Why Catholicism makes Protestantism Tick

apropos a recent post by Scot McKnight about Thomas Howard, I reproduce this essay by Mark Brumley.


Why Catholicism Makes Protestantism Tick: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation

Mark Brumley

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features/mbrumley_bouyer1_nov04.asp

Interpreting the Reformation is complicated business. But like many complicated things, it can be simplified sufficiently well that even non-experts can get the gist of it.

Here's what seems a fairly accurate but simplified summary of the issue: The break between Catholics and Protestants was either a tragic necessity (to use Jaroslav Pelikan's expression) or it was tragic because unnecessary.

Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is "Come out from among them" and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Yet for most Protestants, even for most conservative Protestants, this is not so. They believe God "raised up" Luther and the other Reformers to restore the Gospel in its purity. They regret that this required a break with Roman Catholics (hence the tragedy) but fidelity to Christ, on their view, demanded it (hence the necessity).

Catholics agree with their more agreeable Protestant brethren that the sixteenth century division among Christians was tragic. But most Catholics who think about it also see it as unnecessary. At least unnecessary in the sense that what Catholics might regard as genuine issues raised by the Reformers could, on the Catholic view, have been addressed without the tragedy of dividing Christendom.

Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work–for Protestantism's principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church.

From Bouyer's conclusion we can infer at least two things. First, Protestantism can't be all wrong, otherwise how could the Catholic Church bring about the "full flowering of the principles of the Reformation"? Second, left to itself, Protestantism will go astray and be untrue to some of its central principles. It's these two points, as Bouyer articulates them, I would like to consider here.

One thing should be said up-front: although a convert from French Protestantism, Bouyer is no anti-Protestant polemicist. His Spirit and Forms of Protestantism was written a half-century ago, a decade before Vatican II's decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, yet it avoids the bitter anti-Protestantism that sometimes afflicted pre-conciliar Catholic works on Protestantism. That's one reason the book remains useful, even after decades of post-conciliar ecumenism.

In that regard, Bouyer's brief introduction is worth quoting in full:

"This book is a personal witness, a plain account of the way in which a Protestant came to feel himself obliged in conscience to give his adherence to the Catholic Church. No sentiment of revulsion turned him from the religion fostered in him by a Protestant upbringing followed by several years in the ministry. The fact is, he has never rejected it. It was his desire to explore its depths, its full scope, that led him, step by step, to a genuinely spiritual movement stemming from the teachings of the Gospel, and Protestantism as an institution, or rather complexus of institutions, hostile to one another as well as to the Catholic Church. The study of this conflict brought him to detect the fatal error which drove the spiritual movement of Protestantism out of the one Church. He saw the necessity of returning to that Church, not in order to reject any of the positive Christian elements of his religious life, but to enable them, at last, to develop without hindrance.

"The writer, who carved out his way step by step, or rather, saw it opening before his eyes, hopes now to help along those who are still where he started. In addition, he would like to show those he has rejoined how a little more understanding of the others, above all a greater fidelity to their own gift, could help their ‘separated brethren' to receive it in their turn. In this hope he offers his book to all who wish to be faithful to the truth, first, to the Word of God, but also to the truth of men as they are, not as our prejudices and habits impel us to see them."

Bouyer, then, addresses both Protestants and Catholics. To the Protestants, he says, in effect, "It is fidelity to our Protestant principles, properly understood, that has led me into the Catholic Church." To the Catholics, he says, "Protestantism isn't as antithetical to the Catholic Faith as you suppose. It has positive principles, as well as negative ones. Its positive principles, properly understood, belong to the Catholic Tradition, which we Catholics can see if we approach Protestantism with a bit of understanding and openness."

The Reformation was Right

Bouyer's argument is that the Reformation's main principle was essentially Catholic: "Luther's basic intuition, on which Protestantism continuously draws for its abiding vitality, so far from being hard to reconcile with Catholic tradition, or inconsistent with the teaching of the Apostles, was a return to the clearest elements of their teaching, and in the most direct line of that tradition."

1. Sola Gratia. What was the Reformation's main principle? Not, as many Catholics and even some Protestants think, "private judgment" in religion. According to Bouyer, "the true fundamental principle of Protestantism is the gratuitousness of salvation"–sola gratia. He writes, "In the view of Luther, as well as of all those faithful to his essential teaching, man without grace can, strictly speaking, do nothing of the slightest value for salvation. He can neither dispose himself for it, nor work for it in any independent fashion. Even his acceptance of grace is the work of grace. To Luther and his authentic followers, justifying faith . . . is quite certainly, the first and most fundamental grace."

Bouyer then shows how, contrary to what many Protestants and some Catholics think, salvation sola gratia is also Catholic teaching. He underscores the point to any Catholics who might think otherwise:

"If, then, any Catholic–and there would seem to be many such these days–whose first impulse is to reject the idea that man, without grace, can do nothing towards his salvation, that he cannot even accept the grace offered except by a previous grace, that the very faith which acknowledges the need of grace is a purely gratuitous gift, he would do well to attend closely to the texts we are about to quote."

