Ten Things I Learned in My First Year of Seminary

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind: classes ended, I had three papers and four finals, I went to Clear Creek Monastery for a few days, and four of our men were ordained deacons. As I make the transition from being in seminary to spending the summer at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, I wanted to share ten things that I learned this year:

1. The Liturgy of the Hours is the Prayer of the People of God

The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office, is the prayer of the People of God for two reasons. First, because it is prayed for you. Priests make a public promise to pray these prayers daily for the Church. They’re not meant to replace private prayer, but to supplement it. Second, the laity are invited and encouraged to join in these liturgies, as well as to pray the Hours privately. The Catechism (CCC 1175), citing the Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium, has this to say:

Aert de Gelder, Simeon’s Song of Praise (1710)

The Liturgy of the Hours is intended to become the prayer of the whole People of God. In it Christ himself "continues his priestly work through his Church." His members participate according to their own place in the Church and the circumstances of their lives: priests devoted to the pastoral ministry, because they are called to remain diligent in prayer and the service of the word; religious, by the charism of their consecrated lives; all the faithful as much as possible: "Pastors of souls should see to it that the principal hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and on the more solemn feasts. The laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually."

So what is the Divine Office? It is a set of up to seven prayers (called “hours”) punctuating the day, so that we can pray with the Psalmist, “Seven times a day I praise thee for thy righteous ordinances” (Psalm 119:164). Typically, monks and nuns pray all seven, priests pray five, and the laity are encouraged to pray at least two or three (Lauds and Vespers, and hopefully, Office of Readings). Each “hour” consists of a hymn, Psalms (or parts of the Psalms), Scripture reading, and prayer:

• Invitatory: This isn't a separate hour of its own. Rather, as DivineOffice.org explains, “The Invitatory is the introduction to the first hour said on the current day, whether it be the Office of Readings or Morning Prayer.” Traditionally, the invitatory Psalm is Psalm 95. Psalm 100, Psalm 67, or Psalm 24 may also be used, but I have never seen this done.
  
  



Jan de Bray, David Playing the Harp (1670)

• Office of Readings: This is a major hour, and replaces Matins. After the hymn and three Psalms, there are two readings. The first is from Scripture, and the second typically comes from the Church Fathers or a Church Council. The second reading often serves as a commentary on the Scripture reading or the liturgical feast of the day. In all, Office of Readings takes about 15 minutes.
  
  
• Morning Prayer (Lauds): After the hymn and three Psalms, there is a short Scripture reading (usually only a couple verses long: just enough to give you something to reflect on), a short Responsory Prayer, the Canticle of Zechariah (the Benedictus, Luke 1:68-79), intercessions, the Our Father, and a closing prayer. Lauds also takes about 15 minutes.
  
  
• Daytime Prayer (Terce, Sext, None): These are minor hours, prayed at mid-morning, midday, and mid-afternoon. They are three short Psalms, a short reading from Scripture, and a closing prayer. Diocesan priests are only required to pray one of these. Monks and nuns will often pray all three. Traditionally, they are prayed at about 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m. (the third, sixth, and ninth hours: hence, the names). Each one takes about 5 minutes to pray.
  
  
• Evening Prayer (Vespers): The structure of Vespers is almost identical to Lauds, except that instead of praying the Canticle of Zechariah, you pray the Canticle of Mary (the Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55). It also takes about 15 minutes.
  
  
• Night Prayer (Compline): After reflecting on your day, you pray an act of contrition, followed by a hymn, one Psalm, a short Scriptural reading, the Canticle of Simeon (the Nunc Dimittis, Luke 2:29-32), and a closing prayer. Typically, this is followed by a Marian hymn.

2. We All Want to Be Good (And Can't Help It)

St. Thomas Aquinas' moral philosophy is built upon what he calls the notion of the good, that “good is that which all things seek after.” We pursue what we view as good: all of us do this, always. 

Think about it: if a thing didn’t seem good in some way, we wouldn’t bother striving for it. To will something is to desire it, and all of our intentional actions are willed. So even when we do something that we know, rationally, is evil, it shows that some part of us is unconvinced: some part of us -- our passions, for example -- views it as a good worth achieving. Evil, by definition, is treating something which isn't good as if it were. This point will turn out to be both the bedrock of Thomas' ethical system, and (as we shall see below) an answer to some of the strongest arguments from modern philosophers. 

But this point is also profoundly humanizing, because Aquinas doesn't demonize evildoers. He reminds us that they, like us, are people who love and seek that which they think (on some level) is good. 

3. One of Aristotle’s Four Causes reveals the meaning of life.

Why does Michelangelo’s David exist? Who or what caused it? According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, our answer to that question should delineate four different types of causes: formal, material, efficient, and final. (Obviously, he didn’t address the David directly).

Materially, the cause is the marble. The formal cause is the shape of the statue: it’s David. Together, the form and matter of the statue are what give it its nature (as a marble statue of David). But the form and matter don’t tell the full story. We have to look to the efficient (or agent) cause: primarily, that’s Michelangelo. In a secondary sense, Michelangelo’s tools can also be described as efficient causes.

Let's not even talk about the Royals right now.

But there’s one more cause: the final cause. The final cause is the end, “that for the sake of which” the thing exists. In other words, the final cause is the goal, the motive of the action. Only if you ask why Michelangelo made the David can you fully understand the statues' causes.

Final causality applies to all human activity. Take the example of a batter swinging at the first pitch of a baseball game. What’s his goal in swinging the bat? To hit the ball. But there’s a more final cause: he’s trying to hit the ball so that he can get on base. And he’s trying to do that so that he can score a run, and so on.

When you start to arrange the causes in these sorts of sequences, they begin to converge. So, for example, a batter not swinging at a pitch is the opposite action as the last example. But when you explore why the two batters swing (or don’t), you can see that they are pursuing the same goal: trying to get on base, score runs, win the game, etc. So these opposite actions are done for the same final ends.

If you were to arrange all human activity into these series of causes, you’d see them eventually converge at a single point: one goal which is desired only for its own sake (since if it’s done for the sake of something else, that something else is a further end). Aristotle describes this as perfect happiness, which he says can be achieved fully only in contemplating the Divine for eternity. For a pre-Christian pagan, that’s an incredible insight.

