I remember the first time I encountered the word perspicuity. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia and a young Calvinist, having been persuaded to adopt Reformed theology by reading the works of the late R.C. Sproul. I had been accepted to Reformed Theological Seminary, and had already taken my first course there. Reading the Westminster Confession of Faith for the first time, I was in awe of Chapter One, Paragraph Seven:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

I was struck by the confident, succinct wording of the Westminster divines. It encapsulated something I had believed, albeit implicitly, since I was a high-school evangelical. Of course Scripture must be clear, at least on salvation, otherwise how could we have any confidence we were saved? And since our knowledge of Christ and salvation is derived only from Scripture, I thought, then Scripture’s clarity is de facto presumed. Though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it, perspicuity seemed a linchpin doctrine for Reformed theology.

Yet even if I believed in Scripture’s clarity, and now had a more impressive, academic word and historic definition for it, there was something troubling about the doctrine. I had already taken a course at UVA entitled “Paul’s Letters,” which introduced me to the New Perspective on Paul, an academic movement begun in the 1960’s among mostly Protestant scholars. NPP adherents argued that Luther had grossly misinterpreted Paul, including on salvation, misreading the “Apostle to the Gentiles” through the lens of Luther’s own frustrations with late-Medieval Catholicism, rather than trying to understand Paul as a first-century Jew. Most saliently for me as a young, zealous Calvinist, many NPP scholars argued that far from teaching sola fide, Paul believed baptism, among other things, was necessary for salvation and entrance into the covenant. Moreover, they argued, Paul actually believed one could lose one’s salvation.

Understandably, for me the question of the legitimacy of NPP scholarship loomed largest during my years at RTS. I wanted to know: can we have confidence in our Reformed interpretation of Paul? Were NPP interpretations of Paul credible, perhaps stronger than our own? I took a seminary class by Guy Waters, one of the preeminent Reformed critics of NPP, and read his book Justification & the New Perspectives on Paul: A Review and Response, as well as another by Reformed biblical scholar Richard Gaffin, By Faith, Not By Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation. Alternatively, I read NPP advocates E.P. Sanders, N.T Wright and James D.G. Dunn.

Though reading Reformed biblical scholars gave me effective rhetorical ammunition against NPP, I had to confess I remained a novice when it came to biblical interpretation and the various complexities of historical, linguistic, and textual analysis. Though I moved on to other seminary courses and debates, a thought lingered in the back of my mind: if Scripture was so clear, why were so many people, including Protestants, sometimes even Protestants within the same theological tradition, debating not only esoteric issues, but the very core doctrines of the Christian faith? As I’ve written elsewhere at Called To Communion, it was this, coupled with concerns over the canon and interpretive authority — which are intimately related to perspicuity — that ultimately led me to renounce the Reformed tradition in favor of Catholicism.

I. A Brief Summary of The Obscurity of Scripture

Earlier this year, I published a critical assessment of the doctrine of perspicuity entitled The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2023). In this present article, I’d like to briefly summarize the main arguments of that book and address some of the Protestant critiques of it that I’ve observed thus far. My hope is that this will encourage further discussion of my book and the arguments therein, as I believe perspicuity is an overlooked, but deeply foundational (and problematic) doctrine in the Protestant (and particularly Reformed) tradition.

In the first chapter of The Obscurity of Scripture, I describe the various definitions of perspicuity within Protestantism, definitions which are themselves in tension: some say Scripture is clear in regards to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, others that most, if not all of it is. As a former Presbyterian, I am (unsurprisingly) inclined towards the definition supplied by the Westminster Confession Faith. However, in its favor I would note that it is one of the narrower conceptions of the doctrine, and thus more defensible — the more of Scripture that one must prove is clear, the harder the task. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize the wide variance regarding what constitutes Scripture’s clarity, as that fact itself reflects the very same type of irreconcilable divergence one finds in reference to all of Protestantism and its many manifestations.

Though the word perspicuity is not well known today among Protestants, I believe it to be the most bedrock of Protestant doctrines. This is because Protestantism at its heart is a theological system originating from a debate over religious authority: specifically, who has it. Who has the authority to define and interpret the contents of the biblical canon? Even Protestants in “high-church” traditions such as Anglicanism find that authority not in an institution, but in the conscience of the individual Christian. Luther, when pressed at the Diet of Worms, asserted that it was neither right nor safe to violate his conscience, even when confronted with the authority of ecumenical councils. All Protestants, knowingly or unknowingly, inherit that “Lutheran” paradigm of individual interpretive authority, armed with the ability to assess the scriptural veracity of denominations and churches, and free to leave one for another if conscience dictates.

My book addresses what I deem to be four categorical problems with perspicuity. The first of these are the logical and philosophical problems, one of which is the fact that arguments leveled in support of perspicuity presume precisely what is in question (namely, that Scripture is clear), and thus are question-begging. Another philosophical problem with perspicuity is that its adherents must consistently exclude from fellowship or theological consideration those biblical interpretations regarding salvation or the “essentials of the faith” held by other self-described Christians that do not align with their own particular interpretation of the Bible in order to maintain their clarity thesis. This too is a logical fallacy, called special pleading.

The second category of problems with perspicuity is ecclesial. Perspicuity, I argue, elevates the individual at the expense of the church, by transferring ultimate authority from the latter to the former, since it is ultimately the individual who maintains an interpretive “veto” that enables him to depart one church for another, or even found his own, if necessary. Moreover, perspicuity also proliferates opinions among self-described Christians with no means of adjudicating disagreements besides reference to biblical interpretation — which is precisely what is in question — thus creating an irresolvable dilemma within the Protestant paradigm. And perspicuity marginalizes the role of tradition, since the individual Christian is free to choose what traditions he accepts or rejects to aid him in his interpretation of the Bible.

Perspicuity also results in sociological problems. If the Bible is clear, then anyone who disagrees with someone holding to that thesis must have some sort of defect. Otherwise, he would agree with the perspicuity-holding Christian. Consequently, since the earliest days of the Reformation the means of explaining this problem has been to ascribe a problem to the character of one’s interlocutor, whether that interlocutor is Catholic, Protestant, or something else: either he is willfully obstinate in refusing to accept the Bible’s plain language, or he is deceived by the devil, or he is culpably ignorant. All of these explanations presume the best about oneself, and the worst about others.

Finally, I argue that the history of the doctrine of perspicuity since the beginning of the Reformation presents a helpful case study in the disastrous effects of the doctrine. Over the last five centuries, we have witnessed countless divisions among Protestants into various ecclesial communities and theological ghettos over any number of religious disagreements, with no means of adjudicating those divisions besides referral to the individual conscience and its opinion over the Bible’s supposedly plain meaning. These divisions arise from the same “Lutheran problem”: the exaltation of the individual conscience in defining the extent and character of divine revelation, as well as its interpretation.

The second half of my book is devoted to offering a Catholic counter to the doctrine of perspicuity. There is a chapter explaining Catholic dogmatic teaching on the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and the magisterium, and how magisterial interpretive authority provides an effective, objective guardrail for understanding the Bible and Tradition. I discuss how the Church Fathers understood the interpretation of Scripture and address some of the more common Protestant patristic “proof-texts” in favor of the doctrine of perspicuity. I have two chapters engaging the most commonly cited biblical “proof-texts” for and against the doctrine of perspicuity, though my goal there is not to decisively prove one interpretation superior to another, but rather to explain to interested readers how the Catholic tradition has understood pro-perspicuity proof-texts, and what biblical texts the Church cites to support its own understanding of biblical interpretation. Finally, I respond to several of the most common Protestant objections to Catholic critiques of doctrine of perspicuity, as well as to objections to the Catholic interpretive paradigm more broadly.

II. Addressing Criticisms of The Obscurity of Scripture

Having summarized the contents and arguments of my book, I’ll devote the remainder of this article to addressing some of the objections I have observed to The Obscurity of Scripture from various Protestant critics. My hope is that this response will encourage further debate over the merits of the perspicuity thesis, and lead Christians from various ecclesial traditions to consider alternatives to this doctrine. I should also note that some prominent critics of Called to Communion, including Baptist apologist James White and Presbyterian historian D.G. Hart, have criticized my book, but I could not identify an argument in their criticism, and thus I will not be engaging with their comments here (though I certainly welcome arguments from them).

A. Am I Clearer Than Scripture?

One counter-argument begins by posing the question that if Scripture needs an interpretive authority to be understood, wouldn’t my book, as well? Otherwise, the argument goes, I would be asserting myself as clearer than Scripture. For example, a Twitter/X account titled “Operation St Cyprian” posted: “New Catholic book defending the obscurity of Scripture. If the author doesn’t come to my home to read it next to me, will I understand anything? Just assume anyone who takes this position is b/c they’re spiritually dead themselves.”

This retort, I think, derives from a misunderstanding of my argument. My argument is not that all of Scripture is so hopelessly obscure that Christians cannot understand any of it, nor benefit from it. Nor do I argue that individual Christians are incapable of rightly interpreting specific verses of the Bible. Rather, my argument is that Scripture, even if we desire to submit to it as the inspired, inerrant word of God, cannot effect a unity of belief among self-professed Christians regarding what counts as dogma or the essentials of the faith. Thus these two writings (i.e. my book and the Bible) stand in different relations to two different purposes: the former to articulate an argument criticizing the doctrine of perspicuity; the latter as to whether or not it is capable of unifying Christians (as a Catholic, I argue it is not, because God did not intend Scripture to do this absent a magisterial authority).

An example from the history of Christian theological development may help clarify this distinction. The early Church required multiple ecumenical councils to articulate the trinitarian conception of God that many Christians — be they Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox — taken for granted today. Prior to the councils of Nicea (325 A.D.) and Chalcedon (451 A.D.), there was considerable debate on the nature of God, so much so that for a time Arianism, according to which Jesus is not co-eternal nor co-equal with the Father, was a popular position held by many Christians, including some bishops. Arian Christians cited many biblical passages to support their understanding of God. And, even after Chalcedon, Arianism remained popular among some Christians, as it does today, for example, among Unitarians, Oneness Pentecostals, and several denominations within the Sabbatarian tradition, as well as many others.

A Protestant today may claim that he is Trinitarian because it is the clear teaching of Scripture — but the history of the Church, and the continued existence of many non-Trinitiarian self-described Christians undermines that thesis. Indeed, as I studied the historian of Trinitarian theology when I was a seminary student, I realized it was unlikely that I, on my own, without recourse to an authoritative theological tradition, would have been able to formulate the Trinitarian doctrine (e.g. three persons, one nature) promulgated by Nicea and Chalcedon. Thus even if a Protestant today is correct to interpret Scripture as Trinitarian, that Protestant has no means of authoritatively confirming that interpretation apart from reference to his own conscience. And if the Protestant grants that Nicea and Chalcedon have authority over his conscience vis-a-vis religious truth, he would have to provide some principled reason why those ecumenical councils possess that power, and not all ecumenical councils.

I am not claiming in The Obscurity of Scripture that I am clearer than God’s word. Indeed, anyone reading my book without any knowledge of Church history or Catholic-Protestant theological debates would probably find my book somewhat difficult, even obscure. I do my best to present my arguments in a lucid, accessible manner. I readily acknowledge the possibility of failing in that endeavor, especially given that my book is attempting to unite various streams of history, theology, philosophy, and even sociology. Nevertheless, my book is making arguments accessible to human reason, something all persons possess, and over which they exercise a certain natural authority via their will. The perspicuity thesis, in contrast, presumes individual Christians have not only an authority to exercise their intellect to reason about nature, but a certain religious authority: namely, to interpret God’s Word. Moreover, I am not adopting some form of deconstructionism that makes the meaning of texts up to the reader. Rather, I am arguing that Scripture is not perspicuous with respect to a particular purpose: the unity of the Church with regard to doctrine.

B. Responding to Kyle A. Dillon

The most extensive critique of my book thus far has been from Kyle A. Dillon, an assistant pastor at Riveroaks Reformed Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Tennessee, and theology teacher at Westminster Academy in Memphis, Tennessee. In a lecture uploaded to YouTube, Mr. Dillon devotes an hour to engaging (quite charitably) with The Obscurity of Scripture.

i. Do Protestants Affirm Not the Individual’s Authority, But Accountability to God?

