A clear prophecy of the Catholic Church in the Old Testament?

I had this post as a guest post on another blog that was shut down, so I will just repost it here:

Daniel 2 contains a fascinating prophecy which speaks of God’s plan to set up a Kingdom upon earth that is not of human origin and will come to cover the whole earth. Christians as far back as the Early Church Fathers have interpreted this prophecy as referring to the Catholic Church being established by Christ, expanding all over the world, and lasting forever. After reflecting upon the prophecy, I see no other plausible interpretation. Let me explain my thoughts.

Back at the Babylonian Exile, God caused the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar to have a mysterious dream which only the Prophet Daniel could explain. In verses 2:31-45, Daniel interprets the dream in some pretty plain terms.

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was of a large statue that was divided into Five Sections: the statue’s Head was made of Gold, the Chest was made of Silver, the Lower Torso was made of Bronze, the Legs were made of Iron, and the Feet were made of an Iron-Clay mix (2:31-33). Then he saw “a stone not cut by human hands” was hurled down from the sky and struck the statue at the Feet, reducing it to pieces, and this stone went on to become “a great mountain that filled the whole earth” (2:34-35).

That was the dream which Daniel was then given the task to explain.

Daniel begins by telling King Nebuchadnezzar that he and his Babylonian Empire are the Head made of Gold (2:37-38). Then Daniel says another Empire will arise, not as fancy as Gold (i.e. Silver), and this second Empire will take over and become the new world super power. After that, a third Empire, the Kingdom of Bronze will succeed the Kingdom of Silver. This third Empire will be succeeded by a Kingdom of Iron, followed lastly by a Kingdom of Iron-Clay, which signifies “a divided kingdom” (2:41), partly strong and partly weak (2:42). And it will be in the time of this Iron-Clay divided Empire that God will set up His Kingdom which will never be destroyed, and in fact will shatter all kingdoms that stand in its way (2:43-45).

It really isn’t difficult to make a coherent interpretation of what Daniel is talking about. We know from the text that the sections of the Body represent a succession of world Empires and that the clock starts with the Babylonian Empire. We also know from other parts of the Bible as well as undisputed world history that the Persian Empire came in and replaced Babylon, and after that Alexander the Great came in and replaced the Persian Empire with his Greek Empire. The next big Empire to immediately come along was the Roman Empire, which we all know was the big dog at the time of Christ. As the Roman Empire began to erode, it eventually broke into two Empires, an Eastern (Byzantine) and a Western (Latin), starting around the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325AD. It was about this time that Christianity began making huge growth in the public sphere such that we see Christianity as a force to be reckoned with among the pagan remnants. And as we know, Christianity ended up long outlasting the Roman Empire(s) and that Christianity grew and grew to spread all over the world.

For apologetics purposes, we should note that the only “candidate” that fits this prophecy/interpretation is the Catholic Church. We see how the Catholic Church was around at this time and that this is the time when the Catholic Church began to grow in influence. There is no Protestant denomination that really fits as even a possible candidate. No Protestant denomination was around at the time frame of AD300-400, and Protestantism usually explains the Reformation was necessary because the Gospel started to become more and more lost over the centuries as Catholicism grew — despite the fact this Prophecy says these “dark ages” were going to be the time when the Church really begins to spread its wings!

The only ways I see a Protestant not being indicted by this Prophecy is to try and claim a different timeline or different Empires, but this is too tall of an order to fill. For example, what succession of Empires comes close to fitting the Five that were just mentioned? And the way the timeline goes, if you start the Kingdom of God too late down the centuries, e.g. starting at the time of the Reformation, then you have to both explain away the influence of Christianity during the “dark ages” of AD400-1400, as well as explain which Protestant denomination really comes close to modeling an united heavenly Kingdom that spreads all over the world. For those Protestants who say the Church went underground all this time, that certainly doesn’t fit the description that this Kingdom would be like a huge mountain that covers the earth, an image impossible for anyone to not see!

In conclusion, any attempts to get around the plain, straightforward traditional Catholic interpretation will cause more problems than it solves, leaving the Catholic Church as the most obvious candidate of this Scriptural Prophecy.

