The Apologetics Men Missed: Part 2
Christ and The Catholic Church
This is Part 2 of my review of Apologetics by The Rt. Rev. Monsignor Paul Glenn (Ph.D, S.T.D). He wrote it to ‘show the unreason and the unmanliness of irreligion, and to dissipate the fog of sentimentality that passes for religion with many moderns.’ Whereas Part 1 gave the rational proofs for God and the necessity of religion, this article will apply the same ‘coldly scientific’ reasoning to Christ and the Catholic Church.
Book Third: Christ
I. Jesus Christ, the Redeemer
The Redemption
Liberalism views man as basically good and believes in progress. But Glenn quotes Chesterton on the fact that ‘there is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall.’ Many traditions, for example, have stories about a rebellion of men against God — like Prometheus and the Titans. From Homer and Hesiod downward, people have seen miseries as punishments. And whether it’s Elysium, the Isles of the Blessed, Atlantis or the Golden Age, there are various traditions of Paradise Lost.
Whereas liberalism looks forward to what Bertrand Russell called ‘the bright shining society of the future,’ all other human cultures have looked back to it. No shining society can be made of men. Man needs redeeming because there is something wrong with him. In Glenn’s image, man is like
‘a cripple who stands at the foot of a stairway which he is unable to climb, looking helplessly upward to a door which he longs to enter, but which his own perversity has closed and locked against him.’
Without a Redeemer, then, he is hopeless.
And the Redeemer must be a man to satisfy the demands of justice for man yet also be God because he must perform a work of infinite value. This is because — through ‘ingratitude unspeakable, impertinence unthinkable’ — man lost something infinitely good and offended God, who is infinitely good.
This is why the Incarnation was necessary:
‘He is God, and can pay the infinite price of redemption in the measure of justice; He is man, and of the race that should pay that price.’
The Redeemer
Accordingly, and here Glenn quotes Chesterton again,
‘The life of Jesus of Nazareth went as swift and straight as a thunderbolt…it did above all things consist in doing something that had to be done.’
Christ came mainly to die for us. His Passion, Glenn says, is ‘an infinite price paid for an infinite debt: justice is satisfied. Man has again the opportunity which he lost in the primal sin.’
And unlike Muhammad, for example, numerous prophesies foretold Christ, including the time and place of his birth as well as the fact that it would be to a virgin. His name, too, was foretold, as were His family and the Magi. And so were His miracles, His crucifixion, His Resurrection, His Ascension and the Church He founded.
II. Jesus Christ, True God
Jesus Christ claimed to be God
The Jews understood that Christ claimed to be God. After He said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ they wanted to stone Him. The great German rationalist Harnack (1851-1930), too, despite being what Glenn calls ‘a bitter opponent of the truth of Christ’s divinity,’ admits that the Gospels are historical documents and that Christ made this claim.
C. S. Lewis’s famous “trilemma” thus says we must regard Christ as either Our Lord, a lunatic or a liar. And this cannot be escaped by saying He was a mystic or claimed He was God only in the sense that every man may call himself a child of God. No, He exercised the power to forgive sin by his own authority. The Jews didn’t want to kill Him for being a mystic.
Jesus Christ proved Himself God by His personal character
Nobody doubts that Christ was a great teacher. The atheist William Lecky admits in his History of European Morals that
‘the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists.’ (Vol. II, p. 8 )
Despite having had no worldly education, He surpassed all the scholars and philosophers of human history in not only the content of what He taught but also, crucially, how He taught it, making it accessible to everyone — the true test of a teacher.
Even Nietzsche claimed He was the greatest man who ever lived. As Glenn comments, ‘Christ alone of all men that ever walked the earth is at the very centre of human life.’ But at the very centre of Christ’s teaching was His claim to be God. And He can’t be a great teacher is a lie is the core of his teaching.
Jesus Christ proved Himself God by His wondrous works
Christ’s miracles also proved He was God. As Aquinas pointed out, Muhammad worked no miracles. And Glenn stresses that, at Christ’s trial, His accusers ‘did not allege any fraud in His works. They knew that He had raised Lazarus, four days dead, to life again.’ Because of that fact, ‘they devised to put him to death’ (John 11:53), knowing that otherwise everyone would believe in Him.
But the greatest miracle was the Resurrection. It was preached just a few weeks after the Crucifixion, and Jesus’s enemies would have loved nothing more than to produce His body to stop it. If He wasn’t resurrected, the whole of Christianity crumbles. But the cold fact of the empty tomb reduced His enemies to offering bribes to the guards that had stood watch at the sepulchre to say that while they were asleep the disciples of Jesus stole the body away (Matthew 28:13).
This entails the absurd claim that the disciples went to their deaths and for what they knew to be a lie. It also involves them making up a story with women as the first witnesses to the empty tomb. But a woman’s testimony was virtually worthless in first-century Judaism; furthermore, Mary Magdalene at been possessed by demons (Luke 8:2). And the disciples themselves didn’t believe the Resurrection at first, calling it ‘an idle tale’ (Luke 24:11).
The claim that the disciples hallucinated the risen Christ is also absurd. He appeared to a group of over five hundred people, and He was capable of eating (Luke 24:41-43). Numerous appearances took place over forty days, and many of the high priests who had condemned Jesus to death became social outcasts and damned their souls to Hell, according to Judaism, to follow Him.
Jesus Christ proved Himself God by His prophecies
Christ’s prophecies all came true. He named His betrayer (Matthew 26:25); He foretold the sum the betrayer would receive for his treachery (John 13: 21, 26); He foretold the triple denial of St. Peter (John 26: 3-4); and He foretold His Resurrection, the spread of His Church and the destruction of Jerusalem. By the year 200, Tertullian could write that, despite terrible persecution, ‘We [Christians] are but of yesterday, and yet we fill every place that you have.’
III. Jesus Christ, True Man
Christ was not only truly God but truly man because, being God, He cannot possibly be a deceiver, and He said He was both ‘the Son of God’ and ‘the Son of man.’ He was conceived and born; he hungered and ate; he thirsted and drank; he laughed and cried; and he died. Although Christ has the true and full nature of man,’ however, ‘He is not a human person,’ Glenn stresses. The substantial union of the two natures (divine and human) in the one Person of the Son of God is the hypostatic union.
Book Fourth The Church
I. The Church of Jesus Christ
The Formation of the Church
Christ told His Apostles, Glenn says, ‘to teach and govern mankind in His name and by His authority.’ And because He founded a Church for ‘the enlightenment and salvation of the world,’ man is obliged to belong to it.
The Primacy of St. Peter
Christ conferred primacy on St. Peter, and this primacy descends to the successors of St. Peter, giving them the office of supreme authority in the Church. This necessarily involves infallibility when the holder of the primacy ‘speaks authoritatively in a matter of faith or morals.’
In John 1:42, Christ says to Peter, ‘Thou art Simon . . . thou shalt be called Cephas, Which is interpreted Peter.’ Kepha in Aramaic was the word for rock or stone and never used as a proper name in that language. But why Christ changed Simon’s name to Peter is made clear later, in Matt. 25:18: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.’
II. The Marks and Attributes of the Church of Jesus Christ
The Marks of the Church
The Church of Christ must be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
It must not contradict itself, so it must be one in doctrine, worship and authority.
Because its purpose is making men holy, it must show itself holy. Although it will have members, as even the Apostolic Church contained one member, who are unholy, its members who are ‘truly and spiritually devoted to the faith’ for which it stands will be holy.
Since Christ founded His Church for all nations, it must be universal.
Since Christ founded His Church for all days, it must go back to the Apostles, teach what they taught, be governed by their lineal and lawful successors and be ‘presided over by the successor of St. Peter in the primacy.’
The Attributes of the Church
It must also have the attributes visibility, infallibility, authority, and indefectibility.
The Church must be a visible society standing before men’s eyes like ‘a city set on a hill'.
It must be unable to err in doctrine or morality, i.e., infallible. If it could err, the gates of hell could prevail against it and certainly would.
Since it is founded by Christ, who is God and commands our obedience and belief, ‘the Church has the right and duty of teaching its members, and of exacting acceptance and obedience.’ This means it must have authority.
The Church must last ‘even to the consummation of the world’, never failing or disappearing, making it indefectible.
III. The Identification of the Church of Jesus Christ
The Catholic Church the Church of Christ
Glenn notes that these are the ‘marks and attributes of the Roman Catholic Church alone.’ The reasoning for this conclusion is ‘cold and inexorable’. For example,
‘No other Christian group than the Catholic Church is one. Such groups are not one in government or authority, for they have no common head or rule. They are not one in doctrine, for the Orthodox Greeks deny the doctrine of the primacy as vested in St. Peter and his successors in office, and they are split into different “independent” groups; and Protestants claim the right to interpret Holy Scripture at will, each believing what he chooses by private judgment.’
And all other Christian groups have capitulated on contraception and divorce. Only the Catholic Church, Glenn stresses, ‘stands squarely against the evils that come from the weak human quest of comfort and softness.’
The Necessity of the Catholic Church
Glenn explains the meaning of the dictum ‘outside the true Church there is no salvation.’ It applies to those who know the Catholic Church to be the true Church yet don’t become members of it. It also applies to those who don’t interest themselves in finding out the true Church or who won’t consider the claims of the Catholic Church.
But those who are honestly convinced that their own sect is the true Church, if they are in the state of grace, are members of the soul of the Catholic Church even though only the actual members of the Catholic Church constitute its body.
‘The religious unrest of the modern age,’ Glenn says, means that there is ‘need of ardent apologetic activity on the part of every Catholic, especially every educated Catholic.’ That is why I have summarised his book in the hope of winning it more readers and Christ more souls:
‘It is vain for a Catholic to talk of loving his fellowmen if he does not work and pray and give living good example in a tireless effort to bring his fellowmen to the knowledge of the all-necessary truth.’
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A final note on the Bible
What does it mean to say the Bible is inspired? Three things:
God stirred the will of the writers
He illumined their minds (directly or indirectly by guiding their research)
He guarded their writing from error
Amazingly, although the Bible was composed by many writers differing in time, education, culture and language who didn’t know how each part was related to the whole, it is marked by a unity and harmony — or ‘fearful symmetry’, to use Blake’s arresting phrase — that far surpasses even the work of Shakespeare, the world’s greatest writer:
But it is essential to realise that the first Christians didn’t have the Bible. The New Testament wasn’t even started until after Christ had founded the Catholic Church. The Bible is not the sole or sufficient source of Revelation. In fact, Glenn points out, ‘the very revelation that the Bible is revelation, is not in the Bible.