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Is the Reformation Over? A Statement of Evangelical Convictions

I am glad to share the following press release by the Reformanda Initiative.

Is the Reformation Over? – A Statement Release

 Rome, Italy – October 24, 2016 – The Reformanda Initiative is releasing a statement entitled, “Is the Reformation Over? A Statement of Evangelical Convictions,” which affirms the principles of the Reformation, and calling on international evangelical leaders to sign it.

The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In recent times, ecumenical friendliness between Protestants and Catholics has created ripe conditions for some leaders in both camps to claim that the Reformation is over.  While the fact that dialogue has replaced persecution is something to be thankful for, the question remains:  Have the fundamental theological differences between Catholics and Protestants/Evangelicals disappeared?

The Protestant Reformation was ultimately a call to (1) recover the authority of the Bible over the church and (2) appreciate afresh the fact that salvation comes to us through faith alone. These theological differences remain to this day.

At the same time, what is true of the Roman Catholic Church as a doctrinal and institutional reality is not necessarily true of individual Catholics. God’s grace is at work in men and women who repent and trust God alone, who respond to God’s gospel by living as disciples seeking to know Christ and make him known.

We, as Evangelicals, affirm the following three principles:

1)      Encouraging Collaboration: Where common values are at stake regarding ethical, social, cultural and political issues, we encourage efforts of collaboration between Evangelicals and Catholics and also other religious groups.

2)      Maintaining Clear Gospel Standards: When it comes to fulfilling the missionary task of proclaiming and living out the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world, Evangelicals must be careful to maintain clear gospel standards when forming common platforms and coalitions.

3)      Affirming the Reformation’s Core Principles: The issues that gave birth to the Reformation 500 years ago are very much alive today for the whole church. Evangelicals affirm, with the Reformers, the foundational convictions that our final authority is the Bible and that we are saved through faith alone.

Visit http://IsTheReformationOver.com/ to learn more.

Click here to read the full Statement.

Click here to see the current list of Evangelical leaders who have signed the Statement.

The Reformanda Initiative exists to equip and resource evangelical leaders to understand Roman Catholic theology and practice, to educate the evangelical Church, and to communicate the Gospel.

Contact:                                                                                                                                                            Reformanda Initiative                                                                                            

contact@reformandainitiative.org                                                                            

www.reformandainitiative.org

 

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129. Roman Catholic Theology after Vatican II: An Interview

October 1st, 2016

Excerpts of an interview published in Unio Cum Christo. International Journal of Reformed Theology and Life, Vol. 2, No. 2 (October 2016).

Since Martin Luther’s reformation, three major events in the life of the Roman Catholic Church have marked its reaction not only to Protestantism but also to developments in the modern culture: The Council of Trent (1545–1563), Vatican I (1869–1870), and most recently Vatican II (1962–1965). Whereas the first two are often considered as hardening the arteries of the church in their reaffirmation and defense of traditional doctrine, Vatican II is often seen as a renovation that makes the life blood of the Roman church flow swifter, opening a way to greater receptiveness to the world, bringing hope for a new ecumenical era with respect to Protestantism and openness to other religions. But since then, what has happened, and where is the Roman church headed?

1. How did Roman Catholic theology change in your country after Vatican II?

Vatican II brought significant changes in the theological landscape of Roman Catholicism. Catholic theology found itself pushed toward a season of aggiornamento (update). The retrieval of patristic influences introduced by the nouvelle théologie softened the rigidity of neo-Thomism as the main theological grid and nuanced many clear-cut boundaries that were prevalent before. Modern biblical criticism was introduced into biblical studies, thus blurring Rome’s previous commitment to a high view of biblical inspiration. After Vatican II, there has been practically no distinction between critical scholarship done by Catholic exegetes and that done by liberal Protestants in their study on Scripture. More broadly, after Vatican II, Roman Catholic theology connected with many modern trends like evolutionism, political theories, existentialism, feminism, and religious studies, all developed in a highly sophisticated “sacramental” way that is typical of Rome. Post–Vatican II Roman Catholic theology has become more “catholic” and diverse in the sense of being more open to anything, embracing all trends, and hospitable to all kinds of tendencies without losing its Roman institutional outlook. “Dialogue” seems to be its catchword: dialogue with religions, dialogue with other Christian traditions, dialogue with the sciences, dialogue with social trajectories, dialogue with the secular world…. We need to understand what dialogue means, though. I think it means expanding the boundaries, stretching the borders, rounding the edges, but not changing or moving the institutional center. Roman theology seems to reflect the catholicity project launched at Vatican II.

2. How has it continued to change, and what new directions do you note since the turn of the twenty-first century?

At times the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (i.e., the former Inquisition) felt it right and necessary to warn about possible theological derailments. For example, the 2000 document Dominus Iesus reaffirmed the centrality of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in God’s salvific purposes, trying to silence dangerous moves towards universalism and relativism. The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church tried to provide a comprehensive magisterial presentation of Catholic doctrine that would define and confirm the basic contours of Roman teaching in an age of much theological diversity and confusion. The catholicity of Rome does not mean that anything goes. It is always and organically related to the Roman center of the system. The former is at the service of the ever-expanding, universal scope of the catholic vision; the latter maintains the whole process connected to the sacramental, institutional, and political hardware of the Church.

With Pope Francis, a new development that can be seen is the increasing role of the “theology of the people,” a specific theological motif that has been shaping Latin American theology over the last few decades. It is a version of theology “from below.” Instead of jumping top-down from the official magisterium to the peripheries of the world, it makes the voices, concerns, and traditions of the “people” central for theology. This insistence on the “people” explains Francis’s endorsement of folk traditions and devotions, even ones that are idiosyncratic with regards to biblical teaching.

3. Are there signs of biblical renewal because of Bible reading by Roman Catholics?

After centuries of stigmatization if not prohibition of the use of Bible translations in the vernacular languages, the Bible is finally accessible to the people. Official documents are replete with Bible quotations. The present pope gives a short daily homily based on Scripture, focusing on a kind of sacramental-existential reading of it but often missing the redemptive flow of the Bible. There are some lay movements that encourage a spirituality that gives Scripture a significant role. The theological framework of Vatican II, though, while recognizing the importance of Scripture in the life of the Church, has placed it within the context of Tradition (capital T), which precedes and exceeds the Bible and which ultimately speaks through the magisterium of the Church. Besides these positive developments, post–Vatican II theology has increasingly aligned itself to a critical reading of the Bible: the last document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (“The Inspiration and the Truth of Sacred Scripture,” 2014) echoes the typical liberal skepticism on the reliability of the Old Testament stories, the miraculous nature of certain events, and the full inerrancy of the Bible, thus needing the magisterium to fill the vacuum with its authoritative teaching.

4. How is Pope Francis changing things now?

Francis is the first Jesuit Pope in history. It is ironic that a pope who appears to be close to Evangelicals actually belongs to the religious order that was founded to fight Protestantism. The former soldier Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1566) gathered a group of friends who called themselves The Society of Jesus (Societas Jesu), and eventually they were commissioned by the Pope to stop the spread of Protestantism. Their task was to imitate the strengths of Protestantism, that is, spiritual depth and intellectual brightness, but to use them as Catholic weapons against it. The Jesuit order provided the “alternative” catholic way to the Protestant faith. It comes as no surprise then that the first saint that Pope Francis proclaimed in 2013 was Pierre Favre (1506–1546), a first-generation French Jesuit with a “smiling face,” who more than others tried to look like a Protestant in order to drive people back to the Roman Church.

5. What can we expect from the Roman church in future?

In our fragmented and violent world, unity is one of the catchwords that many people are attracted to. Francis is strongly advocating for Christian unity and ultimately the unity of mankind. His passion for unity makes many Evangelicals think that he is the person who may achieve it. Francis developed his idea of ecumenism as a polyhedron, a geometric figure with different angles and lines. All different parts have their own peculiarity. It’s a figure that brings together unity and diversity.

