At the end of the eucharistic liturgy comes a little phrase which is easy to miss and rather awkward to translate into English. So here it is in Latin:
Ite, missa est.
Literally, this means “Go, it is the sending,” or “Go, it is the dismissal.” “Go, you are dismissed” might be a better translation, but in Catholic churches we sometimes say something like “Go in peace to love and to serve the Lord.” This emphasises the fact that we are sent forth from church with a mission. This little word missa has ended up being used to refer to the whole eucharistic liturgy: it has become, in Italian, messa; in French, messe; in English, “mass”.
As Christians, we all have different missions in life. One of mine is to preach to Christians the unity of the Body of Christ. Jesus tells us that Christian unity is a necessary precondition for the effective preaching of Christ to the rest of humanity:
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (Jn. 17:22-23, my emphasis)
In so saying, Jesus is echoing the words of the prophet Ezekiel six centuries earlier:
“‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation… Then the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy.’” (Ezek. 37:21-22,28, my emphasis)
In both Old and New Testaments, therefore, the visible unity of the people of God is an essential prerequisite for the world to recognise the saving power of the LORD. The problem is that Christian unity is one of those ideals which we can all say we are in favour of, but which sometimes our actions militate against. So, how can Evangelicals and Catholics be brought closer to the unity which God demands of us?
Perhaps I had better answer my question in several stages. For at the heart of our answer must lie Christ: “unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God… the whole measure of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13) – without which the Body of Christ remains incomplete, wounded and maimed (1 Cor. 12:15-21), and without which we are but bleeding stumps. However, far as we are from that ideal, maybe there are some lesser things we can do to bring us, step by tiny step, towards the fullness to which we aspire. Perfect institutional and theological unity may be beyond our grasp right now, but what the great Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullman calls “solidarity” or “brotherhood” [1] may be useful staging posts along the way. So, let us start from the outside, and see what is required for us to begin the journey inwards.
First step: truth and
falsehood
First, we need to speak truth to and about each other. And truth does not only come out of sincerity, but out of knowledge. An Evangelical who says in all sincerity that “the Catholic Church preaches salvation through good works” is not speaking the truth; neither is a Catholic who says that “Evangelicals believe that it doesn’t matter whether you sin or not, so long as you believe in Jesus”. Their ignorance may well be understandable – but their vocal expression of that ignorance is unwise. They are both, though unwittingly, perpetrating falsehood.
In the days before globalisation and information technology, such ignorance was easily forgivable: we all depended upon the authoritative opinions of others, and if our Christian leaders and teachers preached misinformation about other types of Christians, we could not be blamed for believing them. But now things have changed. Clear factual information about the beliefs of other types of Christians is available at the click of a mouse. [2] If our Lord’s teaching matters at all to us, then we are duty bound to seek “unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God” (Eph. 4:13) – and we must start by seeking and learning the truth about each other. For Christians in a globalised world, ignorance about other types of Christians is not an option.
Let me give you an example. A. and I have home-educated all our children, and are always on the lookout for good Christian educational books. A friend of ours recommended to us a book from a Christian homeschool curriculum, on the subject of Christian evangelisation around the world. A fine volume in many ways, it nevertheless contained the following statement:
Catholics… worship Mary as the Mother of God. [3]
If you have read Chapter Fourteen of this volume, you will immediately see not only what a terrible falsehood this statement is, but how it represents a complete misunderstanding, not only of what the Catholic Church does say about Mary, but also of the meaning and history of the term “mother of God”. When I read it out to my son S., then aged about thirteen, his reaction was indignant: “No, we don’t worship Mary. How could we do that? We only worship God!” But now imagine what the reaction of a child who knew nothing about Catholicism would be. He would learn that Catholics “worship Mary”, and therefore are not really Christians at all, for Christians worship God alone. Immediately his concept of Christian unity would be warped, for he would now think that the only way that Catholics could be part of a unified Christian church would be if they were to cease being Catholics at all. His brothers have been turned into his adversaries.
The sad thing is that there are many ways in which the authors of this children’s book could have legitimately criticised Catholicism – including many Catholics’ attitudes to Mary. But instead they chose to write a falsehood; and by doing so they have set back the cause of Christian unity, taking us one step further away from the fulfilment of Christ’s John 17 prayer. One is forced to ask: Why?
Thomas Howard, drawing on his Evangelical heritage, puts it as charitably as anyone can:
An evangelical, accustomed as he is to being surrounded by worshipers all of whom manifestly share not only his faith but also his way of expressing that faith, may find himself looking about at the people and asking whether they all understand and believe everything they should. This is the wrong approach… Faith is often scarcely recognizable across the lines that divide Christendom, so that C. S. Lewis, for example, smoking his pipe and drinking his beer at an Oxford pub, might not look like a Christian to a Christian and Missionary Alliance boy from Nebraska. A Sicilian peasant woman might have difficulty making a young woman from the Inter-Varsity group at Mount Holyoke understand that she is indeed born again. Heaven will be full of surprises, we all say blithely. Well, so is earth – and especially the Church on earth. [4]
I think that is part of what I failed to realise all those years ago when I attended my first Catholic mass. At that stage in my life, I was used to the fact that different Protestant churches, even within the same official “denomination”, often make a point of differentiating themselves from each other according to their liturgical or doctrinal flavour. Even within the nominally unified Anglican communion, some churches are “liberal”, others “evangelical”; some “high”, others “low”. If you are of an evangelical persuasion, you will probably attend a church where the evangelical vision of Christianity is preached, the evangelical style of worship is purveyed, and where you mix to a very great extent with others who feel at home in an evangelical religious milieu. If you are of a more “liberal” persuasion, your way of worshipping, the people you meet, and your interpretation of Scripture will be coloured in a very different way. However, just as much as Protestant churches are sometimes inclined to differentiate themselves by emphasising their distinctiveness, Catholics are likely to emphasise their catholicity: it would be considered in the worst possible taste to advertise a parish as, for example, “biblical” or “missionary” or “high” or “low” or “conservative” or “family-friendly”. And one does not normally find different services at the same church advertised for their distinctive characteristics: for example, a “family mass”, or a “sung eucharist” etc. Nor do Catholic parish newsletters or websites ever – much, I must admit, to my personal frustration – advertise who is preaching at which liturgy. The underlying presumption is that there is one universal Church, with one Word of God and one Eucharist – and that these are for everyone. Any given parish community is but one part of that one Church. In the Church there may indeed be people who are particularly zealous for Scripture, or sacraments, or music, or preaching, or outreach, or charitable works, or charismatic signs – but rarely will Catholic parishes seek to present themselves as anything other than kata holon: “according to the whole”. They tend therefore to be full of a great mixture of people: some very “evangelical”, others very “catholic”; some very “high church”, others very “low”; some very “charismatic”, others more restrained in their self-expression; some deeply committed, others more “on the fringe”. What binds us together is not the type of Christian we are, nor the type of Christianity we “like”; but Christ, revealed to us in Scripture and Sacrament. It is what He does which makes us one Church, not what we do for Him.