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END NOTE: The above apologetic also works very effectively against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who officially teach the same succession as the above, but they say the Iron-Clay Empire represents the British-American Empire, which is when the Watchtower comes on the scene. This interpretation suffers from the flaw of leaving a 1500 year gap between the last two Empires, conveniently side-stepping the disastrous implications to JW theology. To add to this, the JW interpretation has never produced a Church that fits the description of one which will cover the whole world, putting them in a similar dilemma to any given Protestant denomination.

I firmly believe this is an awesome and effective apologetics argument to use against Evangelicals.

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Update 11-19-14: I have found online an article called “Interpretations of the Kingdom of God in Daneil 2:44” by Gerhard Pfandl (1996). He gives a good summary of the patristic data. The following Patristic sources he cites I was able to find online and verify the quotes:

Is Imputation taught in 2 Corinthians 5:21?

Protestants consider 2 Corinthians 5:21 to be one of the chief Biblical proof texts for for their doctrine of the Imputed Righteousness of Christ. In fact, they put so much emphasis on this verse that a lot of their credibility hangs on it. Given this, I want to provide Catholics with some key information on what to say when speaking with a Protestant on this crucial text, because if you can stop them in their tracks here, you'll have gone a long way towards causing them to rethink everything about their own position and what Catholicism has to offer them.

Is the Imputed Righteousness of Christ the only hope for a person to become right with God?

[The following is a Guest Post I made at another blog but the blog was deleted a couple years ago]

How does a sinner become right with God? That’s a question Reformed Protestants love to ask, and for good reason, since it’s one of life’s most important questions. But the interesting thing is, the Reformed answer contains a serious flaw, and recognizing this can help explain where their understanding of Justification goes off course and get corrected. This blog post, which is somewhat a continuation of the last blog post, will address the problem and explain the solution.

The Reformed answer for how we can “stand before God and be right with him” is typically summarized as follows: Since we are sinners, we’re obviously not righteous, so we need Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. As the prior post explained, the Reformed understanding of righteousness is perfect obedience to all of God’s commandments. So Christ’s righteousness imputed to us means that we need Christ’s perfect obedience (also called “Christ’s Active Obedience”) transferred to our account, so that God can then “count us as righteous” (i.e. Justify us), just as if we had been perfectly obedient ourselves. Sounds simple enough, and it is simple, but there’s a problem that emerges and cannot be ignored.

Now everyone agrees that Adam was originally created in communion with God and was in a right relationship with Him. But how can this be if Adam had not yet perfectly kept all God’s commandments? In other words, Adam was not yet righteous (in the sense of perfect obedience) and yet he was in communion with God, with God being well pleased with him.

Do you see the dilemma the Reformed position falls into? The Reformed rightly recognize that Adam didn’t have to have perfect obedience to be in a right relationship with God, but the Reformed also say that us being in a right relationship with God requires perfect obedience. Something’s wrong here. Logically speaking, if Adam didn’t need perfect obedience to be in communion with God, then neither should we.

The difference between Adam and us is not which one of us had perfect obedience (since neither Adam nor us ever did), but rather a matter of Adam not having sin and us having sin. Thus, if justification is about putting us in a right relationship with God, then needing a perfect obedience isn’t the solution, but rather getting rid of the sin. This is precisely why the Catholic understanding of ‘getting saved’ (or ‘getting justified) is one of remission of sins and cleansing our hearts, which is basically the undoing of the damage Adam caused.

While it needs to be said that Reformed theology does teach that ‘half’ of Christ’s work on our behalf was to secure the forgiveness of sins (i.e. Christ suffering for us), they go off course by saying the other ‘half’ of Christ’s work was perfectly keeping all God’s commandments in our place. If they were to say that Justification was simply the forgiveness of sins, they’d be a lot closer to the Catholic and Biblical position. But by understanding justification as being declared before God to have perfectly kept God’s law, the Reformed have basically put themselves in a bind. They’ve incorrectly defined what it means to be “Justified,” and that’s not a trivial matter.

