Protestantism's most embarrassing strawman (Catholic Justification)

I think the most embarrassing strawman of Protestantism is how it sees the Catholic view of Justification. In the Protestant's mind, the Catholic position entails a person starting off a little bit righteous, then has to work his way up to fully righteous. It's as if the Catholic had to fill up a gas tank, with the tank starting off at 1% full, and with each good work they increase the tank by 1%, until they get to the end of their life and the tank is 100% full. With this view in mind, the Protestant thinks the Catholic is never actually Justified in this life. As such, this "Catholic Gospel" hardly sounds like good news at all, and in fact is (understandably) seen as quite troubling. But this is a complete misunderstanding of the Catholic view, and if you can point this strawman out to Protestants it will completely pull the rug from under them. 

The actual Catholic view is that a Catholic is instantly 100% Justified the moment they convert. This then means that works have nothing to do with a Catholic getting Justified. So it is a complete strawman for the Protestant to say the Catholic view of Justification is a "process" while in 'contrast' the Protestant claims to stand firm on "the finished work of Christ". In the Catholic view, the moment one is baptized (usually as an infant, who obviously doesn't do any work at all), through the merits of Jesus, the individual is instantly 100% forgiven of their sins and instantly becomes an Adopted Child of God. Period. There's no "work" to be done. There isn't really such a thing as "initial justification," so such language should be avoided by all sides, since Baptism is not the start of some progressive life-long filling up of a 'righteousness gas tank'. 

Quickie Apologetics: Sola Fide & Losing Salvation

My "election/calling in the NT" article as a follow-up to my last post is taking longer than expected, so here's a brief post (on a different subject) for now.

One line of argument I use against Protestants is to ask them early on in the discussion if they believe salvation can be lost through (grave) sin. About 'half' of Protestant denominations do believe salvation can be lost if we turn to sin, fall away, lose faith, etc. But this raises an interesting dilemma: how can you say we are saved by faith alone if salvation can be lost? If faith is what saves you, then your works obviously cannot play a role. If your works do play a role in saving you (including keeping you saved), then obviously it's not faith alone saving you. You would be surprised how many Protestants get stumped by this question - and indeed they should, since it's a blatant contradiction. 

I've found this argument is especially useful against Lutherans, since they believe salvation can be lost through grave sin. In fact, Luther himself taught that salvation could be lost:

When holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them. (Smalcald Articles #43).

Luther wrote the Smalcald Articles and Lutherans formally accepted them in their Confessional Book of Concord, so this is official Lutheran teaching. It is interesting that Paul himself quotes this example of David having lost his salvation and having to repent to become re-justified in Romans 4:6-8 (quoting Psalm 32). 

Recognizing this contradiction, we get the other 'half' of Protestants who logically hold that salvation cannot be lost. These require a different line of approach, but can still easily be exposed as well. Those who do believe salvation can be lost typically (rightly) appeal to the clear passages of Scripture indicating salvation can be lost (see HERE and HERE for some examples), and in this case they sacrifice logical consistency for Scriptural testimony. On the flip side, those who believe salvation cannot be lost are forced to explain away those many texts of Scripture, and in doing so they sacrifice God's Word for logical consistency. In reality, you shouldn't have to sacrifice either one, and that's why the Catholic Church is obviously correct in rejecting salvation by faith alone.

Guardian Angels and Heavenly Intercession

I have been very busy with life so I haven't had much time to blog, but I do have a few interesting posts in the works that I think readers will enjoy. Until I get the time to post them, I'll post this brief reflection on the reality of Guardian Angels and their relation to Intercession. 

In Matthew 18:10, Jesus says: "Beware of despising one of these little ones; for I say to you that their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." In this passing verse we see an affirmation of something most of us hardly ever think about: the reality of guardian angels, at least for believers. The implications of such a reality are actually quite astonishing when you think about it: you have a spiritual being assigned to assist you on your salvation journey. 

Many interesting other insights arise once you recognize this basic truth, and some significant issues arise for the Protestant tradition (which typically neglects the issue of guardian angels entirely). Having a Guardian Angel means you aren't alone, and in God's best judgment, you need this angel to help you navigate life. That's a major swipe against the Protestant notion of Salvation by Faith Alone and Eternal Security, for it suggests your journey is dangerous and thus you need heavenly assistance. This would hardly be necessary if your salvation were secure. Furthermore, the angels here are described as 'beholding the Father's face in heaven', which means the Guardian Angel in some sense is constantly reporting back to God and receiving instructions of how to proceed. This is the essence of the Catholic dogma of intercession of the saints in heaven. A Protestant might say the angel cannot communicate with you. But it would be kind of silly and nonsensical to think the angel couldn't hear you if you called out to it, especially for help, and there are instances in Scripture where angels have conversations with men (e.g. the Annunciation). A Protestant might further object and say this only applies to angels but not to saints in heaven. Well, at that point it just seems even more desperate, for the essential matter is affirmed - i.e., heavenly intercession, without undermining Jesus' mediation - and so the Protestant would be forced to say the saints in heaven are effectively unconscious, rather than the reality, which is that the saints in heaven are more alive than ever and are rejoicing along with the angels. Also, if "little ones" here refers to children, which 18:2-6 strongly suggests, then this verse would be an implicit testimony to Infant Baptism, as it would mean these children would have to be members of God's Church family in order to have their Guardian Angel, rather than having to wait until they are older to "accept Jesus for themselves".

Lastly, a recent Protestant convert to Catholicism pointed out a particular irony in the very famous "Doxology" which most Protestants have historically enjoyed praying: "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise him, all creatures here below; Praise him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." What else would "praise him above you heavenly host" mean except you praying to angels/saints? It is biblical after all: "Praise him all his angels, praise him, all his host!" (Ps 148:2) It seems like Protestants just don't think things through.

"Eternal Life" according to Scripture

I thought I had written a dedicated post about the Biblical teaching on "eternal life," but after doing a search it seems I only wrote about it in passing (e.g. Here and Here). As with many of my posts, the heart of good apologetics is defining key theological terms according to the Bible. Most theological errors are due to people unconsciously assigning their own definitions to key theological terms, which results in building other theological conclusions on an faulty foundation. In this case, many people will read verses such as "whomever believes in him will have eternal life" (Jn 3:15) as if it were saying once you accept the Gospel your spot in heaven is secure forever. This is understandable, but it's a serious mistake and even misses the beauty of such texts. 

 

Doing a simple word search, the term "eternal life" appears in approximately 45 verses in the Bible. To keep this post short, I wont go through every verse, but you can and should follow the link to see the verses for yourself. The key verses I want to highlight are as follows:

• John 4:14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
  
• John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
  
• John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
  
• 1 John 3:14-15 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 

In these passages from John, it is clear that "eternal life" is not something that comes in the future, it is not a ticket to heaven, but rather it is something you presently experience. In John's mind, to have "eternal life" means you have a relationship with the Trinity, the Trinity dwells within you. You "know" the Father and the Son, you have a spring of water flowing within, you have passed from spiritual death to inner spiritual life. In short, you have "eternal life abiding within" yourself (1 Jn 3:15). So all those times in John when Jesus says "believe and you will have eternal life," this is simply saying if you believe Jesus is your Savior, you will be in communal relationship with the Trinity. This communion can obviously be broken, as we see Adam originally had communion and fell, and 1 John 3:15 warns that mortal sin will result in no longer having eternal life in yourself (unless you repent). 

It is understandable why the term "eternal life" would confuse many, but it's pretty clear once you stop and try to understand the term from John's mystical perspective. That said, now it's time to look at how the term "eternal life" is used by Paul and other Apostles, because we will see a different usage than John's. 

Love this quick yet effective refutation of sola fide (which the Protestants didn't see coming).

I think I've come upon a devastating yet subtle 'quickie' argument against the Protestant (especially Reformed) notion of justification by faith alone. Catholics will often point out that "faith that works through love" is what Paul meant when he spoke of the essence of a justified believer (Gal 5:6), and that without love we are told by James that "faith is dead" (James 2:24-26). Protestants think they have an answer for this, by insisting (without proof) that "true faith always comes with love" with it. This seems like a save at first, but thinking about this means the Protestant is saying that when a person receives the gift of faith prior to justification, they also receive the gift of love along with it. That's a problem, and here's why. 

If a person receives faith and love prior to justification, it means the unsaved individual loves God already, prior to even accepting the Gospel message! This cannot be, and thus the Protestant must reject this and say faith doesn't automatically include love along with it prior to justification. This leads to a few significant but plain conclusions:

(1) Faith prior to justification lacks love, and thus this faith must start off 'dead'. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just an incomplete thing, which is why justification is still needed. 

(2) Justification must be what bestows love, and this seems confirmed by Scripture (e.g. Romans 5:5), and thus the Protestant can no longer say justification is purely forensic, but rather infuses divine gifts into the soul.

(3) Dead faith prior to justification becomes living faith after justification by the addition of love to faith, and herein is the essence of a justified believer. This would mean it isn't Christ's Imputed Righteousness that makes all the difference, but rather the presence/absence of love, and thus suggests your justification (salvation) hinges upon what you do with that love. This is why texts like Revelation 21:8 list "unbelief" as one of the many sins that can damn a person, because it's possible to have faith and be damned by other grave sins.

Given the above, when Paul says we are "justified by faith," he isn't saying we are "eternally saved by faith," rather he's saying that we receive God's love within us by believing in the Gospel, and that this is just the beginning of our salvation (Rom 13:8-14; Gal 5:13-14).

What the Quran says about Jesus - One of the strongest apologetics on Islam I've ever seen.

A priest had shared a fascinating video of a convert to Christianity from Islam. I looked up the details, and it turns out this convert named Mario Joseph (probably his conversion name) was not only an Imam, but he also converted to Catholicism (see Here)! I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention, and I'm also surprised what Mario said hasn't gotten more attention within Christian apologetics. 

Mario's claim was pretty simple: What does the Quran say about Jesus? Here are some things Mario discovered while still a Muslim:

• The name "Jesus" appears in the Quran in about 25 verses, while "Mohammed" appears in only about 4 verses of the Quran. [This is significant because even though Mohammed is "mentioned" under different names, the name itself barely appears in 114 chapters of Islam's holy book (more on this later).]
  
