Friend publishes masterful defense of heretical Christology

My good friend and former student, Edgar Foster, recently sent me a copy of his , Christology and the Trinity: An Exploration, Vol. I (NP: EMI Publishing, 2001). The edition he sent me has a preface updated in 2003 and announcing the release of Volume 2 of the work in January, 2005. The original edition of Foster's work is available also in an online edition.

Foster writes in his Preface that since 1983 he has "devoted his life to an intense study of God's Word, the Bible." During this time, he says, he has also "endeavored to know the true God more intimately while trying to discover and somewhat understand certain objective facts pertaining to His divine nature or endearing attributes." Such expressions of piety are so few and far between today as to seem almost quaint, if not refreshing. But the reader is not kept waiting to discover the unorthodox twist in Foster's Christology, for he immediately adds:

In the process of searching for the living God, I have concluded that Jesus Christ simply cannot be the Most High Deity, whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob worshiped (Acts 3:13). Thus, I have decided to write this book in order to present my reasons for believing that God's anointed Messiah is not one persona in a consubstantial triune Godhead. Furthermore, I compose this monograph in order to present an authentic portrait of Jesus Christ since a disciple of the Lord has a twofold obligation to both expose doctrinal fallacies and communicate or teach Christian truth.

Foster is a man of integrity to a fault. I respect him and admire his commitment to truth and his religious devotion. These are rare virtues these days. Yet I also think his views are mistaken and his Christology is heretical. But precisely because of the aforementioned virtues of Foster, his scholarship possesses an integrity that demands an honest accounting. Foster's book, Christology, demands a close reading and courteous refutation.

Just one stylistic comment for now: Foster refers in his notes to his own work simply as Christology, without alerting his readers to the fact that he is not referring to "Christology" in the sense of the doctrine or theory of Christ's nature. For example, in note #3 on p. 5, he writes:

Originally grammatical arguments did not play a major role in most of the arguments found in Christology.

This sentence could easily be mistaken to be saying that grammatical arguments did not play a major role in the early development of Christological theories. But this is a minor detail. I kept wondering what Louis Berkhof, the author of that old Reformed classic, Systematic Theology, would think if he knew that his work elicited the appreciative remarks of a Jehovah's Witness in the opening footnote in the first volume of his heretical explorations in Christology.

Our loving God is not a solitude (continued)

A JW (Jehovah's Witness) might pursue his anti-trinitarian line of argument by protesting that his point about carrying on an interior discourse with oneself is not that we can know ourselves, as I previously said, "in a primary and immediate way," but rather to suggest that a human subject can also make himself an object of his own thought, thus implying a self-relation. Why could it not be argued, then, that a unipersonal God (that is, a non-trinitarian God) could also make Himself an object by engaging in contemplation? The point could be rendered even more lucid, the JW might argue, by referencing Aristotle's idea of absolute NOUS, or divine intellect, which is defined as thought (subject) thinking thought (object). Aristotle's "god" can thus be called to witness as a being which makes itself simultaneously a subject and an object by thinking itself. Accordingly why could not a unipersonal God (which the JW takes to be the God of the Bible) also think Himself--that is, have a subject-object relationship within Himself--antecedent to contemplating others as alterior objects? Similarly, why could such a unipersonal God not love Himself much in the same way that the god of Aristotle theoretically thinks itself? How might we answer such a challenge?

First, I've always found fascinating subject-object relationships, particularly as Dooyeweerd elaborates them, with all the modal analogies, etc. A cow is a psychic subject but not an aesthetic or religios one, since it doesn't function subjectively within those latter spheres of experience. On the other hand a cow may function as a religious object, as when it is used for purposes of Old Testament religious sacrifice. In another, simpler vein, the hunter (subject) sees the bird (object); the bird (subject) sees the worm (object). Hence one entity can be both subject and object. Thus, despite the protestations of feminists about women being treated as objects (meaning objects of purient lust in pornography, etc.), it nevertheless remains a fact that when her husband is making love to her, a wife is, even while her husband is conscious of her subjectivity, a sexual object.

Second, the question raised above, however, is whether a person can play the roles of subject and object with respect to himself. Aristotle's notion of God as pure form (NOUS: thought thinking thought) is referenced to ask whether a unipersonal God could not love Himself in the same way that Aristotle's God thinks itself. The "itself" here, as opposed to the Christian "Himself," is apropos, since Aristotle's god has no personhood as such, or, for that matter, personality. But there is another problem here with the Aristotelian anology, since what Aristotle's god "thinks" has no content. So even if we are formally correct in saying, as Aristotle does, that his purely formal god "thinks himself," thus serving both in the capacity of subject and object of thought, the end result is the same as if this god had no relationship with itself at all, since there is no content to apprehend or with which to interact in anything resembling a relationship.

What about a unipersonal deity? Such a being would presumably have a content to his personhood, which could be made the object of thinking. On the level of an analogy to temporary human experience, it may seem like self-relationship and self-love is possible. However, as suggested in my previous discussion of this question, our self-knowledge (even our grasp of ourselves as selves) is something that, I believe, occurs only within a matrix of relationships with God, with other persons, and with the world. Thus using our human temporal experience of self-awareness as an index for speculating on a unipersonal deity's self-relationship would seem to beg the question, as it already presupposes our temporal experience within the matrix in question. But what we're concerned with is the question whether a unipersonal deity would have such a self-awareness in the absence of any matrix at all, whether a trinitarian matrix or a matrix of creation. And here we can only speculate.

For a human being, I would think that no self-awareness could be possible without awareness of something other than self. Imagine an infant coming into the world and growing up with absolute sensory deprivation. It's nearly impossible to imagine. But unless one held some sort of altogether non-empiricist epistemology, in which self-knowledge where somehow divinely infused into the human soul, I don't quite see how consciousness could ever become self-consciousness. Speculatively, I would have to wonder the same for a unipersonal God with no matrix for thought.

Would such a deity not turn out to be, in effect, any different from Aristotle's God? Of course, all sorts of complicating considerations enter here, about whether God is temporal or transtemporal, and whether God's act of creation is something that for God exists outside of time or within time, and so forth. But these sorts of considerations usually lead us in directions where our heads are apt to explode.

Another response that a JW could make at this point is to reference Jesus' injunction that we ought to love our neighbors as we love ourselves in order to suggest, not an ontological point about the self, but simply that one cannot love others unless he first loves himself. The apostle Paul appears to construe Jesus' words this way in Eph 5 when he encourages Christian husbands to love their wives as they love themselves. Certainly a man who does not take care of himself physically will more than likely not cherish and care for his mate, will he? Additionally, modern psychology evidently corroborates the view that self-love must precede alterior love; it certainly must obtain if one is going to love others. But not being able to know myself primordially or immediately does not entail that I can't love myself primordially, does it? How should we respond?

I would happily grant everything said in the above paragraph, but with the caveat that all of it already presupposes the earlier-cited matrix or web of interrelationships by which we come to know ourselves. Hence, I would argue that none of the points above can be used to argue for the possibility of self-awareness, let alone self-love, apart from some sort of pre-existing matrix. I think Plato was driven in the direction of accepting the pre-existence of the soul (along with reincarnation) in part because of the epistemological problem of explaining how an intellect could learn without something innate already resident within it to which what is learned could be related (cf. Plato's dialoge, Mino). Not only does an absolute solitude of a being presumably have no basis for self-love or self-knowledge: it would seem to have no basis for learning anything at all.

In turn, the JW might respond that he is not suggesting that the quality of love is developed IN VACUO where humans are concerned. He might argue that it just seems impossible to love others unless one first loves him or herself. Further, he might suggest that, on this view, a unipersonal God have to develop love only by relationship to a subsequent creation. Love could be viewed as God's primal ethical attribute or His essence, even if He were a God in just one Person and not three. There would thus be no difficulty involved in a unipersonal God eternally or everlastingly loving Himself as the supreme object. How should we respond?

I would contend that I have no trouble agreeing with this. I think our ability to love others depends in part on our awareness of existing in an interactive matrix in which we are loved by others.

Our loving God is not a solitude

Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs), the contemporary stepchildren of the ancient Arians, call into question the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity on several grounds. One Catholic argument they oppose is the contention that God's love demands that He be triune, since love presupposes not only a lover but a beloved, and love is fundamentally other-related.

One strategy used by some JWs against Trinitarians [who argue that since God is eternally love, he must be triune] is to refer to the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:39, namely, "You must love your neighbor as yourself." The JW assumption is that God's loving character can be accounted for in terms of His self-love without introducing inter-trinitarian distinctions between Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

Accordingly, the JW can argue that his unitarian view of God retains the notion of God as essentially loving. He can argue that God did not become love by creating other beings to love, but that God IS love eternally [or everlastingly] (1 John 4:8); that love is His essence or nature. The JW will then ask, why cannot an uncreated [unipersonal] being, who is eternal or everlasting love, love Himself prior to loving anyone else? If the unipersonal God of the Bible has eternally loved Himself, then He has supremely loved that which is worthy of being supremely loved. Thus, just as anyone can make himself into a kind of "object" by conducting a rationally inward form of discourse with himself, why can we not say that God [understood as the unipersonal God of the JW religion, as opposed to the trinitarian God] make Himself the supreme object of love by loving Himself as He loves others whom He has created? Accordingly, it would seem that, before one directs his affection toward another beloved being (i.e. an external and alterior personal object) in a way recommended by Christ in the Bible, he must first have proper love for himself. Thus reasons the JW.

What does the Catholic say to this? I would say several things. First, I would agree that one can carry on an interior discourse with oneself, as the JW suggests. That was the basis of Augustine's Soliloquies, an imaginary discourse he wrote between himself and "reason," symbolizing his alter ego. However I would say that this is possible only in a derivative and secondary sense, not an exemplification of the primordial way in which we know ourselves. That is to say, strange as it may sound, I don't think we are capable of knowing ourselves in a primary and immediate way. The self is simply too elusive a thing to grasp in that way.

Second, for similar reasons, I would also deny that our love of God or neighbor is primordially contingent upon our love of self. I know Christ commands us to love others as we love ourselves, which might be taken to suggest that self-love is ontologically primary. But I believe that the meaning He intends in this command has only an ethical sense, not a sense that specifies primordial ontological possibilities. Hence, just as I believe we are incapable of knowing ourselves primordially, I think we are incapable of loving ourselves primordially, as though self-love and self-knowledge were an ontological condition for knowing and loving others.

Third, I would agree with Herman Dooyeweerd who says that our identity is primordially constituted in a three-fold relationship: to God, to others, and to the world. Here, of course, he follows Calvin, who expresses a traditional
notion only somewhat more dialectically when he says that we come to know ourselves only through knowing God and to know God through knowing ourselves (at the beginning of the Institutes of the Christian Religion).

Finally, for these reasons I would reiterate the view the JW calls into question here, not because I think that God is bound, in a compromising way, to what I believe are limited and human ways of knowing and loving the self, but because I think our human ways of knowing and loving ourselves reflects the relationality that lies in the heart of the Blessed Trinity.

On an exclusively male and unmarried priesthood

Swiss bishops recently (Zenit.org, March 31, 2004) rejected a call for women's ordination and abolition of obligatory priestly celibacy.

These issues, which may seem baffling to Protestants who have long accepted married and women clergy, keep surfacing as controversies within Catholic communities because of a climate of confusion that has fostered, in some cases, dissent and envy (Catholic priests and seminarians who want, like their Protestant counterparts, to be married as well, and Catholic women who want, like their Protestant counterparts, to be "pastors"). Why shouldn't they?

There are a couple issues here-- one (priestly celibacy) a matter of discipline that is in principle changeable, the other (a male priesthood) a matter of doctrine that cannot. But this requires some explanation. First, matters of doctrine (like, say, the triune nature of God or divinity of Christ) quite clearly can't be revised because they conform to irreformable Catholic/Christian tradition--they're a legacy of ecumenical councils that have dogmatically codified, we believe, the teachings of the apostles and of Christ himself. Second, matters of discipline, such as whether we should kneel during the liturgy or fast on Fridays are quite clearly matters that are reformable with a view to what is pastorally prudent and helpful at a given time in history.

The question of priestly celibacy has always been understood as a matter of discipline. The Catholic Church hasn't always required that it's priests to be unmarried. Most of the original apostles, as we know, were married; as were many Catholic priests until it was judged that an unmarried priesthood could be more effective for various reasons, which I will mention momentarily. Even today, there are Catholic priests who are permitted to marry in various non-Roman rites of the Church (Byzantine, Ukrainian, Chalcedonian, Syrian, Serbian, etc.), and a number of Anglican priests who have become Catholic now continue as married Roman Catholic priests. And even in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, once a man has become a priest or a bishop, he is not permitted to marry.

Why should priests (like monks and nuns) be unmarried? Let me start with our priest, Fr. Ed Sheridan ad St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Hickory. His church doesn't look much larger than any of the other churches around Hickory. What's the membership in an average Hickory church? 200? 500? 1000? I'm not sure. But the membership of Fr. Ed's parish is over 1,400 FAMILIES. That's a LOT of people to pastor. The church seats only between 500-600, so every Sunday there are five services-- two in English, one in Spanish, one in Hmong, and another in Lahu (the Laotian language). And since not everyone can possibly attend services on Sunday alone, there are two services on Saturday-- one in English and another in Spanish. Plus there are Masses on every other day of the week, including "praise masses" Sunday nights. Imagine being pastor of a church like that and having a family too.

The first argument, then, is that a married man, as St. Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 7:25-36, will have "worldly troubles" and be "anxious about worldly affairs" and "how to please his wife." Not that marriage isn't a perfectly natural and proper calling for the man who is so called. But it may not be the most expedient calling for someone wishing to devote his or her life to "full time Christian service." My experience growing up as a missionary kid in Japan is a case in point. Many godly protestant couples have felt called to mission fields, gone abroad, and raised families there while attempting to fulfill their missionary vocations. The result has frequenly been disastrous. If you know anything about the problems missionary children often suffer growing up neglected and shuttled between countries and not knowing where "home" is, you know it's severe. When the first Christian missionaries came to Japan, long before any Protestant missionaries, in the mid-1500s, they came as celibate members of religious orders like the Franciscans and Jesuits. They were extremely successful once the native populations realized they were no threat-- since they were vowed to POVERTY, they weren't interested in extrorting wealth from the Japanese; since they were vowed to OBEDIENCE, they weren't about to undertake a political coup-d'etat; and since they were vowed to CELIBACY, they weren't interested in taking their women. Plus they had time, with no distractions. This allowed them to achieve all that they did in places like Japan, China, India, and South America--where they founded orphanages, hospitals, schools, and churches where none had ever existed before.

There are other arguments too, like the witness of the celibate priest to a higher calling amidst a world run amok indulging itself in immediate gratifications. It's surely a blessing to have physical progeny: children. But it's another to father spiritual children, and another to cultivate the charism of spiritual maternity, as St. Edith Stein writes in her treatise On Women. While marriage is a great blessing, St. Paul reminds us that those who are unmarried can devote themselves singlemindedly to the Lord without distraction; and even Jesus speaks with favor of those who have the gift of forgoing marriage in order to become, as it were, "eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom" (I don't think He ever intended anyone to take this in a literal sense, as did Origen, the Egyptian Christian, who took two rocks to his own rocks "for the sake of the Kingdom")!

As to the other question of a male priesthood, while there are plenty of dissenting Catholics out there who keep hoping this will be changed into a matter of discipline, so that women can be admitted to the priesthood, there is simply no possibility that this will ever happen. That this has been received as a matter of inherited and irreformable doctrine from apostolic times is absolutely clear from many papal encyclicals, including Pope John Paul II's most recent statement on the letter, where he writes:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, May 22, 1994; for more information, click here.)

Now why should priestly ordination not be open to women? Surely it is not a matter of abilities or function, for there are doubtless women who can do all of the things a priest does-- preach, pray, baptize, counsel-- as good as any man. What is the reason, then? One of the best treatments of this issue, besides an essay by C.S. Lewis in GOD IN THE DOCK, is an article in CRISIS magazine (not online, fortunately) from September, 1993, by Peter Kreeft. I don't have time to summarize his points now, but he divides the issue into reasons of (1) authority, (2) sexual symbolism, (3) common good, and (4) discernment. I will quote only the first paragraph to give you a taste of the piece:

These are the simplest arguments. There are three: arguments from the authority of God, of Christ, and of the Church. (a) God invented the priesthood. The Church did not invent the priesthood. The Catholic Church claims less authority than any other Christian church in the world; that is why she is so conservative. Protestant churches feel free to change "the deposit of faith" (e.g. by denying Mary's assumption, which was believed from the beginning) or of morals (e.g. by allowing divorce, though Christ forbade it), or of worship (e.g. by denying the Real Presence and the centrality of the Eucharist, which was constant throughout the Church's first 1,500 years). . . ."

Obviously this doesn't even get into the issue. But you can find plenty of other material at the link posted at the end of the earlier quotation. This has gotten far too long already.

God bless,
PB

Don't be a slave: be a Catholic!

"The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age." - G.K. Chesterton

More on the history of Church hierarchy and Magisteral authority

Conservative Protestants often have difficulty fathoming the notion of an authoritative Magisterium, of teaching authority, such as the Catholic Church claims--especially in connection with the interpretation of Scripture. While few but the most obstinately anti-Catholic Calvinists would insist that the Bible "interprets itself" in any adequate way, most Protestants are repelled by the notion that a HUMAN religious authority should have the last word in interpretation of Scripture. Why can't God interpret his own book for His readers by means of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit? Why not let the truth of an interpretation be tested in the market place of open investigation? Why can't reason, grammar and linguistics help us to sort out, falsify, and verify truth claims made by Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox interpreters? Wouldn't this help prevent us from falling into a morass of subjectivism and undue dependence on human authority? So, at any rate, the Protestant supposes.

What shall we say, then? No one would contest that God knows how to interpret His Word in Scripture. Nobody, I think, would even contest that God could guide individuals in the proper interpretation of Scripture, just as he infallibly guided human individuals to write what He would have them reveal (this, in fact, is what the Catholic Church claims for its prophetic office of Magisterium throughout Church history). I think the problem comes in our empirical circumspection, which reveals a plethora of individuals and groups each claiming to rely faithfully on such divine guidance, yet arriving at mutually incompatible interpretations. I think we can agree that reason, grammar, etc. can help, and assume God expects us to use them. But we also believe that Christ gave Peter and his successors the unique charism of carrying on the prophetic office once borne by Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament, and we would ignore their authority at our peril.

Protestants also like to rebut, or try to rebut, any Catholic claim that such an authoritative Magisterium, or even an ecclesiastical hierarchy, existed in antiquity. In response to the Catholic claim that Pope Clement I of Rome exercised authority over the Catholic churches in Corinth, in Greece, they note, for example, that Clement speaks of overseer-presbyters rather than overseer-priests. And then, if you point out that they neglect to note that the English "priest" is a contraction of "presbyter," suggesting a distinction without a difference, they may turn to the BDAG Greek-English Lexicon (page 862, under entry "PRESBUTEROS" 2b), which explains: "The Engl. word 'priest' comes fr. PRESBUTEROS via Lat. presbyter; later Christian usage is largely, if not entirely, responsible for this development; s. OED s.v. 'priest' B)." Hence, they assume, any notion of a Catholic priesthood is likely a later development. In the first century, they may say, PRESBUTEROS signified an "elder" or older man, as in the 24 elders in Revelation. The primitive congregation's "elder body" was modeled after the ancient Jewish GEROUSIA. The presbyters were not "priests," but ones who were spiritually advanced and discreet (i.e. older men). And they will assume they've made their case.

But many words have multiple significations. The word "LOGOS," for example, means one thing in Heraclitus and another in St. John. The word "ART" (Lat. "ARS", Gk. "TECHNE") means one thing in Plato and another in modern art galleries. The term "PRESBYTEROS" does in fact signify "elder" or "ancient" etymologically, and originally the PRESBYTERI were members of the high council that, under the presidency of the bishop, administered the affairs of the local church. But the word PRESBYTER soon lost its etymological meaning and came to explicitly signify the minister of worship and sacrifice, as in traditional Catholic usage. Hence the term SACERDOS, though not used in the Greek New Testament (though in the Septuagint) was applicable to both bishops and priests, and one became a presbyter by sacerdotal ordination. For a standard account, see the article on "Priest" in The Catholic Encyclopedia.

When confronted with the early fathers of the Church, a Protestant may go so far as to concede that the three offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon were clearly distinguished already in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch in the first century. Yet this isn't enough of a concession. I see no reason for supposing that the threefold distinction isn't implicit in the NT. Linguistically the Greek terms for deacon, presbyter, and bishop are already in use there. We will be told that we must guard against anachronism here; that, strictly speaking, the first century congregation evidently did not have "deacons," "presbyters" (in the later sense of the term) or "bishops"; that the historical data just do not support this notion--a point even some Catholics concede (I am ashamed to say).

Certainly we must avoid anachronisms. I doubt whether the first Pope, Peter, ever wore a miter (a pointy hat) or carried a crosier (shepherd's staff). However these later developments were wholly faithful and consistent with the meaning of the apostolic faith, the miter symbolizing the tongues of fire that descended upon the heads of the apostles (the first bishops) at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them, and the crosier symbolizing the shepherds staff and his role as senior shepherd of the flock.

But I completely disagree with the notion that first century parishes had no "deacons" or "presbyters" in the later sense of the term. Despite later refinements of these distinctive offices, it's clear in the NT itself that many of the original congregations had these offices. As you well know, "deacons" were first appointed by the apostles in Acts 6, referred to in Phil 1:1, and their qualifications discussed in Acts 6:3 and 1 Tim. 3:8. Furthermore, their function, as ancillary assistants to the apostles (presbyters and bishops) is clearly signaled.

Again, I see the hierarchical structure clearly implicit, if not spelled out explicitly, in Paul's visits to Peter in Gal. 1-2, and the erstwhile described patterns of choosing Judas' successor (Acts 1) and episcopal presidency at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15); and I see this as wholly consistent with Ignatius' explicit distinctions between the three offices and the later developments and further practical definition of these offices that followed.

Under the pall of the Protestant textbook tradition, the scholarly world remains skeptical. J. Rohde makes this observation: "The monarchical bishop appears first in Ignatius. It is not certain, however, whether Ignatius describes existing conditions or sets up ideal requirements that do not correspond to reality" (Exegetical Dictionary of the NT, Vol. 2:36).

But here I would shift the emphasis to one of exclamation: the monarchical bishop is ALREADY explicitly attested in Ignatius! That in itself is a momentous fact. Yet I see this monarchical structure also already presupposed in the NT-- for example, for starters, in the highly-educated Paul's visit to Rome and what I take to be his submission to the common-fisherman, Peter, who Christ placed in monarchical authority over the other apostles, and his visit again to the college of bishops in Jerusalem 14 years later (both in Galatians 1 & 2).

Again, the scholarly skeptics will reply that we read Paul's letter to the Galatians through different spectacles. They will not think, for example, that Paul "submitted" to Peter's authority or that it seems likely that Paul visited a "college of bishops" when there was no such arrangement in existence at that time. Besides, they will argue, our interpretation seems to militate against the entire tenor of Paul's argument in Galatians that he received a revelation directly from the Lord Jesus and did not have to rely on any human to disclose the good news to him.

For the moment, let us set aside the comment about reading Galatians through different lenses, as well as the remark about there not being any such arrangement as a "college of bishops" at the time. What is important in the expression, "college of bishops," is not what it what it signifies: a colloquy or gathering of elders in the Church who may also be called overseers or bishops. That clearly existed in Acts 15 as it did in Gal. 1-2.

Further, the claim that Paul argued that he did not have to rely on any human witness misses the irony of what transpired in the meeting between Paul and Peter. Everything they have noted about Paul may well be true. He was converted, not by any apostle, but directly by the risen Christ on the Damascus road. He received his apostleship from Christ directly, not from man. Further, he was the most accomplished student and brilliant protege of Rabbi Gamaliel, learned beyond any of the other apostles chosen by Christ from among the ranks of common fishermen, tax collectors, and the like. In fact, for three years, Paul had nothing to do with the other apostles, but went into Arabia, then again to Damascus. But then, after three years, he "went up to Jerusalem to see Peter" (Gal. 1:18), and, wonder of wonders, this accomplished scholar, who could have so easily been arrogant and refused to condescend even to meet with this common fisherman, "abode with him fifteen days"!

It is true that the text nowhere SAYS that Paul was "submitting" to "Peter's authority." But how else would you interpret what's going on here? Why didn't Peter go to see Luke, who was at least a reasonably learned man? Or James? Why Peter? Why is it, circumstantially, that Peter's name is cited 179 times in the New Testament, and the next most often cited disciple (John) cited only 30 times; and why is it that Peter heads every list, long or short, of apostle's names in the New Testament? Perhaps we could get somewhere even if we got our skeptical friends to agree with something merely for the sake of an argument: IF one were to accept the Catholic hypothesis that Jesus' declaration in Matt. 16 signifies the founding of His Church upon Peter and his successors, then all of the Catholic claims would look quite natural! It may not be a conclusive demonstration, but it is an argument with the kind of transcendental structure that Kant uses in his Critique of Pure Reason: look for the conditions presupposed by our experience, which make it possible. If I assume the Catholic claim regarding Matthew 16, many of these other parts of the puzzle resolve themselves.

Paul goes up to Jerusalem and meets with Peter. Then, again fourteen years later, Paul goes up to Jerusalem AGAIN, to share with Peter and the other bishops the content of the Gospel he had been preaching to the Gentiles, and privately, for a gnawing fear that the direction of his ministry had perhaps been in vain. (Gal. 2:1-2) But the elders and bishops confirmed him in his ministry, accepting his erstwhile conviction that he apostleship was first and foremost to the Gentiles, and gave him the "right hand of friendship." Furthermore, in a passing statement pregnant with significance, Paul adds: "All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do." (Gal. 2:10)

What does this sound like to you? Doesn't it look for all the world like Paul, in a period of self-doubt, is checking in with the official party of apostles and their leader, Peter, back in Jerusalem to make sure he's on the right path, to have them confirm his ministry, to be told by someone with an authority he respects that he's on the right path? Isn't this posture echoed when he concludes by saying, as an afterthought, by saying, "All they asked was . . ."? In other words, he was encouraged to be confident in what he was doing already, he wasn't told that his thinking was off base, and "All they asked was . . . [something which was] the VERY THING I WAS EAGER TO DO"! That is, even while tacitly admitting the authority behind their request (they were the ones to whom he went to have his ministry authoritatively confirmed), he declares that the ONLY thing they asked of him (the only thing he hadn't brought up for confirmation by them) was the very thing he was already EAGER TO DO. The concluding clause of his statement loudly sounds his concession of their authority. It's like a rather proud young graduate student going up for examination by his dissertation committee, and coming out and telling his friends that these professors approved everything he wrote, and even the appendix which they suggested that he add to clarify a point was the very thing he had already thought of and was planning on doing anyway!

Protestants often argue the point that ALL believers are priests with respect to the church and the work she has been given to do in this world. To make this case, they are fond of quoting texts such as these:

So as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and priceless in God's sight, you yourselves, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet 2:4-5 NET Bible).

A Catholic may wish to respond by suggesting that here the Protestant has conflated two things that ought to be distinguished-- namely, the (1) priesthood of all believers, (2) the ministerial priesthood of those ordained to this special office and charism. To which the Protestant skeptics will typically respond they do not believe that (#2 above) is a legitimate NT ecclesiastical category. To them it will seem that in the first century, all Christians were priests and it was only in that sense that they were priests. Some individuals taken from the body of priests, they may say, perhaps were appointed to oversee the congregation. Nevertheless, this ordination to shepherd the flock of God did not make them priests, for they were already priests in that sense when they became Christians.

What should we say to this? Well, a sacerdotal, sacrificing ministry may not seem like a "legitimate NT ecclesiastical category" if you try to conclusively infer it from the New Testament alone, but if you expand "NT ecclesiastical category" to mean what was going on in the Church of the New Testament era, it appears to be readily confirmed. A number of documents and writers from that era attest to it. We find already in Didache 14:1 the following:

And on the Lord's own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, first confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.

We may gather by reading further what kind of sacrifice is intended, for the next verse reads:

And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled.

In other words, the sacrifice envisioned is Holy Communion. Even various New Testament passages attest, if only obliquely, to this conviction:

• Heb. 13:10 says "We have an ALTAR, of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle."
  
• Acts 2:42 says "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the BREAKING OF BREAD AND TO PRAYER."
  
• 1 Cor. 10:16 says "Is not the cup of thanksgiving [Eucharistic cup] for which we give thanks a PARTICIPATION IN THE BLOOD OF CHRIST?" etc.

It seems clear, to me anyway, that the celebration and commemoration and re-enactment (ANEMNESIS) of the Lord's Supper is here viewed as the High Priestly Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus mentioned in Hebrews, the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ in which all "participate," as Paul says, who partake of the Lord's Body and Blood. "Anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing THE BODY OF THE LORD, eats and drinks judgment on himself."(1 Cor. 11:29) All of this is perfectly consistent with the Catholic tradition of a sacrificing priesthood, who, in persona Christi, offers on the altars of the Church the one and same Sacrifice offered by our Lord. This understanding is certainly confirmed by numerous later patristic writers.

Another verse Protestants like to quote is 1 Corinthians 12:12ff., where St. Paul encourages the unity of all in Christ by speaking of each member of the Church as belonging to one body: "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" (1 Cor. 12:21) Etc. The idea is that everybody belongs. My fellow Catholics will want to note, of course, that this analogy does nothing to undermine our assumption that the Church has an earthly head, since the body in Paul's analogy has a head. But the Protestant skeptics will also want to counter this assertion with their question: Where in the Bible is the term for "head" (KEFALE) ever applied to a fallible human? Only Christ, they will say, is said to be the head of the body in Paul's epistles. This, at least, is what they will assume.

How to reply? This position is Protestant literalist gridlock at its worst. But let me begin by indulging this literalism for the moment. It may be true that the term "head" (KEFALE) is nowhere directly applied to anyone but Christ. But now let me go beyond literalism: it seems to me that Paul is using the "Body of Christ" metaphor for the Church precisely as a metaphor to illustrate that, despite differences of authority and gifts among its members, each has its proper place; for he concludes: "And in the Church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, . . . " etc. Then he asks: "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? . . ." etc.

What this suggest to me is that there were some who chafed and resisted the fact that some members of the Christian community (Apostles, in the first place, then others) possessed the status of lawfully appointed or commissioned authorities in the ongoing administration of the Church's affairs. Perhaps, like Korah and his associates in the Old Testament, they resented this. But Paul is insisting that, despite this division of labor, gifts, and corresponding division of authority, all belong together and need one another in the body of Christ. Hence, I see no reason why Paul would have denied that, say, James, was "head" of the Church in Jerusalem, as its bishop, or that another elder, a presbyter, under James' episcopal supervision in Jerusalem was, in turn, "head" of his congregation meeting, perhaps, in a house or small auditorium.

The New Testament uses the term "Rock" or "Foundation" in similar ways. On the one hand, it insists that Christ is the one "Rock," the exclusive "Foundation" of the Church. On the other hand, Christ Himself can declare that Peter is the "Rock" upon which He founds His Church (Matt. 16), and Paul can say in Eph. 2:20 that God's house is "built on the FOUNDATION OF THE APOSTLES AND PROPHETS," even as he goes on to add: ". . . with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone."

Not everything written in the NT is addressed to every believer who reads the NT. For example, when Jesus said "Whosoever's sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosover's sins ye retain, they are retained," he was speaking to those whom He had just breathed upon and infused with the Holy Spirit-- i.e., those bearing the apostolic office. Thus, I would say that neither you nor I have been given the power of binding or loosing gifted to the apostles and their lawful successors, the bishops; but there are priests and a bishop in this very diocese who have that charism through the laying on of hands in succession from the apostles and Christ Himself.

Thus, I don't take the apostle John to be addressing every believer who in the future would read his words when (in John 16:13) he wrote: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." For one thing, it is amply clear that no everyone (or even every denomination) who individually seeks to interpret the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirt succeeds in getting it right: they often blatantly contradict one another.

Again, the Protestant skeptics may or may not admit that John 16:13 strictly applies to the apostles. However, they will insist that other Johannine texts indicate that all Christians are lead into all truth by the Holy Spirit, suggesting that this is the import of passages such as 1 John 2:20, 27.

I would agree with this, with one proviso: that the way in which God ORDINARILY intends for us to be led by the Holy Spirit is not as isolated individuals, but in communion with His one, universal Church. Empirically we know that even many of the most pious and sincere individuals and groups which intend to follow Christ and God's Word in Scripture, have ended up teaching and practicing incompatible things. We also know from Scripture, that Christ has promised to be with His Church until the end of time, and that the promise of the Holy Spirit's guidance into all truth was made, not to separate individuals and groups, but to the apostles whom Christ Himself placed in a position of authority at the foundation of His Church.

When did hierarchy develop in Church history?

Most Protestants see no evidence in Scripture or tradition of any sort of hierarchy in the New Testament Church. Increasingly today, Catholics who have been influenced by protestant traditions of interpretation--especially since Vatican II in the early 1960's--agree with that assessment. They would be far more inclined to accept the view that Jesus set up a kind of egalitarian community of believers with nobody having any unique authority over another. For example, one author whom I shall refer to only as E. Foster, writes the following:

Jesus taught his apostles that the greatest disciple in their midst would be the one who served his brethren. Jesus further said that all of you (i.e., the apostles) are brothers without a human leader (Mt 23:8-10). Furthermore, Eph 4:11-16 depicts the apostles as "gifts" bestowed upon the church of the living God in order that all might attain to the oneness of the faith and maturity as the entire body of Christ "promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love" under the invisible leadership and headship of the one greater than Moses, to wit, Jesus Christ. We have no need of human hierarchies or human leaders, according to the Messiah.

However, Jesus' teaching in in Mt. 23-8-10 is a moral exhortation not to arrogantly lord it over others, not a literal prohibition of the use of the term "father." If one reads on, he also tells them not to be called "teacher," but few who find themselves in the vices of literalist gridlock over the term "father" (because of the Catholic tradition of calling priests "father") find themselves similarly gridlocked over the use of the term "teacher." The most obvious meaning of the passage to me seems to be an exhortation to humility later echoed by Paul's remark that none of us ought to think more highly of ourselves than we should, or that the "head" cannot say to the lowly hand or foot, "I have no need of thee," but that all form a unity in Christ, in whom there is neither "male nor female," "slave nor free," etc. But none of this betokens the suggestion that the Body of Christ has no "head" to govern it, or that it has not parts with different functions, some subordinate (as means to ends) to others, as in any organism. Even the Pope has from earliest times referred to himself, in keeping with Christ's injunction, as the "Servant of the Servants of God"; and when this sentiment is authentically incarnated in the pontificate of a truly holy and faithful Pope--as in, for example, St. Pope Gregory I (the Great) or John Paul II--it would be silly to dismiss it as so much hot air.

There is, I think, plenty of evidence of a distinction in authority between apostles and non-apostles. For starters, otherwise, why should Christ have explicitly called, out of the masses that daily followed him in his Galilean ministry, only Twelve, in conformity to the number of Tribes under the Old Covenant; and why should Peter have led the eleven apostles left after the apostasy and death of Judas, in choosing a successor to him ("...let another man his bishopric [EPISKOPEIN] take"-- KJV), carefully seeking the Holy Spirit's lawful guidance?

Yet there is an engrained resistance among most Protestants to the notion of apostolic succession, or that one should attach any such significance to the appointment of a successor to Judas in the Book of Acts. Again, E. Foster writes:

Concerning the "successor" of Judas Iscariot, reading Luke and Acts does not reveal that Peter "presided" over the appointment of anyone to fill Judas' office. Acts 1:23-26 (in translation) uses the plural pronoun "they" instead of "he" to describe the process of selecting another apostle (the Greek verbs employed are ESTHSAN, EIPAN and EDWKAN).

I would agree that the matter cannot be settled conclusively one way or the other by appeal to the New Testament alone; but I don't believe the New Testament was ever intended by its authors to be used in this way. But I think the New Testament, at the very least, is wholly consistent with the kind of claims from Catholic tradition that I've mentioned above, and, at best, attests to their veracity amply, if not conclusively.

In the passage to which Foster refers, for example, it's true that the term "they" (and not "he") us used to describe the actual process of selecting a successor to Judas, but it is also true in this passage, as in numerous other texts, that Peter is singled out for special attention in some way. Here, for example, it says that "Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said..." (Acts 1:15) There is a similar pattern at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15:7, where Luke writes: "And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said ..." Again, it will be raised as a counterexample that Acts 15:13 brings James into the picture in a similar light, when Luke writes: "And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying..."; and it may be supposed that this "counter-example" annuls the singularity of attention called by Luke to Peter. Yet, despite the fact that the case cannot be settled conclusively by reference to the text alone, Luke's entire account remains utterly consistent with traditional Catholic practice, as the Council of Jerusalem would have taken place in the Diocese of Jerusalem where James was bishop, and after Peter had given his authoritative word as Prince of the Apostles (or the first Pope), it is only natural that the bishop of that diocese, James, "answered, saying..."

Almost no Catholic Bible scholars or Church historians today, let alone Protestant ones, would accept the notion that the New Testament Church had a hierarchy or even an organization to speak of until much later. Protestant Fundamentalists see these as the creation of Medieval Catholicism. Yet careful and honest scholars will admit that some sort of hierarchical structure is evident very early in Church history. A scholar of integrity such as E. Foster is willing to admit that at least a primitive analogy to the structure the Catholic Church now has may be found as early as the time St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in Rome between AD 98 and 117. Foster writes:

Granted, the "diocesan structure" is clear from Ignatius onward. However, it is not clear prior to Ignatius of Antioch, not even in Clement of Rome. Scholars are evidently right on target when they argue that the notion of parishes existing under bishops first appears in Ignatius and not before Ignatius. Hence, support for such an arrangement is apparently not found in the NT.

Yet, while anything like a "diocesan structure" obviously didn't exist early in Jesus' ministry when he first began preaching, any more than the practice of celebrating and commemorating the "Lord's Supper," it seems clear to me that this structure developed rapidly in the aftermath of Christ's Great Commission (Mt. 28). Thus, already in Acts 1 there is Peter's concern to choose a successor to Judas, signaling a desire to sustain the apostolic episcopal structure that Jesus had called into being and commissioned. And it seems quite clear to me in the rest of Acts and in Paul's accounts of his missionary journeys, that when he established churches throughout Asia Minor and Greece, sooner or later one of the presbyters ordained to the pastoral ministry in those communities was elevated and/or ordained to the office of an overseer or bishop, to assist in the governance of the several churches in any given area. This is suggested, I think, as I've mentioned before by some of his remarks regarding Timothy and Titus. Though the terms 'bishop' and 'presbyter' were often used interchangeably, it is also apparent that the term 'bishop' was soon reserved for the presbyter presiding over a parish or a number of parishes (of course, all bishops are also presbyters), and that each city or area (or what would eventually be called a diocese) had one bishop, as well as perhaps a council of presbyters, along with deacons; and that the authority of the bishop was relatively autonomous, save for the pastoral jurisdiction of the universal bishop, suggested, e.g., by Clement.

To be continued...

The interpretation of St. Paul in Harold Bloom's Genius

Sat Feb 21, 02:10:02 PM - Philip Blosser

Harold Bloom's book, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, was named a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" in 2002. It is, without doubt, a monumental achievement of scholarship and work of considerable genius itself. Bloom, who holds dual appointments as Yale University's Sterling Professor of Humanities and New York University's Berg Professor of Humanities, has authored more than twenty-five books, most of which have been greeted by critics with wild accolades. Yet even an intellect so learned and fecund as Bloom's can betray signs of inadvertent influence, if not entrapment, by uncritically received ideological trends of his age. His treatment of St. Paul, whom he considers a genius and compares to Muhammad, is telling in this regard.

In twelve short pages (133-142), Bloom offers a widely ranging, idiosyncratic interpretation of St. Paul, drawing on unconventional and esoteric as well as the expected sources. In the course of his analysis, his discussion betrays the influence of some of the most radical trends in contemporary hermeneutics. One finds postmodern tendencies stemming indirectly from the influence of the French deconstructionists, such as Jacques Derrida, and from the legacy of Nietzschean thought, which Alasdair MacIntyre classifies under the rubric of historicist "Geneology." (Excellent critical analyses of these currents of influence can be found in Alasdair MacIntyre's Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, Allan Megill's Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and John Martin Ellis's Against Deconstruction.) One also finds radically desconstructive tendencies of biblical interpretation, such as one finds today in the works of Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Burton Mack, which can be traced back to earlier influences from the Enlightenment critics and the development of a decidedly anti-supernaturalistic historical-critical approach to the Bible such as one finds in classic Protestant Liberalism. (Excellent critical analyses of these currents of thought can be found in Roy A. Harrisville's and Walter Sundberg's The Bible in Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Kasemann, J. C. O'Neill's The Bible's Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann, and Luke Timothy Johnson's The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels.)

The following is a page-by-page analysis of Bloom's twelve pages on St. Paul:

p. 132:

Here Bloom suggests that both the Corinthians and Paul had Gnostic qualities, which Bloom associates with the phrase, "Jesus first rose, then died." This latter phrase is typical of Gnostic beliefs, which often take the biblical story and turn it on its head--for example, suggesting that the Genesis 3 story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden was actually the first step of salvation, since Eve was responding to the Serpent (seen as the embodiment of wisdom) who offered Adam and Eve knowledge, whereas the repressive 'god' who had forbidden them to eat of the Tree wished to keep them in ignorance. Eve's sin thus is interpreted as the first step of 'obedience' in the occult plan of 'salvation' through knowledge (=Gnosis, the root word from which we get "Gnostic"). Yet I see no evidence that the members of the Corinthian church believed anything of the kind, and certainly not Paul.


Further, Bloom describes Paul as a Hellenistic Jew who followed the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the LXX, or Septuigint), as opposed to the Torah, and as repudiating the notion of a reciprocal covenant implicit in the Torah in favor of a plan of redemption imposed by God's will (divine voluntarism). Thus, Bloom claims that Paul misreads Judaism, placing him (Paul) over against the Hebraic or Jewish paradigm, as a representative of a new Hellenic paradigm in the development of 1st century AD religious ideas. Hence, Bloom calls Paul, "not the second founder of Christianity, but the first," suggesting that orthodox Christianity as it eventually developed was a Hellenic distortion of Hebraism. But, again, I see no evidence whatsoever that one should think that. Rather, Bloom's whole construction at this point is highly reminiscent of the very influential neo-Hegelian school of classic F.C. Baur's Protestant Liberalism at Tubingen, which, following the triadic pattern of the Hegelian dialectic, interpreted the development of historic Catholic Christianity as a hybrid resulting from the synthesis of (a) Hebraism, stemming from the Torah and manifest in the more 'Jewish,' earlier religion of Jesus in the Gospels and NT writers like Matthew, Mark, John and James, and (b) Hellenism found in first-century Mediterranean culture, and allegedly exhibited in Paul's writings. But, again, I see no reason for accepting these neo-Hegelian philosophical interpolations. It is a fact that the NT was written in Koine Greek, that Paul and the other NT writers used it, etc. But none of this requires the absurd supposition that their thinking was not typically Jewish or infected by the categories of Greek philosophy.

p. 133:

Bloom is clearly skeptical about the "historical Jesus," by which he means he is skeptical of the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. This skepticism, again, reflects a pattern of influence stemming from Enlightenment skeptics like David Hume and Immanuel Kant, whose arbitrary bifurcation between (a) "historical, natural empirical fact" and (b) "untenable superstitions of faith in the supernatural" led to the classic Liberal Protestant distinction between the "Jesus of History" and "Christ of Faith." The latter ("Christ of faith") was consigned to a realm beyond historical data, evidence, and rational debate, but the former ("Jesus of History") was also rendered inaccessible by arbitrarily disqualifying the four distinct Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as historically unreliable because--it was alleged--as men of faith, they imputed properties of the "Christ of Faith" to the "Jesus of History," such that we can't admit their accounts as reliable testimony. However, can you give me one good reason why such a supposition shouldn't be dismissed out of hand as so much rubbish? Why should the reliability of an historical witness be impugned because he is a man of faith rather than a skeptic? The problem is not that the man of faith is a gullible fideist (blind believer) while the skeptic is a reasonable and judicious fellow; rather, the problem is that the skeptic is no less biased by his commitment to his disbelief in the supernatural than the man of faith is. There's no more reason for writing off the witness of the Gospel writers, who were by all accounts men who put their lives on the line for what they believed (John was the only one of the Twelve who was not martyred), than for putting our faith in the trendy-lefty spin-masters of the The New York Times, network television news, or National Public Radio. The ultimate question is: whose witness do you trust? And that question can't be answered apart from a personal commitment.

p. 134:

Here Bloom suggests that Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist implies that Jesus was some sort of "disciple" of John, that since John's baptism was a "baptism of repentance," this whole relationship is "embarrassing" to the Christian community, who professes the sinless divinity of Jesus. Bloom even suggests that the NT writers are "evasive" about Jesus' relationship to John. But, yet once again, I find not one shred of evidence for this assumption. It strikes me, rather, as a rather cavalier and free-wheeling reading of the Gospels, much like the deconstructive interpretations of texts, which invariably ignore authorial intent (which is declared to be inaccessible) and consequently conclude by doing violence to the text.

p. 135

Along these lines, Bloom playfully suggests that God and Jesus are both "literary characters," much as Hamlet is. Jesus is a character, or better, a "construct" of the apostle, Mark; just as YHWH (Yahweh) is a "construct" created by the "Yahwist" (one of the purported authors of an OT fragment or document); and that the "genius of Jesus" is therefore something parallel to the "genius of Hamlet." In other words, Bloom seems to be suggesting here that we can have no more access to the "historical Jesus" than we can to the "historical Hamlet," since both are "constructs," works of "fiction" "created" by authors. Yet the rub comes in the fact that postmodern writers like Bloom do not necessarily contast "fiction" with "reality"; at least the most radical deconstructionists insist that there is "nothing outside the text," by reference to which one can adjudicate its authenticity, no "transcendental signified." Thus all are left with, on this reading, is a web of texts that refer to one another, but not decisively to any "historical reality" beyond them. Michel Foucault, one of the most radical deconstructionists, even views history as "fiction," so that he felt little compunction about re-writing history in imaginative ways that depart grossly from traditional accounts.

p. 136:

"So as to avoid all churches and their polemics," he says, Bloom here quotes the words of Jesus from The Logia of Jeshua (the publication spells the name Yeshua), "a little volume blessedly free of theological tendentiousness." This implies that the four traditional Gospels of the Church, then, must be "theologically tendentious" and unreliable. But why think this? The Logia of Jeshua, which Bloom favors, draws its "sayings of Jesus" from sources such as the quasi-Gnostic pseudo-Gospel of Thomas, regularly put to use by the so-called Jesus Seminar in behalf of lunatic fringe interpretations of Christianity that fly in the face of academic sanity. Why should Bloom turn to these sources rather than traditional Christian ones? Because he doesn't believe Christianity is true; and since the Gospel writers were obviously believers, this "prejudices" their accounts, rendering them "unreliable." But why should orthodoxy render someone's testimony "unreliable," and heresy render it "reliable"? What nonsense! At the very least, he should be willing to give even-handed treatment of all sources. (It is noteworthy that in Marvin W. Meyer's edition of the Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus an appendix appears offering "A Reading by Harold Bloom, in which he states that Meyer's rendering of Jesus' Zen master-like sayings offer a gospel that "spares us the crucifixion, makes the resurrection unnecessary, and does not present us with a God named Jesus. No dogmas could be founded upon this sequence (if it is a sequence) of apothegms. If you turn to the Gospel of Thomas, you will encounter a Jesus who is unsponsored and free.")

