I look on my heretical and Protestant, pre-Catholic days much as Howard, Kreeft, and Bouyer. Despite a hefty heap of pernicious error and downright silliness, there were many, many valuable things I learned without which I would never have been brought to orthodox Catholicism. I'm very grateful for the introduction to Christianity, no matter how flawed it was, that I received from the heretical sect in which I was born and raised, and for the very high view of Scripture I was taught. God's grace worked in and through these things to lead me to Him. Hopefully Frank Schaeffer can come to see that appreciation for the grace he has been given doesn't require piling scorn and insult and derogation on his past.
As a convert to Russian Orthodoxy, I certainly do not feel "scorn" towards Roman Catholics, although i certainly disagree with the direction and institution of the Papacy. But sometimes people forget and see religion as a kind of contact sport and so the scoring of points causes bitterness and harm. To be Orthodox to me is feel the peace of Christ (although I frequently fail). St Seraphim of Sarov remains an important modern saint to me, along with the countless martyrs of communist totalitarianism.
Isaac (Gerald) Herrin ~
God bless you, my friend. "Truth" and "Charity" should always be our twin bywords.
Twowords for you:
A - men!!!!!!!!
And check out this link regarding reciprocal regard and JP2:
'We Are Brothers' - Christianity Today Magazine
http://www.christianitytoday.com.../006/
17.28.html
Francis A Schaffer was a rather dismal writer -- perhaps not a fundamentalist, but certainly a narrow, bullying preacher. His son seems to have revolted. And it is indeed interesting that he sees a likeness to daddy in our new pope.
Joe writes: "Francis A Schaffer was a rather dismal writer -- perhaps not a fundamentalist, but certainly a narrow, bullying preacher. His son seems to have revolted."
Joe, it's hard not to lose patience with you. You rant against the Vatican's "dogmatic pontifications" but then come out with pontifications of your own like this--based on what? Did you know these men? I did. I spent a year with the former and knew the younger as a teen. There was nothing "dismal" about the former's writing. He wrote simply for a popular audience, and at that did swimmingly well. If he gave Hegel only a couple of sentences in his review of Western philosophy and that offends you, so much the worse for Hegel and for you. He had a point to make, and on that point his instincts and insights were right on target. They were the same insights as J. Gresham Mache's Christianity and Liberalism, which Walter Lippmann applauded in his Preface to Morals, but how could you possibly know that ...
Their Christian faith was indeed "fundamentalist," though not in the disparaging sense you give it. As the post explains, the original sense attaches to "The Fundamentals" of 1909 and has little in common with your dismissive caricature and hardly warrants being used as a term of opprobrium. There was not a "bullying" bone in the man's body.
The son didn't revolt against his father, but rather with him. One of the father's last books was The Great Evangelical Disaster, which announced his dismay at conservative Protestantism's loss of moorings in the modern world. When dying of cancer, he asked to be admitted to a Catholic hospital instead of the Baptist in the same city, because the latter performed abortions. Only God knows what direction Francis senior would have taken had he lived. He might have become a Catholic. He might have become Orthodox, as did his son.
If the son made an additional turn to mysticism, or against the notion of objective truth, or against the notion of ecclesial authority, you can be certain that this is not a turn his father would have made.
But please spare me your glibness. I've quite had enough of it. Why don't you go pray the Stations of the Cross or a Rosary or something. It might do you good.
Father O'Leary:
To pick up on Dr. Blosser's point: When did you stop praying?
Chris
Chris, I didn't. When did you stop beating that nice wife of yours?
Philip, I actually like one fundamentalist theologian, Benjamin Warfield. I read Schaffer thirty years ago in my charismatic days and he sent little chills down my spine, but indeed I might see him differently now. His son seems to have the same feeling about him, or am I misreading?
Father:
My comment made sense. Yours doesn't. It is not my observation -- I think I read it in Archbishop Sheen's autobiography -- that priests who innovate their way out of the Church do so not out of malice but because they have stopped praying. Since you seem to be enamored of a whole host of heresiarchs, I presumed that you had stopped praying.
Let me ask my question a different way, since the way I originally put it bothered you so much. Why have you rejected as untenable so much of what the Church teaches as resolved and sensible (those are two different groups)? Priests who advocate for democracy in the Church make almost as much sense as Jews who advocate for more ghettos or expanded birth control.
