What do Roman Catholics Believe? A Confessional Protestant Response to Ten Teachings of the RCC

 

We've been doing a teaching series in our Midweek Meeting at CRBC on World Religions and just started looking at Christian denominations. 

Notes from last Wednesday's Midweek Meeting (4.3.24) on the Roman Catholic Church (RCC):

Below is a summary of ten teachings of the RCC, along with paragraph references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (1994, 1997).

Each teaching is followed by a Protestant response and Biblical prooftexts in support of the Protestant position.

1.      The Pope is the head of the church, following its founding upon Peter and his successors.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 100, 882, 891.

Response: Christ alone is the head of the church. The church was not founded upon Peter but upon his confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Prooftexts: Matthew 16:16-19; 18:18; 23:9-12; Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18.

2.      The highest authority for doctrine and life is the magisterium of the RCC and its interpretation of Christian tradition.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 100.

Response: The highest authority for doctrine and life is Scripture (Sola Scriptura).

Prooftexts: 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21.

3.      The Deuterocanonical books (1-2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch [plus additions to Esther and Daniel]) are Scripture and should be included in the OT.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 120.

Response: The Apocrypha are a collection of uninspired writings. Among the reasons they are not received as Scripture: (1) They were not accepted by Jews as Scripture; (2) They were written in Greek not Hebrew; (3) They were not cited by Jesus and the apostles in the NT; (4) They contain errors (e.g., Judith 1:1 says the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar reigned in Ninevah, the Assyrian capital).

Prooftexts: Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Romans 3:1-2; Revelation 22:18-19.

4.      Salvation is a synthesis of grace and works. The sacraments are necessary for salvation.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1129, 1257, 1742, 2002.

Response: Salvation is a monergistic act of God alone. It is by grace through faith alone. Good works are a fruit of our faith but not the root of our faith.

Prooftexts: Jonah 2:9; Ephesians 2:8-10; Galatians 2:16; 2 Timothy 1:9.

5.      Mary is an object of special devotion as the mother of our Lord and is called a “Mediatrix.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 484-507, 964-975.

Response: Mary was an important early disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, but she was an ordinary sinner saved by grace. Devotion should be given to no one other than God himself. There is only one Mediator between God and man: The Lord Jesus Christ.

Prooftexts: Exodus 20:3; Matthew 12:46-50; John 3:30; Acts 4:12; Romans 3:23; 1 Timothy 2:5.

6.      In the Mass the sacrifice of Christ on the cross continues to be offered.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1364-1368.

Response: Christ’s death on the cross was a once for all sacrifice, to which nothing needs to be added nor can anything be taken away.

Prooftexts: John 19:30; Hebrews 9:28.

7.      In the Mass the bread and cup through transubstantiation become the literal body and blood of Christ.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1373-1381.

Response: the Lord’s Supper is a sacred meal for the church (“when ye come together in the church”) ordained by Christ himself. The bread and cup are spiritual emblems representing the body and blood of Christ, as Christ himself indicated in the Last Supper. The Lord’s supper is a memorial (“This do in remembrance of me”), a proclamation (“ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come”), and a recognition of Christ’s presence (“and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”).

Prooftexts: 1 Corinthians 11:18, 20, 23-26; Matthew 28:20.

8.      The officers of the local church are “priests” who cannot be married and have families.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1562,1579.

Response: The officers of the church are bishops (also called elders and pastors) and deacons. They are free to be married in the Lord and establish families. Peter and other apostles were married.

Prooftexts: Matthew 8:14; 1 Timothy 3:1-13; 1 Corinthians 9:5; 1 Timothy 4:3.

9.      There are seven sacraments given to the church (baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, confession, last rites, holy orders, matrimony).

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1113.

Response: There are only two sacraments (ordinances) given by Christ: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Prooftexts: Matthew 28:19-20; Luke 22:19-20.

10. There is a place called purgatory where those who are not fit for heaven may go through a process of purgation (purification) until they are ready to enter heaven.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1030-1032.

Response: There is no place called purgatory. At death one either enters into heaven or hell. This assignment is made based upon one’s response to Christ in this life. There is no post-mortem opportunity for salvation or progressive sanctification.

Prooftexts: Matthew 10:32-33; Luke 16:19-31; 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:8; Hebrews 10:27.

JTR

WM 302: The Failure of James White's Apologetic in the "Real World": RCC, PA, and Sola Scriptura

 

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 9: The unwillingness of our chief adversaries that the Scriptures should be divulged in the mother tongue, etc.

 

Part 9 attacks the Roman church's opposition to vernacular Bible translations:

"So much are they afraid of the light of the Scripture... that they will not trust the people with it...."

JTR

Audio Book Note: Evangelical Is Not Enough

  

Someone commented this week on a book note/article I did on my blog back in 2017 (read it here) on Thomas Howard (brother of Elisabeth Elliot), Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament (originally published by Thomas Nelson, Ignatius, 1984). So, I decided to try to give the article a little more exposure by recording an audio version.

Enjoy! JTR

Calvin on John 8:41 and Roman claims to apostolic succession

In preparing to preach last Sunday on John 8:32-47, I read Calvin’s commentary on this passage, and I was struck by his reflections on the crowd’s statement to Jesus in John 8:41: “We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.”

Calvin notes that Jesus’ opponents were claiming not only to be Abraham’s children but also the children of God. He then draws some intriguing applications on ecclesiology, including a critique of Roman claims of “apostolic succession.”

Calvin comments:

“We now see how they thought that they had holiness from the womb, because they were sprung from a holy root. In short, they maintain that they are the family of God, because they are descended from the holy fathers. In like manner, the Papists in the present day are exceedingly vain of an uninterrupted succession from the fathers. By sorceries of this description Satan deceives them, so that they separate God from his word, the Church from faith, and the kingdom of heaven from the Spirit.”

He then adds:

“For let them go about the bush as much as they please, still they will never avoid discovery that the only ground of their arrogant boasting is, ‘We have succeeded the holy fathers; therefore, we are the Church.’ And if the reply of Christ was sufficient for confuting the Jews, it is no less sufficient now for reproving the Papists.”

So, Calvin’s comparison is this:

First:

The Jews of Jesus day claimed to be the children of God by virtue of being the physical descendants of Abraham, even though they were not the spiritual descendants of Abraham. Meanwhile, Christians, including both Jews and Gentiles, are not all physical descendants of Abraham, but they are his rightful  spiritual descendants.

Second:

The Papists of Calvins’s day claimed to be the Church of God by virtue of direct succession from the apostles and fathers, even though they were not the spiritual descendants of the apostles and fathers. Meanwhile, the Reformed do not necessarily come in direct succession from the apostles and fathers, but they are their rightful spiritual descendants.

His point: Spiritually speaking, it is not the Papists who can claim true apostolic succession, but the Reformers.

JTR

Poole on Peter and Primacy in John 21:15-17

Image: Altar in St. Alexander Roman Catholic Cathedral, Kiev, Ukraine, with inscription from the Latin hymn "Tantum ergo" from Thomas Aquinas.

Here’s another note on Matthew Poole’s commentary on Christ’s post-resurrection commission of Peter (John 21:15-17). Poole suggests that Christ’s commission is not just to Peter but to “his church” and objects to any Roman Catholic notion that it suggests the “primacy” of Peter:

Christ replies: Feed my lambs: by which he understands his people, his church; not the pastors of it, (as if Christ by this had made Peter the chief pastor over the rest of the apostles,) but the community. The papists from this text argue for Peter’s primacy and authority over his fellow apostles, as well as over the members of the church. But Christ said not to Peter only, but to all the rest of the eleven, Matt. xxviii.19; Mark vi.15 [BTW, note Poole's citation of Mark's traditional ending], Go ye, preach the gospel to all nations; and it was to the rest as well as to Peter that he said, chap. xx.23, Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted. So as it is apparent, whether feeding only signifies instructing, or feeding by doctrine, or (as most judge) comprehends government, and signifies that universal charge which ministers have over the church, the same power which Peter had was also committed to the other disciples.

JTR

A Confessional Baptist’s Reading of Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough

I recently read Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament (Ignatius, 1984). Howard is emeritus professor of English at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass. He was raised in a prominent evangelical family and is brother to evangelical writer Elisabeth Elliot. In his 20s he became an Anglican and at age 50 Roman Catholic. This book was first published in 1984 by Thomas Nelson, a year before Howard swam the Tiber, so much of it is an explanation of his movement to Anglicanism. A postscript describes his transition to Rome.

Howard’s critique of evangelical worship:

The center of the book is a critique of the vacuity of much evangelical worship and liturgy.

In Anglican worship, he was impressed by the fact that the vicar “hardly addressed the congregation directly during the act of worship… He did not greet us, and he did not smile at us. No attempt was made to create a feeling of familiarity or welcome” (45).

The experience “did not depend in the smallest degree on atmosphere nor on the minister’s establishing any sort of contact with the congregation. The notion of group dynamics would have seemed grotesque, irrelevant, and embarrassing” (46).

He reacts against the evangelical tendency to focus on the personality of the minister. According to Howard, “the less individuality we have to cope with in the minister, the better” (60).

Howard observes that the “extempore prayers” of evangelicals are “made up of stock phrases strung together,” suggesting that “spontaneity is impossible sooner or later” (48). He adds that as an evangelical he had “little appreciation for the whole Church as a praying body, with its own prayers suitable for perpetual use” (49).

He later adds: “But I have wondered whether in its stress on earnestness, and even fervor, evangelicalism has not to some extent overestimated most of us” (76).

