Journey Home - 2019-01-15 - Dr. David Anders

[Music] [Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program and this is one of those programs I look forward to on the journey home every once in a while of course I love all my guests I don't want to delineate one from the other but I enjoy when I have a returning guest especially a guest that is well liked by all the EWTN audiences in the past and it's just exciting they have dr. David Andrews back on the program it's been a long time I think I was with you for the first time in 2010 yeah and I think the last time David that you were on the journey home was the actually the last time that we did the journey home in the studio at EWTN David's a former Presbyterian and he's well-known to EWTN television and radio because he's the host of EWTN s called the communion we'll talk about that in a bit he's also the author of a new book the Catholic Church saved my marriage and so I know that you've already done a bookmark with with Doug Keck on that so we won't redo placate that and encourage the audience to go to that and watch it but also you have a website Calvin to the new world - Calvin - Catholic comm but David welcome back thank you so much it's my pleasure to be here I mean I should had you back long since it's way too long but it's good to have you here it really isn't as I'm also excited I've had the privilege of joining on your program I think one time I filled in for you yes you did Laidback and I've had you deep in Scripture so I've done numbers I was in Houston on that day and I turned on the radio and I listened to you and Doug Keck places me and Tom price that was kind of fun that's right that's right so but welcome back to the journey home what we usually do on a return appearances I know that your previous journey home appearance with a longer detailed description of your journey is available online so encourage the audience to do that but for those that haven't seen the program I'd like to invite you to begin by giving us a summary so briefly I grew up in an evangelical family meaning very kind of born-again Billy Graham type spirituality pray to receive Christ trust in Jesus for your salvation I grew up in a city Birmingham Alabama where there are very few Catholics and all the Catholics that I knew were ex Catholics and they went to our church and I would ask them did you grow up a Christian and they would say oh no I grew up a Catholic you know in quite seriously they were you know they meant that what they said and and and often they would tell the same story I didn't know Christ when I was a Catholic I didn't know my own tradition I didn't know the Bible and I didn't develop a living Christian faith till I left the church so that combined with all the prejudices built into my Presbyterian heritage I had no reason to take Catholicism seriously or Catholics as anything other than objects of conversion or proselytism and that's how I viewed them I viewed them as kind of these B'nai 'td fools honestly that were in slavish obedience to a Roman tyrant and trying to earn their salvation by crawling up a string of rosary beads to heaven and and flagellating themselves on the way to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe I thought it was just a superstitious backward medieval kind of slavish existence and I had no interest in the Catholic faith and but when I developed a deeper well I say deeper more engaged interior life in college decided to take my own Presbyterian faith more seriously also met a young lady that I ended up marrying it was a natural transition to go to seminary eventually went to a Christian Christian College Wheaton College studied theology there and went to seminary really orienting myself towards an academic career thought I'd be a professor in an evangelical college or seminary and teach church history so went on got a PhD in church history and it didn't turn out the way I thought hey so like so many people studying the history of the church ultimately led me into the Catholic Church after doing a doctoral dissertation on John Calvin I tell people John Calvin made me a Catholic and there were all these oh so fundamental theses of evangelical religion and they began to fall one after another of course the the big one for me was justification by faith alone yeah that was the doctrine I which the church stands Falls as I understood it and what began to open my eyes was reading Agustin great 4th century doctor of the church 5th century doctor of the church whom the Protestants had claimed as their own and as I began to read him voluminously I realized that Augustine by golly he was a Catholic his understanding of salvation was deeply Catholic sacramental moral interior renovation none of this Lutheran idea of imputed righteousness or faith alone but I also began to find once I was married began to have children not only was the doctrine of justification false to history I eventually discovered his also false to scripture too wasn't what st. Paul meant by saved by faith and not works of the law but as also false to my own experience because I found that I needed more than faith alone I desperately needed the renovation of my interior life and my moral life and grace because the conviction that faith alone would save was making me into a bad human being and the attitude I had had as a child that I needed to convert or proselytized people who didn't have the true faith meant that my orientation towards people was manipulative and exploitive I was interested in you because you were a mark someone that I could convert to my understanding of angelical Christianity and that was actually part of my spirituality you know I wasn't looking for a my charitable or kind or patient or humble after all Christians are totally depraved right that's what the reformed Presbyterian tradition told but do you have the true faith so it made me a very annoying dinner guest but it made me a bad husband and a bad father I remember and I was to a certain extent in that camp myself the John 15 vine and the branches abide in Christ produce fruit and if you don't produce fruit you're not abiding my interpret is the producer the fruit is the conversion of those people ok just like you're