Name:Sean Country:United States State:Massachusetts Metro:Boston Birthday:7/1/1976 Gender:Male
Interests:I love Ecclesiology, Ecumenism, and Theological Method. Special Interests of mine include ecumenical dialog on Justification, Catholicism, the Papacy, Scriptural Inerrancy, and more. I also enjoy talking about Science, Religion, and Politics. On a lighter level, I love Philip Yancey, John Eldredge, and CS Lewis. I want to read more literature and become better informed and balanced politcally. Expertise:I'm a Doctoral Student at Boston College, working on a degree in Systematic Theology with a minor in Christian History. I did my undergraduate in Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and my Master's in Theology from the University of Dallas. Occupation:Student Industry:Research
Here is a very interesting essay on Scripture, Experience and Tradition as it relates to homosexuality by LT Johnson and Eve Tushnet. I personally enjoyed both perspectives but feel Johnson's thoughts resonate more with my own.
For those who don't know LT Johnson, he is a well known NT scholar who often does battle with the Jesus Seminar scholars over their understanding of the "historical Jesus".
I of course haven't posted anything in a while. Xanga wants to reclaim my username. I suppose I'm not ready to give up my site just yet. So here is a brief hello.
You raise some very good questions about this
latest document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
(CDF) which was approved by Pope Benedict. I feel especially qualified
to comment on this document. First, I am a recent convert to Roman
Catholicism. I grew up Presbyterian and just before my conversion I
attended Prestonwood Baptist, IBC, and Bent Tree Bible Fellowship for a
few years. Second, for the past 5 years I have been studying Roman
Catholic theology. I have my Masters from the University of Dallas and
have almost finished my PhD at Boston College in Systematic Theology.
Third, my dissertation research concerns the subject matter
specifically addressed by the CDF in this latest document.
Specifically, I have studied the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on
the relationship of non-Catholic churches and ecclesial communities to
the Roman Catholic Church. I also am quite familiar with how Vatican II
has been interpreted by Catholic theologians and the Roman magisterium
in the 40 years since the council.
Let me walk you through
this brief document which has a Q&A format. Hopefully I can clear
up some unfortunate confusion and misunderstanding and clarify what are
the essential concerns that the document intends to address.
The
first question addressed by the document is: “Did the Second Vatican
Council change the Catholic doctrine on the Church?” The background of
this question concerns a passage from the Second Vatican Council’s
“Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”, known in Latin as Lumen Gentium.
In article 8 we read the following passage which has caused quite an
intra-Catholic theological debate over the past 40 years:
“This
is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one,
holy, catholic and apostolic… This Church constituted and organized in
the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church…although many
elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its
visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of
Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.” (LG
What
is interesting about this passage is how it is different from official
papal teaching prior to the council. Take these two quotes from Pius
XII. In his 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi (On the Mystical
Body of Christ), Pius writes:
“If we would define and describe
this true Church of Jesus Christ - which is the One, Holy, Catholic,
Apostolic and Roman Church - we shall find nothing more noble, more
sublime, or more divine than the expression ‘the Mystical Body of
Christ’” (MC 13)
In his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis (On the Human Race), Pius states unequivocally:
“Some
say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical
Letter of a few years ago…which teaches that the Mystical Body of
Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing.”
The
key point to remember is that the Church of Christ, the Mystical Body
of Christ, and the Roman Catholic Church are completely identified in
official church teaching prior to Vatican II. In fact, when the Second
Vatican Council preparatory commission wrote the first draft for Lumen
Gentium this strict identification again appeared in the draft. I am
paraphrasing but I think the draft went so far as to say that “only the
Roman Catholic Church is rightly called ‘church’”.
Getting
back to the final text of Lumen Gentium 8, what is surprising and what
has caused so much hoopla in Catholic theological circles for the past
40 years is what is not said in this statement. Based on previous papal
teaching, one would expect this passage to again affirm that the Church
of Christ IS the Catholic Church. But curiously it does not. Rather the
statement is that the Church of Christ SUBSISTS in the Catholic Church.
Catholic theologians have spilled a ton of ink trying to interpret the
meaning of ‘subsists’. The second and third questions in the CDF
statement try to explain what subsists means and also why it was used
in Lumen Gentium instead of the simple ‘is’. Some Catholic theologians
after the Council suggested that this change in wording indicates that
the Council radically departed from previous papal teaching and now
acknowledges that Church of Christ is found equally in the Catholic
Church and also in the Orthodox and Protestant churches. Others have
argued that the word change is insignificant and does not alter
previous papal teaching like that formulated by Pius XII.
Benedict,
through this new CDF document, wants to stress that the teaching of
Vatican II is not a radical break from previous Catholic teaching.
There is continuity between it and the teaching of Vatican II. Still,
it is clear that the teaching of Vatican II develops, deepens, and more
fully explains that preconciliar teaching.
So, what did
Vatican II teach about the Church of Christ and the Mystical Body of
Christ? First, the Church of Christ is a complex reality. It is neither
completely spiritual nor completely a visible society. It is both
earthly and heavenly. The Church of Christ has both a divine and human
element. Second, the Council made a huge advance over preconciliar
teaching. Instead of teaching that all ‘churchly reality’ is contained
within the Roman Catholic Church (as it was often taught before the
council), it explicitly acknowledged that outside of the Catholic
Church are not only many elements of sanctification and truth, but that
there are also real Churches and ecclesial communities of non-Catholic
Christians which contain the means of grace and salvation for those
Christians who are a part of them. This is the key meaning behind the
change in Lumen Gentium 8 from IS to SUBSISTS. On the one hand, the
Council now recognizes the truly Christian and ‘churchly reality’ found
in these communities of non-Catholic Christians. The Second Vatican
Council wrote:
“Moreover, some and even very many of the
significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and
give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible
boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of
grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the
Holy Spirit, and visible elements too… It follows that the separated
Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be
deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of
significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit
of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which
derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth
entrusted to the Church.” (Unitatis Redintegratio 3).
On the
other hand, the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed that it is only in
the Roman Catholic Church that the FULLNESS of the means of salvation
are found and that non-Catholic communities and churches lack
characteristics proper to the Church of Christ:
“For it is
only through Christ's Catholic Church, which is ‘the all-embracing
means of salvation,’ that [our separated brethren] can benefit fully
from the means of salvation” (UR 4).
I can comment later on
why official Catholic teaching believes Orthodox Churches are properly
called ‘Churches’ but Protestant churches are only called ‘ecclesial
communities’. I simply direct you to the explanation offered in the
document. For now, I want to make clear that the newswires are mistaken
when they claim the Pope is denying that salvation is possible for
Christians in non-Catholic churches and communities. He also is not
denying the Church of Christ is operative and present in non-Catholic
churches and ecclesial communities or that they are means of salvation
for their adherents. Benedict is simply summarizing again Catholic
teaching about the relationship of non-Catholic churches and the
Catholic Church to the Church of Christ. This has been official church
teaching for the past 40 years. It is unfortunate that the CDF's
teaching is being misunderstood to mean that the Catholic Church is
adopting a very harsh attitude towards non-Catholic Christians and
churches. I hope this helps remove some confusion.
Reading St. Thomas Aquinas has made clear a practical consideration in my attempt to blog my notes. I am moving too slow and digitizing my notes (which up to now I have accomplished by cutting and pasting those sentences which I have highlighted in my hard copy of the text) is taking too long.
Plus, it doesn't seem like too many are really into reading through notes of this kind. So, I will be blogging on future authors in a more summarized way, and will take advantage of outside sources when possible.
So, for Aquinas, I direct people to this website, which are some notes prepared by a student a couple of years back on the sections of the Summa that I am reading:
