Catholics, Faith, and Such Things

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

    and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

    it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

Isaiah 55:10-11

This is the first of what I hope to be a weekly blog post giving second thoughts, caveats, and corrections as I think of them after Sunday mornings. This last Sunday School continued through our series on the Apostles Creed and the sermon was on Jesus, the judge, who judges perfectly, who knows our secrets, and yet becomes our advocate when we trust in him. 

Faith

I cannot remember if it was during the sermon or the Sunday School, but I think I quoted Genesis 15:6 “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” and made the mistake of saying it was in Genesis 12. While “Abram” certainly exercised some faith in God in Genesis 12 by leaving his homeland, it was specifically stated in Genesis 15:6 when God promised him innumerable descendants.

The Holy Catholic Church

During Sunday School we spoke about the “holy catholic church,” and particularly the notion that individual churches can be more or less pure. Some have in fact degenerated into “synagogues (assemblies) of Satan” (Rev 2:9 and 3:9). That is to say that instead of leading people to find forgiveness and grace in Jesus, they are actively STOPPING them from finding forgiveness and grace in Jesus. This is often by denying the reality of sin and guilt, or by promoting another means of salvation.

But when talking about the true universal church, and how to know whether a specific denomination or local church is part of Christ’s true church, we can’t avoid talking about Roman Catholicism, at least in the West. Right now, there are many finding the Roman Catholic arguments about the true church and “authority” in the church to be compelling. We discussed the idea of the 3 marks of the church also discussed the importance of apostolic succession in the early church for preserving and bearing witness to the canonical scriptures. 

Another question that did not come up on Sunday, but often does, is whether or not Roman Catholics are real Christians. That’s a hard question, because while we might have significant problems with the Roman church as an institution and a set of doctrines, individuals are not saved by having perfect theology, but by having faith in Christ.

An interesting statistic came across my screen this week posted by Ryan Burge. According to a 2022-2023 survey…

“Among those who leave Protestantism: 79% become non-religious. 7% become Catholic.

 

Among those who leave Catholicism: 58% become non-religious. 33% become Protestant.” 

 

I have a theory. One of the three marks of the true church is “the right preaching of the word of God.” Whatever one may say of the Roman Catholic church, the Bible is read in significant portions during most Sunday services. Relative to mainline protestant denominations, Catholics have a high view of scripture. Wherever God’s word is present, the church “sprouts.” I would argue that a lot of those “sprouts” read and heard the word in Romans Catholic churches, then started looking for something more aligned with said scripture.

Remember that Isaiah text at the top?

The Conquest of Canaan

The Old Testament reading during the worship service was Joshua 11. After reading it, I commented that this is one of those passages that does not sit well with modern westerners, and that while other religions might have a constitutional basis for conquest by sword, Christianity does not. God provided us with two examples of how “getting rid of the bad people” doesn’t accomplish the redemption of humanity: the flood and the Canaanite conquest. We have three great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Hide in a cave and you still have two out of three to mess things up.

But by saying that, I did not mean that God messed up. Only that in doing what God is entitled to do, namely, punish the wicked (all y’all), he showed us that there are none righteous (Romans 3) and that “the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” Things still went wrong. We still needed the Messiah to come and usher in a new covenant, doing what the law and force of arms could not.

SDG

Keith

PS- Joel Hebert will be preaching the next two weeks.