Roman Catholic

Bavinck: Faith, Works, and Assurance

Tony Reinke Assurance, Herman Bavinck, Roman Catholic

Some helpful thoughts taken from chapter 22 of Herman Bavinck’s Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans, 1956). Italics mine:

Page 474: “In justification we are declared free of guilt and punishment on the basis of a righteousness which is outside of us in Christ Jesus, and which through God’s grace is reckoned to us and on our own part is received in faith. In sanctification, however, the holiness of Christ is most certainly poured out in us through the Holy Spirit. When Roman Catholicism therefore speaks of a grace which is poured into us, we have no objection to that in itself; we object only to the fact that this grace is regarded as a part of the righteousness on the basis of which we are declared free before God. For, if that were so, then justification and sanctification, the deliverance from guilt and the removal of the pollution, would be confused with each other; and then Christ would be robbed of the perfection of His achieved righteousness and the believing soul of its comfort and assurance.”

Page 510—511: “The assurance of salvation is not something which is added to the life of faith from without, but something, rather, which blossoms up out of that life of faith itself. Hence, the assurance differs according to the measure of the faith… But all this does not take away from the fact that the saving faith, such as Scripture describes it and the Reformation restored it, is not in its inner nature certainty, and that this certainty becomes stronger in proportion to the extent that the faith becomes stronger. Such faith is not opposed to knowledge, but it is opposed to all doubt whatsoever. Doubt does not come up out of the new man but out of the old; it does not come up out of the Spirit but out of the flesh. The faith says yea and amen to all the promises of God, embraces those promises, and leans upon them. As it does this, and in proportion to the extent that it does so, the refugee confidence of the faith becomes sure confidence, and it gives the believer the freedom to apply all of those promises of God to himself and to appropriate them; the growing confidence becomes a sure confidence that not to others only but to me also the forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation have been given of God, out of pure grace, and solely for the merits of Christ.”

Pages 512—513: “But we must carefully note that in seeking for assurance we cannot begin with these good works, that the faith can never firmly lean or rest upon them, and that still less can they be performed by us with a view to our achieving the assurance of salvation by means of them. For all good works are imperfect, and they are more or less perfect in proportion to the extent that they issue from a stronger or weaker faith. But to the extent that they do issue from a true faith, they can serve as aids to our assurance. Just as faith proves and illustrates itself in good works, so the faith is also confirmed and strengthened by them.”

Rome and Geneva

Tony Reinke Reformation, Reformation Day, Reformed theology, Roman Catholic

tss-john-calvin-coffee.jpgUnderstanding the differences between medieval Roman Catholicism and the Protestant Reformers is important because many of the core distinctions exist today. In the final week of September we have interviews planned with scholars to help further unpack the contemporary importance of the Protestant Reformation.

Today we post the comments of Scott Manetsch, associate professor of church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In a recent book review (download pdf) he wrote it is “impossible to reconcile the classic Protestant solas with the teaching of the Catholic Catechism.”

Manetsch summarizes the differences well:

– For Roman Catholics, Scripture and Tradition are two distinct but equal modes of revealed authority which the magisterium of the Roman Church has sole responsibility to transmit and interpret. For the early Protestant reformers, the holy Scripture provides final normative authority for Christian doctrine and practice, standing as judge above all institutions and ecclesial traditions.

– For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified because of inherent righteousness. For the mainstream Protestant reformers, sinners are accepted on the basis of the righteousness of another―namely, the alien righteousness of Christ imputed to them.

– For Roman Catholics, sinners are both justified by unmerited grace at baptism and (subsequently) justified by those infused graces merited by cooperating with divine grace. For the magisterial reformers, sinners are justified before God by grace alone.

– For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified by faith (in baptism), but not by faith alone. For the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, sinners are justified by faith alone.

– For Roman Catholics, justification is a process of renewal that affords no solid basis for Christian assurance in this life. For reformers such as Luther and Calvin, justification is God’s decisive verdict of forgiveness and righteousness that assures Christian believers of the acceptance and love of their heavenly Father.

HT: Justin Taylor

Indulgences Continue

Tony Reinke Indulgences, Roman Catholic, spurgeon

tsslogo.jpgIndulgences Continue

This week the Vatican released a statement saying all non-Roman Catholic churches are “not proper Churches” and that those outside of Rome are of a compromised sort (that’s you, you Reformed rascal). The 16-page statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decrees that Rome is “the one true Church of Christ.” The implication is this: If your church does not bow to the authority of the Pope, it is unfaithful. These divisive statements have whipped the ecumenical community into a froth (though Christianity Today denies the obvious implications).

The biblically discerning (like Al Mohler) are not shocked at these most recent statements. In fact, these conclusions are quite consistent with historical and contemporary Roman Catholic dogma.

Christopher Catherwood, in his new and excellent book Church History: A crash course for the curious (Crossway: 2007) warns us that Rome has not changed. “Theologically, from a biblical point of view, nothing really changed since the key Catholic doctrines to which Protestants have objected since the Reformation did not change” (p. 198). He also shows that false doctrine in Rome is increasingly prominent in the twentieth century. On the false idea that Mary is ‘the mother of God’ he writes, “Mariolatry in the Catholic Church has in fact evolved over centuries, and one can argue that it was not until the twentieth century that much of the false teachings about her became the official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, as comparatively recently as 1950” (p. 81).

