EWTN Journey Home - Former Presbyterian - Marcus Grodi with Dr. David Anders - 02-08-2010

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program every week I have this wonderful privilege the journey home is all about helping you understand the journeys of men and women who were drawn by the Holy Spirit sometimes touching their hearts sometimes through the the logic of theology and apologetics but whatever it was that somehow the Holy Spirit awakened them to the beauty of the Catholic faith many of these guests if you watch the program before have come home because they were brought up in the church and then left and then by God's grace they sometimes with their tail between their legs and we're glad to be back some like our guest tonight and myself the last thing we ever wanted was the Catholic Church but we wanted Jesus and all of him and that meant in time recognizing the beauty of the church and so I want to remind though some of you may not realize this but this program has been on for 12 years we've got a lot of conversion stories on tape at ewtn.com all the old journey on programs are there to listen to if you'd like a copy of the dvds of the old programs you can go to the religious catalogue at ewtn and get all the old stories that have been shared with you over the years here on the journey home but our guest tonight is dr. David Anders former Presbyterian you those of you to watch the mass here at EWTN may recognize him because he sings in the choir once in a while so dr. Anders welcome to the thank you very much thank you it's good to have you here it over here I've seen you in mass singing in the choir are you there every day at mass no we sing just twice a week Tuesdays and Fridays all right all right so the audience will keep their eyes out to see you there and mass of course you visited here but probably weren't ever sure that you'd actually be up here on on the hot seat with me on them now I didn't know if that would happen but it's good to have you you're gonna be here thank you it's actually good to hear your story cuz you and I share a little bit of background in our Calvinism so I'm here you come from a little more conservative a sliver of Presbyterianism then I was a part of though we shared our same views but normally on the program I invite the guests to begin by taking a step back and give us a summary of your early spiritual background sure thank you very much I grew up here in Birmingham Alabama like you said in a very conservative Presbyterian Church an evangelical Presbyterian Church and I draw that distinction because I came to learn later after I went to seminary in graduate school that evangelical Protestants in America today differ quite significantly from their forefathers in the 16th century in the Reformation and our church was very interested in seeing people be born again I have conversion experiences pray to invite Jesus to come live in your heart and that was really the beginning of the spiritual walk even though we practiced infant baptism for us you became a Christian when you invited Jesus to come live in your heart whether that was at age 5 or age 20 or whatever and so very converging istic very emotional you brought up in that in this particular theological tradition from the time you could remember I was so growing up at that time were you aware that that particular slant on Calvinist presbyterian was a bit different than the presbyterian churches on the other side of the street Oh at that time no at that time I had no understanding and this was this was what I was told the Bible taught this is what the early Christians allegedly believed and we were just the pure Christianity pristine Christianity and so I grew up and in this tradition went to Bible camps Sunday School Christian schools invited Jesus into my heart when I was five or six years old and and stayed in that for most of my youth straight a little from the faith in high school and then when I got to college went to started out of the secular university neat discovered I need to come back to church rekindle my prayer life get back in touch with Jesus and had been spurred on by the the parallel evangelical groups on campus had that been a part of it you know it was really just a realization that that I believe in God I believed in Christ I believed in the scriptures I had let my prayer life slept for a few years I needed to come back to the Lord and rekindle that relationship that I had I had let go that had been part of my childhood and so that's when I came back into the practice of the faith in college I met a lovely young lady when I was in college she eventually became my fiancee and fortunately today she's my wife and she started going to church with me and and we were at a secular University at the time and we mutually realized that this university was not conducive to the practice of the Christian faith and it would be a good idea to seek out a new place to go to school and we elected to go to Wheaton College which is an evangelical Christian school and in Illinois and and just to again point out to the audience not everyone listening realizes that - an evangelical Wheaton is a household word that's right maybe I just I almost paid to use the word Mecca but I mean it is the the touchstone of evangelical America in terms of college level and that's that was a major consideration yep and went to Wheaton College transferred there in my sophomore year and began to study theology from really as you pointed out that the finest Protestant teachers of the faith very pious devout they love Christ very very intelligent very well educated people knew the Protestant tradition knew the Bible very well began to study the faith intensely with these men and women and ironically this is really the beginning of my journey to the Catholic Church and as you said it was the last thing I ever thought I would ever do because one of the corollaries of this Protestant upbringing was that the Catholic Church was the Antichrist I mean it was it really was the Church of Satan we considered it in your particular and you know I hope that any of the audience's watch the journey home program over the years realizes that just to say what do Presbyterians believe well there's no simple answer to that I mean there's a complete gambit from the most liberal Christian viewpoints to the most conservative all within