Since @ThomasdelVasto has made a couple "main-Motte" religious posts I thought I'd join in the fun.
I'm a Protestant with strong Reformed leanings. My wife, on the other hand, has just converted to Catholicism. This has led me to explore aspects of Catholic teaching, though necessarily at a surface level given the rich history. Aquinas alone would take months if not years to digest. I expected to disagree on Mary (perpetual virginity, immaculate conception, assumption) and the Pope (infallibility); and I still do (though I was surprised how recently these have become "dogma": I would have found it much easier to be a Catholic in 1800 than today). I am pleasantly surprised at how much weight they place on Scripture, Christ, and Assurance: there are far more shared hymns than I had anticipated, as as an example.
What follows is some of the reflections I had to this surface exploration. I would be thrilled to be corrected or critiqued by any of the Motte's Catholics, if nothing else to better understand my wife's flavor of the Christian faith. Many of these are reactions to "Catholicism" by Bishop Robert Barron, which my wife kindly bought to introduce me to the titular topic. While I presume he is orthodox Catholic, his interpretations may not be universally accepted by Catholics. If I challenge particular arguments from Barron, it should not be interpreted as an argument against Catholicism unless Barron is arguing for Church Dogma. His "Catholicism" is also meant as an introduction and for popular consumption, and his actual beliefs may have more nuance.
As part of this journey (which is certainly not over yet!), I also read (the dense and repetitive) "Divine Will and Human Choice" by Richard Muller and "Christus Victor" by Gustaf Aulén. These, too, have varying degrees of rigor. Muller and Aulén were both Protestants.
God’s freedom
While Reformed theology would affirm that God predestines both those who are saved and those who are damned, Catholics balk at this concept; arguing that this implies a God who would cause sin. God cannot will that which is against his nature. Catholics would appeal to God’s provision and common grace that allows humans consciences to (partially and weakly) discern good and evil. Yet we cannot perfectly discern this apart from divine revelation (scripture). And scripture states multiple times in the Exodus narrative that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Aquinas (as if often the case) provides the most rigorous Catholic argument I’ve heard for this hardening. God through an act of his will withdrew what grace was granted to Pharaoh. Absent God’s grace Pharaoh drew more into his sin. While Aquinas argued this case for the individual case of Pharaoh, it seems consistent to assume that were God to withdraw his common grace more broadly that all would fall into a state where our consciences are no longer capable of even partial discernment of good and evil. This is also consistent with God giving humans over to their lusts in Romans 1.
So far, this interpretation is consistent with scripture, though I am discomfited by the constraints this threatens to place on God: constraints that come perilously close to being primarily informed by our own interpretation or perspective of scripture and sin. God works and wills, including in sin.
Barron, if I read him correctly, goes a step further. He puts the "problem of sin" as one of the best arguments against God. I’ve never understood this as a problem for Christians. It is a deep problem for atheists, who have to explain or excuse their visceral (though often mis-aligned) desire for justice despite no objective basis for these judgments. Christians have no such need to explain or excuse: of course we are all deeply desirous for justice since we have (again, weakly and with great room for error) a sense of what transcendent goodness could be. A consistent perspective on the problem of evil would be that God defines good, and if we don’t understand his actions to be "good" that is a fault (a mis-calibration) of our fallen nature. The fact that Barron does not take this tack hints that he believes humanity’s desire for a "good" God is compatible with humanity’s definition of "good". This runs the grave risk of putting ourselves as a "judge" or external arbiter of God’s behavior.
Barron continues to put a soft face on hard truths. Later in the book, Barron says "God sends no one to hell, people freely choose to go there". This sharply contradicts scripture. Jesus talks about casting sinners into the outer darkness. Peter says the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. John’s Revelation describes those who receive a mark on their forehead drinking the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his anger, and tormented with fire and brimstone. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Again, God is not passive: he works and wills.
