Truth Unites - Are Catholics Christians? Why Protestants Can Say YES

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Gavin Ortlund explains why Protestants can affirm that Roman Catholics are Christians. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Are Roman Catholics Christians? My answer to that is yes. And since that is a source of concern for some of my Protestant friends, I would like to offer an explanation for why I say that in three points, and stick to the end. I'll have some important things at the end, fuller picture. First, this is a historic Protestant view. On the one hand, the reformers had harsh polemics for the abuses occurring in their day. They used words like Antichrist and ravenous wolves to describe the Catholic hierarchy and the things that they were doing at that time. On the other hand, they maintained that the Church of Rome was still Christian and with Christian people within her. Luther said there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy.

He also said, in the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity, and many great and devoted saints. The Christendom that is now under the papacy is truly the body of Christ and a member of it. in the institutes, John Calvin bewailed the rampant idolatry, superstition, the error in the Church of Rome. He's going on quite some space about this, but then he qualifies by saying when we categorically deny to the papists the title of the church, we do not for this reason impugn the existence of churches among them. They also, both Luther and Calvin, vigorously defended over and against Rome, the ecclesial

status of both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox, when some contemporary Protestants go further than Luther and Calvin, I think it's fair to ask them at that point for their evaluation of Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Syrian Church of the East as well. After the Council of Trent, much Protestant evaluation of the Church of Rome continued to reflect this balance of, on the one hand, strident polemic against error, and on the other hand, an affirmation of Christian status. In the Anglican tradition, Richard Hooker critiqued what he called Rome's gross and grievous abominations, but he also said, touching on the main parts of Christian truth, we gladly acknowledge them to be of the family of Jesus Christ. Francis Turriton took a more qualified

view. He basically said there's a sense in which Rome is a church. She has Christian people, she has Christian sacraments and she has Christian doctrines, therefore she's a church in some sense. But there's a sense in which she isn't a true church because she's intermingled so much error with the truth. More recently, Charles Hodge defended the view that Roman Catholic baptisms are valid. And he said, basically, the Church of Rome is a part of the visible church. So that's Charles Hodge. Unfortunately, sometimes the noisiest voices today in the most visible are more strident and they go further than the reformers themselves, and perhaps they're unaware of these historic Protestant views.

So that's a little bit of history. So that leads to the second point here, and this question of people now wonder, well, wait a second, if that's what the reformers said, then what were they protesting? And I'll have people who ask me, why do you advocate for Protestant theology if you think that people can be Christians and can be saved outside of Protestantism? And the response that I would give to this can be stated simply, not all error is damnable error. Even very serious and grave error can fall short of placing a person or a tradition outside of Christianity. Simply stated, right?

But I think there's a lot of black and white thinking. And I know here, the reality is it gets nuanced here. Some people don't like this, but I don't know any way to address this question without it getting complicated because in real life, these questions are complicated. It is possible for someone to be a part of a tradition that has errors and corruptions, and yet they're still a Christian. So the approach that I take that I think is ideal is C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien can sit there across the table at a meeting of the inklings, and they can be honest and fully unveil their concerns about each other. Their disagreements, this is how I would say, their disagreements go down to the

roots of how we conceptualize Christianity, how authority works within Christianity, what we even set the boundaries of Christianity at? Those are serious, real differences. They should be able to be honest and advocate for their view of the truth. At the same time and at the end of the day, they can look across the table and say, you're a Christian. That is the view that seems correct and good to me. And honestly, it gives me joy because I respect a lot of these people. Who wants to restrict salvation more than we absolutely have to, right? But what I see right now sometimes isn't all or nothing thinking, black and white thinking. When I have these conversations, I'm sometimes aware.

Respectfully, it seems like some people are thinking like this, that, well, if they're Christians, then everything's fine. And so you go quickly from it. Either they're damned or it's no big deal. And of course, those are not the only two options. If it helps to impart categories, consider the ancient Israelites. And I'm not drawing a direct comparison between ancient Israel and anything today. But just as to inculcate categories, there are times where there's serious error and idolatry within ancient Israel, and yet they remain the people of God. Circumcision is still valid and so forth.

And yet, that's not denying the problems. I think we need to be able to allow multiple things together at the same time that yield a complicated picture to be faithful to the truth about this topic. Let me share, for example, two experiences that I have that drive me in my conscience to be willing to embrace complexity here. First, I have Protestant friends who are missionaries in Catholic majority countries, and their experience is they see very little understanding of, of the gospel and very little fruit of the gospel in their context, even I am pained to say they experience persecution. There is persecution of evangelical missionaries in certain contexts. I also have friends who have grown up Catholic, and they never heard the gospel, a single time. I want to, the last thing I would ever want to do is cause pain for those people by invalidating

their experience. Okay, that's an experience. Now, another experience, I have is I meet particular Roman Catholic Christians whom I deeply, and Christians from other traditions outside of Protestantism, that I deeply admire and respect. I cannot in good conscience, reject them and say they are not Christians. These are people who are, in some cases, far better Christians than myself. And here's, you know, some people will say to me, this happens a lot. People say, well, yeah, they can be Christians in the Catholic Church, but only if they don't really understand Catholic theology or really believe in Catholic theology. And that is where I would disagree. The people that I meet and respect as Christians understand Catholic theology. I think

G.K. Chesterton knew Catholic theology when he converted to Catholicism. So these are these two different experiences. I think we can acknowledge the validity of both experiences that on the one hand, there are huge swathes of Roman Catholicism in various places in the world that need to be evangelized. And to be fair, that's true of other traditions as well, including some Protestant traditions. And at the same time, we cannot reject the reality of Christ that we find outside of Protestantism, including in Roman Catholicism. Third point, what about justification? Here I take what I regard as a middle of the road approach in which I would say we have made progress. Protestant Catholic dialogue about justification has made progress since the Reformation.

we're not in the exact same spot at the same time, there are still important differences that remain. So for anyone curious about this, chapter four of my book works through this, there's multiple points of difference that are still on the table that we need to be aware of. That I just think it's sort of naive to gloss over. Like one of them is the formal cause of justification, imputed righteousness versus infused righteousness, those kinds of issues. That's not the only issue. That's one example of things still on the table. However, the nature of the disagreements, though they are important, don't concern the entirety of the gospel or the entirety of justification as such, such that one side versus the other is now no longer within Christianity.

