>> Well good evening. We would like to welcome
you to this conversation on a future of Protestantism. I'm Paul Spears, the Director of the Torrey Honors Institute. Torrey is committed to a
robust intellectual life grounded in the great
texts or should I say even great conversations that wrestle with the perennial questions regarding our place in
God's orderly universe. So it is not surprising that we would leap at the
chance to be a part of what we hope will be
another great conversation. I would also be remiss, if I
did not thank our cosponsors, the journal First Things as
well as the Davenant Trust. I would also like to start by apologizing for the distinct advantage
that Fred Sanders has by having this be his home field. So to be fair we're going
to take three minutes away from his presentation time. [audience laughing] That's been agreed upon by
all the other participants. They paid me off. At this time I would like
to introduce Brad Littlejohn of the Davenant Trust to
introduce our distinguished panel. [applauding] >> Thank you Paul. It's a pleasure to be able to be here and welcome you all on
behalf of the Davenant Trust. In the spirit of our
namesake, John Davenant, our organization seeks
to embody his vision of an ecumenical, intellectually serious publicly engaged Protestantism
for the church today. The Davenant Trust is
committed to a project of evangelical and Reformed resourcement, a return to the sources. For us, that means
particularly the sources of early Protestantism in
the 16th and 17th centuries, not because we don't need to be reading the fathers and the scholastics as well, but because we think that
our Protestant forefathers are too often taken for granted and too little understood
by most modern protestants. We found that the more that
one digs into these sources, the more one finds the
questions that consume us today: how Christian faith
informs political practice, how political authority guides
our ethical deliberation, how to foster the unity of the church and demonstrate the rational
credibility of your witness were there questions as well, questions to which they provided some profound and enduring answers. We seek to retrieve this
wisdom for the church today and more importantly, to do so in a way that breaks down the stultifying divide between professor, pulpit and pew. We aim to bring the resources
of academic scholarship into the churches, enriching the discourse of both pastors and laypeople. Conversely, we aim also to bring thoughtful and educated pastors into collaboration with scholars and to create opportunities for them to develop their own scholarly gifts for the edification of others. If you're interested in
learning more about our work and our ambitions, please
check out one of the brochures that have been included in your packet or read more about us on our website. If you're interested in
being part of our work or supporting us by time, money or prayers and especially money, [audience laughing] please sign up on the table,
as you exit afterwards, to receive emails or become a member. Although Davenant has
played an important role in this event, we can only take
a small slice of the credit. I would like thank Paul
here and Fred Sanders and the entire Torrey Institute for their hospitality and their commitment to making this event happen. Laurel Hurst has been fantastic in handling all the logistics and making sure that all of
us flying in from out of town were well taken care of. And of course I would like
to thank our three panelists and the moderator here for being willing to take time out of
their very busy schedules to participate in this
important conversation. Thanks especially to Peter Leithart for being willing, after having endured some sharp criticisms in print for the essay that prompted this even, to have the courage or possibly brashness to fly out here and face two
of his critics in person. The greatest thanks
though goes to my friend Matthew Anderson, alumni of Torrey Honors who many of you may know. It's been a pleasure working
with him on this event, over recent months and I hope its success repays
the effort he has put into it. This event was his
brainchild and he oversaw most of the planning and logistics from over 6,000 miles away. He also stuck with it
with dogged perseverance over the past several months
when it looked, several times, like it wasn't going to come together. That includes yesterday
and today, in fact. It's a minor miracle that you see all three speakers on
this stage behind me. Dr. Leithart's flights were disrupted by the barrage of tornadoes
in Mississippi and Alabama and Matt was working
feverishly behind the scenes, even while Dr. Leithart
was peacefully sleeping, unaware that his flight had been canceled, to rebook him on the last available seat of the last available flight and he arrived about 30 minutes ago. [applauding] Thank you Matt. I know you're listening from Oxford. Now I'd like to open our event in prayer. Almighty God, we thank you for your great grace in making this event possible and for your kindness to Peter Leithart in bringing him safely
through the storms last night to be with us today. We do pray for all those that
have not been so fortunate and who are grieving today in
the wake of deadly tornadoes. Protect all those in the
path of the storms tonight. We pray for the conversation ahead that you would bless
each of the participants with clarity and grace to express their convictions and charitably challenge one another in a way that builds all of us up and equips us to be better disciples. Help us to understand what location it is you have called us to as Protestants and how to fulfill it in the
years and decades to come. We do pray that you would
heal the rifts in your church and improve understanding
between its warring members and we pray that our conversation tonight would make some small contribution
toward that great end. In the name of Christ,
who has reconciled us through the blood of his cross, we pray. Amen. And now I'm supposed to say a word or two of introduction
about each of our speakers. So Peter Leithart will be going first, as is fitting, since his essay, The End of Protestantism, was
the occasion for this event. Peter Leithart was, until lately, a professor at New St. Andrews College and now heads up the
Trinity House Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. He's published on topics
as diverse as Shakespeare, Athanasius, biblical hermeneutics and American imperialism. Fred Sanders, of course many
of you here already know. He has taught here at
Torrey Honors Institute for the full duration
of his academic career, beginning in 1999. He is also the author of
several books on the trinity and John Wesley and well
known in the blogosphere from which he fired the salvo that helped initiate this event. As a committed Wesleyan,
he will be offering something of a classical
evangelical perspective on the questions we are
discussing this evening. Carl Trueman is our token Englishman [audience laughing] and currently a minister in the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church and professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary. And eminent historian of the Reformation and Protestant theology, he has written books on
Luther, Calvin, John Owen and American politics. Why not? [audience laughing] He will be speaking from a non-cranky confessional
reform perspective. [audience laughing] A brief word about the format
of the discussion to follow and then I'll shut up and yield the floor to the much more interesting
gentlemen to my left. Each of our three panelists
will offer a short presention sketching their viewpoint on the meaning and role
of Protestantism today and how, if at all, it needs to change, to be a faithful witness to
the catholicity of the church. Our moderator, Peter Escalante,
will then ask Dr. Leithart to kick of our discussion with a brief response to his critics, clarifying the points of disagreement. And then from there we
will gradually descend, it is hoped, into what
Dr. Trueman described as a three way gentlemanly cage fight [audience laughing] umpired by the capable Mr. Escalante. And then we will finally
open the door for questions. So without further ado, I
give you Peter Leithart. [applauding] >> Thanks very much. Thanks very much to Brad and to the Davenant Trust
for organizing this. Thank you to the Torrey Honors Institute here at Biola and to First Things are
all close sponsoring this. Thank you to Fred and Carl for being here and for being willing to discuss this and for Peter for moderating it. It's a delight to be here. It really is a delight to
actually have gotten here. I had all possible forms of obstacles to my travel and I was able to get here
and literally Matt Anderson was changing flight
while I slept last night, because the flight I was
supposed to be on got canceled. I woke up, found out I was on a different flight. So thank you to Matt. I don't even know Matt, but
he's the reason I'm here. And I wanna thank all of you for giving me 12 to 15 minutes to sum up my entire life. [audience laughing] Should be adequate. I begin at the beginning. God created the world in six days and each day improved on the previous one. He spoke light, separated
light and darkness and said that was good, but come the next day and first day good was not good enough, so he separated the waters below from the waters above and
inserted a firmament between. After he toured the waters and
called Earth to fruitfulness he said that was good too. Another evening and morning and again, good was not good enough, so he spent to fourth day
hanging lights in the firmament, the fifth calling swarming
things to swarm in the sea and birds to hover on the face of the sky, the sixth filling the Earth
with animals and creating man, male and female, as his image. Each day was good, but each was followed by darkness and dawn that made good better. And when he had finished Yahweh
God pronounced it very good and rested in what he had made. That same rhythm continues after the fall, of course with the critical addition of God's judgment against sin. He tears Abraham from among the nations and sends him as a wondering Hebrew, through a land not his own,
offering sacrifices at oaks and oases under and open sky. He midwives his son Israel,
through the travail of Egypt and carries him to Sinai where he teaches him
to worship in his tent to live in the land of promise. Solomon reorganizes tribes into districts and builds a temple, a well
watered Eden on Mount Moriah with the king's palace hard by Yahweh. Divided, the people of
God take on a new name, Israel and Judah, until Yahweh melds them together in
exile into one new man, now all Jews, now Judahites incorporated
into the royal tribe and through the cross and
resurrection of Jesus, the people of God take their final name, Christian. God creates Israel as tribes, then as a kingdom, then scatters them among the nation then sends them out to the nations. Each good, each followed
by a night of darkness, which is in turn followed
by a brighter good than the good that proceeded it. And at each juncture, God calls his people to shed old ways and old names, to die to old routines
and old ways of life including ways of life that
God himself established. We don't like this. We don't want our world shattered, even if God rebuilds from the rubble. We don't want it to die. As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy put it, Christianity and future are synonymous, because Christians confess
that the world ends and begins again and again. Christianity and future are synonymous, because resurrection faith alone enables us to meet the world's end and to die to our old habits and idealS, get out of our old ruts, leave our dead selves behind and take the first step into a genuine future. It won't do to say that history is change and that the world is
always coming to an end. History is not a seamless garment. It has gaps and tears,
some of them quite rough. The reformers reached
deep into the scriptures and I think they reached deep
into the Catholic tradition, but they were revolutionary
innovators before all that and a world came to an end 500 years ago and the Western church was
reborn in an unprecedented form as Catholic and Protestant. New kinds of Christians began
to appear for the first time with new names like Lutheran and Reformed and Anglican, but if God is alive and he is creator, why would we think the
church reached its final form in 1517 or 1640, why would we think that the Reformation
marks the end of history, why would we think that we
would keep these names forever. I think we can't. Division cannot be the final state of Christ's church. Luther's protests against
Rome was necessary and we should reverently
say that the division of the Western church, like the division of Judah and Israel, like the division of heaven
and Earth at the beginning was, in some mysterious
way, from the lord. Yet if the gospel is true, this division is at best provisional. Jesus prayed that we would be one and this unity that he prayed for must be visible enough
for the world to notice. Paul told Peter that refusing to eat with gentiles was
an offense to the gospel and an insult to justification by faith. Jesus is our peace who died to make the two into one new man, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. The promise of unity is internal to the good news. We can putter around with counterfactuals: what if the early disputations between Catholics and
Protestants had been fruitful? What if Lutherans and Reformed
had mended fences by 1600? What combination of theological principle, myopia, politics, pride
prevented that reconciliation? But let's stipulate
that the reconciliation might have happened sooner, regardless, there are signs that
reconciliation is stirring now. For a century already, the
ecumenical liturgical movements have been chipping away and
the identifying divisions in dogma and ritual. I've often thought it part of my vocation to play a role in dragging conservative American Protestants kicking and screaming
into the 20th century and yes I do mean the 20th century. That wasn't a typo. That wasn't a senior moment. I'm not that old. More important, I think, in the U.S. has been the foxhole
ecumenicalism of the culture wars. Evangelical Protestants, historically the most anti-Catholic sector of the American church meet vibrantly faithful
Catholics on the picket line while Catholics realize
that their best allies of same sex marriage
happened to be evangelicals. Old boundaries become permeable, as theological differences
get swallowed up in cobelligerency. What happens at the picket line is happening in seminaries
and pastors studies. These day promise and pastors
read papal and cyclicals for edification and Western Christians
discover unprecedented wealth, unexpected wealth in the
works of Orthodox liturgists. From the Catholic side, Vatican too, for all its excesses and false moves has made the Catholic church
sound more Protestant, because it's become more attuned to common biblical and patristic sources. Swimming the Tiber had become
a popular evangelical pastime, partly because the manifest
attractions of Catholicism, but I think partly because
