Christ my only hope

I have just been thinking the other day.

I was alone with my thoughts. It dawned on me in a deep and profound sense that without Christ, I have no hope for the forgiveness of sins and how hopeless I would be without Christ. There is no other way, but to look to Christ for the forgiveness of all my sins.

Is this what it means to hope in Christ?

Romans 5:2-7

LPC

Improve 'me'

It seems what I need is not a better and improved 'me'. The more I get older the more I come to the idea that what 'me' needs is not to be come better or improved.

It needs to repent.

It needs to repent from the idea of what it needs is to be improved or become better!

What 'me' needs is to die and be no more. It needs death and resurrection, not just death, it needs new life, not just an improved one.

Even other religions hint at this. I know in my study before becoming a 'Christian', Buddhism advocates some form of nothingness. What is the difference? In Buddhism it is self help - you have to do this for yourself.

In Christianity, it is done for you.

OK. Comparative religion is sometimes a luny exercise, but it shows to me that Christianity has the WHOLE TRUTH.

Why Muslims Convert ---- because they want Jesus

[HT: Dave Gosse]

Article by Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship: They Want Jesus Instead

According to this piece, thousands of Muslims are converting to Christianity each year.

Those reasons

I am reading an analysis of Dr. Beckwith's ratonale for coming back to the RCC. It is found here

I came to this bit, he comments...

For example, Trent talks about the four causes of justification, which correspond somewhat to Aristotle’s four causes. None of these causes is the work of the individual Christian. For, according to Trent, God’s grace does all the work. However, Trent does condemn “faith alone,” but what it means is mere intellectual assent without allowing God’s grace to be manifested in one’s actions and communion with the Church. This is why Trent also condemns justification by works.

Either he is re-reading Trent with his own sets of presuppositions or he missed some portions of it, for I do not think he could have missed this bit...from Trent

If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema. (Trent Session VI, Canon XII)

Here Trent was not condemning naked faith or mere faith or assent, it is condemning "trust alone" or "confidence alone" ie "faith alone" as the Reformers defined it.

Now if you are an Evangelical and you are not condemned by these words, please check again, perhaps your notion of faith is not as the Reformers defined it, you may be functioning RC in you ideas of the nature of faith etc.

If as Dr. Beckwith thinks that Trent and the Reformers in their confessions are saying the same thing about "faith" ie mere "assent" is not what they mean, why convert? My point is this - ok, he thinks that the RC position has been mis-represented by his evangelical communion, that is, no, the RCC actually is saying the same thing as his evangelical friends are saying. What is the difference then if he converts back? Is he not simply bringing along what he already affirms? or is there something else more profound underneath?

Then I wonder if he studied the Fathers and the confessions made by the First Evangelicals and compared them?!? Frankly I don't think he did. I think he did not dare bother about the Book of Concord. On the otherhand, if there is a pre-disposition already, perhaps the BoC would have been irrelevant anyway.

Kinda, "I have made up my mind, do not confuse me with facts"!

Those Re-Conversions

As was said in the last posting, there is much publicity on famous evangelicals converting to Roman Catholicism. Over at Bill Cook's blog we see the reverse of what happened to Dr. Frank Beckwith. Mr. Cook went from SDA to RCC and then to SDA again. I am going to be side tracked a bit and tell you what intrigued me in the comments to Mr. Cooks reflections. Someone who converted to Roman Catholicism commented to him, said this...

When I became a Catholic I was spiritual both a Jew and a Muslim and I didn’t have to give up either to become a Catholic.

This comment confirms what I have been suspicious of, those Lutherans, Baptists (or whatever) who became RC , have they really converted or did they just carry over their spirituality inside the RCC? No one knows the heart, hence you can be in RCC and be a crypto-evangelical, crypto-Jew, crypto-Muslim, crypto-Mason etc, like this gentleman commented. The label you used to wear is no longer there but it is still the same clothing, like new wineskins for old wine. This is what I observed in my younger years and here it is again. So have they really converted with that philosophy in mind?

Now, back to the topic of what Prof. McKnight said of conversions from Evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism. I will just comment on one aspect; he says that the person gets into a crisis situation,a crisis of transendence. One of them is the crisis of certainty (but others would be that of history, unity or authority). I will focus on certainty. These are questions of the type "how do I know I am saved", "how do I know that this interpretation of the Bible is true", "how do I know this is the true church", "how do I know I am in God's will"?

These are legitimate concerns, I had them. I go through crisis of self-doubts too. However, because evangelicalism focuses you on yourself, these crises are made accute. For example, it makes you find out these questions within your inward experiences. Evangelicalism is not the same, it is now post-Evangelical. It has departed miles apart from the Reformation. Whereas in olden days, justification was the core focus, it is now regeneration. The first makes you look outside, the second makes you look inside. It became "Christ for you vs Christ in you", and the latter won. So there will be a lot of swimming going on for a while, until the likes of Mr. Cook come out of the woodwork.


Indeed if you are going to find certainty, you got to find it somewhere outside you, it can not be in you because that is circular. There is no certainty inside you. So, the converts rely on the RCC Magisterium's claims that they are the TRUE Church, and they hope so. This gives security because it has claim to history, has claim to authority and works for unity, what more can you ask? Or does it? Some who went to the RCC have gone beyond and become Sedevacantists.

