As a historian/theologian with a particular passion for the field of Wesley studies, I (Ken) came to this work reluctantly. Producing materials that help to communicate the genius of the Wesleyan theological tradition to the spiritually hungry around the world, I have witnessed countless testimonies of genuine salvation and radical transformation of persons who now both know and love God as revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Why then should I leave this very positive and enormously satisfying work, even for a season, to take up the task of what initially looked to me like polemics?
As Jerry Walls walked the halls of Asbury Theological Seminary, at first he said, “Collins, you should write this book,” knowing, as he did, something of my background. Yes, I am a product of twelve years of Roman Catholic education. My aunt was a Mercy nun, and my older brother a Xaverian Brother for a time. However, I fled the church—that’s the right word—as a junior in high school after a particularly emotionally wrenching experience. Earlier, while I was in grammar school, I had often been physically abused by Roman Catholic brothers who had been quite creative here and even made a sport of inflicting physical and emotional pain. Though I was serious, an excellent student, and even won the religion medal in my graduating class, I, like other students at the school, received an inordinate number of blows throughout my grammar school career. One beating, for example, was so severe (on the hands with a very thick composite “ruler”) that I couldn’t even hold anything in my hands for several days. I often walked to class in fear, not knowing what would set off the brother on that particular day. By the time I was sixteen and feeling some of my teenage pushback oats, I had had enough. My thought at the time was simply this: “I need to get away from these people.”
Today, I have not the slightest twinge of resentment toward Roman Catholicism or its clergy. How can that be? Indeed, I myself often marvel at this. In fact, I am in some sense even grateful for this particular theological tradition. Again, how can that be? The answer here has much to do with grace. That is, it was no one less than the Holy Spirit, orchestrating providential grace, who not only changed my heart but also used my early, negative experiences in Roman Catholicism to bring great good out of them. In particular, the Spirit of the living Christ ultimately led me into the church that is known as the Wesleyan theological tradition, in which I have flourished for more than four decades now. If I live to be a thousand years old, I would still not have enough time to express all the gratitude in my heart for this wonderful, life-transforming journey. The riches of the Wesleyan tradition are so very considerable. In the end, I must energetically confess, it’s all good, for God’s grace is sufficient, and God’s love is over all!
Knowing something of this history (though certainly not all its earlier gory details), Jerry Walls kept coming at me, urging me to write this book. He repeated this entreaty again and again. I politely replied, “No” in every creative way I could imagine. I thought we were finally done with the matter, but no, I was wrong. Years later when he was well ensconced at Houston Baptist University as a scholar in residence in the Department of Philosophy, Jerry asked me over the phone if I would join him in writing this book. This would be something we could do together. Again I said, “No.” However, after several more efforts he was ultimately persuasive—as usual.
What changed my mind? The simple answer is that by this point Jerry had convinced me that I could help a large population of Christians who are currently struggling with the issues we discuss in this book. Many of these folk are evangelicals—though some are not—who have begun to look at their own communions of faith in greatly diminished ways precisely due to errors in historiography (how they read the history of the church and their own place within it) as well as in ecclesiology, that is, with respect to a proper understanding of what constitutes the church, the body of Christ. Properly motivated now to take up the cause by love for my brothers and sisters, some of whom are suffering, I came to view this whole enterprise much differently and very positively. I had this change of heart even though I realized that writing such a book would open up both Jerry and me to much criticism, even to personal attack (did I really want a round 2?). However, that also comes with the lay of the land here and reveals, once again, precisely why such a book must be written.
This work is preeminently about Roman Catholicism; it is not about Protestantism, at least not directly. Accordingly, we can save some of the Roman Catholic apologists, authors, and bloggers much wasted effort in pointing out that we are humbly, honestly, and forthrightly aware of many of the faults and missteps of Protestant theological traditions. However, that is not our topic. Therefore, to point out repeatedly the weaknesses of Protestantism in the face of serious reflection on Roman Catholicism, as some apologists are wont to do, is in our judgment just another way of changing the conversation, even shutting it down, so that the very real problems of the Roman Catholic tradition are never actually faced. We avoid such an egregious error. Thus Roman Catholicism (and its many claims) is after all the topic of this book, and we unswervingly pursue this throughout. To be sure, this subject is well worth the focus and effort, as the unfolding of the book will clearly demonstrate. It constitutes much of why neither of us is a Roman Catholic even today.