In response to my argument that perspicuity necessitates a paradigm in which the individual is the ultimate authority over Scriptural interpretation, Dillon responds: “Protestants affirm not the individual’s authority but accountability to God.” By this, Dillon means that God will hold individual Protestants responsible for their interpretation of the Bible. He adds: “We’re not the ultimate authority, God is”; and “We are only bound to the Word of God.” Dillon asks, by way of comparison, if individual citizens have the right to exercise civil disobedience against unjust laws, does that mean that he/she has authority over the civil government? In other words, per Dillon, just as citizens retain the right to disobey unjust laws — and this does not mean they possess authority over civil government — individual Christians retain the right to reject the teachings of churches which they believe to be erroneous, as long as their reasons are biblically-grounded.

In response, I want to emphasize that I understand that many Protestants, including Dillon, do not believe their theological system places ultimate interpretive authority in the conscience of the individual Christian, but rather they are subject to God as He has revealed Himself through His word. Yet the claim that the individual Protestant is simply obeying God when he reads and interprets the Bible, both presumes the very issue in question (namely, the doctrine of clarity), and collapses the Bible and its interpretation into one another, as if they are the same thing. But they are not the same thing. Scripture is a text, and the reader of Scripture is an individual person attempting to understand the meaning of that text. Thus every time a Protestant reads the Bible and subjects himself to it, he is not necessarily obeying God, but his interpretation of the text.

What of Dillon’s argument comparing how individual Christians relate to their ecclesial communities to the way individual citizens relate to their governments? The premise of this argument is that the way Christians relate to the church is in some respect analogous to the way citizens relate to governing authorities. However, this premise is disanalogous, because citizens do not have ultimate interpretive authority over civil law, which is the point in question with regard to my claim that the doctrine of perspicuity entails a paradigm in which the individual retains ultimate interpretive authority of Scripture. The answer to Dillon’s question — if individual citizens have the right to exercise civil disobedience against unjust laws, does that mean that he/she has authority over the civil government? — is of course no. Citizens must not comply with unjust laws, because they are subject to a higher power, God. And that’s true regardless of the form of civil government. But this obligation not to comply with unjust civil laws does not give citizens interpretive authority over the meaning of civil laws. To be analogous, Dillon’s example would have to make civil law perspicuous in the sense that individual citizens have the authority to decide for themselves what civil laws mean, and establish for themselves legislators and judges who interpret them the way individual citizens do.

There is a further problem with Dillon’s analogy: the citizen, posits Dillon, recognizes that secular authorities exert a coercive power over the individual citizen, but that the citizen reserves the right to disobey those authorities if he determines that those authorities are compelling him to do something that is unjust and a violation of his individual conscience. Thus, it would appear, governing authorities only have as much authority as a citizen willingly grants them. Perhaps you can perceive the tension here.

Dillon’s argument has created a (presumably unintentional) dilemma: having first asserted that perspicuity does not necessitate a paradigm in which the individual has ultimate interpretive authority but rather is subject to a true authority (namely, the word of God), the analogy he uses to press his point is one in which the individual is subject to an authority derivative of others (namely, the consent of the governed). Thus Dillon’s analogy implicitly acknowledges that churches only have as much as authority as their members are willing to grant them. Otherwise, Dillon would have to concede that churches retain the right to coerce their members, even if those members disagree with church teaching. Yet that would violate the very principle of the “freedom of the Christian,” as Luther described it, a concept that rests at the center of Protestantism. This is so because, in the Protestant paradigm, individual Christians are free to reject doctrines or disobey ecclesial teachings they disagree with if those doctrines or teachings are in conflict with their personal interpretation of the Bible. Otherwise, this would violate the individual Christian’s conscience.

In sum, if the authority Protestant churches possess is no different than that possessed by secular civil governments, this only reinforces the claim that perspicuity facilitates a paradigm in which the individual Christian possesses ultimate interpretive authority. The Church, or churches, would be institutions comprised of autonomous individuals, free to change these religious institutions to suit their personal opinions, or disobey, reject, and change them as conscience dictates. God’s Church, it would seem, would be no different than, for example, France and its five republics since 1789.

What if there is a different way to understand the relationship between Christians the Church, one that is not analogous to the way citizens relate to civil government? What if, for example, the Church is not a voluntary association of autonomous individuals who are free to conscientiously object to Church teaching when that teaching is contrary to their personal interpretation of the Bible? Instead, what if those individuals are compelled to obey Church teaching, even if they disagree with it, because they recognize, based on other criteria besides individual biblical interpretation, that the Church has a divinely-originating authority that gives it the right to compel submission of intellect and will?

The Church’s power to do this, of course, would be derived from God, rather than independent of Him. But it would require assent, because of the nature of the authority of the institution. Thus for example, we read in the Catholic Code of Canon Law (¶752):

Although not an assent of faith, a religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium…

The question, of course, is whether or not the Church has such a divinely-originative authority, which is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say for now that Dillon’s argument comparing obedience to churches to obedience to civil authorities fails because it supports, rather than contradicts, the idea that Protestantism is individualistic. Moreover, it would only obtain if we had some reason to believe our obedience to civil authorities is indeed analogous to our obedience to ecclesial institutions, a premise Dillon does not prove.

ii. Does “The Rule of Faith” Resolve Disagreements Among Protestants?

In response to my argument that perspicuity demands a paradigm in which there is no objective criteria by which to resolve interpretive disagreements, Dillon cites the “rule of faith” as an “objective, empirical guardrail,” one that is an “authoritative yet subordinate summary of apostolic teaching” that have been handed down through church history. This “rule of faith,” explains Dillon, relying on the work of Calvinist scholar Keith Mathison, developed from apostolic oral teaching to an uninspired summary of apostolic teaching to fixed formulas for baptismal instruction to semi-formal and later formal creeds, and eventually advanced formal creeds such as the Nicene Creed of the fourth century.

Yet appeals to a supposedly objective and empirical “rule of faith” create more problems than they purport to solve. For starters, there is the issue of what constitutes the rule of faith, and how does one determine what is included therein. For example, it is unclear from Dillon’s presentation what criteria he uses to assess which early church documents or creedal formulas are included in the rule of faith, and which are excluded. Nor, alternatively, is it clear if any of the writings of the early church fathers are included, and, if so, on what grounds.

To take but a few examples, there are the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, the Didache, or the Shepherd of Hermas, all of which scholars assess to have been either in the first half of the second century, or perhaps even earlier, at the end of the first century. Presumably Irenaeus of Lyon would also have some authority, given his writings include the first historical reference to a “rule of faith” (e.g. Against Heresies 1.10 and The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 6). Yet Irenaeus also speaks of the “authority” of the Christian tradition coming from the Apostles (Against Heresies 1.10.2.; 2.9.1), that this apostolic authority was handed down to bishops, the successors of the apostles (Against Heresies 3.3.1), and that the Church of Rome is preeminent (Against Heresies 3.3.2). Indeed, Irenaeus even asserts that if the Apostles had not left writings, the Church would still be able to “follow the order of tradition… handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches” (Against Heresies 3.4.1). Among these traditions include the belief that Mary is the new Eve and that the Eucharist is a real sacrifice. If Dillon is not willing to assent to all of what Irenaeus teaches about apostolic authority and tradition, what standard would he apply by which he evaluates what is legitimately part of the “rule of faith” or not?

Moreover, there is the question of the basis for our confidence that the Nicene Creed is an accurate representation of apostolic teaching, especially given that the creed was itself a refutation of beliefs held by other self-professing Christians in the early church. Indeed, the very end of the Nicene Creed anathematizes as heretical various teachings popular among some Christians. On what basis should we subscribe to the teachings of the council fathers at Nicea — because they possessed some extra-biblical authority, or because their teaching aligns with what is deemed to be the “clear” meaning of Scripture? If the former, how does that authority relate to Scripture? If the latter, the rule of faith seems superfluous given Scripture’s supposed clarity — as Michael Liccione argued in a 2011 CTC essay responding to Mathison — and also to undermine clarity, given so many early Christians disagreed with Nicene doctrines.

The “rule of faith” does not solve the problem of interpretive disagreement stemming from the perspicuity thesis. Rather, it is an ad hoc, arbitrary means of claiming an extra-biblical authority which is supposedly true, not because it itself has authority binding on the conscience of the Christian, but because, according to Mathison and Dillon, it delineates the essentials from the non-essentials (though, notably, the Nicene Creed is silent in regards to what is “necessary for salvation”). It is an example of the arbitrary use of tradition as a supposed authority within the Protestant paradigm, since it is the Protestant who decides what tradition he will label authoritative. Moreover, the rule of faith as presented by Dillon lacks any method for determining what constitutes authentic and inauthentic development of apostolic teaching post-Nicea.

iii. Are All Appeals to an Absolute Authority Circular?

Finally, Dillon claims that all appeals to an absolute authority, and thus my argument that Protestants question-beg in their use of proof-texts to defend perspicuity fails. Dillon declares: “You could say all reasoning is circular.” He cites Protestant thinker Matthew Barrett’s book God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture, in which Barrett argues: “Any appeal to an ultimate authority is necessarily circular. After all, there is no higher authority to appeal to. If there were a higher authority outside of Scripture to appeal to, then Scripture would no longer be the highest authority (and Sola Scriptura would be compromised).” Moreover, Dillon argues, “you could say there is a circular argument for accepting magisterial authority, too.”

Dillon then says: “We should expect its [Scripture’s] clarity to be self-evident,” and says that clarity is “self-evident” for those who use “ordinary means” — such as relying on biblical preaching, reading Scripture within a Bible-believing community, and consulting various biblically-faithful extra-biblical sources — and are guided by the Holy Spirit. Dillon compares this “self-evident” quality to the type of certainty that one has regarding the knowledge that the total degrees of a triangle is 180 degrees.

Let’s first consider Dillon’s and Barrett’s argument regarding circular reasoning. Are all appeals to a higher authority necessarily circular, and thus to presume the perspicuity of Scripture is an “acceptable” form of question-begging? One immediate problem with this argument is that it grants that there is no means of actually debating the veracity of the perspicuity of Scripture, because Dillon is arguing that adherents to the perspicuity thesis are permitted to commit a logical fallacy. This is so, argues Dillon, because Scripture’s clarity is “self-evident.” Yet that amounts to nothing more than simply asserting that Scripture is clear, as if one’s interlocutors are simply supposed to accept one’s opinion despite whatever concerns they have.

To wit, Scripture’s clarity is quite obviously not self-evident to all those who disagree with the perspicuity thesis, which would seem to suggest that Scripture is not self-evidently clear. And the only way to explain this problem, as I argue in my book, is to impugn some sort of character defect to everyone with whom one disagrees, thus explaining why so many people do not recognize something that is purportedly “self-evident.” Yet on what basis does one presume oneself to be the one to whom God has revealed what is self-evident, while all one’s interlocutors are wrong, be they willfully ignorant, obstinate, or deceived by the devil?

Moreover, the claim that all appeals to an ultimate authority are circular amounts to nothing more than fideism, the idea that faith is not informed by reason, but simply an exercise of the will. Yet if all arguments are mediated to us through our intellects, they must be evaluated based on reason, which is composed of the human powers of intellect and will. Thus, for example, we believe that the three sides of a triangle equal 180 degrees because it conforms to reason, and our intellects, properly formed, are capable of grasping that truth. It is not because the nature of triangles is “self-evident” to us. Or, alternatively, we believe in the existence of God because His existence conforms to reason communicated via arguments, not because He is “self-evident.” Indeed, the classic Thomistic arguments for the existence of God (“the Five Ways”) are appeals to an ultimate authority that are not circular, but rather argue from effects to God as first cause.

Granted, there are things in the Western philosophical tradition called “first principles” — foundational propositions or premises that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or premise, at least not directly. First principles include such axioms as the whole is greater than the parts, or that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time (the law of non-contradiction). To argue otherwise would be self-defeating for any attempt to think reasonably. Belief in Holy Scripture as an ultimate authority that operates in the same way as reason is also self-defeating. Christians should believe in the veracity and divine origin of Scripture because they are persuaded by reasonable arguments — demonstrating, again, that it is reason that is the operative authority — about the Bible’s veracity and origin, not simply because we assert the Bible’s veracity and origin based on our interpretation. Otherwise, why not believe in the Quran or Upanishads, Buddha or Odin, if their veracity or divinity is established by mere arbitrary assertion? If we abandon reason as the means by which we evaluate arguments regarding Scripture or God, all we have left is either emotivism (e.g. “I believe X because X feels right to me”) or purely random arbitrary choice, a cast of the dice.

