Beatified saints!

Happy Sunday, beatified ones and saints!

'By God's will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.' [Heb.10]

Blessed are all who take refuge in the Son. [Ps.2]

Dear Benedict

I would not be unecessarily contentious, nor do I dislike you personally, not knowing you personally. A public figure comes in for criticism, and it seems that most of the criticism of your office pertains to your 'presumption' as a celibate man, to speak on matters of sex - especially since you lead an organisation full of sinful people, and impose strictures on them which God's word expressly forbids. It would be better if you were to stay confident only in Christ, fully aware of sin, and offer others Christ alone - no extra rules, no special priesthood, no holy 'father' but the one in heaven.

Indeed, as one wrote to one of your predecessors:

'How much better it would be, [Benedict], if you would abandon the splendour and glory that your enemies claim belongs to your office! ... Do not listen to those sirens that pretend you are not a mere human but some sort of divine being who can command and decide whatever you wish. Things cannot be done this way; you do not have such power. For you are the servant of servants and more than all others you are in a most miserable and dangerous position. Do not be deceived by those who pretend you are lord of the world or who claim that no one can be a Christian unless he or she accepts your authority. Do not listen to those who claim you have power over heaven, hell, and purgatory. ... They are mistaken when they place you above a council and the universal church. They are also mistaken when they give you alone the right to interpret Scripture. Under the protection of your name, they desire only to promote their unchristian teaching in the church. And unfortunately, through them Satan has made much progress, just as he did under those who preceded you in the papacy.

'In summary, do not believe those who exalt you; rather you should believe those who humble you. This is the judgement of God who 'has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly' (Luke 1.52). Observe the great difference between Christ and his 'successors', though they all wish to be regarded as his substitute here on earth. I fear that most of them have viewed themselves as Christ's substitute in an all too real a sense! A person is a substitute only when the superior is absent. If the pope rules and at the same time Christ is not present or is not ruling in his heart, then what else is he but a substitute for Christ? Wha tis the church other than an assembly of people without Christ? And it follows - what is such a substitute other than an antechrist or an idol? Were not the apostles much more right in calling themselves the servants of the present Christ rather than the substitutes of an absent Christ?'

As for a state visit, dear Ratzinger, I am astonished that you let a quirk of history lead you to deny our Master, who said clearly to Rome's representative: 'My Kingdom is not of this world.' So it is not for the sake of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, nor her namesake, that we say with all due respect, 'The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England'; but for the sake of Christ, who is present to rule his Church.

Some complain that we take our current situation and read it back into the gospel accounts. But we cannot duck from their clear application to our day.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honour at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." [Matt 23]

As you yourself said, in your opening speech in 2005, 'May Christ always take first place in our thoughts and actions!' I am concerned that those critiquing your visit, and those who will go to 'see the Pope' tomorrow down the road in Longbridge, will not be encouraged to have Christ take first place in their thoughts and actions. Rather, as a money-grabbing flash televangelist denies any grace in his message by his wealth, and as a rock star's words of charity and peace are drowned out by his image and noise, is not anything of Christ replaced by your office, and his finished work substitued by your performance of sacrifice? You have the theological acuity to explain at length why this may not be so - but the crowds will not read your theology: they know what they see.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. ...

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. [Heb 9]

There is more at stake here than contraception, or even grave sin, or the cost of a visit by a State which should not be. For the glory of Christ - 

Yours sincerely,

Rosemary Grier

'I'm sorry but it's not my fault.'

It's not really a real apology when you blame someone else, is it? The current Roman Pope has sent a 13 page letter to the Irish Roman church to say, 'Sorry: the Irish church leadership should clean up its act.' Hans Küng, a German priest of Rome and its frequent critic (his right to teach theology has been rescinded), suggests that Ratzinger himself is the one who needs to apologise for a top-down coverup. He also suggests that Rome's insistence that forbidding priests to marry has an unsurprising and strong connection to systematic sexual abuse of decades. The Bible says that forbidding marriage is the teaching of demons; the Reformers critiqued it (as there were known examples of immorality 'hushed up' in their time) and we're supposed to be totally surprised about child sex abuse now? Küng:

Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own "mea culpa".

