This rare move of a pope renouncing the Petrine office last occurred in the fifteenth century and before that in the thirteenth century.¹ Gregory XII renounced the office of pope in 1417 to facilitate an end to the confusing years of the anti-popes known as the Great Western Schism. In 1294 Pope St. Celestine V, after only a few months in office, wished to return to his former life of hermitage and renounced the bishopric of Rome. Pope Benedict has ruled the Church for a longer period of nearly eight years, having been elected in April 2005. His renunciation comes not to end a controversy but to retire due to ill health.

Canon law makes brief mention of this process. The current Code of Canon Law (1983) states

Can. 332 § 2. Si contingat ut Romanus Pontifex muneri suo renuntiet, ad validitatem requiritur ut renuntiatio libere fiat et rite manifestetur, non vero ut a quopiam acceptetur.

Can. 332 §2. If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns [renuntiet] his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.

The reason why no one accepts the renunciation of the pope is that the pope is the Church’s supreme pastor and the president of the college of bishops. He is entrusted with the supreme care of souls. While he is brother to all the other bishops, he is also the successor of St. Peter, the one charged with confirming the faith of the brethren (Luke 22:32). There is no authority within the Church on earth higher than the pope. The decision must be free and deliberate. This is why Pope Benedict stressed in his announcement that he had made this decision for the good of the Church and only after a prolonged period of discernment of seeking the Lord’s will. Thus he said,

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

It is no secret that the Holy Father’s health has been deteriorating of late. Aware of this possibility, Pope Benedict has made cryptic mentions in the past of the possibility of renunciation. For example, in a 2010 book-length interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, the Holy Father said,

If a Pope realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of the office, then has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.²

Pope Benedict XVI

The Holy Father has been a constant inspiration for us as a man who has loved the Church so deeply and thoughtfully. He has spent himself in service to his flock, in his visits to various countries, his presence at World Youth Days, his constant teaching, and his care for the order of the Church. He has been at the helm of the Barque of Peter during some precarious times and has incurred the hatred of many who see in him and the Church all that is inhumane. Yet Pope Benedict made it clear that he would not resign because of difficulties: “One can resign at a peaceful moment or when one simply cannot go on. But one must not run away from danger and say that someone else should do it.”³ In this, he is blessed to share in the revulsion the world felt at the Lord Jesus, in despising his love and his teaching (see Acts 5:41). May Benedict depart this life in much joy, the joy of his Lord!

For many of us at Called to Communion who were still Protestant at the time, the election of Pope Benedict XVI and his subsequent reign held out the question, “Will that be my leader someday?” Perhaps we sensed something of the Holy Father’s solicitude for visible reunion of Christians, a concern which has led to, among other things, a warming of ties with the Orthodox Churches and the creation of the Anglican Ordinariate, through which Anglicans can return to full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining some distinctive liturgical elements of their tradition. Benedict himself announced this concern the day after his election when he said:

The current Successor [to St. Peter] assumes as his primary commitment that of working tirelessly towards the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all Christ’s followers.

May the next Successor of St. Peter likewise continue the work of prayer and love and dialogue in the truth for the reunion of all Christians!

We of course are saddened that one of the greatest theological minds to hold the Petrine office is now leaving. He has given the Church so much, not least in his encyclicals and informal works on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, his work against relativistic conceptions of culture and politics, his freeing of the 1962 extraordinary form of the Mass, the Year of Faith currently underway in the Catholic Church, and much more.

We are sad that we will no longer have Benedict as our pope. Yet God guides the Church, and so we pray for Benedict’s successor and put our hope in the chief Shepherd, from whom all popes and bishops receive their authority and example.⁴ May He come and take His flock to himself after making her ready and after the full measure of the nations have found their salvation in the Barque of St. Peter.

O God, eternal shepherd, who govern your flock with unfailing care, grant in your boundless fatherly love a pastor for your Church who will please you by his holiness and to us show watchful care. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the Election of a Pope or a Bishop from the Roman Missal)

1. It first occurred 1,778 years ago, when Pope St. Pontian resigned on 28 September 235.
2. Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), 30
3. Light of the World, 29
4. See 1 Peter 5:4 and John 21:15-19

But what good do barriers between Christians impede? When one laments the persistence of caste among communities of Indian Christians or ponders the racial segregation of American Christians as a problem, why is one lamenting? When the poor are not lifted from the dust and seated among princes (see Ps 113:7), to what is that an obstacle? The Scripture readings for this sixth day of the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity tell us.

Credit: AFP/Getty

All the readings speak in some way about the inclusion of Gentiles along with Jews into the one society of God. The reading from Ruth (4:13-18) highlights the stunning fact that a foreign woman stands in the genealogy of David the king, and by extension, in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus according to the flesh. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (2:13-16) explains that the “mystery” of the gospel is precisely the inclusion of the Gentiles as co-heirs with Jews in the “one man” of Christ Jesus (v. 15; see also 3:3-6). What was separate before has been united in the “flesh” of Jesus, a “body” which issued forth “blood” to purify the Gentiles, allowing them to draw near despite the former “dividing wall” between Israel and the nations. Therefore, there can be no justification for separate Christian societies for Jews and Gentiles.

The final reading from the Gospel according to St. Matthew (15:21-28) is the episode of the Canaanite woman. The Lord Jesus seems to reject a begging foreign woman only to commend her faith and exorcise her daughter. What Jesus rejects is a vision of Israel’s mission as excluding or humiliating the nations (“sons” versus “dogs”), instead of a mission of visible communion with them at the table of the Lord’s blessing. The Lord hints in this encounter that the New Covenant will include all the peoples of the earth into the one body spoken of by St. Paul.

Thus all these readings speak of a visible unity between people who were not previously united: rich and poor, male and female, Gentile and Jew. The mystery of the gospel of Jesus is that he reunites the lost peoples of mankind into himself, “one man”. And yet Christians are not visibly united today. We are rightly disturbed by this or ought to be. Why? The text from Ephesians in particular explains. The reason why the separation of Christians disconcerts us is the recognition that a lack of visible communion is incompatible with the truth of the Incarnation. Consider St. Paul’s words:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.

The union that Christ Jesus achieves is multi-faceted. He unites in his one Person two natures, the infinite divinity and the finite humanity; he unites the far off sinner to God through the shedding of his blood, the blood of God; and he unites the Jew with the Gentile by instituting the Church to contain all the peoples of the earth, not merely those who belonged to the “commonwealth of Israel” by circumcision (v. 12). God unite disparate things across infinite distances because he is Lord of Creation, Lord of Israel, Lord of the Nations, Lord of History–not many lords, but One.

Now admittedly we are not in the same situation as the Jews and Gentiles at Ephesus, for St. Paul was not addressing two groups separated by schism, but two groups newly and unexpectedly brought together at the dawn of the Messianic age. The divisions against which we struggle happened later. Yet our divisions are no less a tragedy, a tragedy which is exacerbated by locating unity in anything less than visible, incarnational communion. As Pope Benedict XVI said during his latest Sunday Angelus homily,

“One of the most serious sins that disfigures the face of the Church is its visible lack of unity, especially the historical divisions that have separated Christians and which have not yet been completely resolved.”

We are living on the other side of historical wounds to that one body of Christ, wounds left by the sin of schism. The wounds have become mere features of the background of our lives as Christians. This insouciance toward visible unity which both Catholics and Protestants display is a contradiction of the Incarnation. What could break down the barrier of not even knowing that there is a barrier? Recognizing the problem is certainly the first step, but it is not a final one.

