What about Catholic sacraments? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In this section, Bates contends that one of the big problems with Catholic salvation is the idea of sacraments. Bates says that there is very little about the gospel in official Catholic works. To back his case, he says this:
The Paschal mystery of Christ’s cross and Resurrection stands at the center of the Good News that the apostles, and the Church following them, are to proclaim to the world. God’s saving plan was accomplished “once for all” by the redemptive death of his Son Jesus Christ. (§ 571)
That’s it. My edition of the Catechism has 688 pages. The gospel gets only two sentences. To say that “the gospel” is woefully underemphasized by official Catholic teaching understates the magnitude of the problem.
Matthew W. Bates. Beyond the Salvation Wars (Kindle Locations 957-961). Kindle Edition.
He then goes on to say that confirmation, the eucharist, and baptism get 144 pages of mention.
He also says there is a lack of emphasis on kingship and says that Protestants and Catholics should pause to applaud the Orthodox community for their emphasis on kingship. Of course, the Catholic church holds that Jesus is the Messiah, but Bates says the emphasis in a service is on forgiveness. This does not mean forgiveness should not be taught, but that forgiveness should be taught in the light of Jesus as King.
The last big problem that Bates has is with the idea of creeds. He does not oppose creeds, but says too often the creeds do not pay enough attention to Jesus as King. Humorously, I can think of how N.T. Wright has said that he can imagine the Gospel writers being at the Council of Nicea and seeing the creed being written where they go from “Born of the Virgin Mary” straight to “Crucified under Pontius Pilate”, and saying, “We spent quite a lot of time on some of that material in-between and we think you should say something about that.
Bates says that in his experience teaching in higher education in a Catholic setting, the message is not really known as the gospel so much as the faith. A small difference to some perhaps, but it could be significant. Does there need to be more emphasis on what is the content of the gospel?
It is important to note that in all of this, Bates does not accuse Catholics of holding to a false gospel. He considers them brothers and sisters in Christ. Of course, this does not mean that everyone who is a Catholic is a Christian any more than everyone who is a Protestant is a Christian. Insofar as they hold to the gospel points and live in allegiance to King Jesus as described by Bates, he sees them as Christians.
Unfortunately, for those of us on the Protestant side, while we might be the Jews watching the Gentiles get slammed by Paul in Romans 1, that same hammer is going to turn towards us. Bates is going to talk about the problems he sees in Protestantism. We’ll discuss those next time.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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