by Charles Kluepfel
5/13/. Surprised by "Truth"?
Catholic lay apologists speak
The Catholic Side
Summary
- Surprised by Truth is a book presenting the stories of eleven people who became Catholic, mostly from fundamentalist Protestantism, but one from Judaism. I review that book by summarizing their stories, and showing how their conversion really was not one of truth-seeking, but rather a transfer from one set of false beliefs to another.
While the Catholic friend from my wife's prayer group lent me a book from the non-Catholic side of Christianity, with its inevitable disagreements with Catholic dogma, I have received a new book that is making the rounds of Catholic cable TV shows and other media, called Surprised by Truth, by Patrick Madrid. Its 11 chapters tell the reasons 11 people converted to the Catholic Church. My agnostic friend says that I should seek all the arguments for the church, as I had read voluminous skeptical literature, so I gave this book, touted as the book to make one a Catholic, a whirl. (Although I thought that I had already given the Church a chance, in my earlier years with much heed to approved readings and sermons.) This chapter will thus cover the apologetics of 11 individuals who favor Catholicism. The chapter after this will then focus on other Christians' arguments against Catholicism, pointing out the inconsistencies of Christianity, and the bad and good points of the differing varieties.
It is interesting that the foreword by Scott Hahn states as difficulties for those entering the Catholic Church such things as "career derailment; loss of salary, benefits, pension, and financial security; alienation from family, friends, and colleagues ... hardship, sacrifice and often loneliness." Strangely, the same can afflict those leaving the church because of their intellectual consciences, and in times past, leaving the church has meant burning at the stake, exile from one's homeland, or imprisonment. Consider Giordano Bruno, or the Jews forcibly converted in Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries. Consider also antipathy even today against laws prohibiting employment discrimination against gays.
Madrid's Introduction allows how conversion requires docility and a "willingness to be led to the truth, and for many ... in a direction 'where you do not want to go'(John 21:18-19) [actually verse 18 includes the whole quotation]." The question actually is, does one allow oneself to be led by human authority (the pope, the authors of the Bible, one's parents) and one's hopes for a better world, or by what one sees about one's self, as the psychological truths of people's self-delusion, misunderstanding, blind following of tradition, adaptation of pagan rituals, and myriad other behaviors that detract from the truth. Yes, it would be nice if truth were neatly packaged, but life's experiences do indeed bring us to the unhappy truth of "where we do not want to go."
There follows a parable of a bamboo plant that must yield to its owner so that it may be hewn to serve as a channel for water to serve mankind. The author asks the same blind trust in those who would hew the human spirit into a conduit for what is known as Christianity, but which is actually a blend of various paganisms and Judaism: the Christmas tree from tree worshippers; the very date of Christmas from the pagan solstice rites to Mithra; the ten commandments, but not the Kosher laws or the other holy days; the pagan day to worship the Sun being treated as if it were the Jewish Sabados; a complete misunderstanding of what the Jews' prophets meant by a Messiah (Christ).
I will warn the reader that the eleven stories may get quite repetitious, as I summarize them here, with my answers. The original 270-page book is even slower going. You may wish to skip ahead to the section on Tim Staples ("The Bible Made Me Do It"); it covers the most philosophically cogent chapter of Surprised by Truth. And be sure to include the Chapter PostScript at the end of the current chapter; it covers the supposed avoidance of circular reasoning, alluded to by Staples. If you are interested in emotional factors then by all means read all the sections. Other unique chapters in Surprised by Truth, and therefore unique sections of this, my, chapter, are the only woman, Julie Swenson, and the only convert to Catholicism from Judaism rather than from Protestant fundamentalism, Rick Conason.
The Image of the Crucifix - Paul Thigpen
First up among the 11 is Paul Thigpen, who traces his roots from a Southern Presbyterian church, whose family had rejected crucifixes as being "just for Catholics." He went through an atheist phase, in which he was also attracted to parapsychology. Here is a first indication of Thigpen's credulity: he attributed what he thought were established forces as "unexamined natural powers of the human mind" rather than the chimeras that they are. He heard voices telling him of others' thoughts and experimented with "seances, levitation and other occult practices."
When race riots in his school confounded his Aquarian hopes of a better age, his despondency led this non-swimmer to nearly drown himself in a river. He was saved by his friends, and what others would attribute to mental instability, his Christian English teacher convinced him was the action of the Devil. He went to the Bible to find a "multi-tiered model of the universe" rather than to psychology books to discover what the workings of the human mind can do, perhaps unable to distinguish scientific psychology from pseudoscientific parapsychology. He "came to believe in the Devil before [he] believed in God." But how did he eventually imagine that an all-good, omniscient, omnipotent God would create such a flawed and evil creature as the Devil? He has apparently failed to research the origin of the Devil in earlier religions in which good and bad Gods battled it out - the bad gods, or the gods of other nations than Israel, became devils.
He goes on to discover the wisdom the bible attributes to Jesus, not recognizing the eclectic nature of the New Testament's teachings, built upon spiritual ideas of mystery religions, combined with the wisdom of contemporary rabbis, and other thinkers.
Thigpen, not one to follow the Bible's injunction not to test the Lord (Deu 6:16 - Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah)., tried some experimental prayer. His prayers, unlike those of many others, were answered. (Hey, you never know!) By the way, to those who say that God knows better than the person who prays what is good for that person, and that is why some prayers may seem not to be answered, one can say Why bother with petitionary prayer? Since God knows best, why not leave it to God, since he will do what he deems best anyway?
A "Campus Crusade for Christ" gave meaning to his life and Thigpen was overcome with a spiritual awakening, and he placed it into the only context available to him as one who has grown up in a Christian milieu, a Biblical context, of Pentecost and "Holy Spirit baptism." It left him with a feeling that reason should be a servant rather than the god it had "masqueraded" as previously in his life - somewhat in contradiction to Madrid's aforementioned exhortation to have a "willingness to be led to the truth, and for many ... in a direction 'where you do not want to go'." The apparent distinction that these men make (ten of the eleven cases given are of men, as are the authors of the foreword and the introduction; only one woman is represented) is that they wish to be led by people rather than by reason. Unfortunately people have their own agendas and misperceptions. Also, our emotional ties to people interfere with the search for truth. As Thigpen's family followed him into Catholicism, other families have followed others into different beliefs; all these families can't be right, and some have been following misguided leaders. While logic can be misapplied, at least one can test it and refine it in one's self, and apply it with a cool disinterest. In what way can reason even be your servant if you do not allow it (given some unquestioned assumptions) to determine your beliefs?
Thigpen continues his narrative, describing great works of art: the Gregorian chant, Schubert's "Ave Maria," the great cathedrals of Europe, St. Augustine's Confessions, ... . In fact the sanctuaries of Catholic churches made him feel an attraction, in the form of the crucifix. He says he rebelled from such attraction, but perhaps his rebellion was from his family's injunctions against such things "just for Catholics," aided by what he sees as his own suffering in life, as everyone has suffering, that drew him to the Catholic Church.
One does not know how to argue against Thigpen's claim that "to be human is to have a body and emotions as well as an intellect: that God's grace can be communicated through physical and emotional healing, and that worship involves not just minds, but feelings, physical postures, and pageantry as well. As a charismatic [he] even discovered that God could work powerfully through the spoken prayer, the anointing oil, the laying on of hands, the prayer cloth...," other than to say that people have found such affirmation in all sorts of varied traditions. One man's meat is another man's poison, and this is no compelling argument for one brand of religion. Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims all find their feelings and emotions touched by their respective heritages. In times past, peoples have found spiritual uplift in actions as far removed from the present Christian tradition as connection with temple prostitutes, and the ingestion of peyote. In the proper eclectic spirit, we could combine these with Christian popular music and get a religion of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Who could argue against that? Remember, don't let reason sway you; you are the boss over it.
But Thigpen was still not a Catholic. He says "God knew what I needed. So he put me in a Ph.D. program in historical theology" which would give him "maps" to where he should journey spiritually. He starts with St. Augustine, that famous "saint" who abandoned his wife to pursue the proper theology.
Thigpen goes on to put aside his old "Protestant misconceptions" of Catholicism. He now realizes that the pope is "not held to be infallible in every casual statement he makes," but fails to note that treatises have been written about how to tell whether a given pronouncement is or is not ex cathedra and therefore infallible, and still Catholics do not have a definitive way of knowing. Also unexplained is how any doctrine of infallibility can be jump-started, as it depends on assuming the Church council declaration of the pope's infallibility was itself infallible; but how can one know that?
Thigpen admits of all the iniquities that have taken place at the hands of Catholics, and Christians generally, and attributes that to human failure, and the need for grace. He quotes "Romans 3:23, 'All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.'" But this of course in no way demonstrates that Catholicism or Christianity is true.
He also claims that features that Protestantism removed have been replaced, of necessity, in the modern world. As an example he notes that the confessional has been replaced by "the psychoanalyst's couch, with none of the safeguards of the confessional." But what about present-day exorcisms which leave the patient in the same confused state in which she started, without adequate treatment for mental illnesses caused by chemical imbalances in the brain? What about priests who take sexual advantage of confused parishioners seeking help? To become a psychotherapist it is not a requirement that one have serious sexual hang-ups of one's own; to become a priest, one must have a different sexuality to say the least - or at least a hiding of one's normal sexuality. And where is there any possibility of seeing the individual's problems from a feminine perspective, as a woman with personal problems might find necessary? In addition, consultation with a therapist implies no guilt on the part of the person with problems. The very act of going to a confessional, or seeking "reconciliation" implies that the seeker has been doing something wrong or has placed himself beyond the pale of accepted behavior.
Of course, as I point out two chapters from now, "Defending the Church," the Protestant denominations do in fact owe much to the Catholic Church from which they sprang. I specifically note the Sunday "sabbath". I do not believe in any Christian church, as you obviously can tell, and squabbling is made possible by the ambiguities and contradictions in the Bible, such as on the topic of Faith vs. Good Works, also covered two chapters from now. In his embrace of the Catholic faith, of which he is particularly attracted to the crucifix, Thigpen also seems to ignore (as he had previously ignored the injunction against testing the Lord) the biblical injunction
Exo 20:4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Lev 19:4 Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourselves: I am the LORD your God.
Deu 5:8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
The prohibition seems to be absolute, and not depend on the positive or negative nature of the subject of the idol. And this is one of the Ten Commandments, not the 603 others that Christians claim have been superseded by the New Testament. Judaism holds that there are 613 commandments in their Bible, the Christian's Old Testament. How Christianity boiled the 613 down to 10 must be by some application of reasoning, though Thigpen disallows reason from being his "god." If we were to take reiteration in the New Testament as a criterion (the choice of which strategy would also involve reason of some sort), we would be reduced to six:
Mat 19:17 And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments."