The problem is beyond us, even taken collectively. Still, I want to suggest one means toward visible reunion. I want to propose common leisure between Catholics and Protestants, not only in internet form as we have here at Called to Communion, but also in flesh and blood encounters with “the other side”. Meeting in ecumenical groups for the discussion of theology is one way of slowing down, speaking with real people, and together seeking the truth about what the Incarnation has to teach us about visible unity. Not only have the groups I have participated in had a significant impact on my own understanding of the goal of Christian unity, but I frequently hear of the importance of such groups for many friends. These groups can only be successful if the participants are able to exercise theological imagination–to draw from what Alasdair MacIntyre says in general about engagements between traditions–in order “to translate” between two languages, two paradigms. Only then will progress be possible, for all other engagements will tend to beg the question in criticizing the other point of view by standards alien to that view. But to try to speak about another point of view from within that point of view opens up new channels of progress. (An example of a Reformed pastor trying to see the Catholic faith in this paradigmatic way is Rev. Lane Keister of the PCA. Check out his project to read Catholic theology sympathetically.)

This attempt to empathetically understand the other tradition is a concrete way for Christians to seek conversion, for to engage others like this requires patience and love, without compromising one’s allegiance to truth. There come from the Holy Spirit and are necessary dispositions for those who seek reunion (see Unitatis Redintegratio n. 7). For when we speak even critical words to one another in each other’s language with a desire for the reunion of Christians, perhaps the Lord will say, “Great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire” (Mt 15:28).

BIBLICAL REFLECTIONS AND PRAYERS
 FOR THE ‘EIGHT DAYS’

Day 6	Walking beyond barriers
Readings
Ruth 4: 13-18	The offspring of Ruth and Boaz
Psalm 113	God the helper of the needy
Ephesians 2: 13-16	Christ has broken down the dividing wall between us
Matthew 15: 21-28	Jesus and the Canaanite woman

Commentary

To walk humbly with God means walking beyond barriers that divide and damage the children of God. Christians in India are aware of the divisions among themselves. St Paul lived with the devastating divisions in the earliest Christian community between Gentile and Jewish Christians. To this barrier and to every subsequent one, Paul proclaims that Christ “is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall between us.” Elsewhere Paul writes, “As many of you were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3.27-28). In Christ, all the deep barriers of the ancient world—and their modern successors—have been removed because on the Cross Jesus created in himself one new humanity.

In a world in which religious barriers are often difficult to cross, Christians who are a tiny minority in the multi-religious context of India remind us of the importance of interreligious dialogue and cooperation. Matthew’s Gospel tells of the difficult journey for Jesus—and his disciples— to cross the barriers of religion, culture and gender when he is confronted by a Canaanite woman who pleads with Jesus to cure her daughter. The disciples’ visceral instinct to send her away and Jesus’ own hesitation are overcome by her faith, and by her need. From hence Jesus and his disciples were able to cross the imposed human barriers and boundaries of the ancient world. Such is already present in the Hebrew Bible. The book of Ruth, the Moabite woman of a different culture and religion, concludes with a list of her offspring with the Israelite Boaz. Their child Obed was the father of Jesse, the father of David. The ancestry of the hero-King of ancient Israel reflects the fact that God’s will may be fulfilled when people cross the barriers of religion and culture. The walk with God today requires that we cross the barriers that separate Christians from one another and from people of other faiths. The walk towards Christian unity requires walking humbly with God beyond the barriers that separate us from one another.

Prayer

Father, forgive us for the barriers of greed, prejudice, and contempt that we continually build which separate us within and between churches, from people of other faiths, and from those we consider to be less important than us. May your Spirit give us courage to cross these boundaries, and to tear down the walls that disconnect us from each other. Then with Christ may we step forth into unknown terrain, to carry his message of loving acceptance and unity to all the world. God of life, lead us to justice and peace. Amen.

Questions

• What are the barriers that separate Christians in your community?
• What are the barriers that separate Christians from other religious traditions in your community?
• What are the differences and similarities between walking beyond the barriers that separate Christians from one another, and walking beyond those between Christianity and other religions?

(Source)

Whatever obstacles remain to the reunion of Protestants and Catholics, examples like this show how far we can go together in the effort to uphold God’s will for human society.

“But God can’t exist because of all the evil in the world! And how can you believe that a piece of bread becomes the flesh of a first century Jew?!”

“I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about these arguments by some physicists about how the world really came into being from nothing without God.”

“The Bible is just mythology!!”

“Um, well, thanks for the conversation. Good day to you!”

The atheist in this story commits the logical fallacy of diversion, losing the thread of discussion in the process. He does not rebut the arguments and challenges that the theist raises against the belief that modern physics has proved that something could come from nothing without God. Instead, he throws down irrelevant objections from other quarters, thereby avoiding the real issue.

Recently, Michael Horton has written a series of blog posts responding to questions about the validity of the Reformation principles of sola fide and sola scriptura, which questioning has in some cases led Reformed pastors and seminarians to convert to the Catholic Church. These posts catalogue why Dr. Horton believes people are wrongly attracted to the Catholic faith. The most striking feature of the most recent post, however, is that Dr. Horton indulges the same bad logic as the atheist above. Instead of showing why sola scriptura does not fall victim to the objections we and Catholics through the ages have raised, Dr. Horton changes the topic to why the Catholic Church’s claims are wrong. “But sola scriptura is true because the papacy didn’t exist in the first century!! How can you believe that Scripture is a dark, obscure book!?”

Now, Dr. Horton is within his rights to raise objections to the Catholic faith. But in an article on the authority of Scripture, he is not within his rights to wave his hands over the text of the bible, mumbling, “Non habemus papam!” and then claim that he has really solved the fundamental problems with the sola scriptura paradigm.

In light of such a misdirected response to the problems of sola scriptura, Horton is in a way making the case for agnosticism. If he cannot refute the Catholic objection to sola scriptura, then we have reason for thinking sola scriptura is not true. By implication, we would have reason for thinking traditions untrue that hold sola scriptura to be crucial for understanding reality. On the other hand, if Horton is correct about the Catholic Church’s claims being historically untenable, then Catholicism is not true, either.¹ One is left with something other than either the sola scriptura traditions or Catholicism, perhaps a Church-less belief in Jesus Christ or even agnosticism or atheism. But one is not left with a good reason for thinking sola scriptura is the formal principle which Jesus Christ gave his Church for preserving and advancing in their understanding of his saving work.

All this is ironic in light of Horton’s previous dismissal of the claim that either Catholicism is true, or atheism or nihilism is.² Dr. Horton has, in his own way, given evidence for the claim’s plausibility. The claim, which comes down to us from Bl. John Henry Newman’s history of his religious opinions, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, is not that it isn’t possible to articulate some other view, Anglican or Reformed or whatever. Rather, Newman’s point was to say “that the same bad logic that leads to the rejection of Catholicism necessarily leads also to the rejection of Theism.”³ The meaning of this striking claim is explained by Newman in the Apologia:

Moreover, I found a corroboration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism in a consideration parallel to that which I had adopted on the subject of development of doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to last of that principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and Primitive Christianity; but as there is a law which acts upon the subject-matter of dogmatic theology, so is there a law in the matter of religious faith. In the first chapter of this narrative I spoke of certitude as the consequence, divinely intended and enjoined upon us, of the accumulative force of certain given reasons which, taken one by one, were only probabilities. Let it be recollected that I am historically relating my state of mind, at the period of my life which I am surveying. I am not speaking theologically, nor have I any intention of going into controversy, or of defending myself; but speaking historically of what I held in 1843-4, I say, that I believed in a God on a ground of probability, that I believed in Christianity on a probability, and that I believed in Catholicism on a probability, and that these three grounds of probability, distinct from each other of course in subject matter, were still all of them one and the same in nature of proof, as being probabilities—probabilities of a special kind, a cumulative, a transcendent probability but still probability; inasmuch as He who made us has so willed, that in mathematics indeed we should arrive at certitude by rigid demonstration, but in religious inquiry we should arrive at certitude by accumulated probabilities;—He has willed, I say, that we should so act, and, as willing it, He co-operates with us in our acting, and thereby enables us to do that which He wills us to do, and carries us on, if our will does but co-operate with His, to a certitude which rises higher than the logical force of our conclusions. And thus I came to see clearly, and to have a satisfaction in seeing, that, in being led on into the Church of Rome, I was not proceeding on any secondary or isolated grounds of reason, or by controversial points in detail, but was protected and justified, even in the use of those secondary or particular arguments, by a great and broad principle. But, let it be observed, that I am stating a matter of fact, not defending it; and if any Catholic says in consequence that I have been converted in a wrong way, I cannot help that now.⁴

This argument is, it seems, illustrative of another principle of Newman’s, viz, that to just be able to doubt is no warrant for unbelief. The analogy with the arguments for God’s existence is that, though there are philosophical demonstrations of the existence of God, most people in the event do not come to faith in God by following these arguments in detail (few can do that), but by the cumulative force of the testimony of the surrounding culture, incomplete pieces of evidence (external and internal), and imperfectly followed arguments, each attended by difficulties, but nevertheless, on the whole, showing forth the truth, such that one is not excused from the duty of believing by the possibility of a doubt.

Lacking a cogent response to the case against sola scriptura, Horton’s arguments against Catholicism leave his readers with little but doubt. Here at Called to Communion, we believe that faith in Jesus Christ leads one to adopt the truth of divine revelation as expounded by the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, for Christ founded one visible Church endowed with a teaching office which transmits and protects the deposit of faith for as long as the Church is on her pilgrim journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem. The paradigm of sola scriptura has not maintained and cannot  maintain the unity of the Church in holding to the truths of the gospel, not even with the Reformed nuance of having a fallible ministerial pastoral office which is a norma normata for which the norma normans is Sacred Scripture.

We have interacted with other points of Horton’s recent post, from arguments for sola scriptura to the criticisms of Catholic teaching about apostolic succession and the papacy. For the consideration of our readers, we offer Bryan Cross’s dialogue with Dr. Horton in the pages of Modern Reformation, to which we have added Bryan’s original final reply, together with an extended response to the numerous claims made by Dr. Horton in his concluding remarks. Most of these claims are repeated in the blog post at White Horse Inn. We also commend to our readers a post written by Dr. David Anders which further points out how objecting to Catholicism when posed with an objection to sola scriptura commits the fallacy of non sequitur (“It does not follow.”).

Other material on the principle of sola scriptura and the nature of ecclesial authority can be found on this site’s Index, particularly under the categories The Church (cf. the sub-categories “Apostolic Succession” and “Authority and Infallibility”) and Sacred Scripture.⁵

_____________

1. Horton’s claims would implicate the rejection of Orthodoxy, as well, given that his objections would apply to any system investing interpretive authority in bishops ordained in apostolic succession.
2. Here, third paragraph from the end.
3.  The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Cardinal Newman, ed. Edward Sillem (Louvain, 1968-1970), 2:46, as cited in Ian Ker, John Henry Newman (Oxford, 2009), 565.
4.  Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter 4, Part 2, paragraphs 3–6.
5. My thanks to Andrew Preslar and Bryan Cross for their indefatigable and forbearing editorial work. Many thanks, brothers!

The Council of Trent

That the Catholic Church did such a thing only confirmed my predilection for the Reformed tradition. The latter seemed more concerned with understanding the Bible rightly in its insistence on the importance of studying both Hebrew and Greek. This desire to understand with precision what the Bible meant was ordered to the further goal of teaching people about Christ. In employing the historico-grammatical methodology of early Humanism to critically determine and interpret the text, the Reformed offered simultaneously both a measure of clarity and realism about what the Scriptures communicate and also a check against foisting human speculation, no matter how pious-sounding, onto the Christian faithful. One needed only to crank the canon of Scripture, which is primarily known to the individual by the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit rather than through the mediate testimony of the Church,² through human reason’s ability to grasp the truth as repaired and guided by the same Holy Spirit. The prospect of learning the original languages of Hebrew and Greek also whetted my longing for intellectually challenging ways to help others and also, unfortunately, my prideful desire to appear smart and authoritative to others.³

In contrast, the Catholic Church seemed to me very stupid and ignorant. She was an ostrich thinking it could fly who nevertheless kept plunging her head into the dirt in order to avoid any talk that might upset her fantasies. The abuses in the Church that preceded the Protestant movement indicated, to me and the tradition I was growing to love, a lack of contact with God through special revelation. Instead of turning to the source of renewal, the Word of God, the Catholics inoculated their communion against the cure. Everyone knew that the Vulgate had acquired errors that provided purportedly divine authorization for the Catholic view of justification, Purgatory, the penitential system, the veneration of Mary and the saints, and spurious sacraments such as confirmation and marriage.⁴ Trent made it the official version in an astounding act of arrogance, locking her faithful up in the prison of ignorance about the Scriptures and thus about Christ. I believed this story as did several of my friends.

When my wife and I began the process of learning more about the Catholic Church, I found that several friends also had concerns about the implications of this story. Having studied Hebrew and Greek for several years, I was worried that my training would be useless in the Church. Perhaps the Church was only holding its nose at the use of the original languages. Would we not be joining a group that had rejected Scripture, if not in name, then in method by arrogantly raising up a Latin translation over the very sources of that translation? The Vulgate’s status as the “authentic version” of the Catholic Church revealed that the recent renaissance of Catholic biblical scholarship was something borrowed from genuine Protestantism, picking up some elements of liberal Protestantism as well. Many of the books I used to learn Hebrew and Greek grammar in fact were written by Catholics and published by the Vatican.⁵ Yet I thought I could say that they were really “one of us Calvinists” because it seemed that they were inconsistently studying the original languages and not following their Church’s discipline regarding the Vulgate.

The problem is that this story is a myth. It is a myth like the myth that the Catholic Church officially opposed the translation of Sacred Scripture into other vernacular languages in itself. When I was seeking Protestant sources and arguments to keep me from converting to Catholicism, I found that this misinterpretation came down to me from the very pen of John Calvin.⁶ In reading Calvin’s Antidote (1547) to the Council of Trent, I found him accusing the Council of exalting the Latin Vulgate with the intention of shutting the mouth of the true reformers such as himself. So the Frenchman writes:

John Calvin

But as the Hebrew or Greek original often serves to expose their ignorance in quoting Scripture, to check their presumption, and so keep down their thrasonic boasting, they ingeniously meet this difficulty also by determining that the Vulgate translation only is to be held authentic. Farewell, then, to those who have spent much time and labor in the study of languages, that they might search for the genuine sense of Scripture at the fountainhead! [...]

In condemning all translations except the Vulgate, as the error is more gross, so the edict is more barbarous. The sacred oracles of God were delivered by Moses and the Prophets in Hebrew, and by the Apostles in Greek. That no corner of the world might be left destitute of so great a treasure, the gift of interpretation was added. It came to pass–I know not by what means, but certainly neither by judgment nor right selection–that of the different versions, one became the favorite of the unlearned, or those at least who, not possessing any knowledge of languages, desired some kind of help to their ignorance. Those, on the other hand, who are acquainted with the languages perceive that this version teems with innumerable errors; and this they make manifest by the clearest evidence. On the other hand, the Fathers of Trent contend, that although the learned thus draw the pure liquor from the very fountain, and convict the infallible Vulgate of falsehood, they are not to be listened to. No man possessed of common sense ever presumed to deprive the Church of God of the benefit of learning. The ancients, though unacquainted with the languages, especially Hebrew, always candidly acknowledge that nothing is better than to consult the original, in order to obtain the true and genuine meaning. I will go no further. There is no man of ordinary talent who, on comparing the Vulgate version with some others, does not easily see that many things which were improperly rendered by it are in these happily restored. The Council, however, insists that we shall shut our eyes against the light that we may spontaneously go astray.

Who could have imagined they would be so senseless as thus boldly to despise the judgments of good men, and hesitate not to make themselves odious and detestable to all? Those who were aware that they had nothing useful in view, were yet persuaded that they would make some show of it to the world, and assign to some of their sworn adherents the task of executing a new version. In this instance, however, they use no deceit. They not only order us to be contented with a most defective translation, but insist on our worshipping it, just as if it had come down from heaven; and while the blemishes are conspicuous to all, they prohibit us from desiring any improvement. Behold the men on whose judgment the renovation of the Church depends!⁷

For Calvin, the Tridentine decree is a sure sign of the Catholic Church’s ignorance, imprudence, insecurity, and malice. According to Calvin, Trent swept away the need for studying Greek and Hebrew in marking the Vulgate as the authentic text of the Church. Yet Calvin has read more into the decree than the decree says. Calvin, a man with a great talent for sober and elegant writing and interpretation, here gave way to impassioned “eisegesis” of what Trent really said. Trent nowhere forbids the use of the original languages, as if St. Jerome had not used them to revise the Old Latin texts or make his own translations. One may add here that certain Reformers were perhaps overly optimistic about their Hebrew text or even about the manuscripts of the New Testament which they currently had in their possession. Modern biblical scholarship, especially after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has deemed various Greek translations of the Old Testament to more accurately preserve the Hebrew Vorlage than the Masoretic text in some books. Further, the New Testament text used by early Protestant translators as the basis for the Geneva and the King James Bibles, the so-called textus receptus, no longer has priority in critical editions of the New Testament, such as Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece. Modern vernacular Bibles therefore no longer use the textus receptus as their base text. What a benefit it is to the Church to have the faith passed down both by a written mode and by the mode of Tradition, such that the faith does not depend on the vicissitudes of textual discovery! The manuscript discoveries misused by the Reformers in articulating their principle of sola scriptura do not give God’s people the faith. Rather, the valid critical study of manuscripts supports the faith but does not establish it.

The truth was surprising for me, someone who had come to share in this misinterpretation of the fourth session of Trent. The Catholic Church made the Vulgate the official version of the Church without prejudice to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. The Reformers were not the only problem on the Council’s agenda but were merely one symptom of an underlying need for reform. Trent set out to reform the Church, and all its decisions against Protestant formulations or preferences must be kept within that context. If one were to make Trent a narrow reaction against Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists, one would fail to appreciate the intent of the Fathers of the council and their enduring success in reorganizing and focusing the Catholic reform, which had started before Luther ever thought to instigate a revolt against the Church. Trent was concerned with strengthening the Church through clerical and liturgical reform in addition to clarifying the doctrine of the faith over against Protestant errors.

I learned that I had accepted a myth only after I did two important things toward learning what the Catholic Church actually teaches: 1) I talked to a faithful Catholic priest and 2) I read Trent and some other Catholic sources with an ear that was at least open to being corrected. One does not want to look in the mirror and see an ostrich, after all.

Francisco Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros

I had met my priest at a conference on economics and Christian social teaching. He was of Latin American provenance and had a wonderful combination of pastoral zeal and theological vigor. I asked him about the decree of Trent on the Vulgate. He told me that the decree was above all aimed at standardizing the Latin text of the Bible for the Church, especially the Latin Rite. The problem was not the use of Greek and Hebrew by the Reformers, as embarrassing as that was for some Catholic polemical authors. After all, scholars who remained within the Catholic Church had begun to use the original languages before Protestants started openly defying the Church’s leadership and traditions. One need look no further than the Complutensian Polyglot (1516), completed in Alcala, Spain, under Cardinal Ximenes, who dedicated the work to Pope Leo X,⁸ or the Greek edition of the New Testament edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Such scholars desired to see greater familiarity with Sacred Scripture and were no less ardent in calling for the reform of abuses than were Protestants. For example, Cardinal Ximenes wrote that one reason for printing the Complutensian Polyglot is the following.

[W]herever there is diversity in the Latin manuscripts or the suspicion of a corrupted reading (we know how frequently this occurs because of the ignorance and negligence of copyists), it is necessary to go back to the original source of Scripture, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine and other ecclesiastical writers advise us to do [...] And so that every student of Holy Scripture might have at hand the original texts themselves and be able to quench his thirst at the very fountainhead of the water that flows unto life everlasting and not have to content himself with rivulets alone, we ordered the original languages of Holy Scripture with their translations adjoined to be printed and dedicated to your Holiness.⁹

One might have expected such Humanistic words from the pen of John Calvin, aside from addressing Leo X as “your Holiness” or calling Jerome and Augustine saints. Later in the preface the Cardinal defends the usefulness of an accurate understanding of the literal sense as the foundation for spiritual exegesis, which is a point of departure with Calvin due to the latter’s rejection of spiritual exegesis.¹⁰ The spiritual sense of Scripture contains that of which “the realities and events” of the literal sense are signs. This sense emerges from the unity of God’s redemptive plan for mankind as revealed in the writings of which he is the primary author.¹¹ Recently, Pope Benedict XVI expressed himself in similar terms to Cardinal Ximenes and St. Jerome, writing:

Throughout the history of the Church, numerous saints have spoken of the need for knowledge of Scripture in order to grow in love for Christ. This is evident particularly in the Fathers of the Church. Saint Jerome, in his great love for the word of God, often wondered: “How could one live without the knowledge of Scripture, by which we come to know Christ himself, who is the life of believers?”. He knew well that the Bible is the means “by which God speaks daily to believers”. [...] Let us follow the example of this great saint who devoted his life to the study of the Bible and who gave the Church its Latin translation, the Vulgate, as well as the example of all those saints who made an encounter with Christ the center of their spiritual lives. Let us renew our efforts to understand deeply the word which God has given to his Church: thus we can aim for that “high standard of ordinary Christian living” proposed by Pope John Paul II at the beginning of the third Christian millennium, which finds constant nourishment in attentively hearing the word of God.¹²

The Holy Father here reaffirms the need to know Sacred Scripture in order to know Christ, an essentially Catholic idea.

A sample page from
the Complutensian Polyglot

Neither the Cardinal nor Erasmus confused the agenda of reform with the rejection of essential elements of the faith. They thus remained in the Church while many around them were beginning to entertain Protestant positions, to despair, or to leave.¹³ To see that Catholic biblical scholarship did not cease with the hardening of the Protestant schism but that it could attain linguistic and theological heights on the other side of Trent, one need only read the work of Cornelius à Lapide (1567-1637), the great Jesuit commentator, priest, and professor of Hebrew.

In this way, the Catholic priest I met at the conference prepared me to see that the first decree of Trent’s fourth session was clarified by the second decree. The second decree shows that the primary intention of Trent was to identify one standard Latin edition of the Bible for the Latin-speaking Church to use in the liturgy and in scholastic disputation. The reluctance of the Council to ban translations of the Bible into vernacular languages opened the door for translations such as the Reims New Testament (1582) and the entire Douai-Reims Bible (1609-1610). More to the point, in the second decree of its fourth session, the Council, which otherwise had no difficulty signaling an intention to correct Protestant errors in its other decrees and canons, explained the promotion of the Vulgate in the following way.

Moreover, the same holy council considers that noticeable benefit can accrue to the church of God if, from all the Latin editions of the sacred books which are in circulation, it establishes which is to be regarded as authentic. It decides and declares that the old well known Latin Vulgate edition [ipsa vetus et vulgata editio] which has been tested in the church by long use over so many centuries should be kept as the authentic text in public readings, debates, sermons and explanations; and no one is to dare or presume on any pretext to reject it. [...T]he council decrees and determines that hereafter the sacred scriptures, particularly in this ancient Vulgate edition, shall be printed after a thorough revision [...]¹⁴

We should see three things in this decree. First, we see that the primary intention of the council was to standardize the Latin text of the Church. Remember that the context of Trent is overall reform, not merely smashing Protestantism. In this light, we see a Council eager to correct the problem of the multiplication of Latin translations and editions in Medieval Europe. The proliferation was caused by the sloppy transmission of the Latin manuscripts of Sacred Scripture as well as isolated attempts by scholars and bishops to revise the Latin texts they received, whether of the Old Latin, Jerome’s Vulgate, or some eclectic amalgamation.¹⁵

St. Jerome

Second, the council approved the Latin because Latin was the common language of the educated classes, both ecclesiastical and lay, in Europe for centuries. It was thus the “common” [vulgatus] language of the Western Church. This is the reason why St. Jerome’s translation was initially called the Vulgate, because it was in the “vulgar” tongue, much like koine Greek was the “common” or “vulgar” language of the Mediterranean world at the time of the Gospel. Due to the Church’s use of the Vulgate over the centuries in liturgy, theology, and devotion, she was eager to preserve that translation tradition. She did not want to dump the Latin altogether while she was open to using the original languages to maintain continuity with the past. Most Protestant theologians did not do away with Latin either but continued to write their theological treatises in that language for centuries, presumably for the same reasons of a common language allowing for communication both across national or ethnic lines and for keeping touch with the Latin Fathers of the Church.

Third, the council provides a way to achieve this reform in decreeing that a “thorough revision” of the Latin Bible is to be made. The council does not deny what everyone already knew, namely, that the text of the Vulgate had been corrupted in places by transmission errors. Enshrining the Vulgate as the “authentic” edition does not mean that the Vulgate cannot be revised in light of the best Latin manuscripts or that one may never correct the Latin text using the Hebrew or Greek manuscript traditions. In this openness to humanistic textual criticism, the Tridentine Fathers order that the Vulgate be corrected after the Council such that one version attaining as closely as possible to Jerome’s original translation would find universal use. The employment of Greek and Hebrew to correct the Latin was not forbidden in any way. The revision of the Vulgate was completed under popes Sixtus V and Clement the VIII and published in 1598. The Church has again endorsed a revision of the Vulgate as the authentic version for the Latin rite in liturgical and theological use. The letter in which John Paul the Great promulgated this Nova Vulgata (“New Vulgate”) edition in 1979 can be found here. The history of these revisions are interesting but too complicated to rehearse here.¹⁶

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has understood the Tridentine reform in precisely this way. Pius XII explained in his famous encyclical on Sacred Scripture and biblical studies, Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), that:

And if the Tridentine Synod wished “that all should use as authentic” the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church¹⁷ and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts. For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time, and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which “had been approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church.” Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.¹⁸

Pius is therefore teaching that the Vulgate was established as the authentic version of the Church because it is the Latin Church’s family heirloom, the text which when read puts one not only into contact with Christ but also with all the Latin-speaking theologians and spiritual writers of the Church’s theological tradition. Yet Pius does not hold that the absence of dogmatic and moral errors disallows the study of Hebrew and Greek or the direct translations of vernacular Bibles from the original languages.¹⁹ He writes,

Wherefore this authority of the Vulgate in matters of doctrine by no means prevents – nay rather today it almost demands – either the corroboration and confirmation of this same doctrine by the original texts or the having recourse on any and every occasion to the aid of these same texts, by which the correct meaning of the Sacred Letters is everywhere daily made more clear and evident. Nor is it forbidden by the decree of the Council of Trent to make translations into the vulgar tongue, even directly from the original texts themselves, for the use and benefit of the faithful and for the better understanding of the divine word, as We know to have been already done in a laudable manner in many countries with the approval of the Ecclesiastical authority.²⁰

The myth of what Trent really did persists among many Protestants, as other myths about Protestants persist among Catholics. In this little post, I hope that I have done enough to show that the Church was not opposed to the use of the Greek and Hebrew languages in the fourth session of Trent, contrary to Calvin’s misinterpretation. The more myths of this nature are dispelled, the closer Protestants and Catholics come to reconciliation and to the healing of long-held suspicions.

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word and the Revelation of your Love, we ask that you bring all into the full unity of the Church in order that we may tell of your mighty works, recorded for us in the Sacred Scriptures. Teach us your truth, that we may all attain eternal life. You sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost to empower her as she reads, contemplates, and teaches the Sacred Scriptures. Confirm us in this sure knowledge of salvation, for your glory and our good. Amen.

St. Jerome, pray for us!