talking about ok that target that person what's the production of fruit conversion of those people you know that was a debate in the Protestant tradition of the 17th century about how do you know you're saved it is a big issue for them the other to know for sure you're saved and there were those that said well you you can know from these evidences from these moral behaviors that flow from your conversion purity and then there were others that said well even with empirical ISM they had this debate they don't I said well yeah but if you if you parse that behavior fine enough you're gonna find the roots of Pride and concupiscence in sense so it's got to be just this kind of purely subjective illuminative experience and those two camps went to war and and there's really no way out of that box you know you either are you have the presumption of I'm saved in spite of my bad behavior or you despair you know because you realize my behavior so bad I can't be saved in the Catholic answer ultimately was so much more sensible and I discovered it in the confessional that that first priest that said to me i absolve you of your sentence in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit and I recognized Jesus said that if I stick with the sacraments he who eats my flesh drinks my blood abides in me I have an objective promise that grace is on offer and he told me again he who perseveres to the end will be saved i I may not know for sure whether I'm in the state of grace but I know for sure where grace is to be found and if I lay hold of that and stick with that in to the end I will be saved I will be saved so better than absolute certainty it gave me the theological virtue of hope and that was a much sounder basis for living out my Christian life so you know justification fell apart Sola scriptura fell apart my whole doctrine of the church fell apart denominationalism went up in flames I was I was a Calvin scholar and reading Calvin I actually realized they would kick Calvin out of my Presbyterian Church because his ecclesiology his view of the sacraments was so much more robust you know the modern denominational idea is that it doesn't really matter what denomination you belong to as long as you have a sincere faith you can belong to any church you want to that that idea is not represented in the Bible at all and it's not even in early Protestantism anywhere it emerged kind of by default because Protestants couldn't agree on anything and so they had to concoct this view well it obviously we don't have to agree well it's not obvious to me at all you know and so denominationalism fell apart now recognize there is a coherent definitive practice of the Christian faith its normative there's room for variety but there is something that means to be a Christian that we all have to agree on the difference between dogma an opinion and so after you know Sola scriptura denomination doctrine Church justification by faith the moral life the life of prayer I was I got to the end of my wits and I said I'm either gonna have to become a Catholic or I'm gonna have to give up the Christian faith I'm gonna push out a few things my friend sure I mean that push you in but I want you to go back a bit you said you were you went to Wheaton you're an evangelical Billy Graham type Calvinist one of the things that open my heart to the church was recognizing this one book this Bible the soul foundation of my faith we never agreed on it all the different groups but you've just described Wheaton evangelical Billy Graham type who I had great respect for Calvinist even just in that statement we have contradictions oceanology sure sure I mean for example free will the whole justification thing how did you understand free will back then well did we have free will you know Luther wrote a book in 1525 I know you know the text called on the bondage of the will and it's interesting in that book he says that the Reformation is really not about the Pope or the Pape the papacy purgatory or even indulgences he says those things are mere trifles and not worthy of debate for Luther the key issue was can we freely cooperate with God's grace and Luther said no and the Catholic Church said yes and so I was a partisan a sectarian Protestant very keen to imitate the thinking of my founders so I was very much committed to determinism and the denial of the doctrine of human freedom for a long time or a long time you know I've done it for many years a little program called versus I never saw yes this morning ice had encountered a verse I never saw and I was thinking as you were talking given your background what you did with this verse book a verse in Philemon where Paul is trying to get Philemon to accept an essa --mess the slave right back as a Christian brother but he's not forcing him he's not telling him what he has to do but he says this but I prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will and I could remember what I did with that verse back when I was just like you brought up Lutheran Presbyterian that believed that our will we really don't have a free will but there's Paul saying you do have the complete freedom it's totally up to you to decide what you're gonna do with your slave so what would I have done with that I would have read read that text as an Ed's wards Ian through the lens that Jonathan Edwards gives in his book on the doctrine of the will which is to say that Edwards who was a Calvinist of course would admit that humans had freedom insofar as there was an inner principle that would determine the outcome of their actions but men really do choose what they want and in that sense he would acknowledge that they are free they're free to do what they want but they're not to define what they're not free to determine what they want because what they won is determined by a whole host of of preceding factors antecedent factors that all fall within the scope of God's providence so he simply he qualifies he acknowledged his freedom but then qualifies it away and and say Thomas has a very st. Thomas Aquinas course common doctor the Catholic faith has a very strong doctrine of God's providence too strong for some not everybody in the Catholic Church as a Thomas and really does teach that ever