Catholic Political Coercion Through Civil Law

Pope Francis Portrays Himself as a Reformer

by Richard Bennett

Across the world, many people are beginning to agree that Francis is a curiously unusual Pope. Some writers have pinpointed the peculiarity. To quote from the Episcopal Cafe Website,

Pope Francis has launched nothing short of a revolution in the Catholic Church.... ‘Will he make it?’ or ‘Will he pull it off?’ ...everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer “a Catholic glasnost.”[1] ...In the late 1980s, Soviet Union Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev elevated glasnost into policy. Linked to “perestroika” or restructuring, Gorbachev used that double-blade to curb embedded corruption in the Kremlin and communist party. Francis’ lifestyle—from lodging in spare Casa Santa Marta quarters to spurning limousines—has rippled out. Cardinals are shedding titles and crimson-laced vestments. Work patterns in Vatican institutions, from the change-resistant Curia to the troubled Vatican Bank, have radically altered.[2]

The Teflon and the Extraordinary Pope

Then there are metaphors used about Francis and descriptions of his actions that were never before used referring to a Pope. To quote the Opinion Inquirer Website,

Francis as a ‘Teflon pope.’ Nothing bad sticks. ‘Francis is giving rise to a ‘new culture of accountability.’ That means somebody actually gets fired. He accepted the resignation of two Vatican Bank officials. And he did not shield Msgr. Nunzio Scarano of the Vatican Bank from a $30-million laundering charge. Francis seeks to enhance the role of the layman—not just in ceremonial ways, but in the nuts and bolts of reforming and governing the Church. And he is repositioning the Church in the political center, after a lengthy period where it drifted to the right.[3]

Moreover, the Political Dog 101 Website, under the headline “Pope Francis as a Progressive Versus the Vatican,” stated the following,

In a blog post titled ‘This Extraordinary Pope,’ Andrew Sullivan, an outspoken homosexual Catholic, expressed the sentiments of many like-minded Church members: ‘What’s so striking to me is not what he said, but how he said it: the gentleness, the humor, the transparency. I find myself with tears in my eyes as I watch him. I’ve lived a long time to hear a pope speak like that,’ Sullivan wrote. ‘Everything he is saying and doing is an obvious, implicit rejection of what came before.’

Pope Francis “Who am I to judge?” and the first pope to speak “off the cuff”

On July 29, 2013, Pope Francis spoke to reporters on his flight back from Brazil. He was asked if there was a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican? He allowed the issue to come up and tackled it with his own question, which has become well known, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”[4] Pope Francis is very much aware that according to Catholic dogma,

The Supreme Pontiff, in virtue of his office, possesses infallible teaching authority when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful...he proclaims with a definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held as such.[5]

That said, he skillfully managed the whole issue of sodomy, and the secondary question of whether there is a gay lobby within the Curia, by addressing it informally rather than from the Chair of St. Peter, all the while knowing that the power of the papal position is being brought to bear through his evasive answer. Thus, he has protected the sodomite lobby inside the Catholic Church without ruling on it from his official position. As a result, Pope Francis set wheels in motion within the Vatican that will make it difficult for the Cardinals of the Vatican Curia to stop.

Then on August 28, 2013, at 4 p.m., Pope Francis spoke to the youth from the Italian Diocese of Piacenza. The Catholic News Website, Zenit, made an unusual statement concerning Francis’ improvised talk, “Pope Francis addressed the youth in an off the cuff discourse.”[6] He began his talk in this way,

Thank you for this visit! The bishop said that I made a great gesture in coming here. But I did it out of selfishness. Do you know why? Because I like being with you! So this is a selfishness. I wanted to tell you this, to tell you: courage, go forward, make noise. Where there is youth, there should be noise. Then, we’ll adjust things, but the dreams of a young person always make noise. Go forward! In life there will always be people with proposals to curb, to block your way. Please, go against the current. Be courageous, courageous: go against the current. And that there will be someone who says: ‘No, but this... I drink a bit of alcohol, take some drugs and I’m getting ahead.’ No! Go against the current of this civilization that is doing so much harm. Do you understand this? To go against the current; and this means to make noise, to go forward, but with the values of beauty, of goodness and of truth. This is what I wanted to tell you. I want to wish you all well, a good work, joy in the heart: joyful youth![7]

A Clear Exposé of the Character of Francis

This “off the cuff” address of Francis gives insight into his own philosophy. Within the Vatican, he is seen as being courageous and as going against the current. Francis is the man who apparently is initiating a revolution in the Catholic Church; at least he is making some noise about it by disturbing superficial bits of the status quo here and there. Pope Francis has chosen the title “Bishop of Rome” in the Vatican’s annual directory,” instead of the large number of the formal titles normally given to the Pope by the Vatican. Then on Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of two women in juvenile detention, one of which was a Muslim. With this action, Francis broke the Vatican tradition that restricts the ritual to men. In the words of the AP Website,

No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis’ gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a ‘questionable example.’ Liberals welcomed the move as a sign of greater inclusiveness in the church.[8]

All Show and No Substance

Do all these revolutionary deeds mean that Pope Francis may be a Martin Luther or a John Calvin in the making? He is anything but! What he has written regarding questions of Vatican doctrine is totally in conformity with traditional Roman dogma. An example of this is the new encyclical letter that he has published entitled, “The Light of Faith.” The language of the encyclical letter is not like the comments and talks that Francis constantly gives. Rather, the long sixty-paragraph document has the stilted Vatican expressions found in previous Pontiffs’ encyclical letters. Thus, Francis continues to present to his audience two persona, as it were. There is the flamboyant revolutionary from the New World who seemingly pits himself in opposition to the Old World Vatican: an outsider confidently shaking up corrupt insider alliances; a modern man from South America, confidently breaking the antiquated formalities and traditions, tossing them aside by speaking casually and moving informally among the ordinary people. All this shrewd acting is targeted toward the naive and the youth, in particular, in a manner presumably calculated to charm them into a malleable personality cult. What is the goal? Behind all this appealing drama, his first encyclical (his words that truly count) shows him to be the subservient-compliant-traditional servant of the Vatican Curia. With this in mind, we biblically analyze his encyclical.

Francis’ Source and Foundation of ‘truth’ is Apostolic Tradition

Francis is forthright in presenting his perspective on how truth is known. He states, “It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.”[9] This same dogma is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

...the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, ‘does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.[10]

The Church of Rome goes so far as to state,

Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living.’[11]

Only men devoid of the Holy Spirit could have published such a distorted view of Holy Scripture. The Bible alone, God’s Written Word, shows the brightness of the truth, holiness, majesty, and authority of God, given to it by its Author, the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture has the stamp of God’s excellence upon it, distinguishing it from all other writings. This is evidenced by the many fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, written hundreds of years before the actual events, many pointing to Jesus Christ. Fulfilled prophecy is God’s way of authenticating the Bible as the one and uniquely inspired book. Divine inspiration is revelation given in written word, “All scripture [graphe] is given by inspiration of God....”[12] “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son...”[13] Thus Francis’ statement,

It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.[14]

is an attempt to take control of the Bible so that the Church of Rome can give predominance to its traditions.

Encyclical Lacks Essential Factor of the Gospel: Man is a Sinner

Francis never mentions sin in his encyclical. Moreover, he does not simply tone down the teaching of Scripture about human depravity; he completely fails to mention the issue. In contrast, the effect of human depravity is clearly expressed in Scripture as being “dead in trespasses and sins,”[15] and “...you, being dead in your sins....”[16] Because of Adam’s sin, each of us is born into this world spiritually dead. Thus the Apostle Paul clearly states, “As it is written, ‘there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God.”[17] Moreover, there is the universality of sin, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”[18] Thus, every person under the Law has fallen short of the glory of God and thereby is possessed both of an evil heart: because of one’s sin nature, and a bad record: because of one’s personal sin. Until the sinner repents and comes by God’s grace alone through faith alone to believe on Lord Jesus Christ alone, “the wrath of God abideth on him.”[19] The Apostle Peter speaks of Jesus Christ giving forgiveness of sins. “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.”[20] Until a person really beholds the destructiveness of sin, and his own in particular, he cannot comprehend his need for the Lord Jesus Christ’s great sacrifice for sin.

However, Pope Francis fails to even mention that it is both from one’s sin and one’s sin nature that an individual must be saved. He circumvents the centrality of this issue by stating the following,

The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being. Only by being open to and acknowledging this gift can we be transformed, experience salvation and bear good fruit. Salvation by faith means recognizing the primacy of God’s gift. As Saint Paul puts it: ‘By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God’ (Eph 2:8).[21]

Such is Francis’ studied attempt to cloud the issue of justification by God’s grace alone. His teaching is wrong: nobody of himself is “open to” any “primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being.” Rather, the beginning of salvation is God who calls each of His own out of darkness into the marvellous light of Jesus Christ. Nobody can come to Jesus unless God calls him. To the last individual, including the Pope, all who do not know God through the one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus, remain enemies of God. They are all “dead in trespasses and sins.”[22] They do not seek Him. Rather they hide from Him, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”[23] This is why each has to be called by God’s merciful grace alone and by Him given to believe by faith alone that Jesus Christ alone has paid for his sin.

Nor does salvation by faith mean recognizing “the primacy of God’s gift.” Justification by faith alone is a specific divine action by God alone. It means that God alone in His gracious mercy has given that individual a new heart so that he is alive spiritually, rather than dead spiritually as he was previously. He has called him out of the darkness of a depraved heart, mind, and will into the marvellous light of Jesus Christ so that the individual is as Ephesians 1:3 states, “in Christ.” To even frame the issue of justification in such obtuse terminology as Francis has, reeks of deception - particularly since the Ephesians 2:1-9 passage from which he quotes makes the issue of being dead in trespasses and sins totally clear.

Francis’ Church Mode of Faith

While Francis mentions the word “faith” 385 times in his encyclical, the focal point of his teaching is stated in paragraph 22. The heading for this paragraph is, “The ecclesial form of faith.” He begins by stating,

In this way, the life of the believer becomes an ecclesial [church] existence, a life lived in the Church. When Saint Paul tells the Christians of Rome that all who believe in Christ make up one body, he urges them not to boast of this; rather, each must think of himself ‘according to the measure of faith that God has assigned’ (Rom 12:3)... Faith is necessarily ecclesial; it is professed from within the body of Christ as a concrete communion of believers. It is against this ecclesial backdrop that faith opens the individual Christian towards all others...Faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a personal opinion: it comes from hearing, and it is meant to find expression in words and to be proclaimed. ..Faith becomes operative in the Christian on the basis of the gift received, the love which attracts our hearts to Christ (cf. Gal 5:6), and enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world.[24]

Thus, Francis, in deceptively clever words, changes the personal nature of faith into his ecclesial church form of faith. In Scripture, faith is personal as the Apostle Paul’s testimony demonstrates,

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.[25]

Martha, the sister of Lazarus, individually said, “I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”[26] The prison keeper personally cried out “Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”[27] And that he did. Then the Lord personally opened Lydia’s heart and she personally believed. “Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened.”[28] The Apostle Paul uses the second person pronoun “thee” to personally address individuals in his letter to the Romans. “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”[29] Again, the personal nature of faith in the Lord Jesus is seen, confessing with one’s mouth and believing in one’s heart. How utterly different to Francis’ words,

Faith is necessarily ecclesial...It is against this ecclesial backdrop that faith opens the individual...Faith is not a private matter... Faith enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world.[30]

Consequently, Francis is again expressing in his encyclical the official teaching of the Catholic Church. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,

It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my faith.”[31] As a result, the Catechism officially teaches, “Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother...[32]

Thus, a person is taught to believe in “Mother Church” and not on the Lord Jesus Christ. The official words of the Catechism are the following,

‘Believing’ is an ecclesial act. The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. The Church is the mother of all believers. ‘No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.[33]

...the Church our Mother teaches us the language of faith in order to introduce us to the understanding and the life of faith.[34]

Thus Francis is consistent with the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which is to focus a person’s faith for salvation to the Roman Catholic Church herself; as it declares,

It is in the Church that ‘the fullness of the means of salvation’ has been deposited. It is in her that ‘by the grace of God we acquire holiness.’[35]

When we wade through the deceptive words of Francis and his Catholic Church on the topic of faith, the message is that “the ecclesial form of faith” means specifically that faith is faith in “holy Mother Church.” With no mention of sin or human depravity from which to be saved, Francis, demonstrating a faith based in traditional human imaginations, takes pride in “Mother Church” and ends by pointing us to its icon, Mary. Thus, the title of the encyclical, “Lumen Fidei” meaning “Light of Faith” is factually “Darkness of Tradition.”

Church Sacraments and Eternal life

In the encyclical, Pope Francis addresses the Catholic sacraments, especially in paragraph 40 that is headed, “The sacraments and the transmission of faith.” He states,

Faith, in fact, needs a setting in which it can be witnessed to and communicated, a means which is suitable and proportionate to what is communicated. For transmitting a purely doctrinal content, an idea might suffice, or perhaps a book, or the repetition of a spoken message. But what is communicated in the Church, what is handed down in her living Tradition, is the new light born of an encounter with the true God, a light which touches us at the core of our being and engages our minds, wills and emotions, opening us to relationships lived in communion.[36]

To make a place for his Tradition, Pope Francis uses the same old Catholic formula of mixing justification with sanctification. His position is that Scripture alone is not a sufficient source to witness to and communicate the reality of faith, Hebrews Chapter 11 notwithstanding. Therefore, first, he casually pushes aside the fact that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,”[37] and that John concludes his gospel by stating, “But these [things] are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”[38] Francis then attempts to replace Scripture by embracing Tradition as the way to justification. Next, he moves his argument forward by introducing the sacraments, the “special means” by which faith is purportedly passed down. He states,

There is a special means for passing down this fullness, a means capable of engaging the entire person, body and spirit, interior life and relationships with others. It is the sacraments, celebrated in the Church’s liturgy. The sacraments communicate an incarnate memory, linked to the times and places of our lives, linked to all our senses... While the sacraments are indeed sacraments of faith, it can also be said that faith itself possesses a sacramental structure. The awakening of faith is linked to the dawning of a new sacramental sense in our lives as human beings and as Christians, in which visible and material realities are seen to point beyond themselves to the mystery of the eternal.[39]

Thus, concerning the sacraments, Pope Francis states, “‘visible and material realities’ are seen to point beyond themselves to the mystery of the eternal.” Looking to “visible and material realities...to point beyond to the mystery of the eternal” is the same lie told by Satan in the Garden of Eden. There it is that Satan promised Eve, “...in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”[40] Satan offered the reality of the fruit [material reality] as the efficacious means of “knowing good and evil [mystery of the eternal].” Eve was beguiled into believing in the inherent efficacy of the physical objects to open her eyes to the knowledge of good and evil. In the same way, Pope Francis presents the Roman Catholic sacraments as the physical objects “to point beyond themselves to the mystery of the eternal.” Unequivocally and unbiblically, he states, “The transmission of faith occurs first and foremost in baptism.”[41] The fact remains that biblical faith and life are not by baptism or any physical rite, rather as the Lord Himself said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death into life.”[42]

After a person is justified by the All Holy God alone, he is to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, taking His yoke upon him and learning of Him, so that he drinks deeply from His written Word and begins to follow what the Scripture teaches. Having been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, a person lives to do the good works for which he has been justified, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”[43] Therefore, we look to Jesus because He is the Author and Finisher of our faith, its beginning and end. True life is that which is lived in personal, intimate communion with Christ; as the Apostle Paul so eloquently stated, “for to me to live is Christ.”[44] In spite of this truth, Francis teaches that visible, material sacraments transmit grace. Thus, we see the lie of Pope Francis regarding the Catholic Church’s sacraments in his claim,

visible and material realities are seen to point beyond themselves to the mystery of the eternal.

This teaching is also official Vatican dogma,

The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation. ‘Sacramental grace’ is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament.[45]

Such horrendous Papal dogma attempts to nullify the biblical doctrine of man’s redemption.

Francis’ Conclusion in Paragraph 60 Turns to Mary in Prayer

The final words of Pope Francis in his encyclical are a prayer to Mary. He prays thus, “Let us turn in prayer to Mary, Mother of the Church and Mother of our faith. Mother, help our faith!...”[46] The light of Francis’s faith is Mary. Rather than the Lord Jesus Christ, whose life is the light of men and is the object of the true believer’s faith, Mary turns out to be the object of “the ecclesial form of faith.”

Papal Rome encourages mankind to contact the dead, especially in prayer to Mary. The Bible forbids contacting the dead; this pagan practice is called necromancy. Despite this, the Vatican publicly teaches people to have communion with the dead, thus it states,

Communion with the dead. “In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them.” Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.’[47]

Supposed communion with the dead and deification of the dead has held a prominent place in nearly every system of paganism. Prayer to “Mary” is a prime example. In Scripture the question is asked, “and when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards...should not a people seek unto their God?... To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”[48] Thus, the verdict of the Lord according to His written Word is true for Francis, and for all who attempt to call up the dead. They do so “because there is no light in them”!

Conclusion

We have clearly seen that Pope Francis who portrays himself as a Reformer is just a clever traditionalist upholding the Papal system in his lengthy and devious first encyclical. True believers in the Lord Jesus Christ live in the world as He did. They are in the world, but they not of the world. In contrast, the Pontificate of Francis the Pope is very much of this world, as he allures the world and the media into portraying him as an appealing Reformer.

In contrast to Pope Francis’s statements, we rejoice that the Lord God is almighty; that there is good news for all those still “dead in trespasses and sins.”[49] In the light of God’s Word, we know “the gospel of Christ...is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth....”[50] Despite our sin nature and personal sins, the Lord God has given His beloved Son for all true believers. The Lord Jesus Christ declared, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life....He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”[51] The Lord will always be merciful to you who turn to Him in faith for the remission of your sins. Clearly the Lord Jesus Christ says to you, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[52] Before the all holy God, according to the Bible, you are made right with Him by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Following on this, all glory and praise is to the Lord God alone! “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits...Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.”[53]

Notes

1. http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/leadership/pope_francis_and_the_catholic.html
2. http://opinion.inquirer.net/58763/teflon-pontiff
3. Ibid.
4. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/07/29/if-a-gay-person-seeks-god-who-am-i-to-judge-him-says-pope/
5. Catechism of the Catholic Church Para 749
6. http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-address-to-youth-from-the-diocese-of-piacenza
7. Ibid.
8. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/pope-washes-feet-young-detainees-ritual
9. http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/lumen-fidei-40/
10. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a2.htm
11. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm
12. II Timothy 3:16
13. Hebrews 1:1-2
14. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 40
15. Ephesians 2:1
16. Colossians 2:13
17. Romans 3:10-11
18. Romans 3:23
19. John 3:36
20. Acts 10:43
21. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html End of 19
22. Ephesians 2:1
23. John 3:19-20
24. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html
25. Philippians 3:7-9
26. John 11:27
27. Acts 16:30-31
28. Acts 16:14
29. Romans 10:8-9
30. http://camdenlifejustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/life-justice-quotes-from-the-new-encyclical-light-of-faith/ 
31. Catechism Para 168
32. Catechism Para 169
33. Catechism Para 181
34. Catechism Para 171
35. Catechism Para 824
36. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 
37. Romans 10:17
38. John 20:31
39. enciclica-lumen-fidei op. cit.
40. Genesis 3:5
41. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 40
42. John 5:24
43. Ephesians 2:10
44. Philippians 1:21
45. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s1c1a2.htm Catechism 1129
46. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 60
47. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p5.htm
48. Isaiah 8:19-20
49. Ephesians 2:1
50. Romans 1:16
51. John 3:16, 18
52. Matthew 11:28
53. Psalms 103:2, 4

Part 8: The Kabbalah & Judaism - John S. Torell

Only Damnable Things Come Forth from Man

by John Calvin

(Corruption of man's nature is such as to require total renewal of his mind and will, 1-5)

1. THE WHOLE MAN IS FLESH

But man cannot be better known in both faculties of his soul than if he makes his appearance with those titles whereby Scripture marks him. If the whole man is depicted by these words of Christ, "What is born of flesh, is flesh" [John 3:6] (as is easy to prove), man is very clearly shown to be a miserable creature. "For to set the mind on the flesh," as the apostle testifies, "is death. Because there is enmity against God, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot." [Romans 8:6-7 p.] Is the flesh so perverse that it is wholly disposed to bear a grudge against God, cannot agree with the justice of divine law, can, in short, beget nothing but the occasion of death? Now suppose that in man's nature there is nothing but flesh: extract something good from it if you can. But, you will say, the word "flesh" pertains only to the sensual part of the soul, not to the higher part. This is thoroughly refuted from the words of Christ and of the apostle. The Lord's reasoning is: Man must be reborn [John 3:3], for he "is flesh" [John 3:6]. He is not teaching a rebirth as regards the body. Now the soul is not reborn if merely a part of it is reformed, but only when it is wholly renewed. The antithesis set forth in both passages confirms this. The Spirit is so contrasted with flesh that no intermediate thing is left. Accordingly, whatever is not spiritual in man is by this reckoning called "carnal." We have nothing of the Spirit, however, except through regeneration. Whatever we have from nature, therefore, is flesh.

But Paul relieves us of any possible doubt on this matter. Having described the old man who, he had said, was "corrupted by deceptive desires" [Ephesians 4:22 p.], he bids us "be renewed in the spirit of our mind" [Ephesians 4:23 p.]. You see that he lodges unlawful and wicked desires not solely in the sensual part of the soul, but even in the mind itself, and for this reason he requires its renewal. To be sure, a little while before he had painted a picture of human nature that showed us corrupt and perverted in every part. He writes that "all the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their minds, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance which is in them, and their blindness of heart." [Ephesians 4:17-18.] There is not the least doubt that this statement applies to all those whom the Lord has not yet formed again to the uprightness of his wisdom and justice. This also becomes clearer from the comparison immediately added wherein he admonishes believers that they "did not so learn Christ" [Ephesians 4:20]. We, indeed, infer from these words that the grace of Christ is the sole remedy to free us from that blindness and from the evils consequent upon it. Isaiah also had so prophesied concerning Christ's Kingdom when he promised: "The Lord will be an everlasting light" for his church [Isaiah 60:19 p.], while "shadows will shroud the earth and darkness will cover the peoples" [Isaiah 60:2]. He there testifies that the light of God will arise in the church alone; and leaves only shadows and blindness outside the church. I shall not individually recount the statements made everywhere concerning men's vanity, especially in The Psalms and the Prophets. Great is the utterance of David: "If a man be weighed with vanity, he shall be vainer than vanity itself" Psalm 61:10, Vg.; Psalm 62:9, EV]. Man's understanding is pierced by a heavy spear when all the thoughts that proceed from him are mocked as stupid, frivolous, insane, and perverse.

2. ROMANS, CHAPTER 3, AS WITNESS FOR MAN'S CORRUPTION

That condemnation of the heart when it is called "deceitful and corrupt above all else" [Jeremiah 17:9 p.] is no less severe. But because I am striving for brevity, I shall be content with but one passage; yet it will be like the clearest of mirrors in which we may contemplate the whole image of our nature. For the apostle, when he wishes to cast down the arrogance of humankind, does so by these testimonies: "'No one is righteous, no one understands, no one seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become unprofitable; no one does good, not even one' [Psalm 14:1-3; 53:1-3]. 'Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues deceitfully' [Psalm 5:9]. 'The venom of asps is under their lips' [Psalm 140:3]. 'Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness' [Psalm 10:7]. 'Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery' [Isaiah 59:7 P.]. There is no fear of God before their eyes" [Romans 3:10-16, 18 p.]. With these thunderbolts he inveighs not against particular men but against the whole race of Adam's children. Nor is he decrying the depraved morals of one age or another, but indicting the unvarying corruption of our nature. Now his intention in this passage is not simply to rebuke men that they may repent, but rather to teach them that they have all been overwhelmed by an unavoidable calamity from which only God's mercy can deliver them. Because this could not be proved unless it rested upon the ruin and destruction of our nature, he put forward these testimonies which prove our nature utterly lost.

Let this then be agreed: that men are as they are here described not merely by the defect of depraved custom, but also by depravity of nature. The reasoning of the apostle cannot otherwise stand: Except out of the Lord's mercy there is no salvation for man, for in himself he is lost and forsaken [Romans 3:23 ff.]. I shall not toil in proving the applicability of these passages, in order that they may not seem to have been inappropriately seized upon by the apostle. I shall proceed as if these statements had first been made by Paul, not drawn from the Prophets. First of all, he strips man of righteousness, that is, integrity and purity; then, of understanding [Romans 3:10-11]. Indeed, apostasy from God proves defect of understanding, for to seek him is the first degree of wisdom. This defect, therefore, is necessarily found in all who have forsaken God. He adds that all have fallen away and have, as it were, become corrupt, that there is no one who does good. Then he adds the shameful acts with which they - once they have been let loose in wickedness - defile their several members. Finally, he declares them devoid of the fear of God, to whose rule our steps ought to have been directed. If these are the hereditary endowments of the human race, it is futile to seek anything good in our nature. Indeed, I grant that not all these wicked traits appear in every man; yet one cannot deny that this hydra lurks in the breast of each. For as the body, so long as it nourishes in itself the cause and matter of disease (even though pain does not yet rage), will not be called healthy, so also will the soul not be considered healthy while it abounds with so many fevers of vice. This comparison, however, does not fit in every detail. For in the diseased body some vigor of life yet remains; although the soul, plunged into this deadly abyss, is not only burdened with vices, but is utterly devoid of all good.

3. GOD'S GRACE SOMETIMES RESTRAINS WHERE IT DOES NOT CLEANSE

Almost the same question that was previously answered now confronts us anew. In every age there have been persons who, guided by nature, have striven toward virtue throughout life. I have nothing to say against them even if many lapses can be noted in their moral conduct. For they have by the very zeal of their honesty given proof that there was some purity in their nature. Although in discussing merit of works we shall deal more fully with what value such virtues have in God's sight, we must nevertheless speak of it also at this point, inasmuch as it is necessary for the unfolding of the present argument. These examples, accordingly, seem to warn us against adjudging man's nature wholly corrupted, because some men have by its prompting not only excelled in remarkable deeds, but conducted themselves most honorably throughout life. But here it ought to occur to us that amid this corruption of nature there is some place for God's grace; not such grace as to cleanse it, but to restrain it inwardly. For if the Lord gave loose rein to the mind of each man to run riot in his lusts, there would doubtless be no one who would not show that, in fact, every evil thing for which Paul condemns all nature is most truly to be met in himself [Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:12].

What then? Do you count yourself exempt from the number of those whose "feet are swift to shed blood" [Romans 3:15], whose hands are fouled with robberies and murders, "whose throats are like open graves, whose tongues deceive, whose lips are envenomed" [Romans 3:13]; whose works are useless, wicked, rotten, deadly; whose hearts are without God; whose inmost parts, depravities; whose eyes are set upon stratagems; whose minds are eager to revile - to sum up, whose every part stands ready to commit infinite wickedness [Romans 3:10-18]? If every soul is subject to such abominations as the apostle boldly declares, we surely see what would happen if the Lord were to permit human lust to wander according to its own inclination. No mad beast would rage as unrestrainedly; no river, however swift and violent, burst so madly into flood. In his elect the Lord cures these diseases in a way that we shall soon explain. Others he merely restrains by throwing a bridle over them only that they may not break loose, inasmuch as he foresees their control to be expedient to preserve all that is. Hence some are restrained by shame from breaking out into many kinds of foulness, others by the fear of the law - even though they do not, for the most part, hide their impurity. Still others, because they consider an honest manner of life profitable, in some measure aspire to it. Others rise above the common lot, in order by their excellence to keep the rest obedient to them. Thus God by his providence bridles perversity of nature, that it may not break forth into action; but he does not purge it within.

4. UPRIGHTNESS IS GOD'S GIFT; BUT MAN'S NATURE REMAINS CORRUPTED

Nevertheless the problem has not yet been resolved. For either we must make Camillus equal to Catiline, or we shall have in Camillus an example proving that nature, if carefully cultivated, is not utterly devoid of goodness. Indeed, I admit that the endowments resplendent in Camillus were gifts of God and seem rightly commendable if judged in themselves. But how will these serve as proofs of natural goodness in him? Must we not hark back to his mind and reason thus: if a natural man excelled in such moral integrity, undoubtedly human nature did not lack the ability to cultivate virtue? Yet what if the mind had been wicked and crooked, and had followed anything but uprightness? And there is no doubt that it was such, if you grant that Camillus was a natural man. What power for good will you attribute to human nature in this respect, if in the loftiest appearance of integrity, it is always found to be impelled toward corruption? Therefore as you will not commend a man for virtue when his vices impress you under the appearance of virtues, so you will not attribute to the human will the capability of seeking after the right so long as the will remains set in its own perversity.

