Category: Apologetics

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you have any article about prayer for the dead?

People are asking me different questions, because of the Evangelicals who say: What is the biblical basis to pray for the dead? As you know, bringing proofs from the book Maccabees is not enough,

Another connected issue, those in purgatory needs prayer to go to heaven, right?

The question was: What if two different people go to purgatory, one has a rich family, so they will keep praying and offering Masses for him, while the other is poor, and no body will -pay- and pray for him, so the poor man can stay -longer- in the purgatory, while the rich man can pass quickly to heaven.

How you answer these questions? What are our biblical grounds?   

Not all questions can be answered in a way that offers Bible verses as evidence. In fact, not all questions can be answered at all. There are many things we human simply don’t know the answer to, because God hasn’t told them to us, and there are also many things in life that have answers that don’t involve the Bible at all, like how to solve the quadratic equation or where to find the gas station with the cheapest gas or how to make chop suey.

I think it is important to point these things out when dealing with the "Where is that in the Bible?" mentality.

It is also important to point out that, even when dealing with questions that do involve theology, we are Catholics and therefore do not need to provide answers within the confines of sola Scriptura.

As Catholics, we draw information from and our theology is shaped by not only Scripture but also Tradition, the formulations of the Magisterium, philosophy, human nature (i.e., natural law) reasoning, etc.

So, if you are dealing with Catholics who are being pestered by Evangelicals who are demanding that questions be answered on Evangelicals’ terms, it is important to remind the Catholics that they are not Evangelicals and should not slide into the mindset of Evangelicals of trying to answer everything from the Bible. That would cut them off from the other sources of information they have, and it would be as foolish as trying to do theology with just a quarter of what the Bible says rather than what the whole of the Bible says.

Just as we want to accept all of the Bible when we do theology, we also should accept everything that God has revealed to us for these purposes, and that goes beyond what is in the Bible.

An Evangelical might not accept that, but even he should agree to the principle of accepting all of God’s revelation, even if he disagrees about the extent of God’s revelation.

I therefore would question whether citing Maccabees is "not enough" as proof of prayer for the dead. It may not be enough for Protestants, because this book was removed from their Old Testament precisely in order to get rid of the passage dealing with prayer for the dead, but since this passage remains in the Catholic Bible, it should be enough for Catholics.

A Catholic thus might say to an Evangelical, "This passage is in my Bible. I accept it. So it is enough for me. It may not be enough for you because you do not find it in your Bible, but you should think about why that is: The reason is that your religious forebears took this passage out of the Protestant Old Testament precisely because they didn’t like what it said."

A Catolic might continue by pointing out that prayer for the dead was a practice rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition even before the time of Christ, as witnessed by the passage in 2 Maccabees, that Jews still pray for the dead today, and that the vast majority of Christians (i.e., Catholic plus Orthodox and other Eastern Christians) pray for the dead. It is only Protestants who do not.

Therefore, one could argue that if we accept that the Judeo-Christian tradition represents the line of religious belief that, in its broad outlines, is true and that God has worked with to shape, and if a particular practice is acknowledged by the great majority of this tradition, then it would seem that it should be those who do not accept the practice in question should have to argue for why it should not be accepted.

Thus ask the Evangelical: "What is your biblical argument that we should not pray for the dead? In particular, in view of St. Paul’s emphasis on Christian liberty, where is your biblical proof that Christians should not have the liberty to pray for their departed loved ones?"

They may respond by arguing that Jesus paid everything, that the saved are justified and have had their sins removed, etc.–all the standard stuff.

The standard stuff that Evangelicals say here is all true–God has provided salvation to the uttermost to the saved–but it ignores the question of how God has chosen to implement that salvation.

Human experience (along with the Bible) shows that when God saves someone, he does not instantly give the person all the benefits of eschatological salvation, including perfect sinlessness, freedom from concupiscence, the Beatific Vision, an augmented nature that will let us pass thru sealed tombs and enter locked rooms, etc.

It is clear, instead, that while God may have forgiven and justified us, he has chosen to implement the other benefits of salvation as a process. We see part of this process over the course of our lives, as he leads us to grow in holiness. We also have to deal with the consequences of our sins, even when they have been forgiven and will no longer cause us to be damned, as when we must pay back money we have stolen or repair harm that we have done.

This is part of God’s will for the process by which he brings us to heaven, even though it was his Son’s death on the Cross that paid for all of this.

We see part of the process by which God implements our salvation in this life. We do not see what he does in the next, where he may continue to implement it by a process or where he may implement the rest of it all at once (except for the resurrected body part, which we know is later on).

Either way, it is still rational for us to pray for our departed. We love them, and it is natural for us to ask God to help them and be kind to them. If there is a process that they must still undergo as their salvation is implemented, God can help them with that process. If it all happens in an instant, God can help them in that instant–even if the instant is already in the past from our perspective since God is outside of time.

Either way, it is natural for us to ask God to help those we love who have died, and if we do not do so then we either do not really love them or we are in the grip of a theology that asks us to do the unnatural rather than the natural.

It is the Evangelical’s theology that asks us to do something unnatural and to restrain our feelings of love and affection for our departed loved ones by not asking God to help them, and there is no solid basis in the Bible, or anywhere else, for asking this of us.

The reader also wrote: "Another connected issue, those in purgatory needs prayer to go to heaven, right?"

Actually, I wouldn’t put it that way. They don’t "need" prayers to go to heaven. They will go to heaven whether we pray for them or not. We merely ask that God help them as they do this, either by making the implementation of their salvation quicker or easier or in whatever way God knows that they need help. Our prayers thus may help them, but they don’t "need" them.

As to the case of a person with a rich family, this plays off anti-Catholic stereotyping that dates back to the Protestant Reformation whereby Catholic priests are depicted as trying to extort money out of the faithful by saying Masses for the dead.

Well, when a Mass stipend is $5 or $10 (or whatever the local limit is in the diocese), nobody is going to get rich off that. This is a red herring.

But let’s turn the question around and take money and death out of the picture: Suppose that there are two people who are sick, one of whom has a big family to pray for them and one of whom has nobody to pray for them. Which person will God heal more quickly, and if he does heal one more quickly than the other, how can that be fair?

The answer to the first question is that we don’t know who God will heal first. Prayer is not a magical incantation that produces results mechanically, the more it is done. Answers to our prayers are based on God’s choice, and God can choose to answer one more quickly than another. Our job is to do our part by building love for other and love and trust for God by praying.

We also know that God has special care for those who are in hard circumstances–like having nobody to pray for them–and thus he may heal this person first in spite of the fact that nobody was praying for them.

We also know that, ultimately, all healing is a gift of God and thus it is fair for him to give it to whomever he wants, so even if he does first heal the person with a big family praying for them, that’s his choice and the appropriate response on our part is to thank him for the healing.

All of this answers the parallel questions about purgatory: We don’t know who would have their purification completed first, it’s a matter of God’s choice; God has a special care for those with no one to pray for them; and being purified is a gift of God’s grace to begin with, for which our response should be thankfulness.

Since the subject came up in the combox of Jimmy’s post on calling priests "father" in Latin, a few quick thoughts on the subject of the custom of calling priests "father" at all. 

Protestants who object to this practice (not all do object, of course) focus their objections on Jesus’ words in Matthew 23:9. Here’s the passage in context:

[1] Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples,

[2] "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;

[3] so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.

[4] They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.

[5] They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,

[6] and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues,

[7] and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men.

[8] But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren.

[9] And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.

[10] Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.

[11] He who is greatest among you shall be your servant;

[12] whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

How are we to understand this passage? Does Jesus really mean to absolutely forbid his followers to call men "father"? If not, what does he mean? What can we say about this?

As Christians who take the Bible and Jesus’ words seriously, we should be cautious about too quickly or easily concluding "He didn’t really mean what he said." It is certainly true that Jesus’ teaching included a lot of figurative and non-literal language. Classic examples include "I am the door" and "You are the salt of the world." There are also cases where we would likely go astray if we sought literally to follow Jesus words, e.g., cutting off limbs and plucking out eyes in order to avoid sin.