even free human actions fall within the scope of God's determining activity but he also acknowledges that there is a real sense in which humans are the cause of their actions the secondary calls in the same way that God is not making this cup stick to this table gravity is but God's cooperating with the gravity God's creating the conditions that allow gravity to work but it's not meaningless to talk about gravity having a genuine instrumental role to play and sticking this cup to the table and in the same way humans Thomas woods each are genuine secondary causes of their own activity and that it's meaningful to say so our guest is dr. David Anders and he's the host of EWTN is called to communion the reason I posed that would you've got excellent David is to point out that even in that simple little verse it can't be scripture alone oh sure sure it can't be scripture alone you needed a tradition on top of that to be able to put your theology and your philosophy and the words of Scripture into some kind of order to be able to live it out well the first time I was on with you in 2010 the scripture alone fell apart for me when I posed the question to myself why do I believe the doctrine why do I believe in Sola scriptura and I recognized instantly that I believed it because my tradition had transmitted it to me he was on the authority of tradition that I believed in scripture alone that seemed absurd to me but then when I began to break it down further I realized that the doctrine was incoherent at several levels one of them of course is that Christ Himself never indicates to us that we are to discern the Christian faith from an examination of the Bible on the contrary Jesus gives provisions for handing on the faith and his provisions were oral tradition and the teaching authority of the Magisterium go therefore into all nations make disciples teach them everything I have commanded you all of which was or I'll be with you to the end of the age do this in memory of me whoever sins you forgive are forgiven as the father sends me I so I send you what have you bind on earth is bound in heaven st. Paul receives that by way of tradition the tradition I received from the Lord I hand on to you as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes so it was oral tradition the Sacred Liturgy teaching office of the church until he comes again no mention of the Bible alone so that was one problem and then logically it just fell apart because you can't discern there's no principled way as a Protestant to tell the difference between Dogman opinion even if we look at the Bible and disagree how do we know if that disagreement is substantive or not no way to know and so the doctrine was was just reduced to philosophical absurdity in an instant and I lost the you know I lost the faith really over that yeah I I remember a journey that I went through and I wanted to have you went through the same when I was in seminary evangelical seminary very high view of Scripture and I remember us talking about well there was oral tradition in there behind the Gospels behind that I'm ever struggling with that i oq or something else that was there before that was carrying on the ideas or that actually the stories we have in the Gospels were written down years later as a result of years of oral tradition and I remember when it struck me I struggled with that issue because of my view of Scripture but also I remember when I realized but actually every New Testament letter written by Paul or James or John or Peter always assumed that their audience already had it mm-hmm exactly talk about that in your own journey or sure so they had they had the charisma they had the sacraments they had the elements of the faith tradition precedes the scriptures now here's something that I often ask people if God gave us a divinely inspired cookbook could tell you how to make the a heavenly meringue you would never presume that the cookbook could also give you instructions on how to order your church because that's manifestly not its purpose and in the same way people try to squeeze out of the Bible answers to questions that the Bible is not intended to answer it's not supposed to be a manual on church government or even a dogmatic theology text a simple investigation of the various components of the Bible tell us what it is Paul's letter to the Corinthians is a very occasional document dealing with a particular set of problems in one historic church in one time you know the Gospels are snapshots of key moments in the life of Christ and you could so on you can go in analyze each of the texts none of them is a comprehensive manual on Christian life why does the Bible exist why didn't God give us the Bible through the church he gave it to us to inform our life of prayer and moral reflection and to edify but not to be the be-all and end-all to define everything about our Christian life that's that was never its function or purpose yeah even just the letter I read Philemon she was a personal letter from Paul to his buddy you know and they got a slave between them you know and how do you it was a personal letter and we haven't even talked about the Canon problem how do you know how do you know you have the right list how do you know the Protestants have 66 books we have 73 how do you know it's 66 what why it's 67 how about 40 and if you even if you go with 73 why not 75 you know you you must advert to tradition you must even if you believe in illumination even if God speaks to you and says these books are divine well maybe there's another one I still need how do you know without adverting to tradition you can't know a certainty do you even have the right list of books let's talk about our lady because she's often one of the biggest hurdles for so many on the journey where was our lady before when you were long before you were thought about becoming a Catholic Church was she a difficult barrier for you into the church and Catholic devotion to Saints not just to Our Lady but to the Saints and to their relics was to me the most manifest absurdity it was the most rank superstition that could serve no purpose and I was certain that Catholics have brought the into the practice of the Christian faith from their pagan origins and that's that critique is articulated by Calvin the man that I studied he wrote a diatribe against relics that was up just a parody and a satire of all the most superstitious kind of medieval practices that he could possibly Lamm pain and so that was my mindset but in my dissertation work I was really studying Calvin's critique of late medieval Catholicism and it forced me to dig deeper into the history of these Catholic devotions and spiritual practices and as I read more deeply especially in the ancient church one of the things that struck me was that you could not find a layer of Christian practice in which there was no devotion to the Saints it didn't matter if you were looking at popular spirituality or the most elite and refined theologians it didn't matter if you looked in the east or the west the North of the South Latin Greek Syriac Coptic wherever you went throughout the world you found this practice there's a passage in st. Jerome's letter against vigilancia s' when he says the Jerome of course is 4th century Doctor the church he says does the Bishop of Rome do wrong does he do wrong when he offers the Holy Sacrifice he's talking about the mass over the bones of the martyrs Peter and Paul and not the Bishop of Rome only but all the bishops throughout the world that's what we call catholicity the universality of the practice and I realize studying that if I wish to claim any continuity with the ancient church I may not reject devotion to the Saints and their relics and that force to me is ok so this is this is the practice how then can I make sense of it is there a theology that makes sense of this and of course there is the doctrine of the communion of saints that we really are Christ in a mystical sense we are his body st. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5 that we have become God's colabor as if Christ was making his appeal through us we become members of Christ's body the church he who beholds the church beholds Christ that's what st. Gregory of Nyssa says and it and we see manifests in Scripture that Jesus chooses to manifest his grace to the world through these broken material instruments st. Paul st. Peter touchin handkerchiefs bringing people back to life healing the sick you know back in second current second Kings chapter 13 the the relics of the prophet Elijah bring a dead man back to life and I began to see yes if I regard these not as pagan gods as objects to be worshiped but as instruments of grace participating in that work of redemption as members of Christ's body the church all of a sudden my my my moral imagination my universe of friendship has opened up it's not merely the church on earth which with with which I'm in fellowship it's the church triumphant in heaven that great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews talks about a revelation 5 those 24 elders offering up the prayers of the church on earth before the throne of God is so much incensed and suddenly it became a beautiful picture of a deeper communion with Jesus and I said it's biblical its historical it's also rational and it's edifying I I can accept that and once I was able to wrap my head around the communion of saints putting Our Lady into that picture I already had a conceptual framework in which she made sense and her imminent sanctity as the one full of grace the Theotokos the mother of God made her elevation above that company of saints quite reasonable to me you mentioned in Jerome's quote the the Pope and all the bishops of the world offering this sacrifice right the use of that word Oh which would have been a problem arrest is Brownson a convert from I know 50 years ago you know I know what you're gonna say I talked about Saint worship yes and he said the talk about that because that's what he does he identify through think we worship saying you know Marcus you are the only other person ever met who has gone to brown sin on this question I've read Brownson I'm thrilled to meet someone else who's read Brownson on this brown sit makes a brilliant observation he says the reason that Protestants reject devotion to Saints is because they have rejected the notion of sacrifice and said they don't know the difference between worship and veneration worship worship the honor due to Almighty God is sacrifice st. Paul says offer your bodies as living sacrifices this is your spiritual act of worship all right the centerpiece of Catholic worship is the Holy Sacrifice of the mass the offering of the body blood soul and divinity of Jesus to God the Father in reparation for the sins of the world all right that's worship to salute the flag is just veneration but Protestants throughout the idea of sacrificial worship they threw out the sacrifice of the mass and so for them there is no distinction between an act of worship and an act of veneration it was less severe yeah and so they prayer exactly and so they get they can just you if you look at the Canon of the mass this is the the prayer in which the priest consecrates the body and blood of Christ and the mo in the Eucharist the Saints come alongside us as partners in this sublime act of worship offering this one sacrifice the whole church heaven on earth offering Jesus to God the Father the Saints don't appear in the mass as the recipients of veneration or worship but as participants in that and it's there more than any place else that that thing becomes focused you know do you know who the Kohler idioms were you know about the coal yridians okay epifanio's of Salamis fifth century doctor the church identifies this arabian heresy called cole yridian ISM in which a small group of women attempted to worship the Blessed Virgin Mary as a goddess and offer her sacrifice and he smacked that down pretty quick and it died out it was a heretical movement but most people have not heard of coloretti anism the reason why is the one time in history when someone actually tried to worship the saints it vanished without a trace there's just one document from ancient history that testifies to it Catholics have never everyone at the time from the top to the bottom knew and their gut this was wrong of course yeah we'll just take a break your thing I want to talk about before we when we come back