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One of the commentors on Armstrong’s blog (referenced in the previous blog post) linked to this article by Jimmy Akin wherein the current definition of anathema is “explained.”

After reading the article, the only conclusion I can come to is that words have no actual meaning in an ecumenical council.  They have no actual meaning because in the future the meaning of the words will be changed to whatever suits the current generation.

Thus, Akin writes:

Originally, the Church did not differentiate between excommunication and anathema, which is why ecumenical councils have traditionally constructed their dogmatic canons using the formula “If anyone says . . . let him be anathema,” meaning that anyone teaching the condemned proposition is to be anathematized or cut off from Christian society.

(In other words, the infallible, unchanging, apostolic Church that has always meant what it means today did not originally mean what it means today in regards to anathema.  But who’s keeping score?)

Akin continues:

Over time, a distinction came to be made between excommunication and anathema. The precise nature of the distinction varied but eventually became fixed. By the time of Gregory IX (1370–1378), the term anathema was used to describe a major excommunication that was performed with a solemn pontifical ceremony. This customarily involved the ringing of a bell, the closing of a book, and the snuffing out of candles, collectively signifying that the highest ecclesiastical court had spoken and would not reconsider the matter until the individual gave evidence of repentance.

Here we see how “anathema” changed from being synonymous with excommunication to become a more formal form of excommunication.  Thus, the anathemas contained in the Council of Nicea, for instance, did not mean the same as the anathemas in the Council of Trent.  Likewise, the anethemas in the Council of Trent do not mean the same as they would if used in a Council today.

This isn’t a problem on the face of it.  Words do change over time.  They evolve different meanings, because words are defined by their common use.  The problem is when the Catholic anachronistically reads today’s meaning of the term back into the original Church fathers and pretends that what is meant today is what was meant back then.  This is obviously not the case, if (as Akin has admitted) the meaning of the words has changed.

Thus, Akin concludes:

Yet the penalty was used so seldom that it was removed from the 1983 Code of Canon Law. This means that today the penalty of anathema does not exist in Church law. The new Code provided that, “When this Code goes into effect, the following are abrogated: 1º the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917 . . . 3º any universal or particular penal laws whatsoever issued by the Apostolic See, unless they are contained in this Code” (CIC [1983] 6 §1). The penalty of anathema was not renewed in the new Code, and thus it was abrogated when the Code went into effect on January 1, 1983.

He is now saying that there are no anathemas in the Catholic Church.  This is, of course, true since January 1, 1983 (assuming Akin’s sources are correct; and I have no reason to doubt them right now).  But before January 1, 1983, anathemas were in effect.  So how does Akin deal with that?

By denying anathemas meant something different in the past.  He writes:

Because the penalty has been abolished, a word should be said about the status of the conciliar canons that employed this penalty. In addition to prescribing the imposition of a juridical penalty, the phrase anathema sit (”let him be anathema”) also came to be one of the phrases that the Church traditionally has used to issue doctrinal definitions.

Catholic scholars have long recognized that when an ecumenical council applies this phrase to a doctrinal matter, then the matter is settled infallibly. (If a council applied the phrase to a disciplinary matter, then the matter would not be settled infallibly, since only matters of doctrine, not discipline, are subject to doctrinal definition.)

Thus, when Trent and other ecumenical councils employed anathema sit in regard to doctrinal matters, not only was a judicial penalty prescribed but a doctrinal definition was also made. Today, the judicial penalty may be gone, but the doctrinal definition remains. Everything that was infallibly decided by these councils is still infallibly settled.

In other words, Akin ignores the use of the term as Trent used it and instead says, “All Trent meant was that it was speaking infallibly.”

But those at the Council of Trent certainly didn’t think that way.  When they anathematized Protestants, they meant it.  They did not have Akin’s view of the term in mind because that view was completely alien to them.  It would not come about until after 1983!

In short, we see that Akin gets around the use of the term “anathema” only by redefining it in today’s language and anachronistically infusing that meaning back into the original Councils.  This demonstrates A) that the Church in Rome is far from unchanging, B) that words don’t have any actual meaning (after all, in 100 years someone could change the meaning of the words of Vatican II and Akin would have no idea what the “true” Catholic doctrine is), and C) that the only way to remain a consistent Catholic is to deny exegetical and hermenutical sciences.

If one’s ”infallible” authority can only solve the “anathema” problem by making the definition of it Jello, I, for one, see no reason to submit myself to that authority.