Mat 19:18 He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, "You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness;
Mat 19:19 Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Here Jesus not only disclaims being the one who is good, but also reduces the commandments to six, including "love your neighbor as yourself," not found in the original ten, thus reducing to five the number from the Old Testament's ten.
Finally, in Thigpen's life story, he gives up "some important business relationships with colleagues in the evangelical publishing world who thought [he]'d been 'deceived.' [He] gave up [his] pastoral ordination and [his] association with a ministry network on whose board of governors [he] was serving," to become a Catholic. He also had difficulty getting his wife to accept his choice. But can you imagine how much harder it would have been in this regard, that is other people's seeing the result, if he had decided not to be a Christian any more? ... how much more emotionally difficult that must be? ... and yet people such as myself have done it despite the difficulties. On a larger stage, can you imagine the American public becoming understanding enough to elect an avowed atheist or agnostic president? ... or even one who doesn't attend church? ... or even a member of a Unitarian congregation that does not believe in prayer? We had this kind of president early in our national career, but religiosity has grown (as well as populism) to such a point that I don't think the Christians of this nation are going to be so tolerant.
What Is Truth? Authority! - Marcus Grodi
Similar to my spiritual awakening about age seventeen to twenty-two, Grodi, like myself, experienced what he calls a "radical re-conversion to Jesus Christ" at age twenty. He went on to give up his engineering studies and became a Protestant minister. He found, however, that he was "faced with a host of confusing theological and administrative questions. There were exegetical dilemmas over how to correctly interpret difficult biblical passages and also liturgical decisions that could easily divide a congregation." Of course, we can see that it is biblical contradictions that lead to the difficult biblical passages, as we have seen in other chapter, but Grodi sees the confusion spreading from Protestantism's break with Rome. In two chapters from now will point out some areas where that was justified in the Christian context, again remembering that anything can be proven from a contradiction.
Grodi had trouble with the Protestant notion of individual private interpretation of the Bible in the light of
Prov 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.
Prov 3:6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Of course those who stay Protestant say that they are trusting in the Lord by reading and interpreting the Bible themselves. Grodi acknowledges this, and also points out the "thousands of different paths of doctrine down which Protestants feel the Lord is directing them to travel. And these doctrines vary wildly according to denomination" - facts which I also point out two chapters from now, where we shall also see that the Catholic version cannot be the correct one in all cases any more than any one of the other Christian sects'.
Of course Grodi's reliance on Proverbs 3:5-6, or on the Gospels' explanation of what it means to be a true disciple depend on believing the Bible to begin with. That is a topic Grodi does not discuss. He takes on faith (that is, blind trust) that
Mat 19:16 Then someone came to him and said, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?"
Mat 19:17 And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments."
Mat 19:18 He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, "You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness;
Mat 19:19 Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Mat 19:20 The young man said to him, "I have kept all these; what do I still lack?"
Mat 19:21 Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
Mat 19:22 When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Mat 19:23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.
We are back to Jesus's six commandments, plus the extra perfecting one. But how many today will indeed give all their possessions for the poor. Even ordinary parish priests have cars and summer homes. The pope lives in luxury. And those television and radio ministers ? ...
Grodi himself points out how this necessity of giving all to the poor conflicts with
Rom 10:9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Rom 10:10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.
Rom 10:11 The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame."
Rather than allow that this contradiction (Faith vs. Good Works) makes proper interpretation of the Bible impossible, Grodi makes the claim that true interpretation lies with the Catholic Church.
But I am getting ahead of Grodi's story. In pondering his dissatisfactions in the ministry and wondering what to do, considering various alternatives, such as leaving the ministry, Grodi "considers the sparrows" in the simplicity of their life, when one of them "poops" on his head. Not believing in accidents, he interprets this as a sign from God that all the alternatives he was considering were wrong. I wonder what he makes of the tower at Siloam:
Luke 13:4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?
Luke 13:5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
So the accident at Siloam was indeed an accident and not a sign. Likewise, I don't think anyone would consider the earthquake in Lisbon's killing the worshipers at its cathedral any sort of sign. There are accidents. Looking for signs is the easy way out, like tossing a coin.
Mat 12:39 But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
The liberalism of Protestantism then strikes him on the head figuratively:
One day I found myself standing before the local presbytery as spokesman for a group of pastors and laymen who were defending the idea that when we use parental language for God in communal prayer, we should call him "Father", not "mother" or "parent." I defended this position by appealing to Scripture and Christian tradition. To my dismay I realized that the faction I represented was in the minority and that we were fighting a losing battle. This issue would be settled not by a well-reasoned appeal to Scripture or Church history, but by a vote - the majority of the voters being pro-gender-neutral-language liberals. It was at this meeting that I first recognized the anarchistic principle that lies at the center of Protestantism.
But what about the gender-neutral language used in many Roman Catholic churches today, not just the liberal Jesuit Church of Francis Xavier in Manhattan, but varied Catholic parishes in cities and suburbs across America? What does Grodi make of "cafeteria" Catholics? My wife tells me not to worry about the Catholic Church's effect on our daughter, because the new Catholic Church is not like the old one. It's full of freedom and love. Then, is Grodi being brought in under false pretenses? The more the Catholic Church changes with the times, the less it is being the Catholic Church, or true to the ideals of a "Christ" of 2000 years ago. It is being a follower rather than a leader
Grodi was upset that the Presbyterians "had bowed under the pressure from radical feminist, homosexual, pro-abortion, and other extremist pressure groups," and "imposed stringent liberal guidelines on the hiring process for new pastors." He wanted to form his "own 'perfect' church." Fellow Presbyterians objected that he was committed to the church, and can't leave, which only led Grodi to analogize to the Protestants leaving Catholicism - it was their leaving that led to fragmentation.
Grodi takes up a Ph.D. program in molecular biology, to gain credibility in discussing issues of life and death, and becomes unnerved at the scientific manipulation of DNA from human cadavers, and writes an essay on the ethical problems of fetal tissue transplantation.
He then discovers the "real" reason God had placed him into this academic program that required him to commute into Cleveland. It was so that he would see a notice in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that "Catholic theologian, Scott Hahn, [was] to speak at [a] local Catholic parish this Sunday afternoon." It turns out it's the same Scott Hahn he knew back in theological seminary who was staunchly Calvinist anti-Catholic. The same Scott Hahn who writes the foreword of the subject book. Grodi attends, but, not yet having seen the light, is dismayed at his colleague's turncoat behavior.
At first, Grodi is wary that "The Catholics got to him with their clever arguments," but later marvels how Hahn, "using Scripture at each step to support Catholic teaching on the Mass and the Eucharist," caused Grodi to find himself "mesmerized by what [he] heard." As mentioned elsewhere the Scriptures can be made to prove anything. That is the richness of their ambiguity.
Grodi was convinced, after reading Catholicism and Fundamentalism, and the writings of the early Church fathers. He was impressed by the "depth, an historical strength, a philosophical consistency to the Catholic positions we [Grodi and his wife] encountered." (Maybe he didn't read about the bloody papal elections where the dead bodies had to be dragged out.) He cites biblical injunctions not to allow dissension come between believing Christians. But that of course depends on faith in the Bible, to begin with. Grodi repeats his need for what the Church provides: "to teach with infallible certitude." We have noted above how difficult it is for the Catholic to pin down what teachings fall within that category. Among the Catholics, one can argue not only over the theological points, but also whether the pope's pronouncements on a subject are ex cathedra and thereby infallible, or are not.
Grodi quotes Clement of Rome's Epistle to the Corinthians:
The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God's will. Receiving their instructions and being full of confidence on account of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the Word of God, they went forth in the complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the Good News that the kingdom of God is coming. Through countryside and city they preached; and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the spirit to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty: for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. Indeed Scripture somewhere says: "I will set up their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith"
Yes, I imagine there were priests, deacons, and bishops even in pagan times, and these offices were emulated by the Christians. It is doubtful the evangelists actually knew Jesus, but wrote from word of mouth, stories from decades before. At this time also, priestly celibacy was not a notion in the air at all.
Then, an exhortation (Against Heresies) from Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, who had a major part in setting up the Canon of the Bible:
When, therefore, we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek among others the truth which is easily obtained from the Church. For the apostles, like a rich man in a bank, deposited with her most copiously everything which pertains to the truth; and everyone whosoever wishes draws from her the drink of life. For he is the entrance to life, while all the rest are thieves and robbers. That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them, while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth. What then? If there should be a dispute over some kind of question, ought we not have recourse to the most ancient churches in which the apostles were familiar, and draw from them what is clear and certain in regard to that question? What if the apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those whom they entrusted the Churches?
Of course it was only in the last decade that the Catholic Church admitted it was wrong in the case of Galileo. So much for "everything which pertains to the truth." Those who would say that this is irrelevant as planetary motion was outside the domain of authority of the church neglect the fact that the infallible church claimed to have purview in this area.
Grodi is won over by the argument from authority, which he attributes to the Catholic Church. He ignores the forged documents that purported the allegiance of the other early bishops to the bishop of Rome, and the anti-Popes, and Popes at Avignon. The Orthodox Church has a long and authoritative history; what about that church?
After an eight-month wait for a church annulment of Grodi's wife's first brief marriage, they became Catholic. He continues in a description of how John Henry Newman's writing that "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant," was an important reason for him to abandon Protestantism and embrace Catholicism, bypassing the Orthodox Church. Of course, an alternative is that Christianity itself is fatally flawed, as I say again, the product of a 2000-year game of telephone, after an initial tradition held verbally for decades before being written down, by believers steeped in several Hellenistic and Hebraic traditions, including paganism and mystery cults.
An ironic twist would be the inevitable future shift that will bring the Catholic positions on homosexuality, birth control, women's rights, divorce, and other issues closer to those currently espoused by the liberal Protestantism which Grodi left. Watching the changes in the Catholic church is like watching an hour hand move - and yet it moves, guided from below.
More Bible-Based Testimony - Triumph and Tragedy, by James Akin
Akin starts out in a Church of Christ family, actually raised outside of any religion, but at age thirteen or fourteen starts reading the apocalyptic "end times" scenarios in the Bible. This frightened him and drove him into the New Age movement, attracting him with a disbelief in hell, with reincarnation providing an attractive sense of adventure. We thus see that his beliefs seem to be dominated by what he wants to believe rather than what evidence presents itself.
He does not say why he broke with the New Agers, but eventually he found a preacher who did not remind him of the Christianity he apparently had an aversion to, and then drifted into the Presbyterian Church in America, and wished to become a minister. Before progressing too far in this direction, he met his future wife, who was a Catholic and held "many New Age beliefs." She was also "plagued by health problems." His wish to be a minister would be thwarted if he married a Catholic, so after having given her a Christian book on reincarnation, ridding her of her New Age ideas, he decided to give her a Christian book on the evils of the Vatican. She became an Anglican long enough for him to marry her, but reverted to her Catholicism once they "were married and the pressure of losing [Akin] was off."