Presbyterianism you were of that sliver of extremely conservative southern Presbyterianism that not only did you assume the Catholic Church was wrong but you probably heard from the pulpit right oh yes well honestly more from the missionaries the teachers in the schools the whole culture of the church was very very anti-catholic I don't remember that many sermons from the pulpit specifically attacking the Catholic Church but you didn't need to because we would always have people come into the church a lot of X Catholics would come to the church and you would always ask them oh well would you raised a Christian oh no I wasn't a Christian I was a Catholic you know but then I came into the Presbyterian Church and saw the light so that was the whole culture of the church that you weren't a real Christian if you were a Catholic and so I there was the last thing in the world I anticipated so I began to study the faith in depth and I really fell in love with the study of theology in Sacred Scripture and finished school got married spent one year in the working world and decided with my wife's consent that I really wanted to go to seminary and I wanted to combine my life to the study of theology and truthfully one of my major goals was to combat the Catholic Church and I considered it my duty as an evangelical protestant theologian to show that the Reformation was was correct was on sound footing and that the Catholic Church was in error that was my objective he would have believed then that if you would have converted a Catholic to the Protestant faith to the evangelical faith that you were doing them a great service absolutely absolutely in in fact converting a Catholic to the faith was was almost the highest form of spirituality I could practice and I can remember being in a in a class when I was preparing for my graduate school a GRE prep class it was a Catholic girl in the class with me and I found out she was Catholic and I pounced you know and one of my great regrets is I think I persuaded her at that time of my point of view and I pray to God that that didn't that didn't keep you know that that didn't take but oh yes we definitely wanted to wanted to go after the Catholics and so I went to seminary I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School which is another one of those flagship evangelical institutions and if you come from the evangelical world there'd be a lot of theologians and biblical scholars whose names you would know would be associated with that institution and I studied my Greek state Scripture learned the Bible very well and began the study of church history in depth and ended up majoring in church history and my plan all along had been not not pastoral ministry but to go into teaching or in my PhD and I thought one day I would be a seminary professor or a college teacher and that I would be teaching church history and my main objective in teaching church history was to justify their Reformation so I left I left Trinity with that mindset and it's still very very anti-catholic very anti-catholic can I ask a question about the history because what I went to seminary protestant seminary and studied church history we jokingly say that that we pretty much jump from the Apostles to Martin Luther and then learned it from there you majored in history I get a bit more than that than usual did you actually read some of the father's did you read Agustin and I'm glad you brought that up thank you one of the things that is part and parcel of Protestant identity is the notion that the early church was sound and that it's we're not never told exactly what we mean by the early church okay we don't know when early church falls away but at some point the church allegedly falls away from the purity of the gospel only to be recovered by Martin Luther in the 16th century and so that's part and parcel of the of the storyline now when you get to seminary and you begin to study and you really press and say okay well who are these early Christians the only answer that you're ever given they loved the church father Augustine of Hippo they loved Agustin because Agustin has a very high doctrine of grace he loves the Bible and and they think they find some commonalities in Augusta so our study of the fathers in seminary really majored on on a few themes when we could find areas of commonality particularly in agustin in his battle with the Pelagian heretics over the issues of grace and justification and salvation they would gravitate towards those issues and they would always interpret them with a very Protestant slant so that that's really my exposure at this stage of my education to the fathers because I think I remember using a textbook from one of the professors at Trinity I could guess his name - maybe I shouldn't use it here but it was a book on historical theology in which he took themes the Lord's Supper or salvation and looked at it historically but it was when I went back it was proof text it was proof texting drinking from agustin or maybe whatever father that that a text from their writings that was in line with the way we presently view or at least see the trajectory of it that's right that's right definitely so so but I did very well in graduate school and and felt very confident about my future in theology and and I left and went to the University of Iowa that has a an outstanding department of religion and began my PhD studies in historical theology they would call it history of religious thought you know but it was essentially historical theology and I elected to focus on once again their Reformation and particularly the the fault in the writings of John Calvin I grew up a Presbyterian and Calvin was our man and we liked Luther fine but Calvin was the one who'd really gotten it right and at least as we saw it so I thought this there's no better preparation from my future career than to immerse myself in the writings of Calvin and although all the while to continue my scripture study as I have occasioned study the fathers clearly agustin need to learn luthor very well and I think I should probably dip my toe into some medieval Catholic theologians st. Thomas Aquinas Duns Scotus and then some American theologians that were important evangelicals like Jonathan Edwards so I really wanted to prepare my pedigree to be the perfect Protestant theology professor learn all the all these