Moreover, this book is about the official teaching of Roman Catholicism; it is not, by and large, about what contemporary Roman Catholic theologians or even what laypeople at times think. Indeed, in several instances these last two groups can differ, sometimes markedly and confusedly so, from the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, we pay particular attention to valuable resources such as the Catechism; Vatican II materials; historic documents of the church such as Scripture, creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian), rules of faith, and councils (Lateran, Trent, Vatican I, etc.); canons; papal encyclicals; and various practices that together make up the formal teaching of the Roman Catholic theological tradition.
Beyond this, considerable care was taken in terms of the order of the chapters and what issues would be addressed. First, this effort is by no means a systematic treatment in the sense that the book flows from the doctrine of God to eschatology and takes every step along the way. Instead, the work proceeds by essays (largely historical and philosophical) along key themes that highlight the distinct claims of the Roman Catholic Church, especially those that set it apart from other theological traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Second, due to space limitations, even in terms of what topics are in fact treated (such as the sacraments, the priesthood, and the papacy) we could by no means be exhaustive. Indeed, entire books could be written in each one of these areas. Third, by the perspective of the Protestant Reformation, which is part of the book’s vantage point, we understand this terminology very broadly to refer at times to the historic leaders and materials of the sixteenth century (to which there are many references throughout the book), but also to how Reformation Christians today participate in these living Christian traditions that are being passed along from century to century.
Authors who take three years out of their lives to dedicate themselves to a worthy writing project such as this would, no doubt, like to reach the widest audience possible. However, this goal cannot be the only consideration. Added to this must be the concern to contextualize the essays, so that they will be carefully understood and therefore more effective in achieving their larger purpose, illumination, which means that this effort moves in a decidedly different direction than a popular account does. In the face of such a dilemma, we have tried to hold both of these considerations in tension, though we have no doubt leaned, almost by necessity (given the demands of the task), toward a more scholarly treatment.
Though Roman Catholics, of course, are likely to think otherwise, our larger argument in the book does not impugn any essential or nonnegotiable teaching of the Christian faith, but only those later additions that for many today serve as obstacles, stumbling blocks, to the proper Christian witness. Indeed, the case that we make throughout the book richly affirms what C. S. Lewis called “mere Christianity,” the classic trinitarian orthodoxy of the historic creeds. This judgment, of course, represents a Protestant perspective, as our critics will no doubt claim, but we receive such criticism as an opportunity to articulate the importance not only of perspective in the life of the church but also of the ongoing vitality and integrity of many Protestant theological traditions. We never have to apologize for being Protestant.
Rejecting the extreme polemics of some Protestant apologists (claiming that Roman Catholics are not Christians, and the pope is the antichrist), we affirm Roman Catholicism as a distinct Christian theological communion, though we recognize that some of the traditions and practices it has developed over the centuries may at times detract from both the power and the clarity of the gospel. Our argument then is broadly ecumenical and generous, especially since it not only acknowledges the theological differences of distinct traditions (such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy) in an open and forthright way but also has the good sense not to make any one of these traditions the heart of the church. Indeed, since each Christian tradition has been a part of a prior schism (the one in 1054 readily comes to mind), no one tradition can ever be the center. Those days are long gone.
We recognize that the word “Catholic” is employed today by Roman Catholics and Protestants in much different ways than in previous centuries, and these differences reflect distinct theological traditions and ecclesiastical locations. In fact, the differing renderings of this common word epitomize a fair portion of our major argument throughout the book. Since speaking out of our respective theological traditions might, given the disputed nature of the term, appear to be triumphalism or cause a gross misunderstanding, we suggest taking the principal meanings (historically and etymologically speaking) of the unabridged and highly reputable Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as a common ground and as an authoritative resource in this disputed area.
The OED points out that the word “Catholic” means “general” or “universal” or even “whole,” and it was expressed much earlier in Greek by the word καθολικός and in Latin by catholicus.1 The term “catholic church” was never used by either Jesus or the apostles; it made its first appearance in the writings of Ignatius during the early part of the second century, when it referred to “the whole body of believers.”2 Much later, after the Great Schism in 1054, the word “Catholic” was used as a “descriptive epithet by the Western or Latin Church,”3 whereas the Christian East much preferred the designation “Orthodox.” It was during the Reformation in the sixteenth century that those under “the Roman obedience”4 began to claim the word as “its exclusive right . . . in opposition to the ‘Protestant’ or ‘Reformed.’”5
This brief history, along with some etymological considerations, suggests that today’s usage of the term “Catholic” by those under the authority of the bishop of Rome (which includes Roman Catholics, of course, as well as other “Catholic” communions, that is, those bodies of differing rites)6 actually has its origin in the polemical context of the sixteenth century, when it began to take on a particular meaning, one that rendered the Roman tradition itself distinct from other Christian communions. In this heated and troubled context, the word “Catholic” no longer referred, as it once had in charity and grace, to “the whole body of believers.”7 The realities of the second-century (ancient ecumenical) church were by now long gone. Rome, no doubt, felt justified in shifting this definition simply because, in its estimation at least, Protestants had left the “holy mother church.” Protestants, for their part, chafed under such restrictive and, in their estimation, newfangled usage.