But this method is something we too rarely practice: we act without considering why we’re acting. Why work overtime, or own a car, or go on vacation? Why do anything at all? We need to have our goal in view, or our actions become (literally) pointless.

4. Thomas Aquinas Solved the “Is / Ought” Problem... Five Hundred Years Early

Philosophers like David Hume (1711-1776) and G. E. Moore (1873-1958) have posed what’s called the “is / ought” problem. In a nutshell, it says that prescriptive statements (what we ought to do or not do) can never be deduced from descriptive statements (describing what is).

David Hume

So, for example, pointing out that the Final Solution was genocide is merely descriptive. According to Hume and Moore, this isn’t enough to prove that the Nazis shouldn’t have pursued it, since that's a prescriptive judgment. The most we can say is that they shouldn’t have done it if some subjective condition was true. For example, they shouldn’t have done it if they wanted history to judge them well, or if they wanted to treat the Jews with respect, etc. But all of these conditions are prescriptions (we ought to want to treat the Jews with respect, etc.).  So it appears that every  moral system requires something to be added to the objective facts.  This addition adds an arbitrary, or at least subjective, element, so we can't describe any moral system as objectively true.

This argument appears strong, and it's a dangerous one. If morality is something added to the objective facts, this would seem to show, in Hume's word, that “the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.” Moore went even further, arguing that this showed that “anything whatsoever can be called good.” In this view, the terms “good” and “evil” come to mean nothing more than “agreeable (or disagreeable) to my subjective preferences.”

But it turns out, Aquinas already solved this problem back in the thirteenth century, some five hundred years before Hume posed it.

Aquinas' answer starts with the notion of the good, which I mentioned above (see # 2, above): that “good is that which all things seek after.” From this, he forms what he calls the first precept of natural law, that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” In other words, to describe something as evil is to simultaneously prescribe that it is not to be done. If something is evil, we ought not do it. Why? Because all of us seek the good, and to will something is to treat the object as good  (again, see # 2). So we're not adding a subjective condition, since this “condition” always applies to everyone, absolutely.

Fra Bartolomeo, St. Thomas Aquinas (16th c.)

But Aquinas provides a second way of answering the objection, by showing that our final end (see # 3) is God. We are made by and for God. With that end in view, we can evaluate whether something is good or evil. If we know where we're supposed to be going, we can tell how well we're getting there. If we know how someone or something ought to behave, we can say whether they’re doing it well or poorly. We can speak objectively of someone who bowls a 300 as a good bowler, and someone who bowls a 0 as a bad bowler. A clock that tells time is objectively a better clock than one that doesn’t tell time (even if we happen to like the way the broken clock looks).

G. E. M. Anscombe's husband, Peter Geach, made a similar point in a 1956 essay called Good and Evil, in which he definitely answered the is / ought problem (using similar reasons to what we find in Aquinas' writings). In the essay, he showed how philosophers like Moore were conflating attributive and predicative adjectives (the argument is actually much more interesting than it sounds). At one point, answering the argument that good merely meant “agreeable to my subjective preferences,” he writes:

I totally reject this view that good has not a primarily descriptive force. Somebody who did not care two pins about cricket, but fully understood how the game worked (not an impossible supposition), could supply a purely descriptive sense for the phrase good batting wicket regardless of the tastes of the cricket fans. Again if I call a man a good burglar or a good cut-throat I am certainly not commending him myself; one can imagine circumstances in which these descriptions would serve to guide another man's choice (e.g. if a commando leader were choosing burglars and cut-throats for a special job), but such circumstances are rare and cannot give the primary sense of the descriptions. It ought to be clear that calling a thing a good A does not influence choice unless the one who is choosing happens to want an A; and this influence on action is not the logically primary force of the word good.

So if we know how cricket is supposed to be done, we can say whether someone is good at it. Likewise, if we know how human life is supposed to be lived (that is, how God designed it to be lived), we can say whether someone's actions are good or not-good (evil), and even whether the person's life is good or evil.

5. The Pre-Christian Pagans Got Much Further than Post-Christian Pagans Can Ever Hope To

Reading through the Greek writings written a few centuries prior to Christ, it’s amazing how much these thinkers got right. They start off asking the right questions, but generally giving the wrong answers.

Johannes Moreelse, Heraclitus (1630)

They ask where everything comes from, and what being is, but end up coming to conclusions like “everything is fire.” Even that conclusion isn’t as strange as it sounds. Rather, it’s Heraclitus’ attempt to explain why change perpetually exists within the closed system of the universe. His reasoning was that it is the nature of fire to be in a perpetual state of flux, so perhaps the rest of the universe is simply fire in different phase changes. Smart reasoning, very wrong conclusion.

From their midst, a few philosophers emerge – namely, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – who start giving the right (or nearly-right) answer to one question after another. When the Gospel reaches the Greeks, it finds people who are both intellectually curious, and already convinced of many of the truths of Christianity. It’s little wonder that early Christians like Justin Martyr (100-165) should conclude that the Greek philosophers played the same role for the Gentiles that the prophets played for the Jews: to prepare them for the Gospel. Justin went so far as to say:

We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious.

Of course, all of this is a stark contrast to where post-Christian pagans have gotten. They started by giving the wrong answers to the right questions, and frequently fail to even ask the right questions: to the point of denying the existence of objective truth. The lights of intellectual curiosity appear to be dimming.

This isn’t to say that relativists didn’t exist among the Greeks: they did. Sophists like Patagoras argued that truth was relative, and the Sophistic school treated reason as subservient to rhetorical manipulation. But the Sophists was answered by Socrates and Aristotle, to such an extent that “Sophistic” comes down to us as an insult.

So what gives? The answer seems to be this: Plato and Socrates were one way that God prepared the Gentiles for the Gospel. But the post-Christian pagans have received the full light of the Gospel, and rejected it. There’s nowhere to go from there but down.