In other words, "Listen up, Catholics!"

Bouyer quotes, at length, from the Second Council of Orange (529), the teaching of which was confirmed by Pope Boniface II as de fide or part of the Church's faith. The Council asserted that salvation is the work of God's grace and that even the beginning of faith or the consent to saving grace is itself the result of grace. By our natural powers, we can neither think as we ought nor choose any good pertaining to salvation. We can only do so by the illumination and impulse of the Holy Spirit.

Nor is it merely that man is limited in doing good. The Council affirmed that, as a result of the Fall, man is inclined to will evil. His freedom is gravely impaired and can only be repaired by God's grace. Following a number of biblical quotations, the Council states, "[W]e are obliged, in the mercy of God, to preach and believe that, through sin of the first man, the free will is so weakened and warped, that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought, or believe in God, or do good for the sake of God, unless moved, previously, by the grace of the divine mercy . . . . Our salvation requires that we assert and believe that, in every good work we do, it is not we who have the initiative, aided, subsequently, by the mercy of God, but that he begins by inspiring faith and love towards him, without any prior merit of ours."

The Council of Trent, writes Bouyer, repeated that teaching, ruling out "a parallel action on the part of God and man, a sort of ‘synergism', where man contributes, in the work of salvation, something, however slight, independent of grace." Even where Trent insists that man is not saved passively, notes Bouyer, it doesn't assert some independent, human contribution to salvation. Man freely cooperates in salvation, but his free cooperation is itself the result of grace. Precisely how this is so is mysterious, and the Church has not settled on a particular theological explanation. But that it is so, insist Bouyer, is Catholic teaching. Thus, concludes Bouyer, "the Catholic not only may, but must in virtue of his own faith, give a full and unreserved adherence to the sola gratia, understood in the positive sense we have seen upheld by Protestants."

2. Sola Fide: So much for sola gratia. But what about the other half of the Reformation principle regarding salvation, the claim that justification by grace comes through faith alone (sola fide)?

According to Bouyer, the main thrust of the doctrine of sola fide was to affirm that justification was wholly the work of God and to deny any positive human contribution apart from grace. Faith was understood as man's grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-completed response to God's saving initiative in Jesus Christ. What the Reformation initially sought to affirm, says Bouyer, was that such a response is purely God's gift to man, with man contributing nothing of his own to receive salvation.

In other words, it isn't as if God does his part and man cooperates by doing his part, even if that part is minuscule. The Reformation insisted that God does his part, which includes enabling and moving man to receive salvation in Christ. Man's "part" is to believe, properly understood, but faith too is the work of God, so man contributes nothing positively of his own. As Bouyer points out, this central concern of the Reformation also happened to be defined Catholic teaching, reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.

In a sense, the Reformation debate was over the nature of saving faith, not over whether faith saves. St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine and the patristic understanding of faith and salvation, said that saving faith was faith "formed by charity." In other words, saving faith involves at least the beginnings of the love of God. In this way, Catholics could speak of "justification by grace alone, through faith alone," if the "alone" was meant to distinguish the gift of God (faith) from any purely human contribution apart from grace; but not if "alone" was meant to offset faith from grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-accomplished love of God or charity.

For Catholic theologians of the time, the term "faith" was generally used in the highly refined sense of the gracious work of God in us by which we assent to God's Word on the authority of God who reveals. In this sense, faith is distinct from entrusting oneself to God in hope and love, though obviously faith is, in a way, naturally ordered to doing so: God gives man faith so that man can entrust himself to God in hope and love. But faith, understood as mere assent (albeit graced assent), is only the beginning of salvation. It needs to be "informed" or completed by charity, also the work of grace.

Luther and his followers, though, rejected the Catholic view that "saving faith" was "faith formed by charity" and therefore not "faith alone", where "faith" is understood as mere assent to God's Word, apart from trust and love. In large part, this was due to a misunderstanding by Luther. "We must not be misled on this point," writes Bouyer, "by Luther's later assertions opposed to the fides caritate formata [faith informed by charity]. His object in disowning this formula was to reject the idea that faith justified man only if there were added to it a love proceeding from a natural disposition, not coming as a gift of God, the whole being the gift of God." Yet Luther's view of faith, contents Bouyer, seems to imply an element of love, at least in the sense of a total self-commitment to God. And, of course, this love must be both the response to God's loving initiative and the effect of that initiative by which man is enabled and moved to respond. But once again, this is Catholic doctrine, for the charity that "informs" faith so that it becomes saving faith is not a natural disposition, but is as much the work of God as the assent of faith.

Thus, Bouyer's point is that the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) was initially seen by the Reformers as a way of upholding justification by grace alone (sola gratia), which is also a fundamental Catholic truth. Only later, as a result of controversy, did the Reformers insist on identifying justification by faith alone with a negative principle that denied any form of cooperation, even grace-enabled cooperation.