The answer to the title of this blog entry is blindingly obvious to any objective historian.  To the Roman Catholic, however, who must interpret the Council of Trent in light of the two Vatican Councils, simple history is insufficient to answer this question.  This is why Dave Armstrong, in the comments on this blog post says:

 

Trent condemned the absolute separation of faith and works. I don’t see that even John Calvin did that. He thought (and so do most Calvinists) that one is saved by “faith alone” but not a faith that IS alone and that any saving faith will necessarily show forth the works that will inevitably flow from it if indeed it is true saving faith.

So there is your cooperation with God; hence that aspect of Calvinism was not, I believe, condemned by Trent. i think what is condemned there is mopre like the extreme faith alone position that John MacArthur opposed in his book, The Gospel According to Jesus (the opposite of Lordship salvation). But that is not classic “Reformation” teaching: it is Anabaptistic or Baptist thinking (even then, one must look at the particular strain of Baptist theology).

 

But who would know better what Trent meant then the people who wrote it?  The historical question is, did those who penned the Canons of Trent consider Calvinists anathema?  Given the persecution between Catholics and Calvinists, the answer certainly seems to be “yes.”  After all, if Calvinists really weren’t anathematized by Trent, there would have been ample time for the authors to say, “Hey, wait a minute!  We didn’t mean those guys!”  But they didn’t do that.

On to the pertinent canons.  I will look only at those that are clearly against my position (as there are others that could be, depending on how they are defined; yet we are looking for certain condemnations, not possible ones).  These will be taken from The American Catholic Truth Society website:

Canon 9

If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema.

This is indeed the very canon I quoted to Armstrong.  Armstrong insists that this canon does not anathematize me, yet I agree with everything that is declared anathema in the above statement!  That’s right.  I affirm that man is saved by faith alone.  Likewise, I affirm that there is nothing but faith required for justification.  Furthermore, I acknowledge that this has nothing to do with the will of the man (it is instead the regeneration of the Spirit through the Election of the Father).  Therefore, by the above canon, I must be anathema to the Catholic Church.

Armstrong disagrees.  In so doing, he must either acknowledge that Trent is not speaking clearly enough in the above (which is another way of saying that they erred in an “infallible” council), or Armstrong must claim that I do not believe what I do, in fact, believe.

There are other canons though!  Let us continue:

Canon 24.

If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of its increase, let him be anathema.

This canon is especially pertinent since it opposes the exact excuse that Armstrong gave for why Calvinists were not anathema!  Once again, I agree with the very thing that is anathematized.  Good works are indeed “the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of its increase.”  Justification, after all, is a once-for-all-time event.  Good works are “merely” the sign that someone has been justified.

Thus, when Armstrong says, “He thought (and so do most Calvinists) that one is saved by “faith alone” but not a faith that IS alone and that any saving faith will necessarily show forth the works that will inevitably flow from it if indeed it is true saving faith” he fails to realize that Trent still anathematizes the Calvinist position!

Continuing:

Canon 26.

If anyone says that the just ought not for the good works done in God to expect and hope for an eternal reward from God through His mercy and the merit of Jesus Christ, if by doing well and by keeping the divine commandments they persevere to the end, let him be anathema.

Again, I agree with the position being anathematized here.  The “just” are only just because of the grace of God, not because they do any good works.  Indeed, the good works done by a justified person have no merit unto eternal life in the least.  After all, the justified man is already saved.

Furthermore, because one is saved by the grace of God only, one ought not hope in his own works as if they merited anything.  One must instead hope in Christ.  Again, Trent anthematizes the position I, and Calvinists like me, hold.

One more example shall do:

Canon 32

If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema.

Again, I agree with the position that is anathematized here.  Good works done by man are not meritorious at all.  The only merit a sinner has is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.  The works that a man does are in now way adding to his measure of grace.

It should be clear now to anyone who is not forced by a faulty view of infalliblity to re-interpret Trent in light of the Vatican Councils, that Trent most certainly did anathematize the Calvinist position.  Thus, the Catholic must either demonstrate why Trent infallibly spoke so sloppily, or why Vatican must have spoken sloppily.  The two views cannot both be right.

I was just talking with one of my co-workers, and somehow we got on the subject of infinity.

This is always fun for me (because I am weird).  Anyway, consider this:

On a numberline from 0 -> 1, there are an infinite number of points.

On that same numberline from 0 -> 2 there are likewise an infinite number of points.

So:  (the ——- = all the points between the two numbers)

A = {[0]——-[1]}

B = