withallyourmind.net

In my last post, I began a series exploring the relationship of evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Today, I will begin to briefly examine areas of agreement between these two groups.

Christianity has an exceedingly rich tradition, both spiritually and intellectually. Much of this tradition, that which is prior to the reformation, is shared by evangelicals and Catholics. To discard the honored theologians of Catholicism would be to discard much of the richness of the Christian faith. Protestants, as well as Catholics, deeply value the writings of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. So, one area of immediate agreement involves the shared esteem of certain great Christian thinkers, philosophers, and theologians. There are also a number of doctrinal questions upon which evangelicals and Catholics may claim considerable agreement. Among these are views on revelation, God, humanity, Jesus Christ, salvation, the Church, ethics, and eschatology. I will examine each of these in turn, today looking at shared views concerning revelation and God. It is important, however, to note that although there is much agreement in each of these areas, this is not to imply that there is complete agreement or that there are no substantial differences.

Regarding revelation, both Catholics and evangelicals embrace one Bible divided into two testaments. The three major creeds - the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed - are also accepted by both groups. The first four councils of the Church - First Nicea, First Contantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon – are also accepted by the majority of evangelicals as well as Catholics. All cults and heresies can be seen to depart theologically from the doctrine which was developed over the first five centuries of Christianity. Evangelicals and Catholics hold to the centrality of God’s revelation as given in the scriptures. Although Catholics include the apocryphal books in the Old Testament, they are in agreement with evangelicals on the other 66 books of the Bible.

Both also hold that God has chosen to reveal himself to man on two levels, one of general revelation and another of special revelation. For Catholics, as well as evangelicals, natural law forms much of the moral foundation from which we address social and moral issues. Both embrace natural theology, but recognize that special revelation is necessary due to the deficiency of human reason as a result of the fall. There is also agreement on the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture. Although there are certainly differences in the way the doctrine is fleshed out, Catholics have no problem, at least in some sense, accepting sola Scriptura.

Catholics and evangelicals also hold to the same basic view of God. The formulations of the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed are agreed upon by all. The doctrine that there is but one God who exists in three persons who is the creator of all is a fundamental area of agreement. The New Catholic Encyclopedia’s definition of God would present no difficulties to evangelicals:

The Supreme Being, Pure Act, First Cause of all, provident conserver and governor of the universe; the Absolute – infinite, eternal, immutable, intelligent, omniscient, all-powerful, and free; the Creator, to whom creatures owe homage, respect, and obedience; the Sovereign Good, diffusive of all goodness, toward which everything tends as to its ultimate final cause; the supernatural source of revelation; the Godhead composed of three Divine Persons in one divine nature – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Both the Catholic and evangelical understanding of God comes from both general and special revelation. There is also agreement on the classical attributes of God, divided into those which are communicable and those which are incommunicable. Evangelicals and Catholics stand together on this fundamental doctrinal area of the view of God.

I listened with great interest to the recent interview of Francis Beckwith by Greg Koukl on the Stand to Reason radio show. As most of you probably know, Beckwith, then president of the Evangelical Theological Society, converted (actually reverted) to Catholicism. I recommend you listen to the podcast available at STR. Given the recent interest in the relationship of evangelicals and Catholicism, I thought I would present a series of blogs on the subject. I must stress the limited nature of my presentation. It is well beyond the capability of this medium to attempt to treat this subject exhaustively. Fortunately, someone has done an excellent job of doing that already in book form: Ralph MacKenzie and Normal Geisler in Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Disagreements. I have recently read this book and it serves as the source for this series of posts.

Over the next several posts , I hope to clarify and sharpen our thinking regarding the relationship between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. After providing a brief sketch of developments in the history of Catholics and evangelicals, I will then examine areas of doctrinal agreement. Then, I will discuss areas of doctrinal differences, and finally, I will provide a brief summary of our subject.

In 1054, an event known as the Great Schism divided Christendom into two large branches, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. In actuality, this was not a sudden event that occurred in 1054, but was instead a long process of estrangement between Latin and Greek Christianity. Then, in the early sixteenth century, a German monk named Martin Luther began a reform of the Roman Catholic Church, which was increasingly viewed as corrupt, both in theology and practice. Other reformers, such as John Calvin, followed suit, and these groups of people became known as Protestants. The Roman Church then launched a counter-reformation culminating in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), condemning the Protestant reforms. For roughly four hundred years, Catholics and Protestants had little in common, often co-existing in an antagonistic relationship.

