Borderless Faith in A Borderless World
“[M]uch less can men, not professing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess.”– Westminster Confession of Faith, 10.4.
A common critique of Protestantism from Roman Catholics is its visible disunity. A wooden dichotomy between Catholic institutional unity and Protestant fissiparity is, of course, not exactly fair, historically or presently.
The Protestant retort is to highlight the various fractures between East and West and the regular conflicts over authority throughout the history of the medieval church. The Investiture Controversy, the rise of conciliarism, the Western Schism (1378-1417), et cetera. Even today, most people would be surprised to learn of Catholic churches sitting outside communion with Rome, like the old Catholic unions of Utrecht and Scranton.
At bottom, the Protestant objection was not so much to visible unity as it was to universal jurisdiction of the Pontif, predicated on institutional infallibility, and which improperly subjugated God-ordained civil authority. Moreover, the correspondence between visible and invisible unity had been pressed beyond its workable bounds, to say nothing of the institutional corruption that even Erasmus recognized, and doctrinal confusions proliferated at the time.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Papalism represented a universalism, so to speak, of authority but now the script has been flipped. Enter Pope Francis who announced last month that “[Religions] are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.” He added, “If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t,’ where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sheik, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].”
This kind of ecumenism, “interreligious dialogue,” Francis claimed, creates a “path.” As Archbishop Charles Chaput rightly questioned, “a path to where?” A path to irrelevancy and apostacy, that’s where. As my old professor Carl Trueman used to say in class, if to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant, as Cardinal Newman claimed, then the Protestant has to ask, “which history?” Surely not the late 14th and early 15th century. We can now add, surely not 2024!
The near universal Protestant view for some time was that however errant, the Church of Rome was a true church insofar as it was still Trinitarian, administered word and sacrament, if in muddled form, and claimed Christ. The ordinations and baptisms of the magisterial Reformers, therefore, remained valid just as those performed by Anabaptists were valid if abnormal.
Now that position is getting harder—impossible, even—to affirm. Extra-Christian universalism is truly innovative, unprecedented. On what basis, then, can Rome claim jurisdiction over Christendom if membership therein is now irrelevant to salvation? On what basis are Protestant “ecclesial communities” sinfully in error? Surely if a Hindu or Muslim can attain salvation without recognizing Christ, so to can a Christian who rejects the Pope.
Pressing visible (and invisible) inclusion to this extent is not only doctrinally heretical by any measure but institutionally suicidal. The legitimacy of the Holy See, by its own logic, requires a balance between its universal institutional claim and its own exclusivity. To rule of all of Christendom requires, almost by definition, the claim to and exercise of exclusion.
As I often tell young Protestant men tempted by the history and grandeur of Rome to swim the Tiber, there’s not much left on the other bank. The Papal States are no more; no new crusades are being called; the political significance of the Papacy died with John Paul II. Apostolic continuity is ever more questionable. There’s no there, there… not anymore. Were the Papacy restored to the height of its medieval predominance, we all might be tempted. We could at least understand the appeal. There was a dream that was Rome. No longer. But now, you needn’t worry. Per the Pontif, you’re in the club already, along with the rest of the world. Cardinal Newman was wrong about Protestantism being ahistorical, but there was something to it. We Protestants might now respond: to be deep in Catholicism is to cease to be Christian.
Obviously, many conservative Catholics are outraged by the Bishop of Rome’s comments. Many of them—especially those who reject the innovations of Vatican II and don’t buy the —are vocally frustrated with Francis and have been for some time. This, however, may be a bridge too far. Rightly so, it portends the complete irrelevance of their church. That is, if institutional Catholicism is to stand for anything more than sentiment and aesthetics. Unity always requires justification—no Protestant pun intended—a basis for its maintenance.
Chaput is right that “Not all religions seek the same God,” and nor are they morally or spiritually equivalent. But it may soon be for Catholics that insisting on this kind of exclusivity is as offensive as believing that not all cultures are equally good or readily transferable. If nations no longer have borders, I suppose it is only natural that religions shouldn’t either. In many ways, these things go hand-in-hand, and that, indeed, has always been part of the Protestant protest.
Just last century, Hans Kung was disciplined for questioning papal infallibility. Today the Pope willingly cedes the point if all religions carry equal weight, equal pathways to eternal life with God. Protestants believe that the mediatorial status of Christ is usurped and diminished by Marian dogma; we are well beyond that now. If this is the trajectory of Rome, prayers to saints, iconography, and the assumption are hardly relevant at all.
To be clear, the Pope is expressing a sort of institutional toleration and universality. Seventeenth century Protestants like Matthew Henry, Matthew Hale, and maybe even Stephen Charnock, entertained the idea that exceptionally virtuous pagans might be able to acquire sufficient knowledge of God unto salvation by the light and law of nature, at least in theory. Zwingli thought the great pagans of antiquity were in heaven, even if their path through natural virtue was not normative. So, this stuff is not new, nor uniquely Roman. What is new, is the institutional flippancy and absurdity of the Pope. Zwingli didn’t think Muslims were getting to heaven by being Muslim, and he certainly wasn’t for sectarian pacifism, as his own death shows.
Culturally, this is a time for cooperation and unity amongst all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, in the West. Our future depends on it. Especially in America, sectarian squabbles are a peacetime activity. In any case, if the Pope keeps up these shenanigans, questioning the exclusivity of the faith once delivered, there may be a lot more Catholics discovering their inner Protestant. At least we want borders on these things.
Image Credit: The Battle of Kappel am Albis in 1531, Swiss National Museum.
This is a fair critique of the pope but didn’t Protestantism bring about this sort of thinking? By shattering the union of western Christendom and the idea of an intermediate authority on earth which has legitimate power and replacing that with the Bible alone, aren’t we less able to discern between legitimate interpretations. If we take as a fact the claim of the Catholic Church to be the intermediary for the faithful I am left with certainty. In the Protestant system, unless I take Luther, or Calvin, or Zwingli to be infallible in their interpretation of the Bible I do not have certainty. Without an institutional intermediary, we must move papal infallibility to another person for any sort of certainty. If we cannot be certain we cannot entirely condemn. This led to the idea of “religion” as a set of private beliefs because every interpretation is that of a fallible human as opposed to an infallible church. It’s easy to ask the question if so many Christians disagree about the interpretation of the Bible what makes your particular conception of salvation more legitimate than the pope’s? Also, I enjoyed the article and really enjoy American Reformer so I hope this didn’t come off as confrontational.
In the end, everyone follows reason and conscience in deciding how to interpret Scripture, even Roman Catholics. RCs have just followed reason and conscience to the decision that their own interpretation should not be trusted more than the RC magisterium as their highest authority in the rule of faith, rather than sola scriptura.
Also, “shattering the union of WESTERN Christendom” is an argument from false premises, as the “union” was already shattered long before Protestantism ever came on the scene.
‘pontiff’ is spelled with two ‘f’s