Read it here.

[HT: Carl Trueman]

Calvin addressed the Pope in June!

I missed it at the time, but it seems that Calvin addressed Ratzinger in June! With a little help. Read the Christianity Today article: Christ Alone.

The headless monster (or our primary loyalty)

As you could tell from previous posts, I've been enjoying G.K.Chesterton's Orthodoxy. Yet as I've progressed through it, and especially in the chapter, "The Flag of the World," it has struck me increasingly as horribly man-centred. He writes with such power and wit that it's hard not to be carried along by it - but he seems to have Man as supreme. He speaks of how we must have a "primary loyalty to life" (or to 'the universe') - to love it enough to feel its strangeness and yet set about changing it. He speaks of suicides as insulting the creation by 'refusing to live for its sake.' This is true, but not ultimate: we insult God by refusing to live for Him!

But that is idolatry and adultery. We are first to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and then men as we love ourselves: but this feels like we are forgetting the Creator and loving His creation primarily, instead.

So much of what Chesterton says is true, but it falls short. He speaks of the accomplishments of the Church, as if of Christ - but without reference to Him. Now we would say, rightly, that one cannot speak of the Bride of Christ without implicating Him - but what a monstrous thing to speak of a body without its head, a bride always without her bridegroom. "Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved." How dare one speak of this as a work of the Church, rather than a glory of God in Christ?

GKC speaks strikingly of the eternal nature of truth, and the importance of doctrinal correctness: helpful in an age which prefers fashion in doctrine, and would rather fluffy feeling than theological precision. But the goal he places before us is human happiness: "...if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness." This is true, but it falls short: our ultimate goal in doctrine is not as a means to the end of human happiness, but faithfulness to the glory of the one true God, who has revealed Himself to us in the one who is Truth, Christ!

Chesterton lambastes selfish egoism, but he doesn't go far enough. He speaks of Christianity, but not of Christ. When he is at his most sparkling, there is a dullness brought by this, that he speaks of Christianity over Christ, Church over Christ, and Man's happiness over God's glory.

Of all horrible religions, the most horrible is the worship of the god within. ... Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards - to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain.

So true, yet not consistent with the rest, where he merely turns our attention from 'the light within' to Man as a whole, rather than to God. It is not then surprising that earlier in the work he explains how he came up with his own, natural, theology, and then found that it "had been discovered before, by Christianity." But true Christianity is no man-made philosophy - such a thing does tend to have Man as its goal, with God in service. Christ came to reveal God - quite another dynamic.

Perhaps in the final few chapters (for I have committed the cardinal error of critiquing a book before I've finished reading it) he will correct this blasphemous tendency. But for now, let me leave you with Calvin's main contention with Cardinal Sadolet, who was trying to persuade Genevans back into the fold of Rome:

It is not very sound theology to confine a man's thoughts so much to himself, and not to set before him, as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God. For we are born first of all for God, and not for ourselves. As all things flowed from him, and subsist in him, so, says Paul, (Romans 11:36,) they ought to be referred to him. I acknowledge, indeed, that the Lord, the better to recommend the glory of his name to men, has tempered zeal for the promotion and extension of it, by uniting it indissolubly with our salvation. But since he has taught that this zeal ought to exceed all thought and care for our own good and advantage, and since natural equity also teaches that God does not receive what is his own, unless he is preferred to all things, it certainly is the part of a Christian man to ascend higher than merely to seek and secure the salvation of his own soul.

I am persuaded, therefore, that there is no man imbued with true piety, who will not consider as insipid that [Sadolet's] long and labored exhortation to zeal for heavenly life, a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God. But I readily agree with you that, after this sanctification, we ought not to propose to ourselves any other object in life than to hasten towards that high calling; for God has set it before us as the constant aim of all our thoughts, and words, and actions. And, indeed, there is nothing in which man excels the lower animals, unless it be his spiritual communion with God in the hope of a blessed eternity.
(Jean Chauvin, Response to Sadolet, 1539.)

