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".
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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.
Well, I suppose the obvious Protestant response there is twofold.
Firstly, theoretically, it is not at all clear how the institution of the papacy is meant to guarantee that. Just in functional terms, it does not seem to follow. How does papal infallibility ensure that heresy will never be made teaching? To sustain this claim the Catholics usually need to bring in some bigger claim about divine intervention, whereby God will not allow the occupant of Peter's seat to infallibly teach heresy, but that is using a less plausible claim to support a more plausible one!
Secondly, historically, it is very far from clear that the papacy has done that. For a start, the safeguard you describe has not in fact been used like that - papal infallibility is actually a very recent idea, going back to the late 19th century at the earliest, and there are only two undisputed cases of its use (ironically, both of which I think are probably false). The doctrine has not been used as a safeguard on the essentials of the faith, historically, but rather papal infallibility in actual practice has functioned primarily to advance otherwise-controversial doctrines. If anything I think it is a tool used to justify innovation, rather than a guard on the tradition. Moreover, the Protestant position is that the Catholic Church has taught various errors. We don't need to get into the weeds on the specific ones, but suffice to say if we go back to the Reformation we will find lots of places where Protestants hold that the Catholic Church is substantively wrong on an issue pertaining to faith and morals. Those issues would need to be engaged on the merits.
If I were arguing against myself here the case I would make would be that the overall machinery of the papacy, as it were, is part of a system necessary to preserve fidelity to the gospel, and that it is absurd of me to profess my own fidelity to the gospel while being critical of its vehicle, all the more so because I myself admit an attraction to Catholic worship. The external evidence of this is, well, look around, the Catholic Church remains institutionally willing to defy power and go against political winds, even as every other church bends or breaks. I think that's partly true (certainly the Catholic Church has been more resistant to that pressure that either mainline Protestants or evangelicals, both of which have severe problems with being colonised by a political/ideological tribe), but also partly an instance of presentism, glossing over the long and corrupt history of the papacy and looking only at the present moment.
I would disagree here. Papal infallibility was limited and circumscribed at Vatican I. The definition of infallible doctrine (the Pope, speaking as the leader of the people of God, declaring a doctrine relating to faith or morals, for the promulgation of all the faithful) retroactively helps Catholics understand prior Church documents and identify which items inside contain infallible statements.
Here are some examples of papal ex cathedra declarations before Vatican I:
--Pope Boniface II, Per filium nostrum, 531 AD
--Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, 1864
https://www.academia.edu/36244015/St_Robert_Bellarmine_on_the_Infallibility_of_General_Councils_of_the_Church is a good paper on the topic if you like.
None of those examples look like clear claims to infallibility, to me. They invoke the authority of the see of Rome, but it was hardly in dispute that the papacy claims authority of some kind. Papal infallibility is a much more specific claim about the nature and extent of that authority.
I didn't say they were claims to infallibility, I said they are examples of infallible statements we see in the past, given the definitions of Vatican I.
Oh, fair. Sorry for misreading you.
I'm not sure what significance that is? You can declare statements infallible post facto, but the doctrine of papal infallibility is nonetheless an innovation, surely? Or do you disagree with my assertion that Munificentissimus Deus and Ineffabilis Deus are the only two uncontested instances of papal infallibility? (The latter of which also predates Vatican I, actually.)
My understanding was that because there isn't a clear label, theologians can and often do debate whether exactly which statements come under papal infallibility and which do not.
Yes, I disagree that those are the only two uncontested instances of papal infallibility. There's about 200 or so.
The doctrine of papal infallibility is not an innovation. The four definitions put out by Vatican 1 were present in the early Church, see https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858047945971&view=1up&seq=1 for an argument for this.
Going straight to the section on papal infallibility, from page 53 onwards, this seems... straightforwardly false, to me? It's not true that the pope was understood to have universal jurisdiction, and his argument that universal jurisdiction coupled with the infallibility of the church as a whole body implies the infallibility of the pope seems like a non sequitur. To say that God will not allow the church as a whole body to permanently fall into grievous error does not imply that any particular individual in the church, not even the individual ex hypothesi at its head, cannot fall into error. It certainly does not imply that any such head is authorised to unilaterally promulgate new doctrine.
On the contrary, ancient sources that speak highly of the popes often do so on the basis of the pope's defense of doctrines known to be true some other way - this is what Vincent of Lérins argues, for instance. Vincent affirms some kind of infallibility of the church but without affirming a similar status for the pope. Pope Stephen is praised for his adherence to the tradition of the ancients, which is the relevant authority.
Fortescue cites many examples of ancient authors respecting the pope in some way, which is unproblematic as far as it goes, but then makes the unmerited assumption that all of these statements in the aggregate, none of which individually imply papal infallibility, do collectively imply it. Isn't that absurd?
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