• The only woman mentioned in the Quran is "Mary the mother of Jesus". There is no other woman mentioned, including no mention of Mohammed's mother. On top of this, two chapters of the Quran are named after Mary. The Quran also says that Mary was born without sin, that Mary never sinned, that Mary was ever virgin, and that Mary was Assumed into Heaven. [This is obviously significant because the Quran repeatedly honors Mary and no other woman!]
  
• The Quran says Jesus is "Word of God" and "Spirit of God" and "Christ".
  
• The Quran says Jesus (1) spoke normal sentences a few days after his birth, (2) He created a bird out of clay and breathed life into it, making it a real bird, (3) He cured leprosy, blindness, and brought back people from the dead.
  
• The Quran says Jesus was taken to Heaven, is still alive, and will come again.
  
• The Quran does not say any of these or similar things about Mohammed. Mohammed never performed miracles, never healed anyone. Islam teaches Mohammed is not alive, he died and his tomb is still here, and that he will not come again. 

While Jesus doesn't get much attention in the Quran overall, and in fact is presented in a very shallow way as a mere prophet, it is fascinating that these details are in there (and that Muslims don't even object)! So what does this all mean? A few things. 

First of all, it means that the Quran definitely testifies to Jesus in a way that puts him beyond a mere prophet. This should get any Muslim thinking about why this is. Imagine if the Bible said all kinds of fascinating things about Joseph Smith, that would definitely startle a lot of Christians. 

Second of all, there is a growing scholarly consensus that the man we call Mohammed never actually existed. Catholic author Robert Spencer wrote a book recently called "Did Mohammed Exist?" The question is outrageous on it's face: of course Mohammed existed, there's all kinds of evidence, and no scholar in history has ever doubted it. But wait, it really wasn't until modern times when scholars have even dug into the question! 

The thesis that Robert Spencer holds is that Mohammed never actually existed, and instead Islam was originally a heretical Christian sect and the Quran was originally a Christian Liturgy book. Now when you compare all of what was said about Jesus in the Quran above, this starts to make a lot of sense! The name "Mohammed" means "The Praised One," which is precise who Jesus is. So to go full circle, the evidence suggests that Jesus was "Mohammed" the whole time in that Mohammed ("The Praised One") is another of many titles for Jesus. 

Over time, the heretical Christian sect was taken over by successive warlords, and these warlords started to weave together a new narrative, similar to how Joseph Smith weaved together a narrative of Jesus coming to America.

I know it all sounds outrageous, but as secular scholars become less afraid for their life, this critical scholarship will show more and more a consensus that Mohammed Never Existed. Even those scholars like Bart Ehrman who love to trash Christianity have said he hasn't equally applied his critical scholarship to Islam "because I value my life too much". I hope to write another post soon from more proofs from Robert Spencer's book.

Was there really no Bible until the year AD381?

I'm writing on an urgent matter that I think needs to be addressed within Catholic apologetics, namely the widespread Catholic claim that there was no Bible until Pope Damasus gave us the canon of Scripture in AD381. At best, this is a half truth, and at worst this is an implicit heresy and undermines Christianity. While it might score points against Protestants during a Sola Scriptura discussion, it's a bad argument that does far more harm than good. 

The problem with the "no Bible until 381" claim is that those who make the claim typically have in their mind that in the early Church - sometime after the Apostles died (~AD80) and up to 300 years later (~AD380) - there was mass confusion as to what books were Scripture and what weren't, such that the Pope had to call a Council to settle the matter by sifting through a massive pile of books, some which were inspired and some which were uninspired, and the "result" was the canon of Scripture. This mindset suggests that the Bible wasn't something passed onto us by Tradition, but rather something that was basically invented. The Pope most certainly did not walk into a library and start reading random books and try to "detect" if this or that book should be in the Bible.  In fact, this false 'personally feel out if this book is inspired' method is closer to the Protestant and Mormon approach to the canon of Scripture.

As (Not So) Often As You Do This - another round of the crushing Protestant liturgical dilemma

Though I haven't had much time to blog recently, I wanted to show people a beautiful real-life example of the crushing effectiveness of the Ultimate Catholic Apologetics Argument (UCAA) against Protestants (which I posted about previously). 

A "Reformed Baptist" pastor named Ken at the Protestant apologetics site Beggars All had a post focused on criticizing Catholics for following "traditions of men" rather than the Bible, which turned out to be highly ironic shortly after I brought up the UCAA in the combox. There's no need to read the post or most of the comments, but if you're interested just see the last ten comments or so for how effortlessly the UCAA can take down the most committed "Bible Christian" (see THIS link to take you straight to the last few comments). 

The key post is when I responded to Ken saying, 

[Pastor Ken said]: None of what you say really carries any weight with me, since you are right in the sense that that an order of worship is not laid out word for word, but the general idea is for us to worship God by Scripture, prayer, singing, teaching, etc. and we can arrange the order however we want to and that is not a big deal to me.

[Nick's response]: The main problem I have here is that you haven't actually given any Scriptural verses that say what the "general idea" is for Christian Liturgy. The closest thing you've listed is the Lord's Supper, which you say you only do once a month. I don't even think you've given a verse that says singing is supposed to be done during liturgy.

As for your admission that you only celebrated the Lord's Supper once a month, this is astonishing because either it is part of liturgy or it isn't. If it is part of liturgy, you have no right to only do it 25% of the time. This suggests a person can celebrate the Lord's Supper as rarely as they feel like it, and by extension they can leave out Scripture, prayer, etc, as often as they feel like it. All this reduces down to a liturgical relativism, which really isn't liturgy at all, but more and more a man-made event according to personal taste.

As you can see, Ken was pretty trapped here, because while the Bible does indicate the Eucharist is the essential part of the liturgy, and thus is done "often" (1 Cor 11:26), both Ken and most Evangelicals do not do this that often. And as I also point out, to compound the dilemma they are in, that line of thinking means there is nothing actually essential to the Christian Liturgy, which is ridiculous, and results in the Protestant being able to leave out anything they want on any given Sunday.

Now, it's important to note that while this massive problem didn't bother Ken nor will it trouble most other Protestants, the fact is it should, and I believe that it eventually will bother them. For now, it's great that some seeds were planted. I strongly believe that if more Catholics would start using the UCAA, I swear that this will be the downfall of Westminster Seminary in a few short years.

The ultimate and most effective Catholic apologetics argument against Protestantism.

I have come to the conclusion that the most powerful apologetics argument that a Catholic can make against Protestantism is that their Sunday Liturgy is actually man-made and thus blatant idolatry. Let me explain this more.

The most important duty a human has, regardless even of whether they are a Christian or not, is to worship God. This should be - without a doubt - an obvious truth that everyone can agree upon. Given this, a person must not only worship God, they must do so properly, i.e., they must worship as God has instructed them to do. This means that Liturgy requires divine revelation, because otherwise the person is "worshiping" God based on what sounds good to their human mind...but there is a word for worshiping according to what sounds good to you: it's called idolatry. So the only way to escape idolatry is to worship according to how God has divinely revealed it. Which leads us to the key problem which all Protestants face.

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?

How Mary Refutes Protestantism

[Updated 12-30-13: I'm in discussion in the comment box with someone who is suggesting the Lutheran view might have a solution to this. If so, then my original argument obviously no longer should be used. For now I'll just leave this whole thread up.]

I feel bad for not getting a new post up for over a month now because I've been so busy, but in some ways that's a healthy thing. I've always believed that posting too frequently is not a good idea because it drives down the quality of posts, promotes a consumerist mentality, and tends to overwhelm readers. For this post, I want to share a brief argument that overturns the entire Protestant paradigm. 

We know that Mary was the mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but this is a more significant claim than we typically realize and give credit for. Mary gave Jesus His humanity. Without Him receiving humanity from Her, no Incarnation would have taken place. So how does this refute Protestantism? Here's the fun part.

Protestants believe that human nature was "radically corrupted" and made "totally depraved" by Adam's sin. As a result, every person from Adam onward, including Mary, was born with a corrupt/depraved 'sin nature'. The only exception is Jesus, who did not have a 'sin nature' but rather a perfectly upright human nature. But how can this be if Jesus received His humanity from Mary, who Herself was born with a 'sin nature'? As the saying goes, you cannot give what you don’t have. So how can She give Him an upright human nature if She didn't have this already? Really, what we have here is two human natures, a corrupt human nature and an upright human nature. So the Protestant has to decide between two devastating options: Either Jesus took on Mary's 'sin nature' in order to become Incarnate, or Jesus did not take Mary's 'sin nature' and thus Jesus couldn't have truly shared in our humanity, meaning the Incarnation never happened. 

So which of the two difficult choices would you go with: Did Jesus have a 'sin nature' or did the Incarnation never happen? Thanks be to God, Catholics don't have to pick either! Rather, Catholics have always taught that there was nothing wrong with Mary's humanity and thus there's no dilemma. This is why the early Ecumenical Councils had no problem saying: "Consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood." During the Creed when we say Jesus is "consubstantial with the Father," the same Councils said consubstantiality applies also in regards to Mary's humanity! 

To better understand all this, you must recognize that Adam didn't cease to be human the moment he sinned. Rather, he ceased to be in communion with God, forfeiting the Divine Indwelling of the Trinity in his soul, as well as forfeiting other divine gifts such as immorality. These gifts "clothed" humanity, they didn't destroy, nullify, or conflate with humanity. Losing the gifts doesn't mean losing humanity, it just means humanity was no longer 'clothed with grace'. This is why some in the Early Church interpreted the Biblical phrase "man was made in the image and likeness of God" to refer to two realities: the "image" referring to humanity as a rational being, and the "likeness" referring to the gracious gifts that 'clothed' humanity and bestow special super-human powers to man, such as immortality. This distinction is sometimes known as the Nature-Grace Distinction.

Realizing this, it becomes clear that God intended man to cooperate with grace, since grace was to compliment the person's natural human abilities (Lk 24:49; 1 Cor 15:53). Since Protestants reject the idea man can cooperate with grace, this forced Protestants to conflate "image" and "likeness" (i.e. collapse Nature and Grace into one thing rather than keeping them distinguished). And to add insult to injury, Jesus' Divinity became of no real significance since Protestants see Jesus as doing what Adam only as a human was supposed to do (e.g. love God by only human powers, not by grace). As a result of this thinking, we have the original dilemma I mentioned earlier on: Protestants are forced to either say Mary passed on "sin nature" to Jesus or else Jesus wasn't truly Incarnate at all. What a Christmas present for Protestants to wake up to!  

With Christmas coming up next week, I would hope this article helped give readers a better appreciation for just what happened at the Annunciation and on Christmas Day.

That time when Jesus came into His Kingdom - More Problems with Penal Substitution

I thought I was off the subject of Penal Substitution for a while, but I've come up with yet another serious problem with that heresy. The good thing is, this should be short. 

When the subject of Penal Substitution comes up, our attention is typically focused on the last hours of Jesus' life. But in reality, Jesus suffered for us the entire course of His earthly life. Even Protestants agree with this, though they interpret Christ's sufferings incorrectly. In the erroneous Protestant view of "imputing guilt," this means the guilt of the elect was imputed to Jesus from the moment of His Conception . . . which means the Father viewed His Son Jesus as a sinner from the moment of the Annunciation!

This error is so outrageous that everyone seeing this should automatically realize it's wrong. I shouldn't even have to dig up Scriptural support, but I will.

At Our Lord's Baptism, the Father's spoke from Heaven saying: "You are My Beloved Son, in You I am well pleased." This is impossible if Jesus was under God's displeasure! And yet the same words were spoken at another time in the Gospels, compounding the absurdity and blasphemy of that doctrine. In the Gospels we see Jesus making some cryptic comments: "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Many people take these words of "coming in his kingdom" to be speaking about Jesus' Second Coming at the end of time, but the Early Church Fathers saw this as referring to the Transfiguration. But how? St. Peter himself tells us:

16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. (2 Peter 1)

A lot of people don't know about this passage and how it explicitly links Jesus' "coming in glory" comments with the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor - which is also why Jesus' words appear immediately before all three Transfiguration accounts, Mt 16:28; Mk 9:1-2; Lk 9:27-28. What amazing light is shed on that glorious event! As with the Baptism, this was a situation where God the Father was bestowing honor and glory on Jesus, again saying "I am well pleased". 

Penal Substitution makes it impossible for God the Father to view Jesus in a favorable way at any point in all 33 years of Jesus' earthly life. Therefore, Penal Substitution cannot be true.

Is God the Father or is Jesus the actual High Priest? (More Problems with Penal Substitution)

I know I've written a lot about Penal Substitution lately, but I believe I've come up with yet another devastating proof against the Protestant heresy of Penal Substitution which I must share. Don't worry, this will be brief. 

Basically, my argument is that the doctrine of Penal Substitution makes God the Father the High Priest, which is impossible for two reasons. First, the High Priest offers sacrifice up to God, and yet if God the Father is 'at the top' of the hierarchy of existence already, then there can be nobody left to offer sacrifice to. So philosophically it's nonsense to say God the Father is or could be the High Priest. Second, the Bible plainly says that Jesus is the High Priest (Heb 2:17; 4:14-15; 8:1, etc), and as part of the Incarnation.

According to the error of Penal Substitution, the innocent person or animal receives the full punishment the sinner deserves. In the case of the Levitical Sacrifices, the animal was put to death, and Protestants see this as the Priest inflicting the punishment upon the animal which the sinner deserved. Ignoring the fact that putting the animal to death wasn't even an essential job of the priest for making atonement (since the sinner could put the animal to death, Lev 4:4-5; 4:15-16; 4:24-25), even Protestants agree that as High Priest Jesus was never pouring divine wrath upon Himself. So the Protestant is ultimately in a bind: they cannot say the Father was inflicting the punishment when inflicting the punishment was the job of the High Priest. (Note that "inflicting the punishment" is the Protestant view, not the Catholic one.) This problem is compounded by the fact that on the Day of Atonement, it was the High Priest who 'imputed the sins' (using Protestant terminology) onto the scapegoat, which likewise does not parallel the Protestant idea of God the Father 'imputing our sins' onto Jesus. 

The only 'escape' for the Protestant is to say something to the effect that Jesus and the Father were effectively acting as one person, but that's the heresy of modalism, collapsing the Three Persons of the Trinity into one person. Only Jesus suffered and only Jesus was High Priest. PSub causes Christ's High Priesthood to fall by the wayside into irrelevance, in more ways than one.

Did Saint Paul have to suffer God's eternal Wrath? (More Problems with Penal Substitution)

In Galatians 2:20, Saint Paul makes a powerful statement: I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The Greek word for "crucified with" is used in the Crucifixion accounts when speaking of the two thieves who were crucified along with Jesus (Mt 27:44; Mk 15:32; Jn 19:32). But in Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6:6, Paul uses this term in speaking of the Christian as crucified along with Jesus. This is no mere figure of speech, but actually describing a very real inward transformation. And since the context of Gal 2:20 and Rom 6:6 is clearly that of justification (the word "justify" appears in both contexts), the Protestant notion that justification involves no inward change is hard to imagine. It is plainly about Christ living "in" us, giving us new spiritual life.

Equally important though is the fact this kind of language refutes Penal Substitution, for it's nonsensical to think that Paul was crucified "with" Christ if the whole point of the Cross was so that Christ was enduring God's wrath in place of the Christian. This amounts to saying that "I have endured the Father's wrath along with Christ," which is nonsense. Any atonement theory that entails Jesus taking your guilt and receiving the due punishment of that guilt makes nonsense of the fact the Christian without any guilt now is also receiving that punishment. It's a logical contradiction and abuse of justice.