Dillon’s claim that “you could say there is a circular argument for accepting magisterial authority, too” fails for similar reasons. The Catholic Church does not argue that people should trust in her authority simply because it asserts that it represents God. Rather, it teaches that people should accept its authority because it is grounded upon evidence accessible to human reason, such as the motives of credibility. We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church §156:

So “that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit.” Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability “are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all”; they are “motives of credibility” (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is “by no means a blind impulse of the mind.

Granted, the Church understands that accepting the Catholic Church to be who she claims to be requires an act of faith, which itself requires the assistance of the Holy Spirit. But it is a faith informed by reason. The Catholic Church does not claim people should accept its claims because it is an ultimate authority, because it says so — that would be circular and self-defeating. Rather, one assents to the Church because he or she has come to be convinced (both by reason and by the motives of credibility, as well as by grace) that the Church is who she claims to be.

Dillon and Barrett’s argument also elides the problem that the proof-texts cited by pro-perspicuity adherents to affirm scripture’s clarity are interpreted differently by those who do not affirm perspicuity. Why must Dillon and Barrett’s interpretation be right, and not someone else’s? Thus all that Dillon’s argument amounts to is this: “My interpretation of these proof-texts demonstrates that scripture is clear to me and those who agree with me.” Yet, as I’ve argued above, to argue this way collapses the text into one’s personal interpretation of that text, as if they are the same thing. This would consequently mean either that Dillon and Barrett are themselves God, or that they have been given some manner of divinely-derivative authority to rightly interpret the Bible on God’s behalf. I know Dillon and Barrett would reject the former. The latter is precisely the paradigm necessitated by perspicuity, placing religious authority in the conscience of the individual.

Please permit me one more observation before I close. Dillon, channeling Barrett, argues that if one granted there to be an authority outside of Scripture to which one could appeal, this would vitiate sola scriptura. Yet this argument presumes sola scriptura, which is another issue of fundamental disagreement between Protestants and Catholics, and is thus yet another form of question-begging. It is to effectively say “we cannot grant X, because to grant X would be to undermine Y, which cannot be questioned.” Yet such an argument is antithetical to both reason and ecumenical dialogue, since it refuses to evaluate the legitimacy of a contested presupposition, and because it de facto refuses to identify common ground from which one can debate an interlocutor. Anyone seeking to argue in good faith must reject such self-serving assertions.

III. Concluding Remarks

I would like to thank Kyle Dillon for reading and engaging with my book. It is, thus far, the most substantive response to my arguments regarding perspicuity. Indeed, I have sincere respect for any person who attempts, in good faith, to understand and engage with the arguments I have offered in The Obscurity of Scripture. Indeed, I believe Pastor Dillon, to his credit, has very much sought to charitably present and refute my arguments against the perspicuity thesis.

Nevertheless, Dillons’ arguments in favor of perspicuity fail. They fail not because of any defect in Dillon himself, but because the perspicuity thesis fails, and has failed, for five centuries of Protestant history. Late in my time as a Presbyterian seminarian, I recognized that failure. My prayer is that Dillon and many other Protestant Christians, Reformed and others, will, through the arguments presented in my book, come to the same conclusion. Until they do, I very much welcome further critiques of The Obscurity of Scripture.

Event: Creation, Nature, and Grace: Catholics and Reformed in Dialogue

Dates:  28 & 29 April 2023

Location: Angelicum, Aula Minor

Schedule:

Friday, 28 April

11:00 Welcome and Introduction

11:05 – 13:15  What is Creation and How Do We Know About It?
– Simon Oliver (Durham University)
– Mariusz Tabaczek, OP (Angelicum)

14:00-16:15  Original Righteousness, Nature and Grace before the Fall?
– John Bowlin (Princeton Theological Seminary)
– Simon Gaine, OP (Angelicum)

16:30-19:00  Image of God and the Effects of Sin
– Michael Allen (Reformed Theological Seminary)
– Euan Grant (University of St. Andrews)

Saturday, 29 April

11:00-13:15 Christ the Fulfilment of Creation: How So?
– Oliver Crisp (University of St. Andrews)
– Aaron Pidel, SJ (Marquette University)

14:00-16:15  Created Mediations: Is the Church a Part of Creation?
– Hyacinthe Destivelle, OP (Angelicum)
– Keith Johnson (Reformed Theological Seminary)

16:30-18:45 Eschatology as First Philosophy: What Ends for Creation?
– Judith Wolfe (University of St. Andrews)
– Bruce McCormack (Princeton Theological Seminary)

Summary of the day: Both reformed and Roman Catholic Christians agree on the fundamental Scriptural claim that the human being is made in the image of God but also affected by the consequences of original sin and that the same human being can be re-created by the grace of Christ. However, historical disagreements also exist about original righteousness, the effects of sin, and the natures of justification and sanctification. This conference seeks to bring together contemporary Catholic and reformed theologians of the highest qualifications to discuss creatively the existence convergences and ongoing relational differences between reformed and Roman Catholic interpretations of the Christian revelation. The aim is to model a genuine ecumenical dialogue marked by the recognition of historical differences and the acception of them in the midst of the search for common truths. All are welcome to attend. Sponsored by the Agape McDonald Foundation.

Registration: https://forms.gle/Fe66BBf1A7r5W8197

Event site link.

By Hannah Brockhaus

Rome Newsroom, Mar 10, 2022 / 12:00 pm

“The first Catholic Mass in nearly 500 years was celebrated at a cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland, last week for the vigil of the First Sunday of Lent.

The last Mass celebrated at St. Pierre Cathedral took place in 1535. After the Reformation, the building was taken over by John Calvin’s Reformed Protestant Church, which destroyed the cathedral’s statues and paintings, and banned Catholic worship.”

[continue reading at Catholic News Agency]

I confess I’m not one for exotic vacations. Before we were married, I joked with my wife that I would be perfectly happy to go on a mission trip to some unchurched land for our honeymoon; she, being the more reasonable one, wasn’t so thrilled with the idea. The very last thing I wanted was to sit on some Caribbean beach, casually sipping daiquiris and wasting away the hours in some otherwise poverty-stricken country. 

It’s highly ironic, then, that my family for three years lived in Thailand, ground zero for exotic beach destinations in Southeast Asia, with its pristine, warm-to-the-touch, cerulean waters, its cheap yet delicious cuisine, and its effusively welcoming hospitality industry. Since returning to the United States, we have often been asked by friends or acquaintances what we liked best about Thailand. Surely its vacation spots, food, or foreign culture is the expected answer. They are taken aback when I tell them the best thing about Bangkok is its predominantly Christian asylum-seeker community.

A Haven for Asylum Seekers

I was entirely unaware that the Asian metropolis had such a community when my family arrived in the summer of 2014. Like most expats who move to Thailand, we had been told to expect sky bars, spicy food, and some of the best beaches in the world just a short jaunt away. We bought a car with the expectation of taking weekend excursions south to Pattaya or Hua Hin, or northward to the elephant-populated national parks. But our very first Sunday at the Catholic parish nearest to our residence exposed us to a very different expat experience.

In a city like Bangkok, one would expect to see a diverse, multinational crowd at any downtown church. There were large numbers of Thais at the church we attended, but also many Westerners, Filipinos, and Africans, and a significant minority of South Asians as well. I introduced myself to one who was distributing bulletins in the outdoor vestibule. He was from Pakistan—as were the other fifteen members of his family, natives of the megalopolis of Karachi who had fled persecution at the hands of Muslim extremists. 

His name was Wilson, and we quickly developed a friendship, his humble and gracious personality—and that of his family—being spiritually magnetic. As my family and his became friends, we learned remarkable details regarding their exodus story. They had been a large, well-respected, middle-class Catholic family in Karachi. Wilson and his wife were both registered nurses; his brother was a medical doctor. 

Trouble started when Pashtun migrants—the same ethnicity as the Taliban who dominate the westernmost provinces of the country—began to harass Wilson’s family. They falsely accused his brother of desecrating a Koran, an offense that often triggers mob violence. The brother fled the country. Two nieces were then abducted and set on fire. I can attest to the veracity of their story: they showed me the burn marks on their torsos. A sister was threatened, went into hiding, and was never heard from again, presumably abducted or killed. So Wilson, with the aid of his bishop, acquired passports for his entire family and took a one-way flight to Bangkok.

Why Bangkok? Because, for more than a decade, the city has been known as a haven for asylum seekers and refugees from across Asia and Africa. Precisely because its economy relies so heavily upon tourism, Thailand has maintained a notoriously relaxed entry policy: visitors can easily acquire a 30-day visa upon arrival. Those same visitors can quite effortlessly overstay their visa without attracting much attention from the Thai authorities. Thus, all manner of people—from religious and ethnic minorities to political dissidents to economic migrants—have made their way to Thailand. Many are from Pakistan, but I also met people from Burma, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the former Soviet republics of central Asia. 

Ecumenism in Charity at the IDC

For many, including Wilson’s family, getting into the country is just the first step in the long and arduous process of obtaining official refugee status. Once the Wilsons made friends found friends at church willing to help them find housing, they applied for such status to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This process can take years, with the very real possibility that one’s application will be rejected in the end, in which case there is little choice but to return home. In the interim, one is deemed an “asylum seeker,” meaning that he has no formal legal status in the host country, and thus is entirely subject to the whims of the local police and security services. In this respect, Wilson’s family are some of the lucky ones—they have never been apprehended by the Thai police and taken to the infamous international detention center, or IDC.

As my wife and I opened up to more Christian asylum seekers at our parish, we encountered some who had either spent time in the IDC or were under serious threat of being detained there. With the asylum-seeker population estimated to number well over 10,000, the Thai authorities have plenty of targets to choose from. One such person, Michael, along with his wife and three children, became very dear to us. Michael was one of the most pious people I had ever met. He and his wife made and sold rosaries after church. He often journeyed from their one-bedroom apartment across town to attend daily Mass—a dangerously long pilgrimage for someone trying to avoid the authorities. After Mass, he would solemnly make his way to the altar, where he would kneel, hold his rosary aloft, and loudly offer a litany of prayers, begging Jesus to intervene on behalf of his family. When their refugee application was denied, Michael decided to turn himself and his family into the IDC.

We immediately began visiting Michael and his family at the IDC. The scene was emotionally and spiritually overwhelming. Every weekday, visitors like ourselves, carrying all kinds of foods and other goods, lined up at 10:00 a.m. to meet with the detainees, while Thai authorities barked at us, moved us from place to place, and often rejected various items that we had brought, seemingly with no reason. Scores of prisoners in orange prison clothes would then be corralled into a long hall behind a wire fence to see their visitors. Individuals on the two sides would take turns shouting at each other, trying to be heard above the din of a hundred other voices.

It was during those initial trips to the IDC that we began to recognize the ecumenical response to Bangkok’s asylum-seeker crisis. One group of women—all members of the Church of Latter Day Saints—scheduled remarkably well-organized weekly visits to the detention center, maintaining an extensive log of all the detainees they knew inside (some Mormon, but many others Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox, or even Muslim) and of when those detainees had last been visited. The ladies brought a plethora of supplies to the jail: fruit, noodles, cookies, juice—all kinds of little luxuries the prison authorities would never serve the inmates. 

My wife and a close Evangelical friend frequently joined the LDS ladies on their weekly visits. When I could arrange leave from work, I would accompany them. In a small coffee shop across the street from the IDC, groups would congregate to prepare supplies for various inmates. There I met an Evangelical missionary from Texas who had brought along his teenage children. “I want them to see this so they understand how much an American passport is really worth,” he told me. 

