Take the Long Way Home

Scott Hahn opens his book talking about our natural need as humans to confess our sins.  The relief that it brings in human relationships, as well as our relationship with God.  Then he begins to describe what confession of sin was like in the old covenant.  I have to quote him here, because this is quite a graphic picture that is shocking to me as a 21st century gal:

     Imagine yourself, after recognizing that you have sinned, preparing to make your confession and sacrifice.  This could only be done at the Temple in Jerusalem, so you would have to plan your journey…Depending on the type of your sin and its gravity, you might have to offer a goat, a sheep, or even a bull.  You could bring one with you,or if you had the money, buy one from the merchants in Jerusalem.  You would of course, have to subdue the animal…Once in Jerusalem, you would lead your beast uphill to the outer court of the Temple.  At the inner court, you would tell the reason for your sacrifice.  Then, in front of the altar, someone would hand you a knife, and you - yourself - would kill the animal.  You yourself would butcher the animal.  YOu would do the cutting and the ripping.  You would do the separating of the parts.  You would detach the bloody limbs and take out the organs and hand it all, piece by piece, to the priest for burning.  You would remove any waste matter from the intestines and purify those parts.  You would also sing penitential psalms while the priest caught the animals blood and sprinkled it over the altar.

 This is the idea of confession that would have been very clear to the apostles - this was the normal way of dealing with sin.  This was very much personal involvement in confession. 

Hahn says, We cannot appreciate the NT at all if we have no understanding of the OT sacraments.  Jesus did not come to replace something bad with somehing good; He came , rather, to take something already great and holy - something God Himself had already begun - and bring it to divine fulfillment.  What does fulfillment mean?  Most of what I’ve been taught says that fulfillment means replacement - old replaced by new.  Does it mean finish, as in to end?  Or does it mean renew?  There is a change, obviously (I don’t have to bring bulls to the temple!), but what does this entail?  Is the ritual completely done away with, or is it changed, renewed?

Hahn says, All of God’s work in the Old Covenant did not vanish into irrelevance with the coming of Jesus Christ. There is no yawning chasm separating the Old Covenant from the New…Thus the Old Covenant signs - the oath, the meal, the sacrifice - find perfection in the New Covenant sacraments. 

James 5:14-16; this is one of many Scripture passages that “bugged” me as a Protestant.  James says to confess to one another, but he says this in the middle of a passage about elders (presbyters, priests) praying and annointing.  James does not say, confess your sins to Jesus, or confess your sins in prayer, but confess to one another, in the context of praying with presbyters.

Another of those passages that never made sense to me was John 20:23 where Jesus gives the apostles the power to forgive sins.  Why would Jesus do this?  Why would He need to?  Why not just tell them to confess their sins in prayer to God and God would forgive them?  What was the point here?  This is where the sacrament of reconciliation comes in - this was the model that Jesus was setting up.  People confess their sins (to another person) and God forgives their sins through the man of His choosing (the one who represents Him on earth). 

Hahn stresses that confession must be real, there must be contrition for sin.  There is no manipulation of God: 1) you must be sorry for your sin  2) you must confess  3) you must do your penance.  Our sins are offenses against God, any penance that we perform cannot make full restitution.  Christ makes up for our lack.  The work of reconciliation is not primarily ours.  It is Christ’s, and it was accomplished on the cross.  Through the sacraments we come to share in His work, by His grace, and to know His benefits.  We do penance then, to provide restitution and repair the damages done by sin, but also to restore and strengthen our bond of love with Christ and the people of God.

I completely misunderstood penance, as a Protestant.  I saw it as “making up for sin”, and I scoffed that a few prayers would make us “okay with God”.  Now I see that there is a whole different emphasis here.  I saw the priest as trying to do something only God could do (and this is true, but in my thinking he was usurping God’s place).  I saw penance as the penalty for our sins, not as conforming us to Christ’s image by suffering like He did.

     God’s sovereignty is not threatened when He shares His power with others.  Indeed, the power remains His own.  Christ is still the Priest behind the priest.  He is the Priest within the priest, and he is the Priest acting through the priest.  So we don’t go to the priest instead of going to Christ… Christ has instituted these creaturely means for the health of our soul.

Hahn introduces another new concept (at least for me); of original sin.  He suggests that original sin is not a positive quality inherited by each man from his forefathers, but rather the lack of a quality that he should have inherited, but didn’t because of Adam’s sin.  He says that sin is not a stain on the soul, but sin is the absence of grace.

He also suggests that the real penalty for sin is not the punishments that we might get (either in penance or by natural consequences), but is the liking of sin itself.  Our punishment is not wanting to get rid of barriers to God, of not having the grace we need to resist.

When I was a good little protestant girl, I went door to door evangelizing.  We had a canned series of questions that we would ask people, and also of answers that we would give back to them.  One of these “explanations” was of what Jesus did for us on the cross.  You see he paid the penalty for our sins, it’s like in a courtroom; you are declared guilty of a crime that you really committed, but Jesus steps in and takes the punishment for you.  Most folks in the deep south are familar with this concept and so they accept it, but every now and then we had someone a little more savvy.  They would say, You can’t do that.  Someone else can’t take your sentence.  You can’t send innocent people to jail for the guilty ones, it doesn’t work that way, it’s not fair.  I never spent much time analyzing this, I just assumed that these people just weren’t going to understand, I didn’t look at my analogy to see if it was flawed.  But there was one little flaw in the presentation (and in my whole belief system) that never made sense to me - confession.  If Jesus paid the penalty for my sins, then why did I have to confess and ask forgiveness when I sinned?  Weren’t they forgiven?  Wasn’t I declared righteous?  And why did the Bible always talk about being judged by our works on the last day?  Why was I judged if I wasn’t guilty anymore?  What of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:14 and Mark 11:25 where he says that we will be forgiven of our sins IF we forgive others when they sin against us?  Why do we need forgiveness for a pardoned act?  When Jesus gave his disciples the power to forgive sins he specifically said that if they didn’t forgive the people’s sins then those people weren’t forgiven!!

