# Polemics Against Rome



## py3ak (Apr 1, 2011)

In this post, Carl Trueman calls for a "thoughtful, learned, respectful, confessional Protestant book on Roman Catholicism." You will want to read it, especially as it contains the magnificent line:


> Evangelicalism looks increasingly like a photo opportunity, a chance for somebody you would never trust with the care of a hamster, let alone a soul, to be noticed outside of New Testament structures of accountability.


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## Gryphonette (Apr 1, 2011)

I didn't get the impression Trueman was planning on writing it, however. He just wants someone else to do so.

He's right, BTW. A serious book such as he describes, that is actually accurate (much as I like John MacArthur, he doesn't understand RC doctrine especially well, based on what I've read that he's written), would be an enormous boon. Of course, trying to nail the RCC down to much of anything apart from what is contained in the creeds can be a trick. It's like nailing pudding to a wall. A lot of stuff goes on unofficially that isn't officially recognized. This will make such a book difficult to write, I'd think. Does one write about the RC as it exists in, say, Mexico, or in Holland, or where? It's so synergistic by nature, with its adherents retaining pagan beliefs such as the "evil eye", it's nigh unto impossible, It seems to me, to identify in a workable way a "Roman Catholicism" that would be useful. 

If it stretches to fit everyone in the RCC it'll be so vague as to be useless, but if it fits the Vatican properly, there's going to be a lot omitted, and those omissions might be the very stuff that pertains to a particular reader's experience. If the intent is simply to write a textbook...which people read but don't usually remember, wanting to get through it as quickly as possible and onto the _next _textbook in the TBR stack...that'll be comparatively easy; if the intent is to write a synopsis of the RCC that is to be useful to a Protestant reader in the sense of addressing the RCC in his area code, that's gonna take a long time and multiple volumes.


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## DTK (Apr 1, 2011)

Ruben,

I have seen "academic" types make these kind of complaints repeatedly, and I don't find them particularly helpful for the following reason. If they really believe that there is a gap in "this or that" area of need, rather than complain, why do they not fill the gap themselves? I cannot emphasize enough just how many times I have read an article like this coming from people with high academic credentials.

Rather than complain, then please help fill the gap in "X" area of need.


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## louis_jp (Apr 1, 2011)

I disagree with the premise -- that Vatican II necessitates a fresh look at the RCC. It may have changed its presentation in some ways, but the RCC is the same old beast. What we need is not new sources, but for people to go back and read the old ones that have already dealt with the issues.


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## greenbaggins (Apr 1, 2011)

DTK said:


> Ruben,
> 
> I have seen "academic" types make these kind of complaints repeatedly, and I don't find them particularly helpful for the following reason. If they really believe that there is a gap in "this or that" area of need, rather than complain, why do they not fill the gap themselves? I cannot emphasize enough just how many times I have read an article like this coming from people with high academic credentials.
> 
> Rather than complain, then please help fill the gap in "X" area of need.


 
I agree completely with this assessment. It is not as if there are no good books dealing with RCC. I might refer to William Webster, or Richard Bennett. The person whose words I am quoting has done a great service to us in his trilogy on Scripture, which is primarily geared towards answering Romanist claims concerning authority. 

Anne is also spot on target concerning the difficulty of dealing with the RCC. Which Catholicism? In my own experience dealing with Romanists, it seems to me that their doctrine is flexible enough always to have an answer. If you pin them down on one thing, they will always have an answer somewhere in the magisterium. It is like trying to nail foam to a wall: no matter where you press it, the rest of the foam will always come back to surround the point of entrance.


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Apr 1, 2011)

I don't know the RCC seems to be almost as wild west-like as Evangelicalism. It seems to fluctuate quite a bit in practice from country to country, especially when it comes how much RC syncretizes with local customs.


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## py3ak (Apr 1, 2011)

Well, I mainly liked the hamster remark. But I would assume Trueman is thinking of scholarly Romanism, not the popular varieties, which would require sociological as well as historical and theological scholarship, as well as detailed breakdown by countries.


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## Gryphonette (Apr 1, 2011)

py3ak said:


> I mainly liked the hamster remark.



That's too funny. Ruben mostly wanted to talk about hamsters. ;^)


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## DTK (Apr 1, 2011)

py3ak said:


> Well, I mainly liked the hamster remark. But I would assume Trueman is thinking of scholarly Romanism, not the popular varieties, which would require sociological as well as historical and theological scholarship, as well as detailed breakdown by countries.



Well, this is the second time now that I've seen this same scholar make the same complaint. Seems to me that there is something of a disconnect.


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## SolaGratia (Apr 1, 2011)

I think RC Sproul can provide us with such a resource. He has already done the work. All he needs to do (or Ligonier Ministries) is put together what he has already said about Roman Catholicism and touch it up. For instance, his audio series on Roman Catholicism deals with Vatican II, Post-Vatican II, Kung, John Paul, Benedict, etc. Also, I have been listening to Ligonier Ministry’s "Tape of the Month" audios and Sproul does have many things to say about Roman Catholicism.