To state it another way, the Reformed have (unintentionally) collapsed two distinct Biblical events into one event: Conversion and Final Judgment. Conversion is about becoming right with God, restoring the broken relationship which Adam originally had and lost for us. The Final Judgment is about departing this life in friendship with God, with God declaring you a “faithful servant” from growing in that relationship. Using an analogy: Conversion is being adopted into God’s household, while Final Judgment is God declaring that you’ve been a faithful son in his household and ready to receive your inheritance. Just to clarify, Catholics are not saying you ‘buy’ your adoption or inheritance, these are gifts that God wants to give us at the proper time, should we accept them. (Note: You can also throw your gifts away by mortal sin, which then requires Confession to recover them.)

With all this in mind consider the Biblical witness on the matter.

When the Bible uses the term “justify,” it never (clearly) refers to declaring someone to be perfectly obedient before a judge, but rather is about declaring a person is vindicated (or not guilty), particularly when speaking of having sins forgiven. For example, Deuteronomy 25:1 speaks of the civil justice system, with the judge having to “justify the righteous” (NASB) man in a lawsuit. This certainly doesn’t mean the judge is declaring the defendant of having kept the law perfectly throughout his whole life, but rather simply that the man isn’t guilty of the charges against him. In other famous texts speaking of civil justice, God does not approve of human judges “condemning the righteous” (e.g. Ex 23:7; Prov 17:15; Is 5:23), which also wouldn’t make much practical sense if perfect obedience was in view, because nobody would be perfectly obedient in the first place. The point simply is this: There’s big difference between saying someone is ‘not guilty’ and saying someone has been perfectly obedient, and justification in the civil sense is only concerned with the former.

Turning to the New Testament, there is abundant testimony as to what Christ did for man, but never does the sacred text speak of Christ’s work for us in terms of perfectly keeping the commandments in our place. Rather, every major text speaks simply of Christ getting rid of our sins and restoring our communion with God. (To keep things brief, only the book of Acts will be examined in this post, with the Pauline Epistles being examined in the next blog post.)

After the Resurrection, Jesus tells the Apostles that the Prophets foretold “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Lk 24:47). And this is precisely the message the Apostles carried into their Gospel preaching in Acts: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”; “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out”; “repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins”; “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins”; “through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed”; “cleansed their hearts by faith”; “be baptized and wash away your sins”; “that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 15:9; 22:16; 26:18). The message is consistent throughout, whether it’s Peter, Paul or another disciple doing the preaching.

So why do none of these Gospel proclamations in Acts speak of needing Christ’s perfect obedience to be able to stand before God and be right with Him? Did the Apostles forget a key piece of the Gospel Message? Catholics say No, the concept of Christ’s righteousness simply wasn’t part of what it takes to be right with God.

For those interested in commenting, please remain focused on this subject at hand. The subject is not about Mary, the Papacy, Indulgences, but simply the proper definition of Justification and whether it’s taught in Acts (with plenty of time for discussing Paul’s Epistles in the next blog post).

Reformed Professor Matthew Barrett and the shallowness of the Protestant grasp of Scripture

I'm not writing this brief article to make fun of anyone, but simply as an example of the sad situation Protestantism finds itself in when it comes to interpreting Scripture. I really want to emphasize this because for a long time and even still to this day Protestants are under a serious delusion that Catholics are too dumb to really know the plain teaching of Scripture. In this post I want to give a brief look at what a Reformed Seminary Professor posted on his blog.

Matthew Barrett has a PhD in systematic theology, is editor of a major Reformed magazine (Credo), and is a professor at a Reformed college. Just yesterday he posted on the Credo Magazine blog a post titled "It is finished: A reflection on John 19:30." Just by the title, you'd think that Dr Barrett is going to exegete this verse, and in fact I was drawn to read this post precisely because I know this verse is important for the Calvinist view of the Atonement. But when you read the brief "reflection," there's no actual exegesis of the text at all. He merely quotes the text in passing a few times, which is simply how most Protestants approach this verse. 