The Bible tells us to ask forgivenss for our sins, that our sins separate us from God, that only the righteous will see God.  We are told to put to death the sins that remain in us.  This is why Jesus taught the disciples to fast… This is why self-denial has always been a hallmark of true Christianity…

Suffering did not, in my opinion, receive adequate attention in the Protestant circles in which I ran.  Although I had a pastor who emphasized fasting, it was still not clear to me why.  Why do we fast, why do we deny ourselves?  Where does suffering come into play?  I was told that unintentional sufferering was a result of living in a fallen world.  While on earth we must endure suffering, and the only positive to be found was that it made us long for heaven where suffering will finally end.  Or suffering could be brought by God as discipline.  That God wanted to teach us something.  And this is not a bad thing, we should long for heaven and we do live in a fallen world, and we can learn through our suffering, but is this it, is this all that suffering can offer?  If so, then why bring it on intentionly (like in fasting or self denial)?  We can choose suffering, to turn away (for a time or for all time) from something good to achieve something great - participation in Christ’s suffering, putting to death any idols we might have).  We make sacrifices the same way that the Jews did.  Their altar sacrifices cost them something.  They had to give up something good - money, animal, time - to get something great - forgiveness, reconciled relationship.  We must discipline ourselves to resist temptation (temptation can come in the form of good things - food, money, sex).  We must learn to choose love for God over our own comfort.  Suffering teaches us detachment from this world and attachment to heaven.  We see suffering as a curse, but Jesus (in the Beatitudes) sees it as a blessing.  Self denial is not about giving things up because the world is bad, but because the world is good and might destract us from God.  It is a matter of choosing between good and best. 

This view of suffering gives meaning to the mundane everyday things that we do, like housework/chores/taking care of kids, etc.  I’ve always been told to do these things as I was doing them for the Lord, that they were meaningful.  But this seems to give the idea teeth.  My sacrifice accomplishes something.  Each sacrifice is changing us, making us more like Christ, more acceptable to God.

Hahn says penance is not suffering for sufferings sake, it’s not the gross imposition of a sadistic God or authoritarian Church.  Penance is, rather, the willing removal of any obstacles to God’s love for us and our love for God.  It is an inchoate giving of our whole self, moment by moment, to God. .. Each act of penance conforms us more to His image.  We accomplish this partly through self mastery, but mostly through our correspondence to God’s grace… The sacrament of penance is an act of penance best practiced with an attitude of penance within the context of a life of penance.

We should have goals for overcoming sin and growing in virtue.  This is where regular confession helps.  It not only gives us the grace we need to fight sin, if our confessor knows us and knows our struggles and can help us with strategies to overcome sin.

Sacraments are not magic spells, God does not sanctify us without our cooperation.  We must examine our consciences before confession, finding  sin patterns.  This should be done daily and should be both general and particular.  We need to know our sins and our motivation for commiting those sins.

As a Protestant, I have vehemently opposed the idea of a “treasury of merit”.  This goes against all my protestant teaching - this was one of my BIG obstacles to overcome in looking at Catholicism.  But here again, I find that I’m surprisingly pleased to find Scripture and Tradition on the Catholic side.

     Hahn quotes a Rabbi Nahum Sarna:  God delivered Lot from the catastophe through the merit of Abraham.  This ‘doctrine of merit’ is a not infrequent theme in the Bible and constitutes the first of many incidents in which the righteousness of chosen individuals may sustain other individuals or even an entire group through its protective power.  Job “would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of [his children]; for Job said, ‘It  may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts’. (Job 1:5)  Job seemed to think that his merits would suffice for his children.  Why is this principle okay for Job and not for us?  If this idea of a treasury of merit is true then why could we not draw from it as well?

The corporate aspect of Catholicism echoes the OT faith.  We are NOT lone rangers - us and God (or us and our Bibles).  We are an army, collectively fighting evil and Satan.  It’s not me against the powers of evil, it’s all of us together.  My success is not mine alone, but contributing to the greater success of the Kingdom.  My failures are not mine alone, but the whole Kingdom’s.  Our personal sin weakens the fight.  This is why we confess to the Church - my failings are their failings too.

But we must hate our own sins more than the sins of others.  We can gage how much we love God, by how much we hate the sin that separates us from Him.

Our prayers are usually lists of our desires to God - this is not bad, but through penance God changes our focus to what we need to gain eternal life, not just what we want.

Just as Zacheaus was unburdened by his confession and restitution, we can be too, by our confession and penance.

What matters most in confession is the relationship between us and God, it’s not just about following the rules.  Only by confessing our sins do we allow the Lamb of God to take them away.  The Bible doesn’t just say that God forgives our sins, but that he takes away the sin of the world.  He changes our hearts from stone to flesh.  He makes us new creatures.

The things that I think will change me the most, if I become Catholic, are confession and the Eucharist.  Being accountable for my sins, my spiritual growth, having to ‘fess up to my shortcomings - the things that most people don’t see - and the mercy that will flow from hearing the spoken words - you are forgiven - will change me forever.  I long to hear the words of absolution and I long to commune with my Saviour in the intimacy of the Eucharist.  These two ideas - so foreign to me once - draw me in a way I cannot explain.  They offer me a much closer relationship to Jesus than I ever experienced outside the Church.  Much in the same way that the “communion of saints” provides a very real link to the past.  I am  not alone - I have brothers and sisters who have travelled the same road I am on.  We are fighting together.  I have no desire to worship them (the whole idea seems silly, how can people think this is what I”m going to do?), but I am becoming fond of the idea of praying with them.  I am getting used to the idea that heaven is not disconnected with earth, that God is truly the God of the living and not the dead.