Then follows the by-now-familiar scenario: his Bible reading shows that the Catholic Church is right: "the apostles have the power to bind and loose (Matt. 16:18 and 18:18) and ... the power to forgive sins (John 20:21-23)." Again, here we are dependent on trusting the Bible ab initio, the Bible that was assembled by early Church leaders, selected from a variety of literature from the Christian and what we would now call semi-Christian sources. Of course if other orthodoxies had taken hold, those would have been the Christian sources, and what we have now could very well have been the rejected semi-Christian ones.
The essay continues by pointing out that on several major issues, such as confession, transubstantiation and baptism, the Catholic Church takes the Bible at face value more than does Protestantism. He could have added divorce and remarriage. Also the Catholic Church is not as liberal (not as anti-Biblical) on homosexuality or women priests (For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. - 1 Cor 14:35) as the more liberal Protestant denominations. But how does Akin accept the defined Catholic tradition of Mary's perpetual virginity. That violates the plain meaning of the Bible's descriptions of Jesus's brothers and sisters. Here certainly the Catholic Church disagrees with the face value of the text:
Mat 13:54 He came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?
Mat 13:55 Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
Mat 13:56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?"
Mat 13:57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house."
Mat 13:58 And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.
The above biblical passage also does not say much for Jesus's omnipotence as God, depending on belief in order to do deeds of power.
Akin correctly points out to Protestants that the very Canon of the Bible (the selection of books to be included) was the work of the Catholic Church (obviously before the Reformation, or even the Great Schism). For Akin, this means he recognizes the Church as having made an infallible decision at the time of the formation of the Canon. He backs this up also with an exposition of the Peter/Rock theme, rebutting Protestant observations that contrast the little Rock of Peter with the big Rock of Revelation. I of course see things a different way. The books supporting the Church's position were put into the Bible by the Church, much as today's "health food" sellers put pamphlets into their stores touting the latest panaceas that they sell. The Church's biblical Canon doesn't make either the Church or the Bible correct.
It makes a touching, emotional scene that Akin is converted to his wife's Catholicism at her death bed, but this also does not make for intellectual truth.
The Prodigal - Steve Wood
Wood starts off as a counter-culture "berserker" who formed the wildest part of his college fraternity. In the Navy during the Viet Nam war, under the guidance of a guru, he seeks to ferret out his Christian heritage with Bible in hand. Through unexplained inner feelings he becomes a new person; his shipmates think he is high on drugs; actually he is high on Jesus. He spends a stint at Costa Mesa, California's interdenominational Calvary Chapel. It was "exciting ... experiencing explosive growth as it evangelized the counter-culture in non-threatening ways." The Christian foot is in the door.
Wood has differences with the chapel's pastor, and decides to return to Florida "to begin sharing the Jesus Movement there." It is here that Wood states an important fact about "non-denominational" churches:
Calvary Chapel prides itself in being "non-denominational" and in its avoidance of the restrictions of a written creed. Yet I learned that non-denominational churches can be far more rigid and denominational than the mainline creed-oriented churches. I now call non-denominational churches "non-denominational denominations." The unwritten creed in non-denominational churches is whatever the pastor happens to believe. Woe to the member who crosses the line and disagree [sic] with the pastor.
In my following chapter "Defending the Church" I will note one such congregation, whose members preach in New York's Times Square. They claim to be only Christians, yet have a distinctive set of beliefs. There, I refer to them by the name Times Square Christians, as they do not give themselves a denominational name other than Christian.
When a Church to which Wood belongs undergoes a "split," he begins to have a desire for church stability and unity "planted like a seed in [his] heart." While I am sure the Catholic Church is more stable than some Protestant denominations, there are certainly dissensions within the Church, and in fact, for one, the Catholic Traditionalist movement, marked by the continued celebration of the Latin mass, has operated in defiance of Church authority, while claiming to be in the true Catholic tradition.
Wood agonizes over whether to baptize his newborn infant in the light of controversy over whether infant baptism is the right thing to do. From an outsider's point of view this seems like arguing over the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
Like the others, Wood studies the Bible and finds many corroborations of Catholic doctrine. Unlike Akins, who says that "the 'faith alone' formula is not an adequate description of what the Bible teaches about salvation," Wood claims that it is indeed true that "the Bible is clear that salvation is by grace, not by works," but that the Catholic Church does not teach the necessity of works. Here we see two contradictory ways of getting around a discrepancy that Protestants see between Catholicism and the Bible.
Later, Wood gets involved with Operation Rescue, the group that blocks access to abortion clinics. There he gets to know Catholics, partly from sharing jail cells with them, as devoted Christians, with "exceptional Christian piety."
He goes on to decry the sexual revolution and the pill, claiming the latter is in fact an abortifacient, preventing implantation of a fertilized egg. When I was a Catholic, I too had this mystical idea of a fertilized egg being a person. Now I see that this is ridiculous. There are not even brain waves, not even a brain in fact, let alone thoughts, at this single-cell stage. And that, after all, is what defines a person - consciousness, thought, mind.
Just before his conversion to Catholicism, Wood has compunctions about administering the Lord's Supper to his congregation. He knows that the Bible quotes Jesus as specifically forbidding divorce and remarriage and he feels that serving communion to the divorced and remarried would be sacrilegious. Of course, once he becomes a Catholic, I am sure he recognizes the Catholic dogma that those communion wafers handed out in Protestant churches are not valid anyway; they are just bread, so he needn't have worried.
A salient point comes up when he describes how he would be out of a job and unemployable as a Protestant minister if he converted to Catholicism, but he converts anyway. The salience from a larger perspective is this: Christian ministers and priests of all persuasions are stuck in their beliefs by their positions. Can you imagine what it would be like to give up Christianity altogether when one is a priest or minister? This must prevent many conversions away from Christianity, even if only subconsciously preventing a free flow of thought in the individual. I am sure journeys away from Christianity would be more prevalent among clergy, who have access to more biblical and historical scholarship, were it not for the vocational dependence on the religion that provides a job.
Wood has another insight: "Protestants are blind to the fact that divorce and remarriage is unlawful because Protestantism itself is an unlawful divorce from the Church. ... problems within the Church, like problems within a marriage, do not merit a divorce." What would Wood say to a woman who is beaten regularly by an alcoholic husband who shows no sign of reforming? ... Tell her, Go back and take it like a woman?
When Wood becomes a Catholic he is lucky enough, because of his Operation Rescue efforts, to gain an audience with the pope, who blessed some rosaries (which are beads for counting prayers - ten Hail Marys followed by an Our Father, repeated five times) for his family. This Bible studier has seemed to have forgotten
Mat 6:7 "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.
The rosary beads must be about as efficacious as a Tibetan prayer wheel, spun thoughtlessly about.
Catching Our Breath
The four essays reviewed thus far all were written from a Protestant perspective, and attempt to justify belief in Catholicism based on biblical criteria. As such, they actually are not an argument for Catholicism, but rather, each is a reductio ad absurdum or argument from contradiction proof that Protestantism is wrong. Argument from contradiction consists of assuming as true what you wish to prove false, apply logic, and come up with a contradiction. This thereby disproves the assumption. In the cases presented, the assumption is that Protestantism is true; the line of reasoning then goes, that the Bible is to be trusted; the Bible supports Catholicism; Catholicism is true; therefore Protestantism is false. Thus assuming Protestantism to be true results in proving it to be false. The line of reasoning does not establish Catholicism as true, since it started with an assumption of Protestantism being true to lead to that conclusion. It is the fact that the assumption of Protestantism's truth that leads to its own disproof that is fatal to the Protestant position, if one accepts the authors' lines of reasoning at all.
Hopefully, the tenor of the remaining chapters will provide some novel arguments. Let's see.
Continuing On Our Quest for Truth
Another Born-Again Becomes Catholic - Bob Sungenis
Well, no such luck. The fifth story, "From Controversy to Consolation," by Bob Sungenis, tells us of his conversion from Born-Again Protestantism to Catholicism, also with the help of the seemingly omnipresent Scott Hahn. Sungenis started out as a lackadaisical Catholic, but discovered the Bible and Jesus "for reasons [he] didn't then understand." He studied the Bible and imagined "Only an extraordinary person could think up such astounding answers like these ["Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."] on the spur of the moment." Spur of the Moment!?! These lines were written down at least half a century after Jesus's death, after an equivalent amount of time of percolation of Christian ideas, with Greek thought, and Rabbinical Judaic thought, as well as Jewish tradition. Sungenis imagines that there was a secretary taking dictation at Jesus's side, or paparazzi hanging on Jesus's every word, collecting sound bites. Our born-again Catholic needs at least as much skepticism as is shown by the (Catholic) Jesus Seminar.
Sungenis continues:
But it was the love and compassion of Jesus that finally pierced my heart. I was moved as I read of the love he showed others, even as he was dying. I saw that he cared for others more than he cared for himself. Though before I thought that such altruistic relationships existed only in fairy tales, I knew in my heart that the Jesus of the Bible was no fairy tale. I began to see that Jesus was a real person, and that if I accepted his lordship over my life I would have to change my life and live for him, not for myself. This knowledge both frightened and exhilarated me.
Ordinarily one would think that finding qualities in a character in a book that are found only in fairy tales would lead one to believe that the book was in fact a fairy tale. Admittedly, however, contrary to Mr. Sungenis's previous notions, we can imagine that there are indeed people who put others' needs before their own, but Sungenis's "knowing in his heart" sounds much too much like wishing in his heart.
I had thought this book was going to provide evidence, to convince even a skeptical atheist. No luck so far. Looking ahead I see a chapter titled "Oy!" so at least we hope we will get a previously-non-Christian angle, but let's see what else there is before that.
Meanwhile, back in the story, Sungenis continues by describing how Protestants lured him away from the Catholicism of his birth with their false arguments. These "false arguments" kept him in opposition to the Catholic Church for 17 years, so Sungenis is apparently not good at detecting the falsity of arguments. Sungenis complains of the "sorry legacy of division left behind by the Protestant Reformers." He wanders from denomination to denomination "due to disagreements in doctrine." As I mention elsewhere, this is inevitable, as the Bible has contradictory statements, and different groups latch on to different pieces. Sungenis had a stint at Family Radio, but left over disagreement with that network's "erroneous and sometimes downright bizarre" interpretations of scriptures.
He finds Presbyterianism a fragmented microcosm of fragmented Christianity:
Everyone had his own agenda and a litany of Bible verses to back up his views.
Amen! See above. The Bible can prove anything, and at this point in Sungenis's life he wants it to prove Catholicism to be true, as its outstanding uniqueness contrasts to Protestantism's splintering, though Catholicism is in fact just another one of the many Christian sects.
We are also told, amazingly enough, that Brigitte, his wife, changed denominations with her husband many times, though not blindly. She coincidentally was misguided in the same directions by all the false arguments of the various sects, at the same time as her husband. Or, in Sungenis's words, she "examined the issues for herself, listening carefully to both sides of the story before she made up her mind." But she always made up her mind the same way Bob did, even the "especially difficult step" of becoming a Catholic. Fortunately for their fourth son, Augustine Joseph, they discovered Catholicism just in time to avoid their first use of birth control, which they were contemplating at the time.
Sungenis then goes through the familiar bootstrap of the Bible to Catholicism as the only authority capable of explaining it. The temporal permanence of the Church is attributed to its truth rather than its good fortune in getting Roman Imperial support and its political intrigues.
Of course in order to use the Bible to support belief in the Catholic Church, Sungenis must interpret what he reads there himself. He counters Protestant notions that the Church that Jesus supports is a spiritual, invisible church by quoting Matthew 5:14
Mat 5:14 "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
interpreting it as referring to the Church not in a figurative way, as all Christians setting a good example, but rather as the concrete notion of a given Church.
Besides the tendentious interpretation of the Bible, of course Sungenis depends on faith in the Bible to begin with. Then, in a description of how the Catholic Church's authority was required to form the Canon of the Bible, Sungenis includes an amazing paragraph:
In seminary we were taught a variation on the "fallible canon" theory. The Bible was said to be "self-authenticating," in other words, the Bible, by its very nature, simply compelled one to accept its books as inspired. That may be a comforting thought for Protestants, but it is no different from the Mormon's claim that he just knows the Book of Mormon is the inspired word of God, because the Book of Mormon feels true to him. This is hardly a reliable way of ascertaining which books belong in the Bible. And don't forget, there are a number of books in the Bible, such as Philemon, 3 John, and others, that don't jump out at the reader as being particularly inspired (read them sometime, and see what you think).
He admits that the Bible is not in itself compelling to belief. It is to be believed because the Catholic Church says it is to be believed, each of its books having been "canonized" by the Catholic Church in the councils of Hippo and Carthage. But this is after we have been told that the Catholic Church is seen as true on the basis that the Bible says so. This is what is known in logic as circular reasoning.
Sungenis reiterates the ambiguous (or actually contradictory) nature of the scriptures:
Each denomination has its particular set of verses that it emphasizes, and these form the base from which it interprets the rest of Scripture. The problem is that each denomination emphasizes a different set of Scriptures, and holds to its own peculiar interpretation of that set. Catholic exegesis interprets Scripture according to the living Tradition of the Church, often called the "analogy of faith" by the early Church Fathers.
I'm sure the Lutherans can find a term for their interpretations, and the Calvinists, etc.
This is one more fusillade of anti-Protestantism, in a book that joins in a war against the anti-Catholic Protestants.
The Sole Woman - Julie Swenson
Only the sex of the author of "This I Seek: to Dwell in the House of the Lord" differ from the preceding authors. She is a formerly vehement anti-Catholic Protestant who has turned around and embraced Catholicism. Nothing much new is added.
There is an interesting quotation from Peter Kreeft, saying that "No one reads the Bible as an extraterrestrial or as an angel; our church community provides the colored glasses through which we read, the framework or horizon, or limits within which we understand." We should always be careful when we use words like "no one." The problem is that if one looks at the bible with uncolored glasses, one is accused of using glasses that are colored by skepticism, atheism, or free thought; but heck, free thought is just what is meant by uncolored glasses - thought that is unconstrained by preconceived notions. Isaac Asimov wrote an excellent Guide to the Bible and still manages to be sensitive to the believer. Robin Lane Fox's The Unauthorized Version also takes a disinterested view, as does Randel Helms's Gospel Fictions.
As did others in the group, Swenson did not choose her new faith alone, but traveled with her family. Like the accident of birth, the accident of marital attachment seems to tie people to a belief, whether that belief be right or wrong. This is one of the arguments against the validity of various beliefs. They are held not because of intellectual conviction, but due to accidents of birth, or attachments to other fallible humans. Swenson in fact is "grateful to God for all the good teaching [she] received [in her Protestant upbringing]; the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the reality of heaven and hell and sin, the virgin birth, salvation by grace alone, and [her] personal need for Christ as [her] savior." This so much as admits that judged objectively, an outsider is not going to come to believe in Christianity as an adult. (We'll see what their next chapter "Oy!" has to say.)
Swenson again repeats the whole litany of how the Bible forced her to become a Catholic, punctuated in this case by a miscarriage and major surgery. The music of Catholic John Michael Talbot "calmed and refreshed" her, and served as inspiration on her road to Rome. Attendance at High Church Anglican services takes her and her brother along the doctrinal road.
She reads St. Paul to endorse the celibacy of the priesthood, and consecrated virginity in monastic life. Readings of the early Christians believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist confirms in her the feeling that they should go all the way to Catholicism, rather than stay in the Anglican Church.
She becomes incensed at the "deceptions [that] were knowingly perpetrated by 'professional' anti-Catholic Protestants: most ex-Catholics, and some even ex-priests."
Oy! - A Jew At Last - Rick Conason
Yes, that's the title of Rick Conason's chapter in Surprised by Truth, "Oy!"
Conason was born into a politically liberal Jewish family. His paternal grandfather had been a member of the Communist Party for a short time, but a time which "validated" his atheism, although he remained a cultural Jew.
In the family, they "never prayed or read the Torah," nor did they observe the Sabbath, or the holy days except for a secular, cultural version of Passover, although Conason himself was sent to Hebrew School. He went at first to an Orthodox yeshiva, but then switched to a Reform (liberal) one, at which time he was shocked by what seemed "cynical and empty" in Reform Judaism, compared to the "vibrant piety of the Orthodox Judaism." He regrets that he had never been Bar-Mitzvahed.
Upon the family's moving to the suburbs, Conason became a "lonely, confused teenager, ... [increasingly] timid, insecure, gullible, and overweight," taking "refuge in books." His teenage rebellion took the form of being more conservative than his liberal family. He supported the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon, and investigated attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. But the "discovery of the pleasures to be had in sex, drugs, and rock and roll" switched him from his novel right-wing inclinations, led him to get a girlfriend, and let him join his "peers at the wallowing hole of drugs and immorality." He "embraced [his] heritage as a progressive, liberal New York Jew."
In college, encountering "Jesus Freaks," Conason's "cynical nature loved to try to sow in their minds doubt about their Christian beliefs. Since [he] had been 'wised-up' to religion by [his] parents and grandparents, [he] had a fun time wising-up these brainwashed followers of Jesus" until he met Tom, a religion major and born-again Christian, who won his debates against Conason with "answers to atheistic arguments, and ... points [Conason] could not seem to refute." He was particularly pulled in by prophesies of the Second Coming of Christ, and Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. Rick (Conason) and Tom spend hours on end discussing religion.
One evening Conason, worrying about "What if there is a Messiah? And what if Jesus really is the Messiah. And what if he really is coming again soon to judge the world - me [Conason] included," he hears a voice in is mind say "Zechariah 14," which insisted that he look it up at that moment. Fortunately Tom accidentally forgot to take his Bible with him, giving otherwise bibleless Conason a chance to look it up. Conason quotes part of the chapter; here is the whole thing (NRSV):
Zec 14:1 See, a day is coming for the LORD, when the plunder taken from you will be divided in your midst.
Zec 14:2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses looted and the women raped; half the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
Zec 14:3 Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle.
Zec 14:4 On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley; so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward, and the other half southward.
Zec 14:5 And you shall flee by the valley of the Lord's mountain, for the valley between the mountains shall reach to Azal; and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.
Zec 14:6 On that day there shall not be either cold or frost.
Zec 14:7 And there shall be continuous day (it is known to the LORD), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light.
Zec 14:8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter.
Zec 14:9 And the LORD will become king over all the earth; on that day the LORD will be one and his name one.
Zec 14:10 The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem shall remain aloft on its site from the Gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king's wine presses.
Zec 14:11 And it shall be inhabited, for never again shall it be doomed to destruction; Jerusalem shall abide in security.
Zec 14:12 This shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths.
Zec 14:13 On that day a great panic from the LORD shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of a neighbor, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other;
Zec 14:14 even Judah will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected--gold, silver, and garments in great abundance.
Zec 14:15 And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever animals may be in those camps.
Zec 14:16 Then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the festival of booths.
Zec 14:17 If any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain upon them.
Zec 14:18 And if the family of Egypt do not go up and present themselves, then on them shall come the plague that the LORD inflicts on the nations that do not go up to keep the festival of booths.
Zec 14:19 Such shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to keep the festival of booths.
Zec 14:20 On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, "Holy to the LORD." And the cooking pots in the house of the LORD shall be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar;
Zec 14:21 and every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the LORD of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and use them to boil the flesh of the sacrifice. And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day.
(I don't know many Christians who "keep the festival of booths" (verse 19).)
Conason finds this apocalyptic chapter mind-blowing, but he prays to be allowed to fall asleep and he does. I don't see what is so mind-blowing, or how one can make sense of either this or the book of Revelation that Conason also acclaims. So far we have been merely told that Tom has won his debates with Rick, but have been given no chance to judge for ourselves, and merely been given this chapter of the Bible. Conason alludes to a fulfillment of Judaism in Jesus the Messiah, ignoring the fact that the New Testament was written by believers, with an eye toward the Old Testament, and inventing incidents in the life of Jesus that make it appear that Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled. This includes contradictory genealogies of Jesus for a putative Davidic descent, claims that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, (a) because Joseph and Mary lived there, and later moved to Nazareth (according to Matthew), or (b) because Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem for a Census (Luke), false analogies to Jonah being in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, just as Jesus was in the ground three days and three nights (try counting yourself from Friday evening to Sunday morning; would you pay for three nights at a hotel with those check-in and check-out times?), and a virgin birth invented out of a mistranslation of the Hebrew word Almah, in Isaiah, into Greek as parthenos, meaning virgin, when it really means young woman. Thus we see that New Testament writers got so carried away inventing Old-Testament fulfillments that they invented one that was not even in the true Hebrew Old Testament:
Isa 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.
is taken to be fulfilled in Jesus (not Immanuel) as a result of a claim that Mary was a Virgin when Jesus was born.
Of course, not being presented with Tom's arguments, I can hardly be expected to refute them. I can only conjecture, as in the preceding paragraph, on the arguments presented.
Conason claims that his conversion was an intellectual one, but his descriptions of accepting Jesus into his life as his "personal Lord and Savior" while looking up at the clouds and clear blue sky through the leaves of a large shade tree sound more emotional to me. Still, he "backslides" and satisfies his "sensual appetites," getting high. So much for the redeeming power of Jesus. Those who want Christianity for their children because of its moral strength, take heed. When he stops praying, he sees the problem as his sinful lifestyle. I would think he must have found other deleterious effects of drug use with worse consequences than forgetting to pray, but this is what Conason worries about.
Conason sees a Fr. Joseph Malagreca, who advises him to visit "a Catholic Charismatic covenant community in New Jersey" called "The People of Hope." He alludes to later controversy concerning this community, but states "at that time it was a vibrant faith community under the leadership of Fr. James Ferry." He doesn't say what the later controversy was.
The natural worries that one would experience in deciding to visit such a community, such as monetary concerns, drugs, his girlfriend's threats to leave him if he attended, and a visit from a young lady with "less-than-chaste" intentions, are all attributed to Satan attempting to prevent Conason from making his retreat. But he made the trip, and was taken aback, upon his arrival, at the prayer service with speaking in tongues (gibberish). Yet, this young man was eager enough to participate in the Mass and receive communion. When the priest objected to an unbaptized person receiving the Eucharist, Rick became angry and defiant. Apparently following the rules of the organization to which he wished to belong was beyond his ken. This indeed does not sound like an intellectual conversion, but the reaching out of a desperate person, in an emotional way. He "wanted that peace and joy [of the people in the community] terribly, but could not ... accept their faith, unless it were actually true."
For some reason, reading "You brood of vipers! how can you speak good, when you are so evil?" in Matthew 12 convinces Rick to apologize to the priest - he knew that "God was angry" with him. After getting a week's extension at the retreat house, he is inspired by the Bible again, this time Micah 7:9, "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me." He sees this as the repudiation of his life of evil. But people have been having regrets about their lives for long before the Bible. The line was not written with Rick Conason in mind, but is a constant human feeling, just as many are dramatized in the works of Shakespeare or other literary artists. Conason is clearly a torn person, worried about the deleterious effects of his actions, guilty about their known evil reputations, and yet drawn to continue on in them. Thus he is grasping ... for someone to rescue him from his dilemma. He "wanted to have God and [his] fun too." Oy!
He prayed for the remorse that he did not feel, and during Mass has a life-changing experience, as Conason gained an awareness of God's presence. One evening Conason actually hears God's voice speaking to him: "Down" and Conason was flat on his back. Then follows an actual two-way conversation with God. This reminds me of what the Bible presents in Abraham's story. Abraham is all set to kill his son as a sacrifice, at the express wishes of God, told to Abraham personally. He is only stayed by the further intervention of God. But when Abraham was willing to go through the slaying of his son at God's behest, How in the world did he know that it was God and not the Devil who told him to sacrifice his son? If we are to know them by their fruits, how can this deadly fruit be attributed to an all-loving God, rather than the deceptive Satan, in which we are asked to believe by the same religionists? How did Paul know Jesus as Jesus in his vision.
There is nothing here to convince us that Conaston was not having hallucinations. He was on drugs, and some people, schizophrenics, are subject to hearing voices without drugs. This was certainly a confusing and emotional time in Rick's life, and imaginary voices are a simpler explanation than that God singled out Conaston to be the recipient of a personal revelation that is not afforded the rest of us.
Conaston admits that his leaning towards the Catholic Church was the result of "trying to follow where the Holy Spirit is leading [him]," but claims that "in retrospect [he] see[s] the doctrinal factors that were so crucial to [his] journey of faith," the lead factor being apostolic succession. Now remember, he has not shown us any reason for even believing that Jesus was a Messiah, other than his own nebulous feelings, and claims that his friend Tom defeated him in debate. Thus the whole concept of apostles is still unnecessary for us, and all the more so apostolic succession.
He goes on to become a Catholic, and despite the death of his wife, and his "struggle to ward off the effects of [his] earlier life of sin," he seems to live happily ever after.
He claims that in his struggle to avoid sin, as a Catholic, he has "access to the sacraments - the mightiest arsenal of weapons against sin available to mankind." That's funny; when I was growing up, the power of the confessional and the Eucharist, which is supposed to enable the avoidance of sin, did not seem strong enough to let me get through to the next week without committing that horrible sin (so they said) of masturbation. All the while, the priests always said that no one is tempted beyond his means of resisting; yet they were also saying that we are all sinners. If they were so sure that we were all still sinners, they could not have had that much faith in the strength of the sacraments in helping us to avoid sin.
Despite this mighty arsenal Conaston says "Each period of growth follows [his] familiar pattern: apathy, resentment about having to change, procrastination, grudgingly accepting the change, backsliding, and repenting," attributing this to the "kind of person he is," but claiming that "When I wasn't looking for him, and even when I was fleeing from him, the Lord showed himself to me. When I tried to ignore him, he clobbered me with his grace. When I procrastinated, he gave me a gentle but firm shove in the right direction. When I turned away from him in rebellion, he respected my free will and let me go; but when I hit bottom, he was there waiting with mercy and forgiveness, ready to bring me back home again." Conaston apparently does not recognize the power within himself for what it is, and attributes it to God/Jesus. He doesn't recognize the conflicting desires within himself, and thinks that the two sides can't be the same person. Then all it takes is some help from believers, and Rick believes.
Another "Born-Again" - Into the Crimson Light by T.L. Frazier
Frazier returns us to those who come from Fundamentalist Protestantism. Again, a child of divorced parents, he felt like a "human pinball." (The Catholic Church seems to be the strongest one against divorce - except for its recent permissiveness on "annulments" - and would seem to attract many of those hurt, as children, by divorce, but there is no need to rule out a secular understanding of the problems of divorce for children, and people guiding their lives accordingly.) He seeks solace in books. Rather than get into the drug culture, he "turned instead toward literature as an alternative form of escapism." Later, apparently, he will turn to the Church. Now wait!! I can hear it coming: you might say that the Church is not a form of escapism. But note the similarity in the stories we have seen. Broken families and drug problems lead these people to attribute their problems to a lack of faith, a lack of Jesus in their lives. But others have gotten a grip on their lives without the coincident entry into religiosity and have also made a success of it. But religion is a form of escapism in another sense. It provides pre-built moral answers for life's tough questions. Rather than face drug abuse and divorce for the worldly problems that they are, to be solved by human actions, Christians seek guidance elsewhere. See the chapter "But What About Morality?" for a further discussion of how moral choices are not always that easy. And - as we have seen - there is no historical basis for claiming truth in Christianity. Anything which depends on myth is escapism.
You might also say that, unlike books, church attendance brings you into contact with other people. However, for satisfying this human need (which one should not prejudge others for lacking, as some in fact lack this need), membership in the Unitarian Universalist church should suffice, if not other secular organizations, and ordinary human acquaintances and friendships.
And a plug for the value of books: While this may brand me as an anti-social nerd, the truth is that access to the finest of human thinking is available only in books. When the Bible was composed and collated, writings were rare, and the scriptures received an aura of reverence as a result - an over-reverence that has extended to this day. Today, books are more common, and indeed include much trash just as the Bible does, but also much good (you have to sort it out). Contrast this with the set of beliefs of the average person: one has only to go "on-line" on computer BBSs or the InterNet newgroups to see the postings of average individuals. Choose for yourself, the Christian groups, the atheist groups, whatever: the average posting is banal and vindictive, certainly not on a level with great literature. Everyday conversation brings us in contact with only a limited set of beliefs, and a rather poor sampling of the eloquence of more pre-eminent individuals.
back to Frazier's life: Frazier decries his moral upbringing, which he says included such paradoxical clichés of the "liberal ethos" of the '60s and '70s as "'All values are relative, there are no absolutes,' ergo, 'It is absolutely wrong to impose values on others.'" Of course the contact Frazier had with this ethos of the times was not via philosophers' carefully constructed moral systems, but rather with informal sayings such as these. The paradox can easily be removed by saying that the ultimate moral good is to increase the pleasure/happiness of as many human beings as possible while decreasing as much pain/unhappiness as possible. Mistakes will be made along the way, but they won't be as bad as the mistake of trying to fit one rule of actions to all circumstances. This requires much moral thought and also requires people to stand up for their rights just as they have been doing for ages. Again, see my chapter "But What About Morality?".
Not only was Frazier the child of divorce, but the child of a father given to domestic violence, a father who was surprised when our subject returned his blows and got thrown out of the house, losing his job, friends, and girlfriend in the process. There was "nothing in [his] malformed conscience to prevent [Frazier] from turning it back on him once [Frazier] reached six feet, 170 pounds." Self defense does not make one's conscience malformed - only Christian values lay this guilt trip on one. And some fathers who profess Christianity have been beating their wives for millennia, and most Jewish and atheist fathers have been kind to their families for even longer.
Perchance, in his new home with his mother, Frazier seeks solace in a book and it turns out to be the Bible, hitting him when he is down and in no frame of mind to think clearly. He had previously tried to read through the Gospel of St. Matthew, but had "got bogged down in the Sermon on the Mount," as well he should. There is no evidence that the meek shall inherit the earth. The meek have as much chance as the Bosnians before there were NATO strikes. I recall one person from work many years ago, who belonged to Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, who claimed that all we have to do is lay down our weapons (unilaterally) and peace will come to the world. The Bosnian men in Srebrnica who laid down their weapons are just as dead as those who took up arms. After NATO strikes the men of Gorazde are still alive, for now. Where is peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin? Fundamentalist Christians would say he's in Hell because he never accepted Christ; in any event he's prematurely dead.
Frazier "was in such an agitated state of mind that [he] put aside [his] pagan outlook and was willing to approach the Bible with an open mind." The pagan outlook, Frazier notes, is one that emphasizes the natural over the supernatural, while Christianity reverses this. (Has no one thought of balancing the two? How about Buddhism, Hinduism, or a myriad other religions/philosophies?)
Frazier is "absorbed by the story of Christ... struck by how Jesus was constantly misunderstood." Frazier doesn't mention that this was Jesus's stated goal:
Mat 13:10 Then the disciples came and asked him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?"
Mat 13:11 He answered, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.
Mat 13:12 For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
Mat 13:13 The reason I speak to them in parables is that 'seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.'
He is "amazed at how people were always attempting to exploit Jesus to their own ends," but fails to note how easy this is, as the same Jesus who exhorts us to turn the other cheek, takes a whip to the vendors in the Temple; the same Jesus who tells us to honor one's father and mother also tells us to hate one's father, mother, brother, sister, and who barely acknowledges his family when they come to visit:
Mat 12:46 While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.
Mat 12:47 Someone told him, "Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you."
