Joe takes audience questions on the common Protestant claim that “Jesus alone is enough.”
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. First of all, apologies for the delay. We’re trying something new. I’m Joe Meyer. I’m joined today by my producer, metal Mike Kupris. Mike, do you want to introduce yourself?
Mike:
Hi, good morning everyone. My name’s Michael Kupris. I am the producer for Shameless Popery and I’ve been working with Joe for about a little over a year now. It’s been really good. It’s been very, very fulfilling. I do some editing rules for him, help him out with some content related stuff, and it’s been awesome. So what are we talking about today?
Joe:
Yeah, so well first, as I said, we’re doing something new. The format here is going to be a little bit of a blend between a normal episode and a live stream where it’s not going to be prescripted or prewritten prerecorded like a normal episode, but it’s also not going to be just a total free for all, like my normal Monday live streams. So the idea is each day we’re going to just each Thursday rather, we’ll get together, have some coffee and a conversation with me and somebody else. Today it’s Mike and explore a particular topic. So today, coffee wise, I’ve got some Trader Joe’s and I’ve got a cup that my wife gave me. It’s a pun. So we just got a new sofa, and so the cup says sofa is so good, and the topic is, well, why don’t you introduce the topic, Mike,
Mike:
Today’s topic is Jesus Alone Enough, which I didn’t even realize seems to be a big phrase or mantra that a lot of people in the Protestant and the evangelical space like to use.
Joe:
Yeah, I would say when we explore something like this, we want to make some distinctions because in a lot of ways we would say absolutely Protestants are completely right. To say Jesus alone is enough. But we’d say there’s other ways in which it would be wrong, even heretical to say Jesus alone is enough. So just to take two obvious ones, if I said I need Jesus and material prosperity, that would be a kind of idolatry. In fact, the reason, well, we’ll talk about this I’m sure in greater depth, but the reason St. Paul refers to covetousness as idolatry is because it’s a failure to believe that God is enough. So that would be one area where you thought you need Jesus plus that’d be clearly wrong. On the other hand, if I said, I don’t need God the Father, I don’t need the Holy Spirit, I just need Jesus, that would be absurd as well. So, oh, my wife says she doesn’t see the stream, but I think several of you do.
Mike:
Yeah, there’s a lot of people seeing this stream. Don, you worry about that. We’ve got 67 concurrent right now. We’re
Joe:
Good. Alright, great. Sorry. Anyway, there’s a way in which it would be wrong to say Jesus alone because to do that would be to separate Jesus from the Father, separate Jesus from the Holy Spirit. So when you ask Jesus alone, the question is are you making another God or is Jesus inviting you into something bigger than just you and Jesus? In other words, you don’t want to end up in a place where you say, it’s just me and just Jesus. Mike, any thoughts on that?
Mike:
Yeah, obviously we agree Jesus is enough to save us, but does that really imply that he alone saves us, which I think is what
Joe:
We’re driving towards? Let’s talk about that in terms of salvation because one of the ways this comes up is people will say, oh, Catholics make it too complicated. You’ve got Jesus and of the church or something like this. And the point there is Jesus invites us into a community. He invites us into the church. So it’s not actually fidelity to Jesus to say we’re going to have Jesus apart from the church, something like that. And so we have to just take Jesus on the terms he gives us, which may not be as private and individualistic as some forms of Christianity promote. So yes, if we are talking about there’s no other name under heaven by which we’re given to be saved, then absolutely Jesus is unique. He’s alone, nobody’s going to replace them. But if you talk about other aspects of salvation, you really can bring people to salvation.
So even when we’re talking about salvation, we have to be mindful of, for example, one Timothy chapter four, verse 16, which says, take heed to yourself and to your hearers. Hold to that for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your. So there is a sense in which we can talk about saving other people. Therefore we can talk about being saved by other people and not in a way where that other person is on the cross for us, but the person who shares the gospel with you really has a role in your salvation. And if you share the gospel with other people and bring them to Jesus, you really have a role in their salvation and not a way that threatens Jesus or his sovereignty or his uniqueness or anything like that. Oh, one thing, sorry, I’m jumping all over the place. This is very much a rough first draft, but I want to make sure people know given the format of these episodes, if you have questions or comments that you think are going to move things forward, feel free to add them in the chat.
Mike will pull them and we’ll share them. And so your questions, your comments can move the conversation forward. I’m presenting the big picture here and then I’ll respond to whatever you have. You can super chat them or not. We’re not really prioritizing super chats, we’re just prioritizing topical comments. So if you have something you think helps by all means share that I know already. Ld Bendik says, our Lord himself says that more is required. And then he quotes Matthew 7 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father. So it doesn’t just say, just believe in Jesus repeatedly. When Jesus talks about salvation, he talks about other things like doing the will of the Father, or when you look at the separation of the sheep and the goats, you see this all very clearly.
And so none of that is to deny the sufficiency of Jesus in those things. He is desirous to be sufficient, but there is a clear sense in which there’s not just one commandment, love God or believe in Jesus. There’s a second commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. And so if your idea of salvation was it’s enough to believe and not love, that would be clearly wrong. St. Paul says, if I have faith and not love, I’ve got nothing. Or if your idea was it’s enough to believe in love God, that would still be not enough because I also have to love my neighbor. So there is an invitation into something bigger than a purely kind of individualistic vision of salvation. Mike, anything either you have or anything you see in the comments you think would drive this
Mike:
Forward. Hold on one second. Okay, so one of the things that it seems as though a lot of Protestants and especially prosperity gospel type people think of when they think Jesus alone is enough, is in the context of enough for providing for us in many ways like material, but sometimes even spiritual. So what are your thoughts on that, Joe?
Joe:
Yeah, there’s a couple ways of thinking about that. One is believe in Jesus and you’ll have material prosperity, the health and wealth gospel name it and claim it all that. And I think the most obvious rebuttal to that is that Jesus’ own family was poor and the son of man had nowhere to lay his head. You see this very clearly in the presentation when Jesus is brought into the temple 40 days after his birth, Mary and Joseph don’t have a lamb that they can afford to offer and sacrifice, so they offer a pair of turtle doves or pigeons, and that’s the offering you would make if you couldn’t afford a lamb. So we know how rough they had it in terms of not being well off because we can see that. And so if Jesus’ own family didn’t have great material abundance, if your idea is that if I just follow Jesus, I’m going to get rich, that certainly doesn’t follow.
In fact, we’re warned several times how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God and how hard it is for the rich to be saved. It’s like a camel entering through the eye of a needle. So the better way of understanding the sufficiency of Jesus when it comes to money is that money isn’t what saves us. Money isn’t what makes us safe or secure. So I alluded to this earlier in the Old Testament, when Israel would fall into idolatry, they weren’t saying We no longer believe in the God of Israel. They had enough evidence that the God of Israel was powerful, he could save. He do all this stuff that even at their worst, they tended not to just fall into an atheism towards the God of Israel. Rather they fell into the idea that while God was real, he was not enough, that someone or something else was needed.
And so you’d turn to ball or you’d turn to any of these mooch, any of these false gods. And so it was kind of a God plus. And so we do want to watch out for Jesus plus in terms of anything that’s a rival to God, anything that’s an alternative to God. And now most of us today, we’re not tempted to be like, we’re going to turn to God and Krishna, but we are tempted to say things like, well, as long as I’ve got my 401k realistically not a 401k for us in this generation, as long as I’ve got my paycheck or I’ve got a little bit of savings, or I’ve got whatever, then I’m okay If I’ve got that in God, that’s enough. And God’s invitation is, no, that’s actually too much. What you want is to just be secure with Christ and then come if you’ve got prosperity, if you’ve got scarcity, all of those things become trivial by comparison.
Mike:
Alright, so Danny Holmes says, A Protestant objection I frequently hear is we believe you are saved by faith in Jesus. Catholics believed you’re saved by faith plus works plus sacraments, et cetera. How would you respond to this?
Joe:
Yeah, that this gets a lot of things wrong at a very basic level, that it’s combining different levels of causality. And I’ve given this example before, so apologies to those who’ve already heard it, but if I said, who painted the Sistine Chapel like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, if I said, what percent was it in Michelangelo and what percentage was it Raphael or something, you’d say, well, a hundred percent Michelangelo, 0% Raphael. But if I said, what percentage was it Michelangelo and what percentage was it paintbrushes, that question would be nonsensical. You’d say a hundred percent and a hundred percent because there’s no tension between those two. When we talk about faith, what do we mean by it? If by faith you mean simply an intellectual ascent that God is who he says he is. That’s not enough. And one of the clearest ways we see that that’s not enough is from the epistle of James where he points out that even the demons have that kind of belief and they shudder.
You believe God is one the devil does likewise. So if that’s all it took to be saved, the devil would be saved. That rather when we talk about faith, the just man lives by faith, there’s regularly a misuse of Abraham from people who I don’t think have carefully read the story of Abraham because they have this idea that Abraham has done absolutely nothing and then just trust that God is who says he is, and that’s it. It’s just an act of intellectual ascent. But the lines that St. Paul’s quoting from are from Genesis 15. Abraham has been following God since Genesis 12. And the important theme throughout the Old Testament is the just man lives by faith, he walks by faith. And so if you’re not doing that walking, then it doesn’t mean anything to say that you have faith in that sense. You can have the belief, but that by itself isn’t enough.