On the other hand, Jesus also meant what he said a lot too, even when some people try to make out that he didn’t really mean it. "Love your enemies," for instance. And "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." There are those who would like to explain away his warnings about the outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. But he meant that too.

As Catholics, too, we take Jesus literally at points where many or most Protestants spiritualize or otherwise water down his teaching: "My flesh is  food and my blood is real drink," for example. (Note the unusually insistent language: He doesn’t say "I am a real door" or "You are real salt.") And "He who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery."

What of the present case, "Call no man on earth father"? Is that a dramatic, parabolic expression, or a literal proscription?

Perhaps the first point to note is that it is not only calling men "father" that is discussed here. Verse 9 mentions calling men "father," but the adjacent verses immediately preceding and following, 8 and 10, likewise forbid the titles (translations vary) "teacher" ("rabbi") and "leader" ("master") on the identical grounds that we have one teacher and leader, the Christ. Yet even among Evangelicals that object to the Catholic custom of calling priests "father," it is common to encounter terms like "worship leader" and "Bible teacher."

Of course this doesn’t prove that Jesus didn’t mean what he (literally) said. It could be that Evangelicals and Catholics are both guilty of violating Jesus’ teaching here.

On the other hand, if we do take Jesus’ teaching here as a literal prohibition, it looks like we may also have to ding both St. Paul and St. John for breaking Jesus’ teaching in holy Scripture itself.

St. Paul, speaking to the Corinthians, calls himself a "father" to them (1 Cor 4:15), since he fathered them in the Gospel. It’s true that St. Paul’s usage doesn’t exactly parallel the Catholic usage of calling any priest "father," since St. Paul considers his role in bringing the Corinthians to the Gospel a unique one, and contrasts it with the countless "instructors in Christ" they may have. To follow St. Paul’s usage exactly, we might call a priest "father" who brought us to Christ, but not other priests.

However, the point is not that St. Paul’s usage provides an exact precedent for the Catholic usage. Rather, it is a data point in our effort to understand Jesus’ prohibition on calling men "father." Although Jesus says "call no man on earth father," St. Paul calls himself the Corinthians’ father and encourages them to think of him in that way. At the very least, this suggests that we should not understand the unique divine Fatherhood Jesus cites as excluding any and all spiritual fatherhood on a human level.

Also worth noting is the usage of St. John in 1 John 2:13-14, where he addresses "fathers." Note that throughout the letter John addresses his readers as "children" or "little children," certainly not meaning literal minors only; "childen" is a metaphor, presumably in the same spirit as Jesus’ teaching that we must "become as little children"; similarly, it seems likely that "fathers" is likewise addressed not to biological fathers only, but to elders or leaders in the community, i.e., to spiritual fathers. 

Granting this, however, isn’t the same as explaining Jesus’ words in Matthew 23. Toward this end, let’s consider another passage in Matthew’s Gospel, from the Sermon on the Mount, that I think is similar in construction and spirit, and which in fact addresses the same spiritual condition:

"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:1-4)

So far so good: but now compare this verse, also from the Sermon on the Mount:

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16)

See the problem? Which is it? Are we to let our light shine before men so that they can see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven? Or are we to beware of practicing our piety to be seen by men, to the point of giving alms in secret? We can’t possibly do both — at least, not at the same time. Are we supposed to alternate between one and the other? If we make a point of doing good deeds like almsgiving in secret, how can men see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven?

Interpreted as literal prescriptions of specific acts, Jesus’ teachings here seem flatly contradictory. I think it’s safe to say, though, that the real point of these exhortations is, for one thing, the actual likely consequences in any particular situation, and more importantly the attitude of the heart.

Note how 6:1-4 begins with a warning relating first of all to motive, not action: "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them." What follows is meant, I think, in the spirit of a cautionary parable, a vivid pictoral exhortation addressing the temptation of practicing piety in order to be seen by men: Don’t even let people see what you’re doing; do it in secret, and then your father will reward you.

Not entirely unlike the teachings about chopping off limbs and plucking out eyes, it says, "Prefer this behavior to a sinful alternative." This is not of course meant to suggest that we should not literally do good deeds in secret — we should. But neither is it meant to suggest that doing good deeds in a visible way is necessarily sinful behavior. On the contrary, it can be meritorious behavior, as Matthew 5:16 makes clear.

The structural and thematic similarities of Matthew 6:1-4 and Matthew 23:5-10 are striking. Both begin by explicitly addressing an attitude of the heart, of motive; in Matthew 23 the warning is against the attitude of those who "love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men." (See also verses 11-12, which return to the theme of humility.)

In both passages, the heart attitude involves aspiring to the honor of men, and in both cases Jesus exhorts us to see where we really stand before our Father in heaven. In Matthew 6:1-4, we are urged to aspire to the honor of God; in Matthew 23:5-10 we are urged to remember that God’s honor is unique.

Finally, in both passages Jesus exhorts a course of action contrary to this temptation: Don’t even use titles like teacher, father or leader, for only the Christ is your teacher and leader, and only God is your Father. Like the exhortation not to let men see our good deeds, I take this as a vivid pictoral or parabolic example dramatizing the humility we are meant to have. It is not meant actually to forbid us to use titles like teacher, father and leader, any more than Matthew 6:1-4 is meant to forbid us to do good deeds in a visible way, as long as our motives are right.

What would make the parallel complete, of course, would be if we had a countervailing example elsewhere in Jesus’ teaching, in which, say, he exhorts those who are teachers, or fathers, or leaders to glorify God through their carrying out of their responsibilities.

Lacking that, though, the examples of 1 Cor 4:15 and 1 John 2:13-14 seem to me to suffice to establish that there is nothing per se wrong with calling or being called father (or teacher or leader), as opposed to loving the honor of such titles.

SDG here. In my first post, I noted that while it is true that the NT writers do not use the word "priest" in relation to Christian ministers, it is equally true that — with the obvious exception of Hebrews — they also avoid using it in relation to Jesus.

In fact, in the NT the word "priest" overwhelmingly means one thing: the Levitical priesthood. (There are only a few passing references to the universal priesthood of all believers, and perhaps only a single reference, in Acts, to priesthood in a pagan context.)

This does not mean that the NT does not present Jesus as a priest. It does, and not only in Hebrews. Although only Hebrews uses the word itself, the theology of Christ’s priesthood in Hebrews is found throughout the NT.

Above all, Hebrews sees the priesthood of Christ in relation to Psalm 110:4: "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."

Although this specific verse is quoted in the NT only in Hebrews, Psalm 110 is the single OT passage most quoted in the NT. Significantly, Jesus himself implicitly applies Psalm 110 to himself, challenging the Pharisees to explain the Messiah’s precedence over his own father David in the opening verse:

"What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David."

He said to them, "How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

‘The LORD said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand,

till I put thy enemies under thy feet’?

If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?"

"The LORD" God here speaks to "my lord" the Davidic king, the son of David who is also somehow his lord. Since Jesus assumes that his hearers recognize this to be the Messiah, it follows that it is also the Messiah to whom the LORD God speaks in verse 4: "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’"

Jesus thus implies that the Messiah, the Christ, is a priest — not in the usual sense of the Levitical priesthood, but of an older order, the priesthood of Melchizedek aspired to by King David and the Davidic monarchy.

This, however, raises another notable point: Although Jesus effectively implies that the Messiah is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, the term "Messiah," like that of priest, is one with which Jesus avoids openly identifying throughout much of his ministry. In fact, when others recognize him as the Messiah, he orders them to secrecy (the so-called "Messianic secret"; cf., e.g., Mark 8:27-30, Matt 16:16-20, Luke 4:41).

A similar reticence seems to emerge at his trials, where Jesus gives the affirmative but ambivalent response "You say that I am" in response to questions ranging from "Are you the Christ?" (Matthew 26:63-64) to "Are you the Son of God?" (Luke 22:70) to "So you are a king?" (John 18:37).

These responses are apparently affirmative (Mark’s Gospel has Jesus saying simply "I am"), but also seem to express some level of reservation or evasion, perhaps a disclaimer regarding misunderstanding. I like the rendering in The Miracle Maker: "These are your words." Jesus seems to be saying something like: "Yes, it is true to say that I am [the Christ, the Son of God, a king], though what I mean by that and what you mean may not be the same thing."

A well-known triple formula (noted in the combox of my first post) acclaims Jesus as "prophet, priest and king." "Prophet" correlates with his messianic role (the "prophet like Moses"). "Priest" is the term under discussion. As for "King," Jesus was acclaimed "king of the Jews" by the Magi at his birth, and died under a titulus bearing that title; yet although he preached constantly about "the kingdom" of God or of heaven, he had very little to say about being a king, except in that ambivalent response to Pilate.

Although each of these terms is rightly ascribed to Jesus, and although he claimed them all in different ways, Jesus also distanced himself from each of them in certain ways as well. Disclaimers like "My kingdom is not of this world" offer a reasonably clear window into this ambivalence, certainly as regards "king" and "Messiah." In the first-century Judaism of Jesus’ day, such language was implicitly understood as a political and military challenge to the Roman empire; and whatever challenge Jesus’ teaching might have had for the Roman empire, he was not a revolutionary in the usual sense. Jesus was the heir of David, not of Judas Maccabeus. 

But it was more than that. If Jesus’ mission could be understood in terms of the Davidic and messianic hope of Psalm 110, it must also be understood in terms of the still older archetype to which, in that very psalm, the Davidic monarchy itself aspires: the royal priesthood, or priestly kingship, of Melchizedek, "king of Salem" and "priest of God Most High" (Gen 14:18).

Although Psalm 110 attests the hope of the Davidic monarchy for a restoration of this double office of priest and king, it was a hope never completely fulfilled in the Davidic kingdom. The Davidic kings did exercise some priestly functions, particularly in the early years, but the priestly function remained with the Levitical establishment, where it resided since Exodus 32.

It would be a mistake to reduce Jesus’ mission to any Old Testament type. Only Jesus is Jesus: He is unique, the one and only Savior. He is not simply the son of David, the Messiah or even the new Adam.

Still, the primeval blend of priest and king represented by Melchizedek, reaching back before such specifically Hebrew institutions as the Levitical priesthood and Davidic monarchy — a priestly kingship with one foot in the pre-Abrahamic world of the early chapters of Genesis — clearly represents an important touchstone in NT thought for understanding Jesus’ mission, one going back to Jesus himself.

In this connection, it’s helpful to remember that both the Levitical priesthood and the Davidic monarchy were institutions with origins in sin and rebellion. The origins of the Levitical priesthood are directly connected with the worship of the golden calf; the Davidic monarchy succeeded to the kingship of Saul, crowned by Samuel at the insistence of the people in spite of God’s warnings. Neither of these provisional and concessionary institutions is an adequate background to understand Jesus’ mission. If Jesus is a king and a priest, he is in a way less like Aaron and Levi, or even David and Solomon, than like Melchizedek.

All of this, though, is a nuance liable to be lost in a world in which words mean what people use them to mean. For first-century Jews, a "priest" was a Levitical priest — period. A king was either someone like Herod or Caesar, or else someone who would challenge the rule of these foreigners and restore the kingdom to Israel. For Jesus to openly claim titles like "king" or "priest" would inevitably have meant something to his hearers Jesus didn’t intend.

This continued to be the case in the early decades of the New Testament church. The process by which the Church’s sense of its own identity as a phenomenon separate from Judaism (or of Judaism’s emerging identity as a phenomenon separate from following Christ) has been much studied; here it’s enough to note that there was a process. In the very earliest days, the Christians continued worshipping in the Temple; as time went by, the Church continued to understand itself in relation to Judaism, though that relationship was increasingly one of opposition as well as continuity.

Although in time the language of Jesus as "our high priest" would be unreservedly embraced by the early fathers, especially after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, the Levitical and Temple establishment continued to dominate the early Christians’ understanding of "priesthood" for decades. Jesus laid the foundations by quoting Psalm 110, but it was still a bold leap for the writer to the Hebrews to identify Jesus as "our high priest."

(To be continued)

SDG here with the first post in a series on Christian priesthood and sacrifice.

Among the doctrines of the historic Christian faith rejected by the Protestant Reformers was the understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice offered by a ministerial priesthood.

Although this language of priesthood and sacrifice was ubiquitous in the early Church, going back to the earliest days of the apostolic and post-apostolic church, and was both widespread and uncontroversial, Protestantism from its inception has considered considered it unscriptural.

For the New Testament writers, Protestants contend, the only Christian priesthood is the high-priesthood of Jesus Christ (especially in Hebrews) and the universal priesthood of all believers (cf. 1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 5:10); the only sacrifice is that of the Cross.

It must be acknowledged that the New Testament writers had the word "priest" (Gk hiereus) available to them; indeed, they used it to refer to the Levitical priesthood as well as the priesthood of Christ and of all believers. Yet for Christian ministers they appear to have scrupulously avoided this usage, preferring instead terms such as "elder" and "bishop" for church leaders, and never once designating such leaders as "priests." This usage cannot be dismissed as inadvertent; it is clearly intentional.

This is indeed a striking fact. Yet the usage of the apostolic and post-apostolic Christ is equally striking and equally intentional. The Fathers possessed and venerated the sacred scriptures, yet they unhesitatingly chose language that went beyond the NT record: From the beginning, Christian ministers were called priests (Gk hiereus, Lat sacerdos), and sacrificial aspect of the priesthood was explicitly developed in relation to the Eucharist.

This language of priesthood and sacrifice applied to Christian leadership and Eucharistic worship can be found from Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and so on. Moreover, Christian history records no resistance, opposition or resistance on the part of any Father to this widespread usage.

From the facts briefly described so far, it appears only two conclusions are possible:

(a) Either the usage and theology of the apostolic and post-apostolic Church departed very early and very thoroughly from the biblical pattern, so much so that a covenant ordinance was converted into a sacrificial rite and a presbytery into a ministerial priesthood without anyone apparently noticing; or else

(b) the usage of the apostolic and post-apostolic Church represents the theology but not the language of the NT; in which case it is necessary to explain why the NT writers so carefully avoided terms readily available to them.

In seeking a solution, it should be noted from the outset that the biblical data has been somewhat oversimplified. It is true that the NT writers had the word "priest" available, and used it readily for the Levitical priesthood. Yet within a Christian context the word "priest" does not seem to have caught on particularly easily in any connection — either with respect to the priesthood of Christ or the universal priesthood of believers. 

Although it figures prominently in Protestant thought and is equally valid in Catholic theology, the universal priesthood of all believers is mentioned only fleetingly in two late NT books, 1 Peter and Revelation.

More strikingly, and crucially, throughout the NT the word "priest" is never once applied to Jesus Himself in any book but one — that one, of course, being the gigantic and enormously significant exception, the book of Hebrews.

Unquestionably, the magnificent treatment of Christ’s priesthood in that book more than makes up for the silence elsewhere, and (insofar as the canonicity of Hebrews is accepted as a settled matter) establishes this doctrine as unquestionably scriptural. Still, it leaves the question: Why did all the other NT writers consistently avoid applying the term to Christ?

It is not that the theology of Christ’s high-priesthood is contrary to the rest of the NT, or even that it is simply unknown to the other writers. Rather, the priesthood of Christ is present, though implicitly, in the teaching of Christ Himself and of the rest of the NT, and made explicit only in Hebrews.

But this only refocuses the question in a new form: Why teach the theology but scrupulously avoid the term? Why were the NT writers (with one major exception) so reticent to call Jesus a priest?

In considering this question, we may cast light on the NT church’s preference for the language of the presbyterate and episcopacy over the priesthood for its own ministers. It may be that whatever is at the root of the reticence here is also the reason that the term was not applied to church leaders.

(Continued in part 2)

SDG here (not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 1).

Suppose you see me bullying a weaker party, and you confront me, saying: "Stop that, you louse!"

"Louse?" I reply. "Louse? A small, wingless insect of the order Anoplura? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, friend. No no, I’m familiar with the slang usage, of course, but you’re quite mistaken, I assure you. I don’t feel lousy at all! Never better. You may be thinking of the sorry specimen here at the receiving end of my bullying, who has surely had better days."

And, indeed, if by "like a louse" you were only describing how you would feel if you bullied the weak, then your calling me a louse would seem to be a case of sheer projection, as much as my saying "Stop making yourself nauseous, you fool!" when in fact you love haggis (or whatever).

On the other hand, if at this point you continue to maintain that, whatever my emotional state, there is some meaningful sense in which I am a louse, or that in some sense my lousiness is not contingent upon my own feelings or yours, then we will have to seek further for what exactly it is that we mean by "lousiness" beyond one or another person’s bio-electrical-chemical responses.

You might make a stab at reasoning with me: "But look here," you say, "of course you wouldn’t want to be bullied yourself, would you? Why should you treat someone else in a way that you yourself wouldn’t want to be treated?"

But I reply, "Why, obviously, being bullied makes me feel bad, but bullying others makes me feel good. You aren’t making any sense at all. Surely you aren’t suggesting some sort of quantifiable correlation between bullying or not bullying others and a higher or lower incidence of being bullied or not bullied oneself? I know people say things like ‘What goes around comes around,’ but don’t let’s kid ourselves. What correlates with being bullied is weakness; what correlates with not being bullied is strength. I, fortunate that I am, happen to rank in the upper percentiles of the strong — not strong enough to escape all bullying, perhaps, but strong enough to be the bully more often than not. So. There you have it."

If I were in a tolerant mood, I might even be willing, for the sake of discussion, to allow that if it were possible somehow to make a deal with the universe such that abstention from bullying would entitle one to exemption from being bullied, under those terms I might possibly (reluctantly) be willing to forgo the pleasures of bullying others in order to secure for myself a lifetime of freedom from being bullied. No such terms being possible, though, that would seem to be the end of that discussion.

Where can we go from here?

I should perhaps point out that nothing I have thus far said tends toward some sort of live-and-let-live moral relativism in which bullies should be allowed to bully and we should not stop them, because different strokes for different folks. Different strokes for different folks perhaps, but that would seem to include the preferences of those who like to stop bullies as well as those who like to bully.

So far, for all I can tell, it would seem that all impulses and desires are in principle equally actionable, in proportion to their strength and in inverse relationship to any counter-impulses or countervailing considerations; and so if we like stopping bullies, bully for us.

We are even, it seems to me, free to hate and despise bullies if we wish (or to forgive them, whichever floats our boat). Let’s not have any nonsense about loving the sinner and hating the sin (I mean, unless that’s your thing). We can even choose to label them (or their actions) "evil" from our point of view, just as I may call haggis "disgusting" because that’s how I feel about it, irrespective of how you feel.

Having said that, it seems to me helpful to have a vocabulary to describe areas such as long division and history and quantum physics in which different people’s answers can be weighed against one another and some found wanting in relation to others, not according to the personal preferences of the judges, but by some more meaningful standard that applies to everyone and everything being judged.

"True or false" might be a start, helpfully supplemented by subtler terms like "more nearly true" and "more clearly false," "better or worse," "more accurate," or "more adequate," or less, etc. Thus, your quotient is right; hers is wrong; how any of us happens to feel about it is irrelevant. Some estimates of the death toll of the Holocaust are better than others, and some are wholly inadequate and even reprehensible. The advocates of various proposals may (or may not) be equally sincere, but the question is not about that.

I hasten to add that dealing with facts doesn’t mean that we can necessarily say with certitude, or even at all, what all the facts are, or that there is no room for honest disagreement and different points of view. What exactly happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Is string theory "not even wrong," as Peter Woit has argued? Those may be questions we aren’t prepared to answer definitively here and now. The point is, whatever the answers are, they don’t hinge on your feelings or mine.

Back to lousiness. Is there anything to be said for "Stop that, you louse!" as anything other than a sheer projection of one person’s bio-electrical-chemical aversion-responses on another?

You might take a stab at it by appealing to something like the good of the social order. What’s wrong with bullying, you may say, is not that it offends your feelings, but that it harms another person and thus the greater good. That is why society labels me a louse if I bully, not just because of the feelings of any one person.

Now, as a matter of fact the defense of bullying semi-facetiously advanced above isn’t especially the kind of thing that an actual bully in a real-world situation would be likely to say, at least as phrased. Here, however, is something that is very much the sort of thing that bullies, when confronted, often say in their own defense:

"We were only playing."

Bracket for a moment the level of transparent dishonesty of this defense, all but confessed in the very sheepishness or glibness of the tone. Even the bully doesn’t really believe he will get away with suggesting that we are all friends here enjoying ourselves in a mutually agreeable and pleasant fashion.

Put that aside just a moment, and consider whether there isn’t actually at least a partial but significant level of truth in the bully’s defense.

Let me preface these comments with a borrowed line from The Problem of Pain: Let no one say of me "He jests at scars who never felt a wound." I am the last person in the world to make light of bullying. In childhood I was not only consistently the bullied rather than the bully, I was at the very bottom of the bullying hierarchy, the bullied of the bullied, and for years the oppression I faced was regular and merciless. The morning walk to school in those years was for me full of dread over the coming confrontations, praying, praying to be spared that day.

For all that, I was never badly hurt, and seldom hurt at all. I know some victims of bullying are, but I think my experience is far more typical. The bullies were out to aggrandize their own egos at my expense, but not to do me any real harm. There was real malice in it, but the goal was to enjoy my fear and their sense of power. The claim that they were "only playing," while odious, is actually more nearly true than it might initially seem.

What’s more, as intense as my fear was, I can’t see that it has inflicted any lasting harm on any measurable level. Having been bullied seems not to have affected my long-term prospects for happiness and success.

For some years in school, I may have been among the least happy in my class; today, well, I just might be the happiest person I know. I’m well-educated, I have a good job and rewarding occupations, I’m blissfully married to a domestic and maternal goddess, and — perhaps most importantly from a materialist–naturalist perspective — we have five beautiful and intelligent children who have excellent prospects of success in life as productive members of society.

By nearly any Darwinian measure, I think it’s safe to say I’ve been rather successful. My experience of bullying was intensely unpleasant while it lasted, but I can’t see that society’s interests or even my long-term good were ever particularly at stake.

That’s not to say I don’t think bullying a great evil. I do. I just don’t think it’s rooted in whatever measurable phenomena, if any, may be adduced under any such rubric as "the greater good of society." I think the evil of bullying is rooted in the dignity of the human person, which as I conceive it is bound up in a whole trans-materialistic understanding of human nature and the meaning of life and so on.

That is to say, I regard the dignity of the human person as the sort of subject that transcends individual feelings or preferences, much like long division and the exact circumstances of Jimmy Hoffa’s death. Different people may have different interpretations of the evidence; some understandings will be closer to the truth, and some are further, even if no human authority can definitively settle which answers are the closest. But we are talking about something real, not about personal feelings yours or mine.

Continued in Part 3

SDG here (not Jimmy — but you already knew that, didn’t you?) with the first in a series of posts on materialism and the moral argument, adapted from a semi-restricted discussion in another forum.

This post, and those to follow, were originally occasioned by a discussion around what has been called the "New Atheism," i.e., the militantly anti-religious, naturalist‑materialist polemics of the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Discussion around this issue has focused on a number of interrelated subjects, including arguments regarding design, miracles, revelation, theodicy, and morality.

Here is how one Christian board member put the moral argument to a self-proclaimed "bright" (a loopy self-designation intended, like the hijacking of "gay" by homosexuals, to co-opt a positive term to replace negative terms like "atheist"):

If the final answer is really 42 and survival is really of the fittest, then what does it matter if the strong take what they want from the weak? The feelings of the weak are irrelevant because the weak are irrelevant. If I am having a slow day and I fancy a spot of raping and pillaging before supper, where’s the harm? After all, when I read the morning news or look back over human history, raping and pillaging would seem to be perfectly normal human pastimes. Everybody is at it. Sometimes even whole nations!

To this, our "bright" (who calls himself Archie) responded:

I’m sorry, but I grow weary of this kind of argument. If your morality is based on your religion, what stops you from copulating with your daughters (like Lot)? What stops you from stoning people to death with stones, for gathering firewood on the Sabbath? Why don’t you make a pact with your god that if you win your next war, you’ll sacrifice the first living thing that comes out of your house, even your daughter (like Jephthah)? Why don’t you gag your women before they go into church (following the apostle Paul)?