In contrast, Howard notes the appeal of ritual:

That ritual might actually be a relief, and even a release, is almost incomprehensible to [evangelicals]. That the extempore and impromptu are eventually shallow, enervating, and exhausting seems a contradiction to these people, who so earnestly believe that nothing does not spring from the authenticity of the moment is actually fruitful (96).

He concludes, “Evangelicalism, stalwart as it is, had in effect left me with nothing but the Bible and the modern world” (58).

Some confessional responses:

There is much in Howard’s critique with which I resonate and which we would do well to hear and ponder. I too have come to find much that passes as evangelical worship to be superficial, vacuous, and sometimes even outright silly.

Yes, evangelical ministers or “worship leaders” sometimes try to act as “hale fellows well met,” liturgical masters of ceremony, more intent on massaging the egos of the “audience” than leading them before a holy God.

There are, however, also some problems with Howard’s critique. God’s people are his ekklesia. They are his “called out” ones. And one aspect of corporate worship is the assembling of God’s people (cf. Heb 10:25).

Yes, there are problems with much superficiality in evangelical worship, but, from what I have observed, superficiality might also seep into so-called “liturgical” worship. This is why many young persons who comes from such traditions are often attracted to what they find to be more personal, welcoming, and authentic in evangelicalism (even if, later on down the road, they tire of its weaknesses and drift away).

Howard’s critique of Reformed Worship:

Within the general critique of evangelical worship, Howard also strikes out at what he perceives to be the weaknesses of Reformed worship.

He finds Reformed worship to be too austere, too cerebral: “It is Buddhism and Platonism and Manichaenism that tells us to disavow our flesh and expunge everything but thoughts” (37).

The “sparse and intellectual approach,” according to Howard, “treats us as though we were disembodied intellects” (102).

He disavows a religion that says to us, “No. Sit still. Or stand and sing…. But your main job is to think about the event and hear a sermon about it. Don’t do anything” (146).

Some confessional responses:

At one point, Howard draws an analogy to a birthday party, noting that on such occasions we make much of ceremony (candles, cake, dimmed lights, etc.), asking why we would expect less in worship (see 102). The problem with this analogy is that a birthday party is not worship. It is not something the Lord has commanded.

This is a general problem with Howard’s approach. Though many of his critiques of broad evangelical worship are on target, his understanding of the Regulative Principle is less precise. Perhaps this is because Howard was more exposed to broad evangelicalism, even a Calvinistic tinted version of it, but not Reformed confessionalism.

Christianity and its worship is about the renewal of the mind (Rom 12:2), and it is about hearing the Word (cf. Rom 10:14, 17). Hearing is doing! He accuses Protestant worship of being like Buddhism, but does not note that the RC liturgical tradition might just as well be compared to the sensuality of Hinduism!

Along these lines, we might note that Howard is also less secure in attempting to marshal Biblical arguments to support his shift in views. For example, in an effort to support the idea of prayers for the dead and post-mortem spirituality, he claims the Bible is largely silent, neglecting obviously relevant passages like the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16, among others.

Final Thoughts:

In the end, though, I find Howard’s critique of evangelical worship to be at times painfully accurate. I do not agree with him that the answer is to embrace Rome. It is a shame that Howard did not dig deeper into his Protestant, Biblical heritage, before making this move.

He raises an alarm, however, that we should heed. Evangelicalism, for many, holds an initial appeal that often dissipates over time due to lack of depth. It is like a sweet dessert that gives a quick sugary high but ends up with a crash, emptiness, and hunger. Some leave it for nominalism or nothingness. Others, like Howard, drift to the liturgical churches, whether Anglicanism, Orthodoxy, or RC, looking for something with more heft.

Howard senses this unease: “Nonetheless, something is causing thousands of stoutly loyal evangelical men and women to inquire into matters of the greatest antiquity and gravity” (149).

The challenge for confessional ministers is to embrace, teach, and embody a rich and soul-satisfying experience of Protestant, confessional worship, regulated by Scripture.

Howard also raises another grave matter: ecclesiology. He jibes that Pentecost was not “the birthday merely of a clutter of conventicles, all jostling and jockeying and clamoring with a multitude of voices but no real authority or unity” (150).

In his postscript (composed after his embrace of Rome), Howard writes: “the question, What is the Church? becomes, finally, intractable….” (157). He concludes: “Yes—I believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the Ancient Church. I accept its claims” (158). We, as Protestants, must be able, charitably, to explain the ways in which Rome does not reflect the ancient church, as evidenced in how it is presented in Scripture and point out that it does not, in fact, provide the authentic unity which only Christ may give (see John 17:20-22).

So, we must strive for a coherent and winsome theology and practice of worship but also of the church. Evangelical is, indeed, not enough, But neither is Rome.

JTR