sources of the Protestant faith and I was rudely awakened during that process I studied everything that I was supposed to study and the first hint that something wasn't right was when I really began to dive into Augustine of Hippo he's a Catholic doctor of the church but he's that he is the one church Father to whom the Protestants point above all as this is the one guy who believed like we do and I read thousands and thousands of pages of Augustan and I took comprehensive exams in Agustin and I learned to Gustin and I came to the shocking discovery that lo and behold Augustine was a Catholic and when I looked at his views of salvation and justification they were Catholic I put them side to side with the Council of Trent they were Catholic I put them side to side with the writings of Thomas Aquinas they were Catholic and I realized that the the unique Protestant accents that Luther put on justification and salvation particularly faith alone were utterly absent in the mind of san agustin utterly absent and and in fact his his views were anathematized rejected by the Reformers not by name they didn't reject Agustin wrote his news so this bothered me and I began to look deeper into well if it's not a Gustin maybe there's somebody earlier maybe that maybe Agustin lost it but someone else had it correct as I was wondering because the assumption behind so many Protestant faiths is that the early church was all right that's at some point in time that got it would it encountered a fork in the road and took the wrong fork all right and some push it all the way to Leo the Great who which would have been after a gust right right so you could push well gusts and had some good things but he had all that burden on his back foot and so what were you thinking that we were looking for is there was there an earlier time or a way to remember specifically with the day I figured out that Agustin was a Catholic and that he really really did not hold the Luther's views rushing in and finding a Lutheran friend of mine saying where do I go now what father should I read you know where right and he didn't have an answer but I you know I began to look and went back to the 3rd century the 2nd century and and it was even more terrifying because the earlier I went the less like Protestants they looked and and and the doctrine of the of the 2nd century church was even farther removed from Luther so then I thought well maybe I need to re-examine the writings of st. Paul so I'm going to go back to my Greek text I'm gonna go back to the Bible I'm going to look at scripture itself and see can I can I find Luthor in the writings of st. Paul and and I thought I'm gonna I'm going to go to the authorities I'm going to get all the helps I can I'm going to look at the Greek text but I'm going to look at Protestant biblical scholars not going to get any Catholics I really want to convince myself of the truth of the Lutheran position on Scripture so I find Protestant biblical scholars and I happen across this this movement called the new perspectives on Paul which is a movement in Protestant biblical scholarship that attempts to interpret Paul in light of his Jewish context in the 1st century and when I and these are the first class biblical scholars all of them Protestants all of them with Protestant view of the Bible is the sole rule of faith and I come to find out that the best in Protestant scholarship in the 20th century rejects Luther and they're not entirely they're not Catholics their point of view and Paul is not entirely Catholic but they provided me with a framework for seeing that Paul not Paul also could not really truthfully and honestly be read from a Lutheran point of view Luther misunderstood Paul and so from from the sources of the faith from the Fathers of the Church from the best in Protestant scholarship I eventually came to the position that justification by faith alone was a 16th century invention by a saxon monk who'd left the church and was no part of historic Christianity and yet I'd still didn't consider becoming Catholic but my faith was shaken Kenna can I ask where your wife wasn't all this um she was taking care of our kids okay and it was it was years this was this process went on for years it was a long time before she began to see that I was having some theological difficulties um the next the next big challenge to my faith is I sort of put that one on the backburner I said well I'll figure out justification later okay let's go see exactly that could be a career killer it could very well be a career killer and so I actually spend up fill a few years how can i how can I work a nuanced version of this doctrine into my theology so that I can continue to be a Presbyterian and be employed to the Presbyterian institution you know so I begin to study the writings of the Reformers and Calvin especially and later and I have another rude awakening and that is that the Reformers themselves don't believe the doctrines that I was taught growing up that there is a difference between evangelical American Christianity in the 20th century 21st century and the religion of 16th century Protestantism and specifically let's let's go to the deduction of being born again inviting Jesus into your heart you have to be born again this is absent this is completely absent from the writings of Kelvin or Luther both of them assumed that Christian life begins with baptism now their understanding of baptism wasn't entirely Catholic they had some things right they had something's wrong but they all agreed Christian life begins at baptism and you can read all of Calvin and you will not find one exhortation to a Christian audience that anyone in there should be born again the assumption is they are they are okay and I looked at the doctrine of Sola scriptura which you know I always thought that meant okay I need to read the Bible and find out if these doctrines that I'm being taught are true it's what I had done with justification and I come to find out that this is not how Sola scriptura the Bible alone was applied in the 16th century in fact Calvin specifically had a very high view of his own divine authority to interpret the Bible and in fact strongly opposed the laity in his own church challenging his authority to interpret Scripture or coming to different interpretations and there was a very celebrated controversy in his lifetime with a with