the Catholic church is more hospitable to evangelical concerns than anyone could imagine in 1870 or even in 1950. I think the most decisive signal among evangelicals is growing revulsion of the divisiveness of Protestantism. The modern age has seen more
than its share of horrors, but none is so stupefying as the spectacle of Christ recrucified in our divisions. The only horror that might rival it is our complacency before this cross. The revulsion I'm speaking of is not war weariness or relativism. At its best, it's a recovery
of the New Testament. Evangelicals are increasingly convinced that unity is a demand of the gospel and that we are complicit in a profound and faithfulness, if we acquiesce in permanent division. Evangelicals are finally making
it into the last century. The living God I think has reached into the postReformation church and has begun tearing apart the sagging fences that have mapped our territories and discarding the badges
that have named us. This is happening
through the entire church and for that reason, and not just because I want to honor the venerable academic tradition of challenging the terms of the question, I suggest that we should be talking not about the future of Protestantism, but about the church of the future. If our focus is on the future
of our particular enterprise, I'm afraid we're
perpetuating the tribalism that we should renounce. If we rebuild what God has destroyed, are we not transgressors. But what we do, we Protestants
do in the mean time, what kind of church should
emerge from the cauldron of exile? I have a partial wishlist,
in no particular order and since I assume this is a predominantly Protestant audience, my wishes are framed for us. What should the church do? What should it look like? What do I dream of? Churches where faith without works is dead is heard as frequently as
justification by faith. Preachers who preach the whole Bible in all its depth and beauty and to draw on the whole tradition of
Christian commentary as they prepare their
sermons and teaching. Pastors who form friendships with the local Catholic
and Orthodox priests, knowing that they are one body. Seminaries where
theologians are encouraged to follow scripture wherever it leads, even if we have to admit that our opponents were right all along. Churches whose worship
centers on the Eucharist celebrated at least weekly. Churches whose members know Psalms as well as many medieval monk, where hymns and prayers and praise are infused with the cadences of psalter. Churches with enemies enough to make imprecatory psalms seem natural. Churches whose musical culture is shaped by the
tradition of church music, emphasis on church music. Churches where infants are baptized and young children participate in the eucharistic assembly. Churches whose pastors have the courage to use the tools of discipline with all love, gentleness,
kindness and patience, but to use them rather than to use love
and gentleness as excuses for cowardice and lethargy. Churches that honor the
discipline of other churches, knowing that they are one body. Lutheran pastors who teach obedience as Luther did. Anglicans who exercise discipline. [laughing] [audience laughing] Jolly Presbyterians with-- [audience laughing] Jolly Presbyterians with
a reputation for lenity. Pentecostals attuned to
the Christian tradition. Baptists who love hierarchy. Liturgical Bible churches. Cities where all the
churches pray and worship and labor together; where pastors serve the interest of the city, speaking with a single
voice to civic leaders. Churches that take the pedophilia scandal, the upheavals of the Anglican communion, the persecution of Orthodox believers as crises among our people, not problems for someone else over there, knowing that if one suffers
all the members suffer. Churches who recognize that they are already members of a church where there are some who venerate icons, some who believe in transubstantiation, some who slaughter
peaceful Muslim neighbors, some who believe in papal infallibility and Mary's immaculate conception, knowing that we are one body. Let's call the resulting churches, as I did in my original article, Reformational Catholic churches. Will they still be Protestant? Though they'll look more
like Catholic churches than many evangelical churches do today, they remain Protestant in many respects. In fact, my wishlist seems odd only to those
have lost connection with classic Protestantism. Yet insofar as definitional
opposition to Catholicism is constitutive of Protestant identity to the extent that Protestant entails being of another church from the Catholic insofar as Protestants,
whatever their ecclesiology, have acted as if they are members of a different church from the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox. I think Jesus bids Protestantism to come and die. For either side, Catholic or Protestant, to persist in a provisional
Protestant-Catholic self identification is a
defection from the gospel. If the gospel is true, we are who we are by union with Jesus in his
spirit, with his people. It then cannot be the case that we are who we are by differentiation from other believers. Some might take this as and exhortation to abandon the passionate
pursuit of truth, but in fact it's the opposite. If Rome is simply outside
of us, as Protestants, we can leave it to its errors, but if we are one body, Rome's errors are the errors in the church
of which we too are members. And brothers correct brothers and it works both ways. It's easy to criticize from a distance. It's much harder, patiently,
to correct family members. Some might take this as an exhortation to convert to Rome or Constantinople, but again, it's the opposite. No one has to leave home to become a full member of the one Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, despite Catholic and Orthodox
claims to the contrary. If I were addressing a Catholic audience, near the top of my list would be the wish that the Catholic church would abandon, repent of, even the moderate
exclusivism of Vatican II. Catholic tribalism is no more
defensible than Protestant, no matter the Catholics have
a much, much bigger tribe. Someone asked me how I
respond to the charge that Reformational Catholic churches don't exist and my response is, "Yes, that's right, they don't." There are pockets where
something like my wishlist exists and any church might become a Reformational Catholic
church as I've described it, but it is a church of the future, a city yet to come and that may be bewildering, but it's where Protestants always are. It's where all Christians
ought always to be. One of the great
contributions of Protestantism has been our insistence that we walk by faith and not by sight. Here we have no lasting city. Being a Reformational Catholic Christian is a circus ride, a high wire act with no net but the loving arms of
our faithful father. If you suffer from vertigo
or if you're pregnant, it might not be the place to you. You might wanna find a safer ride. It's only in this faith that we can embrace the
death that God demands of us. I dearly hope that Protestant tribalism dies and I'll do all in my power to kill it, not least in myself. I long to see churches
that neglect the Eucharist blasted from the earth. I hope to see fragmented Protestantism, antiliturgical,
antisacramental Protestantism, thinly biblical Protestantism, antidoctrinal antiintellectual
Protestantism, antitraditional Protestantism, rationalist and nationalist Protestantism slip into the grave and I'll be there to
help to turn that grave into a dance floor. And insofar as these are the things that make Protestants Protestant, I am hoping for the death of Protestantism, but death is never the last word of the church of the living God, the god who is faithful
to death and then again faithful. Christianity and future are synonymous and if Protestant churches must die, they die in faith, they
will be raised new, more radiant with glory than ever. For the creator has said in the 5th and the 9th and the 16th
century, "It is good", will not finish his work until
we come to the final sabbath where everything will once and for all be very, very good. Thank you. [applauding] >> Thank you Peter. Back in 2006, Princeton
Seminary's Bruce McCormack wrote a journal article about Christology. Sorry, I'm leaning into
the mic like I need it. I got a mic on my head. Back in 2006, Princeton
Seminary's Bruce McCormack wrote a journal article about christology and near the end of it, he waxed prophetic about the future of Protestantism, which from his mainline position looked so grim that he called it, quote, "The Slow Death of the
Protestant churches." He went on, "I've heard it said "and I have no reason to question it "that if the current rates "of decline in membership continue, "all that will be left by midcentury "will be Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox "and nondenominational
evangelical churches. "The last named of which will
include those denominations "like the Southern Baptists, "which are nonconfessional
in doctrinal matters "and congregationalist in their polity. "The churches of the
Reformation", McCormack said, "will have passed from the scene "and with their demise, "there will be no obvious
institutional barriers "of the message of the Reformation." Now that's a grim view from inside the Presbyterian
Church of the U.S.A. Nevermind the statistics. Focus on McCormack's phrase obvious institutional bearers of the message of the Reformation. Whatever happens to the
denominations in question, what this theologian is concerned about is the message of the Reformation and its need for an obvious
institutional bearer. Now I'd like to put in a word for those nondenominational
evangelical churches, which apparently will populate the future alongside Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox churches, including those nonconfessional
ones, the Baptistic ones, the ones with congregationalist polity, but also for the gang of denominations that make up that movement
known as evangelicalism. I'd like to put them forward as bearers of the message
of the Reformation and to commend them as that, Protestant evangelical churches. In doing so, I know that I'm not just commending it to this audience. I know I also need to propose
to many of those churches that they ought to think of themselves, these various evangelical churches, as Protestant and that means
that they ought to get to know, among other things, historic
Protestant theology, but that is a massive educational ministry that I'll come back to in a minute. First I wanna ask what is that
message of the Reformation that McCormack says needs an
obvious institutional bearer. Briefly, it can be stated as the two principles of Protestantism, the formal principle and
the material principle, that is the authority of scripture and salvation by faith. Now you can't understand
these principles in isolation. You can't cut them off from everything that they're informing as if we meant by the
authority of scripture, nothing but the Bible
and salvation by faith, nothing but faith, no good
works need apply anywhere at any point in the Christian life. There are many sources and norms operating in Christian theology, but the word of God in holy scripture stands above all of them making final judgements
over all other voices that inform our theology, scriptures classically
confessed as the norming norm which norms all other norms and
is normed by no other norms. Apparently it sounds even better in Latin, norma normans non normata, et cetera. [audience laughing] And there is much in the Christian, including growth in christlikeness, submission to God's authority
to command righteousness and the cultivation of
personal and social holiness, but nothing in the Christian
life or in church life works without a soteriology that
gives consistent, systemic, sustained emphasis and
strategic pride of place to justification, to God's
declaration of forgiveness, because of the work of Christ, solely from the grace of God and solely received through faith. Scriptural authority
and salvation by faith, these are absolute necessities and while I think churches
like, for instance, the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox traditions do affirm these two things, scriptural authority
and salvation by faith, as a Protestant I have to say I think they affirm them badly. They can dialectically juggle away the authority of scripture into a wider manifold of authorities or make it one element within the richer stream of holy tradition. They can mix salvation by faith with all sorts of badly
ordered distractions. Protestantism doesn't
stand alone, therefore, in teaching the authority of scripture and salvation by faith, but it does stand alone in putting them in their proper place, with
regard to other factors, which is why the word
sola is so often used in expositing Protestant faith,
sola scriptura, sola fide; not to say that there
is nothing but scripture or alls I know is what's in the B-I-B-L-E, but to say sola scriptura, only scripture. That would be solo scripture, apparently. But say that only scripture
is the norming norm, the one that stands above the
others and makes judgment. Thus far the message of the reformation, the Protestant position, it
was possible to characterize evangelicalism equally briefly, I'd like to say that it begins with the application
of those two principles to the life of the
church and the believers. From sola scriptura arises patterns of authoritative preaching
and personal Bible study and at their best, evangelicals are people of the proclaimed word
and students of scripture. And from justification by faith arises the experience of conversion, a known experience of being born again, getting saved, giving your life to Jesus, inviting Jesus into your heart and whatever other way you want to put it, preferably whatever way you want to put it to your unsaved neighbors,
preferably today. That's the kind of people we are. If I have a plan or a program
for evangelical Protestantism it's to bind it to the
strong name of the trinity. Step one is probably the only
step I'll get to in my life. It's to get this movement
more firmly committed to the classic doctrine of God understood in all its fullness, in all its freeness, with all its power as a summation of biblical revelation and of spiritual wisdom. I might not say the trinity
is our social program, as some people say. In fact, I wouldn't say that and I don't, but I would say the trinity is our anchor and the trinity certainly can
be our church renewal program. It's our doctrinal
anchor, because it sums up who scripture says God is. It's a summative doctrine. You read the whole Bible cover to cover, close it and say, "What was that about?" Your answer oughta be, if
it's gonna be a short answer that could fit on an index card probably will fall into about three parts, kinda like the Apostle's
Creed or the Nicene Creed, you'll probably come up
with something like that. You'll end up believing in the father, son and the holy spirit as
the main thing to say in your summary of the
doctrine of scripture. It's our historical anchor,
because the church got it right and while on the one hand we need to learn to see the doctrine of the trinity right there in the Bible for ourselves, we also need to learn how