Indulgences

So I should not have been as surprised today when I found myself looking at the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia offering indulgences. Indulgences?! I thought indulgences died in the Reformation. After a little research, I was sadly reminded that indulgences were promoted and defended by John Paul II, continue in his successor and — the more closely I looked — are interwoven into statements by Beckwith in his recent move out of Evangelicalism into Catholicism. To my surprise, indulgences flourish in 2007 as they did in 1517.

No doubt embarrassed by Johann Tetzel, Rome is quick to say indulgences are not for sale. At least not for money. But they still come at a cost. The Archdiocese has set the sticker price as follows:

“A Plenary Indulgence is granted by participating in any event, pilgrimage, or visit under these conditions: one must go to Confession, receive Holy Communion, and pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, either on the day of the event or within several days before or after it. The Plenary Indulgence may be obtained by the faithful for themselves or may be applied to the dead by way of suffrage.”

The seeker must perform these conditions at one of the following events:

“Pilgrimage to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. on April 28, 2007; Special Youth Event and Mass at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary on September 29, 2007; Bicentennial celebrations taking place in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul or in some sacred place within the boundaries of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia presided over by the Cardinal Archbishop, or his designee; A pilgrimage to the Cathedral Basilica, the Shrine of Saint John Neumann, or the Shrine of Saint Katharine Drexel, which includes a solemn communal celebration; The closing Mass of the Bicentennial Year to be held at Villanova Pavilion on April 13, 2008.”

Indulgences are never free.

So what is the purpose of the indulgences? “An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints” (Indulgentiarum Doctrina). To put it in seasonal terms, it will help shorten the purgatorial sunburn.

This admission is obviously blasphemous: Christ’s Atonement applied to the sinner is insufficient. Certain wages for sin remain, and the redeemed are bound under God’s temporal wrath.

Before we go too far, we must stop and learn about the human heart. Even as believers we tend to consider the negative things that happen in life as a result of God’s anger towards us, rather than the discipline of a loving Father. All things work together for our good because the painful experiences of life are not temporal judgments from God, but the purging of sin. He prunes us to bear more fruit and we bear more fruit to experience more of Christ’s joy (John 15). If we are covered in the Blood of Jesus Christ, we are free forever from God’s judgment (both eternal and temporal judgments).

Secondly, indulgences speak to our natural pursuit of self-righteousness. We want to earn the appeasement of God’s judgment, which is to say we want to earn God’s favor. Indulgences hold out this false hope to sinners. The fact is that God’s elect are united to Christ and there is no more divine favor and righteousness necessary before God. There is no such ‘thing’ as grace that can be awarded or won or added to the Christian life. All we have is Christ, and all of Christ is ours (see Sinclair Ferguson post earlier). “Indeed, I count everything [all self-righteousness] as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8).

John Calvin wrote that those who believe God’s grace and deliverance from judgment is distributed by church authorities, “are fit to be treated by drugs for insanity rather than to be argued with” (Institutes, 3.5.1). The insanity abounds to this day.

All-sufficient grace

Remember the old Martin Luther movie? Luther becomes furious when he sees a poor woman with a crippled child on her back going to pay what little money she has for a Tetzel indulgence. Little has changed. Sinners in 2007 who are crippled and poor and naked before their Holy God are walking to a shrine to pay the fee of homage, thinking that earning grace through an indulgence from Rome is their means of escaping God’s temporal wrath for their sin (or the sin of someone now in purgatory). At best, this practice is a manipulation of the weak sinful heart, and at worst an outright blasphemy towards the work of Christ (no matter how superficially connected to the Cross it appears).

In Christ we have freedom from eternal and temporal judgments. In Luke 23 we are told, “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ 42 And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ 43 And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”

There is all-sufficient grace in the Cross to completely cover the most vile of sinners. Without question, there are temporal consequences to sin (like being crucified for a due crime). But for the repentant sinner who trusts in Jesus Christ alone, there is no self-righteousness, no religious acts or pilgrimages or indulgences — only union into Christ! — that frees sinners from their due guilt! “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Indulgences undermine the Gospel. Calvin succinctly writes, “Obviously, either the gospel of God or indulgences must be false. Paul testifies that Christ is offered to us through the gospel, with every abundance of heavenly benefits, with all his merits, all his righteousness, wisdom, and grace, without exception” (3.5.5).

Conclusion

As the evidence continues to reveal, Rome – at the very epicenter of its public dogma – was relatively unaffected by the Reformation. This Gospel-distorting reality must never escape the notice of the Cross-centered. In contending against the heresies of the new perspectives, we cannot (and dare not) turn our backs to the heresies of the ancient perspectives still alive today.

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Related: Many helpful articles by James White on Catholicism and his books of special note are The Roman Catholic Controversy and The God Who Justifies. Also an excellent sermon by John Piper on justification in Catholicism in light of God’s judgement.