Manage Account

Karlo Broussard explains why Catholics are obligated to go to mass every Sunday.

Why We Go to Mass Every Sunday

Fr. David Michael Moses discusses using social media as a tool for evangelization, noting that the disciples would likely use it to spread Jesus&#8217; message if they were alive today.
Transcript:
Sometimes we look at all this social media stuff and we very rightly, I think, go, &#8220;This is so dangerous. Look what it&#8217;s doing to kids.&#8221; But there&#8217;s also the other side of it. There&#8217;s always the other side. Well, here&#8217;s also a tool that God put in your hands. And do you think the apostles would have done it? Do you think the apostles would have used social media or no? Would they have not?
Oh, I definitely think so. I definitely think so. I mean, I will say, you&#8217;re absolutely right. Social media is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. I would recommend for most parents just to keep their kids off of social media, honestly. The way I look at it, you know, a quick analogy is like social media is like a bad neighborhood. You know, a bad neighborhood is a dangerous place to be. I would not recommend my family, my nieces, and my nephews go live in a bad neighborhood.
But I do think that every bad neighborhood should have a Catholic church. And I think there should be a Catholic priest at that church who gets to know the area, gets to know the culture. They ought to be able to minister to the people. So I feel like even though it&#8217;s dangerous, that&#8217;s not a reason to just abandon it. I think certain people with the right disposition, the right training can go into that landscape and hopefully bring some goodness there.
So it is certainly dangerous, but I think it&#8217;s worth leaning into. And I could certainly see Jesus. I&#8217;m not sure if he would have his own account, you know, but I do think there would be people around recording what he was saying and posting it everywhere, and that would be part of the vehicle of spreading the message.
Judas would be monetizing it.
That&#8217;s a quality joke right now! Judas on the side, monetizing without telling anybody
Yeah, I got this Lord.
Too funny.
We got this, Lord. We&#8217;re going to make you famous.
So, well, yeah, I really like your dangerous neighborhood analogy. And there&#8217;s also a certain attitude sometimes in the modern world that Christians don&#8217;t belong in this space. You know, get out of our space. You know, there&#8217;s a secular bias that&#8217;s not a healthy secularism, but is a denuded secularism. Like, yeah, we don&#8217;t need you here. Do you feel that pushback sometimes?
Well, I do think that sometimes people try to avoid it, maybe avoid evangelizing there too much. You know, I just kind of think about maybe the enemy. If we were to say, &#8220;None of the Catholics are on social media anymore,&#8221; I think the devil would be like, &#8220;Really? You guys are just going to let me have it? You&#8217;re just going to give it to me and I can just run all of it.&#8221; You know, that would be his response.
I think when we say, &#8220;No, we&#8217;re going to enter in a very careful, mindful, prayerful way, look at this and see what we can do here,&#8221; that&#8217;s when the enemy is like, &#8220;Gosh, you know, I&#8217;ve got to deal with this now.&#8221; So I think it is something that&#8217;s really worth investing in the right way and can be a very, very powerful tool.
A lot of, I mean, one of, well, I should tell you this, the most common prayer request we get here at Catholic Answers is, &#8220;can we pray for something for you?&#8221; is that &#8220;my adult children will come back to the faith&#8221;. That is the most common prayer request we get.
And I saw a video that you did, by the way, we&#8217;re talking with Father David Michael Moses, if you&#8217;re just joining us. He&#8217;s a priest of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, but he&#8217;s also very popular online and reaching lots of people with the joy of his own priesthood and with the joy of the gospel. You made a video, which was very, very negative.
It was about how the churches are empty and young people are not vitalized and all that, but the images did not match the words. So you were saying the clichés about the Catholic Church, &#8220;Nobody comes, the pews are empty.&#8221; And a lot of it was at the SEEK Conference where there were like 20,000 young people. Was it the one that was up in Salt Lake City just recently?
That&#8217;s right. Yeah, absolutely right. So young people are interested in the faith. They do want the faith. They do want the faith. So how are you reaching them? And maybe that could help all the rest of us who are thinking about how to reach young people with the gospel.
Yeah, well, I think, you know, the church has a great history, right, of going into different places, learning the language, learning the culture, and then bringing the tried and true, faithful gospel to that culture and that place in that language. And I think in modern times, that&#8217;s very much the reality now is that a lot of the young people have kind of a new culture, right, and a new language.
And that&#8217;s not a reason to be afraid or to tell them to speak a different language. I think it&#8217;s fair for us to say, &#8220;Okay, well, let&#8217;s learn the language then,&#8221; right? Like the great missionaries in the past, learn the language, learn the culture, and try to engage as much as you can.
And just for me, you know, I&#8217;ve heard a friend say recently, &#8220;People don&#8217;t let you into their homes, but they let you into their phones.&#8221; And I think that&#8217;s very, very true. If we are going after the lost sheep. And in many cases, those are young sheep, right? It&#8217;s often the lambs who kind of lose their way.
If we&#8217;re going after the lost sheep, then, you know, I&#8217;m going to perish called, it&#8217;s called Christ the Good Shepherd. And Jesus tells us the Good Shepherd goes after the sheep. And so for me, if I&#8217;m a good shepherd, I want to be a good shepherd. That means I need to go after the lost sheep, but that probably looks like learning the language.
Because people don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t think you learn, people really don&#8217;t like the gospel. They don&#8217;t like what they think the gospel is. To kind of riff off of what Fulton Sheen talk about. People think they know the gospel, but they really don&#8217;t, right? They haven&#8217;t really encountered Jesus.
So I think if we are able to package things in the right way, then that can really make all the difference.
Tell me about that encounter with Jesus, because that&#8217;s the thing, isn&#8217;t it? The difference between the joy of the Christian life and the Christian life as obligation or as a series of &#8220;no&#8217;s&#8221; that God gives, it all comes down to that, the meeting and the knowing of the person of Jesus.
Oh, totally. I mean, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s about. You know, and people get somewhat frustrated with the idea of religion, but really, religion is an organized way of most effectively encountering the person of Jesus Christ.
And you know, I think young people, they do think one thing that gets kind of lost today is this idea of greatness. Sometimes it&#8217;s framed as the kind of the Andrew Tate worldly, you know, having the cars and the mansions as greatness. But really, greatness is knowing the person of Jesus Christ. And that&#8217;s where the joy comes from ultimately. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re searching for.
So, you know, I heard a quote recently, &#8220;The magic that you&#8217;re looking for is in the things that you&#8217;re avoiding.&#8221; And I think the world so often puts out there the pleasure and the status and the comfort and all those things. And that&#8217;s not really what we&#8217;re looking for.
Like, that&#8217;s not really what we want. The magic we&#8217;re looking for—not magic in the world, it&#8217;s not magic—but magic like the meaning and the peace and the joy and the purpose. The magic is usually in the things that we&#8217;re avoiding, which is suffering, self-denial, taking up the cross.
These are the things that actually give purpose to our lives. And so I think it is about, with young people especially, saying, &#8220;No, sacrifice and suffering are not the worst evil to be avoided,&#8221; which is what the world says. It&#8217;s actually like pushing through these things. On the other side of some of that sacrifice is really going to be everything that you actually long for in life.
And what is that actually going to find there? It is the person of Jesus Christ.

Would Jesus Preach on Instagram? | Fr. David Michael Moses

The man who wrote the book <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life</a> gives us a primer on how to share arguments against abortion. Use these effective techniques to move yourself and others closer to the truth about tiny, little, unborn people.

Pro-Life Bootcamp

Some Christians object to the practice of invoking the saints’ intercession because they think it takes away from the unique mediation of Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5—“There is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ”). But those who invoke the saints counter that just because Jesus is the one mediator who “always lives to make intercession” (Heb. 7:25), that doesn’t mean he can’t share that intercessory role with his saints.
In fact, we know that Jesus shares that intercessory role with at least some of his saints: the Christians here on earth. Saints, after all, is a common word used for all Christians in the New Testament, as seen, for example, in 2 Corinthians 1:1, Ephesians 1:1, and Philippians 1:1. St. Paul urges Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:1 that “intercessions . . . be made for all men.”
Now, some Protestants might counter the above argumentation and say, “Your response misses the mark. We’re not concerned with earthly mediation taking away from Christ’s unique mediation. We’re concerned only with the claim that there are other heavenly intercessors.”
Take, for example, Jordan Cooper, a Lutheran pastor and professor of systematic theology. In his online <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">video</a> “A Critique of Prayer to the Saints,” he argues that the Letter to the Hebrews’ description of what’s going on before the Father in the heavenly throne room doesn’t “leave room at all for a kind of other heavenly intercession.”
There are two ways that we can respond to this argument. One is more general, which considers Cooper’s argument itself. The other is more specific to what Cooper says elsewhere in his video.
Here’s the general response. Recall that Cooper’s argument says there can be no other heavenly intercessor because that role belongs to Jesus alone, who has ascended into the heavenly sanctuary to minister as our high priest. But isn’t the Holy Spirit a heavenly intercessor also? Paul says he is:
<blockquote>Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:26-27).</blockquote>
Must we deny Paul’s teaching that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us in heaven? Cooper’s logic would have us say yes.
Now, Cooper might counter, “Of course the Holy Spirit can intercede for us because he’s God. The heavenly intercession that I’m concerned with is creaturely intercession.”
But if creaturely intercession in heaven is the problem, then we’d have to reject the heavenly intercession of the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4. Here’s what John sees in Revelation 5:8:
<blockquote>And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.</blockquote>
In Revelation 8:3-4, John describes an angel doing the same thing:
<blockquote>And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.</blockquote>
The “prayers of the saints” in both passages refers to Christians on earth. And the elders and the angel are presenting their prayers to the Lamb, Jesus, in the heavenly throne room. That’s heavenly intercession, performed by creatures.
If the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4 can be heavenly intercessors without taking away from Christ’s unique mediation as our heavenly high priest, then so can the saints. There is in fact enough “room” in the heavenly throne room for multiple intercessors, especially when those other intercessors intercede with Christ in virtue of their union with Christ through grace.
Now, concerning our more specific response, Cooper contradicts himself in his video. In the above argument, he restricts any and all heavenly intercession to Christ. Yet, later in the video, when commenting on the elders in Revelation 5:8, he concedes that they intercede for us in a general way, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">saying</a>, “Certainly they are before God; it is likely that the saints in heaven pray for the church.” Which is it? Is it Christ alone who intercedes in the heavenly throne room, or do the elders intercede as well? That’s something for Cooper to answer.
In the end, Cooper’s objection to the appropriateness of invoking the saints in heaven fails. Jesus’ unique mediation in the heavenly sanctuary does not exclude other heavenly intercessors, like the saints. As members of his mystical body, the saints share in such heavenly mediation and thereby are made our heavenly allies.

Don’t Exclude the Saints

To support this channel: https://www.patreon.com/counseloftrent

[NEW] Counsel of Trent merch: https://shop.catholic.com/apologists-alley/trent-horn-resources/

Be sure to keep up with our socials!
https://www.tiktok.com/@counseloftrent
https://www.twitter.com/counseloftrent
https://www.instagram.com/counseloftrentpodcast

Favorite Apologist?!

Sunday Catholic Word is the only podcast that looks at the Sunday Mass readings and focuses on the details that are relevant to explaining and defending the Catholic faith.