The real truth is that religion and morality are two totally different things, and there are a great many examples of people who adhered to one and not the other. If you like, I am strong, and the thing that stops me bullying weaker people is that I’d feel like a louse afterwards. I will not indulge in that kind of behaviour. Simple.

Now, deep breath, everyone.

Rather than get sidetracked by the transparently silly exegetical aburdities, I decided to take this post as a springboard for some prolonged discussion of the moral argument. What follows is the first post from this series; in the days to come I will follow up with subsequent posts.

---

First, let me point out that the burden of the moral argument for non-materialists is not that atheists must be bad or even amoral people, or that they have no basis of knowing right from wrong.

Theists generally and Christians particularly do not believe that morality is something that we come to know solely through divine revelation — though we do believe revelation may help clarify, supplement and correct what valid but imperfect moral insights we have.

(While I’m at it, I might also clarify that I don’t believe that morality is essentially connected, even for theists, with belief in judgment, life after death, heaven or hell. What matters to me as a theist is above all that God is, and who he is — not how he may reward or punish me. In principle, I think I would still feel that way even if I believed that death were the end. More on this some other time, perhaps.)

At any rate, the point is not "Unless you read it in the Bible (or unless you hear directly from God in some way, shape or form), how do you know right from wrong?" On the contrary, the Bible itself says that the moral law is written on the human heart (Rom 2), and no theory of biblical authority is required to hold a more or less converging opinion on this particular point.

Archie: You say, "If you like, I am strong, and the thing that stops me bullying weaker people is that I’d feel like a louse afterwards."

Fair enough. I can accept that, as far as it goes — at least, insofar as I prescind from whatever epistemic or ontological claims may or may not lie behind the phrase "like a louse."

To bracket a caveat or two, this is of course not literally what you mean; I doubt if any substantial connection could be maintained between whatever feelings you might have and any of the small, wingless insects of the order Anoplura.

In slang usage, according to the dictionary, "louse" can mean something like "contemptible person, esp. an unethical one" — an affective definition that doesn’t help us out with clarifying the actual denotative value, if any, of the judgments underlying these classifications.

To some, in fact, it may seem as if what you are saying essentially boils down to "I will not act in what I consider to be a contemptible fashion because that would make me feel like a contemptible person" — which would seem to be a rather circular and tautological way of putting things.

What does seem clear at any rate is that "like a louse" feelings represent an undesirable state of affairs, an unpleasant experience contrary to a general sense of well-being. On its face, that is a perfectly respectable factor to take into consideration for deciding between or among possible courses of action. Unpleasant feelings are, well, unpleasant, and all things being equal, we would prefer to avoid them, thank you very much.

But of course all things are not always equal. A given level of unpleasantness by itself is not always enough to deter us from a particular course of action; and that too is entirely reasonable.

Potential causes of experiences of unpleasantness are many and greatly divergent. Some represent harmful behaviors, such as cutting oneself with razor blades. Others do not, such as eating some food that you personally find revolting.

Sometimes incentives to do a thing are substantial enough warrant facing up to even very formidable unpleasantness without compunction or misgiving, such as going to the dentist for necessary dental surgery. Other times, the unpleasantness even of contemplating a given course of action is so appalling that such action would be simply out of the question, such as being sexually intimate with a person whom one finds physically and personally repulsive.

When it comes to the unpleasantness of "like a louse" feelings (or guilt, or other potentially morally charged affective responses), in many cases it’s easy to see that such responses may be far from random or irrational, as far as they go. There is often a perfectly empirical dimension to old moralistic observations about virtue being its own reward and vice is its own punishment. Even on an entirely materialistic worldview, certain behaviors will tend to correlate with greater happiness, and others with greater unhappiness.

For example, heavy alcohol abuse might make you happy for a few hours at a stretch, but in the long run it is going to cause you more unhappiness than not — and not just because you may feel "like a louse" afterward (although that may be one factor).

The virtue of moderation commends itself, at least to an extent, to the materialist and the supernaturalist alike, and for many of the same reasons. When Hitchens tries to explain morality by saying "We evolved it," it may reasonably be felt that there is at least partial justification for something like what he is saying.

Even when "like a louse" feelings happen to be associated with an activity for which we can find no rational basis for such feelings, it may still be reasonable to choose to avoid irrational but unpleasant feelings in the absence of sufficient motivation in the opposite direction.

Suppose a boy is brought up in strict Fundamentalism and taught to believe that card-playing is evil. Later in life, throwing off this belief (whether by coming to a more balanced faith or by abandoning faith altogether), he finds that he quite enjoys cards while the game is in play — but afterwards, despite himself, he can’t help feeling down. Intellectually he knows that cards aren’t evil and there is no reason to feel that way, but he can’t shake the irrational "like a louse" feelings that his upbringing has instilled in him in connection with them.

All things being equal, he might reasonably decide that the fun of playing cards is not worth the irrational depression that follows (though he might also decide otherwise, given a sufficiently strong social motivation, or perhaps a determined intention to root out the emotional consequences of his upbringing).

All to say, the unpleasantness of "like a louse" feelings can be a reasonable rationale for forgoing even a potentially appealing course of action. So far so good; but how far it goes is as yet an open question.

Archie, you say that bullying the weak correlates for you with "like a louse" feelings, and thus you will not do it. Fine. I also gather that you find that following what has been called the Golden Rule makes you feel good about yourself, and on one level surely that is justification enough for doing as you would be done by.

And that’s fine for you. Of course, what causes one person undesirable feelings may affect another person quite differently, just as a particular dish (haggis, say) may thoroughly nauseate one person while sending another into paroxysms of gastronomic delight. I might be grossed out to see you enjoying a meal that would turn my stomach, but my unquiet gorge has no particular relevance to you or your enjoyment.

Whatever else unpleasant feelings may be, or mean, or tell us, on one level they may surely be regarded as a sort of bio-electrical-chemical reaction in our brains triggering an aversive response. Indeed, on a materialist perspective I’m not sure how else they might be regarded.

Thus, while you might experience negative feelings of sorrow and disapproval to see me bullying a weaker party, what relevance, if any, your bio-electrical-chemical aversion-response has on me or the very different bio-electrical-chemical response in my brain remains to be seen.

Continued in Part 2

A reader writes:

I grew up in a non-Christian religious household, eventually left to become an atheist, and since, because of reading philosophy, have become convinced that God exists. Since one of the key philosophers I have been looking at is Catholic, I started considering the Roman Church. Forgive me, for "Catholic" means both "Universal" and "Whole". To accept the Roman Church as "whole" would, in my mind, be the same as agreeing that the Roman Church finds its author in Christ. This may very-well be true, and that is what I hope to explore.

But until I grow in this, either to the point where I become united to the Pope in belief, or where I abandon the idea altogether, I cannot in good conscience use the term "Catholic" to describe those united to the Pope. I need more time before I can do this.

I wanted to first say that I understand why you created the rule. People have become unreasonable and insulting. I do not use the above term "Roman Church" as an insult, but rather as the only name I feel comfortable with (I would like to know another, more respectful name). I also wanted to thank you for your deep understanding and Christian charity you show me (maybe it is hypocritical that I refer to followers of Jesus as though they have been given Chrism marking them as Priest, Prophet and King/Queen, but that is another issue I have not yet worked out very well).

There are many questions I have. The forums have scared me away, for the most part. I am talking with a Monsignor, but at the same time, I want to find good resources, so that I might learn more about the Church.

I want to begin by saying that I appreciate the reader’s simultaneous openness and conscientiousness. I understand fully the dilemma he finds himself in, and I have been in similar dilemmas before. In fact, so have a lot of religious people. Given the names that religious groups give themselves, people of conscience often find themselves scrupling–at least a little bit–about how to refer to them.

The situation is understandable from both the perspective of those who give themselves such names and the perspective of those who are reluctant to use the names. Religious groups often name themselves after one of their beliefs, so if Group A believes it is the one true faith then it may choose to call itself The One True Faith to advertise this fact. That’s understandable. That’s what they believe about themselves. On the other hand, those who are members of Group B are not going to want to call somebody else The One True Faith.