Mr Garton-Zavetsky, you seem to have tied yourself up in knots. To admire Luther (whom you, not I, call a heresiarch) is very common among Catholics today. Ever heard of Ecumenism? I advocate more democracy in the Church -- and you instantly excommunicate me. What kind of fanatic are you?
Are you a Roman Catholic of very recent vintage? Like wine, Catholicism mellows with the years. As a Catholic for the last 56 years, I advise you to practice a little discernment.
The name is Garton-Zavesky, without a t in the second part.
I don't need to stand on my own judgment about Luther. He broke away from the Church of Rome and began teaching a new doctrine. He led others away from the Church All of these make him a heresiarch.
A thing may be common and still evil. How much of German society acquisced in the slaughter of Jews during the second world war? How much actively co-operated? How much of American society contracepts? What percentage of those who do are Catholic? Slavery was common even after the Church condemned it. Heavens! A majority of Catholics in this country voted for George Bush. This fact in and of itself doesn't make Mr. Bush's positions consonant with Catholic teaching. The fact that many Catholics nowadays admire Martin Luther does not make him any less a heretic.
Yes, I've heard of Ecumenism. I think of it as a kind of Christian outreach to those who lack the fullness of Christian truth. My father, among many others, has observed that tolerance among those who don't strongly hold opinions is meaningless. So we talk to the anglicans and others. Sometimes it brings some of them closer to the truth. Some of them even accomplish the Tiberian swim. I did.
I fail to see the relevance of your question about how long I've been a Catholic. Nevertheless I will try to answer it. I've been Catholic 10 1/2 years. I came into the Church on my third attempt. I was Catholic-leaning in thought for slightly more than 10 years before that. His Holiness Pope Benedict has been Catholic a great deal longer than that, and yet is more staunchly conservative than I am. Ditto Archbishop Rifan. Ditto a whole host of saints throughout history.
Oh, I almost forgot. You said that since you advocated more democracy in the Church I excommunicated you. Leaving aside the fact that I don't have the authority to do this, you have neglected the fact that most people who style themselves reformers want "more flexibility" or "more democracy" in the Church. Take Call to Action or Voice of the Faithful. Both are heretical organizations. Take Catholics for a Free Choice. This last group just wants more freedom to make moral decisions, or something similarly dulcet and innocent sounding. What they want is for their immoral choice to be declared moral. This the Church can not do because the choice in question attacks the nature of the message the Church proclaims. Let me turn the question around on you. In what SPECIFIC issues would you like to see more democracy in the Church?
What kind of fanatic am I? I'm not one. When I was lost and heard the voice of Cardinal Bernadin whining from the front fence the element of truth he had intrigued me. When I realized he was on the front fence, and I was still freezing outside, I read more of His Holiness' writings, and became a great fan. Love and Responsibility is a must read. Now that I am maturing beyond a selfish protestantism and a voyeuristic neophyte, I want to read more and more of what those who are friends of God wrote. So I read what I can understand of Chesterton, Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, Bernard of Clairvaux, Davies, Von Hildebrand(s) and others who obviously love the Church and Her Divine Spouse.
I accept what these authors write because it has the ring of truth to it. All the nonsense about "greater democracy in the Church" is usually a cover for opinions similar to "we're one death away from the ordination of women."
I went to Oberlin College as an undergraduate. There I learned more than I cared to about the evil of the political "left" in this country, and the ongoing attempts to twist our beautiful language into a piece of modern art.
Fr. O'Leary,
When your wrote that you actually "like" one fundamentalist theologian, B.B. Warfield, should that have been "liked" (past tense), as with your view of Francis Schaeffer? I would wonder if you still liked Warfield, seeing that you suggest that you might "feel differently" about Schaeffer now.
Which brings me to the question: Why? Why do you think you'd feel differently now? How have you changed, and why? Have you given up on the ecumenism of your charismatic days (where you sought rapproachment with old school Presbyterians and Lutherans) in favor of a new school variety of "ecumenism" (wherein the rapproachment is with secular skeptics, neo-Marxists, feminists & deconstructionists)? Just curious.
[By the way, I'm pleased to see you use the term "fundamentalist" in other than an ad hominem way here. Ad hominems can be fun sometimes (Lord knows I make too much use of them), but they can easily be misunderstood in the medium of writing, where there is no context of tone-of-voice or facial expression to nuance the intention.]