a fellow by the name of Bullock over the doctrine of predestination and he was arguing with Calvin about predestination but for me the most interesting thing about that conflict wasn't predestination it was the assumption about who has the right to interpret Scripture and when you read Calvin's responses that's what really upset him it was that a layman would dare to challenge his right to interpret the Bible with authority and I began to see okay this this this notion of church Authority and Sola scriptura the way we live that in twentieth-century America is different from the way they lived it in the Reformation so as I said the two things there that also even the fine tune which I just which kept me as I understand my own Presbyterian background was number one it's born-again issue well I mean Calvin's view of predestination and not knowing who the elect were and the different the different shades of the way Presbyterians have understood that double predestination for some I mean they're all quite a bit different than being born again born again you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior right you know Calvin's view is for some of them some of the different Calvinist views or that that's some people know that your whole life with your of the elect or not these different views of that and the other one you you you just mentioned the whole issue of what was the second as you just mentioned second their interpretation of scripture yes I mean that's the two-volume Institutes when you read Calvin's Institute's and his strong almost arrogant at times saying this is the way it's it's understood as he writes out his Institutes in interpretation my description differ with that you're in trouble there there are number of places in Calvin you don't you don't hear these in the Presbyterian Church today but when I got into the sources where he he claims to be a prophet he claims to speak with divine authority he he he believes very strongly in the necessity of ordination but except in his own case because he sees himself as having been specially elected by God for this role he's been raised up like an apostle this is the kind of language he uses with himself okay there was another issue that I found very disturbing in comparing my own evangelical upbringing to the Reformers and that had to do with ecclesiology beyond the disty issue of authority things like the sacraments the Eucharist and are these essential parts of the Christian faith or they non-essentials can we dispense with them and growing up our view was if someone was born again they believed in salvation by faith alone they believed in the Bible as the sole rule of faith then they were in and if they disagreed on baptism of the Lord's Supper or church government these were non-essential issues and you could just let them pass that was a really key element of evangelical faith we actually prided ourselves on not building up walls between Presbyterians or Methodists or Baptists worlders and brothers in the Lord when I went back to the 16th century I discovered that that was not at all the view of the Reformers Calvin actually says in one little treatise he writes in the 1540s that a proper understanding of the Eucharist is necessary for salvation all right and as you know Luther wanted to go to war over the issue of the Eucharist rather than join with the swingley ins which is a reformed theologian and the Swiss over what he held to be a heretical doctrine of the Eucharist he thought the Reformed Church the Calvinists were worse than the Catholics all right so these issues to the Protestants were they were life or death issues and once again I woke up and realized are they life or death issues I've always thought that these are variable and they don't matter and they're in essential but here my own forefathers are telling me that the nature of the Eucharist baptism Church Authority all of these are issues that are worth dying for and worth killing for all right do I need to re-examine these issues now I'm getting very worried at this point I'm getting very worried at this point there was another piece of the puzzle in my dissertation work I did a lot of study on the history of spirituality and devotion and I studied the early church again and I discovered another fact that was very disturbing to me and that was the prevalence of the veneration of saints and relics in the ancient church and you know I - I sort of conceived these things as a medieval invention really a deformation of the faith something that the medieval church brought in no biblical basis for as far as I could see certainly couldn't have been any basis in the early church for this and the light really went off in my head when I was reading a study of the veneration of relics by the late antique historian Peter Brown and he made a statement something like this that the that you can track the expansion of Christianity in the ancient world by tracking the growth in the veneration of relics that the two were coterminous that you couldn't separate one from the other and I began to look into it and I found out that this is true this is true everywhere you go and eat in all the father's agustin gem it doesn't matter who you look at the the veneration of saints the place of relics and the life of the church indistinguishable well I had always viewed this is is really almost nauseating connecter Protestant sensibilities and I found out I wasn't the only one there was someone else in the ancient world who also found them nauseating that was the pagans and see his evangelicals we'd been taught these were if anything these were something that that we do adept that the medieval Catholics had brought over from the pagan world and I found out that Julian the apostate the pagan Emperor who'd wanted to reimpose paganism the thing that really disgusted him about Christianity was the fact that Christians were the fellows that carried around dead bones because in paganism they had always separated the the cemetery and the dead from the life of the city the city was supposed to be under the protection of the gods and the gods found dead bones very unappealing all right and you were going to offend the gods if you brought them into a place of worship Christians were the opposite all right and that that shook me and I thought okay I've really got to examine what is the basis for this