Sunday Catholic Word

Just a few days after celebrating a holiday that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States, today we mark one year since <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-deal-with-dobbs-v-jackson">the fall of Roe v. Wade</a>.
It still seems a touch surreal. When I was active in pro-life efforts as a college student and young adult, Roe was the boss monster at the end of the level that we could sometimes manage to take a few whacks at but never defeat. Time and again, we put our hope in legislators and presidents and judges only to have them let us down. We had to be content with nibbling around the edges of the law—parental consent here, partial-birth there—while keeping the focus locally on aiding and persuading women in crisis pregnancies and nationally on “changing hearts and minds.”
In fact, whether due to discouragement, mission creep, or an ultimate lack of conviction, in some pro-life quarters “changing hearts and minds” became the only goal—the most we could hope or rightly want to do. I recall many a debate over the years with other self-identified pro-lifers who claimed that it was imprudent, even wrong to change the legal abortion paradigm in America without first changing how Americans felt about abortion. And of course, the other side <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/it-was-never-about-just-hearts-and-minds">was all too happy</a> to echo this rhetoric. (Though they weren’t keen on “changing hearts and minds, either, so they invited us instead to “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/faith-abortion-and-voting-part-5">reduce the root causes</a>” of abortion, usually by expanding the welfare state.)
Now, changing hearts and minds is great. It’s the core of our mission here at Catholic Answers. But there’s another great truth we need to remember: the law is a teacher. That is, laws are not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of persuasion—they are instruments of persuasion, too.
As Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons remarked when asked whether the arrival of legalized gambling to Springfield was a sin, “Once something is approved by the government, it’s no longer immoral.” It was a dry joke that underscores a truth of human experience: people look to the law for moral guidance, even when it’s bad.
We have seen this principle in action. Prior to 2012, same-sex marriage had been put to popular vote in states thirty-two times—including in California’s Prop 8 in 2008—and lost each time. Legislators and state courts in “progressive” states, unconcerned with changing hearts and minds first, kept testing the ramparts of the popular will: a <a href="https://www.mynbc5.com/article/from-the-archives-vermont-becomes-first-state-to-introduce-civil-unions/30337708">half-a-loaf measure</a> here, a seemingly <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160213204203/https:/www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8760044.html">harmless executive order</a> there, in each case teaching the people just a little more. Just prior to the Obergefell decision that mandated legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, national support for it was in the low 50 percent range. Today it’s in the mid-70s. A Prop 8 today would have a vastly different result. We have been taught.
We could point to a similar pattern with other historical issues: <a href="https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-evolution-of-divorce">divorce</a>, contraception, abortion, marijuana legalization. Revolutionaries use the instrument of law to gradually shift majority opinion as well as the “Overton Window” of socially acceptable viewpoints.
This phenomenon occurs because we reflexively equate legality and morality—and for reasons that make sense. We have implicit trust in the wisdom of our lawmakers and in the inherent rightness and validity of law. Plus, being opposed to the legal status quo is psychically exhausting over time. Most people aren’t moral philosophers or cultural boat-rockers; it’s easiest just to let the law inform our values, even if sometimes imperceptibly slowly.
Today, as we mark Dobbs+1, we hope that new state-level abortion laws will save lives, indeed <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/dobbs-saves-lives">as they have already done</a>. But we can also expect such laws to teach—this time for good. That pro-life activism has managed to keep the fires burning for so many years in the face of Roe’s chilling effect is truly extraordinary; a work of God. Now, post-Roe culture will have to think and argue about abortion without the conclusion having been predetermined by nine judges from 1973. State laws banning or restricting abortion will form citizens and institutions in new habits of thinking about the humanity of the unborn. What was once unthinkable under the old, radical abortion paradigm—that the “right to choose” was anything but sacrosanct—is now the new normal, the baseline for further battles in capitols and courts.

Thoughts on Dobbs +1

<div>Is hell a just punishment? I hear this question many times from skeptics, and that "No human being deserves such a punishment." How would I combat this claim? </div><div>The Church reminds us that hell is the “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm">CCC 1033</a>, emphasis added; see 1033-37).
For further perspective, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/to-hell-with-heaven">this previous response</a> in which I explain that the fallen angels basically said, “To hell with heaven.”
</div>

Is Hell a Just Punishment?

The story about the ten lepers is paired in the lectionary with the condensed version of the story of Naaman the Syrian. It’s one of those combinations that makes it clear that although there are some crucial new things happening in the ministry of Jesus, there is also a great deal that stands in continuity with the ministry of the Old Testament prophets. Here in particular we see in stark terms both the ingratitude of God’s own people and the receptivity of the Gentiles to God’s saving work. As one fourth-century writer describes it, strangers were more ready to receive the faith than Israel (Titus Bostrensis, quoted in Thomas’ Catena aurea).
Israel is supposed to be the light to enlighten the nations, a sign to the peoples of God’s goodness. Yet so often Israel is a sign of contradiction as well: a sign of humanity’s failure to acknowledge its divine vocation. This too, we should observe, is part of God’s good providence, for Israel’s failure is thus turned to a good end, to show how God is able to be faithful despite our unfaithfulness—as St. Paul puts it in 2 Timothy, “he cannot deny himself”—and how even this sign of failure can be transformed as a witness to the nations. Likewise the Church, figured, according to the tradition of the Fathers, in the ten lepers, is a sign of failure, for though her members are washed and made clean in the sacramental waters of baptism, they more often than not fail to accept with gratitude the new life offered.
Beyond these layers of reading, there is also a present reality that we can observe in Catholic life, which is how often those “strangers”—whether Protestants or non-Christians or whatever—seem more grateful for the gift of the Catholic faith than those who have known it all their lives. What’s more, the zeal and gratitude of these strangers, at times, get ridiculed and marginalized by Catholics who, like those nine lepers, would rather just “get their sacraments” and move on.
If I can venture a bold observation, the existence of the Ordinariates is one place where the Church has in a way institutionalized this experience, almost as if to say, this zeal for the goods of the Church is “meet and right”; it is normal; and it would be a distortion of the gospel of grace to act as if the response of the nine ungrateful is somehow what ought to be expected simply because it is more typical. We should not be surprised when the Naamans of this world approach us looking for salvation. This is why God created Israel in the first place. It wasn’t just to make one people feel special; it was so that “all the nations of the of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 18:18). This is why the Church exists.
Whether we are Israelites or Gentiles—which is to say, cradle Catholics or converts—the point of the story in the Gospel remains that the most important thing is not how we got here, but where we are—that the Lord has healed us, that the Lord has made us one of us own. And so today’s epistle from 2 Timothy is relevant, because in it Paul exhorts us to be faithful to our calling.
<blockquote>If we have died with him
we shall also live with him; 
if we persevere 
we shall also reign with him. 
But if we deny him 
he will deny us. 
If we are unfaithful 
he remains faithful, 
for he cannot deny himself.</blockquote>
That last bit can seem a bit contradictory, but it is meant I think to emphasize the fidelity of the Lord to his own promises. In other words, baptism is irrevocable, indelible. When he forgives your sins, they really are forgiven. When he incorporates you into his body, the Church, he really does incorporate you. The variable isn’t he, but we: our denial, our lack of perseverance, our infidelity. Or, in terms of the lepers of today’s readings, our ingratitude or our inability to recognize the gifts that we have been given, the gifts that ever stand before us, the grace constantly available in the Church through the sacraments.
Let us then strive for the enthusiasm and joy of Naaman and the gratitude of the Samaritan leper—not just to sit by and watch our healing, but to recognize that this gift is the sign of an even greater invitation to take part more permanently in the great work of God’s love.

Don’t Be Such a Leper

News flash: “Catholicism is “Bull#!*%” Hmmm…news to me, but apparently not to one of our followers:

The reason? The Church teaches, “Death was contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1008).
Why is this teaching so foul? “Scooby MIKE” argues that it runs contrary to the creation of human beings via evolution, which presupposes death.
Fortunately for “Scooby MIKE,” and all of us Catholics, there’s no stench here for us to worry about. Evolution indeed involves death. But when it comes to the creation of human beings, that is, beings with spiritual souls, evolution is hands-off. As Pope Pius XII stated in Humani Generis, the creation of a spiritual soul and its union with requires a direct and immediate act by God (sec. 36). Thus, the creation of human beings lies outside the material mechanistic processes of evolution.
This doesn’t mean, however, that God couldn’t have directed evolutionary processes (which would have involved death) to develop non-rational animals that would eventually become apt for union with a rational soul. Pope Pius XII teaches that when it comes to “inquiries into the origin of the human body,” it could have come from “pre-existent and living matter” (Humani Generis 36). Of course, this origin would have been under the governance of God.
That pre-existent and living matter very well could have been an animal somewhat like us in its biological makeup but lacking a rational soul. Therefore, the first true human being would only have come about upon the union of a rational soul with such matter.
But note that, before this union, such an evolutionary process wouldn’t have been the evolution of a human being. Rather, it would have been the evolution of a non-human being.
So, contrary to our friend’s claim, there’s no stench in the Church’s teaching that death entered human history after Adam’s sin in light of evolution