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## jogri17 (Apr 1, 2011)

I do agree with Dr. Trueman. Most Christians get their information about catholicism from Fundamentalists (Jack Chick, White Geisler, etc...) who over simplify things and have little or no historical theological background. They do not deal with the views of global Catholicism both in the academy and in the Pew. I learned this when meeting Catholics from Australia. Very Different.


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## py3ak (Apr 4, 2011)

Sorry for the brief reply earlier: I was interrupted by people wanting to talk, and hadn't been back online since.

While in general I do think that other people should live by the maxim that problems should be addressed by those who see them, in this case I can see why Dr. Trueman would point out a need and not volunteer to fill it. He is trying to get the people who are engaging Rob Bell _et al_ to tackle a project he considers more worthwhile. It probably doesn't take the intellectual resources of three seminaries to answer _The Shack_, whereas Ratzinger actually is a theologian. 

Now that doesn't mean that I agree with Dr. Trueman's remark: of making many books there is no end.


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## DTK (Apr 4, 2011)

py3ak said:


> While in general I do think that other people should live by the maxim that problems should be addressed by those who see them, in this case I can see why Dr. Trueman would point out a need and not volunteer to fill it. He is trying to get the people who are engaging Rob Bell _et al_ to tackle a project he considers more worthwhile. It probably doesn't take the intellectual resources of three seminaries to answer _The Shack_, whereas Ratzinger actually is a theologian.



I am sorry to see this rejoinder, because it acknowledges the general rule, but then finds an alleged exception to the rule to justify it. Moreover, it also betrays a common mindset which exists in some quarters of the church today. Here's the real question, what business is it of one Christian to be telling another Christian, "Oh dear, your energies are being wasted with respect to that issue; it's over here where the real action/need is!" 

How, by what means pray tell, does one gain the ascendancy to that elevated spiritual status where one is qualified, let alone authorized, to exercise the subjective judgment of pontificating to others, unidentified at that (though one might guess the target in this instance), what they ought to be doing, when one is gifted in a particular area to engage the very subject to which one exhorts and enjoins to another? Where do we get off these days pontificating like that on internet blogs? Moreover, it wreaks, to some extent of an assumed posture, that most of us would otherwise decry, as we would a figure at the head of some personality cult. Are we in the business of passively assigning such a status to people writing blogs whom we happen to admire?

The general rules of the NT seem clear enough...
1) One responds to a need as it is recognized and according to one's ability to do so, without waiting (or hoping by way of justification to excuse one's self) for another to come along and respond to the need. (Ergo, the parable of the Good Samaritan).
2) There is, I would suggest, the latent pharisaical tendency in us which can so easily come to expression if left unmortified - _"For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."_ (Mat 23:4).

The fact is that college kids today have become enamored with the rob bellS of the world, and we need to help them, even if they have uncritically checked their brains at the door (I happen to have two young people in my congregation off at college who while there have fallen to some extent under the spell of rob bell, and not the allurement of Romanism). Yes, there is a need to counter the claims of Romanism today, but what qualifies (for example) ME simply to lament some unaddressed need as I perceive it, and pass the buck to someone else, not to mention the implicit suggestion that other efforts to address "X" need do not measure up to one's own standard?


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## Philip (Apr 4, 2011)

DTK said:


> The fact is that college kids today have become enamored with the rob bellS of the world, and we need to help them, even if they have uncritically checked their brains at the door (I happen to have two young people in my congregation off at college who while there have fallen to some extent under the spell of rob bell, and not the allurement or Romanism).



Rob Bell is a passing fad. Here today and gone tomorrow. One day these kids rediscover orthodox Christianity (the Creeds, that is). They move in rapid succession from rediscovering C.S. Lewis to discovering G.K. Chesterton. Then they're on the path: they discover that all the Christian philosophical heavyweights are RC, RC-educated, or borrow heavily from RC ideas. They start reading T.S. Eliot, Walker Percy, and Thomas A Kempis. And you know what? The Reformed churches have few responses.

Rob Bell is a short-term problem (like _The Shack_) and will be out of style quicker than 70s leisure suits. The fact remains that the reformed seminaries need to pick up where the old debates against Rome left off (we also need reformed folks writing good literature, but that's another topic---literature, I think, is the most powerful draw toward RCism I've ever seen).


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## DTK (Apr 4, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Rob Bell is a passing fad. Here today and gone tomorrow. One day these kids rediscover orthodox Christianity (the Creeds, that is). They move in rapid succession from rediscovering C.S. Lewis to discovering G.K. Chesterton. Then they're on the path: they discover that all the Christian philosophical heavyweights are RC, RC-educated, or borrow heavily from RC ideas. They start reading T.S. Eliot, Walker Percy, and Thomas A Kempis. And you know what? The Reformed churches have few responses.


 
Yes, thank you for making my point.


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## py3ak (Apr 4, 2011)

Thank you for your interesting thoughts, Pastor King. Personally, I would be delighted if Dr. Trueman would take up the challenge he has issued, especially as he does seem both qualified and exercised about the matter. I'm sorry to hear of the young people you mention: may our gracious Lord grant that they will cleave to Scripture at whatever cost.


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