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 -
Yes, this is correct. This does not contradict what I said and it does not contradict what the Church taught previously either.
So consider this - Moses, Elijah, Abraham, these people are uncontroversially saved, right? That is official Church teaching, Abraham is in Heaven, this was known well before the council of Florence. The people at the council of Florence would agree that Abraham is in Heaven and they still wrote what they wrote.
So from the start, we can tell that what Florence is saying here is completely different from how it's been interpreted by various groups (many of whom are Catholic unfortunately.)
What the Catholic Church believes herself to be is the most important obstacle to understanding what she means when she utters statements like this.
They all preceded the formation of Christ's church as current constituted, so it doesn't really seem applicable at all, one way or the other. If you can show me some Jews, pagans, heretics or schismatics who existed after the ascension of Christ who are uncontroversially saved, I am all ears.
I'd be interested in hearing you elaborate on this!
Why should this matter if the formulation is absolute the way it is interpreted? They were Jews and they wouldn't have recognized themselves having any allegiance to a Pope in Rome. Therefore, they will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. That's what the phrase is interpreted to mean when people say that it excludes Protestants or basically everyone who does not consider themselves under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome.
While there are no dogmatic declarations like for Abraham, and sainthood is reserved for Christian role models, we do have records from the earliest times where people outside the church were considered to have been saved:
Acts of Paul and Thecla (c. AD 150) — A deceased non-Christian woman, Falconilla, appears in a dream to her mother Queen Tryphena, asking that the martyr Thecla pray for her soul’s transfer from suffering to happiness.
Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (AD 203) — Perpetua’s prison diary, one of the oldest surviving texts written by a woman, records two visions of her unbaptized younger brother Dinocrates: first in suffering, then in joyful refreshment after Perpetua prays for him.
**Pope St. Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel, 2:3 (540-604 AD): “**The passion of the Church began already with Abel, and there is one Church of the elect, of those who precede, and of those who follow… They were, then, outside, but yet not divided from the holy Church, because in mind, in work, in preaching, they already held the sacraments of faith, and saw that loftiness of Holy Church.”
Abel is an interesting choice because he's not even part of the covenant with Abraham.
So that shows that at one time, Christians assumed that people who died without knowing Christ could be saved. Augustine has compunctions on the case of poor Dinocrates and argues that he could have been baptized as an infant without anyone knowing, but even with that excuse it is still clear he died without being a practicing Catholic.
Though arguing this is perhaps that early Christians believed this, but were the early Christian's Catholic? That's probably one of the points in contention.
I don't know what the authors of Florence read for sure, but I know for a fact that Saints Perpetua and Felicity held wide popularity and they had a publicly celebrated feast day up until the 14th century when Aquinas replaced their calendar day. The Acts of Paul and Thecla also have Latin copies found far and wide.
Ultimately I just don't know enough about what the signatories of Florence had in their libraries to argue too strongly. Hopefully we can agree that Pope St. Gregory the Great was Catholic. Abraham is the better argument for me as his salvation is as assured as anything can be in the Bible.
The Church is the Body of Christ. Christ is the bridegroom and we are the bride. The Church is the New Israel.
All who are baptized with water in a Trinitarian formula are members of the Church. All who are baptized by desire and wish they were members of the Church are members of the Church. All who are baptized by blood and suffer for the Church are members of the Church. This isn't a new teaching or a modern softening of things. The Catholic Church has considered Orthodox sacraments perfectly valid, including and especially baptism. Baptism can be conferred by anybody, even someone who is not a Christian.
I return to Gregory the Great's quote: "in mind, in work, in preaching, they already held the sacraments of faith, and saw that loftiness of Holy Church." With this in mind, consider this:
The Kingdom of Heaven is not just "a set of all those who are saved"/invisible church but instead we are told there are some bad people in it right now who will not be saved but nevertheless are considered in what I would call the Church.
But nevertheless there are some people who are not aware that the Pope in Rome has jurisdiction over them, who are also saved. But all of them are saved through participation in Christ's Body.
Catholics believe the Pope has jurisdiction over the suffering Church on Earth, which would include everyone who is in Christ's Body.
So if I were to rephrase Florence to how I read it with the definitions I have:
Everyone who is saved is saved through a participation in Christ's Universal Church, which is under the jurisdiction of the Pope. This participation needs to happen sometime in their earthly life before their death. They are not saved through merit found in their other faiths, but saved through Christ and His Church.
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