So this is just the kind of situation that humans are going to get in, given the present (pre-eschaton) condition of mankind.

I don’t imagine that that many blog readers are currently starting their own religions, so I won’t offer advice here about how to name them, but a great many readers are likely to wonder how to handle the situation when they encounter people with theologically objectionable names, so I’ll offer some thoughts on that.

1. When you’re using language to communicate directly (as oppose to something else with language, like telling a story or insulting a person–both of which communicate things only indirectly) the #1 goal is intelligibility. If you aren’t intelligible to your audience then you’ve failed to communicate.

2. Ideally, you want all parts of your communication to be equally intelligible, but sometimes this isn’t possible. Sometimes, for example, you may have to use an ambiguous phrase to communicate yourself (for example, because you can’t think of an unambiguous one in time or because using a totally unambiguous one would be horrendously clunky). In these situations, the thing to do is strive for the core of the message to be clear, and you just have to live with the fact that part of the message is ambiguous.

3. A secondary goal in direct communication is communicating in a smooth manner. This means delivering your message in a way that is euphonious and acceptable to the audience. In other words, you don’t cause them to get distracted from your message by the way you deliver it. Distractions can include things like clunky delivery, so much excess verbiage that the message gets lost, or insults to your audience that will get them focused on the fact they are being insulted rather than thinking about what your main point is.

4. Direct communication occurs in the context of language communities. These language communities are based not only on the overall language that the community speaks (English, Spanish, Russian) but also the dialect of the speakers (American English, British English), the subculture(s) to which they belong, incuding not only regional factors but also how old they are, whether they are urban or rural, and what beliefs they have (are they politically liberal or conservative, are they religiously this or that, are they supporters or opponents of a particular technology).

5. Each act of direct communication, to the extent possible, should be crafted to be as intelligible and as smooth as possible for the language community that you are talking to (however broadly or narrowly that is defined).

Now let’s apply these principles to the case of religious groups with theologically problematic names, and I’ll start out by naming two groups whose names I have theological objections to: the Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I object to the former because I do not believe that they are, in fact, witnesses for Jehovah. I think their understanding of God is profoundly flawed in countless ways and that their organization has not been commissioned by God to provide for his witness.

I object to the latter because I do not believe it to be a church in the proper sense of the term (that is, it does not have validly ordained bishops) and because I do not believe it was authorized by Jesus Christ and because I reject the theological underpinnings of the idea of there being "Latter-day Saints" in the sense intended by this Church (i.e., that the early church apostatized and so had to be re-founded by Joseph Smith in the "latter-days"). I also don’t like it because it’s clunky (with that double genitive construction–"of . . . of"), but that’s a stylistic rather than a theological objection.

What am I going to call these groups?

Well, per principle 5, it’ll depend on who I’m talking to. If I’m talking directly to a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon (for example, in an effort to show them the problematic aspects of their respective bodies’ teachings), I’ll want to make my communication as intelligible and smooth as possible for them. That means that I’ll probably start using some of their own in-house ways of phrasing things rather than imposing a Catholic idiom on everything (e.g., "One of the problems with your baptism is that it does not impart sanctifying grace"–that will mean nothing to either a Mormon or a JW).

As I talk with them, I’m going to hit places where the natural, smooth thing to their ears will be to refer to them using their preferred terms, which would be "Jehovah’s Witnesses" and "saints." I find both of these theologically objectionable, so what am I going to do?

I could, of course, take a confrontational approach and, whenever I hit one of the spots in the conversation where one of these terms is called for, I could sub in something deliberately calculated to offend, like "members of your awful, horrible false religion."

I might even rationalize this decision with myself by telling myself that it’s a kind of "tough love" tactic that confronts them with the reality of what their religion is.

While there is a place for tough-love statements, the great majority of the time I’m not in a situation where this kind of statement is going to be productive when talking to members of a particular religion.

Christian charity impels me to do what will be productive in whatever situation I am in, and so the great majority of the time I shouldn’t be talking to people of a particular faith with that kind of confrontational strategy. I want them to think about what I have to say and take it seriously, and most of the time that will mean not insulting them in the process of delivering the message.

This gives me a reason to work within their preferred terminology to the extent possible.

In the case of calling Mormons "saints," the answer is a flat-out no. I’m not going to call them that.

Why?

The obvious reason is that I don’t think that adhering to Mormonism makes you a saint, but that’s the reason I find the term objectionable. It’s not the reason I won’t use it.

Suppose, for example, that a new religion started that called itself "the Saints" and there were no other avaiable terms by which to refer to members of this group. Well, in that case I’d grit my teeth and refer to people of this group as Saints. The goals of direct communication are to be intelligible and smooth and if I use elaborate circumlocutions every time I want to refer to members of this group then I’ll have to fail at at least one of those goals.

This is the kind of situation I find myself in with groups like the Church of Christ (pick whichever group calling itself the Church of Christ that you want). I don’t believe that such groups are the Church of Christ (I believe that’s the Catholic Church), but there is no other intelligible and smooth way to refer to these groups, so I live with the only established term for them. (Note: Depending on the group in question, I could call them things like "Campbellites"–but this is likely to be offensive or even unintelligible to many of them).

Thus per point #2 (above), with a group like "the Saints," I’d make sure my core message is intelligible ("The Saints are not the true followers of Jesus") even if it means that part of how my message is phrase will be ambiguous (because I’m relying on the hearer to figure out that by referring to "the Saints" I am not, in fact, conceding that they are saints; I’m just using the term for the sake of intelligibility).

But that’s not the situation I’m in with Mormons.

There are other terms in common usage which, even though they are not the terms Mormons prefer, they are terms that Mormons will recognize and accept. The term "Mormon" is the obvious one, and it is my preferred term, so it’s the one I use except when special circumstances call for me to give the technical name of their church.

With Jehovah’s Witnesses matters are similar but different. Historically they’ve called themselves a number of different things (e.g., "Bible Students"), but in discussions with them I’ll have the same reasons to not encumber my message with confusing or insulting references if I want them to hear what I’m telling them.

Even if I’m not talking directly to them there can be reasons to use their preferred term. In this blog post, for example, I’ve been using it for the sake of clarity, though I could also use a substitute like "JWs."

In the end, what to call a group with a theologically objectionable name seems to me to depend on how five numbered points listed above play out. If there is an alternative terms that is clear and non-insulting (even if it is not the preferred term) then I’d try to use that with such a group.

On the other hand, if there is no such term then I’d go ahead and use the theologically problematic one and let the reader figure out (if it isn’t blindingly obvious to him) that I’m not really conceding that is group is what it names itself.

Given that I’m an apologist for the Catholic faith, he’s likely to figure that out rather quickly.

I therefore don’t need to encumber my message to him with needlessly clunky or offensive flourishes.

To come full circle back to the reader who wrote, I would say that you need not scruple about speaking of Catholics or the Catholic Church.

As long as people know you aren’t Catholic, it’s implied that you aren’t conceding to the Catholic Church the fact that it is the universal church.

The same refers to referring to Christians as Christians. They are people who claim to follow Christ, and you can refer to them as such without necessarily conceding that Jesus is the Christ.

In the (unlikely) even that anyone ever asks you why you use these terms, you can easily say, "Well, I’m not (yet) convinced that these terms are fully accurate, but I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’m not yet a member of one of these groups, so you can infer that I’m not fully signing off on them. It’s better to just go ahead and use the terms for ease of communication so that we can get at the truth rather than encumbering the discussion by using terminology that constantly points out the obvious (I’m not a Catholic) and runs the risk of being offensive. We’re all smart enough here to know that if a non-Catholic or a non-Christian uses these words that he’s not fully endorisng them."

At least that would be the approach I would take if I was in the reader’s position. I respect those who would still feel bound to scruple on these terms, though.

BTW, I wish the reader well in his journey, and in case it helps I’d invite him to consider how the Catholic Church got its name and what implications this may have for its use of the name.

A reader writes:

I may be a little young to start dreading oblivion after death. But I
can’t help it. Whenever I am told to believe in some religious truth, I
always find myself asking “why?” So often people only talk about what they
believe, but never why they believe it. My constant questioning ensures that
I will have many sleepless nights, but it also makes me think of religion as
an intellectual pursuit of some ultimate truth. I want to be comforted by
truth, not seek truth in only that in which I am comfortable.