Another time, while exchanging high-decibel words with our Pakistani friends through the wire fence, I noticed a group of young American Evangelicals reading Scripture to a group of Pakistani Evangelical asylum seekers—in Urdu, with an Urdu-language Bible. I once saw a woman from my parish at the IDC, later discovering that she periodically led a group of French Charismatic Catholics to visit inmates. Yet again I witnessed a visitor and an inmate who I presumed were speaking Russian (the inmate had Orthodox iconography tattooed on his body) try in vain to persuade the Thai authorities to allow a pack of cigarettes to be passed across the fence. This was truly an international and ecumenical operation!

Things Different, Things Shared

Over the course of three years, refugees and asylum seekers became some of our closest friends in Bangkok. This is not to say that we enjoyed the kind of relational or conversational familiarity that so easily exists between people of the same culture. Communication between us and those we sought to know—and help—was always difficult. There was, of course, the language barrier, with most of them speaking broken or limited English. There were also socio-economic barriers—what does a middle-class white American talk about with poor, marginalized asylum-seekers from across Asia and Africa? “How was your week? You spent it trying to avoid the Thai authorities, looking for menial jobs, and eating the same rice and noodles every day? Wonderful! How was mine? Well, I got to go wherever I pleased, spent an evening stressed out about my backhand slice, drank beer at a nice skybar . . .”

All the same, we sought to connect with and enter into their lives. Smiles, greetings, questions about the health of family members, and jokes about a priest’s homilies were all an effort to show that we loved them, that we were on their side. Our children played together after church. Pakistani families would make us traditional food to take home—it was so spicy I was often the only one who would eat it. In time, we discovered how much we shared with them—yes, we had different sufferings, different hopes, different needs; but we also shared sufferings, hopes, and needs. 

One such suffering involved my wife, who has celiac disease. This means that in receiving Holy Communion in many places around the world, she needs to drink from the chalice to avoid eating too much gluten. In Thailand, the disease is practically unheard of, and many Thais, including some priests, scoffed at what they perceived was an attempt to get special white-person treatment. Yet Pakistani asylum-seeker altar servers every week ensured that the celebrating priest reserved a small cup of wine for my wife. My family was incapable of helping with their biggest appeal—to be ensured of a “refugee” designation by UNHCR—but we could assist with the little stuff: drafting an email in polished English, conducting research on the Internet, donating used clothes.

Investing in this community was not always convenient. Many times, as I left the church after weekday Mass, usually in a hurry to make a meeting at work, asylum seekers would approach me begging for money. Often the request would come with a heartbreaking story I simply did not have time to hear. At other times, the stories bordered on the humorous. Once an Ethiopian Orthodox man approached me on the street to tell me his story—one marked by adventure, loss, and poverty. He concluded by telling me: “You’ve been to Ethiopia. You know our faith in Christ. You know people from my country don’t lie.” As if an entire nationality could claim perfect fidelity to the Ninth Commandment!

Ultimately, the experience fundamentally changed the way my family viewed our calling as followers of Christ. In the many poor, persecuted Christians we encountered at church and in the IDC, we saw the face of Christ. Indeed, it was through our attempts to suffer alongside our tortured brethren that we were thrust into some of our deepest, if not most painful, spiritual moments. In the wounds and scars of Pakistani Christians, we discovered those of our Savior. Is this not what we should expect from a Lord who so intimately identified himself with his Church? It was indeed Christ who asked the Pharisee of Pharisees on the road to Damascus: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4, emphasis added). With such an epiphany, how could we not rush to serve our Lord himself, who declared, “Whatever you did for the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:45)?

Staying & Leaving

Eventually our three years in Thailand approached their conclusion. While some of our Pakistani friends remained there, others—maybe providentially—also found their time in Bangkok reaching an end. The Wilson family’s application to UNHCR was rejected, as was their subsequent appeal. Yet there they stayed, week in, week out, serving at the church and praying that one of the rumors that some other country (Canada? The Netherlands?) might take them in would prove true. After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Wilson pulled me aside after weekday Mass. “I hear your new president is a very holy man, and that he will allow us to come to America,” he said. “No,” I hesitated, “I don’t think that’s quite accurate.” A week before we left Bangkok, I was welcomed into his home to share one last lunch on the floor of one of the three small rooms that constituted the entire Wilson family residence. We talked, we prayed, we took pictures, and I departed entrusting their fate to our gracious Lord.

For Michael and his family, eight months in the IDC were enough. Every family member had suffered some type of debilitating sickness, their son so terribly that a Filipina benefactress persuaded the Thai authorities to allow the boy—quite unconventionally—to be transferred to her care. Just as my own family was preparing for our trans-Pacific move, Michael declared to me that he had lost hope that staying in Thailand was a better option than returning to Pakistan—conditions in the IDC were that terrible. 

Within a few days, we, in coordination with an extended network of faithful friends representing a dozen nationalities across many time zones, worked to arrange all the necessary documents and funds required to ensure the family’s safe return to their native land. I even temporarily became the guardian of Michael’s son before he was returned to his family—some Thai immigration ministry form, now probably locked away in a forgotten filing cabinet, attests to that fact, with my signature! A few days before my own family departed Thailand, Michael, his wife, and their three children boarded a plane back to Karachi, back into the jaws of the persecutors who had driven them out of the country five years before.

Caring Across Traditions

As we returned to our own native land, far removed from our persecuted, imprisoned, or impoverished brethren, several thoughts stirred in my unwary soul and reverberated in my muddled intellect. On the one hand, I was inspired by how the plight of the oppressed had served as the impetus for such beautiful ecumenical moments, when a common call to care for Christ and his Church had drawn people from such varied religious, national, and linguistic backgrounds to the same places and faces. Catholics, Evangelicals, and Mormons were all at one point on Michael’s visitor list at the IDC. Never once during all those visits did anyone bother to debate or condemn another religious tradition. We were simply too busy doing the work of Christ to bother with something that seemed—by comparison—so peripheral. 

This is not to say that debate and criticism isn’t a healthy, essential aspect of ecumenism. Indeed, I would never endorse an indifferentism that elides the essential differences between Catholicism and other religious traditions. Ecumenism, properly understood, does not mean that we downplay or ignore our theological and ecclesial divisions, which are real, and are impediments to realizing true unity. Nor does it mean that Catholics should in any way compromise their faith when interacting with members of other faith traditions, which would undermine the Church’s witness as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in an era which so desperately needs Catholicism’s theological coherence, clarity, and integrity. Ecumenism means charting an authentic middle way between the extremes of capitulating to an indifferentism that views other religions as simply a different manifestation of our own, and viewing people of other religious traditions as scorned members of a lower caste, as Jews in the New Testament viewed Samaritans.  Ecumenism means identifying, acknowledging, and debating our differences, often passionately, but also recognizing that there are times when collaboration in works of mercy can accomplish some greater good. Indeed, that effort itself is a way of making progress in the divine mandate to follow Christ, be His witness, and pursue the unity He prayed for in John 17. People are more open to learning about our own unique faith tradition when they have reason to trust us, and when we have earned social capital with them.

Sometimes certain realities — like the existential threats to Christians — must force us to reevaluate and re-contextualize our differences and work to ensure that all those who identify as Christian are not overrun by the forces of evil. Such has been the clarion call of Christian ecumenical movements since the First Crusade, Lepanto, and the Second World War. Alexios I Komnenos, Pope Pius V, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer all shared a common ability to perceive the kinds of danger that threatened the very survival of anyone identifying as a Christian. I discerned that same aptitude in so many of the interactions I had with men and women across the spectrum of Christianity in Bangkok.

On the other hand, this unique ecumenical experience, aimed at addressing the needs of the persecuted and the marginalized, helped me see the biblical roots of just such a mission. Scripture is filled with stories of immigrant peoples in need of a haven: Abraham fled to Egypt during a great famine (Gen. 12:10); the entire Israelite community, numbering 70 people, later fled once again to Egypt in the face of another famine (Gen. 42–47); and David, on the run from King Saul, sought asylum with the king of Gath (1 Sam. 21:10). Most importantly, the Holy Family fled the murderous King Herod by seeking refuge in Egypt (Matt. 2:13–23). 

My point is not political—all pro-immigration policies are not inherently divinely sanctioned, nor are anti-immigration policies de facto censured by the biblical record—but the desire to help asylum seekers and refugees, which was evident in every Christian tradition I encountered in Thailand, suggests to me that God has placed deeply in any soul singed by his Holy Spirit a passion for the lost, the oppressed, and the wayfaring. The current political atmosphere in America, which defines our own immigration debate, had, I think, clouded my ability to see that prior to my time in Thailand. 

Since return stateside in 2017, my family has been eager—anxious, even—to locate those in this truly blessed and prosperous land who, whether their suffering is religious, economic, or political, are in need of a friend. Indeed, our Lord has called us to that very task. Yet if I’m entirely honest, I admit that I need such persons more than they need me, for it is in their faces that I discover the face of the risen Lord.

Steven Nemes

Why Remain Protestant?: Part I

Steven has presented his argument in two parts, one video for each part. Below I lay out and respond to the arguments in Part 1, and then do the same for Part II. All quotations from Steven’s videos are referenced by the minute from which they are taken from the video from which they are taken.

Steven’s first argument for why Protestants should remain Protestant begins with the claim that the “Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches associate themselves with particular teachers in a way that goes contrary to Christ’s teaching.” (2′) To defend this claim he refers (3′) to Matthew 23:8-10, where Christ says, “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father — the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.”

After describing how Christ’s words applied to the Scribes and Pharisees (5′ – 9′), Steven then claims that while the Catholic Church agrees that “in the truest and ultimate sense” that there is only one teacher, namely, Christ, in practice the Catholic Church contradicts this by prioritizing “tradition to Scripture.” (9′) He adds that the Catholic Church “set[s] up teachers alongside Christ, contrary to what Christ says to His disciple.”(9′) Here he is referring to the Magisterium, namely, the Pope and the bishops in communion with him.¹ Steven then claims that Catholics put bishops “alongside Christ rather than under Him as His students.” (10′-11′) He claims that the Catholic church puts forward “certain students as though they were just as reliable as the Teacher Himself, namely the holy fathers and the Magisterium of the Church when speaking under certain conditions.” (12′)

In order to explain the flaw in Steven’s argument, I need to say something first about the Catholic understanding of the relation between Scripture and sacred tradition. In the Catholic tradition we rightly approach Scripture in the Church and through sacred tradition. That is because in the Catholic tradition, Scripture belongs to the Church, and comes to us through the Church, and through the shepherds Christ has established in His Church. This relation between Scripture and the Church is illustrated by the fact that the Church determined which books belong to the canon of Scripture and which do not. Although scholars can and do study Scripture as if it is not sacred, and outside of its ecclesial context, nevertheless, as a sacred text it belongs properly to the divinely established community who received it, namely, the Church, and is understood rightly according to the tradition handed down within that community. This is a very different paradigm from the Protestant paradigm regarding the interpretation of Scripture. See, for example, my essay “The Tradition and the Lexicon.”

This paradigm difference can be seen in Tertullian’s statement that “heretics ought not to be allowed to challenge an appeal to the Scriptures, since we, without the Scriptures, prove that they have nothing to do with the Scriptures.”² Hence as I wrote in my dialogue with Michael Horton in 2010:

Tertullian here shows that those who are not in communion with the Apostolic Churches have no right to appeal to Scripture to defend their positions, because the Scriptures belong to the bishops to whom the Apostolic writings were entrusted by the Apostles. Since the Scriptures belong to the bishops, those not in communion with those bishops in the universal Church have no right to challenge what the bishops say that the Scriptures teach. The sacred books do not belong to them, but to the bishops to whom the Apostles entrusted them. Since the Scriptures belongs to the bishops and have been entrusted to them, they have the right and authority to determine its authentic and authoritative interpretation.

In the Catholic tradition heresy is not determined by interpreting Scripture apart from Scripture and sacred tradition, and then measuring candidate doctrines against one’s interpretation of Scripture. Rather, before we even get to the interpretation of Scripture, we have to consider to whom Scripture belongs, who has the authority to determine how it is to be interpreted, and by what rule or tradition it is to be interpreted.