I’m reading Scott Hahn’s Swear to God: the promise and power of the sacraments.

“[Sacraments] are symbols that genuinely convey the reality they signify…Ordinary signs convey an idea about something.  Sacramental signs convey the sacred reality itself.”

This is difficult for the protestant trained mind to comprehend.  This is in the realm of the virgin birth and the incarnation.  These ideas I can handle because I’ve heard them all my life.  There’s no “rationality” behind them, but I believe them (by faith I suppose - the only other alternative seems to be brainwashing).  But with Catholicism, I’m asked to put quite a few more things into the “mystery” pile.  This is the humanist legacy of the reformation, I suppose.  I tend to think that perhaps liberal protestants have taken reformation ideas to their logical conclusion - no mysteries at all, nothing that can’t be “logically” argued.  Can you logically argue the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?  I can base it on my own and others experiences, but it remains somewhat “mysterious”.  The logical humanist (perhaps post-enlightenment) side of me wants to limit the number of mysteries I define myself by.  But is this truly Christian?  Is it even Biblical?  Does the last 6,000+ years of record support it?  I know the last 2,000 years do not.  I read about mystery and miracle in the Early Church Fathers and the medieval and modern church fathers as well.  Why do I want to deny myself access to it?  Why do I accept small miracles in my own personal faith story, buy deny these bigger miracles (Eucharist, stigmata, healing, baptismal regeneration, etc)?  If Jesus says, “This is my body,” and bishops in the 2nd century say, “this is his body”, why do I want to argue?

In the OT, God dealt with his people in a very physical way.  In the NT I’m told that Jesus fulfilled this and “spiritualized” the covenant.  Even if this is true, does “spiritualization” automatically rule out using physical things to convey those spiritual truths?  If everything is “spiritual” then why baptism? why communion?

–note– something that never made sense to me as a protestant– why do we need crackers and grape juice to remember Jesus’ sacrifice?  I never forgot about it.  This sacrifice is mentioned whenever the gospel is preached, why the extra reminder?  Also, baptism - what was the need?  It was explained to me as the NT equivalent to circumcism, the sign of joining the believing community.  Water, standing for the washing away of sins (but always a BIG point made about how the water didn’t actually wash your sins away).  Why the physical signs if they didn’t do anything?  I was told that we do it because Jesus told us to, and I get that.  He told us to do it, so we do it, but why?  Why did he tell us to do it?  If everything is spiritual, why physical signs with no power?  I was even told that the signs in the OT had no power either.  Circumcism didn’t do anything, the sacrifices didn’t do anything, they only looked forward to when somebody would come and do the things that the signs represented.  So why institute them?  I still don’t get this.

“… the sacraments do not depend upon the strength, the skill, the intelligence, the eloquence, or even the holiness of the individual priest.  For it is Christ who acts - though through His unworthy minister - in every sacrament… Every sacrament produces its effects by the power of Christ alone, and not at all by our own labors or the labors of our priest.”  So does this mean that we can manipulate God?  That anyone can partake of the sacraments and grace is doled out like pez?  This was my criticism of sacramentalism before studying it.  Now, for myself, I had no problem asking God for “grace” to get me through my day any old time I wanted.  I ask, God gives.  How is this model any different?  I would have argued that God only gives when you “ask according to His will”, and I think I would be right.  God knows our hearts and our motives and he acts accordingly.  If I come to Him in the Eucharist, asking for his grace, will He withhold it?  I don’t think so, anymore than when I come to Him in prayer and ask for it.  But it seems to me that so much more is offered in the Eucharist, much more than I ever thought to ask for.

“God does extraordinary things through ordinary means.  He uses the natural to do the supernatural, the human to accomplish the divine.. Yet great as the sacraments are, they are not permanent institutions.  They are our participation now in a life we hope one day to know more fully.  When Christ comes in glory, all sacraments will cease.  Now we know Him through signs, as though through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12).  Then we will see him as He is (1 Jo 3:2) and we will have no need of signs.”

This makes sense to me!  We DO still need signs to know Him.  Even with the Holy Spirit we can only compare Him to what we know.  We have physical lives in a physical world (just like in the OT).  God used physical signs with spiritual significance in the OT, now because of the incarnation we have a better idea of who God is and what He is like, but we still have limitations! 

My current journey began last year as my boys and I were studying world history.  We were studying the Reformation and I wanted to spend some time with Martin Luther, so I warmed up the search engine on the old computer and started surfing.  I stumbled across the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Luther - I never would have gone there on purpose.  I had never thought about what the ‘other side’ thought of him.  I honestly thought I knew the “whole ” story, which is puzzling because I looked down on others who didn’t look at more than one side of an issue.  Why had I never applied this same test to my faith?  Why should I study both (or all) sides of political issues, historical issues, etc, but not all sides of a faith issue?  I”ll tell you why, because I thought I had.

I grew up attending 1st Presbyterian Church, but my parents believed quite differently than what was preached on Sunday.  So, as a child, I went to church on Sunday (and to that church’s day school all week long) and was taught one thing, but my father would teach me something entirely different when we got home.  I took on the attitude of one who knew something better than the average joe.  I had special knowledge of the Bible that those “sheep” at church didn’t take the time to figure out for themselves.  You see, ‘they” just listened to the preacher on Sunday and believed whatever he told them, while ‘I’ studied deeper (looking back at this somewhat objectively, I was doing the same thing - believing what someone else told me to believe).  But this ’special’ knowledge didn’t affect my heart at all (my arrogant attitude revealed what was truly inside my heart), I did not live a Christian life at all.

