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The Problem With Protestantism, Part 6

I'm sorry; I said that this part would be about resources, but I'm not ready yet. In addition to everything I've said, let me talk briefly about encountering the Catholic claims, and what that was like. In fairness, I had despaired of finding the hermeneutical magic bullets to tell me what I should believe via Sola Scriptura. I was mad that no one had ever seen the gaping holes in our prevailing ecclesiology. I was stunned to find that every interpretation of Scripture potentially came with its own ecclesiology. Strip away all the mediating ecclesial institutions; what you find is the same: people deciding for themselves what the Bible says, and so, what they as individuals mean by "the Church." But unity even in faith if not in government requires consent, and is assumed today rather than achieved. So I chased down the Catholic Church out of an urgent desire to know the will of God, and do it. You can look back here on this very blog if you need proof. This is not some quest for a mythical "certitude" that is inappropriate for Christians "this side of Heaven" to desire! I'm tempted to punch the next person who says this. The doctrine of God is part of asking, "Who is God?" We know what the Scriptures say: "You shall love the Lord your God..." You finish it.

So take your pick: Infallible church, or infallible hermeneutical process. Claiming the second causes the Noltie Conundrum; claiming the first is disallowed by Sola Scriptura. So you cannot know what God has in fact said (or at least what He meant) about anything, save for the barest of creedal essentials (which can be conveniently edited to taste, or eliminated) and that hardly justifies the separation.

I digress. I'd like to have been able to "live with the tension" and rest in the comforting dogma that "hermeneutics is messy," but only an idiot sees the rising spectre of agnosticism and relativism and stays silent out of politeness or comfort.

So I could see that Catholicism had a very stable body of truth and a means of knowing it more deeply, but was it true? One of the things that liberated me from hectoring the Catholic Church with various scriptural interpretations was the realization that each interpretation of Scripture (or denomination, which is like a hermeneutical insurance policy, or a class-action lawsuit...never mind; this is getting weird) agrees and disagrees with the Catholic Church at divergent points. Ironically, it was my respect for each of those interpretations in their own right which led me to open the door of my heart to see another option. To put it this way, my brothers: "We (Protestants) can't all be right." At least not in the same way at the same time. The Law of Non-Contradiction.

But I began to see in history that the heroes of the faith talked, believed, and did things that can only be described as Catholic. In crude terms, if the test of continuity is, "Do they sound Protestant or Catholic to you?" the Catholic wins easily. That in itself means nothing. But I was taught from my earliest days as a Christian that continuity marks the faith in history. There is only a certain level of discontinuity that faith allows, that reason dictates is plausible, given God's promises, especially to the Church.

I've read a good chunk of Origen's commentary on Romans, one of the earliest extant copies of anything Scripture-related on Earth. One of the other important things to happen for me was to see this consistent strand of co-operation in salvation by Man. We're talking 3rd century, here. Augustine about a century later was also a synergist, though a few of his mistaken opinions could be marshalled to defend a nascent Calvinism. And I can say that St. Thomas could be plucked from his century into ours with little trouble. That is to say, I doubt he'd have much gripe with Vatican II properly understood. And that means free will is real, and Calvinism is a heresy. (And so identified.)

That was important. Because it is right to say that the Reformation happened because of a misunderstanding of grace. I hate to ruin it for you Arminians out there, but the Reformation doctrinally was a Calvinist (apologies to Luther for the anachronism) revolt, a denial of the proper understanding of human freedom with respect to the will.

One of the important things to happen--aside from the frighteningly unanimous testimony of the Fathers on what we now call "transubstantiation"--was to realize that a Real Presence in the Catholic sense does not necessitate that all signification is destroyed, a point frustratingly missed by Mathison and certainly many others. When I realized that it need not be an "either/or" on that point, the Protestant objections to the Eucharist lost all force, and I could let my suspicion/desire/faith run free. (Celebrating even an invalid Supper weekly for many years makes you less Protestant on the point.) I can appreciate the desire behind the attempts to nuance the theology away from a strict memorialism; nevertheless, anything short of total change does not do justice to the Fathers, and the Catholic teaching into the present. Catholic theology is more than flexible enough for nuance, provided that what must be held is held.

It was that unique confluence of sacramental theology and authority that led me to realize that my deeply attractive, reverently historical, Chestertonian kind of Protestantism was an aberration. Sometimes, it is an "either/or." I'm either living a sacramental life, which makes the Church a sacrament, her signs efficacious, and any claim to speak in her name subject to the most rigorous scrutiny (apostolic succession), or I am with the Reformers. Any middle positions can be ascribed to both historical ignorance, and a lack of precision. You are reading a man who realized that he ran out of reasons to protest. If the Reformers and their theology in its simplicity and starkness is too passe to be defended, if you are not willing to bite its many bullets, then you have a problem. Better still, if those commitments do not comport with what prayer and experience show, it is long past time to revisit those commitments. But let us kill this "missional-ecumenist" nonsense now, before all theology is consumed in ignorance and sentiment.

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