Now consider Steven’s argument. Steven is making use of a notion from the Protestant tradition, according to which Scripture is not to be understood through what Catholics understand as sacred tradition, to arrive at an interpretation of Matthew 23:8-10. In Steven’s interpretation of Matthew 23:8-10, based on this Protestant notion, to be a student of Christ entails not having Magisterial authority, and not having what the Catholic Church refers to as the gift of infallibility, since those two qualities would place certain students of Christ “on the same level as the Teacher.” (13′) On the basis of this notion from the Protestant tradition regarding how to approach and interpret Scripture, Steven infers that what Jesus said in Matthew 23 in criticism of the way the Scribes and Pharisees used their traditions, applies also to how the Magisterium of the Catholic Church treats sacred tradition, which, according to the Catholic Church was received orally from the Apostles and preserved in the liturgies and the writings of the Church Fathers. In this way Steven treats his interpretation of Matthew 23:8-10 as the authoritative standard by which to determine that the Catholic Church contradicts Christ, and that therefore Protestants should remain Protestant.

But Steven has not shown that Matthew 23:8-10 contradicts Catholic doctrine; he has only shown that his interpretation of Matthew 23:8-10 contradicts Catholic doctrine. The Catholic Church, and I as a Catholic, assent by faith to the authority and truth of Matthew 23:8-10, but not to Steven’s interpretation of Matthew 23:8-10. By presupposing the Protestant tradition in his hidden premise, i.e. that Scripture is not to be understood through sacred tradition, Steven’s argument presupposes the point in question between Protestants and the Catholic Church, namely, it presupposes the truth of Protestantism and the falsehood of Catholicism. His argument concludes that Catholicism is false, on the basis of an assumed premise that Protestantism is true, and that is circular reasoning. What leads him to make this mistake is not ignorance of logic, but the faulty assumption that his Protestant approach to Scripture is theologically neutral when in fact it is theologically loaded.

Later in his video Steven addresses one objection to his argument:

“Now the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic will say Christ has given authority to the teachers of the church to define dogma and to establish the limits of the faith against heretical opinion. It’s as if they were to say the teacher has given certain students the authority definitively to establish certain teachings as unquestionable. But this point has to be qualified. After all the scribes and pharisees could have claimed the same thing for themselves in response to Christ’s criticisms. It is true that the Church has the calling and the authority to define its faith but it doesn’t follow that every purported exercise of that authority is valid or true.” (16′)

Steven is correct that we should avoid credulity. But he implies here that the only way to avoid credulity is to disbelieve claims to Magisterial authority. And that conclusion does not follow from the obligation to avoid credulity. The motives of credibility give us reason to believe that God has given divine authority to the Apostles and their successors. In this way we (Catholics) are neither in a condition of credulity, since we have motives of credibility, nor are we rationalists, since by faith we obey God by obeying our divinely appointed leaders and submitting to them. (cf. Hebrews 13:17)

Regarding the Catholic understanding of Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, where Jesus says “whatever you bind on earth shall be should be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” Steven says:

“but I respond that what Christ says applies to Peter and to the Apostles since He was talking to them but not necessarily to those who come after them.” (17′)

Here again Steven is using the Protestant approach to Scripture (i.e. apart from sacred tradition), to interpret it as he thinks best, and then using that interpretation to oppose Catholic teaching regarding the authority of bishops and the Magisterium. Since he does not find in Scripture a clear prescription for apostolic succession and the continuation in the episcopal successors of the Apostles of the binding and loosing authority Christ gave to the Apostles, he concludes that the episcopal successors of the Apostles do not necessarily have this binding and loosing authority. But in the Catholic tradition, part of what belongs to sacred tradition, through which we come to Scripture, is the insight that this authority does remain in the Church through the successors of the Apostles.³ So here too Steven’s argument is built on a hidden premise, namely, that Scripture is not to be understood through the sacred tradition. And for this reason, just as above, his argument presupposes the very point in question between Protestants and the Catholic Church.

Steven claims that the only appropriate way for the Apostles to bind and loose was by seeing what God had already bound or loosed in a public manner. (19′-20′) He gives some examples of cases where God had manifest His will, and St. Peter made ecclesial decisions based on some public and obvious manifestation of God’s will. Steven then claims that the Magisterium in later centuries did not follow this pattern. I’m going to respond to this argument under Part II below, because in Part II he goes into more detail concerning this argument.

Steven next appeals in support of his thesis to three excerpts; one from Origen, one from St. Augustine, and one from St. Cyril. First he quotes Origen:

If there be anyone indeed who can discover something better and who can establish his assertions by clearer proofs from holy Scriptures let his opinion be received in preference to mine. (23′)

Then he quotes St. Augustine:

For the reasonings of any men whatsoever, even though they be Catholics and of high reputation, are not to be treated by us in the same way as the canonical Scriptures are treated. We are at liberty without doing any violence to the respect which these men deserve to condemn and reject anything in their writings if perchance we shall find that they have entertained opinions differing from that which others or we ourselves have by the divine help discovered to be the truth. I deal thus with the writings of others and I wish my intelligent readers to deal thus with mine. (23′ – 24′)

And lastly he quotes St. Cyril of Jerusalem:

For concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not even a casual statement must be delivered without the holy Scriptures, nor must we be drawn aside by mere plausibility and artifices of speech. Even to me who tell you these things give not absolute credence unless thou receive the proof of the things which I announce from the divine Scriptures. For this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning but on demonstration of the holy Scriptures. (24′)

Origen is here speaking in his capacity as theologian. And what he says is the correct attitude of the theologian as theologian. Origen is not denying that what has been laid down definitively in the Church by an ecumenical council can later be rejected or contradicted. Nothing he says here entails that the Catholic Church goes against Christ’s teaching, either in its teaching about the authority of the Magisterium, in its doctrine of infallibility, or in its teaching on the relation of Scripture to sacred tradition. In short, since the quotation from Origen is fully compatible with Catholic doctrine, it is not evidence that the Catholic Church goes against the teaching of Christ.

And St. Augustine too is speaking here in his capacity as a theologian; he is making no claim here, in the quotation Steven cites, against the authority of a plenary council to give a definitive decision regarding a question, or against the authority of sacred tradition. Elsewhere he appeals to the authority of the tradition distinct from Scripture.⁴ He appeals to the authority of the Church when speaking of the interpretation of Scripture (On Christian Doctrine 3.2). And he appeals to the authority of the apostolic tradition regarding the baptism of infants. (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 10, 23:39; and On Baptism 4,24,32.) So again, because what St. Augustine says here is fully compatible with Catholic teaching, it does not show that Catholic teaching goes against the teaching of Christ.

As for St. Cyril, his statement is fully compatible with Catholic doctrine, because St. Cyril is affirming, as the Catholic Church does, that the content of our faith is located in the divine Scriptures; he is not denying the authority of a plenary council to definitively decide a question regarding the faith, or denying the existence and authority of sacred tradition. His exposition of the liturgy (Lecture 23) illustrates the authority of sacred tradition. He explicitly says “But in learning the Faith and in professing it, acquire and keep that only, which is now delivered to thee by the Church, and which has been built up strongly out of all the Scriptures.” (Lecture 5) If the Scriptures were the only source of faith, then there would be no appeal to the Church when determining what does or does not belong to the faith.

Steven comes back to Origen, and quotes him again:

The holy Apostles in preaching the faith of Christ delivered themselves with the utmost clearness on certain points which they believed to be necessary to everyone, even to those who seemed somewhat dull in the investigation of divine knowledge. … The things that the Apostles did not make clear were left for the investigation of later generations. (26′)

From this quotation Steven concludes:

Thus Origen takes the explicit and clear teaching of the Apostles to be the absolute guide for all Christian theology while everything else is a matter of continual investigation and correction as he mentioned in the passage that I quoted earlier. (26′)

The problem here is that Steven’s [sola scriptura] conclusion does not follow from Origen’s statement. To see that, observe that Origen’s statement can be true and all Catholic doctrine can be true, without any contradiction. Moreover, notice what Origen says elsewhere.

The teaching of the Church has indeed been handed down through an order of succession from the Apostles, and remains in the Churches even to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth, which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition.” (On First Principles, I.2)

Origen affirms the authority of ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition, preserved through apostolic succession. So he is not claiming that tradition is not authoritative or that Scripture should be approached apart from that tradition. Hence here too Origen’s statement is fully compatible with Catholic teaching, and therefore does not show that Catholic teaching contradicts Christ’s teaching.

Next Steven tells a just-so story to explain the emergence of Catholic magisterial authority:

It seems to me that if you have a group of people who, (1) place tremendous emphasis on the unity of the group, and (2), who center the identity of their group of their community around an ambiguous and debatable topic which can produce multiple perspectives, it seems to me that with these two conditions in place you can find something like this traditionalist structure emerge. Differences in opinion compromise the evident unity of the group and people become identified with the opinions that distinguish them. But the problems of debate cannot be definitively resolved or established to everyone’s satisfaction. So self-identifying authoritative voices emerge whose word must on at least some occasions be unquestionable so that the matter is settled and the unity of the group is preserved. A procedure then is devised which will purportedly lead to the truth so long as it is followed correctly. In other words I am suggesting that the Scribes’ and Pharisees’ traditionalism is a social phenomenon that could in principle emerge anywhere as long as the conditions are right. But Christ identifies its weak point. People can confuse opinions for the things themselves, binding themselves to false ideas simply because of the purported authority of the persons propagating them, and in this way they place themselves on a harmful trajectory. The only way out of this spiral is for someone to come along and to say no, this tradition is bad and it has no authority unless what it says is true and an idea is not true because the tradition says it but rather because it is adequate to its object. But of course the traditionalist can’t hear this because in his mind the truth is too tightly bound up with the tradition and its procedures. (27′ – 29′)

Here Steven is by implicature using this sociological speculation about how authority structures arise to explain the development of Catholic ecclesial authority. This presupposes that Christ did not authorize the Apostles and instruct them to authorize successors. So here too Steven’s argument presupposes the falsehood of the Catholic position. The problem with just-so stories is that they are just-so stories. They persuade only by way of suggestion, and only if the hearer knows of no contrary evidence to the just-so story. But there is lots of evidence in the Church Fathers that ecclesial hierarchy was present from the beginning of the Church.⁵ Likewise, implying that Catholics “can’t hear” the truth because in our minds the truth is “too tightly bound up with the tradition and its procedures” again begs the question, by presupposing the falsehood of Catholicism.

Finally, Steven compares (by implication) the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to government bureaucracies in France and Romania. (29′ – 33′) He gives an example of a government bureaucracy getting itself into a situation requiring it to deny reality. He then claims, without any argumentation, that this is what has happened in the Catholic Church regarding doctrines like transubstantiation, Catholic teaching on Scripture and tradition, the veneration of images, Mary, and justification. I need say no more here because Steven has not here demonstrated his claim that these Catholic doctrines are not true. He has only claimed that the Church’s defining of these doctrines is like a state bureaucracy claiming that a living person is dead. And this claim presupposes the very point in question between Protestants and Catholics.

Why Remain Protestant? Part II

Steven opens his second video by summarizing his second argument:

Now my second argument for remaining a Protestant is that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches are sectarian. And what I mean by sectarian is this: I mean that in order to welcome someone into their fellowship they demand that a person assent to the truth of doctrines which are highly contentious and not obviously supported by any properly authoritative sources. (1′)

To illustrate his claim he picks three dogmas: the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the dogma of the Assumption, and the dogma defined at the Second Council of Nicea concerning the veneration of sacred images. (2′) He writes:

My argument is rather that such doctrines are highly contentious and not at all clearly supported by the most authoritative sources, and because they are not reasonably clear it is sectarian to set them up as conditions of fellowship with the Church. Scripture does not explicitly teach that Mary was conceived without original sin nor that she was assumed body and soul into heaven neither does Scripture teach that it is obligatory to venerate icons of Christ and of the saints. (5′)

He grants that these doctrines follow a trajectory set “in certain quarters.” (6′ – 7′) But he argues that these doctrines are neither clearly taught in Scripture, nor were they universally held. And therefore to make assent to them a condition of fellowship is sectarian, and thus a justification for remaining Protestant. Here, to support his point regarding the veneration of sacred images he quotes Origen regarding the practice among Christians of scorning “idols and all images.” (7′ – 8′) These three doctrines are sectarian, according to Steven, because “highly contentious and disputable points of view which cannot be established on the basis of the most authoritative sources are being put forth as non-negotiable conditions of fellowship.” (9′ – 10′) Steven then gives an uncharitable interpretation of the reasons why the Church has proposed these doctrines as dogma, saying:

Now what I think is happening is that a particular church or community of churchmen prefers its own ideas convictions and opinions so much to those of others that it is willing to exclude them from its fellowship unless they agree.” (10′)

This is an example of the bulverism fallacy, but Steven’s argument does not depend on this bulverism. He next says:

The church or community of church men in question takes itself as the standard of truth as though the mere fact that it has come to believe something is a proof that it is right. (10′)

Here Steven’s argument begs the question. His argument presupposes that the only reason the Magisterium of the Catholic Church believes these three dogmas to be true is that it has come to believe them. But in the Catholic tradition, the Magisterium has been given the promises of Christ regarding divine guidance into all truth. Steven’s argument here presupposes that the Magisterium did not receive this divine promise, among others. And in this way his argument presupposes the very point he is attempting to show, namely, that Catholicism is false.