Mat 12:48 But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?"
Mat 12:49 And pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
Mat 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
These are the sorts of quotation that the David Koreshes of the world take to heart.
Frazier takes at face value the Gospels' assertion that Jesus came to Jerusalem knowing the fate that awaited him. I must reiterate that the Gospels were written several decades after Jesus's death. Attributions of foreknowledge and forgiveness were made by the faith community in which these writings were laid down, attributions that gave the Christian community strength in adversity, over the failure of Jesus to bring the rule of the Kingdom of God to Jerusalem, and Israel. A good book to read is Joel Carmichael's The Unriddling of Christian Origins. While some of its details may contain a bit too much conjecture (as it must due to the sparsity of historical references), the main thrust of the book is much truer to the known workings of human nature than any apologetic work.
Frazier "could feel Jesus' hurt and anger at [the] final rejection which would lead to the cross." Later, in my chapter on Elvis, we will see how other sorts of believers, in a modern myth, feel Elvis's hurt in the latter part of the King's life, leading to his death in the drug culture of fame and public adulation, with concerts and record sales taking the place of palm fronds, welcoming this king onto his road to destruction. There is a need in the human psychology of sufferers to identify with a larger-than-life sufferer. The humane solution would have us attempt to remove the suffering rather than allow the sufferer to wallow in it.
At this vulnerable point in Frazier's life he makes a "solemn covenant to forever be [Jesus'] friend and follower." This of course psychologically binds him, to the detriment of any rational thought that might later tempt him to seek more objective truth.
Frazier found the liberal Presbyterianism, the church of his youth to which he returned, "less driven by a thirst for objective truth than by subjective emotional compulsions. It was a pick-and-choose, smorgasbord Christianity where whatever happened to be unpalatable to twentieth century Western tastes [like not allowing women to speak in church?] could be rationalized away [à la "cafeteria Catholicism"] with a little theological hocus-pocus [this phrase is rooted in hoc est enim corpus meum, the Latin words of consecration of the Eucharist in the mass]." Thus Frazier was driven toward fundamentalism, something that was strengthened by his stint in the Air Force. So we are on our road once again to see why Catholicism wins over the mind of a fundamentalist.
At this point, Frazier's view of Catholicism was that it had strayed from its original Christian origins, and taken on a "mongrelized form" by taking in pagan beliefs. (To me, this includes the Sunday sabbath and Christmas trees, which don't seem to bother too many fundamentalists the way statues of saints and Marian devotion do. See my chapter "Defending the Church" on this one, under the heading "Human Authority or Scriptural Authority.")
Frazier goes through a period of being a Baptist, and he describes some of the paradoxical views of that denomination on other Christians, Catholics in particular, emphasizing the case (his) of a Baptist, who thought he was saved, becoming a Catholic, causing his previous pastor to claim he never was one of the saved.
He does "come to realize that honest and sincere people could legitimately interpret the Bible in many different ways," recognizing the ambiguity of the Bible that for a person looking at it with uncolored glasses makes it an unfit work for guiding one's life. He exemplifies this with the Presbyterian Church's infant baptism, which is opposed by the Baptists. Frazier "came to realize... the Bible isn't a comprehensive textbook of systematic theology with a section entitled 'Baptism.'" He is so bold as to say that the early Church never challenged pagan society's custom of whole households adopting the religion of the head of the house, including the children, and did in fact baptize infants, and the early Church fathers endorsed infant baptism. There follows a section on the Eucharist, pointing out his preference for Catholic interpretation over Protestant.
He goes back to ancient Christian writings, specifically pointing out the epistles of St. Ignatius, and his condemnation of Docetism, in which the real presence of the flesh of Jesus as the Eucharist is affirmed. Apostolic succession is also affirmed there, including the ordination of priests.
Strangely, Frazier writes "I was impressed by the fact that during the early Trinitarian and Christological controversies, after the patriarchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople had succumbed to one heresy or another, only the papacy remained constant in witnessing to the orthodox Faith. This and the obviously prominent role in the New Testament of St. Peter, to whom the pope claims to be the successor, inclined me toward Catholicism." Of course, if the see of Rome, to be given Imperial support, makes its doctrine the defining doctrine of the form of Christianity that won out (due to its Imperial support), that doctrine ipso facto becomes orthodoxy and all the others become heresies; this is no great surprise. To say that the see of Rome is preeminent because it held the orthodox beliefs is putting the cart before the horse. And as for Peter, let's please note the true inventor of Christianity was Paul. Where are his successors?
He continues on to argue for papal succession and infallibility. I again remind the reader of the difficulty of pinning down exactly which papal pronouncements are ex cathedra and thereby infallible.
Frazier mentions some of the questions he had asked of the Catholic chaplain at his Air Force base, such as "If Mary was 'ever-virgin,' what of the brothers and sisters of the Lord mentioned in Mark 6:3?", but does not tell us the answers. (I do note however, looking ahead in the book, Tim Staples, next up, does present some answers; more on that below) (By the way, the Crimson Light of his title is the sanctuary light near the altar of a Catholic Church, whose light signifies the presence of consecrated hosts in that altar's tabernacle.)
He joins an RCIA program (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) to get a deeper understanding of the Catholic Faith, but is deeply disappointed by the program and its "highly defective" text Christ Among Us. [By the way, that is the text my wife used in her RCIA; apparently many Catholics find it a good text.] Frazier concluded that "RCIA must really mean 'Roman Catholic Ignorance Amok.'" He drops out to do his own self-taught discovery program on Catholicism. Among the many books on "Church history, liturgics, patristics, Sacred Scripture, spirituality, and theology," he finds one of particular help: Dr. Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.
Then, in order to get into the Catholic Church he "endures" an RCIA program "as a penance for [his] past misdeeds." Apparently the RCIA planners and Frazier have different favorite selections at the Catholic cafeteria. At the ceremony bringing him into the Catholic Church, Frazier elects to have the "conditional baptism" performed. He felt that his previous baptism, in the Baptist Church, left him uncomfortable in his quest for eternity, as it was "administered by someone who called the Bride of Christ the 'Whore of Babylon' and the Vicar of Christ the beast whose number is 666." These Christians really love one another!
The Bible Made Me Do It - Tim Staples
Tim, a former Baptist who joined the Assemblies of God meets a Catholic, Matt, who knows his Bible and gives Tim some answers.
Tim attacks Catholic "vain repetitions" of prayer (condemned in Matthew 6:7). Matt responds by asking if a "wife would object to her husband repeating the words, 'I love you.' ... In the same way, we Catholics tell God we love him over and over again in our prayers." But I ask, how would the wife like the husband counting the "I love you"'s on beads to be sure he got the right number, ten, and after every group of ten, throwing in a "You're beautiful," then repeating the process an exact four more times? What if having to do these repetitions was imposed as a punishment for having sinned? Besides which, the Hail Mary is in fact more complex than a simple "I love you." Repetition is tiring, and very conducive to not thinking what you are doing. It is said 50 times in a rosary. The Our Father (Lord's Prayer) is said five times. This is not at all like the Assemblies of God prayers' repeating "praise God," a rather simpler formulation, not conducive to producing mental fatigue.
Tim objects to the Catholic doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, on the basis of Matthew 13:55:
Mat 13:54 He came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?
Mat 13:55 Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
Mat 13:56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?"
Mat 13:57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house."
Mat 13:58 And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.
Matt counters that Luke 6:15-16 shows that two of the brothers are actually sons of Alphaeus whose wife Mary was the blessed Virgin Mary's sister, or perhaps her cousin, and the brothers were actually cousins. "The term 'brother' is often used to mean 'cousin' or some other type of kin in Scripture." Where?
Let's see what these verses say:
Luke 6:13 And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles:
Luke 6:14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew,
Luke 6:15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot,
Luke 6:16 and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
There is a James here listed as the son of Alphaeus, but why are he and Judas son of James the only ones identified by parentage? (A note actually says that the reference to the first Judas here is really "Judas of James," which might refer to them being brothers, in which case this Judas would be the son of Alphaeus also.) The only explanation that they would be so identified by parentage is that this would distinguish them from some other James and Judas; there are others even among the twelve, and who knows how many more? To say that the James of Luke 6:15 is the same as the James of Matt 13:55 would be like implying that Mary Magdalen and Mary, Martha's sister were identical with Mary the mother of Jesus, just because they are all Marys. Further, the two Marys that the Gospels of Matthew and Mark report as being present at the crucifixion are the Magdalene and the mother of James and Joseph. Would it be more likely that Jesus's aunt would show up or his mother? Besides, if we have established that all those with the same name are the same person, Mary the mother of James and Joseph also has to be Mary the mother of Jesus, anyway (I'm being facetious here). Another point: John 7:5 refers to Jesus's brothers (not some of his brothers) as not believing in him. This certainly rules out their being members of the twelve, so the James, son of Alphaeus, must be a different James from any described as Jesus's brother, whatever brother means. Also John 19:25 shows that the Mary who was Jesus's mother Mary's sister, was the wife of Clopas, not Alphaeus. (By the way, what sort of household would have two siblings both named Mary? It shows that anything can happen in myth.)
And certainly there is no support in the Bible for Mary's virginity after Jesus's birth. Just why does the Catholic Church insist on it so vehemently? It may have to do with the fact that the Church just does not like sex. That could be the reason Matt doesn't bring up another possibility that has been suggested to rescue Mary's perpetual virginity: that Jesus's brothers were children of Joseph by a previous marriage. The Church doesn't even want us to think that Joseph had sex, that being an unsaintly pastime.
And yet Tim is "devastated" by Matt's response, and embarrassed "to be shown up by a Bible-quoting Catholic." He should be embarrassed at his devastation and his not having thought of these counter-replies.
Matt's next point is more telling, but in a way he wouldn't like: if anyone is entitled to interpret Scripture, how does one avoid conflicting interpretations. Obviously the answer is that one can't; that's why there is an embarrassment of riches in the number of denominations. Matt's solution is that only the Catholic Church is in a unique position to be the interpreter of the Bible. But the Catholic Church is just one of the many contenders, depending on certain interpretations of Jesus's relation to Peter, and implications that Peter has successors. (Why would Peter need successors if the early Church expected Jesus to return at any moment?) Needless to say, Matt's arguments don't sway me toward Catholicism; but Protestantism is wrong too.
Matt seems to think that the following supports the idea of a Catholic Church:
Mat 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"
Mat 18:2 He called a child, whom he put among them,
Mat 18:3 and said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 18:4 Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 18:5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
Mat 18:6 "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Mat 18:7 Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!
Mat 18:8 "If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire.
Mat 18:9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Mat 18:10 "Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.
Mat 18:11 (For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.[--KJV])
Mat 18:12 What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?
Mat 18:13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.
