ARTICLES

We're Never Going To Paper Over All Our Problems

DENOMINATIONALISM NOT ALL THAT BAD

Ralph MacKenzie, an Evangelical Christian, is co-author of the Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Baker Book House (1995). MacKenzie lives in Clairemont. He spoke recently with News Notes reporter Lesley Payne.

What is the purpose of this book?

We were encountering amongst Evangelicals a lot of misconceptions about Catholicism. Most of the books available on Catholicism from an Evangelical point of view were anti-Catholic, and did not portray Catholic beliefs accurately. We also believe that Catholics and Evangelicals should be able to work together on issues where they agree -- abortion, education, and so on.

What is your background with regard to Catholicism?

My mother came from France, but when she married my father, a Mason, she was unable to remain in the Catholic Church. She was culturally Catholic, though, and on feast days she took me to the local parish. My co-author, Dr. Norm Geisler, came from a culturally-Catholic family but never really practiced. He attended the University of Detroit and Loyola.

Please given an overview of your book.

We have three parts: one is areas of doctrinal agreements. There are eight chapters in part one: revelation, God, human beings, Christ, salvation, the Church, ethics and last things. Then in part two are areas of doctrinal differences: the apocrypha, scripture, infallibility, justification, sacramentalism, ecclesiology, mariology and purgatory. In part two, we attempt to accurately face what Catholicism teaches, and then, only after that, do we present the Reformed answer. Other books have distorted what Catholics believe -- that Catholics "worship Mary" or "works are essential for salvation, you work your way to heaven."

We're not coming at it blind. We understand Catholicism and we attempt to honestly portray it. For example, Catholics believe in a hierarchical priesthood and evangelicals believe in a priesthood of all believers. Well, a lot of evangelicals do not realize that Catholics also believe in a general priesthood, although Catholics also have a special priesthood.

Another area of confusion is about the nature of the Church -- the Catholics have a hierarchical, physical Church and evangelicals believe in the invisible Body of Christ. Well, those are notexclusive positions. Both groups believe in both concepts. There's as much confusion on the Catholic side as there is on the evangelical side -- Catholics, for the most part, don't know we believe the Church has a physical, material structure. And we do.

Then, in part three, we deal with areas of practical cooperation. In here, we have four chapters: social action, educational goals, spiritual heritage and evangelism. Of course, traditional Roman Catholics and evangelicals have a lot of common concerns -- for instance, abortion, euthanasia, the homosexual agenda. We point out in our book that evangelicals should be ashamed of themselves for coming to the position on abortion as late as we have. Catholics have been holding this position for many, many years.

We also talk about William Bentley Ball, the great Catholic lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court. He has represented a number of non-Catholic groups -- Protestants, evangelicals, Mennonites. As a matter of fact, he represented Bob Vernon -- when Bob Gates left his job as Los Angeles city police chief, they were going to promote the natural successor, Bob Vernon, but he's a very, very outspoken evangelical. That came out and they said he wasn't fit to be police chief, and who comes to his defense but William Bentley Ball?

Is there really Evangelical "theology" developing?

You have a very definite theological history in Protestantism. I happen to be a Reformed Christian -- I'm a Reformed Evangelical, which is to say, a follower of John Calvin. Now, Calvinism, interestingly enough, also looks upon Saint Augustine as its mentor. Martin Luther and John Calvin had nothing but lavish praise for Saint Augustine. Furthermore, Norm Geisler and I are evangelical Thomists, which is to say we have a great deal of regard for Thomas Aquinas. As a matter of fact, my co-author wrote a book called, An Evangelical Appraisal of Thomas Aquinas. Ralph McInerny wrote the forward for that book.

Does the Aristotelianism of Aquinas strike you as pagan?

Not me. But there are Evangelicals and there are Evangelicals. One of the problems with Evangelicals and Thomas Aquinas is that he has been misunderstood. Unfortunately there have been some pretty high-powered Evangelical scholars who have contributed to the confusion. They would say that Saint Thomas is elevating reason above faith. And that's not true. What Thomas does is he says that reason provides the anteroom, the ante-chamber for faith, and that you cannot believe with the heart something that the head rejects. So reason, while it is not sufficient to give us all Christian truth, can bring us into the room. Then we read the Bible, and then the Holy Spirit comes and gives us faith, and that's a gift from God. I don't like to say this to all my Reformed friends, but I put Thomas Aquinas right up there with John Calvin. There's a Thomistic revival among evangelical scholars. In fact, you may not realize this, but the philosophy department at Notre Dame University is predominantly evangelical. They're all Evangelical Thomists.

How does one tell an evangelical Christian from a non-evangelical? For example, some Lutherans call themselves evangelical, and some don't.

You have to make a distinction between denominations and theological stances -- just as it would be wrong to confuse the position of Father Richard McBrien with Cardinal Ratzinger. An Evangelical is one who believes in the Gospel. He's orthodox. He believes in the resurrection, in the virgin birth, believes that the Bible is inerrant, believes that Jesus is coming back, believes in the reality of heaven and hell, and a number of other things.

What's to prevent one Evangelical from preaching something totally different from others?

Those are things that we can debate but not divide over as Evangelicals.

What if an Evangelical didn't believe in, say, the Trinity?

Well, he would by definition not be Evangelical. The term "Evangelical" presupposes belief in the Trinity.

What is the definition based on?

It would be based on Scripture. We would use the classical formulations. I would go back to the Athanasian Creed. In the front of our book, we have a little diagram which defines orthodoxy. It goes like this: one Bible, two testaments, three creeds, four councils, five centuries. All orthodox Christians believe in that diagram. Now, after that is where we have our differences of opinion. The Eastern Orthodox add two or three more councils before they broke off from Catholicism in 1054.

But didn't all the doctors of the Church believe in, say, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist?

Well, Catholics like to make that claim, but I don't think that can be sustained. What I would say is that perhaps the majority did. The term that's used often is "unanimous consent of the Fathers." We don't agree with that. We don't believe there was unanimous consent.

Let me say, though, something about the Real Presence. You know, there are at least four positions on the Eucharistic feast. There's transubstantiation, which is the Catholic position -- that the elements actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The second position, which is often called consubstantiation, is the Lutheran position. Consubstantiation is the position that says Jesus' Body and Blood come alongside of the elements. The elements are there, but also the actual Body and Blood of Jesus are there also. The third position is the Reformed position -- that's the position I hold, which is the position John Calvin described. He said that Jesus' Body and Blood are there virtually or spiritually. The fourth position is the position most Catholics are familiar with concerning Protestants -- it's called the "mere memorial" -- Jesus is not there, but do that as a mere memorial, and I reject that. That's the Baptist view.

In an Evangelical church, do they use the same words Jesus used at Communion?

Yes: "This is my body, which is broken for you...do this in remembrance of me." I attend a Presbyterian church -- First Presbyterian Church downtown. If you were to listen to the pastor when he talks about Communion, you would not be able to make a distinction between his words and the words of the priest at your church.

What do think of Father Richard John Neuhaus's position -- that he became a Catholic without rejecting Lutheranism -- he believes the Church came around to Luther's position?

By the way, Father Neuhaus is a friend of mine. You'll see a recommendation from him on the back of our book. I don't go quite as far as Father Neuhaus does. I don't think Catholicism has changed as much as he thinks it has changed. It all centers around Martin Luther and "The just shall live by faith." What happened historically is that the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages was in a mess. It was a great "works righteousness" time -- you could work your way to heaven. You could pay for people to get out of Purgatory. Martin Luther was reacting to that. That's why his rallying cry was "The just shall live by faith."

So, would Father Neuhaus be promoting justification by faith alone or was that not Luther's position?

