Pascal’s Wager After Vatican II

Father Dwight thinks that the arguments for becoming a Roman Catholic have to do with having more Christianity, not with whether or not you are saved:

So is there salvation outside the Church? Does that mean “There no salvation outside the Catholic Church?” The old guys said, “No Way.” The new guys say, “Well, you know the Church is bigger than the Catholic Church. Christ’s salvation extends to all who are baptized and have faith in Christ.”

Uh-huh. I get it.

“Furthermore, it may extend to all men and women of goodwill who follow the light to the best of their ability. They’re salvation is also through Christ for he is the source of all goodness, truth and beauty even if they don’t know it.”

OK. If you say so.

Well, good for them, but I’m not taking any chances.

I want more Christianity, not mere Christianity, and it is only within the great, graced riches of the Catholic Faith that I can hope for this wounded soul to be healed and for me to make my long journey home.

Why does more Christianity always involve less Christ? Liberal Protestants added western civilization and modern science to Christianity and abandoned the atonement. Neo-Calvinists add the transformation of culture and forget the Canons of Dort. Now in the post-Vatican II Church you get all the statues and rites and holy days without the assurance that you need them for salvation. I don’t know why Father Dwight considers that more. Where else do you go for salvation than to Jesus?

4 thoughts on “Pascal’s Wager After Vatican II

  1. Machen—“Historic Christianity emphasizes, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual. It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come ALONE into the presence of God. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world. It resolutely refuses to make of the individual a mere means to an end, a mere element in the composition of society. It rejects altogether any means of salvation which deals with men in a mass. Historic Christianity brings the individual face to face with his God.”

    Martyr’s Mirror–“I said it was only a bread-god. The priests were wroth that I so contemned their god.”

    John Calvin—“The integrity of the sacrament lies here, that the flesh and blood of Christ are not less truly given to the unworthy than to the elect believers of God; and yet it is true, that just as the rain falling on the hard rock runs away because it cannot penetrate, so the wicked by their hardness repel the grace of God, and prevent it from reaching them.”

    Littlejohn –We would find Calvin arriving in Geneva and gathering around him a band of like-minded pastors and laymen, with whom, having studied the Scriptures carefully, he drafted a church constitution. This constitution would provide for individual congregations to elect elders for spiritual government and deacons for more temporal needs, and each group of elders would be presided over by a pastor. Together, elders and pastor would oversee the spiritual and moral lives of their congregants, rebuking them and excommunicating them where necessary; deacons, meanwhile, would gather and manage the alms of the congregation for the needs of its members. Elders and pastors from individual congregations would meet together regularly with all the others within the city of Geneva, and this synod would vote on decisions binding on all the individual congregations, and would hear appeals on disciplinary matters. Calvin and his fellow pastors would have made this constitution without consulting the city council, though, in order to keep the peace, they would probably have sought the city council’s blessing, or at least their permission, to carry through this arrangement among such believers in Geneva who wished to participate in this scheme. And here is the key point—they would not have sought to impose this system on the whole populace of Geneva, since the visible church is a gathered congregation of the truly faithful who willingly submit to discipline, not the whole body of merely outward professors of the faith. Any Christians in Geneva who wished to participate in Calvin’s churches would have done so, and Calvin and his fellow pastors would have had no interest in imposing their discipline on those outside this church (though they certainly might have tried to evangelize them and to convince them to join). Those excommunicated from these churches would lose their access to the sacraments and their membership in the spiritual kingdom, but would remain unimpaired citizens of Geneva and members of the society there.
    https://calvinistinternational.com/2012/06/25/will-the-real-geneva-please-stand-up/

    Like

  2. mcmark, So Littlejohn thinks 2kers regard Servetus’ execution the way the Boston bombers thought about 9/11 — a hoax.

    Meanwhile, Littlejohn thinks Hooker is the spitting image of Calvin.

    Who’s in denial?

    Like

  3. Sorry, but what compatibility is there between “it is only within … the Catholic Faith that I can hope for this wounded soul to be healed” and “Christ’s salvation may extend to all men and women of goodwill who follow the light to the best of their ability.” It’s like the leaders have sold the pass, and the laity insist on happily humming “I don’t hear you!” The arguments were interesting when people still pretended to care about preconciliar theology in Catholicism. But then John Paul II’s stage show sort of made all that irrelevant. The Pope simply *can’t* not be Catholic, so tradition will get redefined according to the times. Of course “No salvation outside the Church” doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means…. of course! The doublespeak of well-intentioned men like DeLubac made other noble souls like Joseph Fenton finish their course in discouragement, for they insisted on logic.

    Like

  4. Whether one’s piety is more private or mediated by the church, those who are nimble cooperate some with the wrath of the magistrates.

    Nevin–“It was based throughout on the principle, that regeneration and conversion lay outside of the Church, had nothing to do with baptism and Christian education, required rather a looking away from all this as more a bar than a help to the process, and were to be sought only in the way of magical illapse or stroke from the Spirit of God;. . . An intense subjectivity, in one word — which is something always impotent and poor — took the place of a proper contemplation of the grand and glorious objectivities of the Christian life, in which all the true power of the Gospel at last lies. My own ‘experience’ in this way, at the time here under consideration, was not wholesome, but very morbid rather and weak.”

    Machen (What is Faith) –Has it never dawned upon us that God is valuable for His own sake, that just as personal communion is the highest thing that we know on earth, so personal communication with God is the sublimest height of all? If we value God for His own sake, then the loss of other things will draw us all the closer to Him; we shall then have recourse to Him in time of trouble as to the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. I do not mean that the Christian need expect always to be poor and sick and lonely and to seek his comfort only in a mystic experience with His God. This universe is God’s world; its blessings are showered upon His creatures even now; and in His own good time, when the period of its groaning and travailing is over, He will fashion it as a habitation of glory. But what I do mean is that if here and now we have the one inestimable gift of God’s presence and favor, then all the rest can wait till God’s good time.”

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/ben-sasse-obamacare-repeal-bill-236172

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.