Consequently many Catholics instinctively have, I think, a greater tolerance for liturgical and exegetical variety (and sometimes, indeed, liturgical and exegetical lack of standards!) amongst their fellow-Christians than some Evangelicals do. We are not threatened by it – because the Church is not threatened by it. We are confident that the Church’s teaching will remain faithful to and in continuity with biblical and apostolic teaching – regardless of what some of its members may say or do. Generally speaking, we live not in fear of difference, but in faith that whatever differences we may have, God is powerful and wise enough to prevail.
This Catholic instinct towards tolerance and inclusivity has, particularly in recent decades, been extended beyond the Catholic communion. And so it is not unfair to say, as Jesuit priest Philip Endean explains, that increasingly Catholics
tend to be generous in their reading of the Protestant tradition: their vision of ecumenism is such that they would not want to read Protestants as simply repeating Catholic teaching, but rather as different, and thereby enhancing the diversity of the salvific communion – all they need to establish is that there is enough common ground for us to be able to recognize each other as Christians. [5]
Second step: cliff-edges
So, is there “enough common ground for us to be able to recognize each other as Christians”? Can Catholics and Evangelicals rejoice in the diversity each other brings to the communion of the holy – as the three persons of God rejoice in each other? Well, let us attempt to answer these questions by moving another layer inward towards the fullness of Christ. Let us say that, unlike the authors of the homeschool book quoted above, we have done our research and learnt some reliable facts about what other types of Christians believe. We have sorted the truth from the falsehood, and have discarded the books which purvey the latter. Will that alone do the trick? Almost certainly not, because there is no guarantee that, reliable though our information may now be, we will either like or understand what we have found out. We may find the beliefs or practices of other types of Christians, though correctly described, bewildering or frightening, or just too different for comfort.
This fact was brought home to my wife in quite a painful manner some years ago when she was a member of a local home educators’ group. Some of the mothers involved in that group announced the formation of a Christian prayer group for home-educating mothers. A. attended the first meeting with enthusiasm. During the course of that prayer meeting she mentioned that she was Catholic. She was not invited back again. The group continued to meet, but A. was excluded from the e-mail notifications.
What were the good Christian home-educating mums of Surrey so scared of? A Baptist friend of mine attempted to explain it to me:
Years ago, we visited Carcassonne and thoroughly
enjoyed the spectacular medieval castle and town. A lasting memory from the visit
– in one stretch of the wall, we were able to climb up onto a parapet and look
out over the crenellated battlements. While the view was beautiful, the drop
off on the town side was a bit scary. The boys, naturally fulfilling their God
given task of frightening their parents, began to walk closer and closer to the
edge of the parapet, looking over into the abyss… I asked them, told them,
commanded them and then finally dragged them back from the edge.
In talking through their disobedience to my instructions,
we had a conversation that has stayed with them, and with me, ever since. I
said, “If you do not want to fall, then do not walk close to the edge.” In this
same manner, my perceived threats in the Different category lead me to choose
to try to walk far from those potential edges. I can easily agree that my sense
of edge is unique to me and that being close to an edge in some matter is not
the same as having jumped/fallen off it. In all areas of life, if I do not have
a clarity of “oughtness” to do something, I find that things go best when I try
to actively put just a bit of distance between me and that thing. [6]
My friend’s advice was without doubt wise: “If you do not want to fall, then do not walk close to the edge.” There are certainly many cliff-edges in our faith which we need to avoid, because sometimes they can lead us unwittingly into sin or heresy or blasphemy. But that doesn’t alter the fact that sometimes it is hard to distinguish between what we perceive to be the “edge” and what may in fact be a concealed path to potentially fruitful pastures.
Have you ever read C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian? There is a wonderful scene in that book when the four children are trying to find their way across a gorge to join their comrades. Lucy, the youngest, sees Aslan, the great Lion, beckoning to them to cross by what appears to be a treacherous path. Her older siblings refuse to follow her, and as a result they find themselves ambushed by their enemies. Lewis presents this story to us as a cautionary tale about the consequences of lack of faith. We, in our present ecumenical predicament, can learn from this too. For if we forever put a safe distance between us and what we think may be the “edges” of our faith, we will never know what might have been, and, like the three older children in Prince Caspian, we may not see that from the other side Aslan is showing us a safe path:
For a long way Aslan went along the top of the precipices. Then they came to a place where some little trees grew right on the edge. He turned and disappeared among them. Lucy held her breath, for it looked as if he had plunged over the cliff; but she was too busy keeping him in sight to stop and think about this. She quickened her pace and was soon among the trees herself. Looking down, she could see a steep and narrow path going slantwise down into the gorge between rocks, and Aslan descending it. He turned and looked at her with his happy eyes. Lucy clapped her hands and began to scramble down after him. From behind her she heard the voices of the others shouting, “Hi! Lucy! Look out, for goodness’ sake. You’re right on the edge of the gorge. Come back –” [7]
We are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, cliff-edges are, in general, only safe at a distance. On the other hand, the level of danger posed by any given cliff-edge can only be assessed close-up, even by venturing down the cliff-path a little. It is only by risking a bit that we can discover whether what appeared dangerous from a distance is in fact a way to safety. That we sometimes need caution in our spiritual lives is beyond doubt. But there is also a time for trust, and often, as Lucy instinctively knew, that time is when we find ourselves near a cliff-edge. Sometimes, even, God gives us unexplored cliff-top paths as a chance to discover new and fruitful ways to proceed on our Christian journey:
I will lead the blind by ways they have
not known,
along unfamiliar paths I will guide
them;
I will turn the darkness into light
before them
and make the rough places smooth. (Is.