These two concluding paragraphs form the heart of his post, so that's all I'll quote and comment upon:

When we come to the cross and we see the enormous amount of suffering Jesus underwent, we tend to focus solely on his physical suffering: the crown of thorns, the nails, and the crucifix. But as important as all of this is, we cannot miss the main thing: the most excruciating thing about the suffering servant’s cross is that he bore the very wrath of God that was ours. The Lord laid upon Christ our iniquities and Christ took the due penalty for those iniquities. We see this and we hear it when Christ cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34). And then come three beautiful words, “It is finished” (John 19:30).

What is finished? Christ, as he says in the garden of Gethsamani, has drunk the cup of God’s wrath in full (Matt. 26:39), and by doing so, as Hebrews 1:3 reminds us, Christ “made purification for sins.” As our high priest Christ “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11-12; cf. 9:13, 25-26). Indeed, this is good news.

Again, this man has a PhD in systematic theology, so he should know how to exegete Scripture and know how things fit together. And yet these handful of sentences show the most embarrassing level of interpretive skill and grasp of theology. But really, this is par for the course for the highest levels of orthodox Reformed Protestant scholarship.

Dr Barrett starts off by making the standard Protestant claim that Christ's physical sufferings at the hands of men, as dreadful as they were, were in fact nothing compared to the spiritual suffering of enduring the Father's Divine Wrath. Such statements are so obviously outrageous that I'd expect others to be speaking up against it. Dr Barrett both trivializes the physical sufferings of Our Lord and introduces a completely foreign concept of God's Wrath being poured out on Christ. Sadly, as I noted earlier, this is in fact the best Protestantism has to offer. It's not that they do this on purpose, but they have serious 'blinders' on that prevent them from thinking clearly. Such is the reality of sin, and such is the position one is put in when they're outside the Catholic Church. Trivializing the physical sufferings of Christ is equivalent to denying the Crucifixion, and God help me if I or any Catholic trivializes the heart of our salvation like that.

I'm not going to beat a dead horse on the "My God, why have you forsaken me?" comments, because I've covered that many times before. I just want people, Protestant and Catholic, to just stop and look at how shallow Reformed theology is and the liberties and desperation it takes with the Sacred Text. It's truly an abuse of God's Word if there ever was one. And to follow this up, Dr Barrett brings up the main text in question, "It is finished," as if he had actually exegeted and proved his thesis. He is oblivious to the fact "It is finished" has it's own context in John, and he's oblivious to the fact John (and Luke) never mention the "forsaken me" quote, despite Dr Barrett's insistence that this "forsaken me" text is the heart of the true understanding of the Cross. He has the audacity to ask "What is finished?" without even looking at the context. And he concludes by quoting all these texts from Hebrews, not realizing the absolute silence in Hebrews about any reference to God's Wrath (or Active Obedience). What's going on folks? And to think this is the enlightened 'wisdom' of men who don't want you to be Catholic? Give me a break.

Once you have the right glasses on, you have a hard time taking Protestantism seriously. To get the right glasses on, you just have to realize that Protestants don't really follow the Bible at all, but rather they follow a completely unbiblical "tradition of men"  called Sola Fide, and they accept this as a starting premise and from there proceed to make Scripture fit. The Reformation wasn't about Sola Scriptura, it was about Sola Fide, specifically the agenda of presuming its truth and forcing the Scripture's to agree (resulting in numerous other "traditions of men" they are forced to embrace). 

I guess what's really hard about reading this kind of stuff is that I really hoped for better, and I truly believe Protestants owe us Catholics better. But it's almost as if God's Word has a built in safety feature, where the moment someone starts to tamper with it, absurdities surface. That's precisely what happens with Protestant scholarship, and Reformed theology in particular. If the Reformed blogosphere isn't going to call out such embarrassing statements which the Reformed PhD's routinely make, then how can we really take them seriously?

Can Protestants drink from Christ's Cup and Carry their Cross in obedience to Jesus? I don't think so.

Today on John Piper's Desiring God Blog a guest writer named Steven Lee wrote a post titled "The Cup Consumed for Us." The post is a brief reflection on Matthew 20:20-28 where the apostles James and John are asked by Jesus "Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?" Lee interprets this verse in the way many Calvinists do, claiming that this cup Jesus is going to drink is "the cup of God's wrath." But is this true? And wouldn't such a claim make nonsense of Our Lord's words? That's what I'll address in this post. 