Evolution’s Not a Death Sentence

What are popular online Protestant apologists today telling their coreligionists who are encountering Catholic critiques of their religious tradition? “Confessional Lutheran, published apologetics researcher, and Church History enthusiast” Javier Perdomo gave us one such glimpse in his interview on the Protestant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEucTL17vaA">YouTube channel Gospel Simplicity</a>. In a video entitled “What&#8217;s the Protestant Response to Catholic Apologetics?”, Perdomo not only responded to some examples of what we might call “soundbite” Catholic apologetics, but also offered recommendations to Protestants struggling with how to navigate these debates.
Some of Perdomo’s advice is commendable and relevant for all ecumenical debate, regardless of one’s religious convictions. Despite being an online influencer, Perdomo urges viewers (and listeners) to get off their devices, touch grass, read, and pray—a worthy exhortation, given how much time we waste consuming content that does little more than elevate anxiety, or engaging in less-than-edifying debate that is little more than caricature and name-calling. He complains about Catholic over-simplifications and straw-manning of Protestants, which of course should be avoided—whatever we are debating, all sides should always charitably attempt to interact with the very best arguments our interlocutors can offer.
The interview features some responses to common Catholic criticisms of the Protestant position. These include the Catholic contention that Protestantism is hopelessly divided (Perdomo: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/you-catholics-are-divided-too">Catholics are divided, too</a>), or that the Protestant position reduces to individualism and subjectivity (Perdomo: Catholics suffer <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/stuck-in-a-circle-with-you">the same dilemma</a> because they have to individually and subjectively identify the contents of and then interpret magisterial teaching).
I will not belabor here what has been written elsewhere on these topics. Rather, I would like to focus on what Perdomo says at the end of the interview, when he speaks to Protestants trying to determine how to work their way through these often complicated ecumenical debates, many of which originate in the Reformation itself. He encourages Protestants to read the catechisms of various Protestant traditions, as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He urges them to read the early Church Fathers and “most importantly” Scripture, because otherwise, “you’re not going to even be able to know who’s right.” He tells them to join a church and “submit yourself to whatever elder you’re under.”
In one sense, this advice resonates with me, because it’s similar to what I often offered others when I was a Presbyterian seminary student almost twenty years ago. I vividly remember getting frustrated with evangelical friends of mine who loved debating the Bible and theology but who were not regularly attending any church or studying Scripture. But in another sense, I recognize now that such advice is incoherent and based on flawed premises.
Perdomo hints at one of these premises in his exhortation to Protestants to read the Bible to determine which theologians or scholars are right. Such advice presumes the <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/store/the-obscurity-in-scripture-disputing-sola-scriptura-and-the-protestant-notion-of-biblical-perspicuity">Protestant doctrine of perspicuity</a>, which, though it has a variety of definitions over more than five hundred years of Protestant history, is typically articulated as meaning that the Bible is sufficiently clear that the self-identifying Christian, regardless of intellectual acuity or academic training, should be able to read it and determine what is necessary for salvation or the essentials of the Christian faith. To presume this doctrine is necessarily to define myself as the final interpretive authority of Scripture—whatever theologian or scholar I read, that source is evaluated according to my interpretation of the Bible. Moreover, such a presumption undermines the ability even to engage in open-minded research and charitable ecumenical dialogue, because any position at odds with what is the so-called clear teaching of Scripture would necessarily be disregarded as de facto erroneous.
Let me provide an example of what this incoherence looks like in practice. Imagine yourself as a self-identifying Protestant who wants to better understand debate among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. You hold (perhaps inchoately) to some variation of sola fide, as do many Protestants across a variety of Reformation-originating traditions, and you do so because you’ve been taught, and perhaps you’ve even yourself determined, that it’s what the Bible plainly teaches. (By extension, this implicitly means you presume perspicuity, too).
So you begin reading the Church Fathers and prominent theologians and scholars across various Christian traditions, and some of what you encounter seems to contradict sola fide.
What should you do with such data? One option would be simply to disregard such positions out of hand. After all sola fide is clearly taught in the Bible! That would certainly be consistent with the doctrine of perspicuity, which since the earliest days of the Reformation has operated in close correlation with sola fide. Yet that option would also be contrary to the entire enterprise of rational discourse, in which we allow our opinions and beliefs to be challenged and welcome the possibility that we are actually wrong. It would be to effectively declare, “I refuse to have my opinions on the Bible’s meaning regarding salvation questioned, because I consider them indisputable!”
Another option would be to entertain the possibility of alternative interpretations of Scripture as equally possible. Perhaps the Bible doesn’t clearly teach sola fide, but it does teach something else, such as the historic Catholic position often understood as “faith and works,” or “faith working through love,” to use St. Paul’s expression (Gal. 5:6). But even to entertain that possibility would be to vitiate perspicuity—after all, the Bible is supposed to be clear on this. It’s not up for debate!
I hope you can perceive the dilemma here. The Protestant can resolutely hold to perspicuity in the face of contrary arguments, effectively treating the doctrine as a philosophical first principle, such as the law of non-contradiction or that the whole is greater than its parts. Such first principles cannot be proved; they simply are. Or he can consider the possibility that sola fide is wrong, but that would necessitate abandoning the perspicuity thesis, because he would have to grant that other interpretive positions on salvation have sufficient merit to be evaluated as possibly true—and so the historic Protestant doctrine would thus not be perspicuous. And if Scripture isn’t clear on salvation, dialogue and debate are required, as well as some means of authoritatively resolving those disputes (assuming we want them resolved).
What I’m getting at is that even to engage in the kind of open-minded study and debate that Perdomo calls for is to jettison the doctrine of perspicuity, because the doctrine itself is an obstacle to that enterprise. Perdomo (rightly and to his credit) wants to move beyond the caricatures, over-simplification, and even illogic that define so much of modern religious debate. The question is whether his own Protestant premises enable Protestant apologists to be up to the task.