6. Changes in Philosophy Impacted Art (and Everything Else)

Raphael, School of Athens (detail) (1509)

One of the major changes between Aristotle and Plato was this: Plato viewed the realest thing as the ideal. That is, he believed in what’s called the Theory of Forms, which goes something like this: various things may possess the same trait (like two numbers possessing “even-ness”). This points to the existence of a transcendent Ideal, or Form (in this case, the Form of Even-ness). Plato, who regarded the material world with great suspicion, viewed this transcendent Ideal as more real than the individual manifestations of it. So the Ideal of Green was truer than all of those things that we call “green.”

Aristotle rejected all of this, holding that the individual substance was the realest thing: a green leaf is more real than the abstract notion of green. The Renaissance painter Raphael captured this well in his massive painting School of Athens, depicting all of the great Greek philosophers of antiquity. At the center of the painting (see the image on the right) are Plato and Aristotle. Plato is pointing upward to his ideal forms: Aristotle counters by pointing forward to the things of the created world.

Why does all of this matter, from a Christian perspective? One reason is art. When Christians were heavily influenced by Platonism, they tended towards iconography, as an attempt to capture the Ideal of Christ. Instead of depicting a single scene from the life of Christ, the Icon would attempt to capture something broader. So, for example, the Christ Pantocrater icon depicts Christ as simultaneously a Merciful and Just Judge (and simultaneously God and Man) by giving Him different expressions on different sides of His Face.

As Western Christian philosophy became increasing Aristotelian, the artistic emphasis shifted as well. Instead of seeking to capture the Ideal or Form of Christ, art focused more on capturing specific events from the Life (or Death) of Christ. Benedict XVI explained all of this in Spirit of the Liturgy:

Platonism sees sensible things as shadows of the eternal archetypes. In the sensible we can and should know the archetypes and rise up through the former to the latter. 

Aristotelianism rejects the doctrine of Ideas. The thing, composed of matter and form, exists in its own right. Through abstraction I discern the species to which it belongs. In place of seeing, by which the super-sensible becomes visible in the sensible, comes abstraction. The relationship of the spiritual and the material has changed and with it man's attitude to reality as it appears to him. 

For Plato, the category of the beautiful had been definitive. The beautiful and the good, ultimately the beautiful and God, coincide. Through the appearance of the beautiful we are wounded in our innermost being, and that wound grips us and takes us beyond ourselves; it stirs longing into flight and moves us toward the truly Beautiful, to the Good in itself. 

Something of this Platonic foundation lives on in the theology of icons, even though the Platonic ideas of the beautiful and of vision have been transformed by the light of Tabor. Moreover, Plato's conception has been profoundly reshaped by the interconnection of creation, Christology, and eschatology, and the material order as such has been given a new dignity and a new value. This kind of Platonism, transformed as it is by the Incarnation, largely disappears from the West after the thirteenth century, so that now the art of painting strives first and foremost to depict events that have taken place.

Thus, it should be no surprise that the shift from iconography to other forms of Christian art runs parallel (both geographically and temporally) to the shift from Platonism to Aristotelianism.

7. Philosophy Means “Love of Wisdom”

“Sophia” is the Greek word for “wisdom,” which is why the early Christians named a church “Hagia Sophia,” or “Holy Wisdom.” “Philo-” is a prefix meaning “love of,” from the same root as words like “Philadelphia” (city of brotherly love). So true philosophy involves loving wisdom: how could it not point you towards God?

8. Science, Philosophy, and Theology Used to be United

As Msgr. Ronald Knox has explained, in the Medieval period, “science, philosophy, and theology are not three disparate branches of learning, but three rungs in a single educational ladder. From the contemplation of nature you rise to pure thought; from pure thought, grace elevates you to the contemplation of the supernatural.”

Nuremberg Chronicle, Thales (1493)

And this view was by no means limited to the Medieval period. The pre-Christian Greeks viewed philosophy similarly: thinkers like Thales treated “philosophy” as including everything from astronomy to mathematics, and Thales used his love of wisdom to do everything from predict eclipses to aiding the Greek army in rerouting a river (by creating a channel to enable the army to pass). And even after the Medievals, we see examples of thinkers firmly committed to doing serious science, serious philosophy, and serious theology, without feeling a need to choose one against the other two.

But between science, philosophy, and theology, there has certainly been a divorce, an often acrimonious one. Unsurprisingly, there is plenty of blame to go around. In his essay on the subject, Knox credibly blames Descartes, for taking philosophy in a radically-critical direction at odds with science or theology; Luther, for viewing man as so totally depraved that science and natural philosophy became irrelevant to theology; and the Deists, for trying to create a philosophical religion that didn't need theology. Others, like Darwin, could easily be added to the list. 

The end result, as Knox notes, is that “men of science, as we know, are still fond of playing about with philosophy; but always they are at issue with the philosophers.” And he’s saying all of this decades before books like Hawking and Mlodinow's Grand Design, or the general New Atheist push to argue metaphysics without bothering to study it.

9. We Can Go Much Deeper in Prayer

The Catechism refers to three broad types of prayer: vocal, meditative, and contemplative. But God wills for us to go deeper and deeper in contemplation of Him, but it’s not always clear how to do this. There are several great guides for this, but one in particular that I would recommend is Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel - On Prayer, which explores Carmelite spirituality in an easily-understood way. I would recommend it for almost anyone looking to get more serious about prayer.

10. I am Worse Than I Knew, But Everything is Grace

Perhaps nothing exposes one’s lingering faults quite like seminary. It is a group of Christian men who are serious about sanctity, and have cultivated an attention to detail. Furthermore, we are encouraged to engage in “fraternal correction,” on the theory that iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17), and we have a moral duty to look out for one another. But fortunately, God is there through all of this. Where I succeed, it is due to His grace. Where I fail, He stands ready to pick me up again. No matter how big my failings, faults, and sins, God’s Mercy is always bigger. As St. Thérèse of Lisieux is said to have said, “everything is grace.” 

It’s been quite a journey this year, but one that I’ve been humbled and thrilled to take.

1 of the 497

The courses are complete. The vestments are ready. The chalice sits waiting for its sacred duty. Six years in the seminary have finally led to this: ordination to the Sacred Priesthood. Since Joe has been fraternally nudging me to post more, I thought I might take a moment and give a glimpse into what it is like for a man on the verge of being ordained a priest.