is there is there any rationale for this fascination with the dead my my theological theological opposition's had no place for it but I thought what is the reason what's the rationale and as I began to study the question I realized if I could be open minded about it there was really a profound reason from a biblical point of view from a Christian point of view and even an from a devotional point of view of a devotion to Christ and it was this that scripture teaches and the tradition teaches that the church is the mystical body of Jesus and in a real sense when I touch a Christian I am touching Christ and even as the sick would touch the body of Jesus and be healed when I touch Christ in his members I'm coming into contact with Christ and when I thought about it I realized there is a biblical basis for this first of all in the Old Testament and the passage in 2nd Kings with the dead body is thrown into the tomb of Elijah the Prophet he strikes the dead body of Elijah comes back to life so we have biblical attestation of the idea of a relic having miraculous powers and endued in it and then in the New Testament of course Peter who you know handkerchiefs are touched to Peter and people are healed and you know come back to life and so on and so forth and I see the same thing happening in the life and the writings of the fathers agustin has a story of the confessions about discovering the relics of some saints local Saints in Milan and the blind to go and touch the caskets and receive their sight and but when I saw it in light of this doctrine of the mystical body of Christ and realize the Catholic veneration of saints is it's not about taking our eyes off of Christ it's not about Protestants talking about we believe in Christ alone and you Catholics import all this other stuff no no the Catholic faith is so intensely Christocentric that we find Christ in everything especially in his body the church and suddenly it went from being a disgusting notion to one that had a tremendous beauty to me it was it became attractive I also realized that the Protestant point of view on the dead is that death wins death wins death creates a curtain a barrier a door between the church on earth and the church in heaven and the dead the church in heaven turns its back on us doesn't care about us doesn't know about us certainly doesn't pray for us and has no contact with us but the Catholic point of view was that no one of the reasons we venerate relics this is a foretaste of the resurrection of the dead we're witnessing to our faith that these bones shell again live because they have been joined to Christ they've been placed in union with Christ and from the Catholic point of view because of our relationship to the Saints we we rejoice in death because we know we've just gone from better to best and they haven't turned their backs on us they continue to love us to pray for us to be in communion with us and once you have been on the inside of this experience you know it doesn't turn you away from Jesus yet it enlivens your faith in Christ so tremendously like Paul when he said whether you should die or not he doesn't know which is better he wants to be with Christ wants to serve Christ - when he was torn between this let's take a break second David and we'll come back a little bit more of his story as we hear more about how the Lord was drawing him to the Catholic Church to see events No No welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is dr. David Andrews and before we could continue with the story I want to remind you that EWTN allows me to be on their network a couple other times besides the repeats of the journey home program I also have the privilege of being on EWTN radio Wednesdays at two o'clock this coming Wednesday at February 10th I host deep in Scripture our guest this Wednesday will be Rhonda servant she'll join us to talk about a verse she never saw a particular scripture that inspired her on her journey home to the Catholic Church that's deep in Scripture this Wednesday February 10th on EWTN radio to Eastern Time all right David I cut you off no problem acting journalist pick up where you're with I have I've come to a point in my story am I in my life's journey where growing up I believed that we were saved by faith alone the Bible was the sole rule of faith that I had to be born again that as long as I had those down everything else didn't matter it was all in essential and at the early church was on the right track and the Catholics had lost it all right by the time I'm coming to the conclusion of graduate school I've lost justification by faith alone I've seriously been shaken on my understanding of whether or not all these in essential things really are essential do I need to start worrying about what the church is and what the Eucharist is and what baptism means things that had been unimportant to me before I've realized that this whole born-again spirituality is not original to my own founders and that's don't find it in Calvin I don't find it in Luther I really don't find it until the 18th century when the Protestant revivals happen in New England and Jonathan Edwards and Woodfield and Wesley and these sorts of characters so I realized my own faith is a relative newcomer in the Christian world it's about a hundred and fifty two hundred years old it's not in the 16th century it's certainly not in the Middle Ages and I can't find it anywhere in the ancient church so then I realized there was one more big issue I had to tackle the Bible the Bible alone that was the almost the final straw I'd always been taught always assumed any theological question I had I had to go to the Bible to answer it the Bible was the final authority all these other questions made me ask is that true is that true Sola scriptura what's the basis so I went back to the sources I started with Calvin and Luther went back and read them again even though I knew them quite well at this point what did they say about the Bible and I realized that for all intents and purposes the reformers had no defense for Sola scriptura they merely asserted it they had a few arguments here and there but they basically were things like well we should listen to the voice of God and not men materialism truisms that don't amount to real argument that proves nothing or Jesus condemned tradition when he assaulted the Pharisees and the rabbis but