optimistic than even the Catholics about God's power in this area (and way more optimistic than the Lutherans).

Some (Anthony Lane, for example, in a CT article) have noted the absence of discussion of issues like indulgences, penance, and purgatory from the Catholic-Lutheran discussion, ongoing points of disagreement between most Protestants and Catholics.

Priesthood of Believers
Perhaps surprisingly, the RCC was willing to say this:

"All Christians are called to serve ... The goal of the ordained ministry is to serve this priesthood of all the faithful" (quoted on 88).

In other words, the RCC was willing to affirm the priesthood of all believers without denying the role of ordained ministry. Only the most low church Protestant denominations deny ordination as an appropriate practice for ministers, and on that topic they would disagree with the major players of Protestantism.

Certainly ordination is a sacrament for the RCC in a way that it is not in Protestant churches. Some groups also are more concerned about apostolic succession than others. Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed, and Methodists might claim it if they wanted to (although Methodists cheated a little--Wesley wasn't a bishop when he ordained the first bishops in America). By contrast, groups like the Baptists, Disciples of Christ, etc... create their ministers ex nihilo, in no historic connection to the apostles.

Yet the RCC was willing to admit that this succession was initially geographical and only later chronological: "The intention of the apostolic community in establishing ministries in other places was initially to establish collaborators rather than to choose successors: what began as an expansion of communion over distance became later on an expansion over time" (quoted on 87).

Sacraments
Most Protestants recognize two of the RC seven sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist. Of course, many Protestants would consider them ordinances rather than sacraments, memorials with no particular spiritual power. Many Protestant traditions strongly reject rebaptism, as the RCC does. In short, we find greater diversity among Protestants on this issue than at some points between Protestants and Catholics.

The doctrine of transubstantiation was of course a main concern. The RCC of course strongly maintains this doctrine. However, some of the concessions made, in my mind, amount to drawing no difference between them and Luther's consubstantial view, which in my mind is perfectly acceptable for Protestants.

Thus for RCs, transubstantiation does not imply a change of the material of bread and wine (in other words, you won't find physical flesh and blood in your stomach). It is rather a "sacramental presence in which God uses realities of this world to convey the realities of new creation." In my opinion, our scientific understanding of matter has morphed the RC view to where it is hardly any different from that of many Protestants.

Catholics also do not believe that baptism is essential for salvation, as most Protestants. They consider us "separated brethren" who will be saved, despite the fact that we are not with them as we ideally would be.

Burying the Historical Hatchet
A good deal of what is transpired these last forty years is the hitting of the reset button on the past sins of both sides. The RCC and the Lutherans both eliminated the anathemas and stark pronouncements against each other from the past. In short, forgiveness has been the name of the game. In addition to the Lutherans, some of the most intensive forgiveness has involved Pentecostals in Latin America.

Certainly there is a wide variety of perspectives within the RCC, including the ones that Protestants have traditionally railed against. Similarly, the old Protestant hatred of Catholics can still be found in many quarters, just as virulent as the Scots and English who burned Catholics at the stake.

In my view, if your heart is as my heart, then put your hand in mine. My tradition in many respects is closer to the Catholic tradition than it is to many Protestant groups.

Review 1: Introduction to Mark Noll's Is the Reformation Over?

For the next couple weeks, I hope to review Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom's 2005 book Is the Reformation Over? (see link at the side) Noll was a Wheaton professor at the time of the debacle over an Episcopalian professor of medieval history converting to catholicism. The individual in question was forced to resign. Noll has since moved to Notre Dame.

As far as I know, he continues to identify himself as a Protestant evangelical.

Indeed, in the Introduction he makes it clear that he and Nystrom are examining developments in Roman Catholicism from an evangelical perspective. In other words, the book uses evangelical canons to evaluate whether catholicism fits. The book does not evaluate the canons of evangelicalism themselves (at least this is my impression from the introduction).

Aims of the Book
The book is clear in the Introduction about the two goals of the book:

1. To survey the evidence for active and vital Christianity within the contemporary Roman Catholic Church and

2. To evaluate that evidence with as much discernment as possible.

The Canons of Evangelicalism
Noll and Nystrom use the four markers of evangelical identity proposed by David Bebbington (Evangelicalism in Modern Britain) as the basis of their evaluation:

1. Authority of Scripture

2. Personal Conversion

3. Importance of Evangelism

4. Centrality of the Cross

At the same time, Noll and Nystrom mention three battle cries of the Reformation as criteria as well, which they identify in the following ways (these are all Reformation themes to be sure, sola gratia and sola Christi are sometimes mentioned as well):

sola scriptura--the supreme authority of Scripture

sola fide--salvation by grace alone through faith alone

priesthood of all believers--corrective to the corruption of medieval catholic priesthood

Well see what we think of what they've come up with. They provide some interesting statistics about changes in Canada in relation to Catholicism in this introduction. They begin with a quote from 1873 where Catholicism is decried as a worse enemy of living Christianity than atheism. They go on to speak of charismatic and evangelical movements within Canadian Catholicism today, where 1/4 of Canadian Christians agree with all four of the evangelical benchmarks above and 34% more with three of the four.