42:16)
How can we know whether to take the risk or not? Only by listening to those who have tried that path before and have come back unscathed. And that will only happen if we actively seek out Christians who have taken paths different from ours, and who, indeed, appear unscathed by them. The fullness of Christ depends for its fulfillment upon our taking ecumenical risks. Suspicion undermines the Body; trust can bind its wounds.
Trust and suspicion
And so we find that coming to a right understanding of each other’s beliefs is not dependent simply upon sorting truth from falsehood. For the same statement, the same form of words even, can seem like truth, or falsehood, depending upon the understanding we bring to it. Like a cliff-edge, it can appear as a danger, or a salvation, depending upon our point of view. We have seen already in this book that so many of the greatest discoveries of our Christian faith are mysteries, where the path to truth by its nature disappears, as if over a cliff-edge, into the “limitless darkness of God” (cf. Ex. 20:21, Ps. 18:11). [8] And so it took centuries of prayer and discussion for the early Church to dare to explore and to map out the great religious questions of the age: for example, the two natures of Christ and the three persons of God, which we discussed in Chapter Five. This process was not without pain and conflict and much misunderstanding. But here’s the important point: the fact that Christendom was able to frame its doctrine at all was due to the fact that Christians were more determined to stick together than they were to have it exactly their own way. Did every Christian in the fourth century A.D. have the same doctrinally irreproachable understanding of phrases like “begotten not made, of one substance with the Father”? [9] Certainly not! But the essential thing is that at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople they were determined to stick around and battle it out, and come to a consensus which, whilst not necessarily perfect for everyone, falsified nothing of the essentials of their faith.
Fast forward eleven centuries, and we have to ask the question: Amidst the bluster and political intrigue surrounding the Reformation, did Rome and Luther really understand what each other was saying about justification by faith, or about the sufficiency of Scripture? [10] Indeed, do we yet understand?
In this sad case (and many more which could be cited throughout the history of our faith), our determination to be faithful to what we saw as the “best” expression of the truth has caused us to fail to see what the devastating side-effect of schism is, which is to cement misunderstanding by separating the dialoguing parties so that they no longer even argue about their differences but retreat into the illusion of self-assured spiritual superiority. So now, post-Reformation, instead of one Church which struggles to re-marry faith and works, Scripture and Tradition, the individual and the koinonia, in one balanced faith which fully embraces the mystery of the not-fully-knowable, we have opposing camps often incapable of reconciling the poles of our spiritual mysteries because we are unwilling to even imagine things from other people’s points of view.
This sort of destructive division can only be repaired by recalibrating our attitudes to each other, so that our instinct is not to misunderstand and judge, but to listen and understand. And so, I hope that if you have read this far in this book, you will be inspired, not just to read more books, but to go out and find other prayerful Christian believers whose church context is very different from your own, and to speak with them at length about the commonalities and varieties of your Christian beliefs and practices. We will only learn to trust other types of Christians’ ways of being Christian if we, at least some of the time, share other types of Christians’ faith journeys – sometimes even those which appear to be “along the top of the precipices”. [11] We need, some of the time, to share each other’s life in Christ; we need, occasionally at least, to share each other’s life in prayer, and in church. This is a challenge. Sometimes it can go against our fondest prejudices. Sometimes it can seem a thankless task – confusing, upsetting, bewildering, and apparently pointless. But do it we must – for the love and unity of the Body of Christ depends upon it, and so therefore does our own salvation as Christ’s people. Presbyterian theologian Robert McAfee Brown puts it beautifully:
We are not alone upon the road. This discovery
is both comforting and humiliating, for many fellow pilgrims see the city with
more clarity than we. When we fail to discern something of importance, one of
them does. Sometimes a whole host of them does. We may not initially assume
that they are wrong. We must first of all acknowledge that their vision may be
clearer than ours, and that the things they see are really there. We must take
the witness of our fellow pilgrims seriously.
It is not easy to do this. [12]
Ecumenical courage
One of the most inspiring tales of this kind of Christian courage is told by David Bjork, an American pastor with the Missionary Church, resident in France. When he first arrived in France, he came armed with a set of presumptions about Catholics:
I believed that…: Catholics believe they must earn their way into heaven through good works; Catholic believers don’t feel the need to pursue holy living; they simply go to confession before Mass; Catholics worship Mary; Catholics believe they are recrucifying Christ at the Mass; Catholics believe that the Pope is infallible… I simply wrote the Catholic Church off as an invalid expression of Christianity. [13]
Bjork’s missionary zeal began to be turned on its head when he was invited to church by some local Catholic acquaintances. Then began a series of meetings with a local Catholic priest.
It took three and a half years for God to overcome my religious prejudices… As I got to know Father Norbert, as I witnessed the vitality of his faith and the consistency of his obedient submission to the Spirit and the Scriptures, I was not only convinced of his relationship with the Savior, but challenged in my own walk with Christ. [14]
It was John 17:23 (“may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me”) which induced Bjork’s change of focus:
When I arrived in France I operated out of a
perspective that asked: “Which group of believers has the most perfect understanding
of what it means to be Christ’s follower…?”
Slowly, God shifted my thinking so that my
preoccupying thought became: “How can I bring the light which I have received from
my own faith tradition and religious heritage and serve the followers of Christ
in this place?” I began to understand that I had things to learn from, as well
contribute to, the faith of my Catholic brothers and sisters… We are all pilgrims.
We are all in process. And we need each other. [15]
We need each other: this perhaps is the most important lesson which Bjork has learnt, and the one which opens up the door to all the other lessons which we can learn from each other. I hope it will be clear, for all the reasons we have discussed throughout this book, that seeking Christian unity is not an optional extra. Unity-in-diversity is, in fact, the natural condition of our Church: it is the state which characterizes the triune God, and which therefore God has bequeathed to His Body, His Bride, “from the beginning”. We all bear the guilt of having betrayed His command to maintain this unity; we have sought to divorce each other – because our “hearts were hard” (cf. Matt. 19:8). The good news is, however, that in comparison with our brief five-hundred-year period of schism, Protestants and Catholics share a few thousand years of common theological and salvation history. We have in common the history of the people of God, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to the prophets to Ezra and Nehemiah, and onwards. We have in common the revelation of Christ, His life and death and resurrection, prophesied and testified to in Holy Scripture, and explained and developed and codified by generations of Christians ever since: Peter, Paul, John, James, Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, Augustine, and on and on. We share the same Scriptures, which we hold to be infallible. We share the same creeds which were hammered out by our fathers in faith centuries ago. “What God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6)!