1. Translation taken from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, SJ, 2 vol. (Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:664.
2. E.g., WCF I.v.
3. Later, I began to see the limitations of relying solely on the historico-critical method without also submitting to the Church’s reception of the canon of Scripture. I had relied on Sacred Tradition without knowing it in assuming the Protestant canon at the beginning of my criticism. I could not acknowledge this dependence without conceding the importance of Tradition, and so had to ultimately assert the canon on faith. This does not discount having good historical reasons for preferring the four Gospels and much of the Pauline corpus, but many have come to doubt the authenticity of certain Pauline writings. There was also plenty of debate about other books in the formation of the New Testament. I cannot here even begin to broach the problem of the Old Testament canon for Protestantism. For more on the deficiencies of the Reformed approach to determining the canon, see Tom Brown’s excellent article, The Canon Question. For the Reformed then, humanistic and critical study of Scripture can only happen after a fideistic determination of which books constitute the canon. So-called liberal Protestants have simply taken the critical method and set it over against the fideistic element.
4. Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (University of Chicago Press: 1984), 306-310. Cf. John Calvin, Antidote, in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 68-69.
5. E.g., Paul Joüon & T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 2nd ed. (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006); Maximilian Zerwick, SJ, Biblical Greek, 4th ed. adapted by Joseph Smith, SJ (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2009); ibid., A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1996).
6. Apparently Philip Melanchthon also misinterpreted Trent in the same way, but I have not found the source for this assertion.
7. John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 68, 71-72. One should note that I do not intend to take up Calvin’s other complaints against the Council, for example, his protest against the Council reserving the right of arbitrating competing interpretations of unclear passages. Notice also that Calvin arrogates to himself the “gift of interpretation” and thus presents himself as a competing Magisterium. Scholars such as Bruce Gordon have shown how Calvin saw himself as a prophet of God, called to reform the Church by his authority and scholarship. The problem for Calvin is not the need for a final ecclesiastical court of interpretation. The problem is that Trent did not recognize Calvin, and the learned divines whom Calvin recognized, as that court. Calvinists are just as committed as Catholics to retaining an interpretive class constituted by official pastors. For our purposes here we need only see that Calvin has misinterpreted the fourth session of Trent. One might also see how Calvin is perpetually dependent on having accurate manuscripts for his knowledge of the deposit of faith, as if he were not also dependent on Sacred Tradition.
8. The cardinal’s preface to the Polyglot is worth reading. A translation can be found in John C. Olin, Catholic Reform: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495-1563. An Essay with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study of St. Ignatius Loyola (Fordham University Press, 1990), 61-64.
9. Ibid., 62-63.
10. Preceding Ximenes by two and half centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas also insisted that spiritual exegesis proceed from a firm foundation in the literal sense. Cf. Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 10 ad 1.
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 115-117.
12. Verbum Domini, § 72.
13. Cardinal Ximenes died in 1517, just as the Protestant movement was beginning, so it may be unfair to say what he would have done. Given the Cardinal’s loyalty to the Church and that the biblical scholarship which he oversaw had confirmed his confidence in the Church’s teaching, one doubts that he would have become a Protestant.
14. Trans. from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2:664.
15. For more information, see The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vulgate.”
16. Again, I refer readers to The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vulgate.”
17. I assume the Holy Father means in distinction from the Eastern Catholic Churches.
18. DAS, § 21.
19. A reader might wonder how the Church could determine whether the text lacked errors pertaining to faith and morals. The Church determined this in the same way that she partially confirmed that she was receiving the correct books from God in the canon: by comparing the contents of those books to that which had been received by the other mode of revelation’s transmission, namely, Sacred Tradition. In this way, Tradition and Scripture purify and clarify each other’s transmission of the deposit of faith. The Vulgate, even with the scribal errors, said nothing which contradicted the faith. It was an adequate translation of Scripture even if its reading of this or that verse needed updating. This is a great benefit of the Catholic teaching concerning the unity of Scripture and Tradition, such that even if one part of Scripture is unclear due to manuscript variants, we will not lose anything essential to the Faith because of the transmission of the same Faith through Tradition.
20. DAS, §22.

Presenters include notable Protestant scholars Kevin Vanhoozer, Peter Leithart, Hans Boersma, and Iain Provan, as well as Catholic scholars Brian Daley, SJ, R. R. Reno, Matthew Levering, Lewis Ayers, and Mary Healy. That is only about half the list!

Check it out!

“Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward wilt thou have?”

“None other than Thyself, Lord.”

-St. Thomas Aquinas to the Lord Jesus after composing the treatise on the Eucharist, AD 1273.

Joining the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, at a young age, Thomas devoted himself to the mystery of God throughout his life. Most know that his chief work is the Summa theologica. Few also know that he commented on the Sacred Scriptures, on the philosophical works of Aristotle, and, earlier, on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (the production of the latter being a standard requirement for attaining the bachelor of theology in the thirteenth century). Thomas composed various disputations drawn from his university teaching on topics such as truth, creation, the nature of evil, and the various types of virtues. Today the Church uses many of his hymns and prayers, particularly in her celebration of the Holy Eucharist. For example, Thomas wrote the liturgy for the feast of Corpus Christi. His method and works have been commended by popes to form priests and laity in the sapiential–that is, wisdom-seeking–quest for the knowledge of God, the universe, and the mysteries of salvation.

Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, OP

Yesterday the Catholic University of America and the Dominican House of Studies celebrated the feast of St. Thomas early with Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, OP, Secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.¹ In his homily, the archbishop correlated two themes one finds in the life of the great saint: an indefatigable thirst for greater understanding of the mystery of God and an intense dedication to Christ Jesus in the Eucharist. One may listen to the homily by watching this video of the Mass, beginning around minute twenty-one. I highly recommend the homily and have prepared a few thoughts in honor of St. Thomas as inspired by Archbishop Di Noia’s preaching.

The first theme is St. Thomas’s understanding that faith is not only compatible with human reason, but that human reason can continually grow in its understanding of the mysteries of faith. The mysteries of faith, according to Archbishop Di Noia, are “by definition without end [...] endlessly comprehensible and explicable [...] Not darkness but too much light [...] An unending and inexhaustible power to attract and transform the minds and hearts of the individual and communal lives in which they are pondered, digested, and ultimately loved and adored.” The light of faith purifies reason and prepares reason to serve the human journey to the blessed communion of the Three Persons. Thomas appropriated elements of Greek philosophy, whether Aristotelian, Platonic, or otherwise, often doing so in conversation with accomplished Jewish and Muslim philosophers of his day. He sat at the feet of the Church Fathers, read and re-read Sacred Scripture, and adverted to the symbols of faith in the Church’s creeds and pronouncements when necessary. St. Thomas thus synthesized various philosophical and theological sources for the mission of understanding more deeply the things of God, the movement of the rational creature to God, and the way in which this is possible in the Lord Jesus Christ. In his writings we can find an astounding coherence to the faith, not only in the correspondence of its various parts but also of the breadth and height of its contents.

A surprising point made by Archbishop Di Noia in this regard is that we often think of a “mystery” as something impenetrable or inscrutable to human reason. “It’s a mystery,” we say as we dismiss further reflection on a topic or event. Yet St. Thomas understood God to be the author of reason and that human reason participates in God’s rationality (cf. I-II q. 94 a. 2 on the eternal law of God and the rational participation therein of the human creature). In fact, God is reason:

Now, the end of each thing is that which is intended by the its first author or mover. But the first author and mover of the universe is an intellect, as will be later shown. The ultimate end of the universe must, therefore, be the good of an intellect. This good is truth. Truth must consequently be the ultimate end of the whole universe, and the consideration of the wise man aims principally at truth. (Summa contra Gentiles, ch. 1)

And because God is infinite, the conclusion is that the mystery of God is infinitely sought by the rational creature. Ultimately man’s journey into the mystery of God is possible only with the ontological, moral, and epistemological elevation of the rational creature to God through grace, but such elevation does not destroy, nullify, or circumvent the human mind. In fact, we pursue with theology now what we behold in substance in the life to come: the unending and limitless expansion of our awe and amazement at the beauty of the Triune God’s very being and love. Although God is simple, we behold the one mystery of God through various means. Included in these means are the seven “mysteries” or sacraments of Christ.

This touches on the the second theme of the homily, which was St. Thomas’s love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and how in that Sacrament Thomas entered into the deep truth of the God who is love. Archbishop Di Noia related how Thomas had the habit of celebrating daily Mass and then attending a second Mass immediately following. At this second Mass, Thomas would serve at the altar. Often the great theologian would be found weeping at the beauty of God’s love shown forth in Christ Jesus. Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, quotes St. Thomas on the same theme, saying that “the concrete manner in which everything that the Savior did and suffered in the flesh reaches us even today [is...] ‘spiritually through faith and bodily through the sacraments, for Christ’s humanity is simultaneously spirit and body in order that we might be able to receive into ourselves [we who are spirit and body] the effect of the sanctification that comes to us through Christ.’”² Thomas understood that the sacraments are the means of grace, the ways of participating in the divine life. The encounter with the Lord through the consumption of his Body and Blood in the Eucharist vivifies the spirit through the divine nature of Jesus Christ, bringing us to the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. In the sacraments, believers enter into the mystery of the Triune God, where the inexhaustible mystery may be forever contemplated, searched, and enjoyed. Thomas wept because of the beauty of the mystery.