And the reason is our traditions use the term justification with different meanings. So I'll have friends who say, well-meaning, wonderful friends who say, Catholics reject justification by faith alone, therefore they reject the gospel, therefore they are not Christians. Let me explain why I don't agree with that. and I think we need to be willing to look underneath the surface vocabulary and ask about the meaning of these words as a metaphor. If an American and a Brit are arguing about whether football is the greatest sport, they are going to need to be careful to define terms because they come

from context in which the term is used differently. Similarly, we have to be willing to look underneath the surface terminology to the substantial meaning of words. If not, we will have problems with the Bible because the book of James says, basically, at the surface level wording, it's not justification by faith alone. It's faith plus works. Now, someone, I've done these conversations enough. I know how people respond. Someone's going to immediately say, yeah, but that's not what James means. And that is my point. We need to go under the surface terminology to the meaning. And what we discover when we do this is that the word justification has been used with different meanings all throughout church history and in our different traditions, and those differences of terminology go back into the New Testament, like I just showed from James. Roman Catholics use the term justification to refer to the entirety of being made righteous.

They include with that term what we call sanctification, growth in being righteous. Here's how the Catholic Catechism puts it. justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. That is also how Augustine used the term justification. Roman Catholic theology also distinguishes between initial justification and ongoing justification. So for Roman Catholics, good works are not necessary to come into a state of reconciliation with God. This is a crucial difference between the theology of the Judaizers that Paul is targeting in Galatians and what Roman Catholics believe. These kinds of misunderstandings have plagued our discussions and our

disputes. So, for example, the anathemas at the Council of Trent are using their own terminology. Much of what is being targeted is a caricature that Protestants can and should condemn, just like the book of James condemns. Now, that is not to say, again, that the only things on the table are misunderstandings. There are differences. I have concerns about Roman Catholic, even though I wouldn't say justification is like the big issue today that it was at the Reformation. My concerns about Roman Catholic theology are mainly in other areas, but there are differences here too. And I'm going to do a video on a confession, for example, how that works. I offer a full video on justification itself as well, if you're interested in seeing a full case on this. When I try to chart out, where do we agree,

where do we disagree? What does that mean? The only point here, I'm trying to say is that the disagreements are not such that they result in a rejection of justification wholesale. And if you think they are, my question and challenge to you would be, would you excommunicate St. Augustine from your church? Do you think Augustine was a Christian? So I hope this brings some clarification, but let me give a final question of kind of where do we go from here. What should we do if you out there watching this are my brother or sister in Christ, and you still disagree with me. You've heard my explanation and you still disagree.

Well, my appeal would be, let's conduct our disagreement going forward in a way that honors Christ, where we contend for the truth, but we do so with love. One of the things I'm seeing right now, increasing online, is this mentality of let's tear them to shreds.

And this is not good. This is not healthy for the body of Christ. The approach that I aspire to, and I fall short of it, but this is before God, what I'm trying to do, is, on the one hand, to stand our ground,

no matter what. So the online bullies who want to tear me to shreds, I will never back down from them, ever. I will die before I start deviating from the path. Even knowing how crazy the world is, you know, it is vulnerable to kind of have a more public ministry where you're commenting on things and people will pull out little snippets of what you say and they will try to tear you to shreds. every morning I read Jeremiah 1 for my devotions. I just read the same passage every day because it's what I need right now. And this is what I consecrate myself too is I will be faithful to God's calling on my life. The emails I get tell me that the things I'm doing are bearing fruit and the truth of these things is too important.

So I will never back down. And I would encourage those. So my point is those who disagree with me about this topic, make your case. You know, make your argument. you know, but that will require getting into the discussion and defining the word justification and dealing with, you know, the historic Protestant views and giving us what that means for an Augustine of Hippo and so on and so forth. Now at the same time, then what we do is we argue for the truth, but we do so in love. And because I'm seeing so much of this, let's tear them to shreds mentality

online right now, here's a warning from Richard Baxter that can help us to finish. What he's basically saying is that not all theological zeal is good. It has to have love as well. Being wrathful against error is not necessarily good if it has no love. And this part that I've emboldened here is really wonderful just as a thing to aim for and remind ourselves of in all of our disputes. He talks about basically, is your attitude to them, does it tend more to disgrace than to cure? To make parties and divisions rather than to heal them. Take that language. Here's the final thing. This is just a general appeal for on this topic as we disagree and work at it, but also on other things. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the way Christians disagreed about these things was, on the one hand,

Jeremiah 1, plant your feet in the ground and don't budge, don't back off of what you believe is true. On the other hand, content for that in a way not to disgrace, not to tear to shreds, not to rile up and stir up negative emotion, but to heal. that the healing love of Jesus Christ would come through even in our polemics. That's what I think we all should aim for right now. And the absence of disagreement isn't what we need, but love amidst the disagreement. And so let's, as we talk about this, hopefully that's something, just a reminder. I need that. I'm not saying this to censor anyone else out there.

We all need the reminder of that regularly. All right, let me know what you think. Is there anything off base here? Tell me, you know, let's talk about this. Let's keep working at it. Hey, thanks for watching everybody. God bless.