That grand old Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer, writing about John 17:23, puts it well:
Here Jesus is stating… [that] we cannot expect
the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true,
unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians. […]
Jesus did give the mark that will arrest the
attention of the world, even the attention of the modern man who says he is
just a machine. Because every man is made in the image of God and has,
therefore, aspirations for love, there is something that can be in every geographical
climate – in every point of time – which cannot fail to arrest his attention.
What is it? The love that true Christians show
for each other and not just for their own party. [16]
Schaeffer issues a particular warning about this:
There is a… false notion of what this unity
involves. This is the view that evangelical Christians have often tried to
escape under. Too often the evangelical has said, “Well, of course Jesus is
talking here about the mystical union of the invisible church.” And then he lets
it go at that and does not think about it any more – ever…
But this is not what Jesus is talking about in…
John 17, for we cannot break up this unity no matter what we do. Thus, to
relate Christ’s words to the mystical unity of the invisible Church is to
reduce Christ’s words to a meaningless phrase…
That is the whole point: The world is going to
judge whether Jesus has been sent by the Father on the basis of something that
is open to observation.
In John… 17, Jesus talks about a real seeable
oneness, a practicing oneness, a practical oneness across all lines, among all true
Christians. [17]
Each part of the worldwide body of Christians, in its own time, has its own particular genius which it brings to the Body. Historically, the genius of the Reformation was to reform – and the Church needs constant reformation, for we are all sinners and too easily contented with the status quo. In the sixteenth century that zeal for reformation expressed itself in convictions regarding the importance of Scripture (sola Scriptura), of justification by faith (sola fide), and of the sufficiency of Christ’s saving sacrifice (solo Christo). The gifts which Protestantism has brought back to the Church have been increasingly recognised by Catholics over the last fifty years. Where Protestants were once called heretics, now they are our “separated brethren”
who openly confess Jesus Christ as God and Lord
and as the only Mediator between God and man for the glory of the one God… We
rejoice that our separated brethren look to Christ as the source and center of
ecclesiastical communion. Their longing for union with Christ impels them ever
more to seek unity, and also to bear witness to their faith among the peoples
of the earth.
A love and reverence… of Holy Scripture leads
our brethren to a constant and diligent study of the sacred text. For the Gospel
“is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” [Rom. 1:16]. [18]
There you have it – it is official: the Catholic Church “rejoices” in Protestants – particularly in their missionary zeal, their devotion to Christ as the one mediator, and their love of Scripture! That was written in 1964; thirty years later Pope John Paul II felt able to go further:
Today we speak of “other Christians”,
“others who have received Baptism”, and “Christians of other Communities”… This
broadening of vocabulary is indicative of a significant change in attitudes. There
is an increased awareness that we all belong to Christ… The “universal
brotherhood” of Christians has become a firm ecumenical conviction. Consigning
to oblivion the excommunications of the past, Communities which were once
rivals are now in many cases helping one another…; and the slander to which
certain groups are subjected is shown to be unfounded.
In a word, Christians have been
converted to a fraternal charity which embraces all Christ's disciples. [19]
How far we have come! Can the compliment be returned? Can Protestants in general, and Evangelicals in particular, rejoice in the Catholic faith, and “consign to oblivion” the slanders of the past?
We can take courage from David Bjork. His journey has passed through both the stages of reconciliation I have outlined so far: first, the shedding of lies; second, daring to share part of the Christian journey along the “edges” of his faith. And he seems to have done even better: by having the courage to truly let his experience of Catholics rebalance and “fill in the blanks” of his own Evangelical upbringing – as well as the other way around. He has shown that if we are open and honest with ourselves and each other then we can truly learn from each other, and throw away some of our most fondly held prejudices.
Third step: speaking the truth in love
Can we follow Bjork’s example? Can we, as ordinary lay Catholics and Evangelicals, though not figures of authority within our church communities, conduct dialogue with each other in a manner which helps us to speak the “truth in love” (rather than to descend into falsehood and suspicion) so that we “will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Eph. 4:15)? Here are some suggestions as to how we might do so:
(1) We need to provisionally set aside any suspicions we may have of each other’s beliefs and give each other the “benefit of the doubt” – at least enough that we dare to ask each other questions about matters of faith, listen to the answers, and then let the conversation run.
This may seem like the bare minimum – but how easy it is to avoid. A Baptist missionary friend of mine wrote to me: “I have no one [else] with whom I have this kind of theological and spiritual dialogue, who has significant and valuable contrasting views. It is different and therefore unfamiliar. I fear hurting your feelings and the possible loss of relationship that doing so might trigger in you.” He added: “I would a thousand times continue in this kind of relationship with many, regardless of their background…, rather than remain in the little evangelical bubble of most of my friends, family and colleagues… Conditioned as we are by the prevailing cultural winds of the day to not affirm objective truth, it is challenging to express loving disagreement.” [20] The most tragic thing about this statement is not that my friend is wary of hurting my feelings: indeed, it is a blessing to have such loving friends! It is, rather, his acute diagnosis of a modern culture where, even for a Christian missionary, it is so hard to meet people with contrasting views with whom one can dare to disagree in love. We must all do better than this!
(2) If we are able to start a positive dialogue with other types of Christians about our faith, then we need to respect what each other says about his beliefs. As Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller puts it: “If your opponent wouldn’t agree with the accuracy of your statement about their beliefs, then you should not say it.” [21] We can ask other Christians what they believe, but have no right to tell them what they believe.
This advice may seem so obviously sensible that one almost wonders how it could not be so. But how tempting it is not to implement it in practice! Here, for example, is a little imaginary dialogue written by Baptist theologian James White:
Protestant: It appears to me that the Roman
Catholic Church allows for the worship of saints. Isn’t that idolatry?
Catholic: … We don’t worship saints, or even
Mary – we worship God and God alone.
Protestant: Then what are you doing bowing down
before a statue of Mary or some other saint?
Catholic: You need to understand the
difference between the worship we give to God… and the veneration given to
saints… Since we reserve… worship only for God, and never give it to the
saints, then we obviously are not worshiping the saints. [22]
This sounds like quite a promising little conversation so far, doesn’t it? A little more careful and charitable probing, and both parties might progress towards some sort of shared understanding about what constitutes “worship”, what constitutes “veneration”, and how one might tell the difference. Except that instead White recommends:
If the Protestant still has his wits about him, he might respond, “… I do know this: when you bow down before a statue and say prayers and light candles, no matter what you call it, I call it worship.” [23]
Oh dear, and it was going so well… But then one party in the conversation decides not to follow Tim Keller’s advice, but instead to doubt the honesty and integrity of his brother in Christ, and to accuse him of idolatry. The imaginary Protestant above (and personal experience has taught me that he is not so imaginary as all that!) says, effectively, “What I see looks to me like idolatry, therefore I am going to presume that it is idolatry – and no amount of explanation from you will persuade me otherwise!” The journey towards understanding has been thwarted; the dialogue is over.
Failures of understanding are of course inevitable in any sensitive dialogue situation. But when, like in the exchange above, we begin to actively pursue failure of communication, then we are treading close to some genuinely dangerous cliff-edges. The church historian Socrates of Constantinople (c. 380-439 A.D.) presents this description of the fourth-century debates concerning the divinity of Christ – which would be comic were it not so serious:
The term homoousios [“of one substance”, i.e. with the Father] troubled some of them. So that while they occupied themselves in a too minute investigation of its import, they roused the strife against each other; it seemed not unlike a contest in the dark; for neither party appeared to understand distinctly the grounds on which they calumniated one another. Those who objected to the word homoousios, conceived that those who approved it favored the opinion of Sabellius and Montanus; they therefore called them blasphemers, as subverting the existence of the Son of God. And again the advocates of this term, charging their opponents with polytheism, inveighed against them as introducers of heathen superstitions. Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, accuses Eusebius Pamphilus of perverting the Nicene Creed; Eusebius again denies that he violates that exposition of the faith, and recriminates, saying that Eustathius was a defender of the opinion of Sabellius. In consequence of these misunderstandings, each of them wrote as if contending against adversaries…: from what cause I am unable to divine, they could not agree among themselves, and therefore could in no way endure to be at peace. [24]
The scene Socrates so wryly describes is worthy of something out of Asterix the Gaul or Monty Python’s Life of Brian – but it really happened like that, and, sadly, it continues to. Substitute for homoousios in the passage above any of the traditional Protestant-Catholic areas of misunderstanding, such as sola scriptura or sola fide or solo Christo, and we have a fairly accurate description of the sort of exchanges which commonly occur between Evangelicals and Catholics to this day: “a contest in the dark” where neither party really understands the grounds of their mutual calumnies. Socrates’s final words cut to the heart of the matter: is there some reason why we cannot “endure to be at peace”? This is a question we must ask ourselves with the utmost seriousness – for otherwise there is no way we can claim to be “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15).
(3) We must not be distracted or confused by the disjuncture between the fine ideals our interlocutor is enunciating, and the apparently questionable realities we perceive in his life or the lives of others in his Christian community. Chris Hewer, a Christian scholar who has devoted much of his life toward the dismantling of prejudices between members of different faith traditions, enunciates a crucially important principle when seeking understanding with members of other religious communities:
Whenever anyone comes to look from one religious tradition to another there are pitfalls; one of the biggest of these is double standards. Religious traditions have glorious ideals based on their founding documents, great leaders, outstanding members in history and worked out within ideal societies. They also have some pretty horrid realities of the ways in which followers, including official “religious leaders,” have put them into practice – sometimes distorting them, sometimes stressing elements out of balance with the whole. To see the difference between ideals and realities is crucial to understanding. Indeed, I would argue, we don’t know how sordid some of the realities are until we know how far short of the ideals they fall… When we look into another religious tradition there is a great temptation to compare “my wonderful ideals” with “your sordid realities” – and we can see immediately where that leads us. [25]
Look into the lives and actions of Catholics throughout the centuries, and you will find countless examples of “sordid realities” which dismay and shock. You will find innumerable modern-day Catholics whose faith is wishy-washy, whose sins are manifold, and whose religious practice sometimes approaches heresy. Frankly, most of these accusations can be fairly levelled at me, for I am, all too often, a sinner and a fool. However, the important point is that a list of all the weaknesses to which Catholics are prone, however true, does not fairly and truly represent the full reality of the Catholic faith. Abuse of faith occurs in all walks of Christianity, but to truly understand a different vision of Christianity from our own we need to look beyond, to the rarely-fulfilled, yet still “wonderful ideals”. A Church, remember, is not just what its members do, but also what God has made it, by grace.
(4) If it is unwise for us to dwell on the “sordid realities” of Christians, how then do we recognise the ideals? Partly, in the authoritative teaching of the Christian community in question. This is not so simple in the case of Evangelical Christianity, which is so varied in its expression and has no overall “official” arbiter of doctrine. But in the case of the Catholicism, it is relatively easy to do, for the entire official Catechism of the Catholic Church – a “thorough, clear, and God-centered account” [26] of the Catholic faith, according to Evangelical writers Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom – is available for free online. [27] However, even so we must not be too confident, for we also need to recognise that the words we use to describe our beliefs are often very poor indicators of what our beliefs actually are. Sometimes, as Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it,
when terms are ambiguous, the two sides may really disagree when they seem to agree because they agree only on the word, not the concept. Or the two sides may really agree when they seem to disagree because they agree on the concept but not the word. [28]
This is one of the hardest things about intra-Christian dialogue, and its very difficulty has had the most devastating effect upon our common Church – no more so than in the unnecessarily vexed question of justification by faith, which we discussed in detail in Chapter Seven. How can the Church split over “justification by faith alone” when neither side is entirely clear exactly what the other means by “justification”, or “faith”, or “alone” – or, frankly, by “by”?! Genuine differences remain, but we will not really understand or explain these differences by fixating on pithy little formulas; understanding the truth about what other types of Christians (or even our own type of Christian) believe will only come with prolonged, profound and trustful communication. As Pope John Paul II explains:
Dialogue, which prompts the parties involved to question each other, to understand each other and to explain their positions to each other, makes surprising discoveries possible. Intolerant polemics and controversies have made incompatible assertions out of what was really the result of two different ways of looking at the same reality. [29]
This kind of wisdom eventually prevailed in the Christological controversies of the fourth century which we touched on above, described with such perspicacity by Socrates of Constantinople. As church historian J. N. D. Kelly explains, “theological divisions at this time were created and kept alive by the use of different and mutually confusing theological terms.” However, at the council of Alexandria in 362 A.D., under the chairmanship of the great Athanasius, “it was formally recognised that what mattered was not the language used but the meaning underlying it… This statesmanlike decision, which incidentally shocked many,” [30] allowed rapprochement and reconciliation to take place – and out of this emerged the unifying doctrine of the Trinity. [31] If the fourth-century warring factions of Arians, semi-Arians, Sabellians, Montanists, Meletians, Valentinians and Nicene Christians could be reconciled, then so can we!
(5) We need to recognise that what we see in the actions of other Christians in their worship are also often imperfect public expressions of the depth of their faith. Some Catholics may look at the behaviour of Evangelicals in church – their extemporised prayers, their lively choruses, their overtly enthusiastic facial and body language, their use of certain stock phrases – and interpret this to imply a facile and superficial faith inappropriate for worship of the living God, with, in the words of Noll and Nystrom, “therapy substituting for the gospel and entertainment posing as worship.” [32] On the other hand I, when I attended my first Catholic mass all those years ago, interpreted what I was seeing through my proto-evangelical lenses, recognising only a dour atomised collection of individuals “going through the motions” without any real sense of commitment or love. In both these examples, we are mistaking the “earthen vessels” for the treasure (cf. 2 Cor. 4:7). The spiritual vessels we carry frequently appear unprepossessing to those who prefer other designs. But the treasure is the same.
We must guard against the mistake of thinking that what is going through the minds of the people we see as they do what they do is the same as what would be going through our minds if we were to do as they do! It might be difficult for me to imitate the homely “heart on sleeve” liturgical style of the Evangelicals in anything other than an irreverent manner, because such behaviours are not in my habitual pattern; but the Evangelical who does so is praising God from the depths of his heart. Similarly, it might be difficult for an Evangelical to kneel at the altar and chant the Pange Lingua without recognising anything other than mindless mumbo-jumbo; but the Catholic who does so knows himself to be praising the living God. To go back to James White’s challenge above – if an Evangelical were to “bow down before a statue and say prayers and light candles”, [33] he might well be guilty of idolatry in his heart; but he has no right to presume the same of a different type of Christian, for whom those self-same signs may have a completely different meaning. We must not say or think of our Christian brother, “‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’” or, in the Lord’s words, we become hypocrites (Matt. 7:4-5). That is why we are forbidden to judge: “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy” (Ja. 4:11, cf. Rom. 14:4-13).
(6) We need to recognise that sometimes neither words nor actions are quite adequate to express our religious understandings and convictions, and that the essence of our faith lies deeper than both our consciously-formed thoughts and words, and the precise acts we use to express them. This point is made beautifully by Chris Hewer. He asks the essential question: “What kind of understanding” are we looking for? His answer:
If we want to understand another religious tradition then we cannot approach it as though it were a chemical reaction. Rather we have to seek to understand it “through the eyes of those who follow it” and thus to see what it looks like within their perspective, within their world-view. But more than this, a religion is not just a philosophical and ethical system, it is a way of life that trains hearts and leads them into a certain relationship: with God, with the rest of the creation, with fellow human beings and within each individual. It is this “heart knowledge” that needs to be cultivated if we are to “understand” a religion. This I call “empathetic understanding”: feeling within oneself the pull, the attraction, the logic, the cohesion, the inner satisfaction that the religion brings to its followers. [34]
This sounds risky, doesn’t it? Almost as risky as walking along cliff-edges. For if I really want to understand the empathetic attraction another Christian has towards his way of being Christian, then the danger is that I may decide I like his way too! I could topple over the edge, and who knows where I might end up? It is at moments like this that we can too easily retreat into the safe familiarity of our well-trod paths. But imagine! If we really have faith in Jesus Christ, and in His saving grace, then we have nothing to fear. For
neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, not any powers, neither height nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)
And if that is so, then, though poised precariously on an ecumenical precipice, we may discover, by risking a little, that cliff-edges may help us even to fly:
Those who hope in the LORD will renew
their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
(Is. 40:31)
Conclusions
So, what will we learn from each other if we dare to occasionally share each others’ faith journeys? Well, as we have seen, we will not find out miraculously that we have all agreed on everything all along! We may indeed feel that some of our disagreements are very important. But I hope that we will discover at least some of the following things:
First, that none of our serious disagreements stem from a willful ignorance of the truth, or of a unilateral rejection of Scripture or the teaching of the ancient Church. Much of the mistrust proceeds from misinterpretation – of forms of words, or types of action, compounded by an unfair over-emphasis on “sordid realities”. [35]
Second, that the disagreements are on matters which are not of primary importance to our Christian faith. As Evangelicals Noll and Nystrom point out:
Whatever differences may still exist between… Catholics and evangelicals with respect to the foundations of Christianity are infinitesimal when compared to differences between traditional Christianity… and modernist Christianity of all sorts. Differences on basic Christian convictions between Catholics and evangelicals fade away as if to nothing when compared to secular affirmations about the nature of humanity and the world. [36]
Third, that difference does not necessarily imply contradiction. Evangelicals and Catholics tend to emphasise different aspects of the Christian faith, but most of these differences, as we have seen throughout this book, are reconciled in Christ. “Contraries are not contradictories.” [37] To be a Protestant does not mean to be in a perpetual state of protestation against Catholicism. As Robert McAfee Brown explains:
The verb “to protest” comes from the Latin pro-testari, and means not only “to testify”, but, more importantly, “to testify on behalf of something…” Thus the actual word itself is charged with positive rather than negative connotations. “To protest,” then, in the true meaning of the word, is to make certain affirmations, to give testimony of behalf of certain things. [38]
Most of those things which Evangelicals testify on behalf of, but sometimes perceive as “lacking” in Catholicism, are merely things which were always there from the start, attested to uncompromisingly in Scripture: the centrality of Scripture, of faith, and of Christ Jesus. Protestantism has undoubtedly been good for the Catholic Church in reminding us of the importance of these aspects of our common faith. But these things are not new to the Catholic faith, for they are the testimony of Scripture. Nor did they ever “disappear” from the teaching of the Church – though they may have seemed, at various times over the centuries, obscured or overshadowed by other things.