Polyhedrons are fascinating figures, and Francis’s use of the image of a polyhedron is thought provoking. However, the problem for Christian unity lies primarily not in the metaphors used, but in the theological vision that nurtures it. The unity proposed by Francis still gravitates around the Roman Catholic Church and its distinct outlook, and not around the biblical Gospel that calls all Christians to conform to the mind of Christ.

Certainly, with Vatican II a different period began that needs to be understood. It is wrong to have a flattened or static view of Catholicism. On the other hand, Vatican II and Pope Francis, who is its most successful incarnation, are only the latest evolutionary step in a system that was born and developed with an “original sin” from which it has not yet been redeemed, but which instead has been consolidated. No ecumenical diplomacy will be able to change it, nor will even the addition of a new Evangelical offer to the traditional menu. The real new time, God willing, will be when Roman Catholicism breaks the imperial ecclesiological pattern and reforms its own catholicity, basing it no longer on its assimilation project, but on the basis of faithfulness to the gospel.

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128. How Does the Catholic Church Rejuvenate?

September 1st, 2016

Hierarchical. Institutional. Sacramental. Traditional. This set of markers defines the essence of the Roman Catholic Church as a permanent, conservative, top down religious organization. This is only one side of the coin, however. Rome is also home to movements and groups that express a different sociological outlook. Especially after the Second Vatican Council, many new forms of community have blossomed in the Catholic world: think of the Charismatic Renewal movement, the Focolare movement, the Neocatechumenal way, Communion and Liberation, Cursillos de Cristanidad, just to name a few of the most known Catholic groups that involve millions of people around the world. Today, these movements attract growing numbers of people and are the means by which the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in the West, counters the decline. While the traditional parish model hobbles these movements generally flourish. Serving the “missionary” input encouraged by Pope Francis, they are able to attract new people or to re-engage disconnected Catholics.

The relationship of these two components of the Catholic Church has not always been easy. The territorial dimension of the hierarchical church, centered on the authority of the bishop, has found it difficult to come to terms with the charismatic energy of the movements, more inclined to follow their own lay leaders than the local bishops. The well established patterns of the former have at times clashed with the innovative ways of the latter. The remoteness of much nominal Catholic practice appears to be very different from the intensity offered by the movements. Tensions were experienced to the point of undermining the unity of the Roman Church.

Iuvenescit Ecclesia

After years of gradual and progressive integration of the movements in the sacramental and institutional structure of the Roman Church, it is no surprise to find that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the highest authoritative Vatican voice in matters of doctrine) recently came out with a document addressing this very topic (May 15, 2016). Iuvenescit Ecclesia (the Church rejuvenates) is a detailed study on how the hierarchical and charismatic gifts need to match in the life of the Church. The whole point is to show the necessity and compatibility of both. According to the document, the church is hierarchical in its nature. It is in and through the hierarchy that the Church is also sacramental, i.e. the church dispenses God’s grace through the sacraments, the Eucharist being the most important one, and lives out its peculiar form of communion, i.e. the church being cum Petro (with Peter, with the Pope) and sub Petro (under Peter, under the Pope). Quoting Vatican II but failing to support it biblically, the Vatican Congregation argues that “Jesus Christ Himself willed that there be hierarchical gifts in order to ensure the continuing presence of his unique salvific mediation” (14). What that means is that Christ’s mediation is made present in the hierarchical structure of the Roman Church.

While re-affirming the absolute necessity of the hierarchical nature of the Roman Catholic Church, the document also speaks of “coessentiality” (10) in introducing the charismatic gifts. Both the hierarchical and the charismatic dimensions are essential for the church to be such. Applying this theological point to the issue at stake the document argues that the present-day ecclesial movements are legitimate expressions of the charismatic dimension of the church. They are corporate manifestations of the inner vitality of the hierarchical Church. The only way to secure the “harmonic connection” (7) is to serve the hierarchical and sacramental structure of the church centered on the Pope and the bishops. If this point is preserved, the movements have freedom to exist within the Roman Catholic Church.

Both-And

Following Vatican II, the documents applies the integration process that has been characterizing Roman Catholic theology and practice since its beginnings. The system opens itself up to the point of integrating the new point, the new emphasis, the new movement, making sure that it does not harm its stability but serves its expansion. Each movement captures a new form of spirituality, a specific devotional emphasis, a distinct way of living out the Roman Catholic faith, and inserts it into the wider synthesis held together by the hierarchical Church. The stability of the institution is matched with the dynamism of the ecclesial movements. The vertical and hierarchical structure of the former is countered by the horizontal breadth of the latter. The absorption of these movements is the last instance of the catholicity of Rome expanding its platform without renewing its core.

The current flurry of activity within Roman Catholic movements does not indicate, in and of itself, that there is hope for a biblical reformation within the Roman Catholic Church in an evangelical sense. It will only be as these movements make changes in the structural elements underlying the nature of Roman Catholicism, not expanding it further but purifying it in the light of God’s Word, that they can have a truly reforming function according to the Gospel. In today’s scenario, these movements, although interesting, seem to promote the Roman Catholic project of integration rather than that of biblical reformation. As the document makes it clear, these movements are meant to rejuvenate Rome, not to reform it biblically.

 

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127. Is the Ecumenical Martin Luther the Real Luther?

August 1st, 2016

As the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is approaching, it is no surprise to find books wanting to offer fresh accounts of Martin Luther’s theology and legacy. Who was this man? What was his message then and how do we understand it five centuries after? Walter Kasper’s recent volume on Luther (in German: Martin Luther. Eine ökumenische Perspektive,; in Italian: Martin Lutero. Una prospettiva ecumenica) is a valuable contribution to the on-going discussion on the historical and theological significance of the beginnings of the Reformation. Cardinal Kasper is one of the most authoritative living theologians in the Roman Catholic Church and he is highly appreciated by Pope Francis because of his work on the theology of mercy, the center of Francis’ pontificate. Since Kasper was President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity from 1999 to 2010, his analysis of Luther is also worth reading because it gives voice to widespread ecumenical evaluations and concerns.

Dialectical Interpretation

Kasper’s book focuses on Luther’s remoteness with regards to our contemporary culture. From the introduction onward Luther is painted as being a “stranger” for the modern public opinion. Very few people nowadays understand his existential questions framed with the language of sin, a guilty conscience, and the fear of divine judgment. Those theological categories and the controversies around them seem “irrelevant” today. These are “outdated” issues coming from a démodé character immersed in medieval mysticism and anti-scholastic polemics. Yet, according to Kasper, Luther was grappling with the “question of God” in his own cultural ways and patterns. He is outdated but his basic concerns are perennial. They need to be heavily decoded in order to be represented in a more palatable way and eventually appreciated.

Kasper’s interpretation of Luther is therefore dialectical: on the one hand, Luther appears to be very far and in need of significant filtering to be dealt with; on the other Luther is asking the vital questions provided that one understands what he is saying. There is truth in this, of course. As it is the case with any historical character, Luther belongs to a remote world and cultural bridges are necessary in order to meet him. The Cardinal, though, seems to distance the reader from approaching Luther in his own terms by encouraging her to apply a deconstructive interpretation that will tame the German reformer and make him closer to us postmodern Westerners. The impression is that Luther needs to be freed from his idiosyncratic edges and this is something that an ecumenical reinterpretation of him may help doing.

Kasper suggests many cautionary remarks in encountering Luther, perhaps too many to allow Luther to speak for himself. For example, are we sure that Luther’s concerns (sin, guilt, judgment and therefore grace, faith, the gospel) belong to a buried theological baggage in need of being updated with friendlier present-day standards? Wasn’t Luther rediscovering biblical truths that were blurred in medieval Christianity but are central for the Christian faith in all ages? Ultimately, the issue at stake is whether or not Luther is to be rescued from himself in order to be heard by the church and the world. Kasper seems to pit the confessional “bad” Luther against the ecumenical “good” Luther. Is this a fair way of coming to terms with Martin Luther?

Reformation or New Evangelization?

After Vatican II (1962-1965), Roman Catholic scholarship on Luther has seen a significant change of perspective. For centuries he was blamed with all possible theological evils (e.g. being a heretic and schismatic) and personal failures (e.g. prone to drunkness, chasing women). Since the work of church historians like Joseph Lortz, Luther has been mildly appreciated as a sincere reformer who has tragically gone astray. Nowadays, Catholic scholarship considers Luther as a wayward child of the church, provided that his work is excised of all hard line Protestant elements. This is also what Walter Kasper is convinced of.

According to the Cardinal, Luther belongs to a cloud of witnesses who across the centuries have sought to introduce measures of renewal in the church. Kasper mentions St. Francis of Assisi as one of them preceding Luther. The German reformer went further though, and dramatically so. With his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers he undermined the sacramental structure of the church. With his insistence on the primacy of grace he severed his theology from the optimism of Christian humanism. Instead of exercising patience and longsuffering, Luther changed an emergency situation of tensions within the church in an ordinary condition of separation and controversy. The result was schism and the beginning of a fractured confessional age that now needs to be overcome by the ecumenical age. The question is: have Luther’s basic questions been settled to move from conflict to communion?

Kasper is convinced that if Luther would appear today he would support the New Evangelization that the Roman Catholic Church is engaged in, i.e. the attempt to draw baptized but not practicing Catholics back to the Church by reaffirming the traditional body of Catholic teachings and practices. The book is an attempt to save Luther from himself and to facilitate his symbolic return to the Roman Catholic Church, dropping his teachings on grace alone, Scripture alone, and Christ alone. The New Evangelization is the Roman Catholic re-packaged program of inner renewal that has absorbed some Reformation inputs while rejecting its main doctrinal outlook. Would Martin Luther accept the deal? Perhaps the book speaks more of Kasper and present-day Roman Catholic reinterpretations of history than of Luther and his permanent call to retrieve the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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126. What Does It Mean to be Catholic? A Book Review

July 1st, 2016

Jack Mulder Jr., What Does it Mean to be Catholic? (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2015) 226 pp.

What does it mean to be Catholic? The question is simple but the answer is fraught with complexities. Is there a recognizable core, a pervasive blueprint, a distinct pattern of what Roman Catholicism is all about? The issue is worth tackling, especially in times like ours where confessional identities are often blurred and flattened. The merit of this book is to present a comprehensive, albeit short and readable, introduction to what is constitutive of the Roman Catholic identity. The intention of the Author, an associate professor of philosophy at Hope College (Michigan, USA), is to show “a small glimpse of the internal coherence, the beauty, and the depth of the Catholic faith” (p. 9). Rather than testing Roman Catholicism in terms of biblical truth or gospel faithfulness, the primary interest is to underline the coherent nature of Roman Catholicism in terms of its aesthetical attraction and profound structure of thought. In itself this is already an indication of what it means to be Catholic: looking for coherence, beauty and depth, not necessarily according to and under God’s revealed Word. The Author was raised in the Protestant faith and converted to Roman Catholicism in his adulthood. So he knows the evangelical subculture quite well. In presenting his newly found faith he often and interestingly interacts with concerns and questions that are normally asked by evangelical protestants.