These prejudices that Bloom brings to his reading of the literature about Jesus leads him to make such astonishing statements as the following: "We know more about James the Just, 'the brother of Jesus,' than we do about Jesus"! This is preposterous. There are four separate biographical treatments of Jesus (the four Gospels), and only a few statements in them about James. We know comparatively little about James. The only thing that can lead Bloom to make such an assertion is his prior judgment (pre-judice) that the testimony of the four Gospels are "biased" and therefore must be written off as historically worthless. This prejudice comes out of the skeptical and anti-supernatural tradition of Enlightenment scholarship that has led to sharply distinguishing between the "Christ of Faith" and the "Jesus of History" (as discussed above), but there is absolutely no reason for accepting such a distinction. Thomas Jefferson literally took a scissors to his copy of the New Testament and cut out all the supernatural references, which he considered unbelievable. Needless to say, the pages that remained were very few in number and a relative bore to read: a colorless figure named Jesus walked here and spoke there, saying a few nice things about loving others. This is what Bloom is buying into: the view that we really know almost nothing about Jesus.

p. 137

This is why Bloom goes on to say: "Paul, who was the earliest New Testament author, had virtually no interest in the historical Jesus, probably because those who had known Jesus were almost all opponents of Paul"; and then immediately suggests, incredibly, that the historical Jesus has about as much to do with Paul's (and Christianity's) Jesus Christ as the historical Simon Magus has to do with the legendary Faust, for whom he was ostensibly the inspiration!

First of all, one cannot possibly say that "Paul had no interest in the historical Jesus" unless he has already bought into the fable that the supernatural Jesus of Paul's epistles is a later fabrication of having no credible relationship to the Jesus of history, and that any support for Paul's Jesus found in the supernatural Jesus of the Gospels is discredited because it is a still later fabrication by the community of believers duped by Paul's vision. Secondly, one cannot say that "those who had known Jesus were almost all opponents of Paul," unless one is already committed to the premise that those who knew Jesus believed he was only a man and witnessed none of the healings and other miracles such as the Resurrection attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. But again, why should anyone want to think that unless he's committed to the premise of rejecting anything supernatural? Thirdly, the whole notion that Paul's beliefs about Jesus are opposed to those of the eyewitnesses of Jesus is a convoluted fabrication of the historical-critical tradition of skeptical scholarship honed to a fine Hegelian point in F.C.Baur's Tubingen School. But there is plenty of evidence in Paul's own writings that this kind of opposition between the beliefs of Paul and that of the earlier disciples cannot be sustained. For example, at the end of Galatians ch. 1, Paul relates how, after his conversion, he spent some years in Arabia (probably in a kind of spiritual retreat, collecting his thoughts after his life-shaking encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road). Then he writes: "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days." Now this is worth stopping to ponder: here's Paul, the most brilliant protege of Rabbi Gamaliel, with a sophisticated education in theology, going up to Jerusalem to meet with the leader of the disciples, Peter, who is an uneducated, common fisherman! Why would he do this? Paul refers to him by his Aramaic name, "Cephas," which means "Rock," for which the Greek translation, of course, is "Petros," and is anglicized as "Peter." His name had been "Simon," but Jesus had renamed him "Cephas" (or "Peter") in the famous incident recounted in Matthew 16:18. Re-naming a person was a divine prerogative, and a gesture that always signified something momentous (as when God renamed Jacob "Israel" in the Old Testament). Jesus had changed "Simon's" name to "Peter" to signify that he would be the "rock" upon which He would build His Church. This is why Catholic teaching names Peter as the first Pope. The word "Pope" in Italian is "Papa," and means nothing more than that the man occupying that office is the visible head of the household of Faith. If Paul's beliefs about Jesus were different from earthly eyewitnesses of Jesus, such as Peter's, he would have had nothing to do with Peter. Obviously, the reason he went up to Jerusalem and spent fifteen days with him was because he recognized Peter, despite his lack of education, as having some kind of authority within the community of believers. This is further underlined in the opening verses of Galatians ch. 2, where Paul, after having launched in his missionary journeys among the Gentiles, relates a similar event: "Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem ... and laid before them ... the gospel which I preached among the Gentiles, lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain." Again, Paul checks in with the Church authorities (Peter, and James, who was the first bishop of Jerusalem) to make sure that what he has been preaching to the Gentiles is true to the apostolic teaching. What humility, on Paul's part! This hardly sounds like there was a radical difference between the beliefs of the earliest disciples and Paul! In fact, Paul declares that "when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars [in the believing community], gave to me and Barnabas the right had of fellowship ..." (Galatians 2:9) But of course Bloom wouldn't buy this, since he's already committed to the Baur hypothesis that the division of labor between them--Paul to minister to the Gentiles, and Peter and the others in Jerusalem to the Jews--represents irreconcilable differences in their views about Jesus, a hypothesis I reject as preposterous.

p. 138:

Not surprisingly, given his presuppositions, Bloom here declares of Paul that "he never knew" Jesus. This pinpoints the difference between Bloom's standpoint of unbelief and the Christian believer's standpoint of faith. The only way Paul could have known Jesus, in Bloom's view, is for him to have spent time together with Jesus during His sojourn on earth. But in the Christian's view, one can also come to know Jesus (1) indirectly, through the testimony of trusted witnesses (as Jesus says to the doubting Thomas in John 20:29--"Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe"); , and also (2) directly, through personal experience (what Kierkegaard called experiencing the "contemporaneity of Christ"), as Paul did in his Damascus Road experience.

p. 139:

Here Bloom begins his excursus on Paul's personality, temperament, and genius itself. In keeping with his earlier-discussed premises, he views Paul, essentially, as the historical figure who supplants the merely human Jesus of history and proceeds to "invent both Jesus Christ and Christianity"! And to whom does Bloom turn for what he considers an insightful analysis he says "cannot be bettered" (p. 140)? To Nietzsche!

p. 140:

Nietzsche's account of Paul, which compares him to Luther, is based on his "hermeneutic of suspicion," according to which Christians (like the Jews) are animated by a basic impulse of resentment against all that is represented by power, wealth, and status. For the ancient Jews in captivity in Babylon, this was because they were an oppressed people who didn't have power, like their oppressors, and secretly wanted it. (For an excellent critical analysis of Nietzsche's concept of resentment, see Ressentiment, by Max Scheler, whom Ernst Troeltsch called "the Catholic Nietzsche.") And this translates, in Paul's case, just as in Luther's, into resentment against the Law (Torah), which represents a standard so high that it cannot be kept. Hence resentment stems from an unfulfillable desire. Paul and Luther desire to keep the Law, but can't, and therefore resent the Law. I find it presumptuous to think anyone can quite surmise what is going on in the soul, mind, or heart of another; and I am loathe to think that anything quite like this animated the thought of St. Paul, though I may be more willing to consider it in the case of Luther. In any case, Bloom is right in drawing, at least, some distinction between Luther, who denied that keeping the Law has any role in our salvation, and Paul, who stressed the "obedience of faith" under the aegis of Christ's reign, even while acknowledging our justification by faith apart from works of the Law of Moses, such as circumcision, which he relegated to the supplanted dispensation of the Old Covenant.

p. 141:

Here Bloom describes Paul as an arrogant man with a quasi-Messianic complex, wishing practically to supplant Jesus as the Christ. He suggests that Paul is angry because he is regarded as a comparative "latecomer" by the other apostles who knew Jesus from the beginning. He quotes Luther to this effect, for support. "Galatians seems to me a very angry epistle indeed," Bloom writes, "and I think Luther's hint as to the source of Paul's fury is accurate: the apostle Paul would not accept the idea that he was a latecomer. And yet, in relation to the Jerusalem Christians, he was a latecomer; unlike them, he had arrived long after the events of Jesus' life and death."

I think this completely misses the nature of Paul's concern that animated his Epistle to the Galatians. There are indeed parts of this letter in which Paul "raises his voice," but to categorize it in terms of a Nietzschean psychology of resentment is to utterly miss the point. In the opening chapter of Galatians, Paul writes (Galatians 1:6ff.)--"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel … But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed." We learn what this "other Gospel" was In Acts 15, which describes the proceedings of the Council of Jerusalem, which was called to address this problem. It is stated plainly in the opening verse (Acts 15:1)--"But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'" Since the first Christians were predominantly Jews, it is natural that some may have held such views. And Bloom very likely assumes he finds support for his view that a fundamental difference existed between his own Gospel and that of the early disciples in a later passage (Galatians 2:11ff.) where Paul opposes Peter for his hypocrisy in eating with the Gentiles while visiting the Christians in Antioch, but then withdrawing from their company when Jewish Christians came, "fearing the circumcision party." But Peter's was a moral failure and not a doctrinal one, for he himself concurred in the decision of the Council of Jerusalem (of which he presided with James, the local bishop), which unanimously condemned these views. Those who held these views were called Judaizers, believing one had to first become, in effect, a Jew and be circumcised, in order to become a follower of Christ. Of these Judaizers, Paul even goes so far as to say (in Galatians 5:12) that he wishes they would "go castrate themselves"! This is strong language, indeed! But there is no hint of doctrinal dissention between Peter and Paul. This is clear from the earlier-cited passages in this same epistle where Paul declares that he went up to Jerusalem for fifteen days after his conversion and then, fourteen years later, once again to check in with the authoritative "pillars" of the believing community to see whether his preaching meshed with the apostolic Faith.

p. 142:

In conclusion, Bloom compares the genius of Paul with that of Muhammad, because he sees them both as founders of their respective religions. This view of Paul, which divorces his beliefs from those of the earliest followers of Jesus, is fundamentally flawed and contaminated by centuries of classic Protestant Liberal hermeneutics. There is no more need to discuss that here. However, one remark of Bloom's is right on the mark. He notes that "It is easy for many Americans to mistake Paul as a revivalist, whose total emphasis is upon rebirth through the forgiveness of sin. That is a weak mis-reading of Paul, who was more than an apostle of grace." This is certainly true. In fact, unlike Luther, it seems that Paul rejected only the continuing role of Mosaic law in the salvation of believers. Thus, when he declared in Romans 3:28 that we are "justified by faith apart from works of the law" (emphasis added), it seems apparent from the context that he specifically has in mind the "works" of the Old Covenant demanded by Judaizers--such as circumcision. There is no place in Paul's thought for the Lutheran interpretation of justification by faith alone. When Paul speaks of "faith" in 1 Corinthians 13, he distinguishes it from "hope" and "love," and says "if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing," and, in the comparison of the three virtues--faith, hope, and love--he insists: the greatest is love. In fact, while Bloom may be right in noting that James emphasizes more than Paul the need to care for the poor, orphans, and widows, he is wrong in supposing that the Christianity of James is fundamentally opposed to Paul's. True, the only place where the New Testament speaks of "faith alone" is in James' epistle, where James condemns the idea: "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24). But this is hardly opposed to Paul's Gospel in Romans when it is rightly interpreted, as suggested above. It is Paul who stresses, as we have seen, that love is greater than faith (1 Corinthians 13:13), and stresses the importance of the "obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5, and 16:26) and of "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6).

