Mainline Celebrity Blues

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

The word for mainline Protestants these days, apparently, is progressive. I guess this is what happens when you are no longer mainline. This isn’t gloating. How could an Orthodox Presbyterian ridicule progressives for joining the sideline? For a while (maybe 1890 to 1970) they were the mainline. The OPC (and the rest of NAPARC, TKNY’s presence notwithstanding) never was mainline.

Still, Carol Howard Merrit’s reflections on celebrity culture at various Protestant conferences do an injustice to what the mainline was.

In Progressive Protestant circles, David Heim makes the case that we don’t really have celebrities. We’re uncomfortable with them. We assume that if they have glitz then they must be shallow. And if they have an audience then they must be dumbing things down.

The post in question from the Century’s editor, David Heim, makes a similar point:

Occasionally the Century editors sit down to talk with experts in magazine marketing. They sometimes tells us that we need to do more with celebrities–feature a celebrity on the cover of the magazine, for example.

No, they’re not pressing us to feature Brad Pitt or Lindsay Lohan. What they have in mind is featuring the celebrities of our world, that is, the celebrities of the mainline Protestant world.

We usually respond: “But mainline Protestants don’t really have celebrities.” When the experts look doubtful, the editors look at one another. “Well, we might come up with a few living semi-celebrities–but that would take care of only two months worth of covers.”

The absence of a celebrity culture seems like one of the healthy things about the mainline Protestant world, even if it limits marketing opportunities. We tend to get uneasy when a person’s charisma or accomplishment is the focus of attention. Adulation seems not only naïve and credulous but also ignorant of the mysterious and paradoxical ways God chooses to work.

Nothing wrong about this, but I wonder if the editors of the Century were concerned about the health of the mainline churches when the likes of Henry Sloane Coffin (1926), Reinhold Nieburh (1948), Henry Pitney Van Dusen (1946), Karl Barth (1962), and Eugene Carson Blake (1961) adorned the covers of Time magazine. Once upon a time the mainline did have celebrities and those celebrities were responsible for giving the mainline coherence and brand loyalty. And you can chart the decline of the mainline by Time’s covers. Jerry Falwell made it in 1985, Billy Graham in 1993, 1996, and 2007.

To be sure, that kind of dependence can be damaging to the spiritual health of the church. So the change at the Century is a welcome development. But is revisionist history to say that the mainline has no celebrities or that progressive Protestants have always understood healthy churches this way (though it is indicative of how difficult it is to maintain celebrity status in the former mainline when those former celebrities don’t measure up to today’s progressive standards and so are dispensed in the dustbin of dead white European men).

Conciliarism and Protestantism

Published on by D. G. Hart57 Comments

Francis Oakley traces the appropriation and extension of conciliarism by the Reformers (another historical development that cracks Jason and the Caller’s paradigmatic squint):

‘A general councell is a Congregation of Pastors, Doctors and Elders, or others, met in the name and authority of Jesus Christ, out of all Churches, to determine according to the word of God, all controversies in faith, Church-government or manners, no faithfull person who desireth being excluded from reasoning and speaking’. The author of this definition correctly noted that the definitions given across the two centuries and more preceding by the conciliar theorists Jean Gerson and Jacques Almain did not differ much from his own ‘save that they thinke that councells are lawfully convened, if such and such onely, as are of the Hierarchike order be members thereof . . . as also the Pope president . . . [which] we disclaime.’ . . .

These comments are drawn from The Due Right of Presbyteries which Samuel Rutherford, the Scottish Presbyterian, published in 1644. I do not believe it fanciful to suggest that they reflect in intriguing fashion the knowledge of, interest in, and sympathy with the long conciliarist tradition which had been so marked a feature of Scottish ecclesiological thinking since the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and of which, in the early sixteenth, John Mair had been the ‘outstanding representative’. . . . Significant elements of this conciliar ecclesiology are evident also in the Catechism which John Hamilton, archbishop of St. Andrews, published in 1550, and then were later reflected also in such official statements of the Reformed Scottish Kirk as the Scots Confession of 1560 and the Second Book of Discipline, this last drawn up in 1578 and recognized by James VI’s government in 1592. This Second Book of Discipline, indeed, affirmed the general Council to be an integral part of the Kirk’s organization, a capstone, as it were, to the structure of local, regional, and national or general assemblies.