A Protestant Advises Protestants

<div class="page" title="Page 239">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
DAY 229
</div>
<div class="column">
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“We don’t need the Church to help us identify Scripture. God’s word is self-authenticating.”
DEFENSE
This makes for good rhetoric but does not stand up to examination.
The word of God is powerful (Ps. 33:6; Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12), but this does not mean it is self-authenticating. Scripture records that even prophets could be mistaken about whether a word they heard came from God (1 Sam. 3:2–9).
Taken literally, the claim that Scripture is self-authenticating would mean that the text of Scripture has certain qualities that prove it to be (that is, authenticate it as) the word of God. What might these be?
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, “the heavenliness of the matter [in the Bible], the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God” (1:5). This is stirring rhetoric, but it can’t be cashed out in practical terms:
<ul>
<li>It is impossible to state a list of objective literary qualities that characterize all the books of the Bible and only the books of the Bible.</li>
<li>Even if one did so, one would need to argue why this collection of qualities shows it to be the word of God.</li>
<li>And why couldn’t someone write new literature that also displayed those qualities? If so, such writings would also self-authenticate as the word of God and would be new scriptures.</li>
</ul>
For a closed canon, one thus would need to specify a set of literary qualities that not only marked out the Bible as unique and as the word of God but that would also be impossible to duplicate.
This is not possible, as shown by the fact that nobody really applies this test. Those who claim Scripture is self-authenticating (including the authors of the Westminster Confession; see Day 236) end up appealing to factors other than the text, such as the witness of the Holy Spirit, meaning that the text is not self-authenticating.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Self-Authenticating Scriptures?

Do you ever wish someone could explain <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/baptism">baptism</a> to you like you&#8217;re seven? Come on, there&#8217;s no shame in it! Listen to Jimmy Akin explain the basics of why we&#8217;re baptized on Catholic Answers Live.