In light of these basic historical truths, we demonstrate in considerable detail the theological and ecclesiastical trouble that emerges when any one communion insists on being the center. For one thing, the Roman Catholic Church has no greater claim to catholicity or universality than does Eastern Orthodoxy. And when these two traditions make the same or similar claims simultaneously, that’s a prescription for historical and ecclesiastical confusion. The unfortunate reality, substantiated throughout the pages of church history, is that the ancient ecumenical church broke up into distinct theological traditions. We fully and unabashedly recognize this historical truth. Therefore, we most often refer to the Roman Catholic Church (instead of simply the Catholic Church) in order to avoid the confusing wordplay that does not fully acknowledge the significance of Eastern Orthodoxy, much less that of other equally Christian theological traditions such as those that make up Protestantism. Moreover, for the sake of style and also to avoid tedium, we employ the term “Rome” to refer to the Roman Catholic Church (instead of repeating RCC), recognizing, of course, that this particular tradition is in no way limited to Europe but is a global communion of faith.
Though we affirm that Jesus Christ and the apostolic testimony to him are the foundation of the church, and though we celebrate the first-century church, especially in its proclamation at Pentecost, we are not making a primitivistic argument here. We fully recognize that the church develops over time under the authority of the Holy Spirit. Such development, in the best sense of the term, is consonant with the basic truth of Scripture and with the interpretive traditions (expressed in thought and practice) that Scripture has stimulated among the faithful, such that the church is equipped by Word and Spirit to bear its testimony from age to age. Thus our chief concern, especially as we face the Roman Catholic tradition, is not to engage in primitivism but to avoid the error of anachronism, such as reading back into the first-century church later historical products (e.g., the papacy) as if they had always been there.
Finally, our approach is biblical, historical, theological, and philosophical, not dogmatic. We are open to learning from all Christians, including those who fundamentally differ from us. Accordingly, we read and learn even from Roman Catholic dogmatists, that is, from those authors who have already made up their minds that whatever Rome affirms is the gospel truth. This mind-set, which seems to be prevalent among many Roman Catholic apologists and bloggers, was evidenced much earlier in the writings of Ignatius of Loyola himself, who declared: “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it.”8 Our argument is not addressed to the contemporary exemplars of this mind-set, and we are under no illusions that it would be heard by them even if it were.
KJC
My (Jerry) religious background is quite different from that of my good friend Collins. Whereas he was raised in Brooklyn, New York, I was born and raised in Knockemstiff, Ohio. Whereas he was baptized as an infant and confirmed as a Roman Catholic, I accepted Christ as an eleven-year-old in an emotional conversion experience during a revival in a small country church and was later baptized in a creek across the road from my house. Whereas he has painful memories of his religious instruction in his Roman Catholic schools, which led him to lose his faith for a time, I have warm memories of loving nurture from those formative years when I attended Bethel Chapel Christian Union Church, and my faith has never seriously wavered since my conversion experience.
I say this to emphasize that I came to my interest in the issues in this book from a very different direction. I knew very little about Roman Catholicism while growing up, and I don’t recall having any particular opinions about it. Looking back, I have no distinct memories of interacting with Catholics until I went to Princeton Theological Seminary from 1977 to 1980—during which time, by the way, I first met Collins, who was a fellow student at Princeton. No doubt I had met Catholics before then, but my world was very much a Protestant evangelical one. At Princeton, there were several Roman Catholic students, and one of my professors was a Roman Catholic. Those were balmy post−Vatican II days (though I did not know much about the details of Vatican II at the time), and on the front burner was the growing sense of unity among Christians, not the issues that divided us from Rome. I do not recall any discussions or debates about the doctrines that divided us or any concern from Catholics to make an issue of them.
