Welcome to Called To Communion. One of the difficulties in reconciling Protestants and the Catholic Church is that some Protestants misunderstand the meaning of Catholic documents, construing them in a way that places more distance and opposition between Protestants and the Catholic Church than the Church herself believes there to be. So Protestants attempting to understand the Catholic faith should seek out well-informed Catholics to make sure they are interpreting the documents accurately. Courtesy requires that members of a tradition get to define what their documents mean, rather than having meanings imposed on them by those outside the tradition. And so too here, a Protestant should defer to Catholics regarding the meaning of Catholic documents, rather than insist that the documents mean what he [i.e. the Protestant] thinks they mean.

The statements from Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum and Mortalium Animos about the relation of salvation to the Catholic faith are referring to persons who are not in invincible ignorance about the truth of the Catholic faith. That’s the qualified context that your Protestant friend is not recognizing. Notice how the Catetchism puts it:

Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (CCC, 846)

The statement refers to those who know that the Catholic Church was founded by God through Christ as the ark of the New Covenant, and yet refuse to enter this ark, like those who know that Christ instituted baptism and commanded all men to be baptized, but refuse to be baptized.

At the same time, the Church teaches that:

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. (Lumen Gentium, 16)

In other words, invincible ignorance of the Catholic Church does not damn a person. Such a person can be saved, but he cannot be saved without the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape, and these come only from Christ and His Church, even when the person is not formally joined to the Church. So, the Protestant who, because of invincible ignorance does not know about the truth of the Catholic Church, but sincerely seeks God, is baptized, believes whatever he knows to be true about God, and (moved by actual grace) strives to do God’s will, can be saved. And his salvation is by the infusion of sanctifying grace, and that agape comes from Christ, through His Church. Such a person would, if he knew that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, seek to be received into the Catholic Church.

But the Church is not saying that invincible ignorance guarantees salvation. In fact, it is far more difficult to be saved without the divinely established means of grace (i.e. the sacraments) than with them. The person who is not in full communion with the Catholic Church is in a situation wherein it is much more difficult for him to be saved, than if he had access not only to the sacrament of baptism, but also the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist, an orthodox explanation of God as revealed in Scripture and interpreted by the Church in the light of the Apostolic Tradition, instruction in prayer, and the aid of the community of the Body. See comment #38 in the “Doug Wilson Weighs In on the Eternal Fate of Faithful Catholics” thread.

Persons who are not in full communion with the Church can nevertheless receive spiritual benefits from the Church, and in this way have an invisible (though imperfect) union with the Church. This is what we refer to as imperfect communion. And that’s the condition of Protestants. They are not in full communion with the Church, but through baptism they received grace and the Holy Spirit. The Church is visible, so a person is not a member of the Church until he is visibly joined to the Church. But that does not prevent him from receiving spiritual benefits from the Church prior to being visibly joined to the Church. And that’s what happens when a Protestant is baptized. But there are not two Churches: one visible, and one invisible. There is one Church, with two dimensions or aspects, and the way to the invisible dimension is through the visible dimension. I have written more about this in an article titled “Baptism, Schism, Full Communion and Salvation.” If that doesn’t answer your question, then please write me back.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

You wrote that you consider Doug a brother in Christ. I agree with you. I told a Protestant friend of mine that I was converting to Catholicism but that I still considered him a brother in Christ. He maintained that there’s no way we’re brothers in Christ based on the quotes from these Popes:

Pope Benedict XV (A.D. 1914 – 1922): “Such is the nature of the Catholic faith that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole, or as a whole rejected: This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.” (Encyclical, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum )

Pope Pius XI (A.D. 1922 – 1939): “The Catholic Church alone is keeping the true worship. This is the font of truth, this is the house of faith, this is the temple of God; if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation….Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ, no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors.” (Encyclical, Mortalium Animos )

In what way are Protestants our brothers in Christ?

I haven’t seen any reply from Doug. If I do, I’ll be sure to put a link to it here. (David, if you come across a reply from Doug, please let us know. Thanks!)

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

I asked Pastor Wilson to respond and he left me with the impression he was going to. He also asked if I had read Keith Mathison’s book on sola Scriptura and he highly recommended it. I said I had and was going to re-read it, but that the article on this site refuting that very book was one of the things that started my questioning of sola Scriptura. He then reaffirmed his confidence in that book. I am almost done reading it and it is just reinforcing what I have been hoping is not true.

Doug Wilson and R.C. Sproul Jr. are my Reformed heroes and I really wish they would engage these arguments on Called to Communion. At this point I am in a sort of “emperor has no clothes” attitude about Reformed church authority, and I see no other option but to go Catholic. Unfortunately R.C. Jr. recommends the same book by Mathison so I am left with the fact that my preferred teachers are pointing to a book that has been completely refuted on this site in this article.

-David Meyer

Be assured that we will still have you. Discussion that openly seeks the truth together is what we desire on this site.

A couple things I have learned:
1) You are right about our different assumptions, we do have very different assumptions and starting points. I still see your starting point as ending up as tautology. As long as the Pope and Apostolic Succession defines your Church as the one true Church, alone guided by the HS, whatever is, is right, and any attempt by one in schism to point out a “wrong” is himself wrong, a priori.
2) As Protestants, we separate justification and sanctification (I am reading up on your Aquinas posts) and you (RCC) don’t (at least not in the way we do). This makes it difficult to discuss things. It also gives us both straw men to put up (your “finished work” straw man, for instance).
3) I need to read more.

Bryan and all,
I think I will end my posts on this thread here. Let me, in my limited time read more. I have always wanted to read more Aquinas and this will give me a good excuse. I would like to examine Justification and the surrounding controversies- Indulgences, Purgatory and co-operation. You (Bryan) have given out quite a few posts for me to look at. I’ll start from there.

Lastly,
Your accusations of gnosticism in Protestant churches is not condemning enough, but that is another topic altogether!

You will hear from me on Friday (if you will still have me).

Ron

You wrote:

Lex orandi, lex credendi… How can you be sure superstitious practices won’t eventually become official practices with accompanying doctrine?

This is a Protestant worry, because for Protestants, the Church that Christ founded is invisible, i.e. the set of all the elect. And therefore for Protestants all the promises concerning the Church pertain to something which cannot be seen this side of heaven. And so any visible institution, including the Catholic Church, is regarded with a deep suspicion, rooted in the [rightful] awareness of the fallen and fallible state of man. For Protestants, the Catholic Church is just another man-made organization, no less fallible than any other man-made institution.

But Catholics believe that Christ founded a visible Church, with hierarchy and sacraments and laws and the possibility of excommunication. This is a divine institution, because it was founded by God and is sustained and animated by His divine Life. Catholics believe that this visible Church that Christ founded, is the Catholic Church, governed by the visible successor of St. Peter, to whom Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom. Because the Church is visible, the promises pertaining to the Church have (for Catholics) an entirely different import. The gates of hell will never prevail against the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit will guide the Catholic Church into all truth. Christ by His Spirit will be with the Catholic Church to the end of the age. The Catholic Church is the pillar and ground of truth. Until Christ returns, those who listen to the Catholic Church listen to Christ; those who refuse to listen to the Catholic Church, are refusing to listen to Christ. Those whom the Catholic Church excommunicates, are excommunicated from the Church that Christ founded. Those whose sins the Catholic Church forgives, their sins are forgiven; those whose sins the Catholic Church retains, their sins are retained. The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ of which St. Paul speaks in 1 Cor 12. Once we grasp what the Church is, and the promises pertaining to her, then we are no longer faced with the worry of ecclesial deism.

The gnostic (non-sacramental, non-material) conception of the Church robs it of all relevance to the life of the Christian, and blinds Christians to the universal Church that is right in front of their eyes, and to the riches of grace and wisdom and truth Christ has deposited in her indefectibly. All we’re left with is our feeble and fallible interpretation of the Bible, whose canonical contents are again ultimately determined by our own feeble and fallible efforts. By this gnosticism which [conceptually] de-sacramentalizes and thus de-materializes the Church into something invisible, schism from the Church is eliminated. Thus when you ask such persons what it would mean to be in schism from the Church, they look at you with a hollow, blank expression, as if you are speaking a different language. It is a different language, because gnosticism is a different religion. Satan’s great deception is not just making schisms, but leading Christians into a gnosticism in which they have no way of even making sense of the concept of schism from the Church.

Now, of course, some Protestants deny that they deny a visible Church. Just today, for example, R. Scott Clark affirmed strong language about the visible Church. But, when you start doing a little digging, you find that it is just language. In other words, these persons talk about there being a visible [catholic] Church, but in actuality what they are affirming is only an invisible catholic Church, having visible local congregations and denominations and individuals, as its members. I have explained why that is, in my post titled, “Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church”.”