But when James VI became James I, his suspicions of presbyterianism did not put him off conciliarism altogether even if his resolve for Reformed Protestantism was not as think as a Scottish accent:

Within a year of his becoming king of England, after all, and even before he told his first parliament that he acknowledged ‘the Romane Church to be our Mother Church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions’ and expressed, accordingly, his own heartfelt desire to help promote ‘a generall Christian union in Religion’, he had proposed to the papal curia via diplomatic back-channels that the pope should ‘summon a General Council, which, according to the ancient usage,’ would be ‘superior to all Churches, all doctrine, all Princes, secular and ecclesiastic, non excepted’. And if he believed the pope to be subject in jurisdiction to that of the general council (as the Council of Constance had demonstrated), he still insisted that he regarddd hierarchy as ‘essential’ to the Church, and the pope ‘the first Bishop in it, President and Moderator in Council, but not head or superior’. (142-144)

Nation, Race, Church

Published on by D. G. Hart43 Comments

What is my primary identity? I am a white man or less crudely, a person of European descent. I am also a citizen of the U.S. And then, rounding out personal identities, I am a member of the communion known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

But if I check my wallet, the only ID card I find comes from the State of Michigan – a driver’s license (the photo on which identifies me as a white guy with receding hair). When I travel I have a passport issued by the United States (and a similarly dopey photo of a follicly challenged white man). So far, no ecclesiastical body has taken me up on my observation of the need for church passports. That way, we could when on the road, show that our papers are in order and that our membership is in good standing. We could also receive a stamp to verify to the home church authorities that we were present for church and if we partook of the Lord’s Supper.

So far, I am unaware of any documents that would certify my racial or ethnic identity. I know some fancy cats and dogs have breeding papers. The last time humans may have thought about such documentation, the effects were not pleasant. So let’s not go there.

These were some of the thoughts I had after listening to a story on NPR about Italian opposition to Cecile Kyenge, recently appointed as the first black cabinet minister within the Italian government. If Americans think that racism is bad on this side of the Atlantic, I wonder what they would do with Italians referring to Kyenge as a monkey and throwing bananas her way when speaking in public. Granted, it would not be fair to tarnish all Italians with the accusation of racism since the Northern League Party has been responsible for the ugly opposition to Kyenge, a party that accounts for 18 of Italy’s 315 Senators. Then again, can anyone imagine any political candidate winning an election in the U.S. if he were associated with this kind of racism?

So far, so nation and race. We have citizens of Italy who are of European descent (duh!) opposing an African-Italian politician. What about Christianity and church membership. Italy (another duh) is a nation whose citizens have long and deep ties to the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, the Vatican was a major speed bump to Italy’s emergence as an independent nation, and tensions between Italian nationalism and Roman Catholicism existed down to World War II. Still, it is not inconceivable to think of Italians as having some awareness and affection for the Roman Catholic church. And that might lead us to think that Christians, like Roman Catholics, would not react in such a hostile way to politicians like Kyenge. After all, this is a church that puts “universal” in its very name. No matter how bad Christian practice is in Europe, being Catholic, you would think, would lift you out of the particularities of race and nation to identify at least with other Christians if not other humans in a universal way. But apparently Roman Catholicism has not had that affect on Italians just as evangelicalism has not lifted Protestants in the United States, despite all that mystical union with the body of Christ business, above identifying the United States with God’s redemptive purposes.

The Vatican has in the past spoken out against Italy’s racism, so it is not as if the Roman curia are unaware of the problem. Even so, this news does remind us of the older associations between Roman Catholicism and a European conservatism that opposed egalitarianism, individualism, and democracy. (Say what you will about the problems of those political sensibilities, they have been largely responsible for countering racial views that elevate one group above others.) I mention this Roman Catholic illiberalism if only because of a fascinating book by Peter D’Agostino about Roman Catholics in the United States and Italy and how the former sided with a Vatican that was opposed to the kind of political structures on which Americans usually prided themselves. (The book is just the start of D’Agostino’s fascination for me.) I have not finished the book, but here is an indication of the argument he makes:

Students of religion in the United States have ignored Fascist Italy. Studies of the interwar years rarely mention the Italy-Vatican rapprochement of the 1920s or the Lateran Pacts of 1929. Historians John McGreevy and Philip Gleason have analyzed mid-twentieth-century American liberal critiques of Catholicism as an antidemocratic, authoritarian culture with affinities to “fascism” or “totalitarianism.” In their work, “fascism (not Fascism) is a generic term for authoritarianism, and the “rise of fascism” happened in the 1930s, as if Fascist Italy did not exist in the 1920s. They tend to conflate informed anti-Fascists struggling for a democratic Italy with the bigotry of Paul Blanshard. . . . Ultimately, they sidestep the issue liberals raised: the substantial links between the American Church and Fascist Italy for two decades. . . .