to cultivate and develop it from resources in the church fathers, the medievala the reformers, the Puritans, the founders of Biola. If you have a chance to
pop into the Biola library, there's a little display there about something we published
about 100 years ago, The Fundamentals. If you don't know about The Fundamentals, you might think that's like five points narrowly considered, right. No, go check out the exhibit. It's 90 chapters. It's a lot of stuff and
it reaches deep back into church history. To make the most of the
doctrine of the trinity, we need not just our
contemporaries and our Bibles, but friends in every century. So while we've got to see the trinity as revealed in scripture, it would also be great if we could have a big party down through the ages and get a Trinitarian witness
from each of the centuries. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, "All things are yours "and you are Christ's "and Christ is God's." Paul's referring first of
all to Christian teachers who bring the gospel in
a variety of expressions. His general statement there,
"All things are yours", comes from whether of Paul
or of Apollos or of Peter or whoever, all these things are yours. All true Christian teachers of every name; Paul, Apollos, Cephas ... Samuel Zwemer says it this way, "Paul, Apollos, Cephas,
Wesley, Phillips Brooks, "Cardinal Newman, Bart, Brunner, Pascal, "Papini, Spurgeon, Willam Booth." I don't know who Papini is. "They belong to us. "Every faithful minister
profits the whole church. Samuel Zwemer had been
called the apostle to Islam, delivered this message in a sermon at the Keswick Convention in 1915. It's a summons to enter into the boundless heritage of Christianity. Zwemer doesn't just mean to read old books or sing old hymns,
thought that is obviously a good place to start. He also isn't just asserting that ever modern Christian
has the right to loot, pillage and lay claim
to whatever they find in anybody's church. The great tradition of Christian
teaching and experience really is ours, not because
we are postmodern bricoleurs or consumers with a credit line that extends deep into the past, but because of our real union with Christ and his union with the father. Without this real union, all of us are just squatting on
the territory of others or decorating our houses with antiques to make ourselves feel more authentic, but all things really are ours and we are Christ's and Christ is God's. The all things of the
great Christina hinterland of the soul, as Zwemer calls
it, must become our homeland, if we are to keep company with the saints where our fellowship is, with the father and
the son and the spirit. My own vocation is as a content provider for Trinitarian evangelicalism. I don't know if there is a
Trinitarian evangelicalism, but I pretend there is and
I keep providing it content, [audience laughing] truckloads and truckloads of Trinitarian theology
applied spiritually. I think that evangelicals are the ones who are gonna be equipped and resourced to do the hand to hand or rather sometimes the verse to verse combat
with such ne'er-do-wells and the Jehovah's Witnesses and the modalist Oneness Pentecostals. That's gonna be us and I'm speaking here for the great unwashed, the
low church of evangelicals, the Bible people, but I also hope to be at a leverage point for the vast, vast, vast
world of global Pentecostalism that needs catechizing, guiding and equipping to be
faithful to the word of God. Those masses are within our reach, within the grasp of Free
Church of Evangelicalism more than they are available to the higher church
Presbyterians, Anglicans and such. Jaroslav Pelikan, who died in 2006, wrote a book a long time ago, 1959, called The Riddle of Roman Catholicism. While parts of the book are
dated it's still a good patient, at that time Lutheran, whatever
became of Pelikan later, interaction with the phenomenon that is the Roman Catholic Church. In chapter 16, The Challenge
of Roman Catholicism, Pelikan mused about what
American Protestantism has to learn from the Roman church and among the other items on his list, things like a comprehensive world view, an inclusive appeal, urban ministry, sacramental worship. Along with that, he got to his real point, a living tradition. If you know Pelikan's work, you know that for his entire career, he was in tradition like a fish is in water, so it's hard to imagine that
he would be so short sighted as to take up the lament that
his American Lutheran church was somehow magically
disconnected from tradition. There it sits, just as
objectively traditioned as any church of course, but what Pelikan called on Protestants
to learn from Catholics is how to present themselves in such a way that they express the
living tradition clearly. In describing this, he hits on this term which I find instructive, devices for symbolizing
the living tradition. He asks, "Can Protestantism find devices "for symbolizing and
carrying the living tradition "of the Christian past
that are truly meaningful "to the general church public?" By devices, I don't think Pelikan is just thinking about gimmicks. He pokes fun, for instance, at
a bit of ham fisted attempts to symbolize tradition, like, quote, "Russian Orthodox chants
in a Baptist church "or the introduction of the
daily sacrifice of the mass "in a Methodist church." He views these as exoticism,
not living tradition, but he's aware that human ingenuity needs to seek out some cultural mechanisms for making tradition visible, because tradition is
one of those odd things that goes invisible if you neglect it. Churches, in other words,
are objectively located in some stream of tradition, but some do a better job of finding devices for symbolizing that than others. Pelikan made a number of recommendations including such thing
as singing older hymns and reciting ancient
creeds and confessions and along the way he made a recommendation which really warmed my heart. Pelikan said, "Protestant thought "should be able to adapt
some of the devices "now being used to symbolize "and carry our cultural heritage." I think he's thinking of our
American cultural heritage. "For example, some
Protestant congregations "have experimented successfully "with a great books discussion "of selected writings by church fathers. "In such a discussion, the lay members "of these congregations have found "affinity with the fathers "that they have never dreamed could exist. "A Protestant who reads Irenaeus "is proof of the apostolic preachings "or Augustine's and Enchiridion," both available in modern
English translations, with helpful notes and introductions, "will learn that he has a greater claim "upon the living tradition
of Catholic Christianity "than he would have ever
supposed", end quote from Pelikan. I haven't done a lot of
that in a church setting, but in the Torrey Honors Institute, obviously all we do is great
books discussions all the time with a heaping helping of church fathers, Medievals and Reformers in the mix. We even happened to read Irenaeus' Proof of the Apostolic Preaching and yes, I can affirm
that we are about 18 years into having experimented
successfully with it, enjoying the experience of
watching our students find, quote, "an afinity with the fathers "that they have never
dreamed could exist", and reliving vicariously my own experience as a young believer of discovering
that joining the church meant joining a communion
that goes around the world and back across the centuries. As devices for symbolizing
the living tradition go, reading old books just
really can't be beat. It's not enough, but it's
a great starting place. As our curriculum loops its
way back through Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Thomas Aquinas,
the Heidelberg Catechism, Jonathan Edwards year after year, the students here can find a greater claim upon the living tradition
of Catholic Christianity than we would ever have supposed. I know I do. The Roman poet Terence said, "I am human. "Nothing that is human is alien to me." Church historian Philip
Schaff tweaked that to, "I am Christian. "Nothing Christian is alien to me." Nothing is off limits. As Zwemer reminds us, according to Paul, all things are yours,
the whole thing is mine, it belongs to me, but if it belongs to me, I also belong to it and one of the things that I hope to learn from tonight's conversation is what those obligations of
belonging to it obligate me to. Thank you. [applauding] >> It's a great pleasure
to be with you this evening and like Peter I'm a guest here, so I would like to thank
the Torrey Institute and First Things for
sponsoring this conference and to Brad for inviting me. I have to correct Brad one thing. He said that Dr. Leithart had come to face two of his critics. I think I've never
actually criticized Peter. [unintelligible speaking from audience] Oh, sorry. I thought you were referring to me. But I am gonna criticize him tonight, so it would have been okay anyway. I'm afraid I can't quite
fulfill Peter's hope of an eschatological jolly Presbyterian. I can merely describe myself as slightly less miserable
than I used to be. [audience laughing] I'm also conscious, having
listened to the two papers, it's probably worthwhile pointing out that none of the three of us knew what the others were
gonna say this evening. We've operated entirely independently. I'm conscious that I'm a historian up against two talented
systematic theologians, so my approach is gonna
be slightly different. I'm not only a historian, I'm
also and English historian. I come from a nation of shopkeepers. My approach is empirical and
common sense, I'm afraid. [audience laughing] so, what do I have to say? Well, as I reflect upon the issue of Protestantism's future this evening, I wanna do simply three things. I want to offer a sociological observation on the contemporary scene. I wanna make historical
points about Protestantism. And finally, I want to
ask a pointed question about the practicalities
of pastoral ministry. I should probably indicate at this point I'm not only a professor at the seminary, I also pastor a local church. First the sociological observation. It seems to me that the issue
of the future of Protestantism can only be addressed in the
context of the broader question of the future of American
Christianity as a whole. Clearly that is two large a matter for a 10 minute introductory statement, but one thing is for certain. Christianity, at least in its
traditional orthodox forms, is about to see itself politically and socially
marginalized in America in a way unprecedented in history. I'm the Northern European guy. You expect me to be depressive. I spent my high school
days doing nuclear drills, because the Russians were
gonna wipe us all out. That shaped my mind. [audience laughing] Central to this marginalization, I think, is the way that same sex marriage has come to function both
culturally and legally. Recent judicial rulings
and the appropriation of the idioms of the civil rights movement have effectively shut down
intelligent discussion on the issue in the public square and this will change everything, I think, for Christians. It is one thing to be regarded
as intellectually foolish for believing in the
resurrection of the dead. It is quite another to be
regarded as morally dangerous for believing that marriage is to be between one man and one woman. Societies generally tolerate idiots. We allow them to do
potentially dangerous things like have children and drive cars. Peddlers of hate have a far harder time. Conservative American
Christians must realize not simply that they are no longer king makers in election years, they might soon not even be regarded as legitimate contributing
members of society in many quarters. And the speed at which this is happening is such that there is little or no time for the church to prepare
her people for this. And this lays the background
to some of the things I want to raise relevant
specifically to Protestantism. This is perhaps why I have
sympathy with Peter's concerns. In this new world, American evangelicalism existing as it does as a
somewhat nebulous network of institutions and organizations
is ill equipped to cope. Its various sects fight
each other constantly. Often it seems simply
for the right to define, restrict or to monopolize use
of the very name evangelical. Its doctrinal content
tends towards the minimal, in large part because if its
need to maintain its size and marketplace by sort of
by federative arrangements and its various manifestations in America. It seems often to end up being focused on cults of personality and
increasingly unrealistic expectations of cultural influence. Along, I think, with Peter, I believe that such a movement, if one can use the term in the singular, simply cannot provide
the historical rootedness or the sophistication of
theological confession necessary to sustain the communal identity and foster the intellectual resources needed to survive in an
increasingly aggressive antiChristian environment. This brings me to my historical point. It is here that I think
I diverge from Peter. I've spent much of the last 25 years exploring the connections between the reform theology of the
16th and 17th centuries and Patristic and medieval thought, a scholarly tradition to which I belong, I think, is conclusively demonstrated that the great confessions of the 16th and 17th century, which still for the
foundational credal documents of today's Reform and
Presbyterian churches rest on a theology which
is a rick appropriation of Catholic orthodoxy of the early creeds and the careful refinements
of the medieval period. The sophisticated theology and the reflections on ecclesiology, which the 16th and 17th
centuries generated still provide a thorough base, I think, for the development of
a Christian response to the contemporary challenges we face, clear doctrinal identity,
connection to the past and a faith forged in the context of social and cultural marginality; a point, which among other things, has liturgical significance for the shaping of the mind
of the church community. Part of the problem, I think,
with Peter's original post was the implicit comparison
of what one might describe as the most demotic and crude forms of Protestant evangelicalism with the most sophisticated
forms of Roman Catholicism. If we are to be fair then we
must compare like with like. Most Roman Catholics I know
attend church maybe once a year, are ignorant of the most basic
teachings of the catechism and even the Bible and routinely ignore their church's position on contraception. In the case of some famous politicians, one could also add that
they routinely ignore the church's teaching
on infanticide as well. The church as an institution seems to do little or
nothing about these things and that is as important
to me as a pastor, as I look for resources to
pastor in the 21st century, as any points of doctrinal continuity which we might establish
between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. I wanna know what doctrine looks like, in terms of its practical
application within the church and if a church does not
practically apply its doctrine that raises questions to
me about how seriously it takes that doctrine. I should stress at this point that I do understand the allure of Rome. Some years ago I was in Italy and spent a morning at