When children began to come along, I wanted them to have the same kind of childhood that I had had, and that included Sunday School.  So dh and I headed off for Sunday School.  Only something different happened this time.  The Holy Spirit spoke to me, broke through that arrogance and showed me that “knowledge” of God was not the same thing as being a Christian.  He showed me people who had “the joy of their salvation”, who didn’t approach God in purely an intellectual way, as I did, but were “sold out” for him.  I had dismissed these folks before as freaks, now I saw that their devotion was for real and I wanted some!  God changed my heart and I began to truly love him, not just learn about him.  I began to really listen to my preachers and read all the books I could get my hands on.  I became convinced that this “reformed faith” was the real thing, so I threw out my old beliefs (my ’special knowledge’) and forged ahead in the “truth”.  I was a firm believer in the 5 points of Calvinism, but there remained in my mind some questions from the days of my ’special knowledge’, some ideas that I couldn’t totally dismiss.  I put them in the realm of things that I don’t know for sure, but they aren’t salvific, so I can put them aside for now.

Now, I’m sure that all churches have these folks, but the reformed church has quite a few of these arrogant, condesceding know it alls.  You know who I’m talking about, right?  Well, you would have to put me in that catagory.  My arrogance wasn’t really gone, I had just replaced one theology for another.  Only this time I wasn’t alone in my arrogance, I had reinforcements!  We would look down our noses at the poor sods who believed differently then we did.  We were truly convinced that Scripture was on our side, and in the protestant church, what else do you need?  One of the groups that we felt especially sorry for were Catholics.  Those poor fools had added all kinds of requirements onto the simple faith of the apostles.  They worshipped Mary and the Saints.  The confessed their sins to a priest.  They believed that the pope was infallible (which of course means that anything he says is inerrant,right?).  The church had started out all right, I assumed, but then came Constantine in the 4th century and it was all downhill from then.  Pagan rituals became mixed in with Christian, immoral and power hungry people took over the church and turned it into “the whore of Babylon”.  Then of course came Martin Luther and John Calvin and those guys to save things.  Where would we be today without those heroes, right?  Well this leads us right back to my finding the article on Luther on the internet.

The Catholic Encyclopedia had quite a different view of Luther than I did.  I read most of the article and even clicked on links to read about other issues, but ultimately decided, oh they were just mad that he shed light on their faults.  I mean they couldn’t back up their practices with Scripture or anything, right?

Although this left some niggling questions in the back of my mind, I plodded on with my normal life.  Then one of my arrogant buddies was lamenting one day about how nobody knows about church history.  How she taught co op classes for homeschoolers and none of them (except her children of course) knew anything about what our beliefs were based on.  Those dumb parents don’t know what their churches really teach or where those beliefs come from or that anyone believes any differently than they do.  And then there are those Catholics!  They don’t know anything!  I thought, gee she was right, I hadn’t taught my children much about church history (of course I didn’t tell her that!).  So I hurried off to order a book on church history that I could use to teach the boys.  I bought it from a reputable reformed author of course!

In this book was a description of the early church.  It talked about Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Polycarp and described their martyrdom.  Although, it quoted them rarely.  It spoke of Iranaeus and Origen.  I began to wonder, how much do we know about the early church?  Can you read what these men wrote?  It talked about the defense against heresy, and about the church councils.  I began to realize how much happened before the reformation.  I know this sounds stupid, but I had never read anyone earlier than Luther and Calvin.  I considered them the “fathers of the church”, and I had never questioned this.  Now more questions were forming in the back of my mind, but like the others, these got pushed back farther and farther as ‘real life’ beckoned.  I downloaded The Ante-Nicene Church Fathers onto my Bible software, but didn’t read them.

Then I began to frequent a homeschooling forum where theological ideas were debated.  I had never participated in anything like it (I lurked for a long time, reading a lot of old threads before actually participating myself).  Because of some prompt (I don’t even remember what it was - something along the lines of the Early Church Fathers supporting a Catholic viewpoint) I started reading those Ante-Nicene Church Fathers.  I was shocked!  They did indeed support a Catholic view.  Scripture and tradition, real presense in the Eucharist, obeying the bishop as Christ, confession, talk of Mary that was very uncomfortable, the primacy of Rome, the communion of saints (and not in the way that my church explained it!), salvation through faith and good works, no assurance of salvation (ie  able to lose it), free will in choosing God.  I was stunned.  I was lost.  What was I to do with this information?  The early church didn’t look like my “reformation” church at all, it looked like the church that Martin Luther rebelled from!

On this homeschooling forum there were quite a few discussions between Catholics and Protestants (discussion is a generous word, debate is not strong enough either, attacks is a better word).  What kept striking me was that the leaders in some of these attacks on the Catholic viewpoint were obviously Reformed, like me.  But their words were cruel and cutting, their replies arrogant and condescending.  They seemed purposely to misrepresent what the Catholic ladies said and turn it around to mean something else.  And yet these Catholic ladies were gracious and kind in their own replies.  And their explanations made sense!  In fact, their arguments seemed the stronger of the two.  How could this be?  Their replies were Scriptural and well thought out, logical and reasonable.  How could this be?  They knew more about church history than I did, had read all those Early Church Fathers and some I hadn’t yet read.  How could this be?  I had read books on what Catholics believed and why those beliefs were wrong.  I had a pastor who used to be Catholic and he talked all the time about what Catholics believed and why they were wrong.  How could these things not be true?  What these ladies espoused (and they backed up with Catholic Catechism) was NOT what I had been taught Catholics believed.  How could this be?

I began to research the Catholic Church.  I went to the library and checked out the book, Crossing the Tiber by Stephen Ray.  Ray is a protestant turned Catholic.  His discovery of the Catholic faith (and the failings of protestantism) so mirrored mine that I spent most of the book with my jaw dropped open.  Then, on recomendation, I read Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic by David Currie.  Good book, although since I didn’t grow up fundamentalist it didn’t resonate quite like the other.  Then I read Rome Sweet Home by Scott and Kimberly Hahn.  Another good one.  After reading a description of Jesus in the Mass (by one of those Catholic ladies on the forum) I told my husband that I wanted to go to Mass.  He took it all in stride.  He doesn’t enjoy study and reading the way I do, and he doesn’t really enjoy listening to me talk about it either, but he listened a little bit when I told him some of what I was learning.  He said it sounded like I needed to experiment a little, and  he had no problem taking me to Mass. 

I was scared to death when we entered that church!  But I LOVED Mass.  It’s all Scripture and it’s all about Jesus!  My dh said he liked it too, he said it’s hard to fall asleep with all that standing, sitting and kneeling. 

We have been attending Mass ever since, and we have even started RCIA classes (classes you take to join the Catholic Church. They last for months, teaching you about the Church and culminating in the reception of the Eucharist and joining the Church at Easter), but have not made a definite decision what will happen at Easter.  Becoming Catholic is not like becoming Baptist (from Presbyterian).  Your reformed friends will roll their eyes at you becoming a Baptist, but they will black ball you becoming Catholic.  I will become someone’s “mission field”.  I will be treated like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.  Swimming the Tiber is certainly an accurate description of what reconciling with the Catholic Church is like.  It is a crossing over, a leaving everything behind decision.  It’s like Julius Ceasaer crossing the Rubicon.  A major decision with lasting consequences.  I haven’t told anyone what we are doing.  I know the reactions I’m in for, the incredulity.  I don’t know yet how my family will react.  They will not be happy for us if we make this journey.

To whom shall I go Lord, you have the words of eternal life….

The “redefinition” of my faith continues.  Pelikan’s book makes it hard to remain satisfied with the Sola Scriptura method of definition.  I thought that I should revisit the Reformation.  I have idolized the reformers as brave men, men of great unshakable faith, men who would not compromise the truths of Scripture for the “traditions of men”.  Well, I’ve already had to discard the “traditions” argument because of the ECF’s.  Those “traditions” have a pretty long history!  I’ve had to discard the “truths of Scripture” argument because that one really boils down to whose interpretation of Scripture do I choose to agree with.  Scripture is NOT self evident.  If it were then there would be no divisions among us.  Every protestant denomination (and those who claim they are not part of the reformation, but have existed since the beginning - albeit with no corroberating evidence, only their word) claims they have the best interpretation and others are missing something, misunderstanding something.  And here I must admit that I was proud in my own superior understanding. 

So what were the Reformers about?  I went back to the text for a class I took on the Reformation.  After wading through the warring philosophies of the day (essentially scholasticism vs humanism), the political climate of Germany (the Holy Roman Empire), and biographies of the major reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) I came to a very uncomfortable conclusion.  The Reformation was as much about political power as it was about “true” religion. 

And it also had much to do with  philosophy - mainly humanism.  Luther, Zwingli, Calvin (along with other minor reformers) were humanists.  Some of their followers (I can’t guess at a percentage, according to my source it would seem a large one, but that would only be conjecture) were nominal Catholics who thought these guys were starting a social revolution - the overthrow of feudal Lords by the common man. 

And Luther - I was most dissapointed in him - he changed his mind more often than his underwear!  Many of his published sentiments were not all charitable.  He wanted to round up and kill all the Jews because they wouldn’t listen to him and convert.  He wanted to kill all the peasants because they wouldn’t listen to him and  not revolt against their masters.  And what did he accuse those peasants of?  Why, breaking their vows!  They broke their vows of obedience to their masters when they revolted.  Funny how Luther didn’t have any problem breaking his own vow of obedience to the Church, or his vow of celibacy.  But those peasants… they deserved death for breaking their vows.

And Calvin?  He said it was wrong for the Church to be involved in politics, but what did he do?  He created a state church!  And what happened if you followed the Anabaptists?  Well, if you believed in “adult, believer baptism” instead of infant baptism you got the death penalty in Calvin’s Geneva.  But if you committed adultery you got 9 days in jail.

And Zwingli?  Did you know that he had a mistress?  I realize that so did many of the other Catholic priests - that was one of the areas that needed big time reform - but the reformers weren’t any better. 

Do you know what their argument was for clerical marriage?  That it wasn’t natural or possible for a man under 60 (some argued for 80) to remain celibate!  That “they were going to do it anyway, so you might as well make it legal!”  (That sounds eerily familiar to todays argument for condom distribution and drug legalization, and ironically now protestants are against this type of reasoning.)  The reformers said that a  man couldn’t think about God unless he was able to satisfy his lust.  Now personally, I’m still a little shaky on the celibate priesthood (I’m glad it’s not Catholic dogma!), but this reasoning sickens me!

This also made me mad - when Catholic priests turned protestant quite a few of them kept their church building and their salary from Rome, even after they agreed to return it.  So they are preaching against Rome, but the house the live in, the pulpit they preach in, and the food they eat is all paid for by that same Rome. 

Needless to say, I didn’t come away impressed - and this information was all from a protestant author who agreed with the reformation! 

So, my original question ,”what were they protesting?”  They were involved with many of the abuses that they criticized the Church for.  Sola Scriptura?  Sola Fide?  

