In 1994 a notable collection of Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, or Romanists, signed the first in a series of documents known as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” In a couple of places, Reformation 21 and First Things the beginning of those discussions are being remembered in different ways. I remember being quite surprised to see that evangelical luminaries had signed a document that any confessional Protestant should have seen to have been deeply flawed. What caught my attention in the first retrospective piece, first published on Ref21 and since moved to First Things, was this paragraph:
Because of a secure sense of doctrinal clarity and a firm set of theological sensibilities that are rooted in and informed by the Reformed tradition, we are confident enough to enter into dialogues that run the gamut of thought and range across a spectrum of opinion. We do so without fear of succumbing to the temptation of compromising biblical essentials or glossing over existing differences. Such freedom ought to release us from treating this topic in an echo chamber, wherein our own message can end up ringing back in our ears in rather stale and lifeless tones.
There’s something—several things perhaps—about this language that doesn’t seem right. First genuine dialogue is a good thing. When, in the past, I’ve criticized the ECT process and documents, people have challenged me by asking whether I would participate in ecumenical dialogue. Yes, I would participate in genuine ecumenical dialogue but from the perspective of the Reformed confessions we may reasonably doubt that the ECT process met this test. Idris Cardinal Cassidy was commissioned by the Roman communion. Which ecclesiastical bodies commissioned the evangelicals signatories to ECT to participate and to sign these documents? Did the Church of England commission J. I. Packer to represent them? Did the Baptists commission Chuck Colson? Not that I recall. If not, then the evangelicals who participated had no standing. They were there as private persons expressing private opinions. More than that, as Carl Trueman notes this morning in his contribution to the First Things colloquy, is that ECT was another manifestation of the evangelical celebrity culture. If Packer, Colson and the other evangelicals weren’t delegated by their ecclesiastical bodies then on what basis were they there? Celebrity.
Even had the evangelicals been commissioned by their churches to represent them at ECT there is a fundamental problem, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Church made clear in the 2007 document, “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church,” Protestant churches do not have, in themselves, validity. They are only valid insofar as they have their subsistence in Rome.
What is the meaning of the affirmation that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church?
RESPONSE
Christ “established here on earth” only one Church and instituted it as a “visible and spiritual community”, that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ himself instituted. “This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic […]. This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him”.
In number 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium ‘subsistence’ means this perduring, historical continuity and the permanence of all the elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, in which the Church of Christ is concretely found on this earth.
It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them. Nevertheless, the word “subsists” can only be attributed to the Catholic Church alone precisely because it refers to the mark of unity that we profess in the symbols of the faith (I believe… in the “one” Church); and this “one” Church subsists in the Catholic Church.
Did you catch the phrase “not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church”? This article of the document signals that there is only one sort of discussion Rome is prepared to have with “evangelicals:” negotiation of the terms of surrender.
There is only one sort of truly ecumenical dialogue that confessional Protestants are prepared to have with Rome: a call to repentance and faith. The ECT documents reflect Rome’s agenda much more than they do that of confessional Protestants.
Second, When the author quoted above worries about “stale and lifeless tones” ringing in an “echo chamber” does that include the reality that precious few evangelicals participated who were prepared either to question the process or the product. More than one of the signatories testified that they were surprised and delighted to find that Cardinal Cassidy testified to a born again experience and to a personal relationship with Jesus. Let me illustrate: One of my colleagues at Wheaton came to my office to ask me to help him prepare to participate in the discussions leading toward ECT II. He said that he did not want to be duped, that he was prepared to be a voice in the wilderness. When he returned, however, he rebuked me for being so critical and told me that I had better get on board or get run over. What explains his about face? Pietism. In Cassidy et al he found a like religious experience. Rome 2, Pietists 0.
Third, we know, more or less, what constitutes a Romanist: someone in good standing with the Roman communion, in submission to the Papacy. What constitutes “an evangelical”? What body determines the boundaries of that adjective? As much as some would like the Evangelical Theological Society to serve such a quasi-judicial function it cannot. It’s a society of scholars not an ecclesiastical body. Further, when it has tried to function judicially, as in the case of Open Theism and Clark Pinnock, it has demonstrated that it is unable or unwilling. Thus, the designation “an evangelical” is almost meaningless. “An evangelical” may affirm inerrancy or deny it, affirm divine foreknowledge or deny it, affirm Christ’s true humanity or deny it, affirm this ecclesiology or none, affirm that view of the sacraments or none. The quickest way to start an argument among self-identified evangelicals is to say, “so and so is not an evangelical.” In short, when used this way, as a boundary marker, “an evangelical” is so plastic as to be practically worthless. What is the irreducible core of “an evangelical”? The immediate personal encounter with the risen Christ. What is “an evangelical”? A pietist.