I don't even think you can call it substitutionary punishment if Paul was getting punished vicariously. It would be like someone saying they are going to punish a husband's wife instead of the husband, but the fact is the husband is surely going to feel the punishment in virtue of the fact his wife is so closely one with him. Or since this union with Christ is even more profound than marriage, it would be like saying your hand is going to get punished but you aren't. It just cannot be. It's a plain fact that we undergo a Crucifixion ourselves according to Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6:6, and if Crucifixion is fundamentally about God venting His wrath on the person, then that's a problem.

The only way Paul can say he was crucified with Christ is if this crucifixion wasn't about God dumping His wrath on Christ, but rather a dying to sin in the sight of the Father. This carries both meritorious and medicinal aspect. God is pleased that Christ would undergo persecution for the sake of love and obedience (the meritorious aspect), while this suffering has the ontological medicinal benefit of destroying death and man subduing his disordered passions. 

Thus, in Galatians 2:20, Paul can speak of Christ giving himself "for me," speaking of the meritorious aspect of the crucifixion, while Paul can speak of being "crucified with Christ" as far as the subduing of sin in your life is concerned (Rom 6:6; Gal 5:24; 6:14-15).

Surely Galatians 2:20 is conveying a profoundly mysterious idea, one which you could meditate upon for years, but it surely isn't suggesting Jesus was enduring the Father's Wrath in your place.

Did Jesus drink the Cup of God's Wrath in our place? (More Problems with Penal Substitution)

This article is going to be a quickie. We all know the account of Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt 26:36-46), where Jesus prays, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." In order to support their erroneous doctrine of Penal Substitution, many Protestants have incorrectly assumed that this "cup" must be the 'cup of God's wrath' spoken about a few times in the Old Testament, particularly in Isaiah and Jeremiah (e.g. Jer 25:15). But this is easily disproved. 

The key text to look to is Mark 10:38-39, 

37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” 39 And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

This is the time when James and John request to be honored by sitting at the Lord's right and left in the Kingdom. Jesus responds by saying that this is no small honor, and in fact it comes at a hefty price. Jesus asks them if they will be able to drink the same cup and undergo the same baptism He is about to undergo. This is undoubtedly the same "cup" of Gethsemane. But what Jesus says completely undermines the Penal Substitution reading, since Jesus isn't drinking it in their place, but rather inviting them to drink it as well! The only acceptable reading is that this "cup" is physical persecutions that God's servants must endure, which explains why the Apostles were martyred. Thus, the 'cup of God's wrath in our place' thesis is instantly and elegantly disproved.

There's no way this "cup" could be the Eucharistic cup, and there's no way to read this as Jesus draining the wrath from the cup so that it can be drunk like sweet wine, since both of these require no heroic or challenge about them. (I've actually had Protestants make these kinds of claims.) This is further supported by the fact Jesus speaks of a "baptism" He will endure, which cannot be a water baptism since that already happened. Only the most desperate folks will deny the "cup" and "baptism" here refer to the same thing, physical persecutions.

And even with all that said, the "cup of God's wrath" in the Old Testament was that of physical persecutions as well, and Jeremiah 49:12 gives an interesting insight on the matter: "If those who did not deserve to drink the cup must drink it, will you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, but you must drink." This text shows that surrounding nations who were not deserving of the conquering armies had to suffer at their hands, and this corresponds to the fact sometimes God sends sweeping judgments across areas that sometimes include innocent people. The point isn't that these innocent people were taking wrath in place of the guilty, but rather along with. So in this sense, we could also say that Jesus suffered along with us in virtue of His humanity, without suggesting it was in place of us. And the Bible is very clear that Christians suffer for the kingdom, they're not exempt! 

 

I've never been sure how Protestantism can address the fact that if Jesus suffered and died for us that we still have to suffer and die. That apparently disproves PSub in itself.

Romans 4:6-8 crushes Calvinism (Faith Alone)

I'm convinced that Romans 4:6-8 is the most powerful text against Calvinism, and if Catholics utilized this one text I believe there would be astronomical success in their apologetics. While I've written about this before, I want to focus on one thing in particular because I cannot emphasize enough how powerfully this verse crushes Calvinism. Here is Paul in Romans 4 (quoting Psalm 32:1-2):

5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the
blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

I have color-coded this text to help get the point across. When Paul says "just as David speaks of counting righteousness," this means David is speaking of the same crediting of righteousness that Paul just talked about. But David doesn't use the phrase "counting righteousness" in Psalm 32:1-2, and instead he speaks of "lawless deeds forgiven" and "not counting sin". This means that for Paul, "counting righteousness" is synonymous with "lawless deeds forgiven," which is also synonymous with "not counting sin". Simply put, when a persons sins are forgiven, God does not regard that person as a sinner any longer, and in fact God regards them as righteous. Using the analogy of a shirt with a stain on it, after I clean the stain I could either "not reckon a stain on the shirt" or, equivalently, I could "reckon cleanliness to the shirt," and I'd be saying the same thing. The only difference is perspective, similar to asking if the glass is reckoned as half full or is reckoned as half empty.

 

Once you recognize that "counting righteousness" is synonymous with "not counting sin" (meaning forgiveness), you can now proceed to hammer the Calvinist on the issue of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Since the two phrases are equivalent, then it's impossible that "crediting righteousness" refers to "imputing Christ's righteousness," because you'd then have to read "not crediting sin" as referring to "imputing Christ's righteousness" as well, which makes little grammatical sense. How does transferring Christ's righteousness to your account come out of the phrase "not count sin"? It doesn't. 