How does God work and will (1)? Does God have a an array of potential actions, any of which he can actualize? Yet this runs the risk of these potential actions being "outside" God. Does God create the potentials as he actualizes them? Thus no "possibles" exist for God, simply "actuals"? This also could be seen as a constraint on God and limit his radical freedom. Both these potential concepts of God’s will and freedom (of which I’m sure there are hundreds of alternative concepts) seem to be operating at a level above how Barron conceptualizes God’s freedom. Put crassly, Barron seems to be hinting that God could not "make a triangle a square", that is, that God is constrained by logical impossibilities. But this is such a small view of God. God creates our minds and universe. Our minds invent or discover things like logic, or define things like squares or circles. Whether spawned by our intellect or embedded in the structure of the cosmos, these concepts (including logic!) are part of Creation itself. God created the conditions under which we can model physical reality with math, structure, and logic. Logic is a model. Logos is Truth. Logic is created. Logos is the Creator.
God’s atoning work
The freedom God enjoys in his omnipotence has implications for a theological understanding of Atonement. The "big two" theories of Atonement, Satisfaction and Substitution, emphasize the sacrificial nature of the cross. This sacrificial interpretation retains God’s complete sovereignty with Christ’s death being an act of perichoretic propitiation. The incarnation and death was necessary because of God. It was not necessary because of anything external to God.
Catholics consider Substitution theory, which is the most common concept of Atonement in Reformed circles, to be heresy. Belief in the other concepts of Atonement are allowed. In the Satisfaction theory, which my understanding is that most if not all Catholics affirm, Jesus is our great high priest and a perfect offering, but does not receive the judgement of God. Christ died for our sins, but not in our place.
"Christus Victor" makes the historical case for Ransom theory. In principal, this theory could bring Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox together: the church Fathers at least strongly hinted at Ransom theory being the primary lens through which they interpret the cross, and the church universally recognizes the importance of the church Fathers. Aulén makes the case that Luther was also an adherent to Ransom theory. Yet this theory risks making God subservient to morality or law, proposing that Jesus was paid to Satan in exchange for humanity (2). Uncharitably, this theory makes God beholden to the "laws" of commerce, even transaction with a brigand.
However, I do find Ransom theory to have its merits. In heavily Reformed theology Satan is almost considered an afterthought. Satan plays no necessary role in the arc of human redemption and salvation. Ransom theory, on the other hand, puts Satan in a prominent place: he is either the kidnapper of human souls or is the (legitimate, in some sense) owner of human souls. The exchange of Christ for humanity and the subsequent torture and murder of Christ was simultaneously Satan’s crowning achievement and his destruction. This interpretation echos Jesus’ parable of the landowner who sent servants to collect from the tenants only to have them beaten or killed. The frustrated landowner finally sent his own son, but the tenants murdered him hoping to take his inheritance. At the conclusion of the parable, the chief priests react that the landowner will bring the tenants to a “wretched end”. Christ’s death and resurrection was the ultimate victory over Sin, Death, and the Devil, bringing this triumvirate to a “wretched end”. Indeed, this victory can be interpreted as more complete than Satisfaction or Substitution theories: it not only removes the penalty of sin, but defeats the sin itself.
Conclusion?
I plan to read and think more on this topic. Next on my list is "Deification through the Cross" by Khaled Anatolios. Any other book recommendations are welcome. I'm particularly interested in Catholic perspectives Atonement that go deeper than Barron's book.
(1) As I read "The Divine Will and Human Choice" I had to continuously bite my tongue. My mathematical training was screaming "But Kolmogorov!". Yet Kolmogorov is but a model, and Muller was trying to describe reality. Muller, though, had merely words to try to describe reality and I kept mentally begging for a more rigorous algebraic representation to more clearly and concisely communicate. Of course, the algebraic representation is itself a model, but so are words: anyone who uses ChatGPT or Claude is implicitly recognizing that words are not reality but just a map or model of reality.
(2) In CS Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan (representing Christ) is beholden to the "deep magic".
