Tag Archives: Sola Scriptura

Taking Down the Firewall

Apologetics, Church Authority, Communion of Saints, End Times, Last Things, Protestantism, Purgatory, Scripture, , , ,

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral, the Augustinian priest ignited a firewall that continues to separate Catholics and Protestants down to this day.  At the heart of his question was the abuse of indulgences, but he ultimately attacked the firewall upon which the doctrine was built—Purgatory—in order to make his point.  Unfortunately, the debate still rages today, not necessarily because of Purgatory itself but because of all of the ancillary issues attached to it: Atonement, Penance, Tradition, Development of Doctrine, and Authority.  In an age of exaggerated ecumenism, we tend to ignore those doctrines like Purgatory that ultimately lead to division.  Ignoring the truth is never a good idea, especially when the truth is a practical one.  Purgatory is perhaps the most practical of doctrines; many of those who don’t believe in it now will experience it first-hand in the not too distant future.  But it also is important to have a ready explanation for it because it is also a “head-pin” doctrine; knock it down and many of the aforementioned obstacles will fall with it.

The most common argument against it is that it is not Scriptural.  We have spoken any number of times in the past about the rule of faith being implicit within Sacred Scripture and the need for Tradition to make it explicit.  In other words, doctrines like Purgatory need not be explicit in Scripture only implicit.  We will not traverse that well-worn path yet again.  It is mentioned because we need not necessarily have this discussion regarding Purgatory.  If we dig a little deeper into Scripture then we will find that Purgatory is a common theme, so much so that we can offer a strictly Scriptural defense of it.

St. Thomas said that, when arguing with an opponent, we should always argue using terms and sources of authority that they agree with.  For example, when discussing some aspect of morality with a non-Christian, we should not cite the Bible but instead Natural Law.  We can certainly show how the Bible agree with that source of authority, but to obstinately stick to the Bible when they think it mythical is foolish.  A similar thing happens with Catholics and the doctrine of Purgatory.  Second Maccabees (2 Maccabees 12:39-46) clearly points to a belief in Purgatory.  The problem is that Protestants don’t accept that book as inspired.  By referencing them it seems to only prove their point that Purgatory is a Catholic fabrication, yet it still remains the go-to texts from the Old Testament.

St. Francis de Sales and the Argument from Scripture

Throughout post-Reformation history, there is perhaps no one better than St. Francis de Sales at converting Protestants.  Some estimate that he was responsible for over 70,000 conversions in his lifetime.  It is therefore instructive to look at how he presented this divisive doctrine.  He did not argue from Tradition or even mention 2Maccabees, but instead gave a strict Biblical defense using Protestant accepted texts.  Given his success rate and the fact that most of these texts are rarely cited, it is educative to review what he said (Catholic Controversy, Appendix II).

It without saying that Catholics and Protestants both agree that Christ’s Blood is the true purgatory.  But the question still remains how and when that purgation is applied.    For the saintly Bishop of Geneva and the thousands he converted there was a simple reasoning process: if there are passages which speak of purgation after death then there must be a place (call it Purgatory since the name is never given us) where this purgation occurs for purgation can happen neither in hell (where “the worm does not die” Mk 9:48) or in heaven (where “nothing unclean may enter it” Rev 21:27). 

St. Francis begins where many of the Fathers of the Church, those who spoke the great Amen to God’s Revelation, began, in Psalm 66.  There the Psalmist speaks of being led out into the spacious place by passing through fire (Ps 66:12).  Likewise, Isaiah 4:4 speaks of being cleansed by a spirit of burning. 

St. Francis also refers to Christ’s teaching on the Sermon of the Mount where he cautions about the punishments attached to anger (Mt 5:22-26).  Our Lord suggests different levels of punishment, with only the latter meriting hell.  For the other two, Jesus speaks of a prison of sorts that one can leave saying, “truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny” (5:26).  Building on this theme, St. Paul refers to a man who is saved “as through fire”  (1 Cor 3:11-15).

Praying for the Dead

All of this points to a time and place of purgation, but, absent a connection to Tradition, one could argue that this purgation occurs in this life.  The problem with that interpretation however is the abundance of Scriptural examples of people praying for the dead.  St. Francis begins by referring to David’s prayer and fasting for Saul and Jonathan after their deaths—”And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the LORD and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword” (2 Sam 1:12).  Likewise, we find St. Paul praying for his departed friend Onesiphorous (1 Tim 1:16-18).

He also explains two other often problematic texts by referring to Purgatory.  The Mormons often justify their habit of literally vicariously baptizing the dead by referring to Paul’s text in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians (1 Cor 15:29).  St. Francis says that when Paul speaks of being baptized for the dead he does not mean it in the literal sense, but as an exhortation to offer sufferings for the dead.  He says that St. Paul is using Baptism in the same manner as Christ did when He speaks of His baptism of afflictions and penances undertaken in Luke 12:49-50—I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!  There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”.  Notice how Our Lord references to a fire in this rather clear passage.

Perhaps his most convincing passage prooftext is the last one he refers to: Philippians 2:10.  St. Paul says that that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth”.   In particular, St. Francis is concerned with a proper interpretation of those “under the earth”.  To assume that refers to those in hell would contradict Scripture— ”For there is no one in death, that is mindful of thee: and who shall confess to thee in hell?” (Ps 6:5, c.f. Isaiah 38:18).  Instead those “under the earth” refers to “holy souls in Purgatory”, that is the Church Suffering.  St. Paul’s hymn is making reference to the Church in all her members in heaven, on the earth and in Purgatory.  Ultimately then, there is no firewall between the Church’s members nor should there be between Catholics and Protestants.