Nervous

With the end of every school year comes ordination season, and here I am, one of the 497 to be ordained priests in the U.S. this year, waiting for the tsunami of graces and emotions that is scheduled to arrive this Saturday. How did this come to be? Growing up I never imagined that I would be a priest (I was certain I was going to be an astronaut), and surely it was just yesterday that I had made that difficult phone call to the vocation's director to tell him that I was interested in applying for the seminary. Now, with six more years of education under my belt, the Church thinks I am ready to be one of Her priests.

I am naturally a bit nervous about the whole thing. Sure, I have studied the priesthood and even practiced the things a priest does, but I have never actually practiced being a priest per se. I have practice Mass and confession, but I have never actually celebrated them. A few weeks ago I realized the underlying nervousness I had towards the upcoming ordination when I had a startling dream. In my dream I had laid down for a quick nap after my priesthood ordination but then awoke to the frightening realization that I had overslept and missed my first Mass! I was terrified. How could I possibly miss my first Mass? It is a humorous dream in retrospect but my racing heart did not find it funny at the time.

Despite the moments of nervousness, there is a certain level of peace that pervades these last days of preparation. On my canonical retreat I found great consolation in the last words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew where He says, "Behold, I am with you always" (Mt 28:20). Why should I be nervous when I know with certainty that Jesus Christ will always be with me?

Humbled

In preparing for the big day, I have spent a lot of time in prayer with the Rite of Ordination of Priests. More often than not, I struggle getting past the beginning of the rite where the Bishop asks a designated priest, "Do you know them to be worthy?" Me, worthy of this great sacrament? Surely not. I am a sinner and weak man like all the others, just ask my brother seminarians. Yet, the Church in Her great wisdom does not ask the ordinands (or their brother seminarians for that matter) if they think they are worthy. Instead, speaking through the bishop and the designated priest, the Church testifies that She has found the men worthy to be a priests. How could I be anything but humbled knowing that the Church has found me of all people worthy for the priesthood?

A little while ago I read St. John Chrysostom's classic work On the Priesthood and in it the Golden Tongue repeatedly expresses his astute awareness of the dignity of the priesthood and the frailty of his human nature before the sublime office. At one point he says, "I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea" (III.8). The media constantly reminds us that receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders does not prevent a man from committing sin. Yet, despite his own frailty, the priest is given the great privilege of being God's instrument of mercy and grace in people's lives and access to their greatest joys and deepest sorrows. As I approach the altar of God and prepare to receive this gift myself, humility has been a faithful companion.

Excited

Imagine how excited a couple would be to receive the sacrament of Matrimony if marriage preparation lasted for six years instead of six months! That is kind of how I feel. After spending six years talking about the priesthood and studying it, I feel as if the seminary has done its job and I am more than excited to finally leave the seminary and be a priest. I am excited to have my family and friends together that weekend, and I am excited to finally feed Christ's sheep, to be a "co-worker" of the Bishop's in the vineyard, and to have the privilege of ministering the "Sacrament of sacraments" (CCC 1211).

There was a certain joy and excitement in practicing Mass this past year with the understanding that I was not doing it for fun, but that I was doing is so that I might be able to celebrate it in the near future. The experience of practicing Mass reminded me of learning how to fly a plane. You can take thousands of flights. You can watch a pilot fly the plane. You can even notice when a pilot makes a mistake. But that in no way means you are capable of flying a plane. Despite the countless number of times I have gone to Mass, the first few times practicing the celebration of Mass were not pretty. You do not realize the sheer number of times a priest "extends his hands" until it is actually you who are supposed to be the one with your hands extended!

As I enter these last few days, I am reminded of one last quote from St. John Chrysostom which highlights another reason why it is such an honor to be a priest and why I am excited, humbled, and nervous to be one:

"For they who inhabit the earth and make their abode there are entrusted with the administration of things which are in Heaven, and have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels" (III.5). 

Please pray for me and all 497 of us to be ordained priests this year!

Coming Soon: Our Nuclear Engineer Priest

Archbishop Naumann is preparing to ordain four of my brother seminarians to the priesthood at 10:30 a.m. on May 25 at St. Matthew Parish in Topeka. One of them, Deacon Nathan Haverland, was highlighted recently in The Leaven (and The Deacon's Bench) for his unique life story: growing up without religion, he discovered God while studying astrophysics, and entered seminary after getting his master's in nuclear engineering. From the Leaven article:

Deacon (almost Fr.) Nathan Haverland

“I never thought about being a priest while I was growing up,” he said. “I didn’t know what a priest was.”
Both his mother and stepfather had been raised Catholic, but fell away from the faith early, so Deacon Haverland and his older sister didn’t have any religious upbringing. Sunday was just another day of the weekend.
Ah, but God cannot be denied.
French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.”
Deacon Haverland was not immune to the pull of that vacuum.
“Everybody has that natural desire to know God, so I think I had that as well,” he said. “I remember asking and thinking questions about stuff like that, but I never had a means to learn.”
His path took a fateful turn when he decided to enroll in a small Catholic college in Atchison — Benedictine.
“They had a nice little physics and astronomy department, which is what I wanted to study,” said Deacon Haverland. “There are only two places in Kansas where you can study physics and astronomy. One was the University of Kansas, and the other was Benedictine.”

[...]

Thanks to great teachers, he said, he began to learn about the Scriptures and Christ. It all made sense. Gradually, his knowledge began to change him. He underwent a slow conversion of mind and heart.
“It was more of a gradual process, more than anything,” he said. “It wasn’t until after my sophomore year that I was having a conversation with someone, and I had to admit I wasn’t Catholic, and I was just kind of sad about it. That was the beginning of me starting to join the church.”

[...]

“I never imagined [growing up] that I’d become a priest. It baffles me as well,” he said. “It is an unusual path to take. I’ve just kind of enjoyed the ride.

Read the whole thing. It’s a great story, and a great reminder of the importance of good Catholic formation. The article mentions his devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, but I wanted to add a story to that: on October 1 of last year, the feast day of St. Thérèse, he defended his thesis on St. Thérèse and the priesthood, while carrying a first-class relic of St. Thérèse in his pocket. That’s devotion.