Here, however, is the surest and easiest solution to this question: these are not common gifts of nature, but special graces of God, which he bestows variously and in a certain measure upon men otherwise wicked. For this reason, we are not afraid, in common parlance, to call this man wellborn, that one depraved in nature. Yet we do not hesitate to include both under the universal condition of human depravity; but we point out what special grace the Lord has bestowed upon the one, while not deigning to bestow it upon the other. When he wished to put Saul over the kingdom he "formed him as a new man" [1 Samuel 10:6 p.]. This is the reason why Plato, alluding to the Homeric legend, says that kings' sons are born with some distinguishing mark. For God, in providing for the human race, often endows with a heroic nature those destined to command. From this workshop have come forth the qualities of great leaders celebrated in histories. Private individuals are to be judged in the same way. But because, however excellent anyone has been, his own ambition always pushes him on - a blemish with which all virtues are so sullied that before God they lose all favor - anything in profane men that appears praiseworthy must be considered worthless. Besides, where there is no zeal to glorify God, the chief part of uprightness is absent; a zeal of which all those whom he has not regenerated by his Spirit are devoid. There is good reason for the statement in Isaiah, that "the spirit of the fear of God rests" upon Christ [Isaiah 11:2 p.]. By this we are taught that all estranged from Christ lack "the fear of God," which "is the beginning of wisdom" [Psalm 111:10 p.]. As for the virtues that deceive us with their vain show, they shall have their praise in the political assembly and in common renown among men; but before the heavenly judgment seat they shall be of no value to acquire righteousness.

5. MAN SINS OF NECESSITY, BUT WITHOUT COMPULSION

Because of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is ascribed entirely to God's grace. So Jeremiah prayed to the Lord to be "converted" if it were his will to "convert him" [Jeremiah 31:18, cf. Vg.]. Hence the prophet in the same chapter, describing the spiritual redemption of the believing folk, speaks of them as "redeemed from the hand of one stronger than they" [verse 11 p.]. By this he surely means the tight fetters with which the sinner is bound so long as, forsaken by the Lord, he lives under the devil's yoke. Nonetheless the will remains, with the most eager inclination disposed and hastening to sin. For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity, was not deprived of will, but of soundness of will. Not inappropriately Bernard teaches that to will is in us all: but to will good is gain; to will evil, loss. Therefore simply to will is of man; to will ill, of a corrupt nature; to will well, of grace.

Now, when I say that the will bereft of freedom is of necessity either drawn or led into evil, it is a wonder if this seems a hard saying to anyone, since it has nothing incongruous or alien to the usage of holy men. But it offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion. Suppose someone asks them: Is not God of necessity good? Is not the devil of necessity evil? What will they reply? God's goodness is so connected with his divinity that it is no more necessary for him to be God than for him to be good. But the devil by his fall was so cut off from participation in good that he can do nothing but evil. But suppose some blasphemer sneers that God deserves little praise for His own goodness, constrained as He is to preserve it. Will this not be a ready answer to him: not from violent impulsion, but from His boundless goodness comes God's inability to do evil? Therefore, if the fact that he must do good does not hinder God's free will in doing good; if the devil, who can do only evil, yet sins with his will - who shall say that man therefore sins less willingly because he is subject to the necessity of sinning? Augustine everywhere speaks of this necessity; and even though Cadestius caviled against him invidiously, he did not hesitate to affirm it in these words: "Through freedom man came to be in sin, but the corruption which followed as punishment turned freedom into necessity." And whenever he makes mention of the matter, he does not hesitate to speak in this manner of the necessary bondage of sin.

The chief point of this distinction, then, must be that man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the prompting of his own lust, not by compulsion from without. Yet so depraved is his nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil. But if this is true, then it is clearly expressed that man is surely subject to the necessity of sinning.

Bernard, agreeing with Augustine, so writes: "Among all living beings man alone is free; and yet because sin has intervened he also undergoes a kind of violence, but of will, not of nature, so that not even thus is he deprived of his innate freedom. For what is voluntary is also free." And a little later: "In some base and strange way the will itself, changed for the worse by sin, makes a necessity for itself. Hence, neither does necessity, although it is of the will, avail to excuse the will, nor does the will, although it is led astray, avail to exclude necessity. For this necessity is as it were voluntary." Afterward he says that we are oppressed by no other yoke than that of a kind of voluntary servitude. Therefore we are miserable as to servitude and inexcusable as to will because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. Yet he concludes: "Thus the soul, in some strange and evil way, under a certain voluntary and wrongly free necessity is at the same time enslaved and free: enslaved because of necessity; free because of will. And what is at once stranger and more deplorable, it is guilty because it is free, and enslaved because it is guilty, and as a consequence enslaved because it is free." Surely my readers will recognize that I am bringing forth nothing new, for it is something that Augustine taught of old with the agreement of all the godly, and it was still retained almost a thousand years later in monastic cloisters. But Lombard, since he did not know how to distinguish necessity from compulsion, gave occasion for a pernicious error.

(Conversion of the will is the effect of divine grace inwardly bestowed, 6-14)

6. MEN'S INABILITY TO DO GOOD MANIFESTS ITSELF ABOVE ALL IN THE WORK OF REDEMPTION, WHICH GOD DOES QUITE ALONE

On the other hand, it behooves us to consider the sort of remedy by which divine grace corrects and cures the corruption of nature. Since the Lord in coming to our aid bestows upon us what we lack, when the nature of his work in us appears, our destitution will, on the other hand, at once be manifest. When the apostle tells the Philippians he is confident "that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" [Philippians 1:6], there is no doubt that through "the beginning of a good work" he denotes the very origin of conversion itself, which is in the will. God begins his good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing, our hearts to righteousness. He completes his work, moreover, by confirming us to perseverance. In order that no one should make an excuse that good is initiated by the Lord to help the will which by itself is weak, the Spirit elsewhere declares what the will, left to itself, is capable of doing: "A new heart shall I give you, and will put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. And I shall put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes" [Ezekiel 36:26-27]. Who shall say that the infirmity of the human will is strengthened by his help in order that it may aspire effectively to the choice of good, when it must rather be wholly transformed and renewed?

If in a stone there is such plasticity that, made softer by some means, it becomes somewhat bent, I will not deny that man's heart can be molded to obey the right, provided what is imperfect in him be supplied by God's grace. But if by this comparison the Lord wished to show that nothing good can ever be wrung from our heart, unless it become wholly other, let us not divide between him and us what he claims for himself alone. If, therefore, a stone is transformed into flesh when God converts us to zeal for the right, whatever is of our own will is effaced. What takes its place is wholly from God. I say that the will is effaced; not in so far as it is will, for in man's conversion what belongs to his primal nature remains entire. I also say that it is created anew; not meaning that the will now begins to exist, but that it is changed from an evil to a good will. I affirm that this is wholly God's doing, for according to the testimony of the same apostle, "we are not even capable of thinking" [2 Corinthians 3:5 p.]. Therefore he states in another place that God not only assists the weak will or corrects the depraved will, but also works in us to will [Philippians 2:13]. From this, one may easily infer, as I have said, that everything good in the will is the work of grace alone. In this sense he says elsewhere: "It is God who works all things in all" [1 Corinthians 12:6 p.]. There he is not discussing universal governance, but is uttering praise to the one God for all good things in which believers excel. Now by saying "all" he surely makes God the author of spiritual life from beginning to end. Previously he had taught the same thing in other words: that believers are from God in Christ [Ephesians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 8:6].

Here he clearly commends the new creation, which sweeps away everything of our common nature. We ought to understand here an antithesis between Adam and Christ, which he explains more clearly in another place, where he teaches that "we are his workmanship, created in Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" [Ephesians 2:10, cf. Vg.]. For he would prove our salvation a free gift [cf. Ephesians 2:5], because the beginning of every good is from the second creation, which we attain in Christ. And yet if even the least ability came from ourselves, we would also have some share of the merit. But Paul, to strip us, argues that we deserve nothing because "we have been created in Christ... for good works which God prepared beforehand" [Ephesians 2:20, cf. Vg.]. He means by these words that all parts of good works from their first impulse belong to God. In this way the prophet, after saying in the psalm that we are God's handiwork, so that we may not share it with him, immediately adds: "And we ourselves have not done it" [Psalm 100:3 p.]. It is clear from the context that he is speaking of regeneration, which is the beginning of the spiritual life; for he goes on to say that "we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture" [Psalm 100:3]. Moreover, we see how, not simply content to have given God due praise for our salvation, he expressly excludes us from all participation in it. It is as if he were saying that not a whit remains to man to glory in, for the whole of salvation comes from God.

7. IT IS NOT A CASE OF THE BELIEVER'S "CO-OPERATION" WITH GRACE; THE WILL IS FIRST ACTUATED THROUGH GRACE

But perhaps some will concede that the will is turned away from the good by its own nature and is converted by the Lord's power alone, yet in such a way that, having been prepared, it then has its own part in the action. As Augustine teaches, grace precedes every good work; while will does not go before as its leader but follows after as its attendant. This statement, which the holy man made with no evil intention, has by Lombard been preposterously twisted to that way of thinking. But I contend that in the words of the prophet that I have cited, as well as in other passages, two things are clearly signified: (1) the Lord corrects our evil will, or rather extinguishes it; (2) he substitutes for it a good one from himself.