Doctrina Lutheri continet multas errores, sed in articulo centrali doctrinae eius, scilicet justificatio peccatoris ex mera gratuita imputatione justitiae alienae Salvatoris haud longe a catholica veritate erravit. Non est catholicus bene sentiens qui in hoc loco gravamen heresiae Luthero imputat. Declaratio Communis de Justification, 1999, monstrat proximitatem Ecclesiae Catholicae ad theses Reformatoris de Justificatione.
Warfield arguit ex fontibus patristicis honeste et intelligenter, sed theologia eius est nimis anti-romana per me. Schaeffer est scriptor pius, et pietas est qualitas quae diversiter estimata est in diversis momentis vitae humanae.
Venerabile Equite, democratiam in ecclesia non potest esse principium primum gubernationis, quia ecclesia in obedientia fidei fundata est. Sed elementa democratiae possunt esse introducta in vitam ecclesiae. Tale est principium collegialitatis advocatum in Secundo Concilio Vaticano. Methodus electionis episcoporum democratior fieri potest, sicut in praeterito tempore.
Indeed, Father O'Leary, the doctrines of Luther are heretical. "Near the truth" is a good way to begin defining heresies. They begin with an element of truth -- but then Satan spoke at least some truth in the Garden, so what does this prove? Satan is not adopted by some common declaration on justification. More to the point, ecumenism needs to ask the question "Which Lutherans?"
Indeed, as you again recognize, democracy is incompatible with the fundamentals of the Church. The Holy Father is not "elected" in a democratic sense of the term. He is elected BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, through the College of Cardinals. Isn't the principle of collegiality the very reason why His Holiness let the American bishops cope with the sex-abuse scandal on their own -- they had had such a role in creating it by failing to live by Petrine standards? Given the great evil which has come from the exercise of collegiality understood in this modern sense, do you really want more of it?
The means of electing a bishop could not sensibly be returned to the "election" method you describe, for then the right agitators would gain further control over vital sectors of the Church teaching. How's this for a standard of who could vote: only Catholics in the state of grace can vote for the election of a bishop. Therefore, the heretics you so wish to abdicate authority to would not even be able to vote.
Chris, you write:
"How's this for a standard of who could vote: only Catholics in the state of grace can vote for the election of a bishop. Therefore, the heretics you so wish to abdicate authority to would not even be able to vote."
Well, the only trouble with this, of course, is that those in a state of grace know they'e sinners, while heretics are confident that they are in a state of grace. That, or they'd lie.
Fr. O'Leary,
I'm impressed with your Latin. I wonder why you trouble yourself though, in view of your disdain for pre-Vatican II Catholicism. On the other hand, maybe this is your way of signaling your readiness to join my new order, the Sons of Torquemada, to do battle against liberal theologians (heh)!
I've been a part of some of the discussions adjoining the Joint Catholic-Lutheran Declaration on Justification, and I'm a lot less sanguine about that "achievement" than many. At most, in my view, it shows an area of overlap where, if each side is willing to interpret words in unconventional ways, a certain measure of agreement can be said to be attained. But it leaves out huge swaths of "baggage" about which there is no agreement.
There was never any disagreement on the part of the Catholic Church with Melanchthon's slogan sola gratia, of course; but there are huge problems with how that can be applied in a way acceptable to the Church in the Melanchthonian formulation of sola fides. The nominalistic notion of a purely forensic declaration of imputed righteousness just doesn't work. It leaves us, as Luther himself admitted, in the condition of "snow covered dung hills"--outwardly and nominally declared "white as snow," but inwardly "in our sins and trespasses." Luther's (again nominalistic) paradoxic of simul iustus et peccator doesn't get us out of the thicket either, as Bonhoeffer understood and as Kierkegaard increasingly recognized in the last part of his life.