but no sustained argumentation in favor of okay we know from a divine authority that the Bible alone is the rule of faith nothing like that really in the Reformers so I have to move on so I'm moving to 17th century Protestantism the the Protestant scholastic theologians and I began to find more argumentation about the Bible and then of course today in the 20th century 21st century you do find Evan Jellicle theologians who realize they finally have to tackle this subject and deal with how do we really know the Bible as the rule of faith very big ironic discovery they appeal to tradition to justify the notion that the Bible is the sole rule of faith they appeal to tradition they go they find some church father who gets in a theological debate and appeals to scripture or they look even believe it or not it the medieval theologians or they point to Lutheran Calvin where they point to their own experience but their their main argument in favor of the Bible is an appeal to tradition now some of them nuanced it by saying yes but this is not Catholic tradition we're talking about some other tradition it's not it's not the authority of the Pope it's but but at the end of the day they're appealing to tradition some of them have actually recognized the inherent contradiction and there's one presbyterian theologian who has actually said we don't have an infallible can in a scripture we have a fallible list of infallible books right which has always struck me I'm sorry is absurd alright and I realized that if you if you stick with the notion of the Bible alone you you there's no basis for it in history no yes as a historian were you aware had you dealt with how the Bible came about the collection the canon and you dealt with that you know I studied it at great length I started a great length and and also you're thrown back on the texts of Scripture themselves in the words of Christ himself and you have to go back and re-examine you know we were always always taught well Jesus rejected tradition tradition human tradition is terrible Jesus rejected it therefore we should reject tradition in favor of Scripture Jesus always appeals to Scripture this is the kind of argument we were told so I go back and I look at the way Jesus in fact uses Scripture and it's true Jesus quotes the Old Testament frequently does Jesus quote the Old Testament as the final authority and the sole rule of faith by no means by no means he points to his own authority his own authority as the author of Scripture and the infallible interpreter of the Old Testament and on the surface at times seems to dispense with things in the Old Testament that had a time in a place that are no longer relevant the dietary laws of course especially a circumcision these sorts of things now there's nothing in the Old Testament itself that justifies that it's only the authority of Christ that justifies that now what does he do with that authority well he says to the Apostles all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me therefore you go forth to all nations and teach everything I've commanded you and I will be with you a promise of divine assistance until the end of the age so that authority that Christ had to interpret the scriptures to change the legislation of Scripture to appeal to his own authority you heard that it was written but I say he now passes on to the apostles now is there anywhere in the words of Christ anywhere in the words of Christ that he mentions a newt no we're of course not Jesus never mentions the book of Romans the book of Galatians while he does refer to individual Old Testament prophets he never refers to a canon of Scripture so where does this notion come from of a Canon and of course if you study the history you know in the early church yes the early Christians revered the writings of the Apostles they passed them around they shared them with one another they found out that they had different lists they didn't all have the same books so what do they do they appeal to the authority of the Living Magisterium of the church Pope Damasus the first he solicits the help of Saint Jerome Agustin calls a council in North Africa and the Church Fathers examine the question and determine what is and what is not the Canon and so the Bible that the Protestants appeal to that they say as the sole rule of faith is a product of Magisterial authority given to the church by Jesus Christ Jesus never says the Bible is the rule of faith he gives us the teaching Church as the role of faith which would force that particular presbyterian scholar to say therefore it must be a fallible collection because it was put together by the Magisterium of the church at the time right I'm a falcon of infallible books that were that's his only conclusion that's right so which means if you take that point of view if you believe that the Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books innocent Luther would never use that language but in effect that's what he held because he was willing to throw out books that had been held as canonical before them if you take that point of view you have to conclude that we have no certainty in our rule of faith because how do I know in the final analysis that Romans is part of the Canon or that Galatians is part of the Canon well what if I don't like Galatians can I throw it out like Luther you know Luther didn't like James Luther didn't like the dura canonical texts can I throw out Galatians if I don't like it there were early heretics like Marcion who did just that they didn't like certain books of the Bible okay can I do that also what opens that also to that hold da Vinci Code things that there were other ones that should be in precisely sure how do you know what about the letter to Laodicea should it be in there can we should go digging it up and finding it so can't can I have the same certainty objective certainty about what is the Christian faith that the Apostles had can I have the same certainty that the early church had date they knew what the Christian faith was they knew with certainty that Christ taught with the divine authority a message from God of how to know him and be in a relationship with him can I know what that is can I know what Jesus said what he taught well only if he gives me the criteria only if Christ says here is how you know what I said here's how you know what I teach and he doesn't give