is the physicality of the faith and how different that is from where we came from as Lutheran or Calvinists who rejected the physicality of worship and the faith and how actually not only central but essential it is like to get that sure like we come back and before we take a break I do want to say something you with if you like dr. Anders story if it's encouragement to you if hearing the conversion stories of men and women who've been drawn by the Holy Spirit to the church is an encouragement to you something more you want to find out about that I encourage you to come to our website CH network.org where we've got a gazillion conversion stories online for you to read or listen to and and also if you're on the journey we're there to help you so please contact us at CH network.org alright see end of it [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and dr. David Anders is our guest Calvin - Catholic comm is his website and he's also the host or the host of called - communion on EWTN and Wells as the author of the Catholic Church saved my marriage and he has the interview with Doug Keck on the bookmark program on that book we might get to a little bit before the break I mentioned that I wanted to talk about the importance of the physicality of the Catholic faith and and how that's different from where you came from sure sure so the tradition I grew up and I would really describe it as Gnostic you know about the ancient second century heresy of Gnosticism the Gnostics were people who believed that you could attain salvation through an act of intellection like what's in your head what you know about reality somehow clicks something in the divine economy so that when you die you're zapped out of this evil material world to a better place that is very similar to the tradition I was raised in and and in its most sort of gross expression it could be reduced to the idea that we're repeating a mantra reciting a formula the sinner's prayer Jesus come into my heart that phrase somehow locks you into the divine economy and you're guaranteed salvation now the problem with that view so many problems with that view but one of them is it really reduces our material life to absurdity of what value then this material life this life of of marriage and family and children and society if it's essentially disconnected from eternity it is it's of no ultimate value except as a realm in which to encounter this gnostic information and so what do you do with it what do you do with the 80 years you have on earth if you pray to receive Christ when you're seven and nothing you can do can dislodge that and that was the teaching right you're guaranteed salvation what do you do with the next you know seventy three years of your life and and it's it's easy to fall into a kind of a moralism to be antinomian antinomian somebody who Hey law morality have no concept what I was gonna say is connected with something I had said earlier and that is if you're in that mindset once you've accepted Jesus at a Bible Camp then what would now what well Christianity becomes like a pyramid scheme in other words the only thing left is for me to get somebody else to make the exact thing and to gets that person and then that person get someone else to say it and then there's that's all there is so it's a very thin theology in theology and it's a very banal way to live one's life because life is life is a rich and textured many-faceted bang with enormous beauty and and pathos and horror and pain and it's it's a amazing panoply of of experiences of what meaning and value are these if the only thing that I can do of eternal value is to convert another soul or myself be converted so this is why I mentioned earlier that the doctrine of faith alone it fell apart for me not only theologically academically but in my interior life I began to see I needed more things than just faith alone I needed the renovation of my interior life in charity I needed the virtues I wasn't I didn't learn about the virtues growing up now the virtues are very embodied you talk about the importance of the body the virtues are very embodied they're they're they're habits that we acquire to live in the world in justice or in patience or in temperance how do I eat too much you know do i watch too much TV I mean these are very embodied practices and then how of course I'll relate to my wife it intimately or just socially or to my neighbor and the Catholic faith has an answer to all of those things now the answer is a grace that actually changes my embodied experience of the world and it's a grace that comes to me through embodied and material media especially through the sacraments and the sacraments we must remember they're more than signs and symbols but they are signs and symbols they're signs and symbols that come with a promise of efficacy Jesus says if you if you engage in this ritual this sign this symbol I will give you the grace that is being figured or symbolized therein and this I think about performing a ritual or a symbol over and over and over again it's habit forming and if you do it with intention what is being figured here well when I go to the Holy Sacrifice of the mass I see symbolized in front of me Christ's self-sacrifice for his church that's what's being symbolized by the separate consecration bread here wine their body blood pull apart death but the Holy Spirit comes along and actually activates that and and recapitulates that sacrifice in my own heart so that I - hopefully if I cooperate with grace become a man who's willing to sacrifice like Christ did for his church lay down my life for my wife for my family for my kids for my society and you go week after week after week and you build this habit into your life of thinking the life of self-sacrifice and of charity and of love but you know along the way I stumbled I fail all the time and I need to be patient with other people who stumble and fail and it's easy to say that just as a pithy little apotheca but when I manifest that actively in the confessional week after week after week calling to mind my own faults but then accepting God's forgiveness and putting them behind me moving on and then having grace or hoping for grace praying and asking for grace to do