Speaking at the Leonine Forum in D.C. recently, I was asked a friendly but pointed question: “Why are you not a Catholic?” The questioner noted that in my talk I had expressed a love for the early Church Fathers, admiration for Thomas Aquinas, and an approach to ethics that resonated with John Paul II’s theology of the body.
It’s hard to answer such a question in brief compass at the end of a lecture. Many issues are important in my commitment to Reformed Protestantism: authority, salvation, the nature of the ministry, and the significance of sacraments are just a few of the more obvious. And while I am open to the criticism that Protestantism hasn’t given Mary her due, I believe the Catholic Church has given her a significance that is well beyond anything the Bible would countenance. But above all, at the current moment, Catholicism doesn’t appeal to me because of the man at the top: Pope Francis. In my answer, I did try to be respectful of my audience, but I could not help but observe that the present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. And as a Protestant, I am acutely aware of the damage such people do.
J. Gresham Machen, the Presbyterian controversialist who came to prominence in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, argued that confessional Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were separated from liberal Christianity by, among other things, their commitment to supernaturalism. (Both agreed that the tomb was really empty on the third day.) In other words, the former were species of Christianity while the latter was a completely different religion. I would update his critique today by saying that liberal Christianity need not necessarily deny the supernatural. It can also be characterized by a commitment to the supernatural that is nonetheless eclipsed by the natural. It has a concern for the immanent and no real use for the transcendent. Joel Osteen is a fine Protestant example of this: I see no reason to doubt he believes in the Resurrection, but the doctrine is at best merely instrumental to his vision of Christianity, a means toward achieving personal happiness and material success. The same applies to those, left and right, for whom party politics and influence in D.C. seem far more important than the rather less exciting realities of everyday Christian worship, catechesis, and discipleship.
Read More»Carl Trueman | “Why I Am Not A Catholic” | December 12, 2024
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I think Dr. Trueman has correctly applied J. Gresham Machen’s point in his key book, Christianity and Liberalism, that we have more in common with Roman Catholics than we do with liberals, even if they are in our own denominations. Liberalism not only is not Christianity, it is in an entirely different category of religions from Christianity.
That’s not at all defending Roman Catholic doctrine but rather saying liberalism is multiple orders of magnitude worse.
These are interesting responses to Trueman’s essay at First Things so I had to think about how how he would have come to some of these conclusions. In order to do so I turned to the final chapter of his epic work, “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” entitled, “Concluding Unscientific Prologue,” to see if I could find an answer. And indeed, there is where I find the basis for his current comments: “…If the church is to avoid the absolutizing of aesthetics by an appropriate commitment to Christianity as first and foremost doctrinal, then second, she must also be a community…” And I think that here is where he seems to skip over what most of us might consider important doctrines of the Christian faith, as aforementioned, in favor of cohesiveness in the struggle against the raging culture’s insistence on individual preferences for everything from the LGB”Q”, to intersectionality, to transgenderism (which I consider to be separate from the others), to a few others as well…this business of “community.”
What this “community” is, he goes on to say, “…[the second century church] exist[ed] as a close-knit, doctrinally bounded community that required her members to act consistently with their faith and to be good citizens of the earthly city as far as good citizenship was compatible with faithfulness to Christ…”
So, IOW, I think he is calling the RC church to abide by these very basic tenets (which they do not appear to be doing at the present time under the current pope’s regime) or else all of the rest of us under Protestantism will fall apart along with it under the pressures of our current deviant culture. Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents…
An interesting article with good points. Maybe I’m a caveman, but I can’t imagine writing an article about why I’m not RC without mentioning justification and the gospel, at least in passing.
Greg,
I had that same thought.
Along with idolatry.
Here is the final paragraph in this article:
“Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process.”
I do not agree with this framing. In Rome we are witnessing, rather, an unmasking, not a transformation. It’s fine to ally ourselves in the civil realm with Roman Catholics of like mind, but I think we can rejoice if the Pope and the anti-Christian church he leads are exposed. To the degree that our civic agreement masked our disagreement in Christ, let the civic agreement go. And when protestant churches are exposed, we should be grateful for the same reasons.
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
Ot was only a matter of time. Once Rome officially anathematized the Gospel at Trent, the beauty of the harlot slowly over time grew to resemble the hag that she truly was.
Dr. Trueman has answered the question with restrained grace, as as with with trenchant commentary. The irony of the “liberal protestant in white papal robes” is first, that he disdains the “heft” and “the aesthetic accomplishments of Roman Catholicism,” and second, that he seems to value “0p-eds,” rather than the teaching and tradition of Roman Catholicism. To my mind, there are a number of avenues Dr. Trueman could have followed to answer this question. This answer serves orthodox doctrine, apologetics, and biblical faithfulness and is edifying. I can think of incendiary replies that would not have served an edifying purpose. Thank you, Dr. Trueman, and thank you, Heidelblog, for giving this declaration a wider audience.
It’s encouraging to see distinctions between Protestantism and Romanism, resulting from a direct question to C.Trueman.