For an excellent, if dated, classic rebutting the view that Paul's religion was somehow opposed to that of Jesus and his disciples can be found in J. Gresham Machen's The Origin of Paul's Religion, which is still given rave reviews and continues to be reprinted (as recently as 2002), although it first appeared in 1925. Machen, one of the conservative Presbyterian founders of the Westminster Theological Seminary, is a scholar of uncommon common sense who still deserves to be read widely.

America magazine on the "New Apologetics" of Scott Hahn, Karl Keating, Patrick Madrid, Peter Kreeft, et al.

In an article entitled "Do We Need a New(er) Apologetics?" in the February 2, 2004, issue of America, Richard A. Gaillardetz reviews the "so-called new apologetics" of figures like Scott Hahn, Gerry Matatics, Karl Keating, Mitch Pacwa, S.J., Peter Kreeft, and Patrick Madrid." He finds some strengths in their approach, and some weaknesses.

In the first place, Mr. Gaillardetz has some very positive things to say about these apologists and their approach. He writes:

A distinguishing feature of the approach of the new apologists is their obvious enthusiasm and passion for their faith. These are individuals who find Catholicism not a stifling, burdensome or irrelevant religion but a vital faith capable of transforming lives. Moreover, they effectively communicate that love and passion in their presentations....

Second, the new apologists are not afraid to talk of doctrine. And when they do so, it is not defensively but out of a deep-seated conviction that Catholic Christian doctrine is meaningful, relevant and communicates the truth of God's loving plan for humankind. There is a hunger among active Catholics for a reappropriation of their Catholic doctrinal heritage; yet in some circles of contemporary pastoral ministry, it is no longer fashionable to talk about church doctrine. Sometimes this reluctance reflects a certain embarrassment regarding one or other church doctrine. At other times, however, I fear it is the result of the still inadequate theological formation of many pastoral ministers. Too often, their ministerial formation has given them only the barest of surveys of the history and development of Catholic teaching.

Third, the new apologists have responded effectively to Protestant fundamentalist attacks on the Catholic faith. They recognize that many Catholics are not well catechized and therefore are often vulnerable to attacks on the biblical foundations of the Catholic faith. These apologists are often quite successful in exposing Protestant fundamentalist caricatures of Catholic belief and offering demonstrations of the biblical foundations of central Catholic beliefs--about the Eucharist, for example, or infant baptism.

These are welcome observations. It is refreshing to see a magazine so perennially and tendentiously critical of the Vatican as America publish an article recognizing the life-transforming power of traditional Catholic teaching, as well as the the importance of enthusiasm for the Catholic Faith, sound doctrine, catechesis, and effective responses to Protestant fundamentalist attacks on the Catholic Faith. This is heartwarming, to say the least, and Gaillardetz is to be commended for his willingness to seriously address these issues as straightforwardly and honestly as he does.

But even amidst his discussion of the "strengths" of these new apologists, Gaillardetz writes:

.... Indeed, many who purchase their books and tapes or attend their many speaking events seem unaware that the material presented represents a particular ideological perspective. I recall one graduate student who was genuinely surprised when I positioned Hahn's theology on the far right of the contemporary Catholic theological continuum....

Note that here, even while discussing the "strengths" of these apologists, Gaillardetz tips his hand (though, frankly, I'm not sure he is even aware of having a "hand" to tip). Not only that, but he tips his hand with a gesture freighted with irony, for he points out that many who purchase the books and tapes or attend the conferences of these apologists "seem unaware that the material presented represents a particular ideological perspective," all the while seemingly unaware of the particular ideological perspective that animates his own, all-too-critically-unreflective perspective. This is clear when he describes Hahn's theology as "on the far right of the contemporary Catholic theological continuum," offering no indication of where on that relativistic "continuum" a position of Catholic orthodoxy might be located, or, indeed, so much as a nod of awareness of such a need or possibility.

Next, Gaillardetz turns to what he considers problematic about these new apologists:

The apologetical refutations of fundamentalist assaults on Catholicism often mirror the very methodology they condemn in their opponents. Many of the new apologists enter too willingly into "Bible wars," in which Protestant biblical proof-texts are simply parried with a Catholic proof-text in support of a particular Catholic teaching or practice. Moreover, their theological methodology often assumes an overly propositional view of revelation, that is, a tendency to locate divine revelation in a particular text or propositional formula. There is little sense that while divine revelation is encountered in a set of propositional truths, it is ultimately more than this.

First, let me try to be sympathetic with what Gaillardetz is saying here. I think it may be true, in some cases, that a Christian believer (Catholic or Protestant) who wandered into a debate between a Catholic apologist like Gerry Matatics and a Protestant fundamentalist apologist like, say, James White, might find himself alienated by the seemingly arcane biblical and theological jargon, as well as, in some cases, the tone of the exchange. In some cases, this may be due to the unfamiliarity of the interloper with the terms and issues of the debate, though in other cases it may be due to the fact that the debate degenerated into needlessly technical details or random biblical proof-texting divorced from any sensitivity to historical or literary context. Yet I must admit that, on the whole, I have found these apologists to be serious and able students of Scripture and Tradition who generally avoid these pitfalls.

Second, however, let me offer a caveat. It may be true, as Gaillardetz says, that divine revelation is "more than" what we encounter in propositional truths--though he doesn't tell us how it is "more"--but it is surely safe to say that apart from these propositional truths (communicated through Scripture and Tradition and Magisterium), we have next to nothing by which to intellectually define the content of the Catholic Faith. Even Gaillardetz's concession that divine revelation may be "encountered" in a set of propositional truths could easily be interepreted according to the canons of existentialist theories of revelation to refer to my personal, subjective "experience" of the "numinous" or "transcendent," or whatever; but this would be to sever our "encounter" with "the divine" from any propositional definitions, leaving our faith adrift on a sea of subjective impressions far removed from the Church teachings that define the content of The Faith (what was traditinally defined as de fide). Hence, I would agree with Gaillardetz that a view of revelation focused on propositions to the exclusion of other dimensions of the Faith, such as its historicity, historical enculturation, as well as our personal experience of God and His grace, needlessly impoverishes itself. Such views have been practically rampant in certain currents of American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism in the last couple of centuries, as I note in my review of Mark Noll's book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Yet I would insist on the indispensability of the propositional dimension of revelation, as I believe that St. Thomas Aquinas does, for example, in designating the "literal" sense of Scripture the backbone of all other possible senses of the text in the opening treatise of his Summa Theologiae.

Gaillardetz continues:

......This view, in turn, tends to encourage a neo-triumphalism that can undermine ecumenical endeavors. Dialogue with other Christian traditions is reduced to comparing various sets of truth claims. This is evident in the stories of how many of the new apologists journeyed from a Protestant faith to Catholicism. These accounts testify to an intellectual and spiritual journey that ends in the conviction that other Christian traditions are fundamentally erroneous when compared to the truth claims of Catholicism (see Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Rome Sweet Home; David Currie, Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic; Patrick Madrid, ed., Surprised by Truth).

Here, again, I am somewhat sympathetic with Gaillardetz' remarks, to start with. The tone of Catholic apologists can sound triumphalist, at times; and, especially when this tone edges toward the ecumenically insensitive, it can begin to seem obnoxious. But I have rarely heard any of the named apologists say anything completely untoward or out of hand--even though I have to admit that Karl Keating's sense of humor can sometimes get a little naughty, as when he once suggested that the Archbishop of Canterbury is in fact just a Christian layman in clerical vestments; or Patrick Madrid's list of "Pat's Top Ten" fictional Broadway shows based on the life of Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses in his magazine Envoy.

On the other hand, while these apologists have not backed away from exposing and criticizing fundamental errors in the biblical interpretations or theological reasoning of various anti-Catholics, I disagree with Gaillardetz' assertion that they entertain any notion that "other Christian traditions are fundamentally erroneous when compared to the truth claims of Catholicism." In fact, more often than not, I find these apologists willing to affirm the broad body of doctrines and beliefs that they usually hold in common with their Protestant counterparts. More often--like Louis Bouyer, the Lutheran pastor who converted to Catholicism and became a leading Catholic liturgist, in his book on The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, or like Thomas Howard, the Evangelical English professor from Gordon College who converted to Catholicism, in his book Evangelical Is Not Enough--I find that they are ready to describe Evangelicalism, despite its differences with Catholicism, as a "good nursmaid" in the Faith, a good preparation for the Catholic Faith in terms of intimate familiarity with the Bible, high view of Scriptural inspiration and inerrancy, and serious view of fundamental Christian doctrines, emphasis on a life of prayer and personal devotion to Jesus Christ, such as might put most Catholics to shame.