If Sola Scriptura was true then why did the Reformers come to such differing conclusions about what Scripture said?  Why did they kill each other over these differing interpretations?  If reading Scripture for yourself was so important then why did they make it against the law to interpret it differently (from whichever church had political power where you lived, ie - if you were Calvinist you HAD to agree that communion was symbolic and you HAD to agree with infant baptism, if not then you were breaking the law and were punished)?  It’s not like Lutherans tolerated Calvinists - they couldn’t even join together to fight Rome!  And both groups hunted down and killed the Anabaptists.  So it seems to me that they didn’t really believe in Sola Fide either.  If faith in Christ is what makes you a Christian (faith and only faith) then why does it matter how or when you are baptized (or how many times)?  Why did it matter how you viewed the Lord’s Supper?  Wouldn’t, by their own theology, they all be Christians?  If the Anabaptists had faith in Christ, who cares that they baptized adults instead of babies.  Yet the Calvinists thought this so important that they killed anyone who believed it.  It’s not like the Anabaptists didn’t have Scripture to back them up.  They too believed in Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide.

It seems to me that the reformers believed these things in theory, but not in practice. 

So what do I do with this information?  Where does it lead me?  It leaves me with no home, no church.  Everything my faith was founded on is gone.  When you take away Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide from the reformation, you are left with a bunch of arrogant guys who didn’t want to listen to authority, they wanted to be authority. (side note here - I’m not in a position to judge these men’s hearts or their standing before God.  I assume that they were sincere in their beliefs and were trying to obey their consciences before God. But I now find them unconvincing as authorities.)  What was so wrong with the Church they railed against?  It was full of sinners, it was full of abuses, it was full of men vying for political power, but was this it’s heart?  Is this ALL that it was?  I’m forced to look harder at the Catholic Church.  I’m forced to listen to the ECF’s (who don’t listen to Luther or Calvin).  I’m forced to the conclusion that I don’t want to be protestant.  But do I want to be Catholic?

     When I used to study the “church” in history, I usually meant the Reformation  till now.  I assumed that if you could go back far enough (back all the way to the first ever church) you would see a worship service that would look very much like the one I went to every Sunday.  Minus the brick building and the organ.  I was assured (by many - pastors, teachers, elders and their wives) that “we” had it right.  We worshipped the way that God wanted to be worshipped.  In fact my church made a very big deal out of the way you worship being important.  They preached that worship was about what God wanted, not what we got out of it, or what our own personal preferences were, but what God commanded in Scripture.  I also assumed that if there were records from the earliest churches they would bear this out, but I never heard about any sources being available.  The only church “father” I ever heard of was Augustine, after him it was straight to John Calvin or John Knox.  So when I found out that there were quite a few of these “early church fathers” I was excited to read them.  Here was the proof I needed to  “know” that I was in the right place.  Now I wanted to make sure that I only read very early church fathers, only from the 1st or 2nd century, because “everybody” knew that with Constantine the church was corrupted (I never thought through what that meant in practicality.  That it had to mean that the Holy Spirit abandoned Christ’s church.  That God had allowed his people to be without a shephard for over one thousand years before the reformers “put things to rights”.  Is this the way God works?)  So I began to read and I kept a list of “Things to Ponder”.  This list is not in any particular order, just things that make me go hmmmm:

Justin Martyr and Polycarp both speak of the definite reality of hell.  Justin says that the soul is immortal and conscious.  That bodily death does not change this.  He uses the reality of divination (pagans ability to summon spirits) as proof of this.  He also says that the angels in OT actually intermarried with human women and the resulting children were demons (Genesis).

Iranaeus speaks of hell, as well as the immortality of the soul, but expands to say that this does not make the soul pre-existent or equal to God in any way.  God creates each soul, so it has a beginning.  All of these early fathers speak of “works righteousness” and “free will”, “man’s choice to seek God”.  They explicitly say that the judgement of hell is based on works (it supposes faith, but include works as proof).  I don’t see the idea of faith alone, or Scripture alone anywhere here.

Iranaeus speaks of the church in very catholic terms.  He accuses the Gnostics of not following Scripture or tradition of the apostles.  “the tradition which originates from the apostles, which is preserved by means of succession of presbyters in the churches.”  Book 3, chap III of Against Heresy is titled “A Refutation of the Heretics, from the fact that, in the various churches a perpetual succession of Bishops was kept up”.  He says these Bishops were chosen by the apostles.  He cites Rome as the “very great, very ancient, and universally known…founded by the 2 most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; the faith preached to men which comes down to out times by means of the succession of bishops.  For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of it’s pre-eminent authority…”.  He makes a big deal of being able to trace back the bishops to the apostles.  He refers to the “faith handed down by the Church…since the apostles, like a rich man depositing his money in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man can draw from her the water of life.  For she is the entrance to life…to lay hold of the tradition of the truth.”  He actually says that we could, if we needed to , look to the church for answers to our questions, even if the apostles had left no written record, because the Church would have the tradition committed to it by the apostles.  He also says that Barbarian tribes come to the truths and pass on the truths because of these traditions because they cannot read.

The early fathers also praise those who remain virgins.  Both men and women.

Very corporate understanding of faith and salvation.  Iranaeus says, the “Spirit, He did convey on the Church”.

Iranaeus also teaches that Adam and Eve did not consumate their “marriage” until after the fall.  He says they had no understanding of it because they had only recently been created and were childlike.

He compares Eve, the disobedient,to Mary, the obedient just as he compares Adam, the disobedient, to Jesus, the obedient.  “for what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.”

“And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin [Eve], so it is rescued by a virgin [Mary]; virginal disobedience having been balaned in the opposite scale by virginal obedience.”

