The Protestant's Dilemma (5 page)

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called . . . forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.
¹⁷

Protestantism, with its cacophony of competing voices and communities, cannot claim to profess “one faith,” but the Catholic Church can. Its magisterium is able to declare what is true and what is false, drawing the bounds of orthodox belief. The first few councils of the Church, which formulated this creed, by their very existence demonstrate the working of this teaching authority to decree the one faith of the Church, to which all Christians must adhere (or else be in heresy). The councils convened to address novel teachings that ran counter to the one Faith believed by the Church since apostolic times, and they set out to correct those errors so that the faithful might remain unified in the truth.

As for the second mark, that the Church is holy, the Catholic Church teaches that Christians become
truly
holy because God gives them grace, which is divine life. Once again, we find evidence for this belief in Ephesians:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
¹⁸

Notice that Paul nowhere claims that God only declares the Church to be holy, but rather that Christ really cleanses it, sanctifies it, and presents it without blemish to himself. In Catholic theology, following the biblical pattern, Christ has married his Church, and so he truly purifies it. Christ did not give himself up for the Church just so God could declare a legal fiction that it is pure. Instead, his sacrifice of love is powerful enough to truly cleanse it in truth.

The third mark, that the Church is catholic, indeed speaks of its universality, but not in the rather superficial way Protestants do. As the
Catechism of the Catholic Church
explains:

The word “catholic” means “universal,” in the sense of “according to the totality” or “in keeping with the whole.” The Church is catholic in a double sense: first, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church.” In her subsists the fullness of Christ’s body united with its head; this implies that she receives from him “the fullness of the means of salvation” which he has willed: correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession. The Church was, in this fundamental sense, catholic on the day of Pentecost and will always be so until the day of the Parousia.
¹⁹

This full meaning of the word
catholic
was understood in the early 100s, as evidenced by the letter of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, to the Smyrnaeans:

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.
²⁰

In this chapter of his epistle, we see the affirmation of the threefold hierarchy of bishop, priest, and deacon, as well as the proper context for the celebration of the Eucharist and baptism. The early Church saw these aspects as essential to the Church’s catholicity, a true universality that included the ordained leaders and the sacraments.

The fourth mark, apostolicity, indicates that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles, with Christ as the cornerstone: “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone” (Eph. 2:19–20). (The “household of God” is the Church: see Heb. 3:4–6.) To have a church built upon an apostolic foundation means not merely to be in (presumed) doctrinal agreement or moral unity with the apostles—it means to be sharers in the apostles’ authority. God transmitted that authority from the apostles to their successors, the bishops, through the laying on of hands—and then in turn to their successors (cf. 1 Tim. 4:14). Through this
apostolic
succession these bishops remain the foundation of the apostolic Church.

We find this understanding as early as the second century in the writings of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons:

Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain gift of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also incumbent] to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, [looking upon them] either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth.
²¹

The Protestant idea of apostolicity is a half-truth. It does mean unity of belief with apostolic teaching; however, the way that we know what the apostles taught is not to exercise our personal judgment but to look to their successors, to whom apostolic faith and authority have been given.

THE PROTESTANT’S DILEMMA

If Protestantism is true, then the Protestant Reformers had the authority to change the meaning of the four marks to align them with their novel doctrines about the Church. Their actions show how easily people can rationalize inconsistencies between their beliefs and the historical evidence by creating new definitions for statements. What is to stop someone else from reinterpreting other parts of the Creed to conform to
his
new ideas?

5: PROTESTANTISM’S VIEWOF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

IF PROTESTANTISM IS TRUE,

Catholics are at best in serious error, and at worst non-Christian cultists.

Protestants are a diverse lot doctrinally, and some are more liturgical than others, but no Protestant community comes close to embracing Catholicism’s vast array of “extrabiblical” prayers, practices, and teachings. Because of this, if Protestants are being consistent with their beliefs, they can’t view Catholics as fellow Christians fighting the good fight; rather, they must conclude that Catholics are idolatrous apostates.