3. Sola Scriptura: Melanchthon, the colleague of Luther, called justification sola gratia, sola fide the "Material Principle" of the Reformation. But there was also the Formal Principle, the doctrine of sola Scriptura or what Bouyer calls the sovereign authority of Scripture. What of that?

Here, too, says Bouyer, the Reformation’s core positive principle is correct. The Word of God, rather than a human word, must govern the life of the Christian and of the Church. And the Word of God is found in a unique and supreme form in the Bible, the inspired Word of God. The inspiration of the Bible means that God is the primary author of Scripture. Since we can say that about no other writing or formal expression of the Church’s Faith, not even conciliar or papal definitions of faith, the Bible alone is the Word of God in this sense and therefore it possesses a unique authority.

Yet the supremacy of the Bible does not imply an opposition between it and the authority of the Church or Tradition, as certain negative principles adopted by the Reformers implied. Furthermore, the biblical spirituality of Protestantism, properly understood, is in keeping with the best traditions of Catholic spirituality, especially those of the Fathers and the great medieval theologians. Through Scripture, God speaks to us today, offering a living Word to guide our lives in Christ.

Thus, writes Bouyer, "the supreme authority of Scripture, taken in its positive sense, as gradually drawn out and systematized by Protestants themselves, far from setting the Church and Protestantism in opposition, should be the best possible warrant for their return to understanding and unity."

The Reformation was Wrong

Where does this leave us? If the Reformation was right about sola gratia and sola Scriptura, its two key principles, how was it wrong? Bouyer holds that only the positive elements of these Reformation principles are correct.

Unfortunately, these principles were unnecessarily linked by the Reformers to certain negative elements, which the Catholic Church had to reject. Here we consider two of those elements: 1) the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the nature of justifying faith and 2) the authority of the Bible.

1. Extrinsic Justification. Regarding justification by grace alone, it was the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the rejection of the Catholic view of faith formed by charity as "saving faith." Bouyer writes, "The further Luther advanced in his conflict with other theologians, then with Rome, then with the whole of contemporary Catholicism and finally with the Catholicism of every age, the more closely we see him identifying affirmation about sola gratia with a particular theory, known as extrinsic justification."

Extrinsic justification is the idea that justification occurs outside of man, rather than within him. Catholicism, as we have seen, holds that justification is by grace alone. In that sense, it originates outside of man, with God’s grace. But, according to Catholic teaching, God justifies man by effecting a change within him, by making him just or righteous, not merely by saying he is just or righteous or treating him as if he were. Justification imparts the righteousness of Christ to man, transforming him by grace into a child of God.

The Reformation view was different. The Reformers, like the Catholic Church, insisted that justification is by grace and therefore originates outside of man, with God. But they also insisted that when God justifies man, man is not changed but merely declared just or righteous. God treats man as if he were just or righteous, imputing to man the righteousness of Christ, rather than imparting it to him.

The Reformers held this view for two reasons. First, because they came to think it necessary in order to uphold the gratuitousness of justification. Second, because they thought the Bible taught it. On both points, argues Bouyer, the Reformers were mistaken. There is neither a logical nor a biblical reason why God cannot effect a change in man without undercutting justification by grace alone. Whatever righteousness comes to be in man as a result of justification is a gift, as much any other gift God bestows on man. Nor does the Bible’s treatment of "imputed" righteousness imply that justification is not imparted. On these points, the Reformers were simply wrong:

"Without the least doubt, grace, for St. Paul, however freely given, involves what he calls ‘the new creation’, the appearance in us of a ‘new man’, created in justice and holiness. So far from suppressing the efforts of man, or making them a matter of indifference, or at least irrelevant to salvation, he himself tells us to ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling’, at the very moment when he affirms that ‘. . . knowing that it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish.’ These two expressions say better than any other that all is grace in our salvation, but at the same time grace is not opposed to human acts and endeavor in order to attain salvation, but arouses them and exacts their performance."

Calvin, notes Bouyer, tried to circumvent the biblical problems of the extrinsic justification theory by positing a systematic distinction between justification, which puts us in right relation to God but which, on the Protestant view, doesn’t involve a change in man; and sanctification, which transforms us. Yet, argues Bouyer, this systematic distinction isn’t biblical. In the Bible, justification and sanctification–as many modern Protestant exegetes admit–are two different terms for the same process. Both occur by grace through faith and both involve a faith "informed by charity" or completed by love. As Bouyer contends, faith in the Pauline sense, "supposes the total abandonment of man to the gift of God"–which amounts to love of God. He argues that it is absurd to think that the man justified by faith, who calls God "Abba, Father," doesn’t love God or doesn’t have to love him in order to be justified.

2. Sola Scriptura vs. Church and Tradition. Bouyer also sees a negative principle that the Reformation unnecessarily associated with sola Scriptura or the sovereignty of the Bible. Yes, the Bible alone is the Word of God in the sense that only the Bible is divinely inspired. And yes the Bible’s authority is supreme in the sense that neither the Church nor the Church’s Tradition "trumps" Scripture. But that doesn’t mean that the Word of God in an authoritative form is found only in the Bible, for the Word of God can be communicated in a non-inspired, yet authoritative form as well. Nor does it mean that there can be no authoritative interpreter of the Bible (the Magisterium) or authoritative interpretation of biblical doctrine (Tradition). Repudiation of the Church’s authority and Tradition simply doesn’t follow from the premise of Scripture’s supremacy as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, the Tradition and authority of the Church are required to determine the canon of the Bible.