By the way, Dcn. Haverland has posted here before, although he appears to have decided that preparing for the priesthood is more important than blogging. Congrats to Deacon Haverland, along with the other three men set to be ordained: Deacon Daniel Schmitz, Deacon Quentin Schmitz, and Deacon Larry Bowers. Please join me in offering up some prayers for them as they are configured to Christ in a radical way.

Speaking Out Against the Slave Labor of the Sweatshop System

The Rana Plaza building near Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed recently, killing (at latest count) 657 sweatshop workers, and seriously injuring thousands. Pope Francis responded in a homily, condemning the horrible wages and conditions:

Not paying a just [wage], not providing work, focusing exclusively on the balance books, on financial statements, only looking at making personal profit. That goes against God! [....] A headline that impressed me so much the day of the Bangladesh tragedy, 'Living on 38 euros a month': this was the payment of these people who have died ... And this is called 'slave labor!'

The collapsed Rana Plaza building

Worse than the hours or conditions is the mindset that gave rise to these sweatshop conditions, a mentality that places profits above human lives. That dehumanizing disregard for the value of human life was particularly visible in this disaster, as management ordered workers to risk their lives, even after it became clear that the building was a serious safety hazard:

Several garment workers near the wreckage said a crack appeared Tuesday on the building's seventh floor. 

At first, the workers said, managers ordered workers not to report to work on Wednesday.

Later, the factory owners reversed the order, telling workers that the building was safe, said Marjina Begum, who worked on the sixth floor. Many workers were hesitant to show up Wednesday but reported to work because they were afraid of losing their jobs, she said. More than a dozen other workers corroborated her story.

It’s this dehumanization that Pope Francis drew particular attention to, noting that in the modern economic system,

People are less important than the things that give profit to those who have political, social, economic power. What point have we come to? To the point that we are not aware of this dignity of the person; this dignity of labor. But today the figure of St. Joseph, of Jesus, of God who work - this is our model - they teach us the way forward, towards dignity. 

Both communism and many forms of capitalism share a reductionist view of man. Instead of treating every human as made in the image and likeness of God, man is viewed simply as “labor” or the “proletariat.” His worth is no longer tied to his innate and God-given human dignity, but to his economic capacity, and he becomes little more than a glorified machine (and in some cases, lower than even machines, since damaged “labor” is easily replaced).

Victims of the Rana Plaza collapse

This point, made well in Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture, has been aggravated by another trend. Over the last few decades, there has been in a shift in how we (particularly, but not exclusively, Americans) view economic issues. In the past, the two sides of the political spectrum were focused largely on the rights and interests of business owners and “job creators” on one side, and the rights and interests of workers on the other.

These days, I’d argue that there’s been a clear shift: both sides of the political aisle are moving away from workers’ rights, and the legitimate rights of businesses (and business owners), in favor of “consumers’ rights.” We see this shift in a variety of contexts. For example, many of the arguments against conscience clauses and for the HHS Mandate both appear to be based on some variation of this idea: “I’m the customer and I want this, so I should be able to have it, even if you are morally opposed to giving it to me.”

That same unprincipled selfishness seems to be at the root of the problem here, as Western (American and British) clothing companies fueled the demand for this sweatshop:

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for major brands including North American retailers The Children's Place and Dress Barn, Britain's Primark, Spain's Mango and Italy's Benetton. Ether Tex said Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, was one of its customers.  

Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.

The companies who treat workers in this dehumanizing manner are morally culpable here, but so are we, when we incentivize this behavior by demanding cheap goods over just wages and conditions.

Augustine’s Favorite Apologist Explains the Eucharist

St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine is one of the few Saints that both Catholics and (most) Protestants admire. Without a doubt, he is the most popular Saint among Protestants, and is the most-cited Saint in the Catechism. As such, he’s a good Saint for Catholics to cite to when explaining the faith to Protestants.

But who do you appeal to if you are St. Augustine? That is, during Augustine’s lifetime, who were the Saints that he could cite to, knowing that their authority and orthodoxy were nearly universally respected? Augustine actually answers that question in Against Julian, accusing Julian of going against the “many famous and brilliant holy teachers of the Catholic truth: Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Gregory, Basil, Ambrose, John, Innocent, Jerome, and the others.”

Of these eleven Saints, there is one in particular who Augustine cites for his outspoken orthodoxy: St. Hilary of Poitiers, a fourth century Gallic (French) bishop known as “the Hammer of the Arians.”  Augustine remarks, “Who does not know that the Gallic bishop Hilary is to be revered as the keenest defender of the Catholic Church against the heretics?”

And while Hilary is certainly less well-known than Augustine, he is revered as a Saint by Catholics and Orthodox, as well as by Lutherans and Anglicans.  Given all of this, it would behoove both Protestants and Catholics to listen to what St. Hilary has to say about issues like the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Hilary not only believes in the physical Real Presence, he treats this fact as completely obvious to any Christian.  In doing this, he sounds very much like St. Ignatius of Antioch, who used the Real Presence as proof back in the early 100s. That is, Ignatius didn’t feel a need to prove that the Real Presence was true. Instead, he started from the accepted truth of the Real Presence to prove that the Gnostics were heretics for denying the Incarnation.

We see the same thing here. St. Hilary’s opponents argue that the Father and the Son are only One in will, rather than One in Being. Hilary responds to them by showing, from the accepted fact of the Real Presence, that the union between us and the Son, and therefore between the Son and the Father, goes beyond a mere unity of wills:

St. Hilary of Poitiers

Now I ask those who bring forward a unity of will between Father and Son, whether Christ is in us to-day through verity of nature or through agreement of will. For if in truth the Word has been made flesh and we in very truth receive the Word made flesh as food from the Lord, are we not bound to believe that He abides in us naturally, Who, born as a man, has assumed the nature of our flesh now inseparable from Himself, and has conjoined the nature of His own flesh to the nature of the eternal Godhead in the sacrament by which His flesh is communicated to us? [....]