On occasion American Catholics did criticize Fascism. It does not follow, however, that “what appeared to Italian exiles and American liberals to be a monolithic pro-Mussolini Catholic chorus were in reality the voices of individual churchmen.” This claim ignores hierarchical structures of power and community vigilance that belie the notion that the Church was a group of atomized individuals free to articulate broadly divergent views on matters relating to the Roman Question. Attention to the timing and content of American Catholic criticism of Fascism during the Italy-Vatican rapprochemement of the 1920s reveals the collaboration of a transnational church. When the Vatican praised Fascism for outlawing Masonry, American Catholics voiced similar praise. When the Vatican protested Fascist interference in the moral development of Italian youth, so did American Catholics. When the Vatican instigated the dissolution of the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI), American Catholics agreed it was a wise policy. When the Vatican withheld commentary on the beating, imprisonment, or murder of an anti-Fascist, American Catholics also remained silent. (159-160)

So sometimes church membership does transcend nation (American Roman Catholics following Rome), and sometimes it does not (Italians today).

My point is not to find more skeletons in Rome’s closet. I do think this is another piece of Roman Catholic history that Jason and the Callers have airbrushed from their philosophical accounts of the papacy. But the fascinating point, I think, is the degree to which Christianity actually affects a person’s politics and identity. Does church membership define someone more than race and nation? Sure, we know what the ideal is. But can Christians actually escape the constraints of history like to whom and where you are born?

Not Many Square Inches

Published on by D. G. Hart65 Comments

Is it media bias when Buzzfeed reports on the religious affiliation of U.S. Congress members and does not even have a category for Calvinism? Not really since no such communion and as the Calvinist Churches of Christ exists. As I tried to demonstrate in the big book of British smiles history of Calvinism, the institutional vehicles for exporting what we know as Calvinism around the world were the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. Unfortunately, Buzzfeed doesn’t include a category for Reformed Protestants. It does for Presbyterians and the result are not the basis for flag waving:

According to Buzzfeed, there are 31 religions represented in the House, including 26 denominations of Christianity. Here’s the breakdown of the top six faith backgrounds:

1. Catholics (31 percent with 135 members)
2. Baptists (15 percent with 66 members)
3. Methodists (10 percent with 45 members)
4. Anglicans/Episcopalians (8 percent with 35 members)
5. Presbyterians (6 percent with 28 members)
6. Jews (5 percent with 22 members)

Buzzfeed reports that the majority of Catholics and Jews are Democrats while the remaining religions on the top-six list tend to be represented by Republicans. Jews are listed as the most partisan — 21 out of 22 Jewish members are Democrats — while Mormons come in second, with seven out of eight members as Republicans. There is only one atheist in the House, and only Idaho and Utah are represented by exclusively one religion (barring states that have only a single seat)

The other discouraging news is that if Presbyterians want to consolidate their religious identity and build on top of square inches already captured, they will need to move to Montana. Mind you, I don’t have anything against Montana per se (but its bears do give me the willies). And Montana has accounted for a pretty good story about a Presbyterian pastor and his family, A River Runs Through It. Still, Montana is not what comes to mind when you think of Francis Makemie and John Witherspoon.

"We Told You So" – Jason and the Callers Newest Single

Published on by D. G. Hart131 Comments

Apparently Jason Stellman thinks the historical arguments about Roman Catholicism are unfair if Protestants themselves don’t also have to answer arguments against their brand of Christianity. He might have a point if such Protestants were converts from Rome and continually banged the drum for the superiority of Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, all the while skirting such issues as the lack of institutional unity, the variety of interpretations of the Bible, or acting as if Augustine passed the torch directly and in the flesh to Luther. So far, I haven’t seen those blogs.

What I have seen, though, are Jason and the Callers ducking for cover whenever unpleasant historical incidents from Roman Catholicism show a less than attractive side to the church (and so make the conversion narratives look — let’s say — incomplete). Jason and Bryan Cross claim that they have repeatedly answered these objections. Jason does so by pointing to one — ONE!!! — post (too numerous to count) and Bryan does it by linking to a series of other links which take readers the same place the the Condor’s phone calls did when he re-patched the wires in Three Days of the Condor — for the cinematically illiterate — that is, nowhere. Jason and the Callers do not interact with the direct changes between, say Unam Sanctam and Vatican II on religious freedom and the separation of church and state, or with the conciliar tradition that antedates (according to leading medieval historians who are supposed to have the right paradigm) their preferred high (read: audacious) papalism, or anything about Edgardo Mortara and the Vatican’s place in Italian and European politics, or the Inquisition, or the Index of Books, of the Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism and the crisis of the papacy. Granted, they don’t need to answer each and every one. But talk about hand waving. When you promote something as the best there ever was, and then you find that the best was also responsible for some of the worst in Christian history, maybe you want to change your story?