Does the Catholic view of Christ's Atonement permit the Reformed view of "Penal Substitution"?

Some Reformed Protestants have commented to me that the Catholic Church doesn't have an official view of the Atonement and that the Catholic Church even permits the Reformed view of "Penal Substitution". The problem with these kinds of claims is that they don't understand what the Catholic Church means when the Church uses terms like "atonement" and "sacrifice" (and similar terms), so these Protestants end up reading foreign ideas into Catholic teaching. The fact of the matter is, the Catholic Church doesn't have to condemn every single error that comes up in history, especially if those errors are already condemned in other forms. So while you won't find any Church teaching that says "Penal Substitution is heresy," you will find the Church teaching things directly contrary to what Penal Substitution espouses. Typically, the Church lays out parameters for orthodoxy, and while one is free to work within those parameters, one is not free to transgress those parameters. For this post I'll be giving some examples of Catholic teaching that go against the concept of Penal Substitution, showing that a Catholic cannot embrace that view of the Cross and be within the parameters of orthodoxy and Catholic thought.

Protestant apologetics site GotQuestions? says Jesus "spiritually died" on the Cross.

Sorry to annoy you dear readers, but I'm going to have to post a third post this week, after finding yet another big name Protestant apologist making it clear that God the Father damned His Son Jesus in place of damning us. This time it's the website GotQuestions?, a popular online source where Protestants can get their theological questions answered from a conservative Protestant viewpoint. I'll try to make this brief since I mostly just want it to be a "for the record" type post.

The following quotes about what kind of suffering Jesus endured come from various Question & Answer posts on the GotQuestions? website, so I'll quote and provide the link to each (quotes are trimmed down for brevity).

• A physical death is the separation of the soul from the body. Spiritual death, which is of greater significance, is the separation of the soul from God. When Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord, they “hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God.” The fellowship had been broken. They were spiritually dead. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, He paid the price for us by dying on our behalf. Even though He is God, He still had to suffer the agony of a temporary separation from the Father due to the sin of the world He was carrying on the cross. After three hours of supernatural darkness, He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:33-34). This spiritual separation from the Father was the result of the Son’s taking our sins upon Himself. That’s the impact of sin. Sin is the exact opposite of God, and God had to turn away from His own Son at that point in time. (Question: "What is spiritual death?")

Reformed apologist Joe Mizzi says Jesus was "forgotten" by the Father while on the Cross.

Just last week I wrote about how Calvinist John Piper explicitly said Jesus was "damned in our place," and today another Calvinist apologist named Joe Mizzi wrote on his blog a similar article. The article is titled “Why have you forsaken me?” (3-26-14), which briefly deals with Jesus’ words on the Cross and what these words mean. Included in the reflection was the following claims by Joe Mizzi:

But the next time he opened his mouth, Jesus uttered these mysterious words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Many centuries before, the Psalmist had declared: “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken” (Psalms 37:25). But on the cross the Righteous One was forgotten by God – He who never committed the least sin, who unfailingly obeyed the whole will of God, and in whom the Father was well-pleased. In that dark hour the Father left the Son on his own.

John Piper says Jesus was "damned in our place" - Do Calvinists realize what they're saying?

A few days ago I was skimming over John Piper's blog (he's a popular Calvinist author, pastor, and writer) and I noticed his post for March 18, 2014 contained an outrageous comment regarding Our Lord's Passion and Death. I didn't read the whole post since it was an odd mixture of thoughts, but his conclusion caught my eye just because it was so outrageous: 

When Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it was the scream of the damned — damned in our place (Isaiah 53:5–6; Romans 8:3; Galatians 3:14). If we will repent and trust him, no Esau, no lesbian, no president, no pastor, no person will be condemned. Our sight and our reason will return to us.