Steven’s argument begs the question again in his following criticism of the Catholic Church:

And this can be seen in Ineffabilis Deus which says “The Catholic Church directed by the Holy Spirit of God is the pillar and base of truth.” Now note well this is not merely a citation of the words of Paul from I Timothy 3:15. It is an identification of a particular Church, namely the Church of Rome and those associated with it, as the Church. (10′)

First, Pope Pius IX is not equating the particular Church at Rome with the Catholic Church. The particular Church at Rome is a particular Church within the Catholic Church. But in Catholic doctrine schism is defined in relation to the bishop of this particular Church.⁶ Second, Steven’s criticism of Pope Pius’s claim to speak for the Catholic Church presupposes that the papal office is not what the Catholic Church teaches it is, and thus that Catholicism is false. So here too Steven’s argument presupposes the very point in question.

Next Steven says:

And instead of measuring its statements against the things themselves and coming to a moderate conclusion about the truth of what it says, the Roman Church takes the truth of its thoughts for granted and declares its belief an infallible dogma and a condition for fellowship. Now to my mind this is sectarian behavior. It is putting oneself forward as the criterion of truth in a matter in which one appears to have no special access to the reality of the matter.” (11′)

Notice that last line “one appears to have no special access to the reality of the matter.” Here’s the dilemma for Steven’s argument. If Steven’s claim remains at the mere phenomenological, the conclusion of his argument does not follow. If to him it does not appear that the Church at Rome has no special access to the reality of the matter, that leaves open the possibility that it does have special access to the reality of the matter, and he has not demonstrated that the teaching of the Catholic Church goes against the teaching of Christ. But on the other horn of the dilemma, if Steven claims that the Church at Rome has no special access to the apostolic deposit, or no certain charism of truth, then his argument presupposes the point in question between Protestants and the Catholic Church. Either way, his argument fails.

Regarding the Second Council of Nicea, Steven next says:

But the Council then descends into sectarianism when it continues by saying the following: “This promise, however, He made not only to them but also to us who, thanks to them, have come to believe in his name.” Now notice once more this us does not refer to all Christians but rather to these persons who have gathered at the Council and perhaps also to those who agree with them. Thus the bishops gathered at the Council take for granted without adequate reason that they are the inheritors of the original promise of divine guidance to the early Church. (12′)

Steven’s argument presupposes the very point in question when he claims that the bishops at the Council “take for granted without adequate reason that they are the inheritors of the original promise of divine guidance to the early Church.” If the bishops are what the Catholic Church teaches about bishops, and this teaching and authority have been handed down to them from the Apostles, then the bishops do have an “adequate reason” to believe that they are the inheritors of the original promise. My point here is not to establish the authority of the bishops, but only to show that Steven’s argument presupposes the very point in question, namely, that the Catholic Church is false.

Next Steven claims the following:

Of course an unwritten tradition is a word that comes from nowhere in particular and can be traced back to no one with certainty. Who can know if an unwritten tradition is genuinely apostolic?(13′)

His claim that an unwritten tradition is a “word that comes from nowhere” is not a theologically neutral claim. It presupposes the falsehood of the Catholic Church, for which there is an unwritten tradition that comes to us from the Apostles. So here too Steven presupposes the point in question. As for his question, this is not a question that baffled the early Church. St. Augustine, for example, in multiple places identifies traditions that were not clear in Scripture (e.g. infant baptism) but were universally practiced as originating from the Apostles.⁷

Steven next writes:

That is the attitude of a sectarian. He takes himself as the measure of truth and excludes all those who refuse to agree with him rather than putting himself on the same level as those with whom he might disagree and submitting together with them to the truth of things such as they seem.” (13′ – 14′)

Again, for reasons that by now should be obvious, Steven’s argument presupposes the very point in question. If Christ did give ecclesial authority to His Apostles, and they in turn gave this authority to their episcopal successors, and not to the laity, then when the bishops think, speak, and act as though they have this authority, this is not at all sectarian. These are rather acts of faith in Christ and obedience to Him.

Steven summarizes his argument for Part II:

So this is my argument. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches are sectarian because they impose as a condition for fellowship assent to highly contentious and debatable ideas that cannot be clearly established on the basis of the most authoritative sources. That is sectarian behavior. It is an unconditional and relentless privileging of one’s own perspective in some matter of dispute rather than simply submitting to the truth and admitting ambiguities where they where they exist. (14′)

In response, first, two of the criteria Steven is using here to determine whether the Catholic Church is sectarian are “contentious” and “debatable.” Although I could, I’m not going to argue that since the notion that these two qualities are among the criteria for determining what is “sectarian” is itself contentious and debatable, Steven’s argument is self-refuting. Rather, I’m simply going to point out again that the notion that these two qualities are among the criteria for “sectarian” is not theologically neutral, but presuppose the point in question.⁸ A careful study of the Arian controversy shows that for many years it was contentious and debatable. The same is true of Marcionism, Novatianism, Montanism, as well as the Donatist schism, and many others. If ‘contentious’ and ‘debatable’ were the criteria for sectarianism, there would be no schisms, only branches. But that’s not my fundamental point. The fundamental point is that Steven’s argument in Part II presupposes the very point in question by presupposing loaded (i.e. non-neutral) criteria for determining what is and is not sectarian.

Second, Steven here presupposes that the bishops’ perspective in matters of faith and morals is no more authoritative than that of any other Christian. That’s an implicit premise in his charge that the Catholic bishops are unjustifiably privileging their own perspective. But that implicit premise presupposes the very point in question between Protestants and the Catholic Church, and so Steven’s argument is question-begging.

Next Steven says:

Let me say that I agree that the Apostles and the leaders of the Church that come after them were given the authority to bind and loose but it does not follow that this authority is always exercised properly. (15′)

Steven is arguing that infallibility does not follow merely from the authority to bind and loose. But if on the one hand he is claiming implicitly that the Church did not receive the gift of infallibility, he is presupposing the point in question.⁹ If on the other hand he is simply claiming that sometimes bishops do not exercise their authority properly, then from this premise it does not follow that the Catholic Church is sectarian, since this weaker claim is fully compatible with the truth of Catholic doctrine.

Steven next says:

So let’s take as an example. Christ promises Peter that whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven. That is Matthew chapter 16 verse 19. Now from this perfect passive construction being used here we can discern that the binding and loosing in heaven come before the binding and losing on earth. (16′)

Here Steven is again using a Protestant approach to Scripture, according to which its meaning is determined entirely by exegesis, and not by sacred tradition. In the Catholic tradition, however, the mood and voice of these verbs does not entail that prior to the binding or loosing of something on earth, God will have already bound and loosed it in heaven. That’s because in the Catholic tradition exegesis by itself underdetermines interpretation, and Scripture must be interpreted in light of sacred tradition. My point is that Steven’s argument is here too presupposing the point in question, namely, the falsehood of Catholicism in his argument for the falsehood of Catholicism.

Now Steven comes back to the point he made in Part I, and which I mentioned above but to which I did not yet respond. Here Steven uses the examples of Sts. Peter and Paul making decisions on the basis of God having made a prior, clear and public manifestation of His will, to argue that the Magisterium can rightly make authoritative decisions only on the same basis. (16′ – 20′) That conclusion does not follow from the premise. Even if Steven’s premise is true regarding these decisions Sts. Peter and Paul made, it could still be true that the Apostles had (and the Magisterium has) the authority to make decisions without a public divine manifestation of God’s will. Here too Steven is using his own interpretation of Scripture, apart from sacred tradition, to argue against Catholic teaching concerning Magisterial authority. And that presupposes the very point in question.

Then Steven claims that “nothing like this was happening in the three cases he is considering (i.e. the two Marian dogmas, and the teaching of Second Nicea on the veneration of icons). (20′) That is, for these three dogmas, he claims that there was no prior, clear and public manifestation of God’s will, that could be verified by other Christians. But this claim that to be legitimate, Magisterial decisions must be able to be independently verified by other Christians presupposes the very point in question. Yes there is a sensus fidelium, but as Pope Benedict XVI explained, it is not “a form of ecclesial public opinion, and it would be unthinkable to refer to it to challenge the teachings of the Magisterium, since the ‘sensus fidei’ cannot truly develop in a believer other than to the extent to which he participates fully in the life of the Church, and it therefore necessitates responsible adhesion to her Magisterium.”¹⁰ As I mentioned above, Steven grants that these doctrines follow a trajectory set “in certain quarters.” (6′ – 7′) But Steven treats the development of a tradition, and what in the Catholic tradition is understood as development of doctrine, as something only arbitrary in its starting point and in its development. The Magisterium, however, recognizes and affirms authentic developments.¹¹ And this is part of the paradigm difference between Protestants and the Catholic Church, in relation to what I’ve referred to as ecclesial deism, since believing that the Holy Spirit is the ‘soul’ of the Church leads us to expect development of doctrine, and further illumination and defining of the deposit. So by denying that the Magisterium has the divine gift by which to recognize and affirm authentic development of doctrine, Steven’s argument presupposes the point in question.

As for the development in relation to the three dogmas Steven has chosen for examples, the earlier Catholic opposition to images was never universal, never a moral consensus, and was never defined. Nor was it based on iconoclastic principle but rather on the prevalence of the pagan culture of idolatry. As that changed toward theism in the Roman empire, and as the two natures of Christ were defined at Chalcedon, the veneration of sacred images came to be seen as an affirmation of the Incarnation and its implications, in opposition to Arianism. Regarding the developments that led to the Church defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, I have briefly discussed here. And I discussed here the developments that led to the Church defining the dogma of the Assumption.

Finally Steven writes:

But I say that it is sectarian to put them forth as conditions of fellowship. To do that would be a matter of taking one’s own tradition one’s own perspective as if it were uniquely identical to the tradition of the Apostles without adequate argument than evidence. (21′)

Here too Steven’s argument presupposes that the Catholic Magisterium is not composed of the successors of the Apostles, and has not faithfully handed down the Apostolic deposit, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In short, here too Steven’s argument presupposes the point in question. As for his claim that the Catholic Church is sectarian because its contentious and debatable teachings are not “clearly supported by the most authoritative sources,” this criterion presupposes that Magisterial teaching must be “clearly supported” by Scripture. But that criteria is not itself part of the sacred tradition. The material sufficiency of Scripture is part of the tradition, but that is not the same thing as “clearly supported by Scripture.” So here too Steven’s argument presupposes the point in question.

In my opinion, Protestants often do not recognize that their arguments against the Catholic Church presupposes the very point in question because the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism is a paradigmatic difference, such that the paradigmatic nature of the difference often remains invisible.¹² In the Catholic tradition, faith is not itself established by reason or evidence accessible to reason. If I could see for myself the truth of the faith, my act of belief would not be an act of faith. Hence in the Catholic tradition an essential part of the act of faith is believing Christ by believing the successors of those whom He chose and authorized to speak in His name. Through these successors we receive also the content of faith. In the Protestant paradigm, by contrast, the personal and communal is downstream of the hermeneutical, as Neal Judisch and I argued elsewhere. I hope and pray that my response here will be helpful to Steven and also serve in the task of Protestant-Catholic reconciliation.

All you Holy Saints of God, pray for us.

Solemnity of All Saints, 2021.