D.v. ("Lord willing"), chapter 1 tomorrow...

Review 13: Conclusion to Piper's Future of Justification

Today we reach the conclusion of John Piper's response to Tom Wright: The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. As I said in the last post, however, there are six appendices to knock out before Christmas. In these Piper presents what might have been another book entirely, but obviously in condensed form.

By the way, Scot McKnight had a link on his website today with a wonderful interview with Tom Wright. If you want to know his thinking, just read through this very, very good synopsis:
http://trevinwax.com/2007/11/19/trevin-wax-interview-with-nt-wright-full-transcript/
His thought should seem very familiar to you if you read through it!

Conclusion: Is the Reformation Over?
Wright turns out to be pessimistic of any raproachment between Protestantism and Catholicism on several issues. But on the issue of justification, he believes both sides have misconceived the nature of justification. Since justification is not about how a person becomes a Christian but is the declaration that one is a Christian. So for Wright, the case is closed. If both Catholic and Protestant have been declared a part of the people of God, then they are both justified.

Piper then points out some Catholic statements on justification with which he cannot agree. Of course he does not agree with Wright's definition of justification either, so the debate is still on for him. The Catholic Church believes, "Justification is conferred in Baptism ... It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy" (Piper, 182).

Piper of course objects to the idea that we become inwardly just as a part of what we call justification. Rather justification involves the imputation of Christ's justness. I should add that Piper has made it clear that we do become more just by the power of the Spirit, but it is important for him not to include this at all under the heading of justification (no doubt he would place it under the heading of sanctification).

As I process this debate, I would say that

1) justification is usually located biblically around the time of baptism. But of course the explicitly narrated baptisms of the NT are adult baptisms (it is possible there are implicit baptisms of children in Acts). Roman Catholics believe in baptismal regeneration and practice infant baptism. I dissociate baptism from justification.

2) I do believe that the Spirit will make us inwardly just in association with our justification. I would not call this justification. So in that sense I do think the Catholic statement says something different than Paul does.

But in reality there is a good deal of commonality between what the Roman Catholic Church believes on justification and what Protestants believe. This commonality is captured well in The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church. In it the catholics affirm their belief in justification by faith and through grace.

I have said it before and now say it again. The fact that the NT books consistently teach that a person can be in the people of God and yet be rejected at the judgment undermines the entire Calvinist system. Rather, the NT consistently urges its audiences to "make your calling and election sure" (2 Pet. 1:10), a non-sensical command in Piper's theology.

So Piper is welcome to invoke Luther's "Here I Stand." But he is standing in the wrong place on some of these issues.

As a final footnote, I do think it is time for many Protestants to get over this "catholics aren't Christians" thing. A Christian, in the people of God sense, is someone who has been reconciled to God through Christ, a reconciliation made possible through God's love manifested on the cross and His power manifested in the resurrection. When God quickens our hearts to Him, this gracious reconciliation results from our faith in what He has done in Christ. Most of us believe that God's love includes within His embrace all those whose hearts He has not yet quickened (e.g., children).

John Wesley set a model attitude for us toward other Christians: "If your heart is as my heart, then give me your hand." I am surprised that some in my own Wesleyan circles would turn God's priorities upside down as if it were more important to God for our heads to be right than our hearts. If this were true then God would lead all believers eventually to believe the same things. They do not, even though we will find holy elders in almost every church whose hearts are full of "perfect" love yet whose theology is not the same.

And so it is an affrontery to the nature of God for us to disdain others with the heart of Christ. We can disagree with their thoughts, we can fight their thoughts vigorously--as I do. But I must love John Piper and I must love Tom Wright, for in the way that counts, their hearts are as my heart.

Are there Roman Catholics who have trusted in what God's love for us did in the death and resurrection of Christ? Even to ask such a question is ludicrous. Let us dismiss such ridiculous talk from our lips! If the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control, then these are the tell-tale signs of a Christian. Note that these are all attitudes of the heart, not the head. Anyone who suggests Christianity is primarily a matter of our heads has not listened to much of the NT and has twisted what little they have. Yes, faith in Christ is essential--if it is true faith, these are the signs.

It is thus those who use the name of Christ who hate, are disgruntled, unsettled, impatient, hateful, harmful, inconstant, rough, and licenscious whose Christianity is in question. Obviously ideas are important to me or I would not write a series like this one--so don't twist what we're saying into some relativistic or pluralistic puddle. There are right answers to our questions and they are important.

They are just not the most important thing.

So a Wheaton might have to kick out a professor if they convert to Catholicism. But when the subject does not involve teaching doctrine, I hope none of our Wesleyan colleges would reject a candidate who had true faith in Christ, was truly orthodox in belief, truly respected our Wesleyan-Arminian theology, was the best candidate for the job, and happened to be Catholic. I can't think of a legitimate basis to reject such a candidate. To do otherwise is for us to exalt our values over Christ's values and to reject the Spirit of Christ.