This isn't the first time Piper has said such things about Jesus being "damned in our place," as I've recorded such comments of his in prior articles, but I wanted to post on this just for the record that he's still saying this stuff even today. And Calvinists really don't mind, because they agree that what he's saying is what the Protestant understanding of the Cross is all about: Jesus enduring the hellfire damnation that we deserved to endure, substituting himself to be punished in our place, also known as Penal Substitution.  

Isaiah 53 - Does it really say God "crushed" Jesus? (More Problems with Penal Substitution)

Whenever I challenge a Protestant to show where the Bible teaches that God the Father poured out His wrath upon Jesus, one of their go-to verses is Isaiah 53:10 where it says: It was the will of the Lord to crush him. At first appearance, this does come off as suggesting the Father actively inflicted punishment upon Jesus, but it turns out that there are two versions of this text, one of which uses a very different word than "crush".

A Reformed exegetical whopper on The Parable of the Good Samaratan (plus a bonus Papacy Proof)

From the What in the world was he thinking? File comes a link that Bryan Cross shared a little over a month ago on his blog, but I didn't have a chance to re-share it until now. The link is to a January 2014 blog post by Tullian Tchividjian, who teaches at Reformed Seminary (and is Billy Graham's grandson). In his post, Tullian "interprets" the parable of the Good Samaritan - that famous parable from Luke 10:29-37 where Jesus teaches us what it means to 'love our neighbor'. This is pretty straightforward stuff, and yet, astonishingly, Tullian ends up turning the simple lesson of Jesus on it's head. 

Here are some key excerpts (see the main article for the full story) from Tullian's article: 

This parable is perhaps the best known story Jesus ever told after the parable of The Prodigal Son. It is, however, also the most misunderstood.

Another Papacy proof from the Early Church - (Pope Hormisdas, AD519)

Here's a relatively brief apologetics argument for the Papacy that I was introduced to which I think is worth sharing. I'll start with a historical background (with lots of assistance from Wikipedia), then present the argument, and then I'll end by examining some potential objections.

Natural Law...OR...New Covenant in Rom. 2:14-15 - What "Law" is written on the heart?

This is somewhat of a Part 2 to my previous post, "Imputed Righteousness in the New Covenant?"

For this post I want to share a fascinating find regarding a fascinating text of Scripture that is often glossed over when reading Romans 2. Embedded within the context of Paul's claim that "the doers of the law will be justified" (2:13) is a curious statement that the Gentiles "who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires" (2:14) and so reveal that "the law is written on their hearts" (2:15). This text can play a key role in Protestant-Catholic discussions because the way it uses the term "law," which is a crucial term to understand when reading Paul. It is my contention, as well as that of a growing number of Protestant scholars, that the term "law" (Greek: nomos) specifically refers to the Mosaic Law, and not to some more generic eternal law of God. Recognizing the serious negative implications of this for Sola Fide, some Protestants are fond of turning to Romans 2:14-15, thinking that this text provides an escape. In this post I will show that this text doesn't help this Protestant objection at all, and in fact opens an avenue to prove the Catholic position. 

Imputed Righteousness in the New Covenant?

 [Update: Don't miss Part 2 of this series!]

This will be something of a Part 1 of a two-part post. In this post I want to point out something fascinating that I noticed regarding the Protestant heresy known as Imputation, specifically the notion that Christ kept the law perfectly in our place and transferred this perfect obedience to us so we could be members of the New Covenant. This is more formally known as "Imputation of Christ's Active Obedience," but the truth is, the New Testament writers never speak of this, and in fact it contradicts many New Testament passages. One passage I want to point out is a crucial passage for Christians, since it comes from the Old Testament and is one of the clearest prophecies that there would be a New Covenant. 

In Jeremiah 31 we read:

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

This Prophecy is huge for a couple of reasons. As noted earlier, this Prophecy is one of the clearest and most important prophecies telling us there would be a New Covenant. And this New Covenant will be characterized by two main details: (1) forgiveness of sins, and (2) having the law written upon their hearts so that they may know how to love God and neighbor. 

What did Paul mean by "ungodly" in Romans 4:5?