 

And speaking of "not counting," since the word "count" is the same in both phrases, this means it must carry the same meaning. So when the Protestant thinks "count" means something along the lines of "transferring," so that the text is interpreted as "transferring [Christ's] righteousness," this fails when "transferring" is carried over to David's words, for then David says "the Lord will NOT transfer sin." How can a person who's sins the Lord will NOT take away be a Blessed man? He cannot be a Blessed man if his sin remains, and thus "count" cannot mean "transfer" in either case. Rather, the only definition that makes sense is to read "counted" as simply "regards as," and this gives a coherent interpretation of each phrase: "regards as righteous" and "does not regard as a sinner". Thus, the imputation of Christ's righteousness has no place in this crucial justification text.

The beauty of this passage is that it goes right to the Calvinist's favorite place in the Bible, Romans 4, and it turns their interpretation on it's head. No need for James 2:24 since Romans 4 does the job and does it quite well.

What's stopping you?

One question all Protestants need to ask themselves is what is stopping them or any other Protestant they know from going off and independently starting their own denomination. Most Protestants simply don't think about it, but every Protestant who has gone off and started his own church obviously has pondered this question and recognized their 'right' to do this. Ultimately, it reveals a fatal flaw in their system, and that flaw is that ultimately nobody is subject to anyone else. In fact, a well-informed Calvinist I spoke to recently came right out and said he doesn't submit to anyone but Scripture. But how is another Protestant going to stop him from believing this? I don't see a principled way out of this dilemma. And how can a Protestant truly accept texts like Acts 16:4 and Hebrews 13:17, along with the Pastoral Epistles, I truly don't know. I don't think they can. (So much for Protestantism being Biblical.)

This is one of those issues that the more informed Protestants like to keep hushed because it would completely expose the absurdity of their system. A lot of them know that they cannot challenge the 'pastorship' of even their most bitter enemies, because they know what would happen to their own claims to authority. And so they parade around as if their most bitter enemy with even less 'credentials' than themself is still entitled to be regarded as a pastor. When I've confronted Protestants on this issue, they'll often try to get around it by claiming their pastor was ordained by some board of elders or at a Protestant seminary, as if this sufficiently answered the question. But all they're doing is taking the question one step back to who authorized the board of elders or who authorized the seminary. Ultimately, it will always come down to a group of self-appointed pastors who made themselves into a board of elders or who founded the seminary, and acted as if their self-appointed authority was true authority. It's no different than a random dude starting his own mega church. It happens all the time. But the Catholic sees right through all this. The Catholic sees that this is one of the biggest hoaxes foisted upon the world.

In the end, this Protestant mindset ultimately says the visible Church isn't held together by anything concrete, since a person can break off into schism or heresy and be just as much part of the visible Church as anyone else. With this moral, doctrinal, and ecclesial relativism in full swing, the "visible Church" thus goes from something concrete to something abstract, and thus a self-refuting concept (since an abstract thing cannot be visible). And by this point you can realize that just thinking about such a world-wide hoax like this is exhausting. No wonder our society is so much in shambles when this kind of "logic" is running rampant.

Is there a link between abortion and Calvinism? (More Problems with Penal Substitution)

A famous politician made some ghastly remarks some years back when he spoke of the need for easy access to abortion since he wouldn't want to "punish his daughter with a baby" if she accidentally got pregnant. I was reminded of those remarks as I was pondering over a passage in Leviticus which spoke of the legal requirement for a woman who had recently given birth to offer a sacrifice to God. Since Protestants (particularly Calvinists) understand the Biblical sacrificial system to be a matter of transferring punishment from the sinner onto an innocent animal, this came off as suggesting that having a baby automatically merited a punishment (worthy of death, in fact) that had to be atoned for. 

The passage I had in mind was Leviticus 12:

2 If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days. As at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean. ... 6 And when the days of her purifying are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, 7 and he shall offer it before the Lord and make atonement for her. Then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who bears a child, either male or female. 

Clearly, at least two animals must die for what this woman did, give birth to a child. But does it make sense to think that in this situation what the woman did was sinful, especially so sinful that it warranted the death penalty? Could a baby really be a punishment, with the alternative being abortion? I suppose that twisted conclusion can be made if one espoused the theory of Penal Substitution. But clearly this conclusion (abortion) is so absurd that the premise (Penal Substitution) must be faulty. 

Really, there's no reason to think that giving birth to a child is a sin at all, and thus this 'burnt offering' and 'sin offering' must not be about punishing an 'innocent' animal in the place of the woman. And thus neither is this atonement about satisfying God's wrath by transferring it to a substitute. This means that the sacrifice and atonement must be about cleansing/expiation, making the person ceremonially clean again to be in the presence of God. This of course would 'map over' to the spiritual realm and indicate that a person's soul must be cleansed in order to be worthy to be in God's presence. 

This proper understanding would also explain the need for those with diseases or bodily discharges to make atonement, as instructed in Leviticus 14-15. Clearly having a disease or bodily discharge is not a sin, especially not a grave one. 

This is yet another good proof for why the Levitical sacrifices did not operate in a Penal Substitution framework. If you'd like to know more about the error of the Protestant doctrine of Penal Substitution, start with this link and search the blog for others.

Why Protestants deny Intercessory Prayer

Most of the time when a Protestant criticizes a Catholic practice, the criticism is not only based on a caricature, but more noteworthy is the fact the criticism contains an unparalleled level of irony. When it comes to the subject of Intercessory Prayer, both of these elements are present. 

When I've talked to Protestants on the matter, the fundamental problem they have with Intercessory Prayer is that they envision it as living people on earth talking to unconscious people, without realizing the Protestant themself has unconsciously made the assumption that the saints in heaven must unconscious. Luther was actually more consistent here than other Protestants, since there is good reason to believe he held to something called "soul sleep," in which the soul does not go to Heaven after death but instead "sleeps" in an unconscious state at the graveyard awaiting the Resurrection. From that perspective, it makes perfect sense to say a soul that is "sleeping" and not in Heaven also cannot hear prayer, and it also makes sense at that point to deny the notion of Purgatory. But once the heretical notion of "soul sleep" is addressed, then the caricature is also addressed.

Now onto the irony behind the Protestant criticism of Intercessory Prayer. It turns out that with all the brouhaha over whether a saint in Heaven can intercede for a Christian on earth, the Protestant has failed to realize that Protestantism rejects the most important intercession of all, the Intercession of Jesus before the Father. This will be the focus of my post as I go onto explain.

Does Hebrews 6:4-8 refute Calvinism?

Hebrews 6:4-8 is one of those "special" passages in Scripture from which a lot of debates between Calvinists and non-Calvinists have revolved around. This verse is frequently cited against the Calvinist (Reformed) doctrine of "Once Saved, Always Saved" since it mentions apostasy. Calvinists have long been bothered by this text and have sought ways to explain it, but I think the "interpretations" they come up with are pure desperation and ultimately undermine any responsible approach to the rest Scripture.

The passage states:

4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7 For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

The first thing I'd like to focus on is the start of verse 6 where this Protestant translation (correctly) says "and then have fallen away," since some translations (e.g. KJV) incorrectly include the word "if" such that it reads "if they fall away." This "if" is not in the Greek, and it's either added out of ignorance or out of an agenda to make this sentence conditional rather than an accomplished fact. (Some say the "if" was inserted by the Protestant Reformer Theodore Beza when he saw it refuted his Calvinist theology.) In short, the first thing to recognize in this text is that it is speaking of an apostasy that has taken place, not merely one that might or could. 

Recognizing this first point, since not all Calvinists I've encountered do, the Calvinist who knows better cannot approach this text a hypothetical, and thus they must explain it as someone who was never saved in the first place. But that begs the question and is a very dubious claim considering verses 4-5 cannot be describing anyone but a genuine Christian. And verses 7-8 support this claim as well, giving the analogy of a plot of land that after being watered (graced) can either yield good fruit (meriting heaven) or bad fruit (meriting hell). Lastly, any Calvinist pushing this view would seriously condemn their own assurance since they themselves could "experience" all those same gifts in 4-5 and yet it wouldn't be any indication they themselves were truly saved!

So they must then shift attention to the term "impossible," and from there argue that it cannot be speaking of actual Christians since repentance is never impossible. While it is true that one can always repent as long as God gives them the opportunity, the term "impossible" here can be understood different ways. For example, the term "impossible" could be hyperbolic, meaning used for exaggeration, reflecting how difficult or unlikely it is for someone who has abandoned Christianity to return (Cf "impossible" in Matthew 19:24-26). Or it could mean it is impossible to return to that once pure state you were originally baptized into, having to settle for an inferior/tarnished status among Christians (some great saints never committed a mortal sin). Or it could be referring to the "unforgivable sin," which I discussed on [this post]. Or it could refer to not being able to repent while in the midst of your apostasy, instead requiring some special pardon by the Church clergy (e.g. from excommunication). 

The following interpretation I think makes the most sense. First, the language of this text describing those apostates who "are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt" strongly suggests this was an apostasy actually witnessed by the early Christians. Since this book was written principally to a Jewish Christian audience, or at least a congregation with Judaizing problems, then it's likely they witnessed apostate Christians fall into a Jewish lifestyle (cf Galatians 5:1-4). This 'problem' of 'crucifying Jesus once again' is held as the cause for not being able to repent, which also holds the key for properly interpreting the whole passage. As folks like Jimmy Akin explain, this text is saying these apostates were rejecting Jesus as the true Messiah and thus they were claiming He got what every false Messiah deserves as a fitting punishment and humiliation (i.e. Crucifixion). And once an apostate has gone this far, they're so hardened against Christianity that it's very unlikely ("impossible") they'll ever return.

To summarize the problems with the Calvinist approaches to this verse: (1) there is no IF statement; (2) the tone of the Epistle is practical and reflecting reality, not issuing empty threat "warnings" that are meant to scare but are basically misleading; (3) presuming that the gifts in verses 4-5 cannot be speaking of genuine Christians, when the opposite face-value reading makes the most sense. Ultimately with the last approach you can basically forget any meaningful exegesis from the rest of Scripture because at that point any passage could be "assumed" or argued to not really be speaking of salvation or true believers, which effectively puts traditions of men above the Word of God.