Well, now you're going to talk about something that gets very sticky. You've got to follow me on this: traditional Augustinian/Thomistic Roman Catholicism teaches that initial justification is by faith alone, initial justification. The difference is that, as Evangelicals, we look at salvation as consisting of: justification, sanctification, and glorification; whereas Catholics use the term "justification" in a broader context. So, they talk about "initial justification" versus "progressive justification," which we would call "sanctification." Now, even in progressive justification, there are differences of opinion in Catholicism. Some Catholics believe that there is a stronger role of good works in progressive justification than other Catholics think. Some Catholics say that even our good works are the result of God's grace. This comes very close to the way we believe as Evangelicals.

Is that what Luther would have said?

Luther is the least Protestant of the Protestant reformers. Many times, Luther is very close to Roman Catholicism. I've talked about the Eucharist and his consubstantiation. Also, with baptismal regeneration, he's very close to Catholicism. Now, John Calvin was further away. There's a big debate among Evangelicals concerning exactly what traditional Roman Catholics teach about justification. We get into it in our book, where we talk about the "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" document that caused so much heartburn. This is Chuck Colson's and Neuhaus's document. It's in Appendix F in our book. Colson, of course, is a very visible Evangelical. He and Father Neuhaus got together and they got a bunch of Catholics and Evangelicals to sign onto this document. But other Evangelicals did not sign on to it because they didn't think that our perspective was being adequately addressed. Now, we agree almost completely with all the moral and social issues the document tries to address.

But interesting developments are occurring. There has been a movement, for instance, in Catholicism, to lift the anathema on John Huss and Savonarola, who was a Dominican who was burned at the stake in the Middle Ages. Savonarola got into trouble for opposing Pope Alexander VI -- Lucretia Borgia's father. Many saints supported Savonarola.

That raises a real question concerning papal infallibility, see? I don't want to get into a big debate over it -- But even he -- and he has to be the worst pope ever -- was unable to change the teachings of the Church, and from what I understand, he really did try to do so with regard to the issue of slavery but was prevented.

There's another interesting statement coming out between a group of Lutherans and the German bishops concerning justification by faith and so forth. There's a book coming out too, called Are the Condemnations of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation Valid Today? What they're saying is that the Council of Trent was misinformed about what Protestants were really teaching. What Trent was doing -- this is my own spin on it now -- I think the Catholic theologians were afraid that Martin Luther was teaching that you can accept Christ and you can live anyway you want to. He didn't say that. In fact, Martin Luther said, "The good tree produces good fruit." So a person who is a genuine Christian will produce good work. This is the theme of the book of James: if you claim that you have faith and yet you don't have any works, then your faith is a bogus faith.

But didn't Martin Luther leave out the Epistle of James in his Bible?

Well, he had problems with that, because he thought James was teaching that we're saved by works. So he was wrong about that. See, Luther was obsessed with justification by faith, and that was almost his only desire. Lutherans have openly confessed that he made a mistake about James. He didn't like the book of Jude, either. He wasn't too crazy about Revelation, I don't think.

What about ecumenism? It seems to be a favorite theme of the radical left in the Catholic Church, who expect the Church to do away with or make optional doctrines which are problematic to other Christians and even non-Christians.

Here's my take on the ecumenical movement: there is a genuine ecumenism and a false ecumenical movement. You've talked about false ecumenism from the Catholic perspective. There's a lot of that in Protestantism, too. The mainline denominations are full of that stuff. They could care less. They tell you what you want to hear and then they go down the street and they tell the Unitarians the same thing.

There's an ecumenical council in San Diego. It was pretty notorious among Catholics for a while, because, even though it had a couple priests on it, they kept releasing all these "pro-choice" statements. It seemed as if it was all the liberals from all the different churches that have liberals. They went around complaining about "fundamentalists" and complained about Republicans.... Catholics should realize that Protestant Evangelicals and fundamentalists are much closer to traditional Roman Catholicism than Roman Catholic liberals are.

Is there good will among these Evangelicals toward wanting to find out what the Catholic Church teaches and wanting to talk about the issues?