Luther and Calvin did not follow the Radical Reformation in rejecting any role for Church authority or Tradition altogether. But they radically truncated such a role. Furthermore, they provided no means by which the Church, as a community of believers, could determine when the Bible was being authentically interpreted or who within the community had the right to make such a determination for the community. In this way, they ultimately undercut the supremacy of the Bible, for they provided no means by which the supreme authority of the Bible could, in fact, be exercised in the Church as a whole. The Bible’s authority extended only so far as the individual believer’s interpretation of it allowed.

The Catholic Church and Reformation Principles

As we have seen, Bouyer argues for the Reformation’s "positive principles" and against its "negative principles." But how did what was right from one point of view in the Reformation go so wrong from another point of view? Bouyer argues that the under the influence of decadent scholasticism, mainly Nominalism, the Reformers unnecessarily inserted the negative elements into their ideas along with the positive principles. "Brought up on these lines of thought, identified with them so closely they could not see beyond them," he writes, "the Reformers could only systematize their very valuable insights in a vitiated framework."

The irony is profound. The Reformation sought to recover "genuine Christianity" by hacking through what it regarded as the vast overgrowth of medieval theology. Yet to do so, the Reformers wielded swords forged in the fires of the worst of medieval theology–the decadent scholasticism of Nominalism.

The negative principles of the Reformation necessarily led the Catholic Church to reject the movement–though not, in fact, its fundamental positive principles, which were essentially Catholic. Eventually, argues Bouyer, through a complex historical process, these negative elements ate away at the positive principles as well. The result was liberal Protestantism, which wound up affirming the very things Protestantism set out to deny (man’s ability to save himself) and denying things Protestantism began by affirming (sola gratia).

Bouyer contends that the only way to safeguard the positive principles of the Reformation is through the Catholic Church. For only in the Catholic Church are the positive principles the Reformation affirmed found without the negative elements the Reformers mistakenly affixed to them. But how to bring this about?

Bouyer says that both Protestants and Catholics have responsibilities here. Protestants must investigate their roots and consider whether the negative elements of the Reformation, such as extrinsic justification and the rejection of a definitive Church teaching authority and Tradition, are necessary to uphold the positive principles of sola gratia and the supremacy of Scripture. If not, then how is continued separation from the Catholic Church justified? Furthermore, if, as Bouyer contends, the negative elements of the Reformation were drawn from a decadent theology and philosophy of the Middle Ages and not Christian antiquity, then it is the Catholic Church that has upheld the true faith and has maintained a balance regarding the positive principles of the Reformation that Protestantism lacks. In this way, the Catholic Church is needed for Protestantism to live up to its own positive principles.

Catholics have responsibilities as well. One major responsibility is to be sure they have fully embraced their own Church’s teaching on the gratuitousness of salvation and the supremacy of the Bible. As Bouyer writes, "Catholics are in fact too prone to forget that, if the Church bears within herself, and cannot ever lose, the fullness of Gospel truth, its members, at any given time and place, are always in need of a renewed effort to apprehend this truth really and not just, as Newman would say, ‘notionally’." "To Catholics, lukewarm and unaware of their responsibilities," he adds, the Reformation, properly understood, "recalls the existence of many of their own treasures which they overlook."

Only if Catholics are fully Catholic–which includes fully embracing the positive principles of the Reformation that Bouyer insists are essentially Catholic–can they "legitimately aspire to show and prepare their separated brethren the way to a return which would be for them not a denial but a fulfillment."

Today, as in the sixteenth century, the burden rests with us Catholics. We must live, by God’s abundant grace, up to our high calling in Christ Jesus. And in this way, show our Protestant brethren that their own positive principles are properly expressed only in the Catholic Church.


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Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:

• Has The Reformation Ended? An Interview with Dr. Mark Noll

• Evangelicals and Catholics In Conversation, Part 1 Interview with Dr. Brad Harper

• Evangelicals and Catholics In Conversation, Part 2 Interview with Dr. Brad Harper

• Thomas Howard and the Kindly Light IgnatiusInsight.com

• Objections, Obstacles, Acceptance: An Interview with J. Budziszewski IgnatiusInsight.com

• Thomas Howard on the Meaning of Tradition IgnatiusInsight.com

• Surprised by Conversion: The Patterns of Faith Peter E. Martin

• Reformation 101: Who's Who in the Protestant Reformation Geoffrey Saint-Clair

• The Tale of Trent: A Council and and Its Legacy Martha Rasmussen

Anne Rice: "My Trust in the Lord"

from the Washington Post "On Faith" column

Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.

Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love.