My first serious engagement with Roman Catholicism came when I enrolled as a graduate student in the philosophy department at the University of Notre Dame in the fall of 1984. My years there were some of the best of my life; not only am I a proud graduate of that great university, but I also recall my years there with both fondness and gratitude. During this period Notre Dame was in the process of building a great Christian philosophy department with an ecumenical composition, and the excitement was palpable. In addition to a number of serious Catholics, Notre Dame had attracted some noted Protestants, including the great Alvin Plantinga and Tom Morris, who had recently completed graduate school at Yale and was already off to a roaring start in his academic career by the time I arrived.
While I was getting a great philosophical education at Notre Dame, I was also acquiring an informal education of another sort, namely, about Roman Catholicism, at least of the American variety. In addition to faculty members, several of my fellow graduate students were committed Roman Catholics, and my conversations with them were the first I can recall in which I ever discussed at length the differences that divide Protestants from Catholics; they not only took those issues seriously but also were eager to defend their side of the matter. Indeed, I came to realize that many conservative Roman Catholics view evangelicals as Catholics just waiting to happen, and they would love to help push us over the edge. I had numerous conversations about these issues with my Catholic friends and teachers, and I distinctly recall the parting words of one of my professors, Fred Freddoso, when I left Notre Dame: “I’m disappointed as hell you did not become a Catholic.”
But I was not done with these sorts of conversations. Several years later I had the good fortune to meet Richard John Neuhaus and to get to know him a bit. We hit it off, and he was intrigued to learn that I was a Protestant who was defending a version of the doctrine of purgatory in the book I was then writing about heaven.9 Shortly thereafter he invited me to join the Dulles Colloquium, an ecumenical theology discussion group hosted by him and Avery Dulles, after whom it was named. The Dulles Colloquium met once or twice a year in New York, usually at the Union League Club, and the official business of the day was to discuss a paper that had been sent to us several weeks earlier.
My participation in this group for several years was one of the great blessings and privileges of my life, for which I remain deeply grateful. One of my lasting regrets is that personal circumstances caused me to miss the last meeting to which I was invited in the spring of 2008, not knowing it was my last chance to see both Father Neuhaus and Cardinal Dulles in this life. Through the years when I was involved in the colloquium, I got to discuss matters of vital importance with some remarkable people: Gary Anderson, Jody Bottum, Shalom Carmy, Chuck Colson, Robert George, Timothy George, Paul Griffiths, Thomas Guarino, David Hart, Stanley Hauerwas, Russ Hittinger, Robert Jensen, George Lindbeck, Bruce Marshall, Gilbert Meilaender, David Novak, Michael Novak, James Nuechterlein, Tom Oden, Rusty Reno, Steve Webb, George Weigel, Robert Wilken, and many others. The group was composed of persons from a number of traditions, including Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, Methodists, and evangelicals, as well as a few Jews.
The paper topics covered a wide range of theological and moral issues and often dealt with matters of ecumenical concern. After the formal session, conversation continued more casually over dinner. Then we usually retired to the bar to continue to talk until bedtime. Occasionally a few of us were invited to Neuhaus’s apartment for drinks and conversation. Not infrequently these more informal talks centered on issues dividing Protestants and Catholics, with Neuhaus leading the way in making the case for Rome with his characteristic wit, charm, and ecumenical sensibilities. In these discussions with Neuhaus and other members of the group, I regularly defended the Protestant view.
In retrospect, I suspect that the unofficial agenda of the Dulles Colloquium—and I say this with all due affection—was to be a Catholic Conversion Club, particularly with the aim of converting Protestant intellectuals to Rome. (Indeed, I cannot help but wonder if part of the reason I was invited to join the group was that Neuhaus thought I might be ripe for conversion to Rome since I was defending the doctrine of purgatory.) In any case, when I joined the colloquium, a number of the members of the group were evangelicals, Anglicans, Lutherans, and so on who later converted to Rome. I cannot read their minds, and I cannot speak for them, so I will not presume what role, if any, their participation in the Dulles Colloquium might have played in their conversion. But I will say that in my experience, the dynamics of the group encouraged conversion to Rome. Indeed, the same might be said for the highly regarded magazine First Things, which Neuhaus founded. Rusty Reno, a convert from the Episcopal Church and the current editor of First Things, commented playfully on the matter as follows in an issue of the magazine featuring two articles by Protestants.