So let’s clarify the issue. We have a blog, known as Called to Communion, where converts from Reformed Protestantism talk about the woes of Protestantism and how Rome solves all those problems. The converts who have posted there make historical claims but their history almost never includes the dark side of Roman Catholic history. Perhaps they don’t know the history. Or perhaps they are so keen to justify their switch that they cherry pick from the past. Here’s a sampling:

From Stellman himself:

Historically speaking, the idea that the written Word of God is formally sufficient for all things related to faith and practice, such that anyone of normal intelligence and reasonably good intentions could read it and deduce from it what is necessary for orthodoxy and orthopraxy, is not a position that I see reflected in the writings of the early Church fathers. While there are plenty of statements in their writings that speak in glowing terms about the qualitative uniqueness of Scripture, those statements, for them, do not do away with the need for Scripture to be interpreted by the Church in a binding and authoritative way when necessary.

From David Anders:

I began my Ph.D. studies in September of 1995. I took courses in early, medieval, and Reformation Church history. I read the Church Fathers, the scholastic theologians, and the Protestant Reformers. At each stage, I tried to relate later theologians to earlier ones, and all of them to the Scriptures. I had a goal of justifying the Reformation and this meant, above all, investigating the doctrine of justification by faith alone[…]

My first difficulty arose when I began to grasp what Augustine really taught about salvation. Briefly put, Augustine rejected “faith alone.” It is true that he had a high regard for faith and grace, but he saw these mainly as the source of our good works. Augustine taught that we literally “merit” eternal life when our lives are transformed by grace. This is quite different from the Protestant point of view[…]

No matter where I looked, on whatever continent, in whatever century, the Fathers agreed: salvation comes through the transformation of the moral life and not by faith alone. They also taught that this transformation begins and is nourished in the sacraments, and not through some individual conversion experience[…]

From Jason Kettinger:

I have made two perhaps frustrating assumptions: that the Church of Christ is visible, and that the Catholic Church today is that Church. I can only say that Petrine primacy was rather easily established from the Fathers, and that patristic authors on the Eucharist and apostolic succession cast more than a reasonable doubt on both the authority of my community to believe otherwise (and still be the Church) and the antiquity of those particular beliefs. Some might say that I have been a rebel from day one, and there is some truth in that. However, even as I actively investigated Catholic claims, and explored Catholic life, I never lost sight of Christ Jesus. I found Him there as I went; I pleaded with Him to guide me. I gave Jesus every question.

From Jason Stewart:

Going into this I had to admit that my familiarity with the actual works of the Fathers was limited. Thumbing curiously through a random volume from Schaff’s Patristics collection or culling a quote from Ignatius or Augustine or reading a history of early doctrine text for seminary coursework exhausted my contact with these ancient Christian authors. I had known for a long time that the Church Fathers did not share my Reformed theological vocabulary. But such was to be expected, I guessed. The Protestant Reformation with its precise theological formulations was many centuries away when these men wrote. So what (my thinking went) if Irenaeus or Justin or Augustine didn’t sound exactly like our Reformed creeds and catechisms? Yet now in examining their writings I began to sense that indeed there was something more profound at work than a mere difference in expression or emphasis. Was the Catholic claim right? Continued reading suggested that the actual theological substance of the Fathers was different. Certainly the Fathers didn’t seem at odds with the positive elements of the Reformation. But I noticed in my reading that they thought differently than did the reformers. Their approach to the Christian faith took another route. They seemed to cut an early theological path that when traced did not exactly connect to the one blazed by the reformers in the 16th century. I began to consider whether a person would naturally pick up the distinctive trail of the Protestant Reformation if one started with the writings of the early Church? The answer increasingly seemed to be no.

The pattern is pretty clear. Throw Protestantism aside by examining the past. The past in view is invariably the early church fathers, against which Protestants come up short. Then elide right into the idea that “this is the church Christ founded” and you have the early church as no different from Benedict XVI. Let’s just say, this is not very good history, but history is pretty crucial to the Callers’ understanding of their conversion. In which case, bringing up other parts of the past is entirely fair, and if the Callers can’t answer, then call David Barton.