In so far as it is anticipated by grace, to that degree I concede that you may call your will an "attendant." But because the will reformed is the Lord's work, it is wrongly attributed to man that he obeys prevenient grace with his will as attendant. Therefore Chrysostom erroneously wrote: "Neither grace without will nor will without grace can do anything." As if grace did not also actuate the will itself, as we have just seen from Paul [cf. Philippians 2:13]! Nor was it Augustine's intent, in calling the human will the attendant of grace, to assign to the will in good works a function second to that of grace. His only purpose was, rather, to refute that very evil doctrine of Pelagius which lodged the first cause of salvation in man's merit.

Enough for the argument at hand, Augustine contends, was the fact that grace is prior to all merit. In the meantime he passes over the other question, that of the perpetual effect of grace, which he nevertheless brilliantly discusses elsewhere. For while Augustine on several occasions says that the Lord anticipates an unwilling man that he may will, and follows a willing man that he may not will in vain, yet he makes God himself wholly the Author of good works. However, his statements on this matter are clear enough not to require a long review. "Men labor," he says, "to find in our will something that is our own and not of God; and I know not how it can be found." Moreover, in Against Pelagius and Caelestius, Book I, he thus interprets Christ's saying "Every one who has heard from my Father comes to me" [John 6:45 p.]: "Man's choice is so assisted that it not only knows what it ought to do, but also does because it has known. And thus when God teaches not through the letter of the law but through the grace of the Spirit, He so teaches that whatever anyone has learned he not only sees by knowing, but also seeks by willing, and achieves by doing."

8. SCRIPTURE IMPUTES TO GOD ALL THAT IS FOR OUR BENEFIT

Well, then, since we are now at the principal point, let us undertake to summarize the matter for our readers by but a few, and very clear, testimonies of Scripture. Then, lest anyone accuse us of distorting Scripture, let us show that the truth, which we assert has been drawn from Scripture, lacks not the attestation of this holy man - I mean Augustine. I do not account it necessary to recount item by item what can be adduced from Scripture in support of our opinion, but only from very select passages to pave the way to understanding all the rest, which we read here and there. On the other hand, it will not be untimely for me to make plain that I pretty much agree with that man whom the godly by common consent justly invest with the greatest authority.

Surely there is ready and sufficient reason to believe that good takes its origin from God alone. And only in the elect does one find a will inclined to good. Yet we must seek the cause of election outside men. It follows, thence, that man has a right will not from himself, but that it flows from the same good pleasure by which we were chosen before the creation of the world [Ephesians 1:4]. Further, there is another similar reason: for since willing and doing well take their origin from faith, we ought to see what is the source of faith itself.

But since the whole of Scripture proclaims that faith is a free gift of God, it follows that when we, who are by nature inclined to evil with our whole heart, begin to will good, we do so out of mere grace. Therefore, the Lord when he lays down these two principles in the conversion of his people - that he will take from them their "heart of stone" and give them "a heart of flesh" [Ezekiel 36:26] - openly testifies that what is of ourselves ought to be blotted out to convert us to righteousness; but that whatever takes its place is from him. And he does not declare this in one place only, for he says in Jeremiah: "I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me all their days" [Jeremiah 32:39]. A little later: "I will put the fear of my name in their heart, that they may not turn from me" [Jeremiah 32:40]. Again, in Ezekiel: "I will give them one heart and will give a new spirit in their inward parts. I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh" [Ezekiel 11:19]. He testifies that our conversion is the creation of a new spirit and a new heart. What other fact could more clearly claim for him, and take away from us, every vestige of good and right in our will? For it always follows that nothing good can arise out of our will until it has been reformed; and after its reformation, in so far as it is good, it is so from God, not from ourselves.

9. THE PRAYERS IN SCRIPTURE ESPECIALLY SHOW HOW THE BEGINNING, CONTINUATION, AND END OF OUR BLESSEDNESS COME FROM GOD ALONE

So, also, do we read the prayers composed by holy men. "May the Lord incline our heart to him," said Solomon, "that we may keep his commandments." [1 Kings 8:58 p.] He shows the stubbornness of our hearts: by nature they glory in rebelling against God's law, unless they be bent. The same view is also held in The Psalms: "Incline my heart to thy testimonies [Psalm 119:36]. We ought always to note the antithesis between the perverse motion of the heart, by which it is drawn away to obstinate disobedience, and this correction, by which it is compelled to obedience. When David feels himself bereft, for a time, of directing grace, and prays God to "create in" him "a clean heart," "to renew a right Spirit in his inward parts" [Psalm 51: 10; cf. Psalm 50:12, Vg.], does he not then recognize that all parts of his heart are crammed with uncleanness, and his spirit warped in depravity? Moreover, does he not, by calling the cleanness he implores "creation of God," attribute it once received wholly to God? If anyone objects that this very prayer is a sign of a godly and holy disposition, the refutation is ready: although David had in part already repented, yet he compared his previous condition with that sad ruin which he had experienced. Therefore, taking on the role of a man estranged from God, he justly prays that whatever God bestows on his elect in regeneration be given to himself. Therefore, he desired himself to be created anew, as if from the dead, that, freed from Satan's ownership, he may become an instrument of the Holy Spirit. Strange and monstrous indeed is the license of our pride! The Lord demands nothing stricter than for us to observe his Sabbath most scrupulously [Exodus 20:8 ff.; Deuteronomy 5:12 ff.], that is, by resting from our labors. Yet there is nothing that we are more unwilling to do than to bid farewell to our own labors and to give God's works their rightful place. If our unreason did not stand in the way, Christ has given a testimony of his benefits clear enough so that they cannot be spitefully suppressed. "I am," he says, "the vine, you the branches [John 15:5]; my Father is the cultivator [John 15:1]. Just as branches cannot bear fruit of themselves unless they abide in the vine, so can you not unless you abide in me [John 5:4]. For apart from me you can do nothing" [John 5:5].

If we no more bear fruit of ourselves than a branch buds out when it is plucked from the earth and deprived of moisture, we ought not to seek any further the potentiality of our nature for good. Nor is this conclusion doubtful: "Apart from me you can do nothing" [John 15;5]. He does not say that we are too weak to be sufficient unto ourselves, but in reducing us to nothing he excludes all estimation of even the slightest little ability. If grafted in Christ we bear fruit like a vine - which derives the energy for its growth from the moisture of the earth, from the dew of heaven, and from the quickening warmth of the sun - I see no share in good works remaining to us if we keep unimpaired what is God's. In vain this silly subtlety is alleged: there is already sap enclosed in the branch, and the power of bearing fruit; and it does not take everything from the earth or from its primal root, because it furnishes something of its own. Now Christ simply means that we are dry and worthless wood when we are separated from him, for apart from him we have no ability to do good, as elsewhere he also says: "Every tree which my Father has not planted will be uprooted" [Matthew 15:13, cf. Vg.]. For this reason, in the passage already cited the apostle ascribes the sum total to him. "It is God," says he, "who is at work in you, both to will and to work." [Philippians 2:13.]

The first part of a good work is will; the other, a strong effort to accomplish it; the author of both is God. Therefore we are robbing the Lord if we claim for ourselves anything either in will or in accomplishment. If God were said to help our weak will, then something would be left to us. But when it is said that he makes the will, whatever of good is in it is now placed outside us. But since even a good will is weighed down by the burden of our flesh so that it cannot rise up, he added that to surmount the difficulties of that struggle we are provided with constancy of effort sufficient to achieve this. Indeed, what he teaches in another passage could not otherwise be true: "It is God alone who works all things in all" [1 Corinthians 12:6]. In this statement, as we have previously noted, the whole course of the spiritual life is comprehended. So, too, David, after he has prayed the ways of God be made known to him so that he may walk in his truth, immediately adds, "Unite my heart to fear thy name" [Psalm 86:11; cf. Psalm 119:33]. By these words he means that even well-disposed persons have been subject to so many distractions that they readily vanish or fall away unless they are strengthened to persevere. In this way elsewhere, after he has prayed that his steps be directed to keep God's word, he begs also to be given the strength to fight: "Let no iniquity," he says, "get dominion over me" 119:133]. Therefore the Lord in this way both begins and completes the good work in us. It is the Lord's doing that the will conceives the love of what is right, is zealously inclined toward it, is aroused and moved to pursue it. Then it is the Lord's doing that the choice, zeal, and effort do not falter, but proceed even to accomplishment; lastly, that man goes forward in these things with constancy, and perseveres to the very end.

10. GOD'S ACTIVITY DOES NOT PRODUCE A POSSIBILITY THAT WE CAN EXHAUST, BUT AN ACTUALITY TO WHICH WE CANNOT ADD

He does not move the will in such a manner as has been taught and believed for many ages - that it is afterward in our choice either to obey or resist the motion - but by disposing it efficaciously. Therefore one must deny that oft-repeated statement of Chrysostom: "Whom he draws he draws willing." By this he signifies that the Lord is only extending his hand to await whether we will be pleased to receive his aid. We admit that man's condition while he still remained upright was such that he could incline to either side. But inasmuch as he has made clear by his example how miserable free will is unless God both wills and is able to work in us, what will happen to us if he imparts his grace to us in this small measure? But we ourselves obscure it and weaken it by our unthankfulness. For the apostle does not teach that the grace of a good will is bestowed upon us if we accept it, but that He wills to work in us. This means nothing else than that the Lord by his Spirit directs, bends, and governs, our heart and reigns in it as in his own possession, indeed, he does not promise through Ezekiel that he will give a new Spirit to his elect only in order that they may be able to walk according to his precepts, but also that they may actually so walk [Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:27].