Where We Got the Bible

Bible, Church Authority, Scripture, , , , ,

In an age marked by an exaggerated ecumenism, there is a tendency to paper over important differences that, once argued and resolved, could readily become a means of true unity.  Take for example the question of “how many books there are in the Bible?”  This question is not really one of personal faith, but historical fact.  Still it tends to be largely ignored because the facts are not really known on either side.  For this reason it is instructive for us to examine the history of the canon of Sacred Scripture.

To properly speak of a “canon” of Scripture, there are some necessary distinctions that need to be made.  First, the word canon is a theological term that was first used in the Fourth Century AD.  Prior to that the term Scriptures was used to distinguish those books that were inspired from those that were not.  This is important because, as Vatican I taught, the Church in recognizing the canon, was not bestowing inspiration upon certain books, but acknowledging that those books contained in the canon were inspired.  So properly speaking the Church did not “decide” the canon but merely recognized that the books contained in it were inspired and was tasked with preserving and protecting them.

Judaism and the “Canon” of the Old Testament

Second, there was no set canon within Judaism at the time of Our Lord.  Judaism was not a monolithic religion and different sects had different beliefs as to which books from the Hebrew Scriptures were inspired.  The Sadducees, for example, believed only that the five books of Moses were inspired (which is why Our Lord reprimands them for not knowing the Scriptures when they denied the resurrection in Mt 19).  The Pharisees on the other hand included other books, but disputed over the status of Ecclesiastes, Esther and the Song of Solomon.  The Essenes, the group from whom the Dead Sea Scrolls have been excavated, accepted even more, including some that are not found in any of the Christian Scriptures.

The point is that there was no accepted central authority within Judaism that could canonize the Scriptures.  This is one of the things that they thought the Messiah would do (c.f. John 4:25).  This dispute over which books were considered Scriptures lasted well into the second century and beyond.  This point is also important to consider because of a popular myth, perpetuated mainly by Protestants (especially Norman Geisler) that there was a Jewish council at Jamnia around the year 100 that closed the Jewish canon.  The end result was a canon of 22 books; the same set found in most Protestant Bibles.

If they did not recognize the Messiah whose role it was to discern the Scriptures, then by what authority could they have declared a fixed canon?  Furthermore, there is absolutely no historical evidence for such a formal council.  It appears that this was made up by H.E. Ryle as a defense of the Protestant subtraction of books from the Christian canon.  More on this in a moment.

What the Jews did begin to do, although in nothing like a formal way, was create a wall around their Scriptures in order to fend off the evangelization efforts of the Christians—Greek speaking and Greek Bible-reading Christians specifically.  So naturally one of the ways they would do this was to de-emphasize or even accept those books written in Greek.  It was for this reason that Christians, starting with St. Athanasius began making distinctions between what he referred to as “canonical” and what he called “other books.”  The “other books” were simply those books, that though considered to be inspired by the Christians, were not useful for evangelizing and argumentation with Jews.

How do we know that these books were considered inspired, even though not listed among Athanasius’ canon?  Because they were all approved to be used within the liturgy.  This is an important point that cannot be overlooked.  Books that were used in the liturgy were considered to be sacred and authentically the Word of God; lex orandi, lex credendi—the law of prayer is the law of belief.  In an age where literacy was low encounters with the Scriptures happened regularly in the liturgy.  Even if they were not able to read, they were still well versed in the Word of God for this reason.

It was the usefulness of the two groups of Scriptures that led St. Jerome to wrongly make the canon-deuterocanon distinction, positing that the latter were not inspired.  This conflating of usefulness with inspiration was an error that persisted even into the Middle Ages.  There are no degrees of inspiration, it either is or it isn’t.  But there are degrees of usefulness.  It is clear that Genesis has greater use than Tobit, but that does not mean the latter is not inspired.  It was in light of this that the Church spoke definitively as to which books were canonical and could be read in the liturgy at the Council of Carthage in 418.  This same list, which included the so-called deuterocanonical books, was reaffirmed throughout the centuries including at the Council of Florence almost 80 years before Luther drove the nail into his 95 theses.  The “Counter Reformational” Council of Trent merely reaffirmed the list and declared it to be a belief that was to be definitively held.  A solemn declaration had become necessary because for the first time since the third Century someone had challenged the contents.

Luther’s Role

Martin Luther did not actually remove books from the Bible as is commonly thought.  To do so would have been far too radical.  What he did do though is revive the canon-deuterocanon distinction.  His German translation reformatted the Bible so that the books in question appeared in the back of the Old Testament texts. Eventually he labeled them Apocrypha, prefacing them with a note that these were“books which are not held equal to the holy Scriptures and yet are profitable and good to read.”  The logical question is why he would have included them in the Bible to begin with unless they were actually in the Bible.  Why not remove them altogether?  Instead he pulled a little bait and switch by a common heretical trick that remains down to our day—gradualism.

This highlights the difficulty with the “Jewish Council” defense or anything like it.  Why would you remove books from the Christian Bible based upon Jewish authority?  Given the choice between 1500 years of Christian practice and dubious Jewish authority, why would you choose the latter?  For Luther and his progeny that was a red herring.  Books, in his view, should be included in the Bible only insofar as they confirm his authority.  He is very clear about that.  At first he quoted the books of Wisdom and Sirach in his own apology against indulgences.  But when those books were shown to reveal other things he didn’t agree with, he did not argue but instead questioned their authority.

Blessed John Henry Newman once quipped that to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant.  While he meant that once we study the Church Fathers it becomes clear that they were Catholic.  But his dictum can be taken in a deeper sense in that once we study the history of the Bible we come to see that the Protestant position regarding the contents of Scripture is wrong.  For a group of Christians who believe only in the authority of Scripture this is highly problematic to say the least and Catholics in charity owe it to them to set the record straight.