If you want a great exposition of this recently Ferris at How to Be Christian had an excellent video from a day or two ago where he, he’s responding to taco talks and his recent interview with Trent and showing that the thing that he’s calling the simple gospel, he’s adding a bunch of stuff to the gospel. Even if you’re adding in alone, you’re still adding to the gospel. And if your idea is adding to the gospel, that’s not what we’re called to do. So adding anything, even adding in alone where God doesn’t have one is still an addition, still something we’re going to resist. So yeah, the person who says, I believe in Jesus, but then they don’t do what Jesus says, that’s not what the Bible talks about in terms of faith. If you love me, you’ll keep my commands. Jesus says, so if you have faith and not love, you’ve got nothing.
If you love Jesus, you’ll keep his commands. And he calls us to do things like get baptized, like do the works of God. And so this idea that works just flow naturally from faith, show me the Bible verse that says that. And as you’ll see, there simply isn’t one. Rather this is the outworking of faith and the thing that forms and completes faith. CS Lewis gives the example. I believe it gives the example of a bridge. If you have a belief that a bridge, there’s like a rickety bridge and you believe that it’s secure enough to hold your weight, that’s one thing to say you believe that when you’re just looking at the bridge, it’s a very different thing to say. You believe that as you’re walking the bridge. And so faith is the act of actually walking that bridge and not just sitting on the side saying, yeah, that would probably work. And it’s a very different thing. The just man lives by faith, he walks by faith.
Mike:
Ryan Fouts has a really interesting observation off of that last comment. He says Jesus quote alone, yes, but Jesus is never alone because he has a body and he incorporates us into his body.
Joe:
That
Mike:
Which I think also really highlights something that I’ve kind of, I don’t want to say struggled with, but struggled to fully ideate, which is this idea of in heaven we have theosis, but then also we’re still individual or the idea of praying to the saints as them as individuals, but really you’re praying to God through the saints or something like that. Maybe that’s an inaccurate way of describing it, but I feel like there’s kind of a parallel there.
Joe:
The incorporation into Christ is such a thing that to say Jesus plus his body, there’s something a little bit nonsensical about that. This is one of the, I think part of the issue here is just that we are separating Jesus and the church too much. And I think people who aren’t Catholic, who aren’t coming from a background with a big view of the church might hear that it might sound all sorts of alarms in terms of idolatry or something. But I always go back to Ephesians one which says that God has put all things under his Jesus’ feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. So according to St Paul, the church is the fullness of Christ. This is what sometimes called Christus Totos that if you want the whole Christ, you need Jesus ahead In the church’s body that’s straight out of scripture.
And this is a recurring theme, particularly in Ephesians. St. Paul talks about the inseparability of Christ in the church that it would be like separating a husband from a wife or a head from a body. And so trying to take Jesus alone in a decapitated sort of way, you’re taking the head without the body, you’re taking the bridegroom without the bride that’s fundamentally un-Christian. And there’s a risk in which you sort of incarnate Christ because the point of the incarnation is that Jesus now has a body, this begins with his physical body in the first century and it continues through his mystical body, the church and the way that he makes his body sacramentally present in the Eucharist that the incarnation begins in the first century, but it continues for all time that this is a permanent change. It isn’t as if he ascends into heaven and the incarnation is over rather even in ascending into heaven.
This is a continuation of the incarnation even into heaven so that now there’s this bodily presence in heaven in this new and radical way that this is part of. So stepping back when we think about heaven, don’t imagine heaven is just like some far off place like by the planet CoLab rather heaven is the place in which God is in his fullness. And it is this realm that initially is simply immaterial and materiality is introduced into heaven in the ascension. And this is part of the union of heaven and earth and this union of heaven and earth is brought to its fullness in the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. That’ll be the full marriage of heaven and earth. But you’re already seeing this play out more and more through the growth and spread of the church. This is the spread of the reign of the kingdom of God that Christ’s kingdom is made visible through the church.
And so we can pray every day thy kingdom come because we believe that the kingdom is already here in one sense and is still coming in a yet fuller sense. And so we are the heralds of the union of heaven and earth. Were the heralds of the kingdom’s arrival into history and into the domain of earth that these two things aren’t meant to be at odds, heaven and earth, they’re meant to be in harmony and that’s what we come to announce. So to separate Christ from his own kingdom is no service to Christ. The king like to say, oh, I love the king so much, I’m going to separate him from his kingdom is not a service.