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 100.
2. Liber de praescriptione haereticorum, 37.
3. St. Augustine writes, “if you acknowledge the supreme authority of Scripture, you should recognize that authority which from the time of Christ Himself, though the ministry of His apostles, and through a regular succession of bishops in the seats of the apostles, has been preserved to our own day throughout the whole world, with a reputation known to all.” (Reply to Faustus the Manichean, 33:9)
4. “As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful….” St. Augustine, Epistle to Januarius, 54:1.
5. See our “The Bishops of History and the Catholic Faith: A Reply To Brandon Addison.”
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2089.
7. Cf. Letter to Januarius 54.1.1. On Baptism 2.7.1 and 5.23.31.
8. I have addressed the charge of sectarianism in 2011 in “Ecclesial Unity and Outdoing Christ: A Dilemma for the Ecumenicism of Non-Return.”
9. See B.C. Butler’s The Church and Infallibility (Sheed and Ward, 1954) and Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser’s The Gift of Infallibility (Ignatius Press, 1986).
10. Vatican Information Service, December 7, 2012.
11. See comments #29 and #31 under “The Commonitory of St. Vincent of Lérins.”
12. I attempted to illustrate one aspect of the paradigmatic difference in “Imputations and Paradigms: A Reply to Nick Batzig.”

Michael Nazir-Ali

1. Church Times, August 6, 2021.
2. “Church of England bishop to be received into the Catholic Church” Catholic News Agency, September 3, 2021. “Married Anglican bishop joins Catholic Church,” BBC News, September 4, 2021.
3. “‘A moment of great joy’: English cardinal ordains ex-Anglican bishop as Catholic priest” Catholic News Agency, October 30, 2021.

This is a forum for questions and answers pertaining to the purpose of Called To Communion, namely, resolving through good faith dialogue the disagreements that presently divide Protestants and Catholics, by together pursuing unity in the truth. These comments will be moderated to ensure they comply with our posting guidelines, so please read those guidelines before posting. Thank you.

CtC contributor Casey Chalk has been featured on the “Creedal Catholic” podcast in a five-part series on the Calvinist doctrinal acronym TULIP. He and Creedal Catholic host (and Protestant convert to Catholicism) Zac Crippen have discussed Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. Here’s the link.

https://pod.link/1458179240

Pentecost
Giotto di Bondone, 1304-06

In 2005 when I was preparing to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church, I did not yet perceive or understand the magnitude and scope of what I now believe to be one of the most grave and widespread problems in present-day Catholicism in the US. I did not perceive or understand this problem, in part, because I was to some degree ensnared in it myself. Fifteen years later, I am not exaggerating when I say that I see this problem and its deleterious effects around me on a daily basis. The problem I am talking about is that the philosophies in the minds of US Catholics are primarily formed by and drawn from the ideologies of whichever pole of the political binary they inhabit, rather than from the doctrine and philosophical tradition of the Church.

On the Present Polarization

While it would be inaccurate to claim that there are only two competing political ideologies in the US, I need not defend the claim that the US is presently deeply politically polarized, because the latter claim is not only empirically verified but also self-evident to any observer.²

The two primary political poles in the US each embody a distinct general ideology. Commonly these ideologies are referred to with terms like “left” and “right,” or ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative.’ But they are not merely competing sets of answers to policy questions or issues; they are also competing broader ideologies, each with their own principles and ideals about liberty, rights, justice, and national well-being. Like philosophies generally, these ideologies tend to be invisible as ideologies, especially if we grew up immersed within them, and without being pedagogically required to look under the hood, so to speak, to discover what lies beneath these aggregations of positions on issues. As a result, persons who hold these ideologies typically do not see themselves as holding an ideology, but merely as supporting either a set of issues or some general principles they believe to be good and important.

Nevertheless, the deep political polarization in the US creates a tendency toward a tribalism in which, regardless of our religious beliefs, we now tend to see ourselves as members of one of two opposing political teams or sides.³ Tribalism appeals to our natural human desire to belong, and to our sense of loyalty.⁴ It inclines us to embrace not only the positional package, but also the underlying philosophy of one side of the political binary. But it also inclines us to adopt an us vs. them mentality in relation to this political binary, to conceive of the situation as a contest of ‘right vs. wrong’ or ‘good vs. evil,’ and to categorize every person, article, and action, as motivated by advancing or defending one tribe or the other, and thus as either “with us or against us.”⁵

When the background framework in which we live is the continual struggle between two political ideologies, and this political struggle is largely viewed as the struggle in our time and place between good and evil, then one of these parties and political ideologies tends to be placed in the category of the good, and the other tends to be placed in the category of the bad, such that the political battle between them is conceived as the earthly instantiation of the battle between good and evil, and thus between the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys.’ So even before bringing in the topic of grace or divine faith, simply considering human nature in the context of polarization we find that tribalism can lead to a propensity toward intellectual vices and fallacious reasoning.⁶

Political Polarization in the Catholic Church in the US

While the philosophies in the minds of persons in the US are largely formed by and drawn from the ideologies of whichever pole of the political binary they inhabit, this is no less true for US Catholics. For this reason the political polarization in the US leads US Catholics to fall into the very same political tribalism.⁷ Catholics in the US are vulnerable to falling into this tribalism because we too acquire our moral and political philosophy almost entirely from our political affiliation and partisan identity, rather than from the Church’s social teaching and philosophical tradition.⁸ And once we fall into this political tribalism, that only compounds the problem, because the ‘us’ side acquires increased perceived authority, and becomes the dominant lens through which we interpret all Church teaching and Church governance.⁹

The problem is not merely intellectual, but has an important social component, because we humans tend to get our ideology from the community with whom we identify most closely. A Catholic who identifies with the persons on one pole of the political polarization tends to retain and elevate conceptually the functional authority of its political ideology over the Church’s social teaching, rather than by faith allow the Church’s teaching to be the standard by which he critically evaluates his political ideology, and relinquishes it where it opposes the teaching of the Church. But though the cafeteria eclecticism of private judgment is more obvious in other more concrete areas of doctrine, in the area of political ideology this eclecticism as such tends to remain mostly invisible to US Catholics.¹⁰

The Catholic philosophical tradition and Catholic Social Teaching differ from and transcend the ideologies of both poles of our present political polarization.¹¹ At Pentecost of 2017, Pope Francis said that when Christians “take sides and form parties, [we] become Christians of the ‘right’ or the ‘left,’ before being on the side of Jesus.”¹² The following year he reminded us again that when faced with splits along party lines, including “conservative” or “progressive,” we must choose to belong to Jesus before identifying with right or left.¹³ He says this because he sees that identifying ourselves with these political poles can lead us to have a mind and heart other than the mind and heart of Christ, found in and through the Church.¹⁴

What Causes Polarization Within the Catholic Church in the US?

One factor contributing to the problem is the assumption that political left and political right correspond to theological liberalism and theological orthodoxy, respectively. Theological liberalism, defined in one sense as dissent from orthodoxy, is thereby associated with being politically left, and being politically on the right is therefore conceived to be theologically orthodox. Moreover, because the threat of abortion remains the USCCB’s “preeminent priority,”¹⁵ and because the political right in the US has presented itself as more supportive of protecting the unborn than has the political left, therefore it can seem that the political right is on the side of the Church. This can lead to the unquestioning assumption that the political right’s ideology as a whole is in agreement with Church teaching, especially given that the ubiquitous and continual public presence of the battle between the two political poles also implicitly communicates that these are the only two options.

Inversely, some other US Catholics approach the Church’s teaching through a lens of social justice drawn either from the philosophy of the political left or from part of Church teaching, and rationalize dissent from Church teaching in areas of sexual ethics and marriage on the grounds of what they believe are the implications of social justice, as though they know better than the Church on these matters, and as though it is only a matter of time before the Church eventually catches up to them.¹⁶ Here too a driving factor is an operative false dilemma that insofar as political conservatism distorts or denies parts of Christ’s teaching, and central parts of what is known as political liberalism more closely resembles Christ’s social gospel, therefore the political ideology of the left is the one to embrace as a Catholic.

More broadly, insofar as one approaches the Church through the consumeristic paradigm by which one chooses one’s religious practice and affiliation according to its conformity to one’s tastes and beliefs, one will be inclined to distort the Church’s teaching to make it conform to one’s political ideology, rather than allow the Church’s teaching to be the standard by which one evaluates one’s political ideology.¹⁷

Epistemic Effects of This Polarization

The problem is not that US Catholics tend to view the Church as a central context for the overarching battle between good and evil. The Church is such a context, and there is truly a battle between good and evil, as the Church herself teaches.¹⁸ Moreover there have always been persons in the Church seeking to deny or distort the Church’s teaching. A significant and important component of Church history is that of the role of heresies and heretics. And against their errors the saints must always contend.¹⁹

Rather, Catholics in the US, both clerics and lay persons, tend to treat the opposition between left and right political ideologies in the US as the conceptual framework in which and through which to situate and interpret what and who in the Church belongs to the good and true, and what and who in the Church belongs to the bad and false. According to this conceptual framework either the Church becomes the extension of the political war between left and right into the domain of religion, or the political war between left and right becomes the extension into the political domain of the deeper metaphysical conflict between good vs. evil laid out in the Christian metanarrative. Either way, through this lens one is led to construe each event in the Church in terms of a war between left and right Catholicism, and to categorize each person as either ‘us’ or ‘them.’²⁰

From within this conceptual framework one looks for some sign or signs, drawn from the conceptual toolbox of the US political conflict, by which to place each Catholic into one of these two categories: the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys.’ Typically this categorization is already done by others on one’s own side of the political divide. Church leaders and their teaching are conceptually judged and divided as good or bad, on the side of good or on the side of evil, according to the degree to which they conform to the political ideology of one’s group.²¹

For Catholics who identify with the political left, when Church leaders say something opposing leftist political ideology, then by this lens these leaders are placed in the ‘bad’ category, and their teaching is dismissed as coming from leaders who have ‘sold out’ to wealthy donors on the political right. Conversely, for Catholics who identify with the political right, when Church leaders make a statement that opposes something in the political ideology of the right, then by this action these leaders are placed in the ‘bad’ category, and their teaching dismissed as having sold out to leftist ideology or progressivism. However, when Catholic leaders say something that agrees with or is compatible with one’s own political ideology, it is accepted, praised, and highlighted, as coming from one of the good guys, on the side of the good in the war between good and evil. This is not the carrying out of our responsibility to guard the good deposited entrusted to us (2 Tim. 1:14); this is motivated reasoning in the service of politicized ecclesial consumerism.

In this way this phenomenon causes many US Catholics to tend to construe and interpret Catholic doctrine, including Catholic Social Teaching, so as to make it conceptually fit with and conform to their respective political ideology, affirming that which agrees with their pre-existing beliefs, and at least implicitly ignoring that which does not.²²

By adopting such a framework, the paradigm of the US political conflict replaces the Church’s own teaching as the paradigm in which and through which to understand the Church and evaluate what occurs within her, and becomes instead the standard by which the Church’s teaching is judged, which parts of that teaching are accepted and which parts rejected, and how Catholic leaders are to be categorized, so as to be either those counting as approved, or those to be ignored or rejected. In this way can we inadvertently and wrongly treat our political ideology as greater in authority than the teaching of the Church.

When we mistake and construe the conflict between the political left and right as the war between good and evil, we inadvertently advance the cause of evil, in at least four ways. We do so firstly by misidentifying the conflict and where the conflict really lies, thereby further obscuring both good and evil. And evil flourishes and goodness wanes to the degree to which they are masked and thereby made ambiguous and indistinguishable. Secondly, we prevent ourselves from seeing what is bad and false in our own ideology, and what is good and true in the ideology of our political opponent. When error is included in what we set up as our standard, we prevent its being shown to us as error, and when what is good is defined as evil, it cannot be shown to us to be good. Thirdly, we discredit the Church, by driving wedges between Catholics, polarizing Catholics against one another, and reducing the Church to a stage of political conflict when in truth she is the steward of Christ’s gospel and that through which peace and unity are to come to every nation, through the unity we have been given in the Church. Fourthly, we obscure the gospel from ourselves and from the world, by both reducing it to the level of a political ideology and by failing to see that it transcends and judges every political ideology, including our own, not the other way around.

Effects of This Polarization on Evangelism

This problem does not falsify the essential visible unity of the Catholic Church we confess in the Creed, for reasons I have explained elsewhere in 2012.²³. Nevertheless it wounds that unity, and in multiple ways is a stumbling block to Catholics, to Protestants, and to non-Christians. Not only does it make Catholics opposed to each other politically, but it brings that conflict into the Church and applies it to all things Catholic. It makes the faith we have received from Christ itself something to be weaponized and exploited within a broader political war, rather than allowing it to be that by which we beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks.²⁴

We Catholics then as a result fail to show to the world the unity of love Christ has called us to show to one another (John 13:35). We also fail to show the Church’s teaching, because we reduce it to something that does not challenge our respective political ideologies, and falsely imply to the world that the gospel of Christ just is our political ideology.²⁵

Catholics caught up in this polarization think that they are “fighting the good fight” as, for example, they share items daily on social media that score rhetorical points for their side, when in actuality they are fighting for their political ideology, and the “good fight,” which is to be conducted in an entirely different mode, is neglected or even harmed as a result. The gospel of Christ is something beautiful and inviting, but the war as presently waged between political ideologies is ugly and off-putting. And the appropriation of the Catholic faith to advance one side or other in the political battle between left and right is uglier still, making the Catholic faith out to be something ugly and repulsive. Those who sink into this fight and this mode of fighting it tend to become in a certain respect corrupted and tainted by it, losing in a long-term way both within themselves and in the eyes of others the moral credibility needed to share effectively a divine message that transcends these two political ideologies.²⁶ In short, ideological polarization among US Catholics weakens our gospel witness.²⁷

Transcending Politicizing Polarization

“[Christians’] adherence to a political alliance will never be ideological but always critical ….”²⁸

I am not saying that Catholics should not be involved in politics, or that Catholics should not participate in political parties. Nor am I saying that there are no persons within the Church seeking to water down, distort, or corrupt her teaching, and that those attempts must not be faithfully resisted. But participating politically and upholding the deposit of faith does not require falling into the problem described above.

To avoid falling into this polarization we must first recognize it as a grave problem, and become aware of it.²⁹ In parishes, Catholic schools, RCIA classes, and seminaries, we need formation in Catholic social teaching and the Catholic philosophical tradition. Catholics need to be taught both in word and through example where Catholic teaching does not line up with the political ideologies of the US political polarization.³⁰ We need additional tools for examining ourselves to help us recognize when we are falling into this error. We need our priests to recognize this problem, teach us how to avoid it, and live out what it looks like to transcend it.

Without such formation converts to Catholicism are vulnerable to this error. I have seen this many times over the last fifteen years. Converts are vulnerable to bringing with them into the Church their own philosophy, not knowing that they are doing so, and especially not knowing that they should be revising their philosophy according to the Church’s social teaching and philosophical tradition, in part because even with an otherwise good RCIA program, RCIA teachers are typically and understandably overjoyed if the catechumens simply learn the theological basics laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We need to be teaching those coming into the Church how to avoid allowing our nation’s political polarization to commandeer their practice of the faith.³¹

If we love Christ and love His Church, then we must love the peace and unity of His Church. And that means also praying for and building up the peace and unity of the Church. That does not mean uniformity. Disagreements of a certain sort, debated in respect and charity, are healthy for the Church in this pilgrim way, and have always been part of her history. But allowing our nation’s political polarization to become the paradigm through which we see the Church is a philosophical error that creates unhealthy division and keeps us from entering fully into the supernatural peace Christ has already provided to His Church.³² We grow in our participation of this supernatural peace through acquiring the mind of Christ.³³ And we find the mind of Christ in His Body, the Church.³⁴

O Lord Jesus, Who said to Your Apostles; Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; regard not our sins, but the faith of Your Church, and grant her that peace and unity which are agreeable to Your will. Who lives and reigns, Lord, God forever and ever. Amen.

1. Note there in particular what I say about philosophy not only being unavoidable, but tending to be invisible to us, both in those around us and within ourselves. Note also what I say there about the Catholic philosophical tradition. The reader will also be aided by familiarity with my other essay from 2017 titled “Speaking the Truth in the Beauty of Love: A Guide to Better Online Discussion.”
2. See “Republicans And Democrats Don’t Agree, Or Like Each Other — And It’s Worse Than Ever” (NPR, October 5, 2017). Sam Rosenfeld has argued in his recent book that our present political polarization was intentional. See his The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
3. On the way in which we as individuals contribute to the polarization, see “Who is the cause of society’s polarization? All of us” by Matt Malone, S.J. (April 20, 2018).
4. See “Revisiting Robbers Cave: The easy spontaneity of intergroup conflict” by Maria Konnikova (September 5, 2012).
5. A number of authors have written recently about political tribalism in the US, including Jonah Goldberg Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Nationalism, and Socialism Is Destroying American Democracy (Crown Forum, 2020), Ezra Klein Why We’re Polarized (Avid Reader Press, 2020), Amy Chua Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations (Penguin Books, 2019), Steve Kornacki The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism (Ecco Press, 2018), Stevan E. Hobfoll Tribalism: The Evolutionary Origins of Fear Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and Sarah Rose Cavanagh Hivemind: The New Science of Tribalism in Our Divided World (Grand Central Publishing, 2019).
6. The left-right “package deal” way of thinking is the “black or white” fallacy applied to political polarization and so internalized as to become an intellectual vice disposing its possessor to oversimplify positions repeatedly by (a) conceiving them or those who hold them as necessarily belonging to one of those two packages, even when in fact they do not, and thus failing to see even as possibilities third and fourth options beyond those contained in the two packages, (b) assuming on the basis that some parts of the package one has chosen are true and good that the other parts of the package must also be true and good, and defending these other parts without questioning or verifying them, even when these other parts are false and harmful, (c) assuming that the only alternative to a good in one’s chosen package must be an evil in the other package, rather than a greater good, (d) assuming that an error in an opposing package negates the whole opposing package, and thereby verifies the truth of the whole of one’s chosen package, and/or (e) treating a criticism of one component of one’s chosen package as a criticism of the whole package, and therefore of all that is good in the package, and thus as unjustifiable and readily dismissible, (f) grasping at anything that will defend one’s anything in one’s package and criticize something in the opposing side’s package, and (g) treat a criticizing of some component of one’s own package a personal attack and as identifying the critic as an enemy to be entirely distrusted and opposed. One symptom of this way of ‘package’ way thinking is that once one discovers which side a person is on, one can accurately predict all of that person’s positions, because their positions line up perfectly with those of the package.
7. On this problem see the following: “A View From Abroad: The Shrinking Common Ground in the American Church” by Massimo Faggiolo (February 11, 2014), Polarization in the US Catholic Church: Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal, Edited by Mary Ellen Konieczny, Charles C. Camosy, and Tricia C. Bruce (Liturgical Press, 2016), “Christianity’s Grand Canyon” (by Fr. Dwight Longenecker (February 15, 2018), “American Catholicism: How to Mend the Fences” by Fr. Dwight Longenecker (February 23, 2018), “Overcoming Polarization in a Divided Nation Through Catholic Social Thought: Bringing the Joy of the Gospel to a Divided Nation” (June 4, 2018), “Georgetown summit looks to Francis in overcoming polarization” (June 7, 2018), “Like Americans overall, U.S. Catholics are sharply divided by party” (Pew Research Center, January 24, 2019), “A Closer Look: Resisting Partisan Identification for Faithful Discipleship” by Kenneth Craycraft (January 10, 2020), “Pope, US bishops talk about political polarization infecting the Church” (January 27, 2020).
8. See Michele Margolis’s book From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity, (University of Chicago Press, 2018), discussed in “How partisanship drives religious attitudes” by Yonat Shimron, July 31, 2018.
9. See, for example, Ross Douthat’s 2016 First Things article titled “A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism.” Throughout the article Ross repeatedly divides Catholics into “liberal Catholics” and “conservative Catholics.” He is not merely referring to Catholics who happen to be politically on the right, and Catholics who happen to be politically on the left. For Ross these are kinds of Catholicism. But there is no such thing as “conservative Catholicism” or “liberal Catholicism.” These are political terms artificially (and falsely) imposed on the Church. And this is so common that no one blinks an eye.
10. And that too is again in part because instead of seeing these underlying political ideologies as ideologies, many Catholics see within the political sphere only sets of issues loosely related under broader freedoms and rights. And when these ideologies remain mostly hidden to those who hold them, these ideologies are not held up to critical evaluation, either to that of reason or Church authority.
11. On the Catholic philosophical tradition in view of Fides et Ratio, see my 2017 essay “Evangelism as Cultural Conversion.” Recognizing the underlying philosophical dimensions of the “left” / “right” divide in the US is important in part because the philosophies of the left and of the right are neither identical to nor in complete agreement with the Catholic philosophical tradition and Catholic Social Teaching in particular. For the purpose of this essay, this claim will serve as a working assumption, largely because substantiating it would require another whole article. But for example, forms of nationalism, economic liberalism, utilitarianism, expressive liberal individualism, and sexual liberalism are incompatible with the Catholic philosophical tradition and Catholic Social Teaching. See Dennis Sadowski’s “Catholic social teaching held up in efforts to overcome polarization” (December 29, 2018) on the “Overcoming Polarization in a Divided Nation Through Catholic Social Thought” conference at Georgetown University in June of 2018.
12. “Avoid becoming Christians of the ‘right’ or the ‘left,’ urges Pope Francis during Pentecost Homily by Gerard O’Connell (June 4, 2017), “There are no Catholics of the ‘Left’ or ‘Right’. Here’s why.” (June 15, 2017).
13. Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to WCC Ecumenical Centre, Thursday, June 21, 2018.
14. The problem I am describing in this essay is such that for Catholics ensnared in it on one of the two political poles, the problem itself makes it more difficult for them to hear Pope Francis’s voice with credibility or receptivity, and therefore to be corrected by him. It also for them makes this essay at least suspect and on the ‘them’ side of “us vs. them.”
15. USCCB, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” November 12, 2012.
16. This is contrary to faith, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, as explained in “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Relation of Faith to the Church.”
17. See “Ecclesial Consumerism.” (July 5, 2010).
18. See CCC 409.
19. See St. Augustine’s comments on why divine providence permits many heretics, in Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichees, 1.2.
20. See Robert G. Christian III’s “This is What You Get When Politics Invades Our Political Lives.”
21. Usually this conceptual framework does not exist so clearly distinct on its own, but is also conceptually mixed together with concepts of theological orthodoxy and theological progressivism.
22. “The political crisis of ‘Conservative Catholicism’” by Stephen Schneck (January 4, 2016)
23. “The “Catholics are divided too” Objection”
24. Joyeux Noël.
25. See “Bishop McElroy to address partisan polarization in lecture at Loyola in Chicago” (April 17, 2018), “Bishop McElroy: Catholic Teaching Has Been Hijacked by Partisans” (April 30, 2018).
26. “Why the Culture Wars Don’t Evangelize Souls” by Constance T. Hull (June 21, 2018), “Polarization of Church and Society “discouraging” for millennials” by Charles C. Camosy (June 23, 2018).
27. “How partisanship is ‘weakening the Gospel witness’ in America” by Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble (July 2, 2020).
28. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 573
29. “Catholic virtues necessary to address political polarization, bishop says” (April 19, 2018).
30. “Civic Virtue and the Common Good: Forming a Catholic Political Imagination” (May, 2018).
31. See Desiree Hausam’s “How to Avoid Catholic Camps — A Franciscan Word to New Converts” (December 12, 2019).
32. Philippians 4:7.
33. Romans 12:2.
34. 2 Cor. 2:16.

It has become a commonplace in some quarters to suggest that the dik group of terms–particularly the verb dikaioo, “to justify”–are naturally translated as being “treated as righteous” or “reckoned as righteous”, and that Paul’s Greek-speaking readers would have understood him in this way. This may be true at the purely linguistic level; however, the Greek Christian preoccupation with the strongly transformative soteriological metaphor of deification appears to have led to justification being treated in a factitive sense. This is not, however, to be seen as a conceptual imposition on Pauline thought, but rather a discernment of this aspect of his soteriological narrative.