Catholic Distinctiveness

The opening sentence of chapter 1 well captures the essence of what Roman Catholicism is all about in its practical outworking. “In my wallet I carry a little card with a picture of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and a tiny piece of cloth laminated to it. Next to the cloth it reads: This piece of cloth has been touched by his relics” (p. 11). What used to be thought of as being the quintessence of idolatry, i.e. the reliance on pictures, relics and saints, is now seen as expressing the genuine longing of the Catholic faith: the blessed presence of divine grace accessed through tangible objects and human holy mediators. The Author readily acknowledges that in order to make sense of this practice one needs to have a wider concept of Divine Revelation than Scripture alone. According to Roman Catholicism, Scripture and tradition are streams of the same wellspring of Revelation that the Church is given the task to rightly interpret and duly apply, thus governing the “development” of doctrine and practice. From the religious point of view, carrying the card with St. Thomas Aquinas makes sense given the fact that the “formal principle” of the Roman faith is not Scripture alone, but Scripture as interpreted as part of a bigger Tradition ultimately received and spelt out by the teaching office of the Church. As it was the case in the XVI century, the evangelical “Scripture alone” is utterly incompatible with Roman Catholicism.

Having clarified this foundational epistemological point, the rest of the book aptly presents the Roman Catholic faith, introducing topics as central and diverse as The Church and her Magisterium, God and Humanity, The Person and Work of Christ, Mary and the Communion of the Saints, The Seven Sacraments, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, The Human Person. All in all, the Author well manages to navigate the complexities of Catholic doctrine and practice, always trying to trace their doctrinal development and pointing to the coherence of the whole in terms of the present-day teaching of Roman Catholicism. He does a great job in expounding the coherence of the system given its wide foundations which go well beyond the Bible. The problem is: is it what the biblical Gospel is all about? Once established that the normative reference point is not Scripture alone, every point he deals with raises serious concerns from a biblical perspective.

A Gradualist View of Salvation

A test-case of the deviant direction of Roman Catholicism has to do with the view of salvation as having a universal scope and a hopeful end for all. The Author sides with the post-Vatican II account whereby there are circles of salvation which ultimately embrace the whole of humanity. Quoting Paul VI and John Paul II, but evoking standard Vatican II teaching, “There are four concentric circles of people: first, all humanity; second, the worshipers of the one God; third, all Christians; and fourth, Catholics themselves” (p. 9). Salvation is seen as a gift that people receive in different degrees depending on the circle they chose to identify with or find themselves in. Roman Catholics receive God’s grace in the fullest measure through the sacraments administered by the (Roman) Church under the Pope and the bishops who are the successors of the apostles; other Christians receive God’s grace to a lesser extent because they retain true elements of the faith but lack the fullness of it in not being in full fellowship with the Church of Rome. Religious people receive it because they have a sense of the divine, although they miss important aspects of the faith. Finally, the whole of humanity receives it because they are human and therefore existentially open to God’s grace which works in mysterious ways. Ultimately, “the only real way to get outside of God’s grace is to expel oneself from it” (p. 190). The conditions for such self-expulsion are so remote and limited that practically there is hope that all will be saved. This is quite different from clear biblical teaching that turns the picture upside down. According to Scripture we are all by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), all sinners (Romans 3:23), all under his judgment (John 3:18). It is not us who exclude ourselves from God’s grace. Because of sin we are all born into this condition. Roman Catholicism turns the argument around and believes the contrary, i.e. we are all born into God’s grace albeit at various levels of depth and at different degrees.

As an aside comment, the Author interestingly says that “when evangelical leader Rob Bell came out with a book called Love Wins, which only raises the possibility of everyone ending up in heaven, and never definitively claims that this will happen, controversy erupted in evangelical circles, but Catholics took very little notice” (p. 187). This is no surprise given the hopeful scope of the Roman Catholic gradualist view of salvation for all.

The book is very honest in presenting the Roman Catholic faith and not hiding points of controversy with other Christian traditions. Contrary to some attempts to blur the lines, this volume does a good job in highlighting what is distinctive of Roman Catholicism and therefore in showing how it is different from the evangelical faith. Even in its post-Vatican II outlook, Roman Catholicism is still idiosyncratic to Scripture alone, Christ alone and faith alone.