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not going to go in to bat for any specific theory of the Atonement, which for me is mostly a matter of theological... well, not indifference, precisely, but I would say acceptable diversity. As long as a person agrees that Jesus died for our sins and to redeem and save humanity, I think it is acceptable for Christians to disagree about precisely how. By comparison this is also how I think about the Eucharist; provided we agree that Christ is really, truly present in bread and wine, I think there is a level of acceptable uncertainty and speculation around exactly how.
However, I suppose I should to say a few words in defence of Protestantism. This is always a tricky challenge because Protestantism is by far the most diverse of the three big streams of Christianity (four, arguably, if you count Oriental Orthodoxy as an additional stream to Eastern Orthodoxy), and I will not go in to bat for everything that every zany sect teaches. In particular I am not a Calvinist and therefore see no particular reason to defend capital-R Reformed doctrine.
What I would say, I suppose, is that as a devout Protestant who has several times considered becoming Catholic and always stepped back from the brink, one of the major issues for me is to do with ecclesial authority.
That is, the Catholic Church demands, as the price of entry, a full submission of the intellect. Protestantism is founded on, among other things, the conviction that it is possible for the teaching authority of the church to go astray and therefore for the individual conscience, albeit one well-formed by scripture, tradition, and the life of worship, to validly critique the church. Catholicism denies this and therefore requires a convert to consciously pledge to believe doctrines that he or she may not even be aware of. For that matter it requires a pledge to believe doctrines that may change in the future.
This has been a bridge too far for me - however great my attraction to Catholic worship, that submission is not something I am able to offer. It seems to me to be a kind of idolatry of political or institutional authority. At least if a Protestant wants to convince me of something, that Protestant must try to convince me that it is actually true, by appealing to scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (and it is here that tradition has an authority, albeit one subject to scripture). The Protestant does not say, "this is the teaching of the church and that is the end of the matter". This seems the better approach to me.
Yeah. I mean, I could get into a big slap-fight here over the ways "individual conscience" has led to some very strange wanderings* but basically yeah, and that's why papal infallibility: it's not a guarantee that we'll never go wrong or that individual popes will not be terrible, it's the minimum basic 'heresy will not be made official teaching'.
*It's much too easy to poke fun at Henry VIII, for example, and how amazingly coincidental it turned out that what God wanted was exactly also what Henry wanted. I think he did have genuine scruples and quibbles, but he seems to have blithely ignored contradicting himself when it came to getting what he wanted:
So this Biblical verse applies to me and my situation, but that Biblical verse is only for Law and now we are under Grace. Convenient, as I said.
More options
Context Copy link
That's interesting to me, in light of your earlier mention of the Eucharist. Which branch of protestantism believes (or which branches, plural, believe) that Jesus is truly present in communion? The Protestant churches I've been a part of (non-denominational churches in Wisconsin) just believed it to be a symbolic remembrance that was honored because it was commanded of us, not that it was a sacrament in which Jesus was truly present. But as you said, Protestants are very diverse so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to find that some branches of the Protestant church believe in the real presence.
As far as I'm aware, it's more "abide by" than "believe in". If you don't agree with (let's say) the church doctrine that extramarital sex is wrong, I believe that's ok as long as you are willing to try to live by the teaching under the basis that the church has the authority, duly delegated by Jesus ("whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven", etc), to definitively interpret Scripture. I realize I'm splitting the hair kind of fine there, but the difference seems meaningful to me at least. There are doctrines I think that the church is flat out wrong in their reasoning about (in vitro fertilization, for example), but to the best of my knowledge that's acceptable as long as I'm willing to abide by the teaching and do my best to wrestle with the arguments with an open mind.
However, one thing which is definitely not true, is that people are required to accept a doctrine which might change in the future. Not everything the church teaches is dogma (priestly celibacy is the usual go-to example of something which might change because it's a discipline, not a dogma), but dogma is held to be divinely inspired and not subject to change. If it did (say, if the pope issued an ex cathedra teaching that abortion was morally acceptable), then I would expect people to leave the church in droves because it would turn out to have been untrue that God was preventing the church from committing error.