the Gregorian University. I was awed by the learning,
history and brilliance contained within just
that one institution. The following evening, however, I was in Padua enjoying the line in the Basilica San Antonio to gaze on the pickled heart, vocal cords and tongue of Saint Anthony himself. I left Italy understanding why there is an intellectual attractiveness to certain aspects of
Rome, for some Protestants, but also reflecting that it is
a long and very safe distance between South Bend, Indiana and Padua. That geographical distance brings with it a certain convenience for those this side of the Atlantic who want Aquinas without
the pain, so to speak. It also means that if we go to compare Protestant evangelicalism
with Roman Catholicism let us at least make the
comparison a fair one. Evangelical Protestantism
in its classical forms; whether Reformed, Lutheran or Armenian; has the resources to meet
Peter's complaints I think. It connects to the Catholic creeds. It draws appropriately on
patristic and medieval sources, theological, philosophical and exegetical and it ensues an intellectual
parochial sectarianism. Finally, the pointed question. What about pastoral ministry, the point where theory becomes practice? For those of us who
are not only academics, but also pastors, this is crucial and here is one issue which I
suspect unites Fred and myself over against the vision laid out by Peter. While one can point to many
theological connections and continuities between Roman Catholicism and classical Protestantism,
it is still important to note that they represent two
fundamentally different practical approaches to church life. This was clear right from
the start of the Reformation, with its shift from sacrament centered to word centered worship. A sacrament centered
approach to pastoral ministry and word centered approach
are very different, whatever creed or doctrinal similarities there might otherwise be. The veneration of the
host, which Peter rejected in his article, is not an
accident of Roman Catholicism, but reflective of an
important part of what it is with direct practical implications as to how pastoral
ministry and discipleship are to be understood. These things are crucial and point to the fact
that Protestant rejection of Roman Catholicism is
not, for me at least, simply the result of a historical ignorant
knee jerk biblicism. Pastoral practice and
expectations are important and should reflect our theology. In classical Protestantism,
one cannot regard once a year attendance
at church as adequate nor can one, as a member of
the church where I serve, declare abortion to be every
woman's right on a Monday and expect to take communion on a Sunday. Biblical discipleship
requires pastoral action, in such circumstances. We're not perfectionists, by
any stretch of the imagination, but I am bound to place much significance on these practical matters
which frankly divide me from the Roman Catholic Church along with the related
theological differences. Word based ministry,
appropriate catechesis, a loving and sacrificial commitment to the local body of believers is crucial to Christian discipleship and will become more so,
as the cultural pressure on the church increases. As an aside, this is precisely why I minister in a sports jacket and tie, though I'm glad to report that I own no Mickey Mouse t-shirt. My doctors advised me not
to wear skinny jeans either, but that's another story. I'm emphatically not a priest and in dressing that way I do not feel I cut myself off from
historical Christianity, but merely from certain
strands of clerical faction. The content of my preaching,
the creeds we recite in church, the psalms and the hymns we sing are just a few examples of
how we as a congregation explicitly connect ourselves
to historic Christianity. So my pointed questions is this: If Protestantism is at an end, what should pastoral ministry in the postProtestant
Reformational Catholic Church look like, like that offered by Roman Catholicism? That seems to me to be
and unrealistic option, because our respective
understandings of ministry and our expectations of discipleship rooted in significant
theological differences seem so very far apart. Further, when we set
aside the intellectuals and the committed converts,
the level of nominalism among cradle Catholics and indeed the practical contradictions
of church teaching routinely tolerated by the church among communicate Catholics
are simply staggering. Can we learn anything positive from such? This general lack of discipline will not equip people to be faithful in the face of the coming
challenges, social and personal. The Catholic elites write excellent books and I've benefited
immensely from many of such, but the reality is that as a pastor, I have to help ordinary
people to live faithfully in this fallen world and
then to prepare for death. I need to keep my eye
not on the grand gestures of intellectual ecumenism,
nor worry over much about whether the congregation are familiar with Henri de Lubac, but on the immediate
needs of the local church. There the everyday battle is being fought by people who have never heard of Aquinas, but who need to give and answer for the hope they have to the
people working next to them on the factory production line or on the shop floor. I need to know what pastoral ministry to those people looks like, if Protestantism is indeed at an end. In conclusion, American Christianity stands at a remarkable point in history where she's set for imminent
and unprecedented exile from the mainstream of society. Where are the resources,
theological and pastoral, which will equip the church
to face these difficulties? I submit that they lie in the great evangelical Protestant tradition of word bases practical ministry, rooted in the great
confessions of the Reformation and connected through those confessions to the best of the
church's Catholic tradition throughout the ages. [applauding] >> So now we're going
to begin our discussion and I'd like to invite Dr. Leithart to respond to the other presentations. >> Thank you. Thanks to both of you. Start with Fred. I guess maybe a couple observations about both of your presentations. I sense that we're talking about at least two different sets of questions. When you lay out principled
Protestantism as a collection of the two principles of formal and of material principle, I have no disagreement with that. I dare say I'm as committed to sola scriptura, maybe more so than most theologians. I'm accused of being a biblicist and I happily accept the accusation. In that sense, I want to affirm
Protestantism in that sense. That's not what I'm talking about. It seemed that your presentation, Fred, was going kind of cross
tangential to the concerns I was expressing, which
have more to do with the actual existing configuration of probably particularly
American Protestantism, which is what I know, not Protestantism as a set of principles. I think at least we have that difference between maybe Protestantism as a pair of principles over
a set of doctrines, as opposed to actually existing
churches and patterns of church life. And at the end of your presentation, Carl, it occurred to me that we're also ... I appreciated the pastoral emphasis. It occurred to me that we're also talking at two different levels there, because I am talking in
kind of macro level about and a level of significant generality, when I talk about the future of Protestantism or the Reformational Catholic churches and that doesn't directly address ... I hope that some of my comments tonight might have addressed some
of the question you have, but that's not really directly addressing the question of what you do in a pastoral situation and I agree with you that on the ground there are many advantages,
many blessings that come from membership in Protestant churches. For all the things that
you were describing, that's something that's a strength of evangelical Protestantism that you don't find in other settings. So I think that part of what's
going on, it seems to me, is we're talking about
trekking across purposes just about different things. To reiterate what I said,
when I'm talking about the end of Protestantism,
I'm talking about Protestantism with a certain sociological, political
location and arrangement and again, particularly
in the United States and maybe more deeply how Protestantism has seen itself in relation to other traditions of Christianity. It's those sets of issues
that I'm concerned about and I'm not sure we're
addressing the same questions. I said I was gonna start
with Fred particularly, but let me go to your
pointed question Carl. I'd say two things, in
response to the question about what pastoral ministry looks like. The first would be I would
dispute your characterization of the pastorally Reformation
contrast to Catholicism as a word versus sacrament. I think that's the way you put it. >> Word based. >> Peter: Word based. >> I think it's a shift of priorities, not an opposition, if you like. >> Right. Even with that qualification,
I'd still say that I think the Reformation, it was certainly a word based movement, but it's also a recovery or ... Yeah, I think a recovery of
biblical liturgy and worship, in all kinds of ways, in ways
that evangelical Protestants often associate with high
church semiCatholic churches. The fact that Anglican churches have prayer books where the people have
something in their own language that they are participating in
worship with the prayer book is an innovation of the Reformation. You didn't need that,
because you're watching a Latin mass in the Middle Ages. The fact that we have communion where the people actually
partake regularly of both elements of the table, that's a contribution of the Reformation, liturgical contribution
of the Reformation. As you said, the veneration of the host was a major point of dispute by the reformers, but again the effect of that is not
to make it less sacramental, but to make Protestant churches
more fully sacramental. I'm not sure I'm disagreeing with you, but I think the characterization of word based and sending
that up as opposed to a liturgically or
sacramentally worded ministry, I think that needs to be
significantly qualified as a characterization of what
the Reformation achieved. >> Do you not think that
the Reformation introduces an accent on the word ... I'm aware there's some great
preachers in the Middle Ages; Bernard of Clairvaux,
et cetera, et cetera; but does the word not come to
have a decisive function in the Reformation that
it did not have before? >> Peter: Yeah, I'm not disputing that. >> That's what I'm trying
to get at here, I think. >> But you also characterized it as if; if I remember right; you characterized it as over against the
sacramental orientation and the questions you asked are is the pastor in the
churches that I'm imagining going to be performing rituals
at a distance from the people or is it gonna become basically
Roman Catholic priests of maybe preVatican-- >> And you're not proposing that? >> That's not what I'm proposing at all. But I think the Protestant model is a minister more than a sacrament. Preaching and teaching
the word, catechizing, all the ways that the Protestants have carried out ministry of the word, that's central to pastoral ministry both publicly and
privately, yes absolutely and yes, the Reformation
was a movement of the word in an unprecedented way, but I think just to
characterize it that way seems to me we're losing
something important that the reformation achieved, if we're leaving out our
highlighting the word aspect and neglecting what I think are major liturgical changes that happened during the
time of the Reformation. Many of the liturgical things
that I was talking about, many of them were things
that the Reformation affirmed and/or introduced, psalm singing, again. Psalm singing was done in the Middle Ages, but it's mostly done by monks. It's not done by people. Psalter, psalm singing, hymn singing; those are all liturgical
innovations of the Reformation. So I just wouldn't want to polarize that and make the emphasis so much on the word that the liturgical aspects get out. And also in pastoral ministry, that whole package of word
and sacrament ministry, I think that has to be
what pastors are about. >> Can I ask you a question
about that causula, word and sacrament? Some of the things you are
mentioning are liturgical, but liturgy and sacrament
are different to me. The words signify different things. Can you each sort of essay
a definition of sacrament? I think that might be
helpful for the conversation. >> I think sacraments are the identifying rites
of the Christian church that mark the people of God and that are rites that
are participated in by the whole people of God. I could say they are
covenant signs and seals, in a more traditional language, but I think I'm saying
that in a different way. >> Yeah, I would use the
more traditional way, which signs and seals of
the covenant of grace. >> Liturgy and sacrament are different, but when I'm heading up a worship service as a minister, I'm leading a liturgy, but that's a liturgy that, in my mind, should every Lord's day
climax in the Lord's table. So it's a liturgical
procession to the Lord's table. It includes ministry of the word. It includes lots of word, but it's moving toward a Eucharist. >> Would you say that you're sympathetic towards Roman Catholic
sacramentalism Peter? How would you distinguish yourself from Roman Catholic sacramentalists? >> This is something that I have written and thought a lot about,
so it's hard to summarize. Let me put it this way. It seems to me that Catholic sacramentalism or sacerdotalism, as it is sometimes called
in reform circle circles, and reformed antisacramentalism are operating on the same
or a similar paradigm of the relationship between grace and the rite of the sacrament, the action and the thing of the sacrament. In both cases, I think, they're operating on a kind of dualism where you have an authorized rite of Jesus Christ, you have the meal that
Jesus Christ has instituted and promised to be there. That's the rite and then you have some kind of grace that may
or may not be present there. At the extreme, Protestants
say, "It's just a memorial, "it's just a sign, that
grace is not present." Catholics say that it is. It seems to me that the dualism, at least in terminable
debates between Catholics, and I think that larger
dualism needs to be questioned. I've written a lot of baptism. When I talk about baptism,
I think it's best to say, simplest to say that
baptism is simply a gift. This is an authorized
action of Jesus Christ that marks the person who's baptized with the name of the triune god. That is a gift to that person. They have received the grace of God, insofar as they've been identified as a member of God's grace. That doesn't depend on
that kind of duality. I don't think that's Catholic at all. To my mind, it's rooted in Protestant. >> It's more Lutheran, would you say? [audience laughing] >> I'll get Fred. >> I'm less interesting in the sacraments. >> Well if I can push that question-- [audience member coughing] just a little bit further. In the classical Protestant understanding, a sacrament is a visible word, right? Which, I think, is a definition