Now can Christ's saying ("Every one who has heard... from the Father comes to me" [John 6:45, cf. Vg.]) be understood in any other way than that the grace of God is efficacious of itself. This Augustine also maintains. The Lord does not indiscriminately deem everyone worthy of this grace, as that common saying of Ockham (unless I am mistaken) boasts: grace is denied to no one who does what is in him. Men indeed ought to be taught that God's loving-kindness is set forth to all who seek it, without exception. But since it is those on whom heavenly grace has breathed who at length begin to seek after it, they should not claim for themselves the slightest part of his praise. It is obviously the privilege of the elect that, regenerated through the Spirit of God, they are moved and governed by his leading. For this reason, Augustine justly derides those who claim for themselves any part of the act of willing, just as he reprehends others who think that what is the special testimony of free election is indiscriminately given to all. "Nature," he says, "is common to all, not grace." The view that what God bestows upon whomever he wills is generally extended to all, Augustine calls a brittle glasslike subtlety of wit, which glitters with mere vanity. Elsewhere he says: "How have you come? By believing. Fear lest while you are claiming for yourself that you have found the just way, you perish from the just way. I have come, you say, of my own free choice; I have come of my own will. Why are you puffed up? Do you wish to know that this also has been given you? Hear Him calling, 'No one comes to me unless my Father draws him' [John 6:44 p.]." And one may incontrovertibly conclude from John's words that the hearts of the pious are so effectively governed by God that they follow Him with unwavering intention. "No one begotten of God can sin," he says, "for God's seed abides in him." [1 John 3:9.] For the intermediate movement the Sophists dream up, which men are free either to accept or refuse, we see obviously excluded when it is asserted that constancy is efficacious for perseverance.

11. PERSEVERANCE IS EXCLUSIVELY GOD'S WORK; IT IS NEITHER A REWARD NOR A COMPLEMENT OF OUR INDIVIDUAL ACT

Perseverance would, without any doubt, be accounted God's free gift if a most wicked error did not prevail that it is distributed according to men's merit, in so far as each man shows himself receptive to the first grace. But since this error arose from the fact that men thought it in their power to spurn or to accept the proffered grace of God, when the latter opinion is swept away the former idea also falls of itself. However, there is here a twofold error. For besides teaching that our gratefulness for the first grace and our lawful use of it are rewarded by subsequent gifts, they add also that grace does not work in us by itself, but is only a co-worker with us.

As for the first point: we ought to believe that - while the Lord enriches his servants daily and heaps new gifts of his grace upon them - because he holds pleasing and acceptable the work that he has begun in them, he finds in them something he may follow up by greater graces. This is the meaning of the statement, "To him who has shall be given" [Matthew 25:29; Luke 19:26]. Likewise: "Well done, good servant; you have been faithful in a few matters, I will set you over much" [Matthew 25:21,23; Luke 19:17; all Vg., conflated]. But here we ought to guard against two things: (1) not to say that lawful use of the first grace is rewarded by later graces, as if man by his own effort rendered God's grace effective; or (2) so to think of the reward as to cease to consider it of God's free grace.

I grant that believers are to expect this blessing of God: that the better use they have made of the prior graces, the more may the following graces be thereafter increased. But I say this use is also from the Lord and this reward arises from his free benevolence. And they perversely as well as infelicitously utilize that worn distinction between operating and co-operating grace. Augustine indeed uses it, but moderates it with a suitable definition: God by co-operating perfects that which by operating he has begun. It is the same grace but with its name changed to fit the different mode of its effect. Hence it follows that he is not dividing it between God and us as if from the individual movement of each a mutual convergence occurred, but he is rather making note of the multiplying of grace. What he says elsewhere bears on this: many gifts of God precede man's good will, which is itself among his gifts. From this it follows that the will is left nothing to claim for itself. This Paul has expressly declared. For after he had said, "It is God who works in us to will and to accomplish," he went on to say that he does both "for his good pleasure" [Philippians 2:13 p.]. By this expression he means that God's loving-kindness is freely given. To this, our adversaries usually say that after we have accepted the first grace, then our own efforts co-operate with subsequent grace. To this I reply: If they mean that after we have by the Lord's power once for all been brought to obey righteousness, we go forward by our own power and are inclined to follow the action of grace, I do not gainsay it. For it is very certain that where God's grace reigns, there is readiness to obey it. Yet whence does this readiness come? Does not the Spirit of God, everywhere self-consistent, nourish the very inclination to obedience that he first engendered, and strengthen its constancy to persevere? Yet if they mean that man has in himself the power to work in partnership with God's grace, they are most wretchedly deluding themselves.

12. MAN CANNOT ASCRIBE TO HIMSELF EVEN ONE SINGLE GOOD WORK APART FROM GOD'S GRACE

Through ignorance they falsely twist to this purport that saying of the apostle: "I labored more than they all - yet not I but the grace of God which was with me" [1 Corinthians 15:10]. Here is how they understand it: because it could have seemed a little too arrogant for Paul to say he preferred himself to all, he therefore corrected his statement by paying the credit to God's grace; yet he did this in such a way as to call himself a fellow laborer in grace. It is amazing that so many otherwise good men have stumbled on this straw. For the apostle does not write that the grace of the Lord labored with him to make him a partner in the labor. Rather, by this correction he transfers all credit for labor to grace alone. "It is not I," he says, "who labored, but the grace of God which was present with me." [1 Corinthians 15:10 p.] Now, the ambiguity of the expression deceived them, but more particularly the absurd Latin translation in which the force of the Greek article had been missed. For if you render it word for word, he does not say that grace was a fellow worker with him; but that the grace that was present with him was the cause of everything. Augustine teaches this clearly, though briefly, when he speaks as follows: "Man's good will precedes many of God's gifts, but not all. The very will that precedes is itself among these gifts. The reason then follows: for it was written, 'His mercy anticipates me' [Psalm 59:10; cf. Psalm 58:11 Vg.]. And 'His mercy will follow me' [Psalm 23:6]. Grace anticipates unwilling man that he may will; it follows him willing that he may not will in vain." Bernard agrees with Augustine when he makes the church speak thus: "Draw me, however unwilling, to make me willing; draw me, slow-footed, to make me run."

13. AUGUSTINE ALSO RECOGNIZES NO INDEPENDENT ACTIVITY OF THE HUMAN WILL

Now let us hear Augustine speaking in his own words, lest the Pelagians of our own age, that is, the Sophists of the Sorbonne, according to their custom, charge that all antiquity is against us. In this they are obviously imitating their father Pelagius, by whom Augustine himself was once drawn into the same arena. In his treatise On Rebuke and Grace to Valentinus, Augustine treats more fully what I shall refer to here briefly, yet in his own words. The grace of persisting in good would have been given to Adam if he had so willed. It is given to us in order that we may will, and by will may overcome concupiscence. Therefore, he had the ability if he had so willed, but he did not will that he should be able. To us it is given both to will and to be able. The original freedom was to be able not to sin; but ours is much greater, not to be able to sin. And that no one may think that he is speaking of a perfection to come after immortality, as Lombard falsely interprets it, Augustine shortly thereafter removes this doubt. He says: "Surely the will of the saints is so much aroused by the Holy Spirit that they are able because they so will, and that they will because God brings it about that they so will. Now suppose that in such great weakness in which, nevertheless, God's power must be made perfect to repress elation [2 Corinthians 12:9], their own will were left to them in order, with God's aid, to be able, if they will, and that God does not work in them that they will: amid so many temptations the will itself would then succumb through weakness, and for that reason they could not persevere. Therefore assistance is given to the weakness of the human will to move it unwaveringly and inseparably by divine grace, and hence, however great its weakness, not to let it fail." He then discusses more fully how our hearts of necessity respond to God as he works upon them. Indeed, he says that the Lord draws men by their own wills, wills that he himself has wrought. Now we have from Augustine's own lips the testimony that we especially wish to obtain: not only is grace offered by the Lord, which by anyone's free choice may be accepted or rejected; but it is this very grace which forms both choice and will in the heart, so that whatever good works then follow are the fruit and effect of grace; and it has no other will obeying it except the will that it has made. There are also Augustine's words from another place: "Grace alone brings about every good work in us."

14. AUGUSTINE DOES NOT ELIMINATE MAN'S WILL, BUT MAKES IT WHOLLY DEPENDENT UPON GRACE

Elsewhere he says that will is not taken away by grace, but is changed from evil into good, and helped when it is good. By this he means only that man is not borne along without any motion of the heart, as if by an outside force; rather, he is so affected within that he obeys from the heart. Augustine writes to Boniface that grace is specially and freely given to the elect in this manner: "We know that God's grace is not given to all men. To those to whom it is given it is given neither according to the merits of works, nor according to the merits of the will, but by free grace. To those to whom it is not given we know that it is because of God's righteous judgment that it is not given." And in the same epistle he strongly challenges the view that subsequent grace is given for men's merits because by not rejecting the first grace they render themselves worthy. For he would have Pelagius admit that grace is necessary for our every action and is not in payment for our works, in order that it may truly be grace. But the matter cannot be summed up in briefer form than in the eighth chapter of the book On Rebuke and Grace to Valentinus. There Augustine first teaches: the human will does not obtain grace by freedom, but obtains freedom by grace; when the feeling of delight has been imparted through.67 the same grace, the human will is formed to endure; it is strengthened with unconquerable fortitude; controlled by grace, it never will perish, but, if grace forsake it, it will straightway fall; by the Lord's free mercy it is converted to good, and once converted it perseveres in good; the direction of the human will toward good, and after direction its continuation in good, depend solely upon God's will, not upon any merit of man. Thus there is left to man such free will, if we please so to call it, as he elsewhere describes: that except through grace the will can neither be converted to God nor abide in God; and whatever it can do it is able to do only through grace.