In the conversion narratives I examined I saw only one that conceded Rome’s defects. Joshua Lim admitted:

As many Protestants warn, there are certain difficulties that the Catholic convert must necessarily face. The contemporary Catholic Church in America is far from perfect. Liturgically, there are, at least in Southern California, very few parishes that celebrate Mass the way Catholics should; there are numerous liberal Catholics who don’t submit to the Magisterium (to the delight of Protestants), the list seems endless.

That’s a pretty contemporary list (like Stellman’s), suggesting to me Joshua doesn’t have any idea about the difficulties between theory and reality from Roman Catholic church history.

Even so, Lim goes on to make it all better:

. . . none of this is actually new for the Church; things have always been so. These issues have not moved me from the conviction that the Catholic Church is the true Church; on the contrary, they have only increased my faith that this must be the true Church. If Christ could continue to work to build his Church with such a history of failings on the part of the laity, various priests, bishops, and even popes, surely this Church must be sustained by God himself. . .

By that logic, (and I’ve seen it several times at CTC in the comm box — this must be the true church because it is so flawed), Protestantism wins the argument. What, with 40k denominations, our fractured state has to be evidence that God is at work among us. You know, you will know them not by their love but by their errors and divisions?

But even then, Lim cannot avoid appealing to history:

. . . despite the passage of over two millennia, the Church continues to hold and to teach in substance what it has always held and taught. Unlike much of Protestantism which no longer believes what even the magisterial Reformers once held to be fundamental tenets of the faith (Trinity, inerrancy, etc.), the Catholic Church remains unmoved, not by virtue of her own strength, but by virtue of the grace of the Holy Spirit preserving the Church.

I understand the appeal of wanting to have it both ways — appeal to history but no responsibility for historical claims. But I had not heard that Rome’s authority extended to re-writing maxims that say you can’t.

PCA Blues

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

Maybe I can beat Aquila Report with the scoop on this one (thanks to our chortling correspondent). In response to Lane Keister’s post about how the Federal Visionaries won a rightful place within the PCA, Lee — a Pirates fan who pastors in Nebraska, so he must be reliable (whatever) — posits this (which is “what I’m sayin’” but better said):

Lane thinks the FV guys won and took over, and I think that a 3rd party took the opportunity run off the TR’s (for lack of a better term) and gain complete control. I think the “evangelical middle” as Lane refers to them has always had designs on running this denomination.

Let me take you back to the Presbyterian Pastors Leadership Network and 2002. They pushed Good Faith Subscription and a change in the way of GA taking original jurisdiction. Now the change to BCO 34-1 and original jurisdiction failed, but the PPLN won. 40 Presbyteries agreed, it just was short of the 2/3rds required. Thus the majority of the PCA thought Presbytery discipline was enough. Couple that with the Good Faith Subscription, which in my opinion gave more wiggle room to those who disagree with the confession, and the groundwork is set.

That lead nicely into Presbyterians and Presbyterians Together in 2006 (which is no longer on the internet but my summary is still up). This was a clear call from many men that prosecution of others would not be tolerated. This was not so much the FV men courting the evangelical middle, this was the establishment of the PCA saying they wanted the FV men and could do without the TR guys. Lots of Covenant Theological Seminary men signed this document. This is of course the same year that The Missouri Presbytery Report of FV came out, which was an attempt to split the middle, and would later serve as the basis for clearing Rev. Jeff Meyers, who was on the committee. So, too, by the way, were Bryan Chapell, C. John Collins, and David Chapman of Covenant Seminary.

Then comes the 2007 FV report at GA. Now this was heralded by the TRs as a great moment, but really it meant nothing. This is one reason it was able to get such a wide margin vote. The groundwork had been laid that Presbyteries could let in whoever with Good Faith and that the prosecutors in trials are the bad guys. And this report was in no way judicial so why fight it.

Then Lee goes through the case against Steve Wilkens and finally comes to TKNY:

Enter into the debate now the powerful Tim Keller. Published author, featured in magazines, and pastor of a huge church in New York City. Keller gives a speech in June of 2010 about what is so great about the PCA. While I disagree with a lot of Keller’s historical analysis, the main point of Keller’s paper/talk was to promote the idea that the PCA is a diverse body and should remain that way. Clearly then those who are trying to get rid of a subgroup are in the wrong. There was a lot that went into the Strategic Plan that the PCA bounced around and they did change some of it, but they still created “safe spaces” and they advanced their overall agenda of the PCA being a “big tent” denomination, a “big tent” that included the FV. Only those who do not want a “big tent” are not welcome.