Now how it is that we are in Him through the sacrament of the flesh and blood bestowed upon us, He Himself testifies, saying, “And the world will no longer see Me, but ye shall see Me; because I live ye shall live also; because I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you” [John 14:19]. If He wished to indicate a mere unity of will, why did He set forth a kind of gradation and sequence in the completion of the unity, unless it were that, since He was in the Father through the nature of Deity, and we on the contrary in Him through His birth in the body, He would have us believe that He is in us through the mystery of the sacraments? 

Hilary’s point isn’t to prove that “we in very truth receive the Word made flesh as food from the Lord.” His point is that since this is true, we know that we’re dealing with a union of natures, not just wills. But in the process of making this point about the Trinity, Hilary happens to reveal quite a bit about what the early Church believed about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. And his point is all the more powerful in that he’s making incredibly Catholic claims about the Eucharist, without feeling much of a need to defend his views:

The Ordination of Saint Hilary (14th c.)

Hence, if indeed Christ has taken to Himself the flesh of our body, and that Man Who was born from Mary was indeed Christ, and we indeed receive in a mystery the flesh of His body—(and for this cause we shall be one, because the Father is in Him and He in us),—how can a unity of will be maintained, seeing that the special property of nature received through the sacrament is the sacrament of a perfect unity?

How should we understand our union with Christ in the Eucharist? Hilary shows us from Scripture:

Let us read what is written, let us understand what we read, and then fulfil the demands of a perfect faith. For as to what we say concerning the reality of Christ’s nature within us, unless we have been taught by Him, our words are foolish and impious. For He says Himself, “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him.” [John 6:55-56]

So in the Eucharist, we aren’t just aligned as part of God’s team. We take on the Body of Christ. We become what we consume. If there was any remaining ambiguity about whether or not Hilary understood the Eucharist to be Christ's literal, physical Body and Blood, there can be none after his next comment:

As to the verity of the flesh and blood there is no room left for doubt. For now both from the declaration of the Lord Himself and our own faith, it is verily flesh and verily blood. And these when eaten and drunk, bring it to pass that both we are in Christ and Christ in us. Is not this true? Yet they who affirm that Christ Jesus is not truly God are welcome to find it false. He therefore Himself is in us through the flesh and we in Him, whilst together with Him our own selves are in God.

So Hilary leaves room to deny the Real physical Presence of Christ in the Eucharist … but only if you’re ready “to affirm that Christ Jesus is not truly God.” If, on the other hand, you’re going to believe in Jesus Christ as God Incarnate, the Real Presence is an indispensable part of that faith.  It seems that Hilary can’t even imagine someone denying the Eucharist while claiming to worship Jesus Christ. He leaves no room for that position, since “no man shall dwell in Him, save him in whom He dwells Himself, for the only flesh which He has taken to Himself is the flesh of those who have taken His.”

Hilary then returns to showing how the Eucharist gives evidence of the relationship of Christ to the Father:

This is the cause of our life that we have Christ dwelling within our carnal selves through the flesh, and we shall live through Him in the same manner as He lives through the Father. If, then, we live naturally through Him according to the flesh, that is, have partaken of the nature of His flesh, must He not naturally have the Father within Himself according to the Spirit since He Himself lives through the Father?

So that’s it: that’s the Catholic belief in the Eucharist, according to the man who Augustine described as “the keenest defender of the Catholic Church against the heretics.” I’ll leave it to you to decide if Hilary was an idolatrous heretic, or if the Real Presence of Christ’s Flesh and Blood in the Eucharist is true.

The Church, the Bible, and the Trinity of Divine Persons

Did you know that the word “person” comes to us through Catholic philosophy and theology?

Theatrical masks of Comedy and Tragedy, Roman mosaic, (2nd c.).

It’s true, although the word existed before Christianity in a different context. Etymologically, the word “person” originally comes from a Latin word meaning “sounding through” (personare), which referred to actors speaking through a mask in the theater. In other words, the character in the play was a “person.” “Persons,” in the theatrical sense, weren’t just extras, but characters with speaking parts. From this, the word came to denote an individual of rank or dignity (a connotation still preserved in the word “personage”).

Later, this word would be expanded to all humans. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, since “subsistence in a rational nature is of high dignity, therefore every individual of the rational nature is called a ‘person.’” Put another way, our rational natures make each of us “persons,” in the sense of having been imbued with God-given dignity and nobility. We’re not stage props or even extras in the drama of salvation history.  Rather, each and every one of us is an important character (with “speaking parts,” if you will), and in whom the Director is keenly interested.

The word “person” took on all of its modern connotations during the Trinitarian and Christological debates in early Christianity. We needed some way to describe the distinction and relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we needed a way to describe the relationship of the Divine and Human natures in Jesus Christ. But all of this terminology is a theological development that took centuries. Aquinas acknowledged this, explaining why the word “Person” should be applied to God, even though it is not found applied to Him anywhere in  Scripture:

Although the word “person“ is not found applied to God in Scripture, either in the Old or New Testament, nevertheless what the word signifies is found to be affirmed of God in many places of Scripture; as that He is the supreme self-subsisting being, and the most perfectly intelligent being. If we could speak of God only in the very terms themselves of Scripture, it would follow that no one could speak about God in any but the original language of the Old or New Testament. The urgency of confuting heretics made it necessary to find new words to express the ancient faith about God. Nor is such a kind of novelty to be shunned; since it is by no means profane, for it does not lead us astray from the sense of Scripture. The Apostle warns us to avoid “profane novelties of words” (1 Timothy 6:20).

As Aquinas notes, we must use non-Biblical language, when the Biblical language is being interpreted heretically (the alternative being to define the Biblical word with itself). So, for example, a lot of Catholic-Protestant debates have important terminological disputes: what St. Paul means by “faith” and “works,” for example. By Aquinas’ logic, it may be helpful to clear up these disputes by using word other than “faith” and “works,” to try to get at what we mean in clear and precise language that hasn’t been clouded by heresy.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,
Pope St. Clement Adoring the Trinity (1738)

So why do I bring this up? Because it has important implications for how we understand the relationship of Scripture to the faith.  All orthodox Christians accept the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea that there is One God Who is Three Persons. But to accept this requires accepting the ability of the Church to develop doctrine and refine terms, even using non-Biblical language, in order to preserve the Biblical truth.