Right now as I write this, our nation seems to be in some sort of religious delirium. Anti-God books dominate the bestseller lists; people claim to deconstruct the Son of Man with facile historical treatments of what we know and don’t know about Jesus Christ who lived in First Century Judea. Candidates for public office have to declare their faith on television. Christians quarrel with one another publicly about the message of Christ.

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet.

And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.

Within days of my return to Christ, I also became aware of something very important: that the first temptation we face as returning Christians is to criticize another Christian and his or her way of approaching Jesus Christ. I perceived that I had to resist that temptation, that I had to seek in my faith and in my love for God a complete certainty that He knew all about these factions and disputes, and that He knew who was right or who was wrong, and He would handle how and when He approached every single soul.

Why do I talk so much about this trust now? Because I think perhaps that with many Christians it is lacking, and in saying this I’m yielding to the temptation I just described. But let me speak my peace not critically so much as with an exhortation. Trust in Him. If you believe in Him, then trust Him. Trust what He says in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and trust what He says about having conquered evil; trust that He has won.

Don’t ever succumb to the fear that evil is winning in this world, no matter how bad things may appear. Don’t ever succumb to the fear that He does not witness our struggles, that He is not with every single soul.

The Sermon on the Mount is the portion of the New Testament to which I return again and again. I return to the simple command: “Love your enemies.” And each day brings me closer to understanding that in this message lies the blueprint for bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth. The Sermon on the Mount is the full blueprint. And it is not impossible to love our enemies and our neighbors, but it may be the hardest thing we have ever been asked to do.

But we can’t doubt the possibility of it. We must return to Jesus Christ again and again, after our failures, and seek in Him --- in His awesome majesty and power -- the creative solutions to the problems we face. We must retain our commitment to Him, and our belief in a world in which, conceivably, human beings could lay down their arms, and stretch out their arms to one another, clasping hands, and bring about a total worldwide peace.

If this is not inconceivable, then it is possible. And perhaps we are, in our own broken and often blind fashion, moving towards such a moment. If we can conceive of it and dedicate ourselves to it, then this peace on earth, this peace in Christ, can come.

As we experience Easter week, we celebrate the crucifixion that changed the world. We celebrate the Resurrection that sent Christ’s apostles throughout the Roman Empire to declare the Good News. We celebrate one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known: that of a God who would come down here to live and breathe with us in a human body, who would experience human death for us, and then rise to remind us that He was, and is, both Human and Divine. We celebrate the greatest inversion the world has ever recorded: that of the Maker dying on a Roman cross.

Let us celebrate as well that throughout this troubled world in which we live, billions believe in this 2,000-year-old love story and in this great inversion -- and billions seek to trust the Maker to bring us to one another in love as He brings us to Himself.

Anne Rice is the best-selling author of 27 books, including "The Vampire Chronicles" and "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt." Read an excerpt of her latest book, "Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana."

It's difficult keeping the alleluia buried...

It's Lent, and we're burying the Alleluia at VCC, but this morning when A. came in part-way through the praise songs, and flanking her, her mother D. and her mother-in-law, B., it was difficult to resist screaming HALLELUJAH!

So we gave a round of applause instead!

Neither D. nor B. speak any English, and none of us speak Farsi, but I think they felt the love of Christ this morning. I was especially thankful that at this, their first experience in Christian worship, we celebrated communion. Whereas it was impossible for A. to keep up translating Steve's sermon for them, she was able to whisper some explanation about what was happening with the bread and the cup and all the people going forward and sharing in the meal. The Spirit took care of the rest.

Afterward the service ended, A removed her shoes, kneeled and bowed before the altar to pray, as is her custom. "Mamma B" and "Mamma D" did the same, behind her. Kent and I joined them and we all praised God in English and Farsi. He has brought A. through 8 rounds of the strongest chemo available. He has overcome the bureaucracies of two nations to reunite B. with her daughter. And perhaps most amazing of all, he is moving in A's father-in-law's heart, so that he is wanting to read more about Jesus. When Mamma B. pointed to the large cross on the wall behind the altar, and said, "Isa Masi--AMAYN!" we couldn't have agreed more!

My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Col. 2:2-3)

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Postscript:

Rowan Williams has reflected here on his church's practice of "burying the alleluia" while visiting Sudan.

Yes, we need to be reminded by abstinence and restraint that the world is still a Good Friday sort of place, shadowed by abandonment, terror, pain. But what if you don't really need reminding? What if, like the Sudanese believers, you have lived so long with abandonment and terror and pain that you can never forget or ignore it? These were people whose whole life was a particularly awful and crushing 'Lent'.

Yet they could not stop saying, singing, shouting, 'Alleluia'. If they lived in a long-term Lent, they also lived in an unceasing awareness of Easter. They had come through the horrors of war and oppression with the confidence intact that God was always there on the far side or in the depths of what they were enduring. If everyone else forgot them, God would not and could not. Because he was alive, they could live too - to echo the words of Jesus in John's gospel.

What he writes could also be said of A: almost all her life has been one long Lent, yet --as she says, "thanks God"-- she lives with an unceasing awareness of Easter. Because Jesus is alive, she is, too. And that Life flows back and forth and around and through.

A. Continues the fight: July 17

A. is continuing to have a difficult time. Her enzyme count is progressively increasing, and she is panicking. What if Jesus doesn't heal her? What will happen to her son, M. and her husband, H.? What will happen to her mother and brothers, who assured her that if Jesus healed her, they would believe in Him? She is beginning to worry that she is losing her faith.

When we are stressed we often revert to what is automatic, and what is automatic for A. is to see God as Divine Despot. For 37 years she has only known Allah, and he was a god of testing and punishment. Recently, conversing with her about our God is like talking with a hyper-calvinist. She has a wonderfully complete understanding of God's sovereignty; but just introductory experience of His compassion. "I am not human; I am an animal," she said to me Sunday, crying from a pit of depression. "God does not love me."

Her life story has been a harsh one. Every time things seemed to ease up something horrible would follow. When her beloved father died, she had to support the family. That meant she had no time for friends or fun, muchless marriage. People began to call her nasty things, because she had no husband. Her own cousins made fun of her, and her aunt never tired of pointing out her own daughters' accomplishments and social standing to A. and her mother.

Once she married H. and left her native country, she had a little over a year of absolute joy. There followed nine months of rough pregnancy; and four months after M. was born, the news that she had stage IV stomach cancer. Then chemo, which gave her several months of remission that she took for healing. But the raised enzyme levels signaled otherwise. It was at that point that her dreams began, of a man in white beckoning her to come to him. It wasn't long after that that she learned about Jesus, began reading the NT and decided to become a Christian.

Those were exciting times. Who knew what God would do next? H's relative who had converted quite a while ago sent her tapes and reading material in Farsi from her church in California. Steve and I were careful to counter some of what we suspected she was getting from those tapes, so that intellectually A. knew that trusting Christ was no guarantee for healing. But her heart must have been convinced otherwise: Jesus is God! God is love! Surely He will have mercy on me, show His power and remove all traces of cancer from my body!

Now it seems like God is not going to heal her, and Satan is exploiting the situation: "See, God is not love. This is the will of Allah. He desires that you suffer. He wants you to die. He wants your son to be without a mother. He wants H. to marry again, and M. will not ever be a Christian if that happens."

This is not the time to reason with A. "This kind can only come out with much prayer." May the Lord give me His mind so that I can pray well , and may I be able to embody Jesus' love so that A. will see Him, and not me.

And if you are still reading this, ora pro nobis.

"I think God is Doing Something" (or, What Hath God Mixed, part 2)

1) Today Brad's blog (May 19, 2007) reports:

"Robert Koons, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, and Right Reason blogger with Francis Beckwith (Baylor professor who resigned as president of the Evangelical Theological Society when he became a Roman Catholic a few weeks ago) says that he is crossing the bridge from Wittenberg to Rome. (No, Beth, I have no desire to take a dip in the Tiber with you. The company would be good but the water is too cold.) "

Beth: Anscombe...Chesterton...Copleston...Dorothy Day...Dulles...Endo...Geach...Guiness...Hopkins...Howard...Kreeft...
Mahler...Maritain...Newman...Tolkein...Vermeer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_converts
Beckwith...and now Koons.

How long will it be before Ralph Wood
http://www3.baylor.edu/~Ralph_Wood/bio1.htm goes swimming? What a wise and precious man he is! He's already been wading for a while under the Canterbury bridge. Is it just too hot in Texas, so that is why everyone is cooling off in the Tiber? And what about Jay and Jan? Sigh. Though they're way north of Texas, they've been residents of Canterbury for nearly 30 years now, almost all of them in the same parish, until the recent Troubles. Will the ECUSA conflagration force them to seek sanctuary in Rome?

Ah, Brad, according to Yahoo weather it is 79 degrees right now in Guam, and I expect you are enjoying some cool ocean breezes. No wonder you're so content! : ) Things can get downright scorching elsewhere, even here in Eugene! (But, as Steve would say, maybe I what I need is a stronger dosage of estrogen.) Meanwhile, I continue to splash my feet in Latin waters, (precisely because the company there is so compelling!) while always remembering that baptismal water originates from Christ's own pierced side.

I first encountered Koons through his Western Theism class notes at the Philosophy of Religion Hub http://startthinking.homestead.com/philrel_hub.html. Then every so often I would run into him at Leadership University http://www.leaderu.com/. HIs website has been listed on bibliographies for several of my own classes. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/ I greatly respect him as a Christian scholar.

2) A comment on Koon's blog:

"I think God is doing something. There seem to be these huge shifts every 500 years. 1000 - East and West split. 1500 - Protestants split. Is it happening again now? Are we seeing the beginning of God's people finally coming back together in a visible way? What a great time to be alive! Congrats!"