Gaillardetz continues:

A third weakness lies in the ahistorical presentation of the Catholic faith. In defense of papal primacy and infallibility, for example--dogmatic teachings that I firmly accept--Karl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism is far too reluctant to acknowledge the historical difficulties with some traditional Catholic claims regarding the origins of the papacy (e.g., that Peter functioned as a residential "bishop of Rome"). This ahistoricism is reflected in the failure to apply accepted hermeneutical principles in the interpretation of conciliar and papal decrees. An example of this can be found in a series of audiotapes by Scott Hahn, in which he insists that Vatican II's Dei Verbum virtually reiterates the teaching on biblical inerrancy of Pope Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus (1893). One could arrive at such a conclusion only if one avoided studying the textual history of Dei Verbum and focused exclusively on the final text.

Ordinarily, if someone accused an apologist of an "ahistorical presentation" of the Catholic Faith, I would assume he meant that the apologist displayed ignorance of Church history, historical theology, the development of doctrine, and so forth. That anyone would accuse the likes of these apologists of such ignorance strikes me as ludicrous. So I must assume that Gaillardetz has in mind something else. He notes, by way of example, the reluctance of Keating to acknowledge the "historical difficulties with some traditional Catholic claims regarding the origins of the papacy" and singles out as an example, the claim that Peter functioned as a "residential 'bishop of Rome.'" But I am more than confident that Keating is amply familiar with the fact that St. Peter's initial home base was in Jerusalem, that he arrived in Rome only later, and that there is probably no historical record describing Peter as a "residential bishop of Rome." Yet I am equally confident of Keating's awareness of the biblical data supporting the primacy of Peter and the historical data supporting his presence in Rome and role as the first bishop of Rome, as attested in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, for example. So I must assume, yet again, that Gaillardetz has something else in mind.

What he has in mind becomes more apparent when he refers to these apologists' "failure to apply accepted hermeneutical principles in the interpretation of conciliar and papal decrees." Now just what are these "accepted hermeneutical principles," and how have these apologists violated them? He writes:

An example of this can be found in a series of audiotapes by Scott Hahn, in which he insists that Vatican II's Dei Verbum virtually reiterates the teaching on biblical inerrancy of Pope Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus (1893). One could arrive at such a conclusion only if one avoided studying the textual history of Dei Verbum and focused exclusively on the final text.

Now what does Gaillardetz have in mind here? What "accepted hermeneutical principles" would render untenable Hahn's interpretation of Vatican II's Dei Verbum as a virtual reiteration of the teaching on biblical inerrancy of Pope Leo XIII's Provindentissimus Deus? Gaillardetz tacitly concedes that there is nothing in the "final text" of Dei Verbum that would contradict Hahn's conclusion. In fact, despite the fact that the Pontifical Biblical Commission's document of 1994, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, encourages Catholic biblical scholars to take every possible advantage of the latest developments in historical-critical methods of Bible study, I can find in it nothing--not even in its cautions against "fundamentalist" approaches to biblical interpretation--that would contradict Hahn's affirmation that the Church continues to teach, as she has always taught, a high view of biblical inerrancy.

Now, when Gaillardetz asserts that one could arrive at Hahn's conclusion "only if one avoided studying the textual history of Dei Verbum," what does he mean? What is the "textual history" of Dei Verbum? What Gaillardetz probably has in mind is the various drafts and editions the document underwent on its way to its final form. It is a fact, of course, that there always are competing views of what should go into such a document, and it is well-known that at the time of the drafting of the documents of Vatican II, there was a large faction of Catholic revisionists who dissented from the Church's historical dogmatic and doctrinal traditions and wished to refashion Catholicism to their own liking. Doubtless many of these Catholic biblical scholars found embarrassing the views in Pope Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus, which affirmed a high view of literal inerrancy and biblical inspiration, such as many liberal Protestants and Catholics today would readily accuse of being "fundamentalist"! Doubtless, too, this is why even most Catholic biblical scholars who accept this teaching of the Church avoid discussing it. What's the last time you heard any Catholic scholar of national standing defend the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible? But the fact that it isn't discussed much any more, that the Vatican II documents barely mention it, that the Pontifical Biblical Commission is utterly silent about it, or that Catholic modernists and dissidents have repudiated it, does not mean that the Church has abandoned this teaching. (For a defense of the traditional Catholic teaching on biblical inerrancy up through the Vatican II documents, see Willaim G. Most, Free From All Error: Authorship, Inerrancy, Historicity of Scripture, Church Teachin, and Modern Scripture Scholars.)

In conclusion, Gaillardetz writes:

Finally, the new apologists evince a peculiar kind of Catholic romanticism that speaks easily of the transcendent truth and beauty of the Catholic Church and its teachings but fails to acknowledge its pilgrim status as a human community. Belief in the indefectible holiness of the church does not preclude one from also holding that the church itself, understood as the whole people of God, the congregatio fidelium, is always only more or less faithful to its call to holiness. Especially in the wake of the recent clerical abuse scandal, does it make any sense to continue to hold that one may speak of the sinfulness of individual Christians but not, in any sense, of the sinfulness of the church itself? To insist on this is to overlook the way in which the sins of the church's members are never strictly private failings, but acts and omissions with communal ramifications that can weaken the sacramentality of the church as a sign and instrument of salvation before the world.

Here, it seems to me, Gaillardetz wants Catholic apologists to adopt a posture of humility. But why? In answering this question, it quickly becomes apparent that he confuses (inadvertently, I hope) two things he's asking us to be humble about: truth and holiness. It's one thing to want Catholics to be humble because of the sins of Catholics (a failure of holiness); but it's quite another to want Catholics to be humble because of supposed errors in Church teaching (a failure of truth), which would be a denial of the dogma of ecclesiastical infallibility. Gaillardetz states the matter confusedly. On the one hand, he chides these apologists for "a peculiar kind of Catholic romanticism that speaks easily of the transcendent truth ... of the Catholic Church and its teachings...." What's wrong with this? This would seem to be nothing more than a faithful reiteration of what the Church herself teaches. The problem, Gaillardetz suggests, is that these same apologists fail to acknowledge the Church's "pilgrim status as a human community." What is this supposed to mean? That we members of the Church are human and fallible, that even the most knowledgable of us only "sees through a glass darkly," as St. Paul says (1 Cor. 13:12)? Well, what's new? We all know that. But what how is that supposed to undermine our confidence in the infallible truth of Catholic teaching?

Gaillardetz explains: "Belief in the indefectible holiness of the church does not preclude one from also holding that the church itself ... is always only more or less faithful to its call to holiness." Okay, but here Gaillardetz has switched from the question of the truth of Church teaching (the question of infallibility) to the question of the holiness of those who make up the Church membership (the question of impeccability)--a shift he muddles by conjoining with "holiness" the adjective "indefectalble," which is typically reserved for questions of Catholic belief, not Catholic behavior. The latter, he says, is "always only more or less faithful to [the Church's] call to holiness." Well, of course: but who wasn't aware of that? It didn't take the recent priestly sex scandals to remind us that we are all sinners. But here Gaillardetz also makes a move whose implicit danger seems to escape him. He asks: "Especially in the wake of the recent clerical abuse scandal, does it make any sense to continue to hold that one may speak of the sinfulness of individual Christians but not, in any sense, of the sinfulness of the church itself?" This, of course, may have a plausible ring to it--until we remember that in the Nicene Creed we affirm, as a matter of defined dogma, that the Church is "holy"! So what should one think here?

On the one hand, Catholicism teaches that the Church itself is holy. On the other hand, the recent sex scandals embarrass us with the reminder that even the Church's priests, in some cases, are notorious sinners, if not perverts and--in some cases--child molesters. It's one thing to humbly confess the failings of these Catholic priests, just as we confess our own failings, and Pope (who goes regularly to Confession, like every good Catholic should) his failings. But it's another to ask us to humbly confess that the Church herself is sinful, for this would constitute a denial of the biblical declaration that the Church herself is the spotless Bride of Christ. This is why Catholics, when they go to Sacramental Confession, are not only being reconciled to God, but also to their Church; for just as God is holy, so the Church is holy; and when we sin, we separate ourselves not only from Christ, but from His Body, the Church. This, of course, is a matter of Church teaching, for as the Catechism declares: "The Church is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the soul, as it were, of the Mystical Body, the source of its life, of its unity in diversity, and of the riches of its gifts and charisms." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 809)

But if it's one thing to admit that Catholics are sinners, even if the Church as the Body of Christ transcends the temporal sinfulness of her members, it's yet another thing altogether even to suggest that the Church is fallible in her teaching. And that, I'm afraid, is what Gaillardetz' remarks do, despite, let us hope, his best intentions. It's a very good thing indeed for Gaillardetz to want Catholic apologists to be humble. But humility, as G.K. Chesterton knew, is a funny thing. Chesterton once wrote:

But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.... The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether. (G.K. Chesterton, "The Suicide of Thought," from Orthodoxy)

We may be thankful that Mr. Gaillardetz has written such an article highlighting the work of these Catholic apologists, which, in the first place, is appreciative of their work and aims in many respects. It is heartening to see their work taken seriously in the pages of a magazine like America, as I have said. We may be grateful, in the second place, that Mr. Gaillardetz has written such a provocative article, calling us to review what we understand to be the aim of Catholic apologetics, and warning us against some genuine dangers. These, I sincerely believe, are not to be dismissed lightly. On the other hand, it is to be regretted that Mr. Gaillardetz's article offers so little critical reflection on the ideological positions that animate his own perspective, on the assumptions underlying the historical-critical approach to biblical studies, or even the general tenor of contemporary Catholic revisionism, which bears every indication--as in so much contemporary Catholic biblical scholarship--of thoroughgoing contamination by the legacy of classic Liberal Protestantism and its naturalistic Enlightenment assumptions, as well as by the contemporary fallout of deconstructive postmodernism. This is not surprising, however, as these assumptions have seeped down into the general population in our own time and permeate the outlook of most rank-and-file Catholics, to say nothing of Protestants and non-religious secularists.