Fourth step: Catholic and Evangelical?
We could stop there, of course. And if you so choose, that is fine. For, if you are an Evangelical, I will be delighted if you and I have travelled thus far together – first discarding the falsehoods; then recognising the imperative towards Christian unity by sharing some of the journeys along the “edges”; then seeing that the Catholic faith is, at its heart, an evangelical faith. But as I am a Catholic, I would ask you to consider taking one further step – our fourth – and that is to recognise, perhaps even to appreciate, the particular genius of Catholicism. What is this? Well, it covers many things – but some of those which we have discussed in this book include the love of mystery; the reading of Scripture as typology, illuminating and illuminated by the whole of salvation history, both backwards and forwards; the joining of faith, works and love as part of a process of salvation by grace alone; Christ and His sacraments as the bridge between the spiritual and the material; the unity of the universal Church which joins Heaven and earth; and the communion of all the holy in love and suffering, in Christ – all these things perhaps best summed up in the name which the Catholic Church has held for two thousand years: kata holon, “according to the whole”. These are some of the reasons why, in the words of Noll and Nystrom, Evangelicals can honestly “turn toward Roman Catholics with as much charitable expectancy as fearful dread.” [39]
I know that that is a lot to ask. But is it possible? Is it honest? More to the point, is it Evangelical? Evangelical theologian Hans Boersma seems to think so:
As evangelicals, we need Catholic voices precisely in order to maintain and reinforce our evangelical identity... Not only should we consider many Catholics to be evangelical, but also vice versa: we should urge many evangelicals to become catholic (lower case c, to be sure) in order to be true to their claim of being evangelical. [40]
Is Boersma’s hidden agenda to turn everyone into crypto-Catholics, and to make them deny what makes them Protestant in the first place? Absolutely not! It is merely to recognise that to be complete Christians we must learn to love – with lower-case letters at least – both those things that are evangelical and those things which are catholic. To pro-testari those aspects of our faith which, up to five hundred years ago, were common to all Christians, is no treachery to true Protestantism.
What does it mean to be Evangelical? I would be a fool to try to tell you myself, so let me quote an impeccable Evangelical authority. J. I. Packer lists seven characteristics, which I abbreviate here:
1. The supreme authority of… Holy Scripture…
2. … Jesus Christ as God incarnate, mediator of
a new covenant of grace… grounded entirely on his righteousness… now imputed to
us…
3. The lordship of the Holy Spirit…
4. The necessity of personal conversion…
5. The priority of evangelism…
6. The need for community in the Christian
life…
7. The… sacraments that Jesus instituted… as
means of grace, conveying and confirming the benefits they signify signify. [41]
Well, if that is what makes an Evangelical, then I am one too, and happy to be so – because there is nothing in these Evangelical beliefs which contradict Catholicism. So, can you be a catholic – at least with a small “c”?
My belief is that we can all be catholic and evangelical. Indeed we must, for Scripture preaches both of these visions, and, what’s more, it preaches them not as opposites, but as complementary aspects of the one faith in Him who holds all things together in His One Body. As Richard John Neuhaus writes:
Faith in Christ and faith in the Church are one act of faith. Faith in Christ and faith in the Church are not pitted against one another. Christ the head cannot be separated from the body, the Church. I do not love Christ if I do not love his Church. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” [Acts 9:4] In persecuting the Church Saul was persecuting Christ, and in loving the Church we love Christ. [42]
When Luther wrote his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, he was seeking to reform the Church, not to dismember it. Four centuries later, the great Reformed theologian Philip Schaff wrote: “The Reformation must be regarded as still incomplete. It needs yet its concluding act, to unite what has fallen asunder.” [43] To be a true spiritual descendant of the Reformation, one must seek to re-unite.
Someday we will all be catholic (with a small “c”, at least), in that we will all recognise our common membership of the One, Universal Body of Christ. For one day the “imperfect” will disappear and we will “see face to face” (1 Cor. 13:10,12) – and then the scales will fall from our eyes and, held up to the Light, we will recognise our denominational squabbles for what they are: pride, vanity, rebellion, politics – the attitudes of a fallen race who “could in no way endure to be at peace.” [44] We will see that we have all been guilty, even if only by omission or by apathy, of sinning against the Body of Christ by allowing division to continue unabated. But, as we enter the New Jerusalem, we will have the wisdom to see that none of that matters any more, for then we shall know fully, even as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:12). [45]
In the Introduction to this book, I promised you a journey into a different religious landscape, saying:
If you walk the footsteps of a
stranger
You'll learn things you never
knew you never knew. [46]
I don’t know if I have fulfilled my promise. But I hope that if you were suspicious of Catholicism before, some of your concerns may have been alleviated, and that you can return to your native land, like the magi, “by a different way” (Matt. 2:12, JB). And I hope that you will visit again. We are all on a journey, and the ways we take on this journey are not our native land but, at best, caravans along the route. Our House is built on a Rock (Matt. 7:24), but that Rock, who is Christ, accompanies us as we journey (1 Cor. 10:4). We will not have arrived until we reach that Promised Land, that Holy City made for us. Scripture is our guide book. But the Church is our caravan, the Holy Nation with whom we must journey else we perish in the desert. This is a book on Scripture and the Church, and so these words of George Tavard are better than any I can think of, with which to end:
Scripture cannot be the Word of God
once it has been severed from the Church which is the Bride and Body of Christ.
And the Church could not be the Bride and the Body, had she not received the
gift of understanding the Word. These two phases of God’s visitation of man are
aspects of one mystery. They are ultimately one, though one in two. The Church
implies the Scripture as the Scripture implies the Church.