Absolutely. That's what we're about in our book. We say that we can have spiritual unity, without ecclesiastical uniformity. So if you believe that Jesus is your savior, then you're my sister, whether you're Roman Catholic or Lutheran or Baptist or Eastern Orthodox.

But then, those leftist Catholics would lump you in with Cardinal Ratzinger and "fundamentalists" and not want to talk ecumenism with you.

I would take that as a compliment! And also with Cardinal J.J. O'Connor and the bishop from Nebraska that had the spiritual guts to tell Catholics they had no business hanging around with the "pro-choice Catholics."

Do you think there'll come a day when the pope sits down with Evangelical leaders and they work out what misunderstandings there were?

I don't really think that's going to happen, because there are too many differences in major areas. However, what I think can happen is that Evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics can realize that they are brothers and sisters in Christ and we can cooperate on a lot of efforts, although I don't think there's ever going to be one great big Church.

But if the reformers were truly "re-formers," then why shouldn't there be a time when everything is reformed and we're back at the kind of unity we had for at least the first five centuries, maybe ten centuries?

From my perspective papal infallibility would be one of the major stumbling blocks.

What do you think about the discussions of papal infallibility with regard to the hoped-for reunion of the Orthodox churches?

That's very interesting. We're waiting to see what's going to happen there. As Evangelicals we take the same position as the Eastern Orthodox do. As I understand it, the Orthodox say there are five patriarchs with equal authority, and the pope, one of the five, is the "first among equals," but only in extraordinary circumstances.

Would Evangelicals ever be happy with any kind of that sort of authority -- say there were a reunion with the Orthodox Churches, and the Vatican I definition of papal infallibility were moderated in consideration of that circumstance?

I don't think so, because, you see, we take sola scriptura very seriously, and we think that only that which is explicitly found in the Scriptures is something that should be held. We believe that the Scriptures are clear enough on the important issues for us to come to a conclusion. I have no problem looking at Rome as being a very important city and church and jurisdiction historically in the Church, because that's where Peter and Paul were martyred. But I don't ever expect to see ecclesiastical uniformity. As I said earlier, though, I don't think that's really the most important issue. The most important issue is that we recognize that we can have a spiritual unity. I don't look at denominationalism as being all that bad.

Let me ask one more question about the Eastern Churches: many Protestants have gotten to the point, from reading the Bible and reasoning through things, of accepting the sacramental system, the authority given to the apostles and their successors, etc., and have ended up becoming Eastern Orthodox -- like the Campus Crusade for Christ people.

Yes. Franky Schaeffer, the late Christian scholar Francis Schaeffer's son, has become Eastern Orthodox. He wrote a horrible book. You know, the interesting thing is that Protestants and Roman Catholics are both Western and we have some real differences with Eastern Orthodoxy.

Where are Catholics and Evangelical Protestants actually cooperating right now?

We can cooperate against abortion, against euthanasia. We have common ground in the attempts to attack the traditional family, the gay and lesbian agenda, all sorts of things. Also in chapter 18, "Educational Goals," we talk about the cooperation in that area. Russell Kirk, a great Catholic layperson who died a couple years ago, spoke very highly of some Evangelical institutions. In fact, he told his people one time, "Don't send your kids to the local Catholic school, send them to Calvin College. They'll get a more orthodox understanding there than if you send them to some liberal Catholic school."

It strikes me that sometimes liberals will portray this kind of cooperation between Evangelicals and traditional Catholics as just a bunch of "right wing" people who put their politics first -- but I guess there really is an underlying spiritual unity, quite aside from secular politics.

Of course there is. That's our whole thrust. When I talk to groups around the country, I have a little statement that I make: "What Protestants must understand is what made the Reformation possible; What Catholics should understand is what made the Reformation necessary." We have both groups to address. We're never going to paper over all our problems. The liberals don't like that. They want everybody to agree on everything and to just be hugs and kisses with everything, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can agree on the essentials. *

Ralph MacKenzie is available for speaking engagements. Contact Biblical Cornucopia Ministries, (619) 274-7253. Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences is available from Evangelical Bookstore in North Park.