Jimmy Akin

A reader writes:

I’m a Protestant who is seriously considering the Catholic faith.  I’ve enjoyed, very much, listening to you on the Catholic Answers Live podcast.

Are you familiar with the controversy over open theism within evangelicalism?  How does Roman Catholic theology square with the view of God as envisioned by open theists?

I am familiar with the controversy, and Catholic theology would have significant problems with the overall picture of God painted by open theists. Historically, Catholicism has been very firm on the classical theism model.

For those who aren’t familiar with this distinction,

HERE’S A BACKGROUNDER.

That being said, not all aspects of open theism are equally problematic. The open theist’s assertion that humans have libertarian free will is something that Catholics would have not a problem with. What would be problematic is the inference that because humans have this kind of free will the future must contain things that God doesn’t know.

It is not true that knowing what someone will choose to do next year means that their choice is not the product of libertarian free will. From his perspective outside of time, God sees your future free will choices next year the same way he sees your current choices right now. Both "now" and "next year" are equally present to God, so if his seeing what your current choices are does  not deprive you of free will now then his simultaneously seeing what you are choosing next year does not deprive free will then either.

While open theists have made some interesting arguments regarding God’s omniscience (e.g., omniscience doesn’t require God to know things that are logically impossible to know the way omnipotence doesn’t require God to be able to do things that are logically impossible to do, like make square circles or stones too heavy for him to lift), these arguments are only relevant if God is inside of time and if certain theories about time are true. From an atemporalist perspective, the concerns they are meant to address simply don’t arise because God’s knowledge of the future is equally possible as his knowledge of the present and the past.

Once one recognizes God’s atemporality his immutability immediately falls out of this as a logical consequence.

Open theists’ language about God voluntarily limiting his exercise of power in order to allow free will in the universe can be taken in an orthodox sense (though only if it is understood that his exercise of the power–not the power itself–is what is limited). Something like that might seem to be necessary for free will to exist, and there is nothing unorthodox about saying that God can choose how far he’s going to do something. If he chooses to make beings with libertarian free will so that he doesn’t determine all their choices for them then that’s God’s choice.

The best argument that open theists have is why God allows evil if he has the power to stop it, and here we run into a matter that is significantly mysterious, though classical theists have a framework for answering it even if it does not exhaust the mystery.

An orthodox Catholic theologian would thus tend to view open theism as, to a significant extent, an attempt to alleviate the cognitive tension caused when man is confronted by the divine mystery by positing a God small enough that the mystery doesn’t arise (i.e., God doesn’t stop all evil instantly because he doesn’t have the power to do so).

There are thus a few individual aspects of open theism that could be harmonized with Catholic thought but the system as a whole posits a view of God that would not at all be favorably received.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ articulation of classical theism has been the standard Catholic account for centuries, and the First Vatican Council taught:

The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection.

Since he is one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, he must be declared to be in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, supremely happy in himself and from himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides himself which either exists or can be imagined [Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, ch. 1].

Hope this helps!

A reader writes:

I am currently trying to explain the Catholic position on purgatory to a co-worker.  I have given him some info I found on the internet. He looked it over and discussed with a fellow church member. He came back with, “if you believe in purgatory, then you are saying that Jesus dying on the cross was not good enough to save us!” How do I respond?

The purpose of purgatory is to purify us so that we are thoroughly holy and thus fit for heaven. It is part of the process by which we gain "the holiness without which no one will see the Lord" (Heb. 12:14).

But the process of purification doesn’t start in purgatory. It starts in this life, and in Protestant circles it’s known as sanctification. (Catholics also use this term, though not always in exactly the same fashion; the term justification is also used in both circles though not always in the same ways.)

Now, where does sanctification come from? Is it something God gives us by his grace or something that happens apart from his grace?

Protestants will agree with Catholics that it is the product of God’s grace in our lives.

But why is God giving us this grace? Is it because of what his Son did on the Cross or is it separate from that?

Once again, Protestants will agree with Catholics that it is because of what Christ did on the Cross that God sanctifies us.

So sanctification–the process of being made holy–is something that happens to us only because of Christ’s death on the Cross.

Sanctification–including the final stage of sanctification in purgatory–thus presupposes the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. It is so sufficient that it is not only enough to justify us but enough to sanctify us as well. The difference is that (to use language in a Protestant way) justification is something that happens at the beginning of the Christian life while sanctification is something that happens over the course of it.

So that’s what I’d tell him.

In 1978 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an instruction containing norms for the evaluation of reported apparitions.

This document has generally not been circulated publicly, but it seems that someone in France got a copy of it, and I found an unofficial English translation online.

Reading the document, it struck me as having the ring of authenticity. This is written the way that the CDF would have done such a document, and I assume that it’s genuine.

I’ve placed the translation in the below-the-fold section of this post and may be able to interact with it some in future posts. For now, I’d like to see what kinds of questions it raises in folks’ minds.

Continue reading “1978 CDF Document On Apparitions”