The Official Hagmann & Hagmann Report- September 25, 2015 Nathan Leal

Catholic Agenda Embedded in the Manhattan Declaration

By Richard Bennett  

Roman Catholic Dual Purpose Behind the Manhattan Declaration 

On November 20th, 2009, more than 150 people portraying themselves as Christian leaders of Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical backgrounds declared their unity because of moral issues. The signers who are uniting themselves together in the Mahattan Declaration (MD) identify themselves under the signed statement, “We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good….”[1] The Website of MD states that the purpose of the document is “simply to speak with one voice on the most pressing moral issues of our day…[MD is] simply a statement of solidarity about only the social issues it addresses.”[2] And the document itself may not appear to have any objective other than quoted. However, under the Website section entitled, “Message to all signers of the Manhattan Declaration,” the clearly stated purpose is a call for a political movement. This shows that, in fact, the Manhattan Declaration is only the latest step in the downgrade into implementing Catholic social doctrine. There is yet another purpose; one primarily stated in Vatican Council II and post-Vatican Council II documents. Through the use of social issues, the Roman Catholic Church seeks to draw true Evangelical Bible-believers into itself so that there can be no opposition by them on the fundamental issues of the authority of the Bible alone and the Gospel.    

In order to soften up the Evangelicals in their separation from the Catholics on biblical doctrinal issues, particularly the authority of the Bible alone and the Gospel, the Catholic modus operandi calls for using social issues on which both Evangelicals and Catholics agree as preliminary common ground. The major social issues selected by MD are acceptable, but what gives away the underlying Catholic far left political agenda is some of the vocabulary used. This vocabulary has a general meaning, to be sure, but in the context of Roman Catholic social doctrine, it means something quite specific. As Evangelicals are drawn together with Catholics on social issues – like the social issues mentioned in this document – the ensuing ecumenical dialogue “serves to transform modes of thought and behavior and the daily life of their [Evangelical] communities [churches]. In this way, it [ecumenical dialogue] aims at preparing the way for their unity of faith in the bosom of a Church one and visible:  thus ‘little by little’…all Christians will be gathered”[3] into the Roman Catholic Church with its dual authority base, false gospel, and accompanying far left agenda. The Roman Catholic Church’s primary goal is to make enforceable its claim that it is the only true church of Jesus Christ and its pope, the claimed “Vicar of Christ,” has the right to judge everybody, as he did during the Middle Ages. In order to accomplish this, the Papacy must do away with the supreme authority of the Bible and the Gospel and it must silence all who stand against it in this endeavor. This is the Roman Catholic context in which the Manhattan Declaration is set.
                                               
Ambiguous Preamble 

The Preamble of the Manhattan Declaration itself lacks a stated purpose. Instead, it proclaims that Christians are “heirs of a 2,000-year tradition” ambiguously defined as “proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.” The statement certainly does not mean a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming the truth of God’s Word seen in Scripture – because both the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy deny the sole authority of Scripture as well as the Gospel.[4] Equally important, the Preamble does not identify who is meant by the general term “Christians.” That is given only far down in the second section of MD. These two signal factors alone ought to make any Evangelical wary.

Named Drafters of MD 

The named drafters of MD are Robert George, an ardent Roman Catholic taking the place of the now deceased Richard John Neuhaus; Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School, and Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries and now of Center for Christian Worldview. In order to achieve the solidarity among the parties of which the Website spoke, clearly all the compromises have been made by Timothy George as the Evangelical representative. This is required by the Roman Catholic drafter and those behind him.  Indeed, it was to that end that Timothy George was invited by the organizers of the project to be the drafter from the Evangelical side. He is a leader whose “public witness on behalf of justice, human rights, and the common good”[5] is in line with the Roman Catholic political and ecumenical purposes. “Justice, human rights, and the common good” are all buzz words for Roman Catholic far left doctrine as spelled out in the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the [Roman Catholic] Church.”

Timothy George’s Major Compromises 

Timothy George’s first compromise was to agree to the authority base of the document. That base is not the Bible alone; but instead, it is hard-core Roman Catholic tradition and Scripture.[6] This corrupted authority base makes it possible to settle on ambiguous terminology which does not align doctrinally with the Bible, particularly regarding the Gospel.

Equally important is the total compromise by Timothy George on the Gospel.  Although the Preamble states that “Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace,” there is a vagueness of expression and confusion regarding the meaning of “costly grace.” Man’s position as a sinner under the vengeful wrath of Holy God is not explained. On the authority of the Bible alone, salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, is not explained.  Yet MD’s bland expression, the “Gospel of costly grace,” is the closest the Declaration gets to the Gospel. Obviously, MD’s flexible phrase is meant to cover up the lack of “solidarity” among the signers—because there can be no solidarity of unbelievers with those who have been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone.
                                             
In another section MD states, “It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season.”[7] This is a sop to Evangelical Christians, but one which, if they actually did their duty, requires them to confront the Roman Catholic and Orthodox signers with the supreme authority of the Bible and with the Gospel. Both Catholic and Orthodox churches officially deny the Gospel and in its place actively teach and practice a false gospel. Only those who actually are saved and “in Christ,” those who actually believe the Gospel, are charged with proclaiming it.[8]

Roman Church History Whitewashed 

Another major compromise, to which Timothy George bowed, regards the history of Evangelical Christians and the Roman Catholic Church. The historical facts of the Roman Catholic Church’s centuries of Inquisition against millions of Bible-believers and others cannot be air-brushed away with a brief statement that institutions have made mistakes, as MD tries to do. Neither can the drafters, by claiming to speak exclusively as individuals, exonerate themselves from this outrage. The most important part of the Preamble’s summary on Christian history is what it fails to say.

The Preamble presents a few bits of history to support its claim to the heritage of Christian “tradition” but remains silent on the two most significant events of European history. The first is the six hundred year reign of terror by the Roman Catholic Papacy enforced by its murderous Inquisition. The second and equally important event is the Reformation of the sixteenth century – due to the recovery of the Bible and the Gospel in the hands of ordinary people. These two signal omissions were necessary because even to allude to either of them would destroy the supposed solidarity that MD purports to express.

For example, the Preamble states, “It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade….” However, by the start of the 16th century, three hundred years of enforced Papal edicts had already been enslaving Europe by robbing, torturing, and murdering millions of Bible believers and others throughout the Holy Roman Empire. The Inquisition was the Papal tool by which people were terrorized and forced into professing faith in the Roman Catholic false gospel and accompanying practices. It would be another three hundred years before the Inquisition was finally halted at the end of the eighteenth century. It is an outrage, and an utter disgrace, that Timothy George in particular, and Robert George as an educated man, allowed such whitewashing of the Roman Catholic Church’s bloody history be touted here.    

Beginning in 1203, with “ethnic cleansing” of the Bible-believing Albigenses in France, the Papacy instituted its murderous system of Inquisition.  In 1572, the Papacy, under edict from Pope Pius V before his death, was instrumental in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which as many as 70,000 French Huguenots were “ethnically cleansed” from France. In the seventeenth century, the Papacy was heavily invested in “ethnic cleansing” of the Biblebelieving Vaudois, or “people of the valleys” of the Cottian Alps. During World War II, the Roman Catholic state of Croatia, with the approval of the Papacy, wrecked “ethnic cleansing” on the Serbian Orthodox and others. The Papacy, too, was instrumental in preparing the way for the Holocaust of World War II, and it stood silently by while millions of Jews were murdered.[9] The Papacy has not changed in spite of its new tactic of calling Evangelicals “separated brethren” rather than heretics.[10]

Further down in the same paragraph, the Preamble states, “In Europe, Christians…successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible.” Certainly the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches cannot be included in this statement.  Rather, it was the Protestants of the Reformation—who had the Gospel and the Bible—that successfully dismantled the Holy Roman Empire in which the Pope, being head of the church of the civil state, could enforce his antibiblical doctrine by means of civil law. In its place, the Protestants of the Reformation instituted the rule of law, and in America they powerfully shaped the Constitution which was an entirely new kind of government, a representative republic based on the rule of law, the basis of which was the Bible. Without the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the American Experiment of a new kind of civil government, in which having neither a state church nor a ruler claiming both temporal and spiritual authority, as the Pope does, could not have taken place. Many immigrants from Europe, England, and Scotland fled to the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because of the terrors that the Roman Catholic Church continued to perpetrate on their homelands. For Catholics, including Robert George, to claim a 2,000-year tradition of “seeking justice in our societies, [and] resisting tyranny” is simply a blatant lie.    

Thus the drafters of the opening statement of the preamble to MD, by refusing to define there who is meant by “Christians,” are able to present insignificant bits of Catholic information that promote an outright falsehood regarding any Catholic claim for a history of “seeking justice” and “resisting tyranny.” The history of Orthodoxy’s oppression, while in no way matching that of Papal Rome, has fully opposed other forms of Christianity amounting to persecution of true believers in Orthodox nations. It is incredible that anyone who understands that Catholics and Orthodox are included in the Declaration’s definition of “Christian” could endorse this opening statement.  

Robert George Obligated to Roman Catholic Social Doctrine 

Robert George is morally obligated under the dictates of the Papacy to evangelize people, particularly Evangelicals and Orthodox, into the Roman Catholic Church by means of propagating its social doctrine. His duty as a Roman Catholic is laid out as follows, “The Pope as the ‘supreme teaching authority’ of the Roman Catholic Church has decreed the following for its lay people.

“In the tasks of evangelization, that is to say, of teaching, catechesis and formation that the Church's social doctrine inspires, it is addressed to every Christian [i.e., Catholic]…By fulfilling these responsibilities, the lay faithful put the Church's social teaching into action and thus fulfill the Church’s secular mission.”[11]  

The Papacy has put real teeth into its dictates on this issue: “Insofar as it is part of the Church’s moral teaching, the Church’s social doctrine has the same dignity and authority as her moral teaching. It is authentic Magisterium, which obligates the faithful to adhere to it.”[12] The duty of all lay Catholics to evangelize by teaching and implementing Roman Catholic social doctrine everywhere in secular society is obligatory on pain of excommunication. This means that the Papacy has a dependable “fifth column” in every nation where Catholics are found.  Robert George, by his profession as a Roman Catholic and by his drafting of MD, shows that he is part of the Pope’s fifth column, whether or not he acknowledges it.