We who think ourselves theologically attuned can learn many things from St. Thomas. With the collapse of Enlightenment foundationalism under the pressure of the post- or late-modern critique comes also a collapse of confidence in human reason’s ability to wonder at the deep truth’s of existence and, above all, the God who upholds it every moment. Reason has been reduced to innocent delusion at best or hungry quest for power at worst. Sadly, this attitude of suspicion toward reason–even redeemed reason–has had deleterious influence on much modern theology. Despite the origin of man from God, who is pure spirit, many doubt that that which is most spiritual in man–his intellect–is incapable of attaining true sapientia from and in God. St. Thomas Aquinas, the “simple” friar who lived eight-hundred years ago, knew better and his writings stand to show us the way. Let us ask him to help us as we seek the face of the living God in the Body and Blood of the living Savior.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, you always had Jesus, the Wisdom of God and the Bread of God, before your eyes. Pray for us, that we might weep with great joy in His presence!

1. The University news report can be found here.
2. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2: Spiritual Master (CUA Press: 2003), 139, quoting De veritate q. 27 a. 4.

This year we are asking for reflections from Reformed and Presbyterian readers on the recent document, Verbum Domini (“The Word of the Lord”), by Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy Father writes on the place of Sacred Scripture in the Church’s life, liturgy, thinking, teaching, praying, and evangelizing. As he states in the introduction,

I wish to point out certain fundamental approaches to a rediscovery of God’s word in the life of the Church as a well-spring of constant renewal. At the same time I express my hope that the word will be ever more fully at the heart of every ecclesial activity.

This post-synodal exhortation is one of the most significant Magisterial works on the Bible since Vatican II’s Dei Verbum.¹ The document may be found in pdf format and in html. Successful entries will reflect on the document with an eye toward the implications for the visible reunion of Catholic and Protestant Christians. Essays may respond critically to Pope Benedict so long as they are written respectfully. Given the length of the document, authors may focus on one section, if they wish, or tackle a general theme. Furthermore, we will consider submissions that do not directly interact with Verbum Domini but which discuss the broader topic of the recovery of unity between Catholics and Calvinists.

Verbum Domini is divided into three sections. Part One, “Verbum Dei,” considers the role of Scripture in the Church’s theology. It covers issues such as the nature of Sacred Scripture as coming from the Triune God who speaks to mankind, the interpretation of Scripture. This part has a section on the Bible and ecumenism. Part Two, “Verbum in Ecclesia,” discusses the place of Scripture in the liturgy and worship of the Church. Part Three, “Verbum Mundo,” is on the Church’s mission to proclaim the gospel to the world. Readers will find a detailed outline at either the end or beginning of the document depending on which format they use.

We will send the author of the winning essay a copy of Henri de Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis, vol. 1, The Four Senses of Scripture (Eerdmans, 1998), in keeping with the theme of Scripture in the Church’s life. De Lubac’s work is an important multi-volume historical investigation into the ways in which medieval theologians listened to the written word of God and contemplated its riches.

We ask that essays remain under 1500 words. Email submissions to barrett ‘dot’ turner ‘at’ gmail ‘dot’ com. Include your name, mailing address, and email address. The deadline for entries is the end of the Octave, January 25th. We will announce the winner in the first week of February and publish the essay on the blog.

All readers of Called to Communion are encouraged to participate in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity regardless of participation in this contest. Ask your priest or pastor what can be done during times of corporate prayer to include this intention. We all long for the healing of the schisms which wound the Church’s unity, especially those which continue to separate us from our former communities in the Reformed tradition.

Lord Jesus, we pray for the intention of Your Sacred Heart, that all Christians would be reunited fully to the Church. Amen.

1. A recent guest post by Jeffrey Pinyan expounds the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council.

Barrett Turner

One sometimes hears the charge that the Catholic Church, through the Tridentine decrees on justification, adopted a semi-Pelagian soteriology.¹ I contend here that Calvinists for their own part must give account for the similarity of their view of the Covenant of Works to the Pelagian view on nature and grace in the original state of man.

Historically, the charge of semi-Pelagianism against the Catholic doctrine of justification is difficult to support, given the Church’s prior condemnation of both Pelagian and semi-Pelagian theologies. The Second Synod of Orange, which was approved by Pope Boniface II in A.D. 531, stated the following:

If anyone contends that God waits for our decision to cleanse us from sin and does not confess that the bestowal of the Spirit and his action in us moves us to will to be cleansed, he opposes this Holy Spirit who says through Solomon, ‘The will is prepared by the Lord’ [Prov. 8:35 LXX], and the salutary preaching of the Apostle, ‘It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish for good will.’ [Phil. 2:13] (Canon 4)

And Canon 18 of that same Council reads:

No merits precede grace. Rewards are due for good works if they are performed; grace, which is not owed, precedes so that they will be performed.

So much for the accusation of semi-Pelagianism.

I instead propose instead that Calvinism is closer than Catholicism to the teachings of Pelagius with respect to the fundamental relationship of man to God in the primitive state. Through the doctrine of the Covenant of Works, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Reformed tradition approaches Pelagius’ conflation of nature and grace before the Fall of Adam and Eve.

To see why this is the case, we first have to understand what constitutes salvation. From the Church Fathers’ reflection on biblical revelation, the Church has taught that the beatitude of heaven consists in the immediate vision of God. In other words, the reason why people are eternally happy in heaven is because they will see God “face to face;” they see God as He is and as He sees Himself. This theme runs throughout the entire narrative of Sacred Scripture, from Moses’ desire to see God’s face (of course not referring to a corporeal visage) to St. John’s promise that “when [Jesus] shall have appeared, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2) St. Augustine comments on this verse, connecting it to the beatific vision:

Thus do the holy angels see already, who are also called our angels. . . . Just as they see, so too shall we see; but we do not see thus. That is why the Apostle says what I repeated just above, “Now we see obscurely by a mirror, but then face to face.” This vision is reserved as a reward, certainly, for our faith; and of it also the Apostle John speaks: “When He shall have appeared,” he says, “we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.”²

What was at stake in the Pelagian controversy was more than just whether man needs grace after the Fall to obtain this vision of God. What is often missed in the controversy is an additional element, namely, whether man needed grace even in the Garden to obtain eternal blessedness.³ The Second Synod of Orange says in its nineteenth canon:

No one is saved without God’s mercy. Human nature, even had it remained in the integrity in which it was created, could by no means have saved itself without the assistance of its creator. Thus, since without God’s grace it could not retain the salvation it had received, without God’s grace how will it be able to gain the salvation it has lost?

By contrast, Pelagius had asserted that after the initial ‘grace’ of creation, Adam and Eve could merit eternal life by their own natural effort.⁴ In opposing Pelagius’ denial of man’s need for God’s grace to obtain salvation, the Augustinian theologians posited the necessity of infused grace for man’s salvation before the Fall.