likewise with my neighbor it's this habit it's an embodied practice that that shows me and creates in me the kind of dispositions that really do begin to transform my own life my faith my home my culture in the imprint of Catholicism this is another thing that impressed me as a congress the imprint of catholicism upon the world in institutions legal institutions educational institutions healthcare science all the rest of it is the most humanizing divin izing feature in human culture since the dawn of time you have the when I was a Lutheran Calvinist faith alone that yeah you don't want to go completely to the Gnostic side where it's just something I decided up here it's got to make a difference in my life but the idea of baptism the sacraments the things of the church we didn't see as necessary right they were part of that they're extras mistress and all different denominations of different extras what's important was faith alone yeah we don't want to go so far to say it's only that Gnostic side but from a Catholic perspective you recognize that God in His wisdom maybe humor of a mystery has not only said they're extras but that they're necessary I'll talk about the necessity from a Catholic perspective of the physicality of the sacraments the necessity of baptism the necessity of the sacraments sure sure so so you that they're necessary in multiple ways one of them is that if we do not have if we do not have rights and symbols then we have no coherent way to live a corporate life together as members of one body and Catholicism is meant to transform not only my individual relationship with God but my relationship with my neighbor and my entire culture and so the sacraments is embodied expressions of living doctrines our points of reference around which this disparate body of believers can gather I mean you've got to have a physical point of reference you know I mean people say well I don't like the church because they they have holy days of obligation they require you to come on this day and my response is well you got to come on Sunday you know if the church doesn't say you have to come on Sunday we'll never all get together at one time and you know one of the things that I love about the Catholic Church in its in its physical embodied reality is that you know we don't split up just because we disagree and when you go to Mass you'll be there with people of a different political persuasion people who even have different those allowable differences of theology and yes Catholics I do have some allowable differences in theology you know personalities temperaments I'm from Alabama so you could get all bird fans and Alabama fans in the same church on the same Sunday you know but were United around Christ in the sacraments that's a tremendous gift st. Thomas also says the sacraments it's fitting that they should be physical because it's in our physical embodiment that we sin it's fitting that the that the source the instrument of our Redemption be presented to us in the very same medium if you will that we offend God so that the tools of our of our falling away could also become renovated for us and become the tools of our renovation and then finally there's the doctrine of the dignity of our bodies you know the Catholic Church doesn't believe in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul we believe in the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead as Christ rose from the dead we look forward to an embodied existence that takes very seriously the dignity of our body it's why for a long time the church the church didn't allow cremation as a form of disposal of the dead now if you do cremate it has to be done very strict ways that regard the dignity of the body and look forward to the resurrection of those remains on the last day like to post something else for you to talk about another distinction from passed to our understanding president as a Catholic as evangelical Presbyterians the emphasis was on the individual conversion the individual salvation were as a Catholic we were it's this movement of recognizing that we're saved as a part of a group it's not so much the individual salvation as a part of the body radically different than one where he come was that true for you that that transitional understanding difference between the individualism of salvation versus saved as a part of sure I remember I read a book by oddly the luboc the Catholic theologian Christ in the common destiny of man yeah which Cardinal Ratzinger Pope Benedict also said had a profound impact on him and the whole thesis of the book is this this very distinctly corporate element in in Christian identity and which I think is the correct way of reading st. Paul on the doctrine of justification you know that we're we're formed as this one body in Christ through this common faith that we have and we share with the members and it really in the the dispensation of God's grace and when we believe that and live it out it has it has a tremendously transformative impact on our social relations and we see the fruit of it down through history so it's tremendously important now this Catholics also must have a personal individual relationship with God they have to cultivate friendship with Christ in their heart they must do that but in doing that they're joined to that one body of Christ and all the Catholics throughout the world that share that one faith that one relationships a good example of extremes you know the the extreme we came from was individualist doesn't matter what church you go to as long as you got Jesus that's that extreme the group isn't as important the Catholic extreme is just if we forget that it is individual also it's not just the group that we really do have to have that individual relationship with Christ we need to help our separate brethens richens that being a part of the body is very important I think about the mass we say not my sins but the faith of the church the act of faith is an individual act I believe I believe you know you have to it is but it is the faith of the church that I confess I believe what this society this body of Christ that he founded teaches our guest is dr. David Anderson you've been in the church 15 years we talked about