To ease my fears of infinite nonexistence, I try to rationalize faith in an
afterlife. I think to myself, “if God exists, and there are eternal
consequences for going against his will, then he would make his will known
to me.” I base this opinion on the fact that God is obviously a fan of free
will. He allows us to make choices, even if those choices hurt ourselves or
others. Therefore, any damnation would only occur after a knowing rejection
of his will. (A “knowing” rejection because I also assume that God is
merciful).

That’s why I appreciate Catholic websites like yours. On Catholic websites
have I found honest historical/logical arguments for objective truth, not
merely “look inside your heart and you will know the truth.” As implied
above, I have looked into my heart and it has made me want to find God.
However, people can easily confuse their desire for something to be true,
with truth itself (i.e. Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid, 9-11 hijackers, etc…).

Therefore, my question is this: At what point does reason give way to true
religious faith? Authentic faith can only occur if the person has “faith” in
some objective truth. Consequently, is faith only possible after you’ve
proven a religious fact to be objectively true? Or, is faith the leap from
the cliffs of reason to the rope of objective truth? In other words, is
faith a necessary component in proving an objective truth about God? I want
faith, but I need to ensure that I am not one of the billions of people with
the wrong faith.

I want to commend the reader for his thoughtfulness and the obvious sincerity of his search, as well as his openmindedness. Truth is what is important, and the diligent search for the truth is something God will certainly reward. A verse that was very important to me when I was at an early stage of my journey to the Christian faith was John 7:17, where Jesus tells us that "if any man’s will is to do his [God’s] will, he shall know whether the teaching
is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." I took that to mean that, as long as I was sincere about trying to follow the truth and willing to do what God wants, he would make sure I would get the evidence I need to support embracing the faith.

I’d commend this verse to the reader as well.

To answer the question, we may distinguish between two types of truths that are part of the faith.

The first class of truths is those that can be proven by reason. A classic example of this is the existence of God. The existence of God can be proved by human reason, though it is not always easy for everyone to do this. Not everyone has the training in philosophy or the patience to follow the lines of reasoning that show this.

That’s not surprising, becasue we all have different areas of expertise. I, for example, do not have the training or the patience to follow the lines of reasoning needed to show that certain concepts from physics are true. Therefore, on those concepts, I must defer to the experts who have studied matters.

We thus see that there are two ways in which a provable truth can be believed: On the part of those who have thoroughly studied the matter, it can be believed on the basis of having studied the demonstration of the truth. On the part of those who have not thoroughly studied the matter, it can be taken on faith on the word of the experts.

There’s nothing wrong with taking the word of experts. In fact, most of our knowledge (everything that we haven’t studied and proven ourselves) is based on taking the word of others, and unless we have reason to think that the person whose word we are taking is untrustworthy, it is reasonable to operate in this manner.

Indeed, humans are designed in a way that makes it impossible for us to function if we systematically mistrust others. We crash and burn if we try that kind of global skepticism.

It is thus normal for people to simply accept the religion in which they are raised. Their parents teach it to them, and kids are biologically programmed to accept what their parents tell them. They’d never survive if they weren’t, because it would be impossible to pass on human culture from one generation to another.

Because this is the way humans are built to operate, we may trust that God recognizes this and does not hold people accountable if they have grown up in a religion that has false elements or that is entirely false. People are only responsible for how they handle the grace that they are given, not the grace that they are not.

Some–such as the readers–are given the grace of desiring to press further and to examine the rational basis of religion, and I would encourage him to do so. At the end of this post, I’ll recommend some books that can help him further his study of this, but to answer his question about the relationship of faith and reason, when it comes to provable truths of religion, these can be accepted either on the basis of proving them oneself or on the basis of the testimony of experts who have, just as it is in every other field of human learning.

The trick, of course, is making sure that you’re listening to the right experts, which gives us a nudge to at least study a little bit so that we can have something of a feel for which experts are right.

All that I’ve said thus far applies to provable truths, but there are also truths that human reason cannot prove. This is something that exists in every field of learning. There are truths about history that cannot be proved because the data to prove them no longer exists. There are truths about astronomy that cannot be proved because they concern stars whose light hasn’t yet reached earth. And there are truths about biology that can’t be proved because we haven’t studied the relevant life forms sufficiently. In the same way, there are truths about religion that cannot be proved–or at least proved directly–because we don’t have access to them in this life.

But whereas in other areas of learning we’re simply out of luck if something can’t be proven by human reason, when it comes to religion we aren’t in quite that situation. The reason is that–according to the revelatory religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–the realm of the divine is willing to make contact with us and tell us about the things that we can’t observe or prove by human reason.

The situation is analagous to a traveller from a foreign land telling us about what his homeland is like; the homeland in this case being heaven. Or, to use a different analogy, it’s like a person who can see telling a blind person what color objects are. The blind person can’t know this directly, by his own experience, but he can know it indirectly with the help of someone who can see.

God and his messengers, the angels, thus can reveal to humans truths that cannot be proven by human reason alone. A classic example of this is the fact that God is a Trinity–three Persons in one Being. That’s something we can understand, at least partially, once it is revealed to us, but it is not something that human reason alone can prove.

The question is why we would want to accept truths of this sort. Why wouldn’t we want to just stop with a religion of what can be proved by human reason alone?

The fundamental answer is: Because if something is a truth then we should accept it. The real question is how we can know which things that cannot be proven by human reason alone are true.

Here we are in the same situation as someone who has never been to another country or who does not have the ability to see. We can learn things that we can’t sense for ourselves from others, but we need a way to establish whether the person telling us about them knows what he’s talking about and is reliable or not.

What people who are questioning what they’re being told by others need is a reason to believe them, or what is sometimes called a "motive of credibility." The more motives of credibility they can establish regarding the truthfulness of what they are being told, the more reason they have to accept it.

For example, if a person who was blind from birth wants to know why he should believe, on the word of someone else, that grass is green and that the sky is blue, he is asking–in essence–for a motive of credibility. He can’t perceive these things for himself, but he’s seeking a reason that make the claims credible.

The logical one to offer in that case would be the testimony of others. The sighted person who has just told him that grass is green and that the sky is blue might say, "Don’t just take my word for it. Ask other people! They’ll tell you the same thing."

While a person blind from birth could never completely rule out the possibility of a society-wide conspiracy of Santa Claus-like scale to deceive blind people about the colors of objects (or even the existence of color itself), each person he talk to who confirms that grass is green and that the sky is blue provides him one more motive of credibility to accept these facts, and at some point the volume of the motives becomes such that (if he is rational), he’ll end up saying, "Okay, I can’t see these colors for myself, but it’s reasonable for me to believe both that color exists and that grass is green and the sky is blue."

This is essentially the same situation as that of a person inquiring into the rational basis of religion. While he can’t (unfortunately) go ask a bunch of angels about various truths of the faith and test their answers against each other the way a blind person can with sighted people, he can nevertheless see what motives of credibility can be offered for particular belief systems.

Some of those motives of credibility will be related to things that can be proved (e.g., I can prove that God exists, and this religion agrees with that, so it’s a sign that this religion may be on the right track). Others will be based on things that can’t be proved but that are consistent with our intuitions (e.g., this religion teaches that killing innocent people is morally legitimate, and that seems wrong to me, so it’s a sign this religion is not the right one).

Ultimately, if Jesus was right about people who are open to God’s will finding out if his teaching is true, we’ll get the motives of credibility we need to accept the Christian faith (and, I would say, the Catholic understanding of it).

The process thus involves reason leading to faith. Motives of credibility are assessed by reason and, though not everything about the faith can be proved by human observation and reason, the reasonable evaluation of motives of credibility leads us toward the act of faith–that what we place our faith in is itself true and reasonable.