Going to another authority like the RCC Magisterium is outside yourself indeed. But apparently Calvin said that the RCC and the AnaBaptists are the same. The latter makes you point into yourself as an individual and let's face it the Evangelicals today are highly AnaBaptistic. The former, makes you point in yourselves (us, we and our - The Church). Hence, according to him, they are ruled by something in them, not by something above them. Of course, I have some disagreements with Calvin but here, I think he is correct.

So where does one go? Is this spiritual journey like walking in the wilderness, like the Israelites of old, always going around in circles whereas the Promised Land is just a few miles away? The good thing is that crises do not last very long, what we feel real is not that real. When crises of certainty happens, experience tells me it is an opportune time to go back to Jesus through His Word. And, let's face it, you will miss God's will for you if that is your concern, you will have a feeling that you may not be in the right "church", you may doubt if you have the right interpretation of Scripture etc etc. but if you get all of these right but you get the Gospel wrong, Luther says, you still got error, you still have uncertainty, you just made yourself believe you no longer have them because you belong to the "Church".

13(A)These things I have written to you who (B)believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have (C)eternal life.

1 John 5:13

Seems to me, there is only one thing that we need to be sure of, this thing trumps all uncertainty - Did Jesus died and rose again for your sins' forgiveness? Scripture says "YES". If so, then what is the problem?

Those Conversions

I have been reading Prof. McKnights' paper published by the JETS on September 2002 entitled From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals Become Roman Catholics. I have been reading it in the light of famous and prominent convesions lately, like that of Dr. Francis Beckwith's and now in Lutheran circles that of Prof. Koon's. Now isn't that embarassing? I can hear RC friends hollering... "Jump ship, join the bandwagon, your ship is sinking, see, they are leaving the Titanic".

I have few random thoughts here.

1.) I wonder what those Lutheran martyrs and other Protestants of other stripes who gave their lives rather than recant during the Inquisition, would say? Those people who were murdered, tortured, killed, burned rather than renounce their confession. I wonder what the Evangelical converts would say to them - could it be this - you died for nothing, bad luck, you should have listened to the Pope , the Mother Church has been right all along, you got what you deserve. I hope not.

2.) I have not read Prof Koon's paper, but I have just browsed through it, I have no time lately, my thesis is 3 years late and I can not afford to be side tracked like blogging! But I noticed he quoted Cardinal Newmans' work - An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Now again, I have not read the whole work of the Cardinal, just read sections here and there. I was a bit turned off, because he would say the Church Fathers believed this and that but there is not much reference for me to check. But here is really what has got my mind thinking lately. Cardinal Newman said in that work this

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

Now pause a little and feel the blow of that statement and now put your mind on what was the theme or spirit of that paper? - the theme was on how the doctrines of the RCC are historical. It tries to defend and justify how one can believed in RCC dogmas even though historically the evidence for such is nil, e.g. - supremacy of the pope, papal infallibility, immaculate conception of Mary etc. That art and process of defending and arguing speaks from an outsider and ignoramus like me this thing ... as if he was saying - no, the RCC is deep in history even though you can not find in history that our doctrines have been believed by people of apostolic times, it is there - you just could not find it in Scripture or history. Duh? Go figure.

3. Lastly for today, Prof. McKnights's paper outlined several reasons for conversion, one factor is the crisis, but more on that later.

I knew it

Sometime ago, I had a feeling that it would just be a matter of time when we hear a famous Evangelical turn to Rome. I had this notion because apologists of RCC persuasion have been very active publishing conversion experiences. Now it has happened, like a big fish swimming the river (Tiber) to Dr. Francis Beckwith, former Evangelical Theological Society President. This is no ordinary layman, returning to the RCC, this is a leader in a highly visible Protestant scholarly society and has lots of publicity with embarassment for Evangelicals. So many things have been written in reply to Dr. Beckwith's move. I am not here to offer a profound analysis( I am hardly profound). I have no doubt he is sincere and must have come to a crisis of faith that only this move can reconcile the turmoil (so he thinks).

A few things are worth noting. Should not the local church to which Dr. Beckwith belongs exercise discipline? That is I am sure, that Protestant local church to which he attended, if it be Evangelical, surely believe that he is embracing some false teachings, thus should publicly call him to repentance and publicly state that he is under discipline.

Now I wonder, had each Evangelical convert to RCC got disciplined in such a way, I wonder what could result if the Scott Hahns, the Gerry Matatics etc. got such public chasening from their former local churches, I wonder what might have happened? It is not too late to do such a thing, I suppose.

But then, wait - does not Vatican II makes conversion to the RCC superflous?

On an amusing note, from what I heard (and this is just hearsay), had this happened 200 years ago, it would not be strange to hear a suggestion from some quarters that the person converting to RCC from Protestantism must have been a Jesuit mole whose main design was to convert Protestants back to Rome. Don't laugh loud, I know this is playing up to the music of conspiracy theory. But apparently that suggestion was not considered entirely pointless, a couple of hundred years ago.