Fr. O'Leary, since you so clearly appreciate Luther, I will grant you this much: there is most certainly in Luther's corpus of writings--along side all that is heretical, scatalogical, anti-semitical, and prurient--a great deal that, when taken in isolation from the rest, inevitably will strike his reader as pius, insightful, and even beautiful. I think of his commentary on the Magnificat, which in many ways is a beautiful testament to his (admittedly not entirely Catholic) devotion to the Blessed Mother. His commentaries on the Psalms, on various Old and New Testament books, contain numerous interesting insights. However, where I may disagree with the ebullient Hans Kung in his (ca. V-II) assessment of Luther, is that where Luther is most uniquely himself, in his doctrine of sola fide, I think he is most egrigiously wrong. If what Luther meant to stress was the importance of a "personal relationship with Jesus as Lord and Savior," a Catholic could certainly say "Amen" to that. But Luther's soteriology goes far beyond that to the anathematizing of the Book of James--the only book in the Bible to mention "faith alone" in connection with justification, and to condemn the notion. As a result, his reading of Romans was fatally skewed as well, particularly his understanding of justification apart from "works of the law," which he misinterpreted to mean apart from works of obedience, instead of apart from demands of the Torah such as circumcision.
Hence, I cannot accept the notion of Luther as a white knight of the Christian faith in shining armor, or as providing a fruitful archive for champions of ecumenism. He just doesn't deliver what he promises.
Kierkegaardis opiniones de Luthero non habent magnam auctoritatem theologicam. In tempore contrareformationis figura sympathica Cardinalis Contarini notanda est. Anima ardente Lutheri opusculis perlectis, in Concilio Tridentino originalem theologiam justificationis presentavit. Hubert Jedin, eruditus Jesuita, de eo multa scripsit.
Bonhoeffer non rejecit doctrinam Lutheri de justificatione, quae fuit "articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae" in estimationi Reformatoris. Sicut doctrina Pauli Apostoli, doctrina de justificatione potest inducere in errores antinomisticas et quietistas, sed hoc non significat falsitatem doctrinae.
Father O'Leary:
Don't win many converts to the faith, do you? Why do you spend such inordinate energy defending Lutheran teaching, even going to the point of citing an eminent Jesuit who wrote much to you on the subject? Surely Holy Mother Church requires loyal sons, not disloyal ones?
Oh, confusion -- Jedin wrote about Contarini, who with Serpando was the Catholic theologian who best understood Luther on justification; they were major figures at the Council of Trent. Daphne Hampson has written a sizzling book pointing out how the majority of Catholic theologians since them have been utterly obtuse to Luther on justification because unaware of the paradigm shift entailed by the idea of extraneous righteousness (that our righteousness is Christ's). She defends herself thrillingly against misunderstandings of Laurence Hemmings (who is not versed in Luther) in a recent issue of New Blackfriars.
Mr Garton-Gavesky, you ask why I reject so much of what the Church teaches as resolved? Actually I don't. I doubt if the doctrine of infallibility as defined by Vatican I makes sense, but I accept the primacy of Rome and its reliability as a teaching office in the same sense as the Greek Church accepted it and still accepts it. That is quite a lot. I do not reject the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption, and agree with the recent ARCIC statement that they are not incompatible with biblical vision. But I don't think they are very important doctrines or that Catholics should be bullied about them. I am non-fundamentalistic in my reading of the Resurrection and Infancy narratives. I also believe that dogma has to be interpreted. Let me quote an esteemed colleague: "the history of dogma is the gradual explication of an original total experience... dogma strengthen this experience, but it can also make it rigid, becoming a crust that can stifle life and finally cause it to vanish... In every dogma there is, necessarily, a certain incongruence between the word, the language in which it is said and the reality it seeks to say and that it can never fasten in its grasp".
The early Christians lived in intense expectation of the proximate coming of the Kingdom, as we can see from the Gospels and St Paul. The failure of this expectation led to the construction of dogma. To quote my colleague again, "it seem incontestable to me that the dismantling of the eschatological Naherwartung acquired considerable importance for the construction of church doctrine". The dynamism of the Spirit in church history is in constant tension with the limits of historical cultures and the tendency of human beings to fall back on tired habits of mind. The church advances by crises that wake it up!
G-A-R-T-O-N-Z-A-V-E-S-K-Y
Please make a note of it, Father O'Leary.
Why would you doubt the formulation of a doctrine of the Church as formulated by an Ecumenical Council?
Quoting ARCIC as a pillar on which to stand is the rough equivalent of standing on the "developed understands of the Spirit of Vatican II".
Does your colleague have a name?