Mike:
Alright, John Roberts had asked earlier, Joe, do you feel like in some of the evangelical circles, it’s a race to the bottom for the lightest yolk? And I think his implication there is that you can throw so much of the onus on salvation on Jesus or so much of the onus for even your behavior on Jesus that it starts to take away your own onus.
Joe:
Yeah, the kind of easy believism is what that sometimes gets called. And who was it? Was it Dietrich Bonhoeffer who says Grace is free, but it’s not cheap. I think it’s a good line. God freely gives his grace, but if you cheapen it by treating it with that kind of I reverence, that’s not faithfulness. Now look, the fact that there are Protestant theologians who push back against that should show. We’re not talking about all Protestants here, but this very, you can say the sinner’s prayer and you’re good to go. It’s almost like checking a box and then one saved, always saved. This is a form of Protestantism, a form of evangelicalism, a form of non-denominational that exists and is worth highlighting. Don’t assume if you’re Catholic talking to a Protestant, don’t assume that person you’re talking to automatically believes that. But there are tendencies in that direction.
If you notice the work that a lot of Protestant YouTubers are doing, it’s really trying to call modern Protestants back to more historic Protestantism where it was more like Catholicism and kind of halt the descent into this kind of bare minimum form. But if you think about it, this is in some ways the natural outgrowth of what begins in the reformation. Protestantism doesn’t add, it takes away. So we believe in faith, but then they add in alone. So it’s faith alone. Now we believe in scripture, but then in scripture alone, we believe in the glory of God. They get separated from the saints and the way God has made glorious in his saints. All of these things where it becomes a, we’re going to keep this part of our Christian heritage and we’re going to say that’s it, and we’re going to take that part to the exclusion of some other part.
We’re going to take faith and not works. We’re going to take scripture and not tradition. We’re going to take God glory and not the way God’s made glorious in the saints. And once you start that process of reducing Christianity, even if you’re trying to protect it from what you see as innovations, that reductive process isn’t going to just stop in one generation. Other people are going to say, well, you didn’t take away enough. And so you’ll have people who just basically say, Luther wasn’t Protestant enough, we need to go further. And you can have that kind of spirit of 15, 17 if you want to say it that way, where, alright, you’re off to a good start, but you didn’t get far enough away from the Catholic church. This is a lot of what the Puritans are doing. They don’t think the Anglicans have gone far enough. We need to purify the church from any vestiges of romanism. And so we need to take it further. We need to take it further. And eventually in the American expression of this, this does get to reducing to where even baptism becomes optional, even things Jesus explicitly says to do. Well, if you think you have to do that now you’re relying on yourself. And it’s like, no, no, you’re literally just obeying the thing you were told to do.
Mike:
Alright, Sebastian Torres actually has an interesting question regarding the intercession of the saints when praying for intercession of saints. Do we need to word it in a way that specifically does not attribute divine power to the saint or can we be very direct as long as we know it comes from Christ?
Joe:
Oh no. I mean if you ask a saint to intercede for you or to do something for you, you’re not going around God. This is the difference between magic and miracles. There’s a lot of scholarship trying to explain what that difference is because if you just think about the way it looks from the outside, magic and miracles might look the same. A great example of this is before Pharaoh, Aaron, his staff turns into a serpent, but then the Egyptian magicians, their staffs turn into serpents as well and Aaron’s staff swallows theirs up. But nevertheless, there is a clear sense in which someone looking at that would say those two things looked the same. Maybe one of them had more powerful magic, but they both look like magic. So what’s the difference between magic and miracles? Magic is an attempt to either control or go around God that you consult dark forces or use some kind of spiritual power apart from God, like divorced from God to try to bring about some end, or you try to compel God or compel depending on the religion one of the gods.
Whereas the miraculous relies subserviently on divine power that God is able to bring about his good effects and we entreat him and we rely on him and we trust in him. And so that’s the key difference right there. Well, there’s similarly a difference between consulting the dead in the way the witch of indoor does where you’re trying to go around God and saying a prayer that the saints will intercede for you or act. And we see the early Christians are very clear that they’re very comfortable calling on the saints for their help. Even in the catacombs we find these prayers to the saints for their protection and one of the oldest known prayers, the sub toum Presidium, the original dating of this, put it around two 50. There’s been a lot of controversy about whether that dating is correct, but there’s an old manuscript that it’s papyrus number four 70 that has a copy of the sub presidium when the prayer just goes beneath thy compassion.
We take refuge of theotokos God bearer, mother of God do not despise our petitions in time of trouble. But resco is from danger is only pure one, only blessed one. And you’ll notice that is a very high prayer in terms of Mary and devotion. You are asking Mary direc... Read more on Catholic.com