Who has beheld this oneness is
blessed. For the whole mystery of the Church is open to him. The mind of man
craves to tear apart what God has bound together. In Christ, however, God came
to us in the partnership of the letter and the spirit, the Scripture and its
understanding, the Book and the Church that reads it. Who does not separate
them is blessed. For he has escaped the curse of St. John the Theologian: “If any
man shall take away from the words of the Book of this prophecy, God shall take
away his part out of the Tree of Life and out of the Holy City which are
described in this Book” [Rev. 22:19].
The Book is the Word of God, and
the City is the Church. The Book leads to the City. Yet the City is described
in the Book. To prefer the one to the other amounts to renouncing both. [47]
Let us renounce neither, but embrace both. If Catholic already, let us re-embrace Scripture, and faith in Christ our personal saviour. If Evangelical already, let us re-embrace the Church, and all that it has proclaimed since the beginning. Let us rebuild God’s City. Then how blessed we shall be.
Ite, missa est.
[1] Oscar Cullmann, Catholics and Protestants (Lutterworth,
London, 1960), pp. 25, 38-39
[2] The entire Catechism of the Catholic Church is available
online at www.vatican.va, for example.
[3] Daphne Spraggett with
Jill Johnstone, Window on the World: When
we pray God works (Paternoster Lifestyle, Carlisle, 2001), p. 214
[4] Thomas Howard, Evangelical Is Not Enough (Ignatius, San
Francisco, 1984), p. 154
[5] Philip Endean, e-mail
to Anthony N. S. Lane, quoted in Anthony N. S. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue (T&T
Clark, London, 2002), p. 126
[6] personal e-mail from
James C. McElrath, 3rd Aug., 2014
[7] C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (Puffin, Harmondsworth,
1973), p. 130
[8] K
[9] from J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Longmans,
London, 1967), p. 215
[10] a question echoed by
both Catholic and Lutheran churches today in their Common Statement: Justification by Faith, ed. H. G.
Anderson, T. A. Murphy & J. A. Burgess (Augsburg, Minneapolis, 1985), p. 22
[11] C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (Puffin, Harmondsworth,
1973), p. 130
[12] Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (OUP, New
York, 1961), p. 224
[13] David E. Bjork, “When
Obedience Leads Us into the Unknown”, in Catholics
and Evangelicals: Do They Share a Common Future?, ed. Thomas P. Rausch
(Paulist, New York, 2000), p. 152
[14] David E. Bjork, “When
Obedience Leads Us into the Unknown”, in Catholics
and Evangelicals: Do They Share a Common Future?, ed. Thomas P. Rausch
(Paulist, New York, 2000), p. 158
[15] David E. Bjork, “When
Obedience Leads Us into the Unknown”, in Catholics
and Evangelicals: Do They Share a Common Future?, ed. Thomas P. Rausch (Paulist,
New York, 2000), pp. 162-163
[16] Francis A. Schaeffer,
The Great Evangelical Disaster
(Crossway, Wheaton, 1995), pp. 163-164
[17] Francis A. Schaeffer,
The Great Evangelical Disaster
(Crossway, Wheaton, 1995), pp. 167-168
[18] Unitatis Redintegratio III.II.20-21, in Vatican II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin
Flannery (Dominican, Dublin, 1992)
[19] Ioannes Paulus II, Ut Unum Sint: On commitment to Ecumenism
II.42 (The Holy See, 1995), on w2.vatican.va
[20] personal e-mail from
James C. McElrath, 23rd Dec., 2015
[21] Tim Keller, on
twitter.com
[22] James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Bethany
House, Minneapolis, 1996), p. 206
[23] James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Bethany
House, Minneapolis, 1996), p. 206
[24] Socrates Scholasticus,
The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates
Scholasticus I.XXIII, in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers Ser. II vol. 2, ed.
[25] C. T. R. Hewer, A Journey into Understanding: Reflections on
the UI programme in London, p. 5, on chrishewer.org
[26] Mark A. Noll &
Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over?
– An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Baker, Grand
Rapids, 2005), p. 150
[27] e.g. on www.vatican.va
[28] Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian
Apologetics (Ignatius, San Francisco, 1988), p. 279
[29] Ioannes Paulus II, Ut Unum Sint: On commitment to Ecumenism
I.38 (The Holy See, 1995)
[30] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (A. & C.
Black, London, 1965), pp. 253-254
[31] For a fascinating first-hand
account of this process, see Tomus ad
Antiochenos, trans. H. Ellershaw, on www.newadvent.org
[32] Mark A. Noll &
Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over?
– An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Baker, Grand
Rapids, 2005), p. 250
[33] James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Bethany
House, Minneapolis, 1996), p. 206
[34] C. T. R. Hewer, A Journey into Understanding: Reflections on
the UI programme in London, p. 5, on chrishewer.org
[35] C. T. R. Hewer, A Journey into Understanding: Reflections on
the UI programme in London, p. 5, on chrishewer.org
[36] Mark A. Noll & Carolyn
Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? – An
Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Baker, Grand
Rapids, 2005), p. 230
[37] Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, ch. 1, on
www.ewtn.com
[38] Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (OUP, New
York, 1961), p. 4
[39] Mark A. Noll & Carolyn
Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? – An
Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Baker, Grand
Rapids, 2005), p. 248
[40] Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a
Sacramental Tapestry (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2011), p. 121-122
[41] J. I. Packer, “Crosscurrents
among Evangelicals”, in Evangelicals and
Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, ed. Charles Colson &
Richard John Neuhaus (Word, D
[42] Richard John Neuhaus,
“The Catholic Difference”, in Evangelicals
and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, ed. Charles Colson &
Richard John Neuhaus (Word, Dallas, 1995), p. 216
[43] Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism as related to
the Present State of the Church, trans. John W. Nevin (German Reformed Church,
Chambersburg, 1845), p. 183, on www.archive.org
[44] Socrates Scholasticus,
The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates
Scholasticus I.XXIII, in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers Ser. II vol. 2, ed.
[45] For a wonderful
exposition of this vision of eschatological unity, see Edmund Schlink, “The
Sojourning People of God”, ch. 10, in Ecumenical
and Confessional Writings, ed. Matthew L. Becker (Vandenhoek &
Ruprecht), Göttingen, 2004), on books.google.co.uk
[46] Stephen Schwartz,
“Colors of the Wind”, in The New
Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs (Hal Leonard), p. 156
[47] George H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church (Burns &
Oates, London, 1959), pp. 246-247
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