Mat 18:14 So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
Mat 18:15 "If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.
Mat 18:16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
Mat 18:17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
Mat 18:18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Mat 18:19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.
Mat 18:20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."
Mat 18:21 Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"
But the church referred to above seems more like a jury composed of Christians, rather than an authoritative pope, and it concerns settling individual grievances, not church doctrine. Jesus, according to this scripture, is talking to the group, not just Peter, to have the power to bind or loose.
Matt also invokes
Luke 10:1 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.
. . .Luke 10:16 "Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."
to back up the idea of the authority of a Church. Again, it's open to interpretation.
Matt has Tim, who planned to be a Protestant minister, admit that his preaching would not be infallible (as only the Bible is infallible). But then his "interpretations of Scripture" would not be binding on his congregation, and all the teachings would be purely human, condemned by Jesus as the "traditions of men which nullify the Word of God."
Circular Reasoning: Matt asks Tim why he believes in the inspiration of the Bible. Tim replies that the Bible says that it is inspired. The circularity of this reasoning is obvious, and Matt correctly points out that the Book of Mormon, the Koran, and the Hindu Vedas, among others, make the same claim. This is the opening for Matt to show that it is the external trustworthy witness that is the Church that attests to Scripture's authenticity. But wait! We have just been told that it is Scripture that attests to the Church's authority. Now the Church is the one that attests to the Bible's authority. We still have a circle - not as tight a circle, but a circle nonetheless. A is true because B says it's true; while B is true because A says so. No improvement here! A belt loosened by one notch is still a belt. By the way, in Al Kresta's essay, which we will get to later, a comment is made that a chapter in a book called Catholicism and Fundamentalism eliminates this circularity. I'll comment on that at the end of this chapter.
By the way, Tim's statement about the Scriptures declaring themselves to be inspired includes a reference to
2 Tim 3:16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
At the time this was written, there was no Canon of the Bible. What constituted scripture? Should we allow that say the Infancy Narratives of Thomas are scripture and therefore inspired by God? (In that scripture, as mentioned previously, Jesus is shown growing up as a petulant child, who would strike his playmates dead when they angered him, and strike blind any parent who complained about this.) For that matter, the Hindu Vedas are scripture too. Perhaps Paul was asking all to be eclectic in their beliefs.
Tim also realizes the circularity of invoking New Testament's "fulfillments" of Old Testament prophecies as attestations to the inspiration of Scripture. He correctly points out that this depends on trusting the New Testament's veracity about Jesus.
Tim presses the Protestant objection against calling priests "father" on the basis of Matthew 23:9, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Tim retorts that in Luke 16:24 Jesus calls Abraham "father Abraham," and Paul does so repeatedly in Romans 4, and indeed in 1 Cor 4:15, calls himself a father for his readers. The winner in this case is the side of free thought, which has been saying all along that the Bible contradicts itself. Tim calls his interpretation of Matthew 23:9 "crass literalism" but I don't think much of Matt's explanation that it merely called for not giving honor to men that belongs to God alone. It says that being called "father" is one such honor.
While Matt and Tim already agreed about the evils of abortion, Tim had to be convinced about birth control. He thought that Onan's sin in chapter 38 of Genesis was refusal to do his brotherly duty to make his late brother's wife pregnant. However, Matt claims this cannot be the case, for while Onan was punished by death for his sin, Judah was not thus punished for the same sin, if that indeed was the sin. But if you read that chapter you will see that what Judah did was different: he did not require his other son, Shelah, to perform the brotherly duties. This is not the same as refusing to perform the brotherly duty himself. But even if the situations were the same, who is to say that the Bible will be consistent in its punishments for the same sin? In Genesis 4:15 God forbids anyone from killing the murderer Cain, while in Numbers 35:31, God says that a murderer must be put to death. So we need not posit that Onan's actual sin was birth control rather than refusal to give his late brother a child by his widow.
If Matt's (and by now, Tim's) view that "contraceptive conjugal union is sinful precisely because, by not being open to the possibility of new life, it distorts and misuses the Lord's gift of conjugal love, rendering it sterile and incapable of fulfilling its total purpose," were to hold, then we would also have to say that diet sodas, or any use of artificial sweeteners, would be sinful, as by not being open to the storing away of food energy, it distorts and misuses the Lord's gift of ingestion of sweet things, rendering it incapable of fulfilling its total purpose of providing instant energy and a means of building up stores of energy as fat.
As for homosexuality being bad for the reason that it performs a contraceptive function, this is simply ludicrous, and even contradicts papal encyclicals which have said that naturally infertile couples may have sexual relations. Of course the Church wants sexual partners to be married to each other, but is that necessarily true these days? What is the prohibition on homosexual marriages, if the ban is based on infertility, and infertile heterosexual couples are not banned from marriage?
Re: the advisability of birth control: The earth's mass is about 13 septillion pounds. Let's say a person weighs 170 pounds and that currently there are 6 billion people, totaling 13 trillion pounds. The earth would thus be about a trillion times as massive as humanity. If however the earth's population keeps doubling every 35 years, after 1525 years, the mass of humanity would be equal to the mass of the earth, something that could happen only if it were possible to convert all the mass of the earth into biomass, which is clearly impossible because most of the earth's mass is in the form of iron and nickel. Long before that, population would have to stop growing. Of course the Christian could hope for the end of the world by then, with the four horsemen of the apocalypse (war, hunger, death and pestilence) doing their jobs. Indeed, lack of birth control can fulfill this marvelous Christian dream.
Staples goes on to point out that the Bible exhorts one to follow the traditions of the church:
1 Cor 11:2 I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you.
Yet he fails to note that these are the traditions handed down by Paul, not by Peter or Peter's "successors."
In maintaining the "real presence" in the Eucharist, Staples quotes from:
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
John 6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
John 6:53 So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
John 6:54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;
John 6:55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.
John 6:56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
John 6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.
John 6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."
John 6:59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
John 6:60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?"
John 6:61 But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you?
John 6:62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
John 6:63 It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
John 6:64 But among you there are some who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him.
John 6:65 And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father."
John 6:66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.
John 6:67 So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?"
John 6:68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.
John 6:69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
Staples makes much of the statement that Jesus lost many disciples as a result of this teaching but still did not run after those disciples saying Stop, I didn't mean it literally! The fact is, however, that of course these verses were written years after the fact, after early church members who hadn't met Jesus had difficulty with the church's institution and doctrine of the Eucharist, and these lines were put in Jesus's mouth posthumously. It is known that other pagan mystery religions held services in which the savior of that cult had his body eaten by believers, in the form of bread.
He continues by interpreting Biblical injunctions and Jewish practice of praying for the dead, as a justification for praying to the saints. Catholic Mariology is justified on the basis of "All generations shall call me blessed. The Mighty One has done great things for me!" (Luke 1:48-49) It is probably easy to forget that "blessed" means merely receiving good fortune given by God; it doesn't imply any authority or power.
Staples researches the early church fathers and finds early recognition of the primacy of the bishop of Rome. He learns that the former Jesuit who serves as the Catholic expert at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, where he studied, had left the church for personal rather than doctrinal reasons. He loses his staunchly Protestant girlfriend, but succeeds in leading his parents and two brothers, whom he had "led to Christ" (the Protestant variety), into the Catholic Church with him. One brother is even now studying for the priesthood.
1980's Jesus Freak - Dave Armstrong
Armstrong comes to Jesus through a severe depression. He had been brought up as a Protestant, and gone through a period of "New Age" serious dabbling with "ESP, telepathy, the Ouija Board, astral projection ... voodoo ... Houdini and Uri Geller."
When he joins the "Jesus Movement," Armstrong becomes active in anti-cult work, but "realized that Catholicism was entirely different from the cults, in that it had correct 'central doctrines,' such as the Trinity and the bodily Resurrection of Christ, as well as an admirable historical legitimacy; fully Christian, albeit vastly inferior to Evangelicalism." Hardly a clean slate on which to draw conclusions Armstrong needs his Protestant roots, to start on his road to Catholicism.
Through his work with Operation Rescue, blocking access to abortion clinics, Armstrong gets to know some Catholics personally, spending time in jail together. He finds Catholics to be fine upstanding people.
Theologically, Armstrong learns from his newfound Catholic friends that some of what he thought were erroneous Catholic doctrines were not even defined ex cathedra and so were not binding on Catholics. I have mentioned before the difficulty of pinning down the Catholic Church as to which of its pronouncements are in fact infallible, thus the difficulty of stating that the Catholic position is true. It's like trying to nail jelly to a wall. If a position is shown to be wrong, it can always be claimed it was not taught ex cathedra.
Armstrong learns that Martin Luther was no saint, and lists all his friends who have left Protestantism and entered Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
All Detours Lead to Rome - Al Kresta
This chapter is nothing new: The childhood that neglected spiritual teaching, hedonism, the drug scene, turning on, tuning in and dropping out, a succession of "cults", biblical study, finding Jesus and study of Catholicism. Protestantism's independent denominations are a scandal to Kresta also. Despite his misgivings at giving up a Protestant pastorate, Kresta learns to accept Catholic dogma and becomes a Catholic and lives happily ever after.
What is interesting, however, is a footnote in Kresta's essay, which states that a book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, by Karl Keating, contains an answer to the problem of circularity I mentioned above, that is, that faith in the Catholic Church depends on belief in the Bible, while faith in the Bible depends on the word of the Catholic Church. So I plunked down my $15 to Catholic Answers, and obtained a copy of that work. A report on that book's chapter "Inspiration of the Bible," to which Kresta refers, appears below, following the summary of Surprised by Truth.
Summary
Throughout Surprised by Truth, we see a recurrent theme of persons dissatisfied with life, products of broken homes, those addicted to drugs and alcohol, finding love, forgiveness, and understanding in a church - in these particular cases, the Catholic Church, as that Church's growth is the objective of this apologetic work. To say that, while Christianity may not be historically true from an objective standpoint, it still performs a psychological service in making peoples lives happier and healthier, is to take an elitist view: an elitist view that says, Even though I myself don't actually believe these supernatural things, those weaker than I am need them to get through their miserable existences. Sadder is the person who convinces himself or herself that he or she does in fact believe, when in fact the "backsliding" points to an underlying unconscious disbelief in what in fact is indeed incredible.
One can see the opposite side of Catholicism - those who were dissatisfied and left - in Joanne H. Meehl's The Recovering Catholic. Those telling their stories there are women. But see the various chapters of the book you are now reading where I cover where I have been with the Catholic Church to read of one dissatisfied Catholic man who left the Church, and Christianity.
Remember that I am not taking sides in the Catholic/Protestant debate. What I am pointing out is the ambiguity inherent in the Bible and Christianity, that leads to such disagreements - disagreements that can lead to situations such as those in Northern Ireland or the Croatian and Serbian elements of the former Yugoslavia, with the Bosnians receiving the short end of the stick from both the Christian sides.
Logic Lesson:
The first premise listed below is based on the contents of Surprised by Truth. The second is available in Protestant apologetic literature such as is presented in "Defending the Church" below. The conclusion is item number 3:
1) If one is a Christian, it can be demonstrated that one should be Catholic.
2) If one is a Christian, it can be demonstrated that one should not be Catholic.
3) Therefore, being a Christian leads to a contradiction, and one should not be a Christian.
2) If one is a Christian, it can be demonstrated that one should not be Catholic.
3) Therefore, being a Christian leads to a contradiction, and one should not be a Christian.
Chapter PostScript - the Circle Is Unbroken!
As mentioned above, the book Catholicism and Fundamentalism, by Karl Keating, has a chapter claiming to avoid the Protestant circularity of accepting the Bible as the inspired word of God on the basis that it itself says it is, AND the circularity mentioned above of relying on the Bible because the Church says to, and relying on the Church because the Bible says to. It turns out that the chapter's premise is to treat the Bible initially, not as inspired text, but as history. Then, it is believed that this establishes Jesus's founding an infallible Church, which then attests to and properly interprets the Bible. Let's see what this book has to offer:
The chapter starts off with great rational promise: "Yet there is perhaps no greater frustration, in dealing with fundamentalists, than in trying to pin them down on why the Bible should be taken as a rule of faith at all, let alone as the sole rule of faith. It all reduces to the question of why fundamentalists accept the Bible as inspired, because the Bible can be taken as a rule of faith only if it is first held to be inspired and thus inerrant."
It repeats the rational arguments that Bible believers somehow do not believe in the book of Mormon, the Koran, Eastern religions' holy books, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy or other religious works merely on those works' say-so, and that it is Western tradition that forms the basis for these Christians' beliefs.
Keating describes the Catholic method as not assuming to begin with that the Bible is inspired. It is treated like the works of other ancient writers, such as Virgil, Livy, Horace, Plato, and Euripides. He states that the biblical manuscripts we have are older than the extant manuscripts for the classical authors, and far more manuscripts to work from, and then proceeds to consider the Bible, "particularly the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels," "merely as history." But what authorizes him to treat these as history? There are other types of writing, such as humor and mythology. Is everything that Homer writes about taken to be history? Are we to treat as true the idea that there was a continent, since submerged, Atlantis, that existed in the Atlantic Ocean? To quote the Encyclopædia Britannica Micropædia article "Atlantis":
... a legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean lying west of the Straits of Gibraltar. The principal sources for the legend are two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. In the former, Plato describes how Egyptian priests, in conversation with the Athenian lawgiver Solon, described Atlantis as an island larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined, and situated just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar). About 9,000 years before the birth of Solon, the priests said, Atlantis was a rich island whose powerful princes conquered many of the lands of the Mediterranean until they were finally defeated by the Athenians and the latter's allies. The Atlantians eventually became wicked and impious, and their island was swallowed up by the sea as a result of earthquakes. In the Critias, Plato supplied a history of the ideal commonwealth of the Atlantians.
Modern scholars attribute these stories to volcanic eruptions in the Mediterranean, and stories of Mycenaean civilizations, all east of the Pillars of Hercules.
You say Plato was not a historian? ... neither were the Gospel writers.
To quote Keating:
We examine the account of Jesus' life and death and his reported Resurrection. Using what is in the Gospels themselves, what we find in extrabiblical writings from the early centuries, and what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural theology, know of divine nature), we conclude that Jesus either was just what he claimed to be, God, or was a madman. (The one thing we know he could not have been was merely a good man who was not God, because no merely good man would make the claims he made.)
Elsewhere I cover the tendentious nature of reputed "extrabiblical writings": the obviously Christian interpolations in Josephus and ambiguous references to Christians, not to Jesus. What we know about human nature is that it loves to make up stories. It likes to make up creation stories, such as the ancient story of Gilgamesh. It likes to borrow from these stories, as in making up the story of Noah. It likes to see hope for the future. It likes to illustrate ineffable transcendental thoughts with fables, such as those about Hercules, Dionysius, Adonis - even the grasshopper and the ant. As an example, most people in our culture feel it is good to tell little children stories about Santa Claus, and that it is wrong to disillusion them. There are rationalists who disagree with this, as well as Christians, who think that Santa Claus detracts from Jesus. Nevertheless, human nature is such that most feel that such "feel-good" stories with a moral are worth keeping up a lie. Human nature has also separated out the stories that are for kids (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, ...) from those for adults (Hercules, Jesus, ...) so as not to make adults think they are believing in kids' stories. Wouldn't it be better in both cases to treat these as pious fictions right from the start, especially since the Bible is mixed with such impious stories as orders to kill all the Amelekites, etc.? That would prevent people from taking the sayings of Jesus too literally, to their point of absurdity. The stories are good only in the sense and to the degree that they embody ideas and ideals that we would have anyway. When they disagree with what our rational analysis tells us, there is no reason to let the story rule us rather than the other way around. Then we could avoid having more sad stories such as we find in Meehl's The Recovering Catholic.
Keating says that Jesus claimed to be God. Even Jehovah's Witnesses deny that. The Bible seems to say that Jesus made this claim in saying "Before Abraham ever was, I Am," and "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God," but this could be a misremembering or misinterpretation on the part of the Gospel authors, writing 50 to 70 years after the supposed death of Jesus (assuming he existed). After all, we are not assuming Biblical inerrancy here, and any human writer is imperfect, particularly a writer who is biased by spiritual conviction. And at this point in his argument, Keating has not yet established the Church as the proper interpreter of Biblical "truth." (See below for where that spiritual conviction may have come from.)
Aside from the needless dichotomy between madman and God that Keating presents, he also claims "no madman ever spoke as he did; for that matter, no sane man ever did either." [Actually the Catholic Church says that Jesus was true man, as well as true God; denial of this is one of the many heresies defined by the Catholic Church. Therefore the position of the Church must be that a sane man did say those things.] But is it not mad to say in one breath that one should love one's enemies and turn the other cheek, and then go out and fashion whips from cords, and drive one's enemies out of the temple? Is it not mad to curse a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season? Is it not mad for the reputed author of "thou shalt not steal" to tell his disciples to steal a colt for his use? ... to be the "Prince of Peace" who comes not to bring peace but a sword? ... to say "honor thy father and thy mother" and also that one must hate one's father, mother, brother, sister, and act in a surly manner to one's own mother, addressing her as "woman"?
Keating says:
A hoax (the supposedly empty tomb) is one thing, but one does not find people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they have no prospect of advantage. The result of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead and that he was therefore God and, being God, meant what he said and did what he said he would do.
Jesus supposedly said that he would return in glory within the lifetime of his hearers. He did not. Joel Carmichael, in his The Unriddling of Christian Origins: A Secular Account, presents a very plausible history of the origin of Christianity. Jesus was in fact a hopeful in fulfilling the true Jewish idea of a Messiah: a charismatic leader who would restore sovereignty over the land of Israel to the Jews. At one point he even took over the Temple for a while, leading to the story of the cleansing of the Temple. But the incipient rebellion was put down by the Romans, and Jesus crucified. After a period of shock among his disciples, first Peter felt a presence of Jesus and renewed hope, perhaps with a vision. Then others began to feel the presence, and a new hope for the deliverance of Israel. Pious stories were told to explain this "resurrection" and elaborate on it, much as stories of a kind and generous Saint Nicholas could evolve into the Santa Claus of today. Then, when the return did not come, and while Paul was preaching hither and yon, beyond the immediate control of the Jerusalem Jesists, explanations had to be found for the failure of Jesus to return "shortly". Also, means of living had to be found in the absence of a World's End. Rabbinical and Greek philosophy was incorporated into Christian tradition, and more other-worldly interpretations of Jesus' power. All this was oral tradition, except for Paul's letters, expressing Paul's personal opinions - opinions of one who never met Jesus. When the Gospels were finally written down, they had the experience of many rabbis and philosophers incorporated and their sayings put into the mouth of Jesus. The feelings of Jesus's presence became stories of an empty tomb, as a way of explaining those feelings in terms of an actual resurrection. The other-worldliness led to ideas of Godhood.
So, would people be dying for a hoax? No! - not any more than kamikaze pilots died for the hoax of a divine emperor. In one generation they would be dying for independence. In another, for established beliefs, fed originally by messianic fervor, then by "tradition" - an eclectic tradition from Jewish, pagan and Greek sources. No hoax, just mythbuilding. No mad Jesus, just various words put into Jesus's mouth by evangelists.
Keating continues "one thing he said he would do was found a Church." That would actually not make sense if the end of the world was near. However, as the years went by, and the end did not come, the Church found itself to be in existence, and explained itself in the writings of the Gospels, late in the first century, again putting words into the mouth of the reputed founder. As the present-day existence of so many differing factions attests (most of which must be wrong, logically), people will do a lot to maintain beliefs that are traditional within their families. Some, of course strike out anew and convert, such as the early Christians expecting an immediate return of Jesus. Most stay put, such as most of the next generation of Christians after that.
Others would say that even if we couldn't trust the Bible's word that Jesus said he would found a church, common sense says that he would, so that we would know how to interpret the Bible. Of course this disregards the fact that we are told that "God's ways are not our ways" - that we cannot use our human reason to determine the motives of God. We are told this when we can't imagine why God would require the infliction of pain on his innocent son in order to forgive us. So we can't use our human reason to say that, of course God would provide a guide.
It is curious that after Keating uses a "historical" consideration of the Gospels to base a belief in Jesus's divinity and founding of an infallible church, thereby granting the church the sole right to interpret the Bible, that he says, for example, that one allowable (from the Catholic point of view) interpretation of the Jonah and the Whale story, is as "merely didactic fiction, a grand tale told to establish a religious point." But that's what I say that stories of Jesus's resurrection and church-founding are. They are no more literal history than Jonah and the Whale. And there goes Keating's argument for the legitimacy of the Church, for as religious propaganda, the Bible need not be historically true.
Keating goes on to criticize Luther's selection of Canonical Bible books, saying they were based solely on Luther's ideas, in contrast to the Catholic canon. But the early church fathers surely did the same, rejecting the Gospel of Thomas, and the infancy narrative of Thomas and other Gospels, as not fitting in with their ideas of the church. Why can Keating not take on a "historical" basis stories that depict the child Jesus as striking his playmates dead and their parents blind? There's nothing that makes these finds less historical than the Canonical Gospels, before we accept the "truth" of the Church, but we don't get to the "truth" of the Church without considering the Church-chosen biblical canon as being historically true. The circle is unbroken.