us the Canon of Scripture he gives us the teaching church so there goes Sola scriptura for me okay and and I have to at this point can i all right I really have to start considering Catholicism all right is there anything else I need to put together in this picture well the Bishop of Rome what about the Bishop of Rome okay and here's what I learned from history unanimity total agreement in the early church that Rome is the sea of Peter you don't find that disputed no one even even the most anti people here took no one disputes that Rome is to see if Peter no one disputes that Rome is the the the first see that it is the first of all the promises in the ancient church of all the Apostolic sees Rome is the final Court of Appeal in theological dispute ation you find that very very early on popes are making claims not only to a primacy of Honor but to a promisee of jurisdiction meaning they claim the right to in fact intervene in the internal affairs of other diocese and they claim this as a right emanating from their by Christ as successors of Peter all these things are on record in the early church okay and then I look at well what about the problem of bad Pope's what about the problem of bad Pope's can I can I live with the fact that they were bad tips well what is the Pope's job description in the final analysis it is to keep the faith United to guarantee the integrity of the faith has he fulfilled that job description and the answer is yes when I when I look at the sources of the faith when I study the Scriptures when I see the message of salvation that Christ taught that the father's taught where is that instantiated in the Christian world today it's in the Catholic Church it's in the Catholic Church and moreover the church continues to provide me with a living Magisterium that doesn't just guarantee the deposit of faith once for all delivered to the Saints but interprets it for me in light of new circumstances stem-cell research you know modern questions that couldn't have been anticipated by the fathers I have a living Magisterium speaking with divine authority to interpret that deposit of faith for me so there's not only a historical basis there's a practical basis and I begin to see the beauty of that and it doesn't well I grieve that you know there have been bishops and Pope's that have made personal mistakes and sins and so forth and so on they've they've maintained their job description all right they really have so by the Holy Spirit by from not teaching a false doctrine I mean that the Holy Spirit so guarded them they with all their lives were something you didn't it's like kinda like Jesus said you know you to the men to the leaders sitting on the seat of the cathedra exactly do what they say exactly on what they do you know they're exactly it's been part of the object so at this point almost all the pieces are in place almost all the pieces are in place and the the final intellectual piece in place for me was the realization that Christ had said the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church and I realized that if that if Luther was right if Calvin was right if the Protestants were right then Christ was a liar that that the gates of hell had prevailed because I had studied the tradition all the way back to the sources every century all the father's and there was nothing remotely resembling evangelical Protestantism for 1,800 years and if that was the true faith then then Christ was a liar but I look at the Old Testament you know the prophets speak about a mountain that will fill the whole earth a kingdom from sea to sea all the nations straining to Jerusalem the light to the Gentiles it's the most glorious vision of the kingdom of God that would come in the Messiah and Jesus preaches the kingdom is here this long-awaited divine reality that God had been preparing for for the in all of human history in the entire created universe and it can't last for 25 years it falls apart as soon as the last apostle dies this isn't consistent with the view of the the glorious kingdom of God that had bent with it is the whole theme of Scripture and I realized if if Luther's right if Calvin is right then then Christianity can't be true but if Christianity is true and Christ is Lord then the Catholic Church is the church he founded he founded one church he gave us one rule of faith and it's in the Catholic faith believe it or not this realization it first depressed me because I realized that everything that I had ever thought or been taught or held dear or prayed through or studied or trusted was wrong and and it depressed me and I went through a period of real struggle and difficulty before I actually entered the church and this is where the the spiritual on all this intellectual stuff led up to now the spiritual and the emotional begin to play a role and and the Lord slowly showed me how he wasn't just satisfying my intellect but if I would enter the church they were deficits in my person my spiritual life my moral life that could not have been healed in Protestantism that would be healed in the Catholic Church and I'll give you an example Luther I believe was bipolar this is my personal opinion from studying him if you've read Luther you know he was always going from extreme to extreme depression elation depression elation God in the devil you know and he imported that into his theology he actually talked about he called it his infect him you know this is a part of the Christian life for him and he identified that depression with his experience of law and condemnation and his elation with his belief in justification by faith and he taught that this should be a part of the life of every Christian that she should move from despair to elation alright and I found that this is in fact the way Protestants operate because of their peculiar doctrine of salvation they think if I only have faith I know I'll be saved and then they're related but then comes the inevitable question how do I know if I have real faith well the way they define faith is partially experiencial there's a there's a warming of the heart there's an emotional i love christ there's this drawing there's a subjective component to what constitutes real faith well that can always be called into question and so I have dear family members that that struggle something have I had a real faith have a had a real conversion so they'll