Posted by: Tiber Swim Team 2007 May 18, 2007 6:42 PM

Beth: I've long maintained that God "broadcasts" simaultaneously on Three Channels. From about @ 500-1500 humanity was tuned in to the Father Channel. Then from @ 1500 -2000 we were tuned in to the Son Channel (the Reformation.) Since then we've been tuned in to the Spirit channel (Pentecostal-Charismatic movement). From my perspective, the splits happened when certain groups began receiving a "new" Voice and thought that it was
THE true Voice. The East-West split was just that: a split between two languages and cultures, not picking up a new "Channel."

However, I agree with "Tiber Swim Team 2007" that this is a great time to be alive. We are like Abraham, who saw the promise from afar: God is indeed gathering His people back together in a visible way. Chiasm isn't just a literary device!

3) "A Lutheran's Case for Catholicism" by Robert Koons http://utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/case_for_catholicism.pdf
Beth: I quickly skimmed this and intend to give it more attention once the Youth Garage Sale and the Senior Banquet are over. Koons clearly articulates the very things that have bothered me, and in good analytic fashion holds them up for examination:
(R)= Roman Catholic; (L) = Lutheran.

"Justification (R) = the whole process by which sinners are reconciled, redeemed, and made fit for eternal life. Includes sanctification and glorification.

Justification (L) = the process by which a sinner is reconciled to God, including the forgiveness of sins and the crediting to him of Christ’s own righteousness. Excludes sanctification and glorification, which are, however, inseparable effects of it.

Grace (R) = God’s supernatural assistance, poured into the believer’s heart, enabling him to possess the supernatural virtues of faith, hope and love.

Grace (L) = God’s favor and forgiveness, undeserved by the sinner

Faith (R) = the supernatural ability to believe what God has revealed through the Scriptures and the Church. Does not include hope and love (although it finds its natural completion in them).

Faith (L) = the supernatural ability to trust in God for one’s salvation. Includes hope and an attitude of trust and reliance in God.

For a long time now I have been persuaded that Christ's virtues are infused into us, not simply just imputed on to us. That alone puts me at odds with much of Protestantism. I am eager to read what Koons has to say.

4) Tomorrow's Lectionary reading: John 17: 20-26

20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
25 "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

Tony Blair, too?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1801237.ece

From The Times
May 17, 2007

Blair will be welcomed into Catholic fold via his ‘baptism of desire’

Ruth Gledhill, Jeremy Austin and Philip Webster


Tony Blair will declare himself a Roman Catholic on leaving Downing Street, according to a priest close to him. Father Michael Seed, who is known for bringing high-profile politicians and aristocrats into the Catholic fold and who says Mass for the Blairs in Downing Street each week when they are in London, made the prediction to friends at a recent memorial service.

Last night, when contacted by The Times, he did not deny his comments, but said he did not know if Mr Blair would ever be received “formally” into the Roman Catholic Church. To do so he would have to take part in a ceremony called the rite of Christian initiation for adults, followed by confirmation and taking the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Did he delay conversion for sake of Irish peace?

Father Seed said: “He’s been going to Mass every Sunday. He goes on his own when he is abroad, not just when he is with his wife and children.”
Another church source said that many of the early saints and martyrs were not baptised. Such people were held to have had a “baptism of desire”.
He said that Mr Blair was a Catholic by desire and that this did not necessitate a formal conversion. “He is an ecumenical Catholic,” said the source. “He is a liberal Catholic. In terms of his private life, he is a Roman Catholic.”

Although technically an Anglican, Mr Blair only “darkened the door” of Anglican churches on state and other formal occasions, he added.
Downing Street would not comment on the suggestion that Mr Blair would declare himself a Catholic. A spokesman said: “This story is always circulating in one form or another. The PM remains a member of the Church of England.”

Mr Blair has always been reluctant to discuss his religious beliefs. Alastair Camp-bell, the former Downing Street communications chief, famously told one interviewer: “We don’t do God.” The Prime Minister has also indicated in the past that he attended Mass so that his family, all Catholics, could worship together. To receive Mr Blair into the fold would be a triumph for the Roman Catholic Church, which has in the past two decades in particular regained its confidence, recovering from centuries of persecution that followed the Reformation.

Mr Blair has been criticised for receiving Communion at Catholic Mass. Cardinal Basil Hume, the late Archbishop of Westminster, wrote to him in 1996 demanding that he should cease taking Communion at his wife’s church in Islington, although he added that it was “all right to do so when in Tuscany for the holidays . . . as there was no Anglican church near by”.
Mr Blair made it clear that he did not agree with Cardinal Hume’s opinion, writing in a pointed letter to him: “I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.”

Writing in The Tablet, the Catholic weekly, Father Seed described how the Prime Minister had regarded his time in office as akin to a “vocation”.
He first made contact with Mr Blair when the family moved into No 10, and strengthened their links with The Passage, Britain’s largest homelessness centre, attached to Westminster Cathedral. Mr Blair launched the Government’s policy on homelessness there in 1998. Father Seed says that being prime minister is both a cross and a privilege....

Apropos Puccini and A.

Saturday the Met broadcast Pucinni's Il Trittico. "Suor Angelica" was absolutely incredible. "Senza Mamma" reduced me to tears, as I thought of A.

A, the Iranian woman who was baptized two weeks ago, is getting weaker and weaker. She hasn't been able to have chemo for two weeks now, and her platelets are at .5, so unless something miraculous occurs, she won't be having it any more at all.

Yesterday she wasn't there when the service began, and I wondered what was up. She stumbled in during the first hymn, tulips in hand. I settled her in under a blanket, replaced the roses with the tulips, and then held her throughout worship.

She is such a sick little lamb. She was going in and out on me, sometimes seeming to be delirious, sometimes muttering and sometimes actually speaking. My hearing isn't what it used to be so it was difficult for me to always make out what she was saying. Her breathing was rapid and shallow...H's gold cross around her neck barely moved. She was very thirsty, and drank two full cups of water. I have no idea what is going on inside her physically and can only guess at her pain. Yet at the end she snapped back when talking with Judy.

She keeps saying she is so tired. I honestly think the only things that are keeping her here are 1) Her 16 month old son, M. and 2) her desire to see her mother before she dies. Regarding 2) I'm trying to work on the possibility of skyping, so that she could talk and see her mom over the internet, the way we've been doing with Susan. That wouldn't be a problem on this end; but whether it could be accomplished on the Iran end is uncertain. Regarding 1), when her husband H. came to pick her up, he told me he was getting someone (a friend? I was unclear) from Oklahoma to come stay for the next six weeks and care for A and M. Perhaps that will help A see that her son can be provided for.

I don't want to deny the Lord's ability to work miracles, but I also want to make sure that A. is in a position to freely choose as peaceful a death as possible, if that is her choice. I know how important it is for cancer patients to "think positively." But isn't it also important at some point for them to be able to give themselves permission to cease treatment? It seems to me that A might be at that place. Am I assuming more than I should? Should I instead be encouraging her to continue fighting?

Ironic. Or better, providential. All those bioethics articles on death and dying are leaping to life around me, as well as and 1 Corinthians 15 and Plato's Phaedo. I am glad for the way the Lord has provided these texts as ballast for me in this situation, and pray he will use them in me to be a wise and comforting friend to A. Even more, I am grateful to Him and to the VCC congregation for help in shouldering this weight.

Saturday night I got to hear the Puccini Messa di Gloria at the Hult. It ends with the beautiful duet for bass and tenor:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

A. has Butterfly's tenacity, Mimi's fragility, Liu's courage.

She also has Jesus.

Lord, grant A. peace.

A's Baptism

This morning I think I got to feel a little of what the Lord's heart must be like.

Today I taught Cornerstone, and drew the story of David and Bathsheba. Tough, as J. and her daughter were there. I prayed to have grace to speak the truth in love, and not add to their pain.

Then came worship. I don't think it is wise that I use real names, because the persons I am writing about are Iranian, but today "A." was baptized and her husband "H." came, along with his ex-in-laws. H. is a sayed, meaning that he traces his lineage to Mohammed's family. He came with A. for Easter services but has said all along that he would not attend her baptism. A. has stage IV stomach cancer, and this was her greatest wish, that H. would witness her baptism.

Lo and behold, today H. was there, with the children from his first marriage and their grandparents (mother's side)! He had a lovely pink azalea for the piano, a german chocolate cake with "Congratulations, A." on top, and a gold cross and chain necklace for her after the service.

Steve asked A. if she had anything she wanted to say before going into the hot tub. (What spirit--even though she is in great pain, she insisted she wanted to be immersed, so we rented a hot tub and brought it into the sanctuary!) "I want to say that I have cancer, and that it doesn't matter what happens to me, now that I have Jesus." Wow. Not a dry eye in the entire congregation.

My heart was overflowing with joy. H. is an extraordinary man, and has shattered all my preconceptions about Muslim marriage. He clearly loves A. very, very much. J. took all this in, in light of her own situation, and noted how remarkable it was. And that broke my heart.

A. has discovered what is really important. I trust J's husband will, too. This from William Willamon came to mind:

I'm glad this story is in the Bible because it lets us know that unhappiness, tragedy, regret are part of loving and living in a family. It was true for King David; it is true at your house and mine.

We're in a mess, particularly in our families. There is regret and things don't turn out as we planned. We can't get everything together. We can't make it all work out right. If we are hurt by our own families, how much more must God be hurting for the faults and foibles of God's whole human family? What is to become of David's troubled family, or ours?

A cross is raised outside of the capital city. Upon it hangs a beloved son, hanging there not because of his rebellion against his father, but rather because of our rebellion. The Father gives everything for his kingdom, even his own Son. The cross does not set everything right. The cross does not erase the seriousness of the evils we commit. Rather, the cross forgives and makes it possible for life to continue, despite the tragedy. David said that he would have given his life to save his son from death. But even kings can't do that. No, it takes a God to do that. At Calvary, on the cross, God's whole, tragic human family was gathered, embraced, saved by a Father who, in grief, loves us yet.

----William Willimon (Dean of Duke University Chapel)
http://www.chapel.duke.edu/worship/sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=30