The point Lee helpfully makes is that history rarely offers up watershed moments. Most historical episodes are part of developments that have long been percolating in seemingly insignificant acts or statements. It is only historians (and screenplay writers) who turn the ordinary into drama. (That’s why they pay one of us the big bucks.)

Who Transmitted "Calvinism"?

Published on by D. G. Hart46 Comments

Some of the early responses to Calvinism have, in a friendly way, wondered why I excluded Baptists like Andrew Fuller, John Gill, and Charles Spurgeon from the narrative — even airbrushing them from the history of Calvinism. I understand some of this complaint since Calvinism is an expansive word that establishes long queues (at venues like the Gospel Coalition) in ways that Lutheranism and Anglicanism do not. A better title would have been Reformed Protestantism: A History but that would have been like calling a book about beer, India Pale Ale, when Budweiser is much more likely to draw a crowd. I admit my book is not about ideas as much as institutions, and specifically which institutions transmitted Calvinist ideas and practices. In that case, the Reformed and Presbyterian (with some room for Puritans and Congregationalists) get the nod. Baptists don’t. Sorry.

At the same time, Baptists should take comfort in the recent global history of Baptist churches by Robert E. Johnson. In fact, because that book was already in print, I felt at more liberty to narrow the field of scrutiny (not to mention that the publisher did not want five volumes but one modestly sized book). There Baptists will find (just checking the search engine at Amazon) references to Spurgeon, Fuller, and Gill, and none to Thomas Chalmers, Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, and J. Gresham Machen.

Seems fair and balanced to me.

Conciliarism on the Eve of Reformation

Published on by D. G. Hart41 Comments

It may come as no surprise to hear that Thomas Cardinal Cajetan, Luther’s chief antagonist in 1518 at the meeting in Augsburg, was a high papalist who took a decidedly anti-conciliar position with his 1511 work, De comparatione auctoritatis papae et concilii. As Francis Oakley explains, this book by Cajetan disrupted the council, then meeting in Pisa, and the bishops (from exile) sent Cajetan’s treatise to the leading theological faculty of Europe, Paris, for evaluation. There Jacques Almain responded with a vindication of the conciliarist position. It involved three grounds, as Oakley summarizes:

First, just as coercive civil power is present in a political body as a whole before it is wielded by any of its members, so, too, is it with the Church. The supreme ecclesiastical power, which Christ admittedly conferred directly upon Peter, he had earlier conferred ‘in its plentitude’ on the Church. So true is this, indeed, that had he failed after the Resurrection to institute anyone as his supreme pontiff or vicar general, the Church being possessed already of the ‘supreme coercive power’, could itself have done so. . . . .

secondly, the ecclesiastical power residing in the Church is ‘greater in extension’ than is that residing in the pope. When Christ conferred upon Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, he gave them to him not as a private person but ‘as a sign and figure’ or representative of the universal Church. Hence it is by the authority of the Church and in its place that Peter and his successors have wielded the power of the keys — ‘just as kings exercise the power of jurisdiction in place of the community.’ But the general council immediately represents the universal Church and it has the power of the keys ‘more directly than does Peter’. . . .

Third, the eccleiastical power which resided in the Church is not only ‘greater in extension’ than that residing in the pope, it is also ‘greater in perfection’ too. For it resides in the Church with constancy . . . so that the Church ‘is unable to err in those things that pertain to the faith and to good morals, nor can it err in passing sentence [on such matters . . . since it is assisted always by the Holy Spirit, doctor of truth and infallible director’. . . . For popes can err, and manifestly have erred in matters of faith, and have done so in their official public capacity as well as in their private personal beliefs, whereas from that danger the Holy Spirit protects the general council, representing truly as it does that council of apostles and disciples which was the recipient of Christ’s promise that he would be with us always even to the consummation of the world. (125-26)

So strong was this disagreement between Cajetan and Almain, and so strong was the conciliarist movement, that the Council of Trent represented one of the diciest moments in Roman Catholic history. According to Oakley:

. . . concern about the danger to the papacy which [conciliar views] still posed helped, accordingly, to bolster reluctance at Rome to respond to the Protestant challenge in Germany by summoning the general council for which so many Catholics pleaded. When the Council of Trent did finally meet in 1545, it was not only suspicious representatives of the evangelicals who turned out to want the matter of the superiority of pope to council placed on the agenda. Apprehension about the potential recrudescence of conciliarism, very much on the minds of the papal legates, was also, as Paulo Sarpi was to note later on in his ascerbic history of Trent, widespread among the council fathers themselves. And not, it turned out, without good cause. Given the way in which events were to unfold, one is forced to concur in the judgement that ‘there was . . . scarcely any set problems that was so controversial at Trent or that brought the council so close to collapse as the question of primacy and the relationship between the primate and episcopate’. Disagreement about the respective powers of pope and council, though partially downplayed in response to the threat posed by Protestant dissent, rumbled on through the council’s first two periods in the 1540s and 1550s, rising to the level of something more than a subdominant whenever the issue of reform in head and members came to be discussed. And in 1562-3, during the council’s last phase when a French delegation of some significance had finally joined the ranks of the participants, the issue helped precipitate what was clearly Trent’s greatest crisis.

Aside from the ecclesiological debates over a bishop’s power (whether it came through the pope or directly from Christ), and whether bishops were bound to reside in their dioceses, was the question of papal primacy.

Here the level of disagreement was such as to preclude not only that papally sponsored redefinition but also any decree at all on the controverted nature of the Christian Church. So menacing, indeed, was the atmosphere at the council, and so rancorous the dissent, that it was something of a triumph for the diplomacy of the papal legates to have succeeded finally in sidestepping the pursuit of that issue in a compromising context in which appeals were being made to the superiority decrees of Constance and Basel . . . and in which the celebrated Charles de Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, proudly proclaimed himself to be a Frenchman, one nourished at the University of Paris where, he noted, the Councils of Constance and Basel (but certainly not that of Florence) were held to be fully legitimate and ecumenical in status, and where those rash enough to deny the superiority of council to pope could expect to be censured as heretics. (130-31)

Why Jason and the Callers decided to go all in on a theory of papal primacy and chose to ignore the theory of conciliarism (which no less depends on apostolic succession) is not just a mystery but audacious.

Protestantism Isn't All Bad

Published on by D. G. Hart25 Comments

Jason and the Callers do not say much good about Reformed Protestantism. They could possibly admit that the doctrinalist world of confessional Presbyterianism may have given them a taste for the theory greater than which none can be conceived — the visible church is the church that Christ founded. But they could also be a little more gracious. Rather than constantly counting the five digit totals of Protestant “churches,” they could, like Paul McCusker, give their Protestant backgrounds a little credit for making them the Christians they are:

It may surprise some that being a Baptist taught me to respect the authority of the church. I don’t mean the Church with the capital “C”, but the little “c” church, meaning an autonomous and local assembly with a Pastor (or pastors), a group of deacons, and the congregation. That’s the church we thought the New Testament was talking about. No Bishops, no Pope, no monolithic hierarchy with men dressed in funny clothes and hats (not counting Baptist conventions with all the polyester and toupees).

We believed our church was what Jesus Himself intended churches to be. Fallen, not perfect, but a church, doing what true First-Century-type believers did. That our church bore no resemblance whatsoever to the historical First Century church was something we didn’t know. Not that it mattered. Actually history meant very little when we could simply bypass the 2000 years and go to the Bible directly. At least our hearts were certainly in the right places.

Of greater importance, I learned that the local church was essential to Christian living, not merely the “optional extra” it seems to be now. There was no living the Christian life without it. A good Christian needed the church to survive spiritually. The church fed my personal spiritual life, which would, in turn, feed the church. That’s what it meant to be part of the Body of Christ, as we understood it. Going to Sunday School and Sunday morning service – and Sunday evening and Wednesday evening – and Awana on Thursday – and youth group on Friday – wasn’t a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. If I wanted to grow in Christ, then I needed to take my place in the church and all its activities.

I remember, as a teenager, skipping a Sunday evening service once. The Pastor’s wife later asked me why I wasn’t there. I honestly admitted that I didn’t feel like going. She asked, in that very Baptist way: “What if Jesus didn’t feel like going to the cross? Where would we be?” To which I replied, “At home, since there wouldn’t be a church if He didn’t go to the cross.”

She would have been within her rights to slap me.

I’ve mused that, considering the Baptist mantra of “Saved By Grace and not Works,” Baptists tend to be the hardest working people you’ll ever meet. It’s a funny thing. Catholics minimally have to go to Mass once a week and Confession once a year and they think they’re good to go. That’s pretty light stuff for a “Works-based” religion. Whereas Baptists could slide through Purgatory if only for the time they spent making chicken casseroles for the next fellowship, wedding or funeral. (If they believed in Purgatory. Which they don’t. Just to be clear about that.)