St. Augustine teaches that if man were to love God above all things and for God’s own sake, he needed the grace of supernatural charity implanted in his heart.⁵ With infused charity, man is elevated from mere creatureliness to become a son of God, capable of loving God with filial piety.⁶ The Church eventually formally defined this Augustinian teaching of the priority and necessity of grace for salvation both before and after the Fall into sin.⁷

Now the theological standard for conservative Presbyterian denominations in America is the Westminster Confession and its attendant catechisms. Within the document is a section describing the “Covenant of Works,” a late Calvinist doctrine explaining how our first parents were to inherit eternal life. As Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof explains, if the gap between God and his creatures is infinite, there is no possibility for a creature to merit anything with respect to God.⁸ The Covenant of Works doctrine seeks to solve this problem by positing an extrinsic arrangement whereby God promises eternal life to Adam and his descendants upon Adam’s perfect obedience (WCF, ch. 7, sec. 2). Without such an arrangement, man could in nowise merit eternal life from God.

The parallel between this doctrine and Pelagianism is that Reformed theologians who accept the Covenant of Works tradition ascribe to Adam and Eve a natural righteousness and a natural power by which they were to keep the Covenant of Works. These theologians deny the Catholic doctrine that the first couple needed a supernatural charity infused into their souls to make their wills proportional to the supernatural end of the vision of God. Berkhof is explicit here: “[Man] was by nature endowed with that original righteousness which is the crowning glory of the image of God.”⁹ Thus, for Calvinists with allegiances to Westminster, the Covenant of Works doctrine implicates them in a basic Pelagian view of salvation in the original state of man.

Some Calvinists might think such a characterization is unfair, especially since any covenant between God and man contains an element of gracious condescension, as noted by Berkhof and taught by the Westminster Confession.¹⁰ Therefore, even the Covenant of Works was ‘gracious’ in that the arrangement was made by God’s condescension to man. However, the problem with this objection is that Pelagius also left room for extrinsic ‘graces’ in his scheme. For Pelagius, ‘grace’ was either the gift of initial creation of man (especially man’s faculties of intellect and will)¹¹ or the ‘grace’ of ‘the law and the teaching’ which would help mankind to salvation by making it easier for him to do what he nevertheless could do by his own power of free will.¹² No one denies that man’s creation is totally gratuitous, so this cannot be the controversial doctrine. More germane is the notion that something merely extrinsic to man can be the ‘grace’ needed for salvation, such as a covenant or a law. In limiting grace to merely extrinsic things, Pelagius could still hold that man by his own power is able to obey perfectly and thereby merit eternal blessedness. The same obtains for the idea of the Covenant of Works as articulated by the Westminster Assembly: such a covenant would only add an extrinsic ‘gracious’ arrangement to man’s natural state. It would not actually elevate man such that his actions could have a salutary quality in the supernatural realm.

In contrast, Catholic theology understands that in order for Adam to merit the reward of the beatific vision, the relationship between Adam and God in the Garden had to be one of divine sonship. Not only were Adam and Eve given the gift of existence as human beings with a rational nature, they were also given something gratuitous in addition to their existence and nature, namely, sanctifying grace and charity. By the gifts of sanctifying grace and charity they were more than just God’s creatures; they were God’s children, adopted and destined for no mere imperfect creaturely happiness. In addition to this, God gave them actual grace to incline their wills to choose the good, namely Himself. God created them for a supernatural end, namely, to see His own essence and to share in the eternal blessedness of the Holy Trinity, to fulfill a destiny fitting for children of God. This is why they needed something in addition to mere human nature, so that they could become partakers of the divine one (2 Peter 1:4).

1. Semi-Pelagianism is the notion that man, by his natural desire and free will alone, is able to begin to turn to God, who then responds by giving grace to increase man’s faith and elevate man by making him a partaker of the divine nature. See the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Semi-Pelagianism.
2. St. Augustine, City of God, 22, 29, 1.
3. Regarding this grace that Adam and Eve had before the Fall, St. Augustine wrote:

   The former immortality man lost through the exercise of his free-will; the latter he shall obtain through grace, whereas, if he had not sinned, he should have obtained it by desert. Even in that case, however, there could have been no merit without grace; because, although the mere exercise of man’s free-will was sufficient to bring in sin, his free-will would not have sufficed for his maintenance in righteousness, unless God had assisted it by imparting a portion of His unchangeable goodness. Just as it is in man’s power to die whenever he will (for, not to speak of other means, any one can put an end to himself by simple abstinence from food), but the mere will cannot preserve life in the absence of food and the other means of life; so man in paradise was able of his mere will, simply by abandoning righteousness, to destroy himself; but to have maintained a life of righteousness would have been too much for his will, unless it had been sustained by the Creator’s power. … We are to understand, then, that man’s good deserts are themselves the gift of God, so that when these obtain the recompense of eternal life, it is simply grace given for grace. Man, therefore, was thus made upright that, though unable to remain in his uprightness without divine help, he could of his own mere will depart from it. (Enchiridion, 106-107.)

   Elsewhere he wrote:

   When, indeed, Adam sinned by not obeying God, then his body — although it was a natural and mortal body — lost the grace whereby it used in every part of it to be obedient to the soul. (On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, Book 1, 21.)

4. St. Augustine writes:

   “For this, too, the Pelagians have been bold enough to aver, that grace is the nature in which we were created, so as to possess a rational mind, by which we are enabled to understand — formed as we are in the image of God, so as to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth.” (On Grace and Free Will, 25.)

   In contrast to Pelagius’s position, St. Augustine argued:

   The first man had not that grace by which he should never will to be evil; but assuredly he had that in which if he willed to abide he would never be evil, and without which, moreover, he could not by free will be good, but which, nevertheless, by free will he could forsake. God, therefore, did not will even him to be without His grace, which He left in his free will; because free will is sufficient for evil, but is too little for good, unless it is aided by Omnipotent Good. And if that man had not forsaken that assistance of his free will, he would always have been good; but he forsook it, and he was forsaken. Because such was the nature of the aid, that he could forsake it when he would, and that he could continue in it if he would; but not such that it could be brought about that he would. This first is the grace which was given to the first Adam. (On Rebuke and Grace, 31.)

5. Cf. Romans 5:5.
6. St. Augustine says of Adam and Eve, “as soon as they disobeyed the Divine command, and forfeited Divine grace, they were ashamed of their nakedness.” (City of God, 13, 13.
7. See Session V of the Council of Trent. See also St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Q.95 a.1.
8. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 215 ff.
9. Systematic Theology, p. 209. If by “naturally righteous” it is meant that Adam was in right covenantal relationship to God because through sanctifying grace he was participating in the divine nature “by nature,” then he would in this sense be divine by nature, i.e. by participating in the divine nature. To have the beatific vision is to share in God’s own happiness in knowing Himself. This is due only to God. Without grace Adam could only have had a righteousness that was proportional to human nature. In such a hypothetical state of “pure nature” it would have been possible to have a righteousness that was purely natural, i.e. a justice in regard to God that was proportionate to human nature, and not supernatural (i.e. a righteousness that transcends human nature simply speaking — cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II q. 109, a.2). That being said, this natural righteousness would not be meritorious for supernatural beatitude, so it is unclear to me how Reformed theologians like Berkhof could maintain the above idea.
10. Ch. 7, sec. 1.
11. cf. Augustine, On Nature and Grace, ch. 59
12. Cf. St. Augustine, On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin Bk. 1, ch. 45. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on ‘Actual Grace‘ states:

    Pelagius and his disciple Caelestius, who found an active associate in the skillful and learned Bishop Julian of Eclanum, admitted from the beginning the improper creative grace, later also a merely external supernatural grace, such as the Bible and the example of Christ.