your conversion into the church talk now about a Catholic 15 years later what have you learned what why you still Catholic some might say sure at this time well we are doing this program a lot of the answer to that question is in my new book the Catholic Church saved my marriage when I became Catholic my wife was not happy about it she was not Catholic and she was not happy about it and but we had had some pretty difficult times up till then life hadn't turned out the way other one of us thought it would and we were kind of tending in different directions and it was very hard it was very very hard in my conversion didn't help the matter initially eventually she came along and followed me through the very good pastoral care given to her by a Franciscan Capuchin priest named Angela Shaughnessy and we had our marriage conv lead agent in the church and once we did miracles really began to happen quite seriously and now I live a life of marital bliss I say that perfectly honestly and I believe in it and I think it's because of the grace of the sacrament center of the church in my life and the teaching of the church wreath forming the way I think about my marriage my family my vocation in life what it means to live a moral and good life all these things have been affected and changed by becoming Catholic in ways that have made me a fundamentally better person I got a long way to go Marcus I mean I got a long way to go but the before and after I mean it's it's a huge difference my wife two years later I asked Jill father Angelus had spoken to her in the confessional she had been raised Catholic so she could still go to confession she went to confession to him and I said what did he say to you in the confessional that brought you along she said he's only something no one had ever told me before he told me that my suffering had meaning he told me that my suffering had meaning and that's a part of the faith that you and I haven't talked about you know the way of redemption what is how are we saved we're saved the Catholic Church teaches by imitating Christ but not in a moralistic way not like looking at a famous person and seeing his virtues and saying I want to be like that when I grow up but really by seeking to live Christ's divine life after him he died on the cross and rose again I died with him in Baptism and rise again with him he sacrificed himself for his church I sacrificed myself for my spouse reliving these divine mysteries of Jesus's life in the sacraments trusting that the Holy Spirit will make them fruitful in my life and really will rebuild in me what I lost in Adam namely to be in the likeness and image of God holding on to his mercy believing that it's only by grace alone and grace alone as a Catholic doctrine though I cooperate with race and in that way I can be saved but part of that imitation of Christ Jesus himself tells us is you must take up your cross and follow me one of the scriptures that I'm pretty sure you and I would have agreed with was central to our faith as Calvinist was Romans 8:1 there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus mm-hmm and that verse I mean that's even one of the foundational verses to the one saved always saved is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus all right but we ignored the fact that tests 17 verses later Paul says when we cry Abba Father it is a spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer provided we suffer with him yes right now I did we suffer Romans 8 I believe has to be read against Romans chapter 2 there's a Greek phrase and both of those texts where Paul speaks about the decay Amata or the decay oma in two different words singular and plural of the law the righteous requirements of the law the justices of the law and what he says is look works of the law circumcision Sabbath's new moons the laws of kashrut these things don't make you righteous but if the Spirit of God causes your heart to be reborn in grace and the love of God is shed abroad in your heart at the end of the day that's what the law pointed to this renovation of the interior life and charity to one who walks in the Spirit of God after this manner one really does keep the inner demands of the law the righteousness of the law is fully met Paul says in Romans eight three and four the righteousness of the law is fully met if you walk in the spirit but it's it's that conditional the gift of the Spirit gives us the ability to love and be loved and not to be the slaves of our sin our can keep us and sent our pride but we must cooperate with grace we must suffer with him and we cannot he says in Galatians 5 and Romans 8 we can't turn back to those worthless deeds of darkness st. Peter 2nd Peter chapter 3 says if we do better not to have entered the way of righteousness then to have started out on the path and then given up the virtues and head back yeah in Philippians Paul says hey I'm not perfect yet guys right but forgetting what lies behind the press on work right I mean that's the humility of the continual Catholic walk with Christ is we're becoming perfected but we almost learn more and more first how unperfect idli are in the process you know Marcus see people sometimes ask me how can you be a member of a church that has so many problems and that's true we do have problems as a guy I say well yeah I guess I could look for a perfect Church I'd have to I'd have to leave it as soon as I got there because I'd bring my own imperfections to it you know I would be the one that one black sheep in the family you know I'm imperfect the miracle of the Catholic faith is through these broken instruments God gives to me on a daily basis this tremendous stock of teaching that frames my understanding of good evil right wrong the moral life spirituality prayer and Christ he gives me Christ and then he makes those teachings truly present to me in the sacramental mysteries and all I can tell you is I'm not a saint yet but I am I'm a lot less of a sinner than I once was you know I'm moving in the right direction I know the grosser vices that I've abandoned I know the difference it is made to my marriage and my friendships and I see the difference that it makes and the people around me all the time okay the Catholic