In the 1960’s Vatican II softened the traditional stance of Roman Catholicism toward Protestants, no longer referring to them as apostates, but as “separated brethren.” The charismatic movement within the Catholic Church later in that decade provided some new common ground with many Protestants. Combined with the liberalization which has taken place within many mainline Protestant denominations, evangelicals now find themselves more closely aligned on many issues with Catholics than with their fellow Protestants, manifesting itself in scholarly cooperation and alliances on social issues. That Catholics and Protestants were common enemies of communism in Eastern Europe served to further erode barriers. In 1994, a group of thirty prominent evangelical and Catholic leaders met together and created a joint-document called, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: THE CHRISTIAN MISSION IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM.” Among the Protestant contributors were well-recognized men among evangelicals, such as J. I. Packer, Pat Robertson, Bill Bright, and Chuck Colson. There have also been, in recent years, prominent evangelical leaders who have converted to Catholicism, including Francis Beckwith, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Given this recent ecumenism, was the Protestant Reformation a mistake? Do Catholics and evangelicals have any substantial differences that merit the present distinction? Or, is it as some evangelicals have argued that the Roman Catholic Church is anti-Christ and demonic? Many lay evangelicals which I have spoken with question whether Catholicism is even a Christian institution. Just how much do evangelicals and Catholics agree or disagree? How important or significant are these disagreements?

Next, I will begin a discussion of areas of agreement.

I, for one, am very glad to see J. P. Moreland blogging. I am finding his posts to be excellent summaries of clear thinking on a number of issues. (This post is a briefer summary of his brief summary!) His post, How Did Jesus Act?: Jesus as a Moral Teacher, explores the ethical system of Jesus Christ and, by extension, of those who call themselves Christians (followers of Christ). Two competing ethical theories (there are others, of course) are deontological ethics and virtue ethics. Deontological ethics focuses on right and wrong moral actions and moral rules. It stresses that there are moral “laws” which should be followed by all in all circumstances if one is to be considered moral. Immanuel Kant is perhaps one of the best remembered deontologists. Virtue ethics, in contrast, focuses not on the particular actions, but more on the individual who performs those actions. The focus is on the nature and formation of a good person. The development of moral character receives the emphasis, rather than the performance of any particular act. Aristotle and Aquinas represent this ethical position.

So, which is for the Christian? Are we to consider morality as the development of a good, moral person who inculcates the habit of choosing that which is right? Or are we to consider morality as the keeping of certain moral principles or rules? J. P. Moreland, rightly I think, answers, “Both.” Regarding Christ’s view on morality, he first lays a foundation by stating three important aspects of Christ’s moral teaching.

First, Christ was objectivist, not relativist. He believed in the existence of objectively true moral principles.
Second, He believed in moral knowledge… that we can have knowledge of right and wrong.
Third, Morality is based in God’s holy, moral nature.

I won’t reproduce Moreland’s entire post here, since you can read it yourself in his own words. But, I appreciate his ability to provide clear thinking in areas which can sometimes by quite murky. I conlcude with a portion of his last paragraph:

Fortunately, one does not need to choose between the two as some have claimed. Some ethicists hold, correctly in my view, that virtues and moral rules should coexist in some way. They claim that virtues without rules are blind, but rules without virtues are motivationally impotent. Both virtue and deontological ethics are necessary for an adequate moral system. Neither virtues nor moral rules is basic; rather, each has intrinsic value and they complement each other. People have a duty to be a certain kind of person and to obey correct moral rules. The virtues refer to the character traits that should characterize a good person and moral rules provide guidance for defining right and wrong moral actions.

The latest issue of The Areopagus Journal recently arrived at my home. I was asked to write a book review for this publication, and you’ll find my review of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind in this May-June 2007 issue. The Areopagus Journal is the journal of the Apologetics Resource Center. (Areopagus refers to Mars’ Hill and is taken from Acts 17:19 in which Paul is engaging in the apologetic enterprise with Greek philosophers.)