Protestant Perspectives on Catholicism

Some Fundamentalist groups do indeed identify the pope as the Antichrist and the Catholic Church as the “whore of Babylon” mentioned in Revelation 17 and 18. And it’s not just Protestants on that extreme end of the spectrum who think this way. In the section on the papacy, we saw that the Westminster Confession of Faith—the most important document for the Reformed movement of Protestantism—named the pope as the Antichrist.

That said, many modern Protestants, including Bible-believing Evangelicals, take a softer stance toward Catholicism. They see it as a mildly corrupted form of biblical Christianity but still a legitimately Christian faith whose members sincerely believe in Jesus. Protestant author and speaker John Armstrong warmly describes this view of the Catholic Church:

If Christ is truly the center . . . [i]t means I can no longer be an anti-Catholic, evangelical (Reformed) Protestant. With deep conviction, I am compelled to regard both Catholics and the Catholic Church with love and esteem. This personal commitment to oneness has enabled me to draw great blessings from the Catholic tradition and develop many wonderful friendships with Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ.
²²

But Protestants of all stripes
should
get up in arms when faced with the spectacle of Catholics kneeling in worship of a consecrated communion host. No Protestant, however much he may protest to believe Jesus is present in some way, can justify adoring bread and wine. He must conclude that Catholics commit the sin of idolatry.

Although Catholics believe in the Trinity, Protestants should likewise balk at their elevation of the Virgin Mary above all other creatures, especially in the doctrines of her Assumption and her sinless life. They believe that Jesus alone lived a sinless life, so Mary’s achieving the same feat can’t help but steal glory from God, to whom belongs all glory and praise.

Such distinctively Catholic beliefs stem from recognizing Sacred Tradition as a source of divine revelation equal to Scripture. This too should disturb any Protestant, for whom the Bible alone is God’s authoritative word. Any “tradition” outside of Scripture can be only a tradition of men.

BECAUSE CATHOLICISM IS TRUE,

Catholics are Christians in the fullest sense.

A paradox is presented when trying to match up the Catholic Church against the caricatures and accusations thrown at it. On the one hand, those today who call the pope Antichrist have been able to witness recent popes heroically defending the core tenets of Christianity against virulent modern attacks. The beloved disciple, St. John, tells us how to know who the Antichrist is: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). But we can see with our own eyes examples of popes who never stop proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ, our savior, the only begotten Son of the Father. So by the biblical definition, the pope cannot be the Antichrist.

Likewise, the Catholic Church is thought to elevate Mary too much, yet the Protestant Reformers, as we shall see in a later section, retained Marian doctrines and defended them against their fellow Protestants. They realized that these beliefs were well-grounded in Scripture and in the early Church’s faith.

Throughout this book we will examine in more detail specific areas in which the Church can be shown to profess the fullness of Christian truth. But the basic fact to remember here is that the Catholic Church, when faced with a decision to hold to the ancient Faith or adopt a novelty, has in every case chosen the former. Rather than seeing in the Church the characteristic marks of the devil, which would cause it to be “tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14) and adopt idolatrous practices and beliefs, we recognize how it has remained true to the teachings of Christ and the apostles.

THE PROTESTANT’S DILEMMA

If Protestantism is true,
then Catholicism can only be viewed as serious, perhaps even diabolical, idolatry. Yet the marks the Bible tells us to look for to identify falsehoods and deceit are absent from the Catholic Church. Instead, Catholicism’s hallmark is that of a stalwart witness to Jesus Christ.

6: DOCTRINAL RELIABILITY

IF PROTESTANTISM IS TRUE,

We’re stuck without a trustworthy guide to Christian truth.

The Catholic Church makes the outlandish claim that all its teachings on faith and morals are true—that not a single one of them is erroneous. As a Protestant, when I learned about this claim, I smelled blood in the water. I knew that there was no way it could be true, and that all I had to do was find one example of a false teaching and the whole house of Catholic cards would come tumbling down. Why was I so sure that the Catholic Church’s claim was false? Simple: I knew from human experience that every person and human institution is corrupt in some way.

Every Person and “Church” is Fallible