Some Protestants have told me the term "ungodly" in Romans 4:5 refers to moral failing in a general sense, and from here they argue that Paul's point is that Abraham was a rotten sinner when he was declared righteous in God's sight. I don't deny that 'generic ungodliness' is a possible meaning for this term, so the Protestant side isn't helped nor is the Catholic side harmed if this is granted. But I think an even stronger case can be made that "ungodly" in Romans 4:5 refers to being outside the Mosaic Covenant, a much narrower meaning. Here is the article where I show the context itself leads the fair and honest exegete to see "ungodly" best refers to the specific parameter of being outside the Mosaic Covenant. In this article, I want to look at the word itself, especially the way it's used elsewhere in the Bible.

The Greek adjective in Romans 4:5 is asebes and is found in 8 verses: Rom 4:5; 5:6; 1 Tim 1:9; 1 Pet 4:18; 2 Pet 2:5; 2 Pet 3:7; Jud 1:4; Jud 1:15. The noun appears in 6 verses: Rom 1:18; 11:26; 2 Tim 2:16; Titus 2:12; Jude 1:15; 1:18. I don't deny nor have I ever denied that the predominant usage here refers to something along the lines of 'generic ungodliness'. With that said, it is interesting to note that in various verses the term "ungodly" is mentioned along with other terms pertaining to sinful living, suggesting there is a distinction between "ungodly" and moral failing in a generic sense. For example, even though 1 Timothy 1:9 uses the term "ungodly" it also mentions "lawless," "disobedient," and even "sinner," in the same breath. This suggests some distinction. And 1 Peter 4:18 also mentions "ungodly" and "sinner" in the same breath, which again would suggest some distinction. Jude 1:15b speaks of "ungodly sinners," connecting two terms, most likely referring to generic ungodliness, but still suggesting a distinction. Romans 1:18 distinguishes between "ungodliness" and "unrighteousness," which is quite interesting given how these terms relate to justification in the later chapters. So whatever this distinction is, it is clear that asebes does not automatically entail a 'generic ungodliness'.

The Old Testament is harder to deal with because even though the term "ungodly" appears numerous times, almost always referring to sinful living, in the Mosaic dispensation this could especially refer to not living according to the Mosaic standards of law and worship. So while "ungodly" in Genesis 18:23 is long before Moses and circumcision (and thus likely 'generic ungodliness'), a text like Psalm 1:1-2, 4-6 is certainly about David having in mind the Mosaic Law as God's ideal standard. And related to this is Romans 11:26, which speaks of banishing "ungodliness" from Jacob, which is most likely referring to violating the Mosaic Law, especially given the context of Romans 11 is about the Jews versus Gentiles.

There is one more piece of evidence to consult, and that is the fact asebes is the negated form of the Greek word sebo, which basically means "religious" or "devout." This is worth exploring because in understanding the positive meaning of sebo can help give a better understanding of what the 'negated' meaning (asebes) refers to. This word is found in 10 verses in the New Testament, and in nearly every case it refers to the the specific worship of God according to Mosaic standards: Acts 13:43, 13:50, 16:14, 17:4, 17:17, 18:7, 18:13. Two men stand out as being "devout" in reference to the Mosaic standards, in fact being called 'very devout' (the Greek word eusebius, from which the Church Father Eusebius is named), namely Corneilus in Acts 10:2 and Ananias in Acts 22:12. This certainly does not refer to generic devotion to God, but rather it is very concerned with the fact the Jews did make a positive impact on their Gentile neighbors, bringing them knowledge of the true God and the Torah. So to 'negate' this notion would result in the notion of someone 'not devout according to Mosaic standards', and thus in a genuine way supporting the 'outside the Mosaic Law' thesis. 

From this brief look at the term itself, I would say the situation is by no means a simple open-and-shut in favor of what certain Protestants jump to conclude. The best case I could see them make is how Romans 5:6-8 seems to parallel "ungodly" to "sinner" (in an apparently generic sense),  and then say this is in proximity to Romans 4. Regardless, as I said earlier, it ultimately proves nothing against the Catholic position, for the more important Protestant claim that God declares someone righteous whom He knows is unrighteous is flatly unbiblical.