The theme of this issue is “Troublesome Movements in the 21st-Century Church.” Several movements are reviewed, including the emerging church, the church growth movement, the apostolic and prophetic movement, and Federal Vision. I found Craig Branch’s discussion of the emerging church to be one of the best, most succinct and straightforward discussions of this movement around. As far as I know, the articles are not available online, so you will have to subscribe to read them.

According to Branch, there are three major errors found within much of the emerging movement. He finds that its proponents repeatedly fall prey to the either/or fallacy. This fallacy which goes by other names (including the fallacy of the excluded middle or the false dilemma fallacy) involves a situation in which two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there exist one or more other options which have not been considered.

The first major error, Branch claims, regards epistemology, or their views on knowledge and truth. A false dilemma is presented in which emerging church leaders reject all forms of foundationalism, naively claiming that we must either choose between having absolute certainty in our knowledge and beliefs (which is unattainable) or having no certainty and be unable to claim any knowledge at all. There is a third alternative, that of non-classical foundationalism which do not insist that knwoledge requires absolute certainty.

The second error concerns the emerging church movements views on Scripture. Many deny the inerrancy of scripture, claiming that it reflects human cultural concepts. This stems from the view that the traditional evangelical view of innerancy stems from the modernist quest for certainty. Branch correctly points out that inerrancy is not a result of modern thinking, but is the Scriptures own stated view of itself. Branch states:

I appreciate the word picture given by a non-radical and balanced emergent leader, Mark Driscoll, when he describes the postmodern desconstruction of the centuries old doctrinal consensus of traditional Christianity as a “house” that is being torn down. He writes that “descontruction without a rebuilding plan leads to homelessness… This sense of homelessness pervades those who have undertaken t to desconstruct God, Scripture, gender, sin, the meaning to life, and anything else they can find.”

The third major error is rejection of the evangelical emphasis on the substitutionary nature of the atonement of Christ, “seeing the cross and the gospel as primarily relational and missional rather objective and proclamational.” Again, Branch maintains that the either/or fallacy is at play here. One must not choose one or the other. One can maintain the propositional truth of the cross and the atonement, yet also being very missional in one’s practice.

We are not forced to choose between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. These are not exclusive categories. The true church will strive to hold to right doctrinal truths and to live out those truths in this world in the correct manner.

I recently listened to a lecture by J. P. Moreland on Christianity and the Nature of Science. Here’s a summary of certain portions of that lecture.

There is a an often unspoken assumption which is held by certain scientists today. It is often assumed that the only true, reliable knowledge which can be had will be a result of scientific inquiry. Truth claims which are not scientific in nature are considered to be merely opinions or beliefs which produce insecure knowledge, while those claims which science makes about the world are held to be true facts, vastly superior to claims made outside of science. This position is badly mistaken. I will present several reasons why this is so.

First, the claim that something can be known if and only if that thing is scientifically testable (that only scientific knowledge is possible), is self-refuting. That claim itself is not scientifically verifiable, therefore, it is not a claim that we can know anything about. It fails to meet its own criterion of knowledge. A weaker version, that is, that there may be a few examples of non-scientific knowledge, but that that knowledge is not very secure compared to science fails as well for many of the following reasons.

Neither version of this view, often called scientism, allows for the asserting and defending of the presuppositions of science. Scientific inquiry is made possible only by the acceptance of certain presuppositions which themselves cannot be asserted and defended scientifically. For example, science presupposes that there is an external, orderly world that exists independent of our theories about it, that we can have knowledge of that world, and that our language is capable of referring to objects in that world. Many intellectuals of our day would deny each of those claims. Science is unable to defend those claims by its own criterion of knowledge, that is, knowledge which comes by the scientific enterprise. In order to even get started, science needs help from other fields, such as theology and philosophy.

Additionally, science assumes that our cognitive and sensory faculties are reliable. One has no reason to accept this assumption on the basis of scientific knowledge. In fact, Darwinian evolution undercuts this presupposition since evolution does not care if our beliefs are true or accurate, but only if they confer reproductive advantage enabling organisms to survive. If our cognitive and sensory faculties are unreliable, science cannot make claims of truth and rationality. So, scientism does not allow for the justification of its own principles. If science is to succeed, it must grant that true, reliable knowledge can be gained from other disciplines.