But this is a concession that quite a few Evangelicals stumble over. I’ve heard more than a few sola Scriptura-believing Protestants argue against Catholic doctrines on the basis that the wording or phrasing isn’t Biblical: some variation of the argument, “Where is the word ‘Purgatory’ in the Bible, anyhow?” But you cannot have it both ways: if “Purgatory” is out for lack of an explicit mention, so are the Three “Persons” of the Trinity.

With that in mind, consider the first two prongs of the US National Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith:

1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. 
2. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I mentioned on Monday how different these confessional statements are from the ancient Creeds, since “unlike every Protestant statement of beliefs that I know of, there are no references to Scripture in the early Creeds.” Both the Apostles’ Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed follow a basic pattern: they start with the Father, and proceed to the Son, then to the Holy Spirit, then to the Church, and then to any specific doctrines. That order makes sense. The Father sends the Son, who sends the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church, who defines and declares doctrines. It’s top-down, from God to the Church to us. We trust in the Church's doctrines because we trust in the Church; we trust in the Church because we trust in the Triune God.

In contrast, the above Statement of Faith begins with a declaration of faith, not in God, but in Scripture. The authority of Scripture, whose canon and authority cannot be proven but through the Church, is simply accepted as a starting assumption. This statement even goes so far as to describe Scripture, rather than Jesus Christ, as the only “Word of God.” Contrast that claim with John 1:1, 14, Revelation 19:13, Hebrews 11:3, etc.

But the point of the first prong of the Statement of Faith is to cut out a need for the Church: you can get everything you need from the Bible, so the Church needn't be infallible. But this exposes an absurd irony.The first prong undermines the authority of the Church, while the second prong relies upon the authority of the Church, and upon Her ability to develop, define, and refine doctrinal issues. Without that development, definition, and refinement, you can’t get to “there is one God, eternally existent in three persons.” It’s easy for the US National Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith, but only because the Catholic Church did the work for them.

In describing God as Three Persons, they’re using precise Catholic theological language, just as much as they would be if they called Him Three Hypostases in One Ousia. In trying to cut out the role of the Church (to affirm “the only infallible, authoritative Word of God,” Scripture), they end up cutting out the branch they're sitting on.

For more on the role of doctrinal development within Catholicism, check out this post: Su Doku and the Development of Doctrine.

Six Reasons to Reject "the Perspicuity of Scripture"

Near the root of what divides Protestantism from Catholicism is a question concerning the clarity (or, in technical parlance, the “perspicuity”) of Sacred Scripture. The Catholic view is that Scripture needs interpretation; the typical Protestant view is that Scripture is so clear that there are no ambiguities needing authoritative interpretation by the Church.

Rembrandt, The Baptism of the Eunuch (1626)

As classically articulated, this doctrine holds anyone guided by the Holy Spirit can come to understand everything in the Bible. In fact, Martin Luther argued that if you’re confused on the meaning of some part of the Bible, it’s because of your own sinfulness, since “if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth.” Here’s Luther’s summary of the doctrine:

The clearness of the Scripture is twofold; even as the obscurity is twofold also. The one is external, placed in the ministry of the word; the other internal, placed in the understanding of the heart. If you speak of the internal clearness, no man sees one iota in the Scriptures, but he that hath the Spirit of God. All have a darkened heart; so that, even if they know how to speak of, and set forth, all things in the Scripture, yet, they cannot feel them nor know them: nor do they believe that they are the creatures of God, nor any thing else: according to that of Psalm xiv. 1. “The fool hath said in his heart, God is nothing.” For the Spirit is required to understand the whole of the Scripture and every part of it. If you speak of the external clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that are in the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimed to the whole world.

I think that there are several things worth mentioning in response to this doctrine.

1. The Scriptural Case for this Doctrine is Weak. 

None of the passages Luther cites in his defense of this doctrine say anything remotely close to “the Scriptures are all so clear that they don’t need any interpretation.” The closest we get is Luke 24:45, where Christ explains the meanings of the Old Testament to the pair of disciples on the road to Emmaus. And when you think about that example, it’s striking that they’re in need of Old Testament exegesis, even after three years of Christ’s public ministry: that passage could just as easily be used to argue against the perspicuity of Scripture.  Which brings me to the second point...

2. The Scriptural Case Against this Doctrine is Stronger.  

Scripture itself presents itself as something to be read with the Church, not in lieu of the Church. Perhaps the quickest way of demonstrating this is the interaction between Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:29-31,

And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”

Note well that the Holy Spirit is at work in this Ethiopian man’s life, but not by internally inspiring him with the perspicuous meaning of Scripture. Rather, He sends him a representative of the Church to interpret Scripture for him (Acts 8:35). On his own, the man is humble enough to realize when he doesn’t understand what the passage is talking about.

Or take the question of the status of the Mosaic Law. In Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas engage in “no small dissension and debate” with “the party of the Pharisees” (Acts 15:1-2, 5). That is, from the earliest days of the Church, we see disputes periodically arising between Christians. And how is settled? Does each party pull out their Bible and show why they think they’re right, splitting into two churches when they can’t agree? No. “The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter” (Acts 15:6) at the Council of Jerusalem. When the Council announces its decision, it declares that its conclusions “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28).

3. The Early Church Did Not Believe in the Perspicuity of Scripture.

Traditionally (dating back to the earliest days of the Church), the Church’s role has been to declare which doctrines are authentically Christian, and which aren’t. She may point to specific passages supporting this, but She doesn’t always. After all, the earliest Christians didn’t believe in sola Scriptura, so it’s not surprising that the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed look very different from, say, the “statement of beliefs” found in many Protestant denominations.

Guercino, St Jerome in the Wilderness (1650)

For one thing, unlike every Protestant statement of beliefs that I know of, there are no references to Scripture in the early Creeds. For another thing, the Creeds are a statement of faith binding upon the whole Church.  In contrast, the Protestant denominations’ statement of beliefs are at most, in the words of the Southern Baptist Convention, a “statement of generally held convictions.” This is the difference between a Church governed by a visible authority, and a denomination governed by hoping everybody interprets a Book the same way.