“I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I am not the God of the dead, but of the living.  For if he be not the God of the dead, but of the living, yet was called God of the fathers who were sleeping, they do indubitably live to God, and have not passed out of existence, since they are children of the resurrection.”

“But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion.  For we offer to Him his own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and the Spirit.  For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of 2 realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.”

Iranaeus (along with Justin Martyr) seem to say that the early Christians did not tithe.  Justin says that the rich gave what they wanted and Iranaeus says that all belongs to God and we give him the best part.

It also seems as if they believe that you CAN lose your standing before God… “if we do things displeasing to God, we [might] obtain no further forgiveness of sins,but be shut out from his kingdom.”  This quote, from Against Heresy, was attributed to a presbyter who heard it from another, who heard it from the apostles.  (here my American sensibilities scream, hearsay can’t be trusted, which of course is my whole problem with “oral tradition’.  I’ve been conditioned to reject anything that is not firsthand information, but what does that say about the book of Luke?  By this rule, the book must be thrown out as hear say and unreliable.) 

The ECF’s really focus on how to live.  To not sin in word, deed, or thought.  Belief, faith, action are all seen as the same thing.  One doesn’t exist with out the other.  Faith is belief lived out in obedience.

I do not see predestination anywhere.  I see foreknowledge, but not fore”choosing”.  “If therefore, in the present time also, God, knowing the number of those who will not believe, since he foreknows all things, has given them over to unbelief, and turned away His face from men of this stamp, leaving them in the darkness which they have themselves chosen for themselves, what is there wonderful if He did also at that time give over to their unbelief, Pharoah, who would never have believed, along with those who were with him?”  (William Faulkner has got nothing on this guy!  His sentences are a mile long and murder to get through!)

“…set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free agent from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests of God voluntarily and not by compulsion of God.  For there is no coercion with God, but a good will toward us is present with Him continually…And to man, as well as in angels, He has placed the power of choice (for angels are rational beings) so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves.  On the other hand, they who have not obeyed shall, with justice, be not found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment.”

Iranaeus also says that the succession of bishops must include only those who live rightly.  They must be obedient to the law of God, not profligate.  (the reformation era bishops would have done well to harken back to this old dead guy!)

“And then shall every word [of the Scriptures - there is no canon yet, he means the OT and the various letters they consider Scripture, which is not necessarily the same books WE consider Scripture) seem consistent to him, if he for his part dillegently read the Scriptures in company of those who are presbyters in the Church, among whom is the apostolic doctrine, as I pointed out.”  Only read Scripture with presbyters!

Iranaeus teaches that souls do not go directly to heaven when the body dies, but go to the “invisible place that God has for them, until the return of Christ when their bodies will be resurrected.”

Another theme that I find in the ECF’s is obedience.  Obey your bishops seems to be a continual theme.  No question that there was heirarchy in the early church and the members were expected to obey the bishop as they obey Christ (that is from Ignatious of Antioch)

If anyone (other than myself) reads this far I have only this to say:  I apologize for the randomness and the lack of personalization.  At this point I’m only finding out interesting things that I see in the early church and not sure what to do with them.  These insights are primarily from Iranaeus, but the same sentiments are found in the other ECF’s.

I began this post talking about worship, but interpretation of Scripture is key to understanding what the Bible says about worship.  How the earliest Christians interpreted the Bible is very important to me.  It tells me either how far away we’ve come, or how near our interpretations are to theirs.  There is going to be growth in understanding over time, I accept that, but how much should change?  Should our very basic doctrines be different than the early church’s?  What I have found is that these men believe very differently than what I was taught.  Who is right? 

This is a very interesting book!  Even though I know, intellectually, that the Bible wasn’t written all at the same time, and that early Jews and Christians had to decide which books were “inspired” and which were not and that there was early Jewish commentary - I never thought about what it means - how it affects interpretation.  Whose interpretation is correct?  Jewish or Christian?  When was each book written and why?

The Bible is basically written down oral tradition.  I “know” this, but I have always glossed over this in my mind.  When Moses wrote the Torah (and how do we even know that Moses wrote it except for tradition?) was he writing down the stories that his mother had told him as a little boy?  Was it the stories that his father in law told him in the years he lived there?  I was always told that Moses wrote these down so that the second generation of Isrealites (the first generation who left Egypt had died in the wilderness) who hadn’t witnessed the miracles of God’s deliverance would have a record to look back on and “know” what God had done for them.  But what about Genesis?  Did he have a vision and God revealed to him exactly what happened?  Or did God preserve this history by word of mouth?  Or were they stories (like George Washington and the cherry tree) not based in actual history, but moral stories to make a point about who God was and what he had done?

Pelikan talks about  how translation from Hebrew to Greek changed the text.  That what choices translators make show their biases.  there are not always equal words in different languages, so in translation meaning can be changed.  This is so scary to me.  I must rely on men I don’t know to translate a book I consider holy!

I remember the first time someone told me (an English Professor) that the Bible wasn’t canonized until the 4th century and some of the books included were highly disputed.  Barely made the cut, as she put it.  I was stunned, shocked, speechless.  I had never thought about where the Bible came from or that “people” had to choose from many books which ones were Scripture.  I had this idea (not a formed idea, just a vague seed of an idea) that God had put it together.  I knew it didn’t drop from the sky finished, but that was how I treated it.  I wanted to argue with her, but knew I had not a leg to stand on.  “What do you mean, barely made the cut?  What do you mean not all churches at the time used the same books?”  I never thought about the fact that the last book wasn’t written until 70 years after Christ’s death.  What did the first churches do without John or Rev. for 70 years?  What about the churches who were very far away from hubs like Rome or Jerusalem, or Antioch?  Did they even have copies of any of the books?  And what about before any of them were written?  There was about 10 -20 years when there were NO letters from Paul or James, etc.  And now that I am thinking about this, what does it mean?  How does this affect what I believe?

With Pelikan’s evidence I’m forced to rethink my view of Scripture.  Maybe it’s not a “magic” book, where every word is inerrant.  Maybe it has to be looked at more loosely - a collection of thoughts and practices on God that have been amplified by the “community of believers”.

What is most “d*mning is the New Testament authors making interpretations of the Old Testament based on the Septuigent, that end up reading differently in the Hebrew original.  This makes me want to question “inspiration” or at least my definition of inspiration!  Maybe it doesn’t mean that every word is sacred, but that God uses the whole to reveal himself.

Question:  Did God create a text to define the Church or create a church out of which flowed a text?

“Canonization is the search for texts perfect in their role in accounting for how God has come into history.”

“How a text is accepted/rejected in the canon…

1) Do those who experience the life of God in the world through teh right worship of God in Christ find in this text a true account of their experience/history?  Does the text resonate with the community of those who worship rightly?

2) Is the text agreed upon by a consensus of authorities in the apostolic line of descent?  (all in italics were the words of someone in a forum that I frequent)

According to Pelikan, at the Reformation, the Bible became a “doctrine in it’s own right.  Inspiration was defined as the mysterious process by which the Holy Spirit interacted with the personalities of the Biblical writers.  On this basis the religious authority of the Bible was taken to imply also it’s inerrancy, not only in questions of faith and morals but in every historical, geographical, and scientific detail that is mentioned in it’s pages.”  I must personally take issue with Pelikan here, because I see instances where this (all but the first sentence) took place before the Reformation. 

Now many groups claimed their interpretations were right based on Scripture alone rather than how they worshipped or organized or wanted Christians to live.  Before the Reformation, Scripture had never been “alone”.  In the Judaic tradition there were commentaries to go along with and interpret the Tanakh (Old Testament), then the early Christians had Jesus’ words to interpret the Tanakh.  Then the church developed it’s creeds and liturgy.  The church chose which books were “Scripture” according to how they fit with tradition.  These New Testament Scriptures were used to interpret the Old Testament.

I have intentionally kept myself isolated from works of this nature.  I have walled myself in with only Calvinistic, Reformed, Presbyterian works so that I don’t have to think about what I believe.  I can define it , using the words of another, but I don’t really have tomake any choice.  I decided that *thi*s is the way to believe and I have only read those who defend and support *this* view.  Now that I have allowed other voices in I feel like a schitzophrenic with competing voices in my head.  I am having to redefine what I believe.

At the end of the book, Pelikan moves to a description of the “reality” of Scripture that I love…

      It has always possessed that power [to speak to the reader] and those whom it strikes have always been at a loss about how to cope with it…the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentists instruments neatly laid out on a table…until they set to work on the job for which they were intended.  Then my reaction changes from “how shiny and beautiful they are” to “get that d*mned thing out of my mouth!”  Once I read it anew, it stops speaking in cliches and begins to address me directly.

     As much as I like to hear myself talk, I have resisted the “blog”.  It’s one thing to write something in a notebook that no one but me will ever have any interest in reading, it’s quite another to put it out on the internet where no one but me will ever have any interest in reading it!  Somehow posting this in public makes the assumption that someone else WILL be interested and that’s a lot of pressure.  But here I am anyway, warts and all, interest or none.

I had lunch with an old friend with whom I’m in constant contact, but don’t see very often.  She asked me how I was doing, she said she could sense that I had something on my mind.  I told her that I didn’t have anything concrete to tell her yet, but that yes, I did have something on my mind.  I assured her that when I had worked it out in my own mind, I would let her in, and that if I could put it into words now, I would.  Sorry to be so vague, I said, I’m on a spiritual journey of sorts and I don’t know where I’m going to end  up.  I don’t know what path I’m on, so I don’t know my destination.  I’m questioning a lot of things, but I don’t have any answers yet.

This is  a friend, a true friend, that I can tell anything to, because she, unlike most people, has the ability to see right through me.  Most people accept what they see on the surface, also accept what I’m willing  to divulge and make their assumptions about me in this way.  It’s the “normal” way, it’s what we all do.  It’s the way I “know” others.  But this friend has the uncanny ability to see who I am despite what she sees on the surface and despite what I tell her about myself.  Sometimes she “knows” me better than I know myself.  Maybe this is because she is a writer.  She once confided in me, that she was writing a story in which I was a character.  Or not me, exactly, but a character that was inspired by me.  She wrote down for me a quick description of her “character”:

            She is a wonderful, complex woman still trying to fit into her skin.  Some are comfortable with theirs at birth - others go through phases - but there are those who never quite fit - but you have to love her for it.

Although this was scrawled on the back of an envelope it is one of my most treasured items.  It describes me perfectly.  I don’t fit into my own skin, I’ve never fit in anywhere I’ve ever gone.  I’ve never felt completely at home or at ease anywhere in my life.  I hope that heaven will fill my inner most longings for a feeling of belonging, a feeling of comfort and ease, a complete safety that I’ve not found in this life.  Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be?  I am not at home here on this earth, I will only be home when I reach heaven. 

Through this blog I hope to work through this “spiritual journey”.  I hope to work through my questions, and my answers and find my way home.  If there are any who choose to make this journey with me then, welcome.  If there are not, that’s okay too, it is my journey after all.  A journey that I must make somewhat alone, although I have discovered many friends along the way.  I must admit upfront that this is not the *beginning* of my journey, this is more like the middle.  I apologize  up front for any confusion this causes, but my thoughts are rarely linear anyhow, so it probably wouldn’t be any easier to follow if I had been braver and began this blog at the beginning.