that you would subscribe, at least under certain conditions and I think that sheds some light on what Dr. Trueman meant by word based. And for the reformers, the sacraments are a word in the mode of something sensible, rather than just audible. Would you say that the
Catholic sacramentalism that the reformers objected to had to do with sort of a reification of those word based sacraments such that they acquired a different
character and would you sort of agree with their
protest against that? Because what Dr. Trueman
brought up of course is the veneration of the
host in the Middle Ages. At this point, the bread
is no longer a visible word where you have the
breaking and the sharing. There was a belief that
Jesus in his humanity was literally there to be
adored as if physically present and that's certainly a difference from the Reformed or the Lutheran, even the Lutheran
understanding of the sacrament. So could you say a little
bit more about that? >> Sure. I'm not sure this is getting exactly at the direction your question goes. I guess attack it this way. There are certainly
theological projections during the Reformation to Roman Catholic sacramental theology. Depending on at which point
you're reading Luther, there are objections to transubstantiation that can be it's been turned into a dogma
and it should be an opinion and as an opinion, it's
acceptable as an option, but it shouldn't be turned into a dogma to simple opposition
to transubstantiation, mockery of transubstantiation as a distortion of Aristotle kind of a tongue in cheek mockery. Calvin objects to transubstantiation and offers what I think is a fundamentally sound
understanding of the real presence. Christ is present to those who participate and
receive the bread and the wine, by the action of his spirit. Spiritual real presence for
Calvin means by the spirit, it doesn't imply immaterial primarily, it means by the agency of the spirit. That is how Christ is present to us. He's ascended and now he's
present with us by the spirit and that's what happens at the supper. There's objections along those lines. This goes back maybe to my original point about Carl's presentation. There are equally stern and luciferous objections
to Catholic practice, as you pointed out. Transubstantiation, even if
it's an acceptable opinion for Luther, venerating the host is not, because you have a created object that people are venerating. That becomes a kind of
idolatry, for the reformers. Even if the theology of the
mass can be subtle enough to make sense of a once
for all death of Christ and also some kind of continuing
reality of Christs' death, even if you can figure out a theology, still you have a particular way of doing the supper that is a violation of biblical patterns. And I think, again, the
reformers are objecting as much to the liturgical practices
of the Catholic church as they are to the theology. Those are integrally related, but it seems to me that
it's sometimes easier to get to the reformers objections by looking at the objection
to the liturgical practice, because you get into some pretty
sticky metaphysical questions, when you start going after
the theological objections. Maybe to wind this up, I do
have maybe some things for Fred, but to wind this up and
try to bring it back into my original thesis, what is a Reformational
Catholic church look like. That's the term I've been using. What would that look like? How would that be different? If you were in a particular church, how would pastoral care be different? In a lot of ways, it
wouldn't be different. You would minister the
word in the same ways. If you don't have weekly communion, you would have weekly communion and weekly communion would be seen as a high point of the Christian liturgy and the point of gathering
together on the Lord's day. Word is ministered in all
kinds of ways and at all times, but when you gather on the Lord's day you come together to share at the table. I think pastoral ministry would also be different in the sense
that there would be a ... Maybe the way that the
word is communicated or the way that the identity
of the church is communicated. Maybe that would be a way to say it. Pastoral ministry, pastoral
prayer would include prayer for the needs of every
church in the neighborhood. You would have somebody
assigned in your church to call all the other
churches in the neighborhood and get their prayer requests, so you can pray for the
people who are suffering at the Methodist and the Catholic and the Anglican and
the Pentecostal church. You're expressing the unity of the body, in the liturgy of the church. Those kinds of things. >> Can I ask you one question
about the point you just made, which might draw Dr. Sanders
into this conversation? [audience laughing] In this ideal church that you've proposed in which everyone in a locality
are praying for one another, how exactly does that differ from the kind of ministerial association that almost every county
in the United States has where ministers of different denominations collaborate in precisely
that kind of prayer for one another, for the city; for chaplaincy; which
seems to be the kind of on the ground Protestant unity, and it often includes
Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, that Dr. Sanders was pointing to us, something that already exists and is being not recognized as such? Either of you. >> The question is how does it differ. I don't know. It depends on the strength of
that ministerial association. Ministerial associations differ a lot from place to place and sometimes if there's too much prayer then only
evangelicals will show up, the liberals won't. The mainline pastors won't show up, because they're spending too much time in prayer or Bible study or whatever. And I know that there are
ministerial associations around the country that are this kind of local ecumenism and that's kind of the thing that I'm advocating and cultivating that as a
place where it's recognized that we are members of one body. I guess I would add thing. I think those are locations where maybe what I'm advocating is making those a little more frictionful,
rather than frictionless. Rather than just being
we're getting together so that we can befriend one another, we're getting together so that we can actually discuss the profound
differences that we have and see if there's some way
that we can work through them, rather than just being a kind of least common denominator. If anything, I would want to ... Again, if we're brothers then we should be correcting each other. >> I suppose you would
say they should be shocked by what you take to be the division, be more concerned about
working through it. Dr. Sanders, what do you say to that? >> When you were talking
about that sort of on the ground ecumenism with the doctrinal distinctions of each confessional bodies are present, so it is frictionful. It makes me think of John
Wesley's advice to his preachers, which was to not just promote the work that was going on in their
own Methodist revival circles, but if they heard, for instance, that great things were
happening among the Baptists or the Dissenters down the road;
this is an English context; to actually be excited about
that and to tell your people God is moving mightily among the Baptists. You might also score a point like, "Dang those Baptists, why can't they "just join the Church of
England like reasonable people, "praise God that the
spirit's moving for them." I thought it was great advice and it's sort of something
you can do today, to think about our position as individual churches
within this one thing. I promote that. I think it's great. In the internet age,
I'd say link their blogs and things like that, not
just inside your own tribe, but say, "Hey look, great
things are happening "among the Eastern Orthodox. "They're actually reaching the Muslims "in this part of the world." Your first thought should be
hey they're making Christians, not uh-oh Orthodoxy is spreading. [audience laughing] something's gone wrong in you, if you think oh no, more Orthodox, instead of wow, actually
evangelizing Muslims successfully, that is amazing. >> But where do we draw the boundaries? When I look at the list of churches ... You have this vision, Peter, of what the future of
Christianity looked like and you have Baptists, Pentecostals, jolly or less miserable Presbyterians depending on how close
to the escotom we are, it seems that you are making a decision
about who's in and who's out, but it's not clear to me where you set the boundaries. Is it just justification
by grace through faith? Is it Trinitarianism? Is it incarnation? Is it the first seven ecumenical councils? Where would you put the boundaries for the ministerial, fraternal, moving toward some kind of federation of churches idea? >> That's a good question. I think the only answer I have
is a somewhat pragmatic one. It seems to me you have a
couple of choices there. You can raise the bar of inclusion so that only those who affirm
the Westminster Confession are part of your ecumenical
ministerial association. >> Trueman: That is the OPC West. [laughing] yes, I'm tracking with you at this point. >> I knew you would recognize
what I was talking about. Or you could say some kind of broadly reformational confession. In some was we have to start over. I think we have to say we
acknowledge as churches those bodies that confess the
early creeds of the church, in particular I'm thinking
of Nicene and Chalcedonian. At least those are creeds that the churches in all traditions affirm. You get past the first few councils, you get into areas where there's
disputes among Christians. I would begin there. So would I want Mormons at
my ministerial association? No, or Jehovah's Witness,
I wouldn't count them as Christians, but I would say that judged by that standard ... Again, I recognize that's a pragmatic. >> So you mean that your comfortable that relativizing the Reformation in a way and not comfortable relativizing
Nicene and Chalcedonian. >> Yeah, I think I would say that I am, in this particular context, in the particular context of talking about interchurch relations. If you're talking about the
truth of Reformation principles, I'm not relativizing that, but if I say who am I
acknowledging as a fellow Christian and a body of believers that is part of the same church I'm part of, I'm not gonna acknowledge just those were affirming Reformation, but I want to affirm sola scriptura and want to affirm sola fide, but that would be a
standard of brotherhood. >> So this prayer meeting, I'm praying for other
Protestant groups in my city and trying to make it clear in other ways that neither oppose their
doctrine or compete with them for market share or anything like that, praying for them for
spiritual renewal and revival and training and catechism,
but when I turn to pray for Roman Catholics and I say, well I recognize Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy as
a form of Christianity, defective in some ways that I could list, but as a form of Christianity. In praying for the, I gonna
start praying for them to stop doing things
like venerating icons, like Lord, bring about
renewal in that church and get them to stop those practices. That seems like an odd way to share unity in this one church, if you're saying we're part of one church. It seems odd. I'm trying to figure
out who I'm responsible for in that setting. >> I could quote Dostoevsky,
"All are responsible for all." [audience laughing] We are one body. Is that true? If you're saying that the Orthodox congregation, the nearest Orthodox congregation to Biola is a Christian church then they are part of the
same body that you are and yes, I agree, I believe
that icon veneration is wrong and I think yeah, we should be praying that Orthodox churches repent of that. But again, how are we regarding them? Are we regarding them as outsiders who we don't have responsibility for? Again, if they're other than us, if they're in some other church, it's very easy to just let them go on with their icon veneration and not care. We don't even know that they're doing it, but if they're one body with us, if that's really true then yeah, we have to care. I said this in my talk. If Protestants and Catholics
are part of one body then their errors, and I
believe there are errors in the Roman Catholic church,
their errors are ours. They're errors of the church. An ecclesiology that splits
those of, I think, is just ... Again, makes life much simpler, but it doesn't move
toward the kind of unity of mind and heart and faith and voice that the New Testament seems to lay out. In other words this is not a
smoothing over of differences. In some ways, what I'm suggesting would create
a whole lot more friction. >> Someone defined the
Lutheran movement sometime as a group of people gathered
right outside the door of the Roman Catholic
church; pounding on the door; yelling, "Let us back in. "We're not half done reforming you yet." [laughing] Which is understandable,
from their point of view on the outside of that closed door, but you wouldn't expect the
people inside to think oh yeah, we should let that Reformation
thing keep happening. When you say Reformational Catholics, I think that would be great
if all Roman Catholics could become Reformational Catholics. [audience laughing] >> I guess part of my argument too is a question of historical moment. It does seem to me that as Protestants we have an opportunity ... We are engaging with Catholics in a way that has not happened, was not happening at the
beginning of my life. Catholics and Protestants are
in the same room together, a lot of times, engaging
and working together in different ways. It seems to me that there's an opportunity that there hasn't been throughout the whole history
of the divided Western church, but again, the fundamental
premise has to be if these churches are all
part of one church ... Put it this way, if the division is actually a division within the church and not a division between church and something other than church, if its actually a division in the church, then we have to begin from the premise that their problems, whatever they are are also our problems. >> Just to clarify, that's the
Reformer's position isn't it, pretty uniformly, that the Catholic Church does have the note of a church. >> With the Reformers you don't rebaptize children who've been baptized
by the Catholic church, so I think it's essentially
Machen's position that it makes a distinction
in Christianity and liberalism between Catholic church and liberalism. Liberalism is antisupernaturalism,
it's own belief. Catholic church you regard as a bit distorted form of Christianity. >> So Machen would say
liberalism is not Christian? >> Trueman: Liberalism
is a different religion. Catholicism in not a different religion. >> It's a messed up
version of this religion. >> Trueman: Yeah. >> That's something I think
is important to explore, because even Turgeon, in back of Machen, Turgeon says exactly the same thing. He says, "Rome is a deformed
church, but it's a church." It has word and sacrament
in however altered a form. So Dr. Leithart, wondering
if you can say more about this point, because Dominus Iesus, an official Roman magisterial document says that the Eastern
Orthodox church is a church; and Rome has been teaching
this very consistently that it recognizes so
called Eastern orders, but will only allow that Protestants are an ecclesiology community
or something like that, which means baptized
Christians whose baptism Rome is going to acknowledge
meeting accidentally together and that's better than northing, but they lack the notes of a church. They're no church at all. They're on the way to church, insofar as they are gathering together as Christians, but that they won't become a
church until their ministers have valid orders and have
the sacramental system which constitutes the center of unity. What do expect Roman Catholics to change, in order to meet your criteria for the Reformational and Catholic unity that you're seeking? >> A lot. They would have to change a lot. This is a point that I bring up in; maybe to the annoyance of my
Catholic hosts and friends, on the occasions that I'm in situations with Catholics and Protestants discussing such things. The point I made toward
the end of my paper, Catholic tribalism is no more defensible than Protestant tribalism and I think that in the
same way that Protestants should die to our
tribalism that is concerned for our particular branch of the church and not concerned for the whole body, not recognition that we
are part of a large body, so I'd say Catholics
have to similarly die. How could that possibly
happen, I have no idea, but that would be my hope. This goes back to another point, in response to something Carl had said. Who's in and who's out? I'm thinking one way to just to specify. What I'm thinking of in the kind of ecumenical
connections that I'm talking about I think are best pursued in
kind of a localized venue with face to face people who are living and
ministering to the same city. I know of situations
where this has happened where you've got church people from many different churches that
have prayed and worked together and have had significant impact on the communities where they are, but part of that could be
an effort to hammer out some kind of statement of faith just for the local
ministerial association, what do we believe commonly, where are our disagreements, where are the places where we're gonna have to continue to debate and discuss, where do Protestant churches
need to be corrected and learn from other traditions, where do Catholic churches
need to be corrected? That could be a project for a
local ministerial association. There's a great proliferation,
as you well know, there's great proliferation
of confessional statements, at the time of the Reformation, coming from all sorts of places. There's no reason why it couldn't function for a group of churches
in a particular place. >> Then that puts us on a local; I speak as a nonPresbytarian;
it sounds Presbyterian to me. It sounds like the kind of thing that the bishop wouldn't
be as free to engage in, in any kind of episcopal system. >> Evanates: Or tolerate. >> Or tolerate. >> Part of his minsters in an association. >> Yeah, because the bishops
have to agree in a way that as I understand
it Presbyterians don't. I'm just pointing it out. It seems Presbyterian,
but it's a great future. Future's Presbyterian. [audience laughing] Jolly Presbyterian, that's right. The reason why I wanted to emphasize that the 16th century,
the Reformation's position that Rome is a church,
but a defective church is that I take your point that that is not the
modern experience of ... That's not what you're gonna
get from a lot of Protestants and perhaps especially a lot
of evangelical Protestants, if you ask them about Rome. They've engaged in that kind
of rhetorical self definition wherein Rome or Orthodoxy
is the boogieman, not Christian at all,
don't even think about it, why are you asking about it, stop it. So it has this strange
shadowy kind of life on the edge our our
consciousness, not as, well yeah, those people are Christians,
you go to one of their services and you'll be scratching your head going why are they doing
that, what are they up to. That's why I make it a point to say I think they teach the
authority of scripture and salvation by faith, they just teach them defectively or badly or in a cluttered way. I know that a lot of your point is this kind of rhetorical
Protestant self definition. >> That's part of it and then also the other part of it is once you say that, what you stated as the
reformation position, that the Roman Catholic church
is a church of Jesus Christ and a defective one and then leave them to their defections, is that being responsible with people that we have just said
are brothers in Christ, that we share God's name
and triune name and baptism? >> One thing that concerns
me, I do think that the ... I appreciated the ecumenical endeavor, but I worry about the practical
pastoral impact of this. How to be catechismwise, very dear to me, the assurance that bursts
through at the Reformation is, as far as I can see it, unprecedented in medieval Catholicism, doesn't feature in contemporary Catholicism and yet is as a pastor it's vital. It's vital for me to be able
to point people to Christ for them to be able to rest in Christ and be assured of their salvation and I think it would be
irresponsible to me as a pastor to engage in behavior that
could be seen by people in my congregation as
relativizing that point, because that is so important to individual Christians, I think. To individuals here, but I get concerned that what we're actually
doing functionally is relativizing justification
by grace through faith or transforming it into
something that's more corporate or institutional, rather than individual and unpressing
assurance of salvation on a particular person dying
in a hospital or something and I don't wanna do anything for the sake ecumenism or whatever, that's gonna weaken my position
when I go to a hospital bed, when I talk to somebody who's just been diagnosed with terminal
cancer and I can read them Heidelberg Catechism
question one and I can say the theology that this rests
on is vitally important and I'm not prepared to relativize it, relative to the creeds
of the early church. It's just as important practically as the doctrine of the
trinity or the incarnation, if I could put it that way. >> I guess I have no objection or concern. I fully affirm what you just said about Heidelberg one and
the pastoral significance and centrality of justification by faith. What I'm talking about
relativizing the Reformation, I think what I'm talking about is in the context of who we are identifying as fellow Christians. I'm not talking about what you're doing with somebody who's on their death bed, as if you couldn't say anything more than the Nicene Creed might say about
somebody on their deathbed, which is not a whole lot. That's not the context
that I'm talking about it. >> But the practical outcome
of what you're doing. We're saying assurance is not
of the same rank and order of some of these other doctrines and I think piratically it is. >> I guess I just reversed the question. Is the alternative then to say only those who affirm
that are actually ... We're only gonna have
fellowship with those. We only acknowledge as
Christian that affirm that. >> So gentlemen, we
began a little bit late. We have 20 minutes left, so I'd like to sharpen questions
as they've arisen so far. Dr. Leithart, you say that what you want the Protestant churches to repent of is Protestant tribalism and you want the Catholics to
repent of Catholic tribalism, but we've discussed the different ecclesiological principles involved and would you say or
would any of you say that Catholic tribalism, what you're
calling Catholic tribalism, is to the Catholic mind
something that is essential, it's something constitutive
of Catholic ecclesiology. If would seem to be, in the
official magisterial document whereas, from the Protestant side it's sort of an accident. The confessions don't teach it, but it is a sort of a
popular frame of mind where you have Protestants
who get their ecclesiology from a tract or something like, but your not going to get that out of the Westminster confession, you're not going to get that out of the Heidelberg Catechism. The Reformed divines teach that Rome is in many ways a church, not just its individual
members, but as congregations those are in some way congregations. So I think if we can explore
that a little further, in the time we have left
and then wrap things up with a further question I'd like to pose. >> Thinking about this, I
wonder how practically we get to where Peter wants to get to. I can certainly say from
a Presbyterian perspective it's ridiculous. I heard about another
one invented just today, another Presbyterian denomination that holds to the Westminster standards. I'd like to see how
practically we could move to have one confessional
Presbyterian denomination. Somebody at each general assembly votes to go out of existence and
join one of the other bodies. I'm not sure how we get to where Peter wants to be here without, I keep going back to this, without relativizing a lot of doctrine. >> Well somebody will have to. >> That's my counter concern that if this is the eschatological
vision for the church, this is a vision for the church where baptism, justification
by grace through faith, secessionism, nonsecessionism, a whole variety of things
of different priorities simply have to be set to
one side institutionally, for it to work, put on a different
order from, seems to me, a bare Trinitarianism
and incarnationalism. >> It seems like that
what you're clarifying is that for Protestantism, tribalism is a bug in the software, but for ,I think, Catholicism
and to a lesser extent, for Orthodoxy, it's a feature, not a bug. It's built in. >> That's my question. Does that make a difference for the ecumenical
conversations that could happen? >> Absolutely. [laughing] the question how does this happen, I think the answer to that is the unity of the church is God's word. What made Israel and Judah
back into one people? They were thrown into exile and in exile, God took the stick of Judah and the stick of Israel and tied them back together. He threw them into the grave of exile and then Ezekiel called them back to life, out of that grave. I think, in some ways,
that's the whole trajectory; excuse me; of the history of the kings is you've got this kind of sacrificial procedure. We've got a unified
Israel that's torn in two and remains divided until both of them are
thrown into the fire of exile and they come out something new. How does that happen? We can't do it, but if Jesus prays for us to be one and prays for us to be one in such a way that the world will see it and know that the father sent him, it has to be a unity that is evident enough for the world to notice. I don't think we've done a good job of achieving
that kind of unity. What will that look like,
how will that be achieved? I don't know, but I trust that that's
what Jesus is praying for. And in that trust I think we
have to find the opportunities and make use and take advantage of what opportunities we have
to make that unity evident. You could say that there's
already a fundamental unity, which is true. The most fundamental unity is the fact that we are all members of Christ, all recipients of the spirit, all baptized with the same baptism. And baptism, at least, and the confession, at least, of certain truths, that's a visible expression of unity, but I think that those visible expressions of unity have become meaningless, in
the midst of all our divisions. I don't know how it happens. I have to trust that God knows
how he's going to do that and what exact form that that takes, does that mean the end of
denominational differences. I don't know. I don't think we can pass up
opportunities to pursue that and it looks to my like,
again, in the last century, the opportunities have
increased dramatically, so we should take advantage of them. >> Let me pose a different
version of the question I posed earlier and what I think
is a more illuminating way. Dr. Leithart, you said
and I think it's true that in some way all three of you are talking past each other a little bit, because your presentations
were composed independently and certainly there's
some equivocation on terms and a number of things
could be clarified further, but I think the one thing
that you all had in common was a presentation of
a very pastoral vision of the reformation of the one church. How can we make this church more one? How can pastors, for
instance, as Dr. Trueman said, bring Christ to those who are in distress? Each of you pointed to
different resources. Dr. Trueman pointed very
specifically to the confessions. Dr. Sanders pointed to
the wider tradition, but in a way that seemed to be focused through the Protestant confessions or at least the broad tradition of Protestant confessionalism and you seem to have a much broader view of tradition altogether. I'd like all three of you to take a shot at addressing the question of since you all agree that the
church needs to be reformed, where is the center of
gravity for this reformation. You seem to sort of say you have no issue with Protestantism as a set of principles, but it's precisely Protestantism
as a set of principles that Dr. Trueman thinks separates Protestants from Roman Catholics and would make Protestantism,
as divided as it is, the natural center for the
reformation of the whole church, recognizing all of its various members at different states of order and disorder. So if you could all three,
in the time we have left, address that question of where is the center of
gravity of reformation and are Protestant principles
the center of that center. >> I guess I would say that I think it's kind of back to basics. I think this is the
question you are asking. I would say its a kind of back to basics. What's the center of
gravity of reformation? It's the word of God fully taught as the rule of faith and
life, faith and practice. That's a Protestant principle. I think it's a recentering
of the church's worship particularly on the supper,
but on those places and moments and rites where Jesus has
promised to be present and to act and that piety has to be centered
there, word and sacrament and pastoral care of
discipline in all its forms. So basic Protestant agenda of word, sacrament and discipline, that's where ... I don't know if that's exactly-- >> Think that might not
answer my question is that a Roman Catholic could make
exactly the same answer, could say, "Our agenda is word,
sacrament and discipline", but there's a more
doctrinal specific context to the Protestant agenda
and to the Catholic agenda, as they are actually specified, so perhaps Dr. Trueman could
take a stab at that. >> I would say definitely Protestantism and I guess where I'm maybe Peter and I am
talking past each other, I have a sneaking suspicion that we think we have different views of the ways doctrine
functions within the church. I think maybe that might be
the difference between us, but I would say Protestantism
most closely models what I see as the New Testament
form of life for the church, priority on the word,
sacraments are important and local discipleship and fellowship and that distances me
from Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, because I don't see that in Roman Catholicism
and Eastern Orthodoxy. >> But would you say, as Dr.
Leithart has been saying that those who hold this Protestant position need more actively to
regard Roman Catholics as their brothers and consider that this work of reformation isn't something that
produces a finished artifact sort of in a Protestant confessionalism, but it is a gift that should be given to the separated brethren,
if we can call them that. >> I would certainly; I live
in a Roman Catholic area of Philadelphia, would
certainly want to stress to my Roman Catholic neighbors what they're missing by
not being Protestant, if I could put it that way. A number of students at Westminster over the time I've been there have dabbled with converting to Roman
Catholicism have asked me, "Should we do it?" Well my answer was no, but then they asked the
question, "Well why not?" I said, "Well you certainly gain a lot. "If you come from a generic
evangelical background, "you may well gain quite a lot. "If you move to Catholicism, you gain "an adult form of worship. "You gain historical rootedness." I'm not thinking of all evangelicals, just the particular ones I've
have this conversation with. I like to be offensive sometimes. That may be an inadvertently
offensive comment. But what you lose, I think, is assurance. What you lose is that
New Testament vision of growth in doctrinal understanding. What you lose is an
emphasis upon the word. I just do not see that in
my Roman Catholic neighbors. I've not come across that when I've talked to
Roman Catholic priests. Again, the vision of us working together with Roman Catholics is, I suppose, a delightful one in some ways. Some years ago I was
invited to speak at the Interfaith Seminar of the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Trent in Northern Italy. I met with a Catholic
priest before I gave my talk and we went into his study
and he got on display there the religious robes from people
around the world on models and he'd got Genevan gown and
he'd got Eastern Orthodoxy, but switched. The Genevan gown was the
Eastern Orthodox robes. The Eastern Orthodox robes were
marked as the Genevan gown. I remember thinking at that point, yeah, we really don't get they've
invited me here tonight to give a paper, but the bottom line is the Roman Catholic church is so big it doesn't really need us in any way. So I also feel that
there's a certain naivety to the vision of can we
give something to Catholics. Well we can, but I
doubt that they're gonna be interested in hearing from us. >> If I could just ... A couple of anecdotes I guess. One from a conversation
I had recently with a Roman Catholic catechist
in a local congregation who was talking about the problems that they have. He was basically setting up a
kind of Sunday school program in the Catholic church,
because he realized there hasn't been any kind of ... There is a kind of catechetical
training for the training. There's nothing for adult catechesis, no continuing education. The Catholics would
recognize this as a problem. And again, are we in a
situation; seems to me we are ... Evangelical Protestants are in
a situation where we can say, "Hey, we've been doing
this for a long time. "We've got some pointers
for how to teach people." It struck me during that
conversation what you're saying. This is very common for Catholic churches not to have any kind of
continuing adult education. I don't remember the author of the book. There's a Presbyterian minister who spent a year in Russia just recently, wrote a book about his
experience with Russian Orthodoxy and he was talking about how, I don't think it was particularly
through his influence, but he was talking about in
the Russian Orthodox church they realized that there were no moments of kind of fellowship. This wasn't a catechesis
thing, but they'd introduced quasievangelical practices
of coffee and cakes after divine liturgy, so that the people can actually converse with each other on a more informal basis and actually get to know one another. >> What's Russian for potluck? Do you know? >> I think it is a Russian word. I think there are perceived lacks and particularly as Catholics and Orthodox have more interaction with
evangelical Protestantism, they recognize that there's something in evangelical Protestantism
that they don't have. >> The fear we have of
talking past each other is kind of in the way we set this up. I think we've established
that in certain ways reformation is good, Protestantism, in the way you're using it is bad. It's kind of defective, sectarian, defining yourself rhetorically over against what you are not. If it's true then reformation is good, Protestantism is bad, it seems to me you could draw one of two conclusions. One would be well then,
back to the Reformation. Or you could draw the conclusion, which is forward to future church and I was surprised when
you said back to basics, because I thought surely you
would say forward to basics. [laughing] >> I'm sorry to disappoint you. I should have said that. >> Because your opening
statement was really well crafted with that forward motion,
so I could understand how if I were to go to a church and say, "Guess what everybody. "I've got an exciting message. "Back to the 16th century." I'm actually kind of embracing that, because I think there are
riches in your own tradition that you haven't look at. I take Carl's point that boy, it's kind of all in John Owen and if you read that
guy and those Lutherans writing about the same time,
you can't read that stuff, unless you have kind of mastered the patristic and medieval discussion, because they're having
long, ongoing discussions of how to interpret the Bible and church fathers
and the Middle Ages correctly. They've sort of metabolized the tradition that went before them. >> But you're right. That was a slip. I should have said forward. I say that facetiously,
but I do think that there is a kind of resource a mond move, but resource a mond is
never for the sake of, it's never antiquarian. It certainly wasn't,
in the Catholic church. It sparks a lot of innovated theology and practice in the Catholic church, for good and ill. So you recovered the
riches of a tradition, but it's always for the sake of meeting the needs of
the church now and for leading the church in the future. It's not simply backward looking. >> Gentlemen, we've reached
the nine o'clock mark, so I'd like to thank you, all three of you for your participation and I think we should clap for them. [audience applauding loudly] So now we're gonna open up the mics to questions from the audience, which can be directed, of course, at any three of our speakers. I should tell you all the
lights are very bright, so if you want me to point
the microphone to you, you're going to have to make yourself very, very conspicuous. Are there any question? Put you hand way up there. A line forming, okay. >> This is a question for Dr. Leithart. Regarding expressing the
prayer of Jesus to be one body, I perceive and maybe you can correct me that you're advocating a top down unity, that we declare institutionally that we are Reformed Catholic and that goes from the top down and that after declaring
Reformed Catholicism, we as a corporate body work out the kinks within one another. The obvious issue with
the ground up position, as individuals declaring
Reformed Catholicism is that it won't reach the corporate level and the public level that you desire the unity to be expressed in, but the also issue with the top down level is that even if we all declare ourselves to be Reformed Catholic,
there will be issues and kinks that won't work themselves out
personally very immediately, so from the top down
there may be public unity expressed to the world,
but from the ground up there won't be personal
unity expressed to one other as often as we might like. My question to you, with that context, is do you want Reformed Catholicism to begin from institution
leaders and go down to the laity or to begin with the laity
and go up and and up and up and eventually to a
corporate body or both? >> Yes. If I gave the impression
that it was one directional, I certainly didn't intend to. What would it entail? I can see a whole lot of different things going on. At the very public
ecumenical dialog level, there are already institutions, projects where Catholics and evangelicals and Orthodox are engaging in
various forms of discussion, theological discussion, so at the top you have that kind of thing going on. I think the local ministerial association, to some degree, in various
places you have that going on. I think that's a healthy thing and I think it should be
taken beyond just a matter of friendship and fellowship. As important as that is for pastors, it could become a side of
something much more serious. So you have that level,
you have a local level, you have a local church level. What would I want a local pastor to do? I would want a local pastor to lead a church to the
Lord's table every week. I would want a local pastor
to teach and preach the Bible and not to tell personal anecdotes and not to review the
day's news in his sermons. In one local congregation, just those two things
would be achieving ... So I see it happening on all
types of different levels. I didn't mean to imply
just as a top down thing. I certainly don't think top down ... That doesn't work. And again, I reiterate what
I said in response to Carl that I think this is ultimately gonna be a work that God does. Whatever unity we achieve is something that he's doing by his spirit. >> You could also make the distinction internal unity and external unity. One of the things that Roman
Catholics have in their favor is a heavy investment in external unity, so that they are clearly branded upfront. Roman Catholic is Roman Catholic. Now of course, once you get inside, I have Roman Catholic friends
on the left and the right who can't stand each
other and not functionally in the same church in any meaningful way, but bygolly it all counts,
because they are Roman Catholic. Meanwhile I go to an
Evangelical Free Church. I'm a member there, but I preach
at the local Baptist church when they invite me and we
have all kinds of unity, which goes to pulpit exchange. Somehow that doesn't count, because we haven't successfully
branded externally. I do take your point that the unity Jesus prays for is
gonna be external enough that the world notices it, says, "Hey those are the same ... "That's the same religion there." >> Yeah, well I think that counts. I hope I didn't give the impression that what you're talking
about doesn't count, because I think that is a visible expression of the unity that churches have. >> Next question please. >> In the Reform tradition,
especially the continental side, we have guidance, biblical guidance on how to identify a true church, the three marks of the church; word, sacrament and discipline; and it was acknowledged very early on that, at least from the French confession, at least that early, that
Rome failed these criteria, that it was a false church, so I don't see any basis for spreading the tent as nearly that big to include all Trinitarian churches. >> I guess I would question whether what you stated
as the Protestant position or the Reform position was as
universally held as you said. In preparation for this discussion, I was reading through a section of Anthony Milton's book on Catholics and Protestants in England in the 17th century. There's a great deal of discussion about how exactly they evaluate
the Roman Catholic church and according to Milton,
the vast majority of Protestant theologians
in the Church of England; reformed, many of them, strongly reformed, the vast majority said that
the Roman Catholic church was a church in some sense, it
was qualified in some way. I dispute the historical point you made. I don't think it's nearly as clear cut and this came up in our discussion too that Reformists at least recognize Roman Catholic baptism from the beginning. That was the dividing point between the Magisterial
Reformers and the Anabaptists. >> But certainly you would admit that they were barred from the
supper in reformed churches. Calvin would not serve
it to a Roman Catholic. >> Right. Yeah. On the principle, again,
I guess if we have to ... Again, it goes back to a counted question of what we count as, in particular, maybe a doctrinal bar that is sufficient to say
this is a Christian church and I'm very hesitant, in fact I won't say
that only those churches are churches of Jesus Christ that hold to the
confession that I hold to. I don't think that is a
biblical grounded way to go, I would say. >> I was looking at the letter exchange, the open letter exchange between John Calvin and Cardinal Sadolet. Great 16th century document. Very straightforward there, writing public letters to each other, because Sadolet writes
and says, "Hey Genevans, "sorry you were seduced by those teachers, "those reformed teachers. "Come on back. "Come on home to Rome, we'll take you." And Calvin writes back and
says, "Thank you very much, "but no thanks." And in there he does say, "I
grant that you are a church, "it's just that you're a church
with wolves for shepherds." Of course it gets polemical,
but the point is ... That was the nice part right. The point is at least Calvin, at that point, is saying that is a church. >> I think we can add to that as well the use of medieval sources
by the Puritans and Reformed, the Dominicans, for example. I scouted through a John Owens writing, so he refers to them as, I think, as the less benighted brethren
or something like that, some patronizing term, but he certainly appreciates
them as guardians of God's sovereign grace
in the Middle Ages. >> Perhaps the next question. >> My question's for Dr.
Trueman and Dr. Sanders. You two seem to be making
a distinction between the false religion of liberalism and I forgot the exact word you used, but maybe defective church
of Roman Catholicism. I don't wanna put words in you mouth. If the Roman Catholic church
is simply a defective church, but a church of Jesus Christ nonetheless, wouldn't that be all the more reason to embrace Dr. Leithart's position? Why separate the two, if they are in fact a church of Jesus Christ? I see a similarity between maybe a more liberal
Protestant denomination. Whey separate the two,
when they are a church? >> I think I see your point. I think that defining
yourself over against that which is not
Protestant is more dangerous when you try to distance it even further and, for instance, go for the strong point that it's not even a church,
I have no idea what it is, I don't know why they keep
saying the word Jesus a lot, la la la, not listening. The Reformation position
is yes that's a church, seriously messed up, let us
back in there to reform it. Liberalism, we're talking about like early 20th century
Protestant modernist liberalism, J. Gresham Machen's critique there is, "Well you don't believe there is a god "who is distinct from the world. "You don't believe miracles can happen. "You can't possibly
believe in an incarnation. "Give me a list of things "that constitute the Christian religion. "Liberalism doesn't affirm any of them." That's the grounds on
which Machen wrote a book, Christianity and Liberalism, distinguishing those as two
different religious systems. >> In addition to that, Machen's
point is that Liberalism is based on a set of ideas and Christianity is an
affirmation of certain happenings. So Liberalism is not the
same kind of religion, even, as Christianity. >> Every phrase in the
religious vocabulary has an utterly different
meaning in the two systems. So for Protestant
Liberalism, for Modernism it's the fatherhood of
God is a general principle about God's attitude towards the word, whereas for Christianity it's
a thing that God accomplished, adoption in Christ has been brought about by the thing that he does in the gospel. >> Asker: Thank you. >> I was gonna ask you a very
practical question as well. I would simply respond to that and say you may well be correct. I think Protestant disunity
should be the first priority of Protestants, solving,
not disuniting ourselves, but solving Protestant disunity has to come before any significant gains could be made ecumenically with the Church of Rome
or the Eastern Orthodox, so my response here would be yeah, but practically we need
to deal with the disunity, first of within Presbyterianism. Why are there 6, 10, 12
denominations in the United States that all hold to essentially
the same confession? That needs to be dealt with
first, as an ecumenical issue, I think. I'm not as ecclesiastically
optimistic as Peter over here, so I don't think it's going to happen, but that would be the way to do it. [audience laughing] >> Can I ask a clarifying
question and then I'll leave for the sake of everybody else? Are Protestant differences
with Roman Catholicism not salvific and if they are, how do we still consider that I true
church of Jesus Christ? So thank you. >> I wouldn't say that the differences are differences of being saved. This is a point that N.T. Wright makes, people can be justified by faith without knowing they are
being justified by faith and without realizing
that the justification that they have is by faith. I would say that the Catholic Church teaches that salvation is in Jesus Christ and that they gather people into unity with the body of Christ
and those who do that and trust in Jesus are saved. And in doing that, they are following at least the fundamental
teachings of the Catholic church. >> I know this is more of a
question than anything else. I wonder why purgatory
continues to function in Catholic theology, if soteriologically the distance between us is not
significant, put it that way. I'm just not expert enough
in Catholic theology to answer my own question, but for me, I would have some serious questions to ask before I was prepared to say
the soteriological differences between Catholicism and
Protestantism are negligible, though I would affirm what Peter said. I remember a conversation with a person; that I'm in at the moment,
but in a previous church; where he was clearly to me a Christian, but he could not articulate justification by grace through faith, but we did no bar him
from the Lord's supper because he was not able to
articulate that doctrine. He clearly trusted in
Christ for his salvation, so sort of affirm the
qualification Peter puts on there for individuals. >> The next question. >> Yes, I'd alike to address
this question Dr. Leithart as well as the esteemed Paul Woolley Chair of Church History at
Westminster, Dr. Carl Trueman. >> Esteemed, I like that word. >> Esteemed. Esteemed. Dr. Leithart, I have a critique
I'd like you to respond to, in regard to the fundamental narrative, the metanarrative
of your presentation. You said that the focus of Christianity must always be forward. The prophets called Israel forward, but it seems to me the prophets throughout the Old Covenant scriptures always called Israel
back to the Pentateuch, back to the covenant
with God, back to Moses that the constant refrain
don't move the old landmarks, don't move the historic landmarks was so fundamental to them
and even the covenant of grace as it's administered in the New Covenant pointed back to the
covenant of works with Adam, where Adam failed, Christ fulfilled, so even the covenant of
grace is pointing back to the covenant of works, so
that we are saved by works, Christ's, not our won. With that, how can you frame
everything as moving forward, when we're always called to look backward, even by the text that
you yourself referenced? In addition to that,
as an anecdotal point, you asked the question what pride kept the
Reformed and Lutherans apart and it strikes me that it was
Melanchthon's call for unity with Rome itself that kept the Reformed
and Lutherans apart. When Luther wanted to unify with all the other reformed churches, Melanchthon said, "Hold on. "We really wanna keep the doors open "to continuing to reform the church "that had excommunicated us." The Protestants didn't leave Rome. Rome kicked us out. So when you used that anecdote, it struck me that it was
actually our position that kept the Lutherans and Reform from working together. >> I don't really have any
response to the last question. The first question, Deuteronomy is full of exhortations to remember; remember the exodus, remember
what the Lord did in Egypt, because you're heading into a land you're going to have to fight against Canaanites in the land. So the memory is always for the sake of what's ahead and what's in front. I don't think the texts you're citing contradict what I said. And I'll also point out that there is at least once place where
Isaiah exhorts Israel to forget the exodus, forget the former things, because God is doing something new. He's ready to do another
exodus and that exodus, it's gonna so surpass the previous exodus that the first exodus from
Egypt is gonna drop out of mind. That's a fairly unique passage, but it is in the Bible. And I would say again,
memory is essential, but memory is for the sake of present challenge. >> Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with what
Peter said laterally there. I think if I'm right and
American Christianity in general, Protestantism perhaps in particular is moving into a position
of internal exile within American society at the moment that memory is vitally important. How do we know that God is gonna deliver on his
promises in the future? Well part of that is knowing how he's delivered in his promises in the past. If you're in exile, what is your identity? To a large extent, it's
knowing where you've come from, knowing the land that you've come from and I think that recalling the great acts of God in
the past is going to be vital to American Christianity
in a way, in the future, that perhaps it has
never been in the past, because American Christianity has essentially been in charge. When you're in charge,
memory is not so important, I don't think. When you're marginalized
and you're in exile, remembering where you came from, remembering who you are
is vitally important. >> At one point toward
the end, Dr. Leithart, you made the claim that the problem with the
division in the church that was we were failing
to witness to the world, we're failing to witness to
the unity of Christ's body and what I noticed is that I don't think any of the speakers really
challenged that assumption which really seems to underly the anxiety we all feel about this topic, but I wonder if we Protestants
don't suffer from a kind of ecumenical hypochondria in this regard. We are really preoccupided
with our differences, but the Huffington Post
doesn't know or care that there's 12
Presbyterian denominations. They care that they all say that Jesus literally rose from the dead and they all say that same
sex marriage is wicked and the same thing for they
don't make a distinction between evangelical Lutherans
and evangelical Anglicans and evangelical Presbyterians. We're all just culture
warriors on the wrong side and your own remark actually, about the unity between
Protestants and Catholics in these culture war issues, I think highlights the fact that we're getting to
the point where the world doesn't really see Protestants
and Catholics that different, at least the ones that
are really orthodox. They see us all as standing
up for these benighted, old fashioned moral
beliefs and stupid stuff about the scripture actually
being literally true. So I wonder if this doesn't vindicate the basic Protestant claim that the unity of the church
is the unity in the word, the unity of the witness to the gospel and is not something
expressed institutionally and that institutional unity maybe doesn't matter so
much for our public witness. >> I take that in part
as an exhortation to Carl to be more optimistic, because [laughing] because it's actually happening already. >> Yeah, but in the Huffington Post, that doesn't make me too optimistic. [laughing] >> I'm sorry, restate the
way you asked the question right at the end, if you
could restate the comment. >> The question is isn't the fact that the world increasingly sees us as basically united regardless of our institutional differences, isn't that proof that maybe this external unity, visible unity
is the wrong preoccupation. >> Okay, thanks. A couple of thoughts on that. That's a very good point that
I'll have to think more about, but one thing I would say is that I don't really
want to talk about this in terms of institutional unity. Take institutional forms I suppose. I think of Augustine's debates with the Donatists. Donatists have valid
but ineffective baptism, because they're separated from the church and that could be taken as a kind of institutional
mechanical understanding of how the sacraments work. You have to have it in
this particular structure with this particular set
of ritual specialists, in order for it to be effective. But that's not what Augustine says. Augustine says that what
makes it ineffective is that the Donatists are in schism and therefore by definition are not living in love
with their brothers. So it's not an institutional argument. It's an argument about how
they relate to one another. It takes institutional forms obviously, even with the Donatists. The Donatists had their own systems of more Bishops in North Africa than the Catholic church
had at certain times. So it takes institutional form, but I don't want to talk
about it institutionally. I do want to talk about visible unity, but that doesn't necessarily mean bureaucratic unity. Maybe I'm too quickly going
from institution to bureaucracy. I'm not thinking of
primarily in that sense. I would also say that the point about the unity as a matter of mission is only one of the threads of the New Testament teaching
about the unity of the church. Even that I don't think is
simply a pragmatic thing. We need to be unified, in order to have a more
impressive witness. Ephesians 2 Paul talks about
the unity of the church as a fundamental aim of the cross to create one new man. That's why Jesus went to the cross to break down the dividing wall, to bring those that are far off near, to make all those who are in Christ into a holy household and an assembly of saints. So it's not just the mission part. It's the fact that the unity
is an aim of Christ's work and as I said in presentation
it's internal to the gospel. >> I think we have time
for one more question. >> I have a question
relating this conversation to laity in the church. I've been spending the past
three years doing pro-life work, so whether that's in staff meetings or in a board room or at
the pastors prayer breakfast and the mayor's prayer breakfast or in front of an abortion clinic, you have a variety of church backgrounds represented and in some situations it's evenly split between Catholic and
Protestant, so my question is in our personal relationships
and our friendships, in our community organizations can this kind of a conversation be fostered? How would it be fostered practically, especially when as
Catholics and Protestants who value truth, we tend
to be very evangelical with each other and think that's good, we're being honest with our beliefs, but how could we keep those
conversations maybe fruitful instead of it either being what I've seen, let's just dance around and
talk about what we agree about, which is the sanctity of human life and the deity of Jesus
Christ and the trinity and just kind of ignore our differences? >> I think the coming
situation of cultural pressure, the marginalization that we are all going to experience together does present lots of opportunities and I think a lot of them
will fall into our laps. I think in 1932 Karl Barth
wrote a letter to someone where he said, "Well, things
are heating up here in Germany. "I think I better go downtown
and register as a socialist, "not 'cause I really want to especially, "I just wanna make it clear "which side I intend to be hung with." Yeah, I get that. I think I should probably make it clear on which side I intend to be hung with, so one of the things it looks like is if someone is being mocked
for their Christian stance, I don't say, "That's just a Pentecostal,
those people are kind of crazy", but I say, "No, I think the
thing they're being mocked for "is something I hold in common with them." I don't say, "That Catholic
is being pushed out "of public life, but well, you know, "they kinda brought it on themselves. "They're Catholic after all." Instead I'm able to say,
"No, that's the thing "that is offensive about them is the thing "that rightly understood is also offensive "about my Christian commitment." You still have to have some judgment, especially in the evangelical world. You turn on TV and I just think whoa, these are not my people. [audience laughing] Whatever happens on here
in the next 30 minutes, I'm not responsible for this. This is no more my problem
than anybody else's problem. Or if you're on campus
at a public university and someone's got a bullhorn
and they're shouting things you think well, I'm not
gonna stay in this area long enough to find out if the message coheres with what I believe. I'm just immediately
offended by the presentation, but I'm still looking for
opportunities to say yes, the shame, the reproaches, the fall upon that group that I find wrong,
in certain confessional ways is the reproach that should fall on me. >> So we've run out of time for questions, unless Peter you ... >> Well I was gonna say Peter will probably disagree with me on this, but I would say what you're engaged in is actually in the civic sphere. Be a good Christian in the civic sphere, but I wouldn't worry about
doctrinal conversations when you're engaged in pro-life work. I would have no problem
with sharing a platform with a Muslim in pro-life work, because I see it as doing
something in the public sphere. We don't, as a church,
organize going and picketing abortion clinics, but I trust
that as the word is preached each week it will convict people of how they should operate in the civic sphere as good citizens. So I would put a certain amount
of distance, in some ways, between the church and
the sort of civic action in which you're engaged, which to me, defuses some of the
dilemmas you're facing. Your conscious may not
allow you to live with that, but I'm a sort of cold hearted OPC guy [audience laughing] where we're very comfortable
with that kind of distance. >> So we've reached the end
of our time for questions and now at this point I'd
like to invite Rusty Reno from First Things up to address everyone. >> It's a real pleasure to be here. It's a kind of a great experience, as someone who is not a Protestant and I feel like I'm in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. I am not a Protestant sir and I never have been a Protestant. First Things magazine was founded precisely to promote these
kinds of discussions. We're a magazine that publishes Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Jews and recently, Muslim writers as well. We can do that because as a magazine I think Carl Trueman
and Peter Leithart both, but especially Carl Trueman has recognized or has reminded us that as religious believers, we
are being forced together by a common pressure that we are subjected to in the public square, in civil society and in our culture today. He mentioned the moral transformation of
our society that makes our ordinary moral beliefs
seem repugnant to people and certainly our belief
in the resurrection seems incredible to people. So that's certainly driving us together and that allows the magazine to function in its broad ecumenical way, as we as religious believers
try to meet that challenge shoulder to shoulder. But I wanna emphasize that there's a second and very positive dimension to why we can publish a magazine that brings together such diverse people and it's because we're united by a common experience or a common conviction and that is that we are
more deeply humanized the more fully we conform
ourselves to God's will for us. That strikes me as a positive word, a word of hope that our age needs to
hear and it's a message we're trying to get out
in First Things magazine. We have some copies that were available for coming in. I certainly invited people
to take a copy home. We'd love to have more folks at Biola read for us. I should say that both Carl
Trueman and Peter Leithart publish regularly in First Things magazine and I'm very proud to have
them on our roster of writers. So I'd like to thank, again,
the Torrey Honors Institute, as they've been thanked
many times this evening. I'd like to thank them for
sponsoring this evening. I'd like to thank the Devenant Trust for sponsoring this evening and for inviting First
Things magazine to offer us an opportunity to
also serve as cosponsors for this event. So thank you very much. [applauding loudly] >> This has been a wonderful
night of conversation and I'd like to thank our panelists also. I'd like to thank Peter Leithart who in 12 to 15 minutes did attempt
to sum up his entire life, talked about unity of the church, rallied against Protestant tribalism and encouraged the return to the imprecatory psalms and hope for interestingly
hierarchal Baptists and he also encourage us, if I may, to theological go back to the future. [audience laughing] I've been saving that. I wanna thank Fred Sanders who encouraged us to anchor ourselves in the summative doctrine of the trinity, to, as he said, loot, pillage
any historical understanding or theological understanding
that moves the kingdom forward. He pointed out that Jaroslav Pelikan, in a prescient way, knew that the Torrey Honors Institute was coming and encouraged great books as an opportunity to save the West. I thank Carl Trueman who I think rightly expressed a concern that Christianity
is going to be marginalized and go into exile in America and that he called us to not be separated, to find a rich, robust
theology and doctrinal identity and he called us to a theology that needs to be pastorally aware. We also learned from him that skinny jeans are, per his
doctor, contraindicated. And I wanna thank our moderator Peter Escalante whose
helpful, insightful questions and really wicked
mustache moved us forward. So let's just stop and give
a round of applause for them. [audience applauding] I also like to just take one quick second to thank someone who really
held this whole evening together and that is Laurel Hurst. Laurel, where are you? [applauding] She's not here. We'll show her the tape. She was amazing. We could not have done this without her. We're so thankful. I too would like to just take a moment and thank the Devanant Trust and First Things and none of our organizations can continue to do the work we do without additional support and all of you have envelopes that we
gave you as you walked in and if you'd like to contribute, so that we can do more work
like what we're doing tonight, we would ask that you just put
your money in the envelope, write the name of the
trust or First Things or Torrey Honors Institute or
on the memo line of your check and we'll have baskets in the back that you can contribute to. Let me just close us in prayer. Lord, we ask that you point us to your truth. We ask that you guide
our hearts and our minds towards your kingdom purposes and that you give us
the wisdom and the will through your spirit to engage with our fellow sisters and brothers in the pursuit of theological questions, because of our desire to
love you and each other well. We ask that you give us a vision of your church
that is one of grace that is seeking truth. We ask that you help us leave here committed to the word of God that grounds our assurance and is central to our faith and practice. We ask all of this in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen. You are dismissed. Thank you for coming. >> Announcer: The Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, biblically centered, great books, liberal education. More at biola.edu/torrey.