But people like Clark are in a very tiny minority of Protestantism. The vast majority of Protestantism has seen through the charade of having a visible catholic Church, and simply embraces invisible [catholic] Church ecclesiology (which over time reduces to invisible local Church ecclesiology, which is equivalent to no ecclesiology, which is equivalent to a return to paganism). For example, just a few days ago Scot McKnight (in your neck of the woods) posted “On Picking a Church,” in which he asks:

Let’s say you move into a new community, one in which you know no one other than a person or two with whom you will be working your day job, and you are left to your own devices to pick a church. … What criteria would I use? What ranking would I give the criteria? What would be first? Or is there such a “first”? Would it come down to one or to a constellation?

Scot then proceeds to give his list of the top ten criteria he would use in “picking” a church. That list includes things like how often they celebrate communion, how many 20somethings and 30somethings are present, whether the church is growing, etc. But there is one overwhelmingly important criterion that is conspicuously absent from his list: Is this the Church that Christ founded? And as I pointed out in August of 2007, in my post titled “Ecclesial Consumerism vs. Ecclesial Unity,” that’s the identifying feature of ecclesial consumerism, which itself is built upon gnostic ecclesiology. In that Ecclesial Consumerism post I wrote:

So how can a person determine if he is an ecclesial consumerist? How can a person determine of he is one of those described in 2 Timothy 4:6?

One is an ecclesial consumerist if one’s decision regarding which ‘church’ to attend is based on anything other than this question: Which institution is the one founded by the incarnate Christ?

I pointed out that criterion in the comments of Scot’s post, but no one there even blinked an eye. It is completely outside of their conceptual horizon. I might as well be from another planet.

Regarding the “finished work of Christ”, you wrote:

Of course she should pray the Lord’s Prayer, because we all sin in thought and word and deed, daily.

Here’s the dilemma for you. If Christ has already paid the penalty for all her sins, past, present and future, then there is no reason for her to keep asking forgiveness for her daily sins. Doing so, in that case, would be an act of unbelief. But if she should keep asking forgiveness for her daily sins, because they are not all already paid for, then while she might not need worry about purgatory (out of which everyone who enters eventually is received into heaven), she still need worry about something far worse than purgatory, namely, eternal hell. See my “Louis Berkhof, Justification and the Lord’s Prayer.”

Next you ask:

Did Christ almost pay our debt? Some debt, but not all?

The Catholic understanding of atonement is quite different from the Protestant conception. I have explained that in my Aquinas and Trent: Part 6, especially in the first five comments.

Next you wrote:

“Today…er, maybe in 500 years or so you will be with me in Paradise” and the thief on the cross felt a great comfort.

It would be a mistake to infer from the thief going to Paradise that day, that there is no purgatory. That’s because the conclusion would not follow from the premise. In Catholic theology it is possible that in one great act of charity, a person can make satisfaction for temporal punishment.

Finally you wrote:

The finished work of Christ means you can’t and don’t need to add to his atoning sacrifice for our sins- including our good works. I think you know that!

I know that this is what you mean by the “the finished work of Christ”. But Protestant conceptions of Christ’s work are that of replacement, while the Catholic conception of Christ’s work is that of participation. The Christian life is precisely one of taking up our cross, in union with His suffering on the cross, joining ours to His. And this is why suffering, as a Catholic, can be meaningful, because our suffering can count for something, as we join it to that of Christ.

As for the question of purgatory, I might answer that in a separate post, instead of adding to this lengthy comment.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

We haven’t claimed that apostolic succession ensures “truth in practice.” As Jesus told us, there will always be tares among the wheat. And all of us are to some degree tares that need to be further refined. Apostolic succession protects the deposit of faith and allows those who have conceived a desire to be holy and follow God’s truth to find it definitively. It is a principle of unity and keeps Christianity from being a reinvention of the wheel in each generation. Practically it avoids situations like the one I described many posts ago, and which you hinted at above, namely that the ability to “find” truth (as opposed to knowing where to find it and simply going there) becomes a matter of how much time one has apart from life’s other callings.

As to the questions you raise in (2), we can be sure that falsehood will not eventually become truth because we have faith, faith in the supernatural protection of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church by the Holy Spirit.