What exactly does a non-fundamentalist approach to the Resurrection and Infancy narratives entail?
Perhaps you take a non-fundamentalistic approach to Christ's statement about the Church forgiving sins?
Dress for warm weather.
Fr. O'Leary,
What, precisely, is so remarkable about the protestant paradigm shift involving Luther's notion of "extraneous righteousness (that our righteousness is Christ's)"? This bloodless forensic (legal) understanding of justification is little more than license for what the good Lutheran, Bonhoeffer, condemned as "cheap grace." The protestant courtroom understanding of justification leaves the sinner externally and forensically declared righteous by the imputed righteousness of Christ, but also leaves him, as Luther admitted, a "snow-covered dung hill." What, pray tell, is inadequate about the gracious Catholic notion of a sinner mercifully receiving the infused grace of God, through his incorporation into the mystical body of Christ, to effectively (and not only nominally) justify him, making him actually just? What part of getting some of the work of Purgatory done with in this life do you not appreciate?
I did not attack the Tridentine paradigm, just pointed out how obtuse Catholics are to the Lutheran one. To call it "bloodless" is surely to miss the power of the aliena justitia. It is not bloodless because it is a free act of God declaring the sinner righteous. The infusional model is also a free act of God making the sinner righteous. What would be objectionable is the idea that God makes the sinner righteous only on the basis of the sinner first having to show righteousness in himself, That is, sanctification follows on justification and cannot be its precondition. But Trent need not be interpreted as entailing a dependence of justification on sanctification (Paul says "those whom he justified he also sanctified", not the other way round).
Mr Garton Zavesky, my colleague's name is Joseph Ratzinger, Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte in der Sicht katholischer Theologie, Cologne, 1966. Ratzinger is the first modern theologian to ascend the throne of Peter. He can tune in to the exciting world of contemporary biblical studies (Q, the renewed quest for the historical Jesus etc.) and he praised Raymond Brown as an exemplary exegete (to the consternation of arch-conservatives). As a master of the patristic literature, he is well versed in the historicity of dogma. His later years, since 1970, have disappointed those of us who were his admirers, but he may recover the fire of his youth.
Fr. O'Leary,
I borrowed the term "bloodless," of course, from you in another context, where you used it of the pre-Vatican II Catholic tradition. In the case of Luther's concept, however, I think it applies. Here: the imaginary environment of Lutheran justification is not the covenantal setting of a family, in which God is our Heavenly Father and we His children, but a juridical setting of a courtroom in which God is a Judge and we are the accused. You tell me which is bloodless.
Further, although there is a proper sense in which I agree that the external righteousness of Christ can be understood as imputed to the sinner, I think the traditional Protestant interpretation is fraught with problems. The notion of a once-for-all legal declaration, which pardons the sinner carte blanche opens a Pandora's Box of problems. To begin with, it can't begin to do justice to the biblical data, which suggest that justification is a process, concluding with what Protestants call our sanctificatin and glorification. Furthermore, it leads all too easily to a latitudinarian notion that since one is justified (or, as Baptists like to say, one has "been saved"--in the past tense), God's salvific work in him is pretty much concluded. How one lives after that is pretty much up to how much one desires to be please God, but not of any relevance to his salvation. As I've said before, D. Bonhoeffer speaks to that problem in his Cost of Discipleship, and tirades against "cheap grace."
A follow up on the theology and worldview of Francis Schaeffer, Senior, can be found in my friend, Ed Echeverria's post on "Schaeffer & the Christian way of life."
Disagree that courtroom drama is all its about. When Christ mantles the sinner with his righeousness the sinner is not only ACCEPTED by a loving God but is TRANSFERRED TO A NEW REALM OF BEING -- this is part of the paradigm shift I mentioned -- see Wilifried Joest, Ontologie der Person bei Luther, for clarification of what this entails. @It is not longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me@ is the essence of the Lutheran notion of the justification event and state of being (justification is lifelong). Melanchthon is often accused of pallid juridicalism -- I have not found him to be like that at all. Catholic hangups about Luther"s personality are refuted by the fact that a personality so radically unlike Luther's was adopted by Luther as his closest colleague and given major responsibility in formulating the doctrine -- it was the doctrine, not the personalities, that mattered, and that made the Reformation. Melanchthon was to Luther what Ratzinger was to Woytila.
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