faith is an enormous gift to me and I cannot conceive of taking one foot out of the bed in the morning without putting on the full armor of God that Christ gives me in this tremendous tremendous faith that he has given us in his church Ephesians two which is a verse you and I would have would have emphasized by grace we are saved by faith not by works lest we boast but it does talk about yet we are created to do those works those works which he called us to do given where you have come from talk about the the absolute essential miss oh sure well Jesus talks about them over and over again he talked about them over and over again he says if you pray in public to be seen by men that's it you get your reward in full if you give alms in public to be seen by men it's it you got the whole the whole thing if you give alms same thing but if you do these things in secret pray fast give alms your father who sees in secret will reward you he will reward you this is God's condescension to us that aided by grace he really does create within us those works that he then rewards st. Augustine says God you crown your own gifts in us right it's beautiful because then the life that I live does have meaning the question of what about this mortal life of what meaning or value is it st. Thomas Aquinas says that any good deed done in the state of grace merits an eternal reward by God's condescension that's the way it works in divine economy so even you know you help your child with her homework for the sake of the love of God and you can merit your salvation by grace you love your wife you you express repentance and extend forgiveness you reconcile enemies you know you hunger and thirst for righteousness God will reward these things in your life and if we're following Christ that we will be living this kind of way now we have to temper that with st. Dismas they found the cross he did a lot of good work st. Dismas he confessed Christ he made an act of humility he made an act of faith he had courage but he he didn't have an opportunity to feed the hungry clothe the naked give drink to the thirsty cuz he's you know nailed up on a cross but he said Lord Jesus have mercy upon me when you come into your kingdom and he's the first canonized saint in the Catholic Church yeah well part of the journey I think of understanding good works is I mean I can give you something David with the idea that if I give this to you then you then you're obligated to me or I'm giving it because I'm going to expect something from you in the future you know like that old from the Godfather you know I've been a you're gonna owe me something alright but the kind of good works that our Lord expects of us is giving and letting go you know giving secretly giving to some doing it not because I'm obligating God to give me salvation because I freely give that for his sake for his glory for his honor and to me that's really important part the the sheep and the goats parable I didn't know what I did with that as a Calvinist hmm yeah but really it is about as you talked about it's it's the alms that's the caring it's the praying the fasting in secret that's what that's about you know I was reading an article once by the Dominican theologian Thomas Joseph white who was talking about the Lutheran doctrine of justification and he clarified a point for me he framed it so concisely that in Lutheranism in Luther's theology a man can be justified can be reconciled to God while he remains at enmity with God in his will and that's true that's the that's the Lutheran doctrine I appreciated father white really putting it that way from the Catholic point of view the idea that I can be in loving union with you and hate you at the same time is incoherent salvation me salvation means that I have friendship with God the idea that I can have friendship with God and yet hate God makes no sense at all because love is a desire to be in union now if I love God truly I'm going to love his image wherever I find it and so I'm going to love my neighbor if I really love that I'm going to love my neighbor because God's image is imprinted on my neighbor and I'm even gonna love all created being in a proportionate way I'm gonna love the world that God created because it's good talk about and in the final moments then the distinction between we're in the past kind of a once saved always saved you've arrived but no aspect continuing conversion continuing growing in grace we're from a Catholic that's absolutely essential sure the Catholic tradition teaches that the spiritual life is actually a long progress we have a pretty pronounced doctrine of you know developed spiritual three ages of the interior life purge myself of sin began to enter into a mystical relationship with God look forward to an ultimate union with him in my heart which is the patrimony of the Saints and there's enough work to do to keep you busy the rest of your life I mean there really is and it's it's tremendous it's tremendous we didn't even touch on Catholic spirituality and the depth of prayer yeah so much time assuming that this book the Catholic Church saved my marriage is not just about how your wife changed oh no it's mostly about how I discovered the Catholic faith and how it radically knows how you oh she I'm the bad guy in this book I'm the bad guy in this book yeah yeah it's about how we changed and now by grace we discover even the John Paul's a spiritual that I mean Jonathan cross is dark night of the soul is how we grow in spirituality but then we realize we need more God knows we need more pulls away from us so that we pull more towards him boy David hey Marcus thank you so MUC goes too fast thank you absolutely happy on the program I'm gonna remind the audience that David hat is a host of EWTN is called the communion author of of the Catholic Church saved my marriage and I encourage you to go and look at the other things that David does on EWTN and also remind you that his full conversion story is available on the coming home Network website so if you'd like to read his full story as well as others go to CH network.org god bless you I hope that David's story was an encouragement to you see you next week [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019