Lutherans, for a start. I thought the Marburg colloquy was famous and the instance of one of the first big splits among Protestants. Calvin believed that Christ was truly present in the Eucharist, albeit in a spiritual or mystical sense - he did not think the bread and wine literally became the body of Christ, but he did think that Christ was genuinely there and that the believer was united to him. John Wesley also believed in the real presence, though he largely refrained from trying to elaborate on how that presence functioned. The Articles of Religion of the Church of England state that the Eucharist is not merely a sign, but is genuinely a partaking in the Body and Blood of Christ; it firmly rejects transubstantiation, but nonetheless says that Christ is truly received "after an heavenly and spiritual manner". In practice among Anglicans you find both people with a 'high', almost Catholic, theology of the Eucharist, and those with a 'low', almost Zwinglian, theology.
Still, by my count that makes the Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist, and Anglican traditions as all believing that Christ is truly present during communion. I think that makes up most of the world's Protestants. None of them affirm transubstantiation, but transubstantiation, though the Catholic perspective, is but one theory about how Christ is present in the Eucharist.
The Zwinglian view, often called 'memorialism', where Christ is not truly present but the bread and wine are just a symbolic commemoration of the Last Supper, is to my knowledge common among Baptists, and... pretty much only them. However, because the Baptist movement is large and influential in the United States, and has probably shaped most Americans' view of evangelical Protestantism, it seems to be often accepted over there.
Let me give you a concrete example. One difficult point for me was the Assumption of Mary, which is (supposedly) infallibly defined to be true in Munificentissimus Deus. Pius XII's words seem pretty clear: "...if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith".
As far as I can tell, with particular thanks to Stephen Shoemaker's excellent book on early Assumption traditions, this is extremely doubtful historically. The earliest records of any Assumption tradition date from the fifth century - to assert that it's historical you need to posit the existence of some sort of underground tradition in the Near East that preserved this truth long enough for it to emerge into the Byzantine world centuries later, but which church leaders and theologians were somehow ignorant of. Moreover, as you can see in MD, Pius' actual justification for the Assumption is not historical but rather theological - we can reason that this must have happened because it is symbolically fitting, or because it fits with certain presuppositions about death and original sin (which then makes the Assumption rest on the Immaculate Conception, another doctrine that is both infallibly defined and in my estimation highly doubtful).
Can I be a Catholic if I believe that the Assumption of Mary probably didn't happen? It seems unlikely. Pius does not say "as long as you do your level best to understand and receive this doctrine, it's fine". He says that if you willfully call it into doubt, which I certainly do, you have fallen away from the Catholic faith.
Lastly, I note that in the rite of initiation for adults baptised in another Christian tradition (see RCIA study edition) p. 280, the person to be received into the Catholic makes a profession of faith including the Nicene Creed (which I confidently affirm in its entirety) and then the following: "I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God".
Perhaps I am being overly autistic, but I will not say those words unless they are true. And they are not.
Well, it sounds like you have read up and found out that there isn't a clear written tradition before the fifth century that the Assumption happened. But there likewise isn't a clear written tradition that makes it clear the Assumption didn't happen. If Mary showed up later on in a vision and consistently told people, "I am assumed into Heaven" like she did to St. Brigid, it might be true but not known until later.
Mary's final resting place is left mysterious, just like the Ark of the Covenant. What happened to her? It is notable that there are relics galore of so many saints but none of Mary. People have all these stories passed on about this thigh bone belonging to that apostle, and nothing for Mary. And that silence says something. It doesn't get straight to the Assumption, but it does highlight that there is something worth mediating on here.
More options
Context Copy link
Fair enough. I actually didn't know that about RCIA (I was baptized as an infant so even though my parents left the Catholic Church, the church considers me to have been Catholic the whole time), which means I never got asked to make such a profession. I certainly agree with you that you shouldn't make statements which are not true.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link