On the topic of Catholic triumphalism: Not a few Protestant friends complain that First Things is a Catholic party with a few Protestants and Jews invited. That always makes me wince, because it’s not altogether false. After all, the magazine was begun by a man who had just published a book titled The Catholic Moment. But I hope the two forceful essays about Protestantism in this issue convince readers that it’s not altogether true. . . . There’s no requirement that one kowtow to Catholicism.10
Reno’s somewhat whimsical comment accurately conveys my experience as a participant in the Dulles Colloquium for several years. Certainly there was no requirement to “kowtow to Catholicism,” but the claim of Rome to be the one true church was promoted, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in humorous flourishes, but always with urbane sophistication. But then, what else should one expect in a group named after, and attended by, a distinguished Roman Catholic cardinal and led by a famous Lutheran convert to Rome?
So in one sense the experience was deeply and richly ecumenical, but it also vividly showed the limits of Roman ecumenism. A few times the Protestants among us attended Mass with our Catholic friends, and it always struck me how odd it was that we had more genuine Christian unity and fellowship around the dinner table than we did at the table of the Lord. The welcome that was extended to those of us who did not regard Rome as the one true church only went so far: we watched from a distance when our Roman Catholic brothers shared the sacrament of Communion.
These sorts of experiences have generated my interest in the issues of this book and led me to think that it needed to be written. I also share these experiences to emphasize that my experiences and interactions with Roman Catholics have been overwhelmingly positive for the most part. In the past several years, I have had further positive interactions with Roman Catholics, partly because of further work I have done on purgatory. (Indeed, because of this work, not infrequently it has been assumed that I am a Roman Catholic!) Since my earlier discussion of the doctrine in my book on heaven, I have written a whole book defending an ecumenical version of the doctrine, the first book-length defense of purgatory ever by a Protestant, so far as I know.11 I hope this also shows that I am not automatically critical of a doctrine just because of its Roman Catholic pedigree or associations. To the contrary, it is always my aim to weigh doctrinal claims on their biblical, theological, and rational merits, regardless of their ecclesial connections.
I should frankly say that I have never been seriously tempted to convert to Rome, although I have obviously pondered it, as indicated by the experiences described above. Somewhat ironically, that is part of why I wanted to write this book with Collins. In recent years we have heard from lots of evangelicals who have converted to Rome. (Most of them, it seems, feel they need to write a book or at least contribute an essay to one of those collections of conversion narratives that are so popular among Catholic apologists.) I thought it might be helpful for the many persons who are struggling with these issues to hear from persons who have thought about them carefully but have not converted to Rome. We have heard from lots of people who have read John Henry Newman’s famous essay on doctrinal development and found his arguments compelling. I thought it might be helpful to hear from persons who have read Newman but found his arguments deeply confused and his conclusions badly overstated.
I also want to reiterate that this book aims to be ecumenical in the best sense of the word. We very much agree with Kevin Vanhoozer that the “only good Protestant is a catholic Protestant—one who learns from, and bears fruit for, the whole church.”12 Indeed, we believe that challenging the exclusive claims of Rome is essential to true catholicism and for advancing deeper unity in the body of Christ. While committed Roman Catholics no doubt believe that promoting their exclusive claims is necessary to their very identity, we aim to show a better way forward.
JLW
For any curious souls who want to know, as well as our critics, this is how the authors cooperated: They cowrote the introduction. Kenneth Collins wrote chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 9–12, 15–19, and the conclusion. Jerry Walls wrote chapters 1, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, and 20.
1. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v. “catholic.”
2. Ibid. (emphasis added).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. See the discussion of this issue in Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism (New York: HarperOne, 1994): “In addition to the Latin, or Roman tradition, there are seven other non-Latin, non-Roman ecclesial traditions: Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian, East Syrian (Chaldean), West Syrian, and Maronite. Each of these is a Catholic church in communion with the Bishop of Rome; none of these is a Roman Catholic Church” (5). Our use of the term “Roman Catholic” does not ignore the reality that there is a small minority of Catholic churches in communion with Rome that are not Roman, strictly speaking. See Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, trans. Elder Mullan, SJ (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1914), http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ignatius/exercises.xix.v.html.
7. McBrien, Catholicism, 5.
8. Ibid.
9. Jerry L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). I report that Collins does not share my views about the viability of a Protestant doctrine of purgatory. He rejects the doctrine.
10. Reno, “While We’re At It,” First Things, August/September 2014, 69.
11. Walls, Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); see also Walls, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things That Matter Most (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015).
12. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016), 33 (emphasis original).