Really, the Pope still isn't Protestant

A friend sent me the following:
"You will delighted to know that the pope now preaches justification by faith, ... [in] this sermon."

I'd seen about this a while ago, but thought it'd probably go unnoticed. However, given that it has been noticed, here's what I replied:

Thanks for sending on that link, it's certainly good to keep abreast of what's happening in Rome, though it must be said that the Pope's sermons have little effect to the System on the ground.

I must reply though, because although I know it's fuzzy in that sermon, and lines of it can be read in a Protestant way if we look with hope, Ratzinger does not teach the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone - in that sermon he uses those words in a context which redefines them to fit Roman doctrine. I don't want us to have a false hope [about Rome] when witnessing to Roman Catholics we meet or get to know - nor encourage them to get this truth from their Church, because it's not in the system, even if you think this sermon sounds like it in bits.

While Ratzinger is the most theologically astute Pope there's been in a long while, he has not departed from the Council of Trent where Rome anathematised Justification by grace alone through faith alone. He's a stalwart conservative in that field, but as a German theologian, he can say things subtley enough to sound [to so many evangelicals] like it fits Protestant doctrine, if you interpret one-off sentences in a Protestant way. After all, Rome has never been Pelagian in doctrine (only practice, as with many 'Protestant' churches!). Rome does not teach 'salvation by works'. (That's merely the impression you get in the System.) The actual difference is that Rome says that justification is a process of trust in Christ involving living as Christ did, whereas we protest that justification is an act of God's free grace, through trust in Christ alone, from which the life of the Spirit springs as fruit, after God's act of justification. But this is the difference between life & death, between joyful confidence in Christ & endless striving to fulfil it yourself.

In Ratzinger's words from that sermon:

"Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love."

R Scott Clark says:

"We agree that being just means being “with Christ” and “in Christ” by faith alone, i.e., by a “certain knowledge and a hearty trust,” by “resting and receiving” Christ and his perfect righteousness imputed by the unmerited favor of God alone. This is not what Benedict means.

We agree that “observances are no longer necessary.” We agree that faith is “looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ” but that’s not all Benedict says. He adds the qualifier, “conformed to Christ, to his life.” Oops. Justification by faith alone absolutely results in becoming gradually conformed to Christ, but the supreme pontiff has it that justification is predicated upon our being “conformed to Christ.” There’s more. “And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love.”

You could say that it's a bit confused, and could be read either way. I'd say that's the problem - Rome confuses justification and sanctification and so undermines hope and confidence in the cross (in fact, anathematises such confidence). If my justification is based, in any way, on my love - I have no hope. (If you want to make more sense of that specific sermon, read the rest of Scott Clark's article.)

I'm saying this with tears, because it's only through God's mercy that we see the light of the gospel at all; but the Pope has not gone Protestant. He's not Pelagian, either, but that doesn't do much good for those in the system on the ground. If I sound negative or nit-picking in this, no problem: I cry over this - Life hangs on this - that justification is an act of God's free grace whereby he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, received by faith alone. Otherwise you get what Ratzinger ended with:

"And thus, transformed by his love, by the love of God and neighbour, we can truly be just in God’s eyes."

That is no hope to those who hang on his words, and no good news. It's no good news to all those RC friends I have and those students I meet.

Sorry. Still praying for reformation of grace in all churches, only hope is the active righteousness of Christ.

In Him,

Rosemary

The Pope's Catholic: shock & offence

I was about to break the startling news that the current Pope's a Catholic, when I ceded the computer to my mother. Returning to the world wide web of wonderment one book later, I see that I've been beaten to it by him who baptised me, over at Ref21. (Those canny men have already pointed out several times that the Pope's a Catholic. So perceptive, they're worth reading.) It seems that Ratzinger remarked that to save the rainforest from destruction is important, but as important is to save mankind from self-destruction, one example he gave as blurring gender distinctions, and homosexual practice. 'Twould be better still if he didn't blur distinctions in how we're right before God (interesting recent sermon - notes here and here. Now that would help save mankind from God-destruction.