Apologetics toolbox: The sola scriptura problems (Part II)

Sola scriptura and the preacher’s authority

In Part I, we saw the contradiction at the heart of sola scriptura: If the Church isn’t infallible, then either the Holy Spirit has abandoned the Church in contradiction to Jesus’ promise to be with his Church “always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20), or the Holy Spirit’s guidance is unreliable. Either conclusion would contradict Scripture (and verge on blasphemy), so the Church must be considered infallible.

Doctor James R. White’s contention that sola scriptura doesn’t deny the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding the Church is questionable, to say the least. Equally dubious is his claim that the doctrine doesn’t deny the Church’s authority to teach God’s truth.

To say that the Church has authority is to say that it has expertise, permission and power. Nor is this authority self-aggrandized; it’s implicit in Jesus’ commission to “go forth and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19). The gospel is to be taught, and the student is not equal in knowledge to the teacher.

Apologetics toolbox: The sola scriptura problems (Part I)

The biggest problem you’re bound to face as an apologist is resistance to the idea of an authoritative Church.

Intellectually, we know that Christ taught only one gospel message, that certain teachings must be authentic to Christ and others not. No matter how much lip service we give to “subjective truths”, we know some things are true whether we want them to be or not, and that refusal to accept a real, objective truth is not mentally healthy.

However, for many reasons, people don’t want to accept the possibility that a select number of people have been given authority from Christ to define, preserve and promote the gospel message. Sometimes the motive is pride; sometimes it’s based on a fallacious idea of authority; sometimes the motive is sociopolitical.

Regardless of the motive, the easy answer for many Christians is to create their own gospel truth based on their own Bible study. When they do this, they follow in the intellectual tradition of Martin Luther … even if the latter would have been horrified by some of the conclusions they come to.

If truth is subjective, what are they afraid of?

On February 28, I posted a think-piece whose premise was that gay marriage may be the issue which triggers a cascade failure of democracy, which in turn may turn our “culture wars” into a civil war. (Yesterday and today mark the 150th anniversary of the battle of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the War Between the States.)

I got a three-part jeremiad in reply from one reader. I’ll say this: it was coherent, though it was way off-topic. The first two parts of his reply had all the appearance of being “canned”; the third was such a misstatement of my thesis that it was clear he only read the title. And the writer’s basic assumptions about my education and intents were so insulting as to be infamous; it took all my moral courage to take them out of the spam folder (where Blogger had put them) and actually post them against my own stated policy.

I was reminded of this when I read how Equality Matters, a media and communications group for homosexual rights, hysterically claimed that Fr. John Hollowell, chaplain and teacher at Indianapolis’ Cardinal Ritter High School, of “spouting a stream of homophobic and offensive falsehoods about same-sex marriage and gay people in general to a classroom full of students.” You can access the YouTube clips of the class here at his blog site.

Apologetics toolbox: Assurance of salvation

One of the reasons Protestant Christianity has fragmented into so many different churches is that sola scriptura lends itself too easily to cherry-picking Scripture for “proof texts”. This tendency leads to two different logical fallacies: 1) quotation out of context, and 2) special pleading.

We should be familiar with out-of-context fallacies; we see them all the time with product and movie advertisements. The TV trailer tells us, “Roger Ebert says Thrill Ride is ‘A GREAT MOVIE … DON’T MISS IT’”. You go look up his review in the Chicago Sun-Times, and it says, “Thrill Ride is a great movie … except for the story, the dialogue, the acting, the cinematography, the editing and the score. I would tell you, ‘Don’t miss it’, except that I can’t think of a reason why it should be showing in the first place.”

Special pleading refers to an argument that, in its entirety, doesn’t give due consideration to countervailing evidence. In the blogosphere, that’s a hard charge to escape, simply because “due consideration” would make posts too long for the average surfer to want to read. In arguments between Catholics and Protestants, though, it chiefly crops up in the Protestant’s tendency to pin his entire argument on one or two proof texts.

Open letter to Rev. Roy Bourgeois, MM

Dear Fr. Bourgeois,

Like many other Catholics, I’ve read your letter to Rev. Edward Dougherty, the Superior General of your order. While I don’t doubt your sincerity, I do call into question your intellectual honesty as a priest of the Catholic Church.

Let’s step through the reasons you give that the Church should rescind its insistence on a male priesthood:

“(1) As Catholics, we believe that we were created in the image and likeness of God and that men and women are equal before God. Excluding women from the priesthood implies that men are superior to women.” 

Unfortunately, your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise. Men can’t bear children; it doesn’t follow from that fact that men are inferior to women.

Thoughtless answers to tough Irish questions-UPDATED

If the Catholics of Ireland are angry with their hierarchy, their grounds for it are obvious and indubitable. However, anger is a dangerous emotion, and is a poor state from which to suggest changes.

John L. Allen, Jr., who (sadly) still writes for the National Catholic Distorter, reports: “I’m in Dublin this week for a couple of speaking gigs, the centerpiece of which is an April 6-9 conference on the sexual abuse crisis sponsored by the Jesuits’ Milltown Institute titled ‘Broken Faith: Revisioning the Church in Ireland’.”

Okay, the conference is being hosted by the Jesuits. Right away, you’re given grounds for suspicion.

It doesn’t get better. A social worker and psychotherapist from University College Dublin blames the problem on a theology of sexuality which can fuel “self-hatred and shame”, a theology of the priesthood which “sets [priests] apart in an unhealthy manner,” and a “top-down model” of leadership. The acting president of the Milltown Institute demands “a reinterpretation of the faith and the Christian way of life”, especially a “more participatory church” (i.e., hecklers’ rights over magisterial teaching).

Apologetics toolbox: faith vs. works

The role of works in Catholicism is a very basic fundamentalist/Evangelical concern, the answer to which should be in every Catholic’s apologetics toolkit.

At least once in your life, you’re bound to come across a Protestant who states that we Catholics believe we are saved by works. In all likelihood, this person will defend the error by exclaiming heatedly, “Hey, I used to be a Catholic!” Or, if she’s a cradle Protestant, she’ll appeal to the authority of Cindy Lou Apostate or Reverend Expriest over at the First Church of the Intolerant Master, and if they don’t know what Catholics really believe ….

Before you start, you should make clear how you’re using certain terms. The most important term to clarify is “works” itself, but I’ll save that for later. Right now, here are some basic concepts:

• Concupiscence: The human tendency to sin, the legacy of original sin (CCC 1264, 1426, 2515).
• Faith: The individual’s personal adherence to God and free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed (CCC 26, 142, 150, 1814).
• Justification: The gracious action of God which frees us from sin and communicates “the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ” (Rom 3:22) (CCC 1987-1989).
• Redemption: The price paid by Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross to free us from slavery to sin (CCC 571, 601; cf. 517, 1372).
• Salvation: The forgiveness of sins and restoration of friendship with God (CCC 169).
• Sanctification: The process of healing or “perfecting” our wounded nature, an action of God’s grace (CCC 1999).

Cohabitation versus conforming to Christ

In a clear contender for the Spinal Crosier Award of 2011, Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe has issued a pastoral letter to his see, “Pastoral Care of Couples Who Are Cohabiting”.

In the letter, Abp. Sheehan forbids couples who are not married in the Church yet living together to receive the sacraments until their situations are regularized, as well as from acting as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and as godparents. Even more remarkably, he instructs pastors to “preach on the gravity of sin and its evil consequences, the 6th and 9th Commandments of God, and the sacramental nature and meaning of Christian marriage”, and insists that “Our catechetical programs in our parishes—children, youth, and adult—must clearly and repeatedly teach these truths.”

Of course, we’ve already gotten a whine from the Fishwrap. In a comment hysterically titled “Sheehan’s threats to cohabiting couples”, Heidi Schlumpf (I’m not making this up; I swear that’s her name) sneers, “It seems Sheehan has no real interest in persuading or teaching, but rather only punishing those who disagree with him. Oh, and making those who already agree with him happy for ‘laying down the law.’” Father John Zuhlsdorf rightfully diagnosed Schlumpf’s complaint: “Bishops who talk clearly and straight, even when they are right … are mean.  They are mean old mean meanies.”

But my purpose here is not to take her argument apart; I leave that to Fr. Z and LarryD of Acts of the Apostasy. Rather, I’d like to compare it with a post recently written by Melinda Selmys of Sexual Authenticity, “God Made Me This Way”.

Only a Christian nation can protect Islamic moderates

In my last job, I had several immediate supervisors over the course of three years. All of them had their strengths and weaknesses, but they were all good people to work under.

My favorite was Shamain. It’s not completely irrelevant that she’s stunningly attractive, very photogenic. However, she’s also a beautiful person. She’s a very empathetic, likeable person with a great sense of humor; she and I, as the saying goes, got on like a house afire.

Her model-quality good looks, I say, aren’t completely irrelevant. Shamain is a Moslem married to a Hindu; under Shariah, Moslem women can't marry non-Moslem men. I would never have found out how beautiful she is, either inside or out, had she worn the burqa. The burqa not only hides women from men’s eyes, it interposes a social wall between them.

It’s because of people like Shamain that people like Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, are at pains to make distinctions between individual Moslems and Islam: “There are many moderate Muslims. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.”

Is "good without God" good enough?

I don't own the rights ... but here it is anyway ....

When I was a kid in the middle to late 1970s, the US Army was suffering from a lack of volunteer enlistments. Most of it was the aftermath of Vietnam … but part of it was also anemic advertising: “Today’s Army wants to join you.” “Join the people who have joined the Army.”

(To be upfront about it, I’m not wild about “An Army of One”, either. I can’t help thinking of George C. Scott’s speech at the beginning of Patton, taken from the general’s actual talks to his troops: “The Army is a team. It works, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This ‘individuality’ stuff is a bunch of crap!”)

It got a little bit better after the US hockey team beat the USSR at the 1980 Winter Olympics, and Americans started to feel good about being American again. Then the Army pulled out its best campaign ever: “Be All That You Can Be”.

Not “Be Most of What You Can Be”; not “Be the Vast Majority of What You Can Be”. The new Army campaign tapped right into the psyche of the people who wanted to prove themselves, who wanted to bring out their fullest potential. Enlistments skyrocketed after that.