The study of motives of credibility is known as "apologetics," and there have been many works of apologetics that have been written in support of the Christian faith. I would particularly recommend the following:

THE HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli

MERE CHRISTIANITY by C. S. Lewis

MIRACLES by C. S. Lewis

If the reader decides he’s looking for something on an academic level, I’d also recommend

SCALING THE SECULAR CITY by J. P. Moreland

And since he’s expressed particular interest in the subject of life after death, I’d recommend

BEYOND DEATH by Gary Habermas and J. P. Moreland (though I have to mention on this one that the authors are Protestant and the book’s treatment of purgatory is innacurate)

Hope this helps, God bless the reader on his journey, and I hope he’ll ask more questions when he has them!

20

A reader writes:

You may have heard about the priest in Las Vegas who is on the run after allegedly beating a parish worker.  If not, the latest update is here.  My spouse and I are parishioners at Our Lady of Las Vegas and are involved in the teen ministry.  This weekend will be our first teen meeting since the incident occurred.  I know we are going to get a lot of questions from teens; however, the entire parish still seems to be in shock.  I don’t know what to tell the kids given that I still can’t wrap my mind around what happened.  I know both people involved and it just doesn’t make any sense.  Most of the teens have a fairly weak and immature faith.  We’ve been trying to answer all their questions and misconceptions to help them develop a mature faith before going on to Confirmation.  I worry that the disillusionment of seeing a priest that they all knew and respected as a wanted criminal will cause them to abandon the faith. Do you have any advice for us?

I had not previously heard about the situation, but I read the article the reader links, and it is truly horiffic. If the man did what he is reported to have done (which includes not just beating but sexually molesting and apparently threatening the life of the church worker) then it so shocking that I find myself at a loss for words to express the enormity of the situation.

It’s hard to know what to say in such a situation.

And that’s the first thing I’d say to the teens.

There are points when something happens that is so shocking, so horrifying, that words cannot express it, when we can only groan to God with the emotions we are carrying–shock, outrage, anger, sadness. It’s okay to experience those feelings. They are part of human nature, and the teens–like everyone in the congregation–will go through them in the coming days. That shows that they are normal human beings.

It is natural to turn to God with these feelings and not know what to say to him in prayer. This is natural, and God understands it. St. Paul speaks of this kind of situation in Romans 8:26, where he writes:

In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for
we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself
intercedes with inexpressible groanings.

As we work through our feelings in the wake of such an event, we struggle to make sense of it in our minds. Here there are several things to consider.

First, evil is a real. Some people commit horrible evil against other people, and we have to remember that.

If the priest did what is reported then he has committed one of the worst forms of evil since he abused his position of trust and betrayed someone.

Jesus warned us that there would be people like this, even among men who claim to serve God. Jesus told us "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves" (Matthew 7:15).

Indeed, Jesus himself was betrayed by Judas–one of his own apostles. He knew the pain of betrayal personally–as well as the pain of knowing that it was coming.

God has promised that he will deal with such people. No matter what evil someone like this does, God will not let them get away with it. God will right all of the wrongs that have been done, he will heal those who have been hurt, he will make it up to the innocent who have suffered, and he will hold the evildoer to account for his deeds.

God gave us the state to investigate and punish wrongdoing of this sort (Rom. 13), and now the police are doing their job, investigating what happened and seeking the man so that he can be brought to justice.

What we should do now is pray that the man is found or that he turns himself in, that the situation is resolved without any more violence, and that the truth will come out. If the priest has done what is reported then he needs to be locked up so that he cannot do this to other innocent people.

At the same time we pray for this, we must also pray for his soul, because if he has done these things then he needs to repent and seek God’s mercy. God’s mercy is something we all need, and Jesus loved all of us–including the priest and his victim–enough that he took our sins upon himself so that we might be saved.

We need to pray for all the hurting people of the parish, for the woman who was beaten, and for the priest himself, who needs God’s mercy most of all if what is reported is true.

Whatever happens with this situation, God will make sure that justice is done and that mercy will be shown to those who seek it. So let us all seek God in prayer and trust him to help us in this horrible situation.

That’s probably as far as I’d go with the teens as a first effort. They are likely to have questions, and I’d do my best to answer their questions honestly and simply. I’d talk about my own feelings about the situation and let them see some emotion if it comes as you discuss it. That would validate and help them process their own feelings.

Of course, I would urge them to talk to their parents about their thoughts and feelings, and I would offer to talk to them myself as well, but the general points I would make and tone I would try to set is in the post above.

Now a few thoughts I wouldn’t address to the teens (unless they’ve heard about them and ask about them):

1) The fact that the priest backed off when he had the woman at his mercy is a good sign. It may indicate repentance or the potential for it on his part.

2) The fact that he ran appears to incriminate him.

3) His asking the woman if she was ready to go to heaven suggests that he may have had even darker plans in mind .

4) The fact that he seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t be taken alive is a bad sign.

5) His speaking of having been with other women at other parishes suggests that further investigation of his prior parish situations is warranted.

6) If he said that the only way he could get out of Lebanon was by becoming a priest then he may simply be a crook in sheep’s clothing, who was never really trying to serve God.

7) There is a significant possibility that some form of mental illness is involved here.

I’ll certainly be praying for this situation, and I ask my readers to keep it in prayer as well.

A reader writes:

You know the way non-Catholics always say we are re-doing the crucifixion at every Mass. I want to say, No, we’re re-doing the Last Supper (as He said to do); at the Last Supper, Christ is pre-presenting the Calvary sacrifice, so if they could participate in it ahead of time, why can’t we participate in it after the time? So my question is, is it accurate to say that the Mass is a re-enactment of the Last Supper, rather than of the crucifixion?

There’s a sense in which it’s a re-enactment of both, but I think you’re on to something here. The way a current Mass re-enacts the two is not the same.

To flesh out the idea, we need to consider the relationship between three events: The Last Supper (a.k.a. The First Mass), the Crucifixion, and any particular Mass being held today.

Obviously, all three of these are related to each other, but the nature of the relationship differs.

The Masses (either the first one or a contemporary one) make present the sacrifice of the Cross in a special sense. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (quoting the Council of Trent):

1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: "[a] The victim is one and the same: [b] the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; [c] only the manner of offering is different." "In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner."

I’ve added the [a], [b], and [c] in that for the sake of clarity. [a] and [b]spell out the senses in which the sacrifice is the same: It has the same victim ([a]) and the same priest ([b]). Other sources add that the purpose of the sacrifice is the same (our redemption), making it the same sacrifices in those three senses. What is different is the manner of offering ([c]). Christ offered himself on the Cross by the shedding of his blood (i.e., in a bloody manner) but today he offers himself without shedding his blood (i.e., in an unbloody manner) while "enthroned gloriously in heaven". (So this doesn’t seem to be just a time warp to Calvary in A.D. 30.)

So that’s how the Masses are related to the Crucifixion.

Now, how is a current Mass related to the First Mass?

As you allude to, Jesus told his apostles:

"This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me" [Luke 22:19b].

This is the command by which Jesus ordained his apostles as priests (since he was performing a sacrificial action and commanded them to do it, thus commanding them to perform sacrifice), but what is it precisely that he is commanding them to do?

Is it to nail him to a Cross?

No, if we read the first part of the verse, we find:

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them [Luke 22:19a].

So when Jesus says "Do this," the "this" he is referring to is the act of taking bread, giving thanks/blessing it (the word here in Greek is eucharistEsas–"gave thanks"–from which we get "Eucharist"), and distributed it to those present. In other words, he told them to say Mass.

So in fulfilling Jesus’ command to "Do this" what the Catholic priests are doing is to saying Mass, just as Jesus did, not nailing him to a Cross. (As should be obvious.)

Thus the relationship between the Masses (first or later) and the Cross is one of presentation–they make the sacrifice of the Cross present in specific senses–but the relationship of current Masses to the first Mass is one of direct replication.

That means that the thing that is being repeated is the celebration of Mass, not the Crucifixion.

Your point about the Last Suppre pre-presenting the sacrifice of the Cross the way contemporary Masses re-presenting it is also a good one: If Jesus didn’t have a problem with having the Last Supper pre-presenting what he would do on the Cross–and if he told us to keep doing it after the Crucifixion–then we should have no problem with the Mass re-presenting the sacrifice of the Cross (in the senses indicated above).

In other words, whatever the relationship is of the Eucharist to the Cross, Jesus didn’t have a problem with it, so we shouldn’t either.