It seems not only the case that science cannot justify its own inherent assumptions, but also that some things outside of science can in fact be known, even with more certainty than scientific knowledge. One example of this is mathematical knowledge, which cannot be known by scientific methods. The proposition, 2 + 2 = 4, is necessarily true and is a priori knowledge (not needing experience to justify it). Scientific knowledge is a posteriori (justified by sense experience) and only contingently true.

Logical propositions also seem knowable without science’s aid. In fact, science presupposes basic propositions of logic in order to proceed. I can’t imagine that science could function without presupposing the law of non-contradiction (a thing cannot be both a and non-a at the same time in the same way). That law itself is not a product of science.

One kind of non-scientific knowledge which seems very obvious to us all is the knowledge of the contents of one’s own consciousness. One simply knows his own beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. One also knows which body is his without the aid of scientific methodology. We seem to have first-person direct knowledge of these things by introspective awareness. It is rational to state that one has more certainty which body is his than that electrons exist.

Finally, ethical propositions are the kinds of claims that we seem to know. The proposition that torturing babies for fun is wrong has not been a product of scientific research. It is sure, reliable knowledge that we know in non-scientific ways. That mercy and kindness are virtues seem obviously true, and science has not nor cannot provide that knowledge.

In conclusion, I feel there are convincing reasons to reject the notion that only science can give us knowledge or that scientific knowledge is superior to other kinds of knowledge. There are many real things which science simply cannot address. Not only that, but science depends upon this knowledge which is gained by non-scientific methods.

In case anyone is interested, I’ve posted two papers I’ve written to my website at http://jeremy.withallyourmind.net/papers.html. They are pretty much the first two substantive papers I wrote in college and so they aren’t to be taken as finished products or as ultimate demonstrations of my philosophical writing. Nevertheless, I still think they are pretty good (though incomplete). Both deal with issues in free will. The first is a discussion and defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, and the second is a broad defense of agent causation.

J. P. Moreland has an excellent post in which he presents a primer on God and logic and then shows how that Jesus was a great logician using Matthew 22:23-33 and Mark 11:27-33 to support his case. Moreland shows the self-refuting nature of those claims that logic is an invention of western minds and should be rejected. Regarding Jesus as logician, Moreland concludes:

To my mind, Jesus was the greatest thinker who ever lived. And while he did not come to develop a theory about logic or to teach logic as a field of study, it is clear that he was adept at employing logical forms and laws in his thinking and reasoning. We who are his followers should go and do likewise.

Hat Tip to Joe Torres at Kingdomview. He has been blogging on worldviews and apologetics since January. His blog appears very well done and you should check it out. I’m adding it to our blogroll.

Eleanor Stump, in Philosophy of Religion, edited by William L. Craig (which is the source for my previous post on pain as well), examines the biblical story of Cain and Abel as a case study on the problem of evil. While not pretending to solve all instances of evil in the world, she applies the theodicy which she developed to this particular instance of “evil.” According to Stump:

… the incidents related in the story are such that a twentieth-century atheistic philosopher might have invented them as a showcase for the problem of evil.

Most readers of this blog are probably quite familiar with this story found in Genesis, but I will recount it briefly. Cain and Abel, two brothers, bring offerings to god. God accepts Abel’s offering and rejects Cain’s. The reason for the acceptance of one and the rejection of the other is not provided in the text. Cain becomes very angry and jealous of Abel. God, then, does not leave Cain alone, but intervenes, asking questions of Cain and warning that he is in danger of sin. Cain ignores God’s intervention and murders his innocent brother, Abel. Abel, a righteous man, suffers a violent and untimely death. God again comes to Cain, asking probing questions in an attempt to bring about a confession on the part of Cain. Cain once again resists God’s efforts and God punishes him by miraculous intervention: When Cain tills the ground, it will be barren. Cain complains to God that this punishment is too severe and more than he can bear. God once again comforts Cain and promises a measure of protection, keeping him from any murderous intentions on the part of others.

Stump asks what it is that God actually does in this passage. First, he allowed Abel to be murdered when he could have intervened miraculously (after all he did intervene on the behalf of Cain). God seemingly did nothing to help innocent Abel when he obviously knew what was about to happen. Second, God warns Cain of the danger waiting ahead if he does not repent. After the murder, he again appeals to Cain to repent. He punishes Cain with what appears to be a miraculous intervention. Then, he shows mercy on Cain by offering protection from murder. Stump states:

Clearly, any one of these things done on Abel’s behalf would have been enough to save him. But God does none of these things for Abel, the innocent, the accepted of God; he does them instead for Cain, a man whose offering was rejected and who is murderously angry at his brother. When it comes to righteous Abel, God simply stands by and watches him be killed.

The appropraite question at this point might be, “Why?” The answer Stump provides is her solution to the problem of evil:

If God is good and has a care for his creatures, his overriding concern must be to insure not that they live as long as possible or that they suffer as little pain as possible in this life but rather that they live in such a way as ultimately to bring them into union with God…

God does not rescue Abel because contrary to appearances Abel is not in danger; and God’s failure to rescue Abel, as well as all the other care for Cain recorded in the story, constitutes the best hope of a rescue for Cain, who is in danger, and not just of death but of perpetual living death.

On this account, while it is true Abel died violently and prematurely and is deprived of years of life, from a Christian standpoint, he gained eternal bliss. If God had intervened and caused Cain’s death, Cain would have died in mortal sin while Abel would have continued a life of “painful and spiritually perilous pilgrimage through this life”, dying eventually, perhaps in a less virtuous state.

The bottom line is that on a Christian worldview, much more than the present circumstances must be considered when evaluating an instance of evil. There are considerations much more weighty than living a comfortable, pain-free life on earth.

I’ve been doing a little reading on the problem of evil the past few days. Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? This is obviously a difficult and complex question and I will not attempt to provide an answer in this brief post. However, a common practice of mine might shed some light on the subject.

As many of you know, I am a practicing emergency physician in one of the busiest emergency departments in the country. A common presenting complaint is that of abdominal pain. Fairly frequently, the cause of abdominal pain cannot be discovered. One can guess as to the problem but often cannot know with certainty what the etiology of the pain is (Perhaps greater than 50% of the time this is the case). One of the goals of an emergency physician is to relieve pain. It is pain that brings most people to see me. I would have a lot less business if it weren’t for pain! (This is not my defense of the existence of pain, by the way… that it provides me an income.) If I am able to discharge a patient home, in most cases I try to provide some medication for pain relief. There is, however, one prominent exception. I almost never send a patient home with pain medication if they are having abdominal pain of unknown etiology.

Why? Because there are a lot of bad things that can cause abdominal pain. I do not want to send someone home with a strong narcotic pain medication and have them ignore a worsening condition because I have blunted their ability to feel pain. Pain serves a purpose. If the patient’s pain is increasing, I want them to return to the emergency department for re-evaluation to makes sure they are not developing an emergent surgical cause of pain (e.g., appendicitis).

The point is this: Pain serves an essential purpose. It tells us that something is wrong and that we should seek help in order to obtain relief from the pain. The problem is not the pain. The pain is simply a symptom letting the person know that something is amiss, perhaps fatally so. Perhaps, the pain and suffering we all experience in this world serve a similar purpose in man’s relationship to God. Peter Van Inwagen, in a proposed theodicy, stated:

As essential and important component of God’s plan of Atonement… is to make us dissatisfied with our state of separation from Him; and not by miraculously altering our values or by subjecting us to illusion or by causing us suffering that has no natural connection with our separation, but simply by allowing us to “live with” the natural consequences of this separation, and by making it as difficult as possible for us to delude ourselves about the kind of world we live in: a hideous world, much of whose hideousness is quite plainly traceable to the inability of human beings to govern themselves or to order their own lives.

The perception by human beings of their incapacity to “live to themselves” is essential to God’s plan of Atonement because, first, without this perception few if any human beings would consider turning to God. (If, therefore, God were miraculously to “cancel” the natural consequences of separation from Himself, He would not only be a deceiver but would remove the only motivation fallen human beings have for returning to Him.)

As I want to “motivate” my patients to return to me if their condition is dangerous by not relieving all their pain, so does the pain which exists in our world serve to indicate to every man that something is indeed dangerously wrong and that we should seek the definitive cure - God’s plan of Atonement!

For a cute, light, refreshing moment, watch this little girl recite the 23rd Psalm… Surely!