they have oh I have faith I know I'm saved oh but do I know I have real faith so they're not worried about works but they still have this this doubt in this question but then the works do play in because the Protestant faith teaches if you're really saved well your life will show it but then they also tell you all of your works are hateful to God no work that you can do merits anything so you'll have works but works are hateful but you have faith but did you have real faith and so there's this constant back and forth between these two poles and I found in the Catholic Church a glorious brilliant refreshing objectivity there's no doubt about what the faith is and there's no doubt about whether I believe it because faith is an assent to what the Church teaches to be revealed by God you either assent or you don't and you don't have to worry about feelings and the question of forgiveness you know Protestants always teach when you're growing up Catholics are the ones that are supposed to be neurotic and the confessional is supposed to be the worst place on the planet this is what we're taught you know this is why Luther was so messed up because he'd been to all those confessions when I went to my first confession it was like a shower from heaven it was the most glorious experience of my entire life when I heard those words of Absolution when the priest said i absolve you from your sons and I knew that Christ had said to him through the Apostles whoever sins you forgive are forgiven he didn't attach any qualifications he didn't say you know well if you have this emotional experience only whoever sins you forgive or forgiven and if you say I'm sorry and you mean it they're gone and when I believing that because I believe the words of Christ that first confession I felt this is the most wonderful institution that I have ever seen in my entire life so far from creating any kind of neuroticism it relieved so much internal tension so much anxiety that I had always grown up with and it was liberating that objectivity is really key because I think even convert sometimes don't catch that always that it's unique I I've got a young son who is learning remorse and and but there are times we'll say dad I'm sorry later is it well dad I didn't really I didn't feel sorry but I'm trying to help him to know you it's a choice you make to be sorry it's exactly right that's exactly right so the Catholic doctrine of contrition has nothing to do with emotion or feeling it has to do with a determination that I have done something objectively wrong and I am deciding to not do it again no yeah tomorrow I may stumble but my determination to improve my life and to turn away from sin that's what we call contrition it's not an emotional thing and it's very objective there's no doubt about it yeah very liberating so once you discovered all this were you ready to come in you've been through the dial you said at first it was a downer because you realized it wasn't downer yeah it was a downer um the the st. Thomas help me st. Thomas helped me and by the way before I came on the show today a friend of mine lent me a relic of st. Thomas as I was able to bless myself with a relic of st. Thomas before I came here but um Calvin had always taught that your final certainty is from this illumination of the Holy Spirit this is how you know that you know that you know God zaps you okay and that's not the Catholic view now God does draw us the Holy Spirit does draw us but but faith is a has a intellectual component it has a volitional component at the end of the day as a Catholic my belief is an act of my will to say I will align my life with what the Catholic Church teaches and I don't have to necessarily feel fireworks although you know they come all right and Thomas laid out a path for me where I realized I can I can do this I can choose to do this I don't have to wait around anymore for God to push me in and you know there were some answers to prayer I remember my first my first experience actually praying to a saint I was I was terrified of praying to Saints but I prayed to st. Therese of Lisieux if this Catholic stuff is really true you've got to show me and about a day later she sent me to Catholics to my work who happened to attend the st. Therese of Lisieux parish and they came to me talking about the Catholic faith this has got a big an answer to prayer and so eventually in 2003 I was received into full communion in the Catholic Church my son was baptized in the Catholic Church on the same day and my wife also came in and now she she is fulfilled and happy in the church as I am let's let's assume watching our program there's a real conservative evangelical Presbyterian Tyrian of your ilk or happens to be watching I'm wondering it would you have a word you might want to say to them why they should consider making the same journey on the you and your wife of me how do you know that the Bible is the sole rule of faith who told you not Jesus Luther and Calvin told you men did they tell you with divine authority no they didn't they told you because they wanted an excuse to leave the Catholic Church and then go back and look at Paul again what does he say about the ethical life the moral life justification by faith is it scriptural it isn't and from the inside the Catholic Church is a wonderful place we'd love to have you thank you David thank you very much a journey join I do appreciate the way you've expressed it so clearly and you know often on the program we'll have guests that come from different traditions but your particular unique evangelical Presbyterian background I think speaks to a lot that are out there today that are struggling with the meaning of their evangelical faith because that's one thing the Internet has helped to see it's all the other opinions that are out there that's right and so thank you so much for your witness thank you and sing it in the choir you do you don't I think you're doing it thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home David has hit a very large number of nails on the head very important issues and I pray that it's been an encouragement to your own journey of faith god bless you you you

Channel: Christopher Davies

Views: 86,625

Keywords: Journey Home, EWTN, Catholicism, Apologetics

Id: R5NT32Y-Mrk

Length: 56min 36sec (3396 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2011