Have this mind among yourselves

... Which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:5-11).

Jesus the Anarchist Revolutionary-BORING!

For centuries, Catholics have looked on the Corpus of the crucifix and seen there the awful price of their salvation, the cost of their sins: the torture and death of God. “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him’” (Ac 2:38-39).

Jamie L. Manson, writing for the National Catholic Fishwrap, wants us to look up and see another oppressed proletarian victim of the system:

When I read the passion narratives of the Gospels, I don’t hear simply that Jesus suffered and died for our sins. Rather, I hear the four evangelists very clearly say that Jesus’ suffering and death was the will of those who conspired against him—those whose political systems he had undermined, those whose religious convictions he had offended.

Jesus’ passion and death is a result of deeply-human intolerance, jealousy, resentment, hatred, and, most of all, fear.

Jesus’ death may have been the will of God, but it was also the will of both powerful people and ordinary people who preferred unquestioning loyalty to rigid, oppressive political and religious regimes to the profound challenges of God incarnate.

Jesus as a first-century César Chavez. How mundane.

"Kill the Cathlics"

Various crimes have targeted Catholic churches in California in recent years. In January one or more vandals spray-painted the misspelled phrase “Kill the Cathlics” on churches in Anaheim and Irvine.[1]

Sometimes it seems that we Christians aren’t happy if there’s no way we can convince ourselves that we’re being persecuted. At least, that’s what many non-Christians believe, and there were times in the past I would have agreed.

But I felt a frisson climb up my spine when I read this paragraph in a story about the burning of St. John Vianney in Hacienda Heights, California. How is this different from “Kill the Jews” or “Kill the n*****s”? How is this different from any church burned down in the Deep South in the time between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act?

So okay, nobody’s died yet. No priest has been lynched; no bishop is sitting in a jail cell on trumped-up charges; Catholics aren’t wearing yellow crosses or being forced to the back of the bus. So why won’t my hackles lie flat?

Apologetics toolbox: The sola scriptura problems (Part VI)

Scripture and Tradition

In the last part, we talked about the reason that Scripture is insufficient to act as the sole infallible rule of faith: the apostles never expected to teach Christianity out of a book, or even a series of books. There are lacunae in Scripture because the writers took for granted things they expected their audiences to know without being reminded. Moreover, the vast majority of people in the Roman Empire were functionally illiterate or semi-literate; Christianity was not the religion of the elite.

Instead, for most people, learning the faith was a matter of learning symbols, experiencing the liturgy of worship—and oral tradition.

Doctor Timothy Paul Jones, a Protestant minister and educator, cites 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 to illustrate the oral tradition as Paul used it: "For I delivered to you as of first importance that which I also received …." "Delivered" translates the Greek paradidōmi, and "received" paralambanō, which were used in the context of oral tradition. The pattern of and … and … signals the repetition of things to be memorized: that the Messiah died in accordance with Old Testament prophecy, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day, and so forth and so on. The same pattern is also visible in the same letter at chapter 11, verses 23-26, where Paul relates the events of the Last Supper in words that are echoed at every Catholic celebration of the Eucharist.[1]

Apologetics toolbox: The sola scriptura problems (Part V)

Formal sufficiency of Scripture

In Part I, we saw how the basic premise of sola scriptura (only Scripture is infallible) must implicitly contradict Scriptural promises of either the Holy Spirit's guidance or the Holy Spirit's reliability to be true. In Part II, we saw how sola scriptura effectively and logically denies anyone the authority of the Spirit, including the Protestant defender of sola scriptura.

Part III addressed the question of human authority as it affects the composition of Scripture. And in Part IV we looked at the Scriptural citations common to defenses of sola scriptura, and found that you can’t prove the material sufficiency of sola scriptura from them. Ironically, sola scriptura fails the “Show me in the Bible where it says” test.

Let’s be clear on the point: To say it’s not materially sufficient isn’t to say that it doesn’t have a lot. Certainly Jesus, the apostles and the Church Fathers got a lot of mileage out of the Bible, and it’s still the most important resource of the Church today. Nothing that the Church has ever said about sacred tradition or the magisterium of the Church contradicts Scripture’s God-inspired nature; in fact, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were the first to uphold it.

But no one said getting a lot out of Scripture means you can get everything out of Scripture that you need.

Apologetics toolbox: The sola scriptura problems (Part IV)

Material sufficiency of Scripture

In Part I, we saw how the basic premise of sola scriptura (only Scripture is infallible) must implicitly contradict Scriptural promises of either the Holy Spirit's guidance or the Holy Spirit's reliability to be true. In Part II, we saw how sola scriptura effectively and logically denies anyone the authority of the Spirit, including the Protestant defender of sola scriptura.

Part III addressed the question of human authority as it affects the composition of Scripture. Again, the contradiction at the heart of sola scriptura denies the infallible authority of the Spirit to determine the canons: If the Church could be wrong about including the Old Testament deuterocanonical books, then all Christian churches could be wrong about denying a role for the Gospel of Thomas or the Book of Moroni.

In this part, we finally start to address the Scriptural backing for it. If we remember, the first principle of sola scriptura is: Scripture, taken by itself, is sufficient to act as the regula fidei, the infallible rule of faith. Although we haven't addressed this point directly, this is the key claim; if it's not true, then nothing else that follows from it can be true.

Apologetics toolbox: The sola scriptura problems (Part III)

Authority over the Bible

In Part I, we saw how the basic premise of sola scriptura (only Scripture is infallible) must implicitly contradict Scriptural promises of either the Holy Spirit’s guidance or the Holy Spirit’s reliability to be true. In Part II, we saw how sola scriptura effectively and logically denies anyone the authority of the Spirit, including the Protestant defender of sola scriptura.

Part III builds on both the previous parts, because authoritative teaching necessarily entails authority over Scripture’s interpretation and the doctrines that can be derived over it. Since Scripture is literally “God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16, the

ópneustos), giving it God’s authority, the person or institution who attempts to fashion doctrine from it must also have God’s authority to do so if the exercise isn’t to be one of astounding chutzpah verging on hubris.

But before we can decide what doctrines are supported by Scripture, we must decide what books are Scripture. This isn’t as obvious as it looks; besides the Protestant emendations which cast several books out of the Catholic canon, other groups look to add or subtract as befits their needs. For example, the “Jesus Seminar” wants to add The Gospel of Thomas, and the Latter-Day Saints propose the Book of Mormon for our acceptance.

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.