In another post, McCusker draws this contrast:

As a Baptist I truly believed faith without works really was dead. Fortunately, many of the “works” were done as part of “fellowship.” Few groups do “fellowship” as well as Baptists. They seemed to understand the importance of relationships to commitment and growth. After any service or event, the majority of people would hang around to “visit” for ages – adding a half-hour to an hour to the worship service experience. There was no rushing for the exit as soon as the final hymn ended or the last Amen said.

I have said in other contexts how it’s ironic that Catholicism is supposed to be about Community, but tends to be very individualistic (if one were to judge by the scramble to the parking lot even before Mass has truly ended), while Protestantism is supposed to be individualistic yet tends toward Community (if the crowds hanging out and talking in the lobby are an indicator).

It makes you wonder why he converted. It also makes you if it would kill Jason and the Callers to say something positive about Reformed Protestantism.

It Is What It Is

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

I have tried often to have Jason and the Callers consider that they are more hard line about Protestantism than all of the post-Vatican II popes. Those pleas also come in the context of asking which Roman Catholic Church they have actually joined, the difference between theory and reality being what it is.

With this in mind, Pope Francis’ address on Machen Day to the Leadership of the Episcopal Conferences of Latin America caught my eye. Thomas Reese rendered the address as three temptations confronting the church. But his summary lacked some of the directness of Francis’ actual (translated) remarks:

The decision for missionary discipleship will encounter temptation. It is important to know where the evil spirit is afoot in order to aid our discernment. It is not a matter of chasing after demons, but simply one of clear-sightedness and evangelical astuteness. I will mention only a few attitudes which are evidence of a Church which is “tempted”. It has to do with recognizing certain contemporary proposals which can parody the process of missionary discipleship and hold back, even bring to a halt, the process of Pastoral Conversion.

1. Making the Gospel message an ideology. This is a temptation which has been present in the Church from the beginning: the attempt to interpret the Gospel apart from the Gospel itself and apart from the Church. An example: Aparecida, at one particular moment, felt this temptation. It employed, and rightly so, the method of “see, judge and act” (cf. No. 19). The temptation, though, was to opt for a way of “seeing” which was completely “antiseptic”, detached and unengaged, which is impossible. The way we “see” is always affected by the way we direct our gaze. There is no such thing as an “antiseptic” hermeneutics. The question was, rather: How are we going to look at reality in order to see it? Aparecida replied: With the eyes of discipleship. This is the way Nos. 20-32 are to be understood. There are other ways of making the message an ideology, and at present proposals of this sort are appearing in Latin America and the Caribbean. I mention only a few:

a) Sociological reductionism. This is the most readily available means of making the message an ideology. At certain times it has proved extremely influential. It involves an interpretative claim based on a hermeneutics drawn from the social sciences. It extends to the most varied fields, from market liberalism to Marxist categorization.

b) Psychologizing. Here we have to do with an elitist hermeneutics which ultimately reduces the “encounter with Jesus Christ” and its development to a process of growing self-awareness. It is ordinarily to be found in spirituality courses, spiritual retreats, etc. It ends up being an immanent, self-centred approach. It has nothing to do with transcendence and consequently, with missionary spirit.

c) The Gnostic solution. Closely linked to the previous temptation, it is ordinarily found in elite groups offering a higher spirituality, generally disembodied, which ends up in a preoccupation with certain pastoral “quaestiones disputatae”. It was the first deviation in the early community and it reappears throughout the Church’s history in ever new and revised versions. Generally its adherents are known as “enlightened Catholics” (since they are in fact rooted in the culture of the Enlightenment).

d) The Pelagian solution. This basically appears as a form of restorationism. In dealing with the Church’s problems, a purely disciplinary solution is sought, through the restoration of outdated manners and forms which, even on the cultural level, are no longer meaningful. In Latin America it is usually to be found in small groups, in some new religious congregations, in exaggerated tendencies toward doctrinal or disciplinary “safety”. Basically it is static, although it is capable of inversion, in a process of regression. It seeks to “recover” the lost past.

As a Protestant, I know I get carried away with my own private interpretations (not to say that converting to Rome has kept Jason and Callers from holding forth with their own interpretations of the magisterium). But it is hard not to read Francis’ point about the Pelagian solution and think of the CTC brand of Roman Catholicism. Could it be that upbraiding the errors of Reformed Protestants is part of an effort to recover the last past of Tridentine Roman Catholicism? At the very least, we might ask for Jason and the Callers to be as non-judgmental to us as Francis appears to be to non-Roman Catholics.