Similarly, St. Jerome (one of the greatest Scripture scholars in the early Church) talks about his in his Dialogue Against the Luciferians:

We ought to remain in that Church which was founded by the Apostles and continues to this day. If ever you hear of any that are called Christians taking their name not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, for instance, Marcionites, Valentinians, Men of the mountain or the plain, you may be sure that you have there not the Church of Christ, but the synagogue of Antichrist. For the fact that they took their rise after the foundation of the Church is proof that they are those whose coming the Apostle foretold.  

And let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. Otherwise, if we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the Church.

Jerome is by no means the only Church Father to talk about the error of taking Scripture against the Church, but he is one of the clearest on this point.

4. Luther Proves this Doctrine False.

Luther changed his mind on all sorts of doctrines (e.g., Purgatory) after he left the Church. Many of these reversals and changes occur after 1524, when he wrote On the Bondage of the Will, the text in which he advanced the idea of the perspicuity of Scripture.

This seems to show that Luther was wrong ... or by his own argument, that he wasn’t guided by the Holy Spirit, since everything would have been crystal clear to him, if he had been.

5. Protestantism Proves this Doctrine False.

The easiest way to see that Scripture needs an interpretative authority is to look at the anarchy that has invariably resulted where that authority is rejected. If the perspicuity of Scripture were true, we should expect to see one more-or-less unified Protestant church. Everyone of good will, guided by the Holy Spirit and the clarity of Scripture, would be able to come to the same conclusions. But of course, the history of Protestantism has been the expect opposite of this.

Doctrinal anarchy erupted almost immediately after Luther launched his “Reformation.” Within Luther’s own lifetime, Calvin, Zwingli, and a whole litany of other Reformers arose who accepted the principles of Protestantism, while rejecting other key parts of Lutheranism (which, if Luther was right about Scriptural perspicuity, shouldn’t have been possible, if both men were guided by the Holy Spirit). Writing at the close of the 16th century, St. Francis de Sales compared the rapid collapse of the Reformation to the Tower of Babel (Part II, Article III, Chapter IV):

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel (1563)

What contradictions has not Luther's reformation produced! I should never end if I would put them all on this paper. [….]

You have not one same canon of the Scriptures: Luther will not have the Epistle of S. James, which you receive. Calvin holds it to be contrary to the Scripture that there is a head in the Church; the English hold the reverse : the French Huguenots hold that according to the Word of God priests are not less than bishops ; the English have bishops who govern priests, and amongst them two archbishops, one of whom is called primate, a name which Calvin so greatly detests: the Puritans in England hold as an article of faith that it is not lawful to preach, baptize, pray, in the Churches which were formerly Catholic, but they are not so squeamish in these parts. And note my saying that they make it an article of faith, for they suffer both prison and banishment rather than give it up. Is it not well known that at Geneva they consider it a superstition to keep any saint's day? — yet in Switzerland some are kept ; and you keep one of Our Lady. The point is not that some keep them and others do not, for this would be no contradiction in religious belief, but that what you and some of the Swiss observe the others condemn as contrary to the purity of religion.

Are you not aware that one of your greatest ministers teaches that the body of our Lord is as far from the Lord's Supper as heaven is from earth, and are you not likewise aware that this is held to be false by many others ? Has not one of your ministers lately confessed the reality of Christ's body in the Supper, and do not the rest deny it ? Can you deny me that as regards Justification you are as much divided against one another as you are against us : — witness that anonymous controversialist. In a word, each man has his own language, and out of as many Huguenots as I have spoken to I have never found two of the same belief.

St. Francis explained that because the dispute is over the meaning of Scripture, Protestants are incapable of ever resolving these issues, if they refuse to submit to the authority of the Church:

But the worst is, you are not able to come to an agreement: — for where will you find a trusted arbitrator? You have no head upon earth to address yourselves to in your difficulties; you believe that the very Church can err herself and lead others into error: you would not put your soul into such unsafe hands; indeed, you hold her in small account. The Scripture cannot be your arbiter, for it is concerning the Scripture that you are in litigation, some of you being determined to have it understood in one way, some in another. Your discords and your disputes are interminable, unless you give in to the authority of the Church.

That prediction - that the disputes would prove interminable - was made over four hundred years ago.  Would anyone today deny his point?  Does Protestantism seem any closer to solving these exegetical disputes? Quite the contrary. Protestantism has spent five hundred years slowly imploding into an ever-greater number of warring denominations. We are as far away from having a unified “Protestant church” as we’ve ever been, and the situation is only getting worse, like a universe spiraling towards heat death.

6. This Doctrine Risks Making you a Jerk. 

I hesitated to include this one, for fear that it would seem like more of a potshot than an argument, but hear me out. Even ignoring all the disputes Protestantism has with historic Christianity (and with modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy), there are innumerable Protestant denominations feuding with one another over the proper interpretation of Scripture on a whole litany of doctrines. Are we really to believe that all but one of these denominations are arguing in bad faith?

John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli (1874)

If you really believe that the meaning of Scripture is just obvious to anyone guided by the Holy Spirit, you’re essentially left with three options:

• Option A: Your opponent is ignorant, and just needs to be shown the proper Scriptures.  Once he sees those, he will convert.
• Option B: Your opponent is godless, and that is why he can't understand Scripture.
• Option C: Your opponent is a liar, and that is why he pretends he can't understand Scripture.

I would suggest that this is at least one factor in the ugliness of so much inter-Christian dialogue (although by no means the only factor), and the speed in which non-Protestants are accused of acting in bad faith.  Again, we need look no further than Luther's own life, to see how toxic this doctrine turns out to be in real life.

The logic is clear enough: if your opponents disagree with you (and in the case of the Protestants holding this position, this includes the entire Church prior to 1500 A.D.), they must be ignorant, godless or liars. Otherwise, they would “see the all-perfect clearness of the truth.”  Just look at how Luther treated the Jews once they weren't convinced by his version of the Gospel.

Conclusion

To clarify, there are two things that I’m not saying: (1) I’m not saying that early single passage of Scripture is so cryptic that someone has to spell it out for us; and (2) I’m not saying that the Church’s primary task is to exegete individual Scriptural passages.  But what I am saying is that the doctrine of the “perspicuity of Scripture” is contrary to Scripture, Tradition, Protestant history, and is generally a bad idea.