Political Objective of MD  

The Website makes it very clear that MD has a political objective. Under the Website section entitled, “Message to all signers of the Manhattan Declaration,” that purpose is stated; namely, “We are seeking to build a movement – hundreds of thousands of Catholic, Evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox Christians who will stand together alongside other men and women of goodwill in defense of foundational principles of justice and the common good.”[13]

It is here that Christians are defined as Catholic, Evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox. Thus, true Evangelical Christians are to be yoked together with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, neither of which is Christian. Furthermore, this newly formed “Christian” group is then to be yoked together with “other men and women of goodwill,” presumably meaning atheists, pagans, animists, and such as Buddhists and Hindus. This is exactly the world group that the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the [Roman Catholic] Church” targets as those who are to move the Catholic far leftist agenda forward into global implementation. Quite overtly the movement is to propagate the Roman Catholic social agenda, which comes to light by the words “justice and the common good.” Justice in Roman Catholic social doctrine is specifically defined. It now includes “economic” justice, which is a buzz word for the call for “redistribution of wealth from richer countries to poorer ones.” The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ 1995 Pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All,” states, “In Catholic teaching, human rights include not only civil and political rights but also economic rights … ‘all people have a right to life, food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, education, and employment.’”[14] However, in Scripture, God does not speak in terms of rights. The biblical mandate safeguards against injustice and grants men responsibility both in owning private property and in making their own economic decisions.  It allows men the freedom to act with the dignity of beings created in God’s image. It also allows men the freedom to fail in their endeavors. The importance of true economics is that it does not primarily offer riches and extravagance, but rather its primary offer is one of freedom and personal responsibility to exercise one’s role before God in His universe. Such responsibility puts him face to face with God’s law, or his own law, and his own inevitable failure to live up to either. It gives him a chance to move beyond what he can see and control, and to seek for real truth. It is here that the supreme authority of the Bible and the Gospel bring to him the truth that he needs. The Bible alone teaches him truthfully of God’s sovereignty and shows him his need for a Savior. He then can understand that his dependence ought to be on God through Jesus Christ.  Conversely, the thrust behind “economic rights,” – i.e., the “redistribution of wealth” for which the Roman Catholic social agenda calls – seeks to transfer an individual’s responsibility before God and, therefore, his dependence on God to a demoralizing dependence on the civil state or on the Roman Church. These two institutions then become either a god or the unauthorized intermediary for the true God.

The term “the common good,” mentioned eight times in MD, is a Roman Catholic social agenda buzz phrase.  Thus, the official papal Compendium states,

“The Church’s social teaching moreover calls for recognition of the social function of any form of private ownership that clearly refers to its necessary relation to the common good….The universal destination of goods entails obligations on how goods are to be used by their legitimate owners…From this there arises the duty on the part of owners not to let the goods in their possession go idle and to channel them to productive activity, even entrusting them to others who are desirous and capable of putting them to use in production.[15]    

What very few realize is that this concept of “the common good” in Roman Catholic teachings involves enforcement by the civil governments in which every person is required to participate.[16] It is this that Pope Benedict called for in his encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” of June 29, 2009,[17] and for which the official Papal Compendium also calls.[18] How many of the Evangelicals who have signed MD have understood that what appears to be a convervative, Bible-based concern over “justice and the common good” —words that in America unmistakenly hearken back to the Preamble to the U. S. Constitution—have here been formed into a deceptive tool to be used against them. When Evangelical Christians sign MD, the Roman Catholic social agenda with its enforced moral obligations is being advanced. That agenda stands diametrically opposed to the Bible, to the U.S. Constitution, and to the Bill of Rights. When fully formed, the larger politicalreligious global institution envisioned by the Papacy will be fully coercive, as it has been in every totalitarian regime. Thus, when MD speaks of how Roman Catholicism has stood for freedom when it does not, and never has, it is clear that Robert George and his Roman Catholic advisors have laid a trap for unsuspecting Evangelicals in particular.

The Ecumenical Purpose 

It is no coincidence that the ecumenical agenda of the Pope appears in the Manhattan Declaration. This Declaration is as important as the proclamation that launched the “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT) movement in 1994. The words at that time were, “This statement cannot speak officially for our communities [churches]. It does intend to speak responsibly from our communities and to our communities.”[19] On this occasion, however, the leaders claim Christian unity “as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities.”[20] Again, the same words are not a coincidence; rather, they are evidence of the same purpose, namely, both Catholics and Evangelicals are to be accepted as “Christian.” Part of the reason for the terminology change from “speaking from our communities” is that the Catholic Church has offically stated that Evangelical churches are not “churches” in the proper sense.[21] Therefore, while denying recognition to the Evangelical churches, the Roman Church uses this document to make a not-so-subtle display of its institutional power in order to ecumenize the Evangelical Christians and the Orthodox. When the two cardinals, seven archbishops, and five bishops of the Roman Catholic Church signed MD, they did so as representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papacy. This was done by using their full titles, rather than only their given names and the denominations from which they come; as for example, the cardinals sign as “His Eminence Adam Cardinal Maida, Archbishop Emeritus, Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit, MI” and “His Eminence Justin Cardinal Rigali Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, PA.” The same can be said of most of the original signatories to the document. This means that although the signers claim to be speaking “as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations…” clearly they are using their titles to identify their status and power in the religious world. The list of signatories is meant to impress ordinary people so that on the basis of who’s who – or identity politics – they will also sign. Herein the Roman Catholic false ecumenism has accomplished a larger step in drawing Bible believers “little by little…” into thinking that the Roman Catholic Church is not so different from their own Evangelical churches.

One basic tactic of MD is to leave out of the Declaration the things on which the parties do not agree. This tactic is part of a “divide and conquer strategy.” It was enunciated in 1994 in Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT), which sought to identify Roman Catholics as Christians. According to ECT, Roman Catholics were to be identified as Christians on the things about which they agreed with Evangelicals rather than on the authority of the Bible alone as regarding the major defining doctrinal issues that anyone who claims to be “in Christ” must believe. About these major doctrinal issues there is as yet no agreement.

The legacy of ECT fifteen years later is that in MD the defining issues regarding the identity of Christians is not addressed per se. Nevertheless, the drafters of MD were careful about how and when they would make it clear that Roman Catholics and Orthodox were to be included as Christians. To that end, the Preamble to MD simply makes statements about “Christians” and their heritage according to tradition, most of which could be accepted by the hasty, biblically ignorant, or naive Evangelical reader. But in the final paragraph of the section entitled, “Declaration,” after speaking about Catholics, Orthodox, and Evangelical Christians, the drafters flatly state, “We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences…” No argument has been made regarding the issue of whether historic “ecclesial differences” had been solved. Rather, the compromise of calling Roman Catholics and Orthodox “Christians” is stated as if it is a huge accomplishment, which it is for the Roman Catholic Church, but to the shame and disgrace of the Evangelicals who have compromised themselves.  

MD itself must be read in the context of its Website if one is to comprehend what one is about to sign. The Declaration itself is fairly innocuous as a statement and of little political significance – except to the Roman Catholic Church with its far left agenda, particularly for the U.S. In recognizing and signing onto MD, Evangelicals are sanctioning the Roman Catholic system and Orthodoxy as “Christian.” This is something they should have refused to do. Regarding the embedded Roman Catholic social agenda, however, many Evangelicals have simply been deceived by this cunning document.  

The Scripture emphatically states, “God will not be deceived and He will not be mocked for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”[22] True Christians therefore must make a stand, the Lord God will not be mocked, His glory and His Gospel of grace are at stake!

Notes

1. Main Website, second paragraph; http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/
2. http://www/manhattandeclaration.org/faqs  1/14/2010  Q. 4
3. Doc. No. 42, “Reflections and Suggestions Concerning Ecumenical Dialogue”, S.P.U.C., Aug.15, 1970 in Vatican Council II:  The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Austin Flannery, Gen Ed., 1981 Edition; II, Para. 2 (d). 
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church  Para 1129, “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation.  ‘Sacramental grace’ is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament.”  Also “What Do Orthodox Christians Believe?” Lamp: 1996  9 Serbian Orthodox Church
5. MD website, faqs, Q. 2.  1/14/2010
6. Catechism, Para. 82
7. MD, Section entitled “Declaration”
8. Ephesians Ch 1, 2:1-9.
9. John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope:  The Secret History of Pius XII  (Viking Penguin, 1999)
10. The wording of Papal Rome’s tactical change are given in her official documents “Reflections and Suggestions Concerning Ecumenical Dialogue” in Vatican Council II:  The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Austin Flannery, O.P., editor (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1981)
11. Compendium Sect. 83
12. Compendium, Sect. 80.  Emphasis is in original.
13. Manhattandeclaration.org/for_signers_whats_next   1/14/2010
14. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, www.osjspm.org/rights_and_duties.aspx   2/10/2010
15. Compendium Sect. 178   Emphasis not in original.
16. Compendium, Sect. 167
17. http://www.vatican.va/.../encyclicals/.../hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html
18. “Charity in Truth”, Sect. 67 
19. “Evangelicals & Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium”, First Things 1994, p. 1.
20. MD, First sentence  
21. Pope Benedict’s 2007 decree stated, Q. “Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of “Church” with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?”  A. “…These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense.” In “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church.” www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html 
22. Galatians 6:7