Fourth, though we knew what the evangelical doctrine of salvation was in the 16th and 17th centuries (justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone), since the 18th century the relationship between “the evangelicals” and the classically evangelical (i.e., confessional Protestant) doctrines has become tenuous at best. In North America the classic evangelical piety was overthrown for various species of Anabaptist enthusiasm (e.g., direct revelation) and a growing disinterest in the formal and material doctrines of the Reformation in favor of the immediate encounter with the risen Christ. Experience über alles.
Those of us, however, who still hold to the Reformation evangel are not together with Rome. We cannot be not only because we still have regard for what we understand to be the biblical doctrine of salvation but because we pay attention to what Rome has said and continues to say. A Romanist may give assurances of his spiritual experience until the cows come home but his experience is quite beside the point. The Roman Catechism, which is an official statement of her dogma, is clear:
§1989 The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus’ proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high. “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”
The last sentence is a quotation from the Council of Trent, session 6, 1547. Those who proclaim that Vatican II changed Rome’s doctrine of salvation are simply wrong, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said. Vatican II did bring reforms of various kinds but Rome has not moved on justification. She still teaches that justification is sanctification, i.e. progressive moral renewal by grace and cooperation by grace. Confessional Protestants teach something very different:
Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4. (Augsburg Confession art. 4)
60. How are you righteous before God?
Only by true faith in Jesus Christ; that is, although my conscience accuse me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil; yet God without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sin, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me; if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. (Heidelberg Catechism 60)
What is justification?
Justification is an act of God’ s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone (Westminster Shorter Catechism 33).
As the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, justification is an act of God’s free grace, i.e., his favor merited for us by Christ and imputed to us and sanctification (WSC 34) is a work of God’s grace, i.e., his gracious renewal of us as a consequence of having justified us by his free favor alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), on the basis of Christ’s (condign) merit alone. For confessional Protestants, justification is the once-for-all declaration that a person, even though he remains of himself a sinner, is nevertheless accepted as righteous before God for the sake of Christ’s righteousness imputed to him and received only through faith resting in, receiving, and trusting in Christ alone. In short: simul iustus et peccator (at the same time righteous and sinner). Rome denies this very doctrine. At Trent (1547) she pronounced God’s eternal curse on these very doctrines. Liberal Protestant and Roman ecumenists play at words to make the anathemas disappear but anyone who knows his Romanism knows that, in Roman dogma, a conciliar anathema ratified by the papacy is a sticky thing indeed. As Rome said in 2007:
Did the Second Vatican Council change the Catholic doctrine on the Church?
RESPONSE
The Second Vatican Council neither changed nor intended to change this doctrine, rather it developed, deepened and more fully explained it.
ECT was ultimately Pietists and Romanists Together and the pietists centuries ago walked away from any commitment to the objective truths of the Christian faith in favor of the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience (QIRE). For pietism what matters, as we saw in 1994, is not objective Christian truth but subjective Christian experience. Confessional Protestants do have a “secure sense of doctrinal clarity” and that is why we are able to see the entire ECT experiment for what was: a series of misguided adventures in which ill-equipped pietists sacrificed objective biblical truth in favor of a shared religious experience.
Amen! You nailed it, Dr. Clark!
I thought this especially great:
“What is the irreducible core of “an evangelical”? The immediate personal encounter with the risen Christ. What is “an evangelical”? A pietist.”
Dr. Clark,
Charles Hodge, in the Princeton Review, says concerning the Roman Catholic Church,
No one denies that Rome and the Reformed mean different things regarding justification. The question that Hodge is entertaining though, is that we cannot define Rome’s terms the way we want to define them. Is Rome wrong/confused? Absolutely. Are some expressions of Roman teaching (i.e. Tetzel) heretical? Undoubtedly. Should the Roman Church repent from its errors? Certainly.
But that does not denigrate the significant common ground that we share with Rome, as Hodge would conclude,
To be fair, Thornwell and other Presbyterians thought the question was not so “plain.” Speaking for myself though, I concur with Hodge.
Where does that leave us with ECT? There are some legitimate questions or concerns that can be raised about the process. How “ecumenical” can Evangelicalism be if it is bereft of ecclesiology? Who gets to speak for Evangelicalism? Those are legitimate questions, but they introduce a whole new set of questions for me about our Reformed denominations:
How are we engaging in “genuine ecumenical dialogue” inside (and outside) of the Reformed tradition? What does it say that these types of conversations are happening outside of our denominational structures? How seriously do we take Jesus’s prayer that “they may be one just as you are in me and I am in you”?
For me these are not questions accepting us to hang our head in shame, but they are, for me, truly diagnostic questions. Maybe we’re doing well and there are good answers, but these are the more important questions to be asking in light of ECT.
Brandon,
Signing away the material question of the Reformation hardly constitutes constructive dialogue.
Virtually everything in your comment is immaterial to what I actually wrote. Where did I question what Hodge said? I agree with Hodge but that is quite beside the point when it comes to negotiating with Rome.
Where did I “define” Rome’s terms for them? I’m taking them at their word, which is treating them with respect rather than treating them like children who don’t know what they are saying.
Dr. Clark,
Sorry if I was not clear enough. I’m certainly not “signing away the material question of the Reformation,” but I’m not so sure ETC did that either. For example, ECT (1994) notes,
In The Gift of Salvation, the authors concede,
My point in citing Hodge was to emphasize that even in our disagreement with Rome, we can recognize the unity of our baptism and that Rome professes “true religion.” In this way, the project of ECT, imperfect as it is, is filling a void that our ecclesiastical bodies have left. It seems that your criticism of ECT is that it doesn’t solve all of the disagreements–but it never claimed to do that. Instead, ECT is about finding what we can agree on in the midst of our disagreements.
And one final note. You said,
There are a few problems with this. First, it is not only liberal Protestants interested in these discussions. Second, even in talking with the most conservative of RCs, they will emphasize that anathemas only apply to those that in full knowledge reject the teaching of the Church. Third, echoing Calvin, John Neuhas notes that while the decrees of Trent remain, Trent did not accurately reflect what Protestants were actually teaching. Neuhas says,
Neuhas’s view may not be correct, but it is shared by other Roman scholars (like Karl Rahner & Karl Lehmann) and provides Protestants the ability to have constructive conversations about justification.
Brandon,
Let me clear. I’m not accusing you of signing away the gospel. I am accusing the “evangelicals” who signed ECT of signing away the gospel. ECT absolutely signed away the gospel. Go back and read the Protestant the original critiques. Any document that fudges on the solas signs away the gospel because the solas are essential to the gospel. Did you read the documents I linked? I’ve offered fairly extensive surveys and critiques of the ECT documents and of the Roman doctrine of progressive justification and distinguished it clearly from the Protestant doctrine.
I’m well aware of “The Gift of Salvation” and have been writing on it for 20 years. The unity that we do have is not in question. After all, I’ve defended the validity of Roman baptism in this very space. What is in question is what seems like an attempt, by some, 20 years later, to re-tell the ECT story. ECT represented a capitulation by earnest but misguided pietists and a little chicanery by Fr Neuhaus, who knew better from his seminary training. I knew his church history prof.
No extra-ecclesiastical document can fill a void left by the church. It’s not up to private, entrepreneurial evangelical pietists to fill voids left by the church. That sort of thinking that has done great damage to the visible church.
Neuhaus was a mediocre student of history. Trent was quite precise its rejection of the Reformation. Read session 6 of Trent carefully. Show me the great error. I can show you where they’re virtually quoting Luther and Calvin. The delegates to Trent weren’t stupid and they weren’t ignorant. It is modern hubris, it seems to me, that assume they were.
Even if Trent was shown to be wrong, she can’t, on Roman terms, be wrong. Again, you’re illustrating one of the fundamental problems of the entire ECT enterprise. Rome is not the ETS. Rome is Rome. What has she has spoken she has spoken. She is the mother of Scripture. She does not err in her magisterial declarations even if she does err. You’re still not distinguishing between private negotiations and Roman dogma.
Brandon,
The problem is not that Rome professes the true religion and the hard line meanie/hater/truly reformed don’t acknowledge it. Rather the problem is Rome professes a lot of stuff beside and in addition to the true religion and then says that is the true religion. Which is not true.
IOW the reformers were wiser than contemporary “evangelicals” or even Hodge (Chiniquy understood the dialectic better than he did). Or, to put it another way, there is a reason the old judicial oath was “to tell the truth, the whole truth and only the truth”.
But in an age that idolizes sincerity, such distinctions carry no weight.
How interesting!
Thanks Scott, very helpful stuff for the untrained layman such as I.
“Second, even in talking with the most conservative of RCs, they will emphasize that anathemas only apply to those that in full knowledge reject the teaching of the Church.” Or as Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin might put it (and I can provide the audio of basically the same concept):
Someone in a far off land who’s never heard the gospel but is cooperating with grace, for them there can be salvation but for someone say, oh I don’t know, like RS Clark, who knowingly rejects Rome, he cannot be saved.
Join Rome or you won’t be saved, unless you’ve never had the chance to hear the gospel, then you’re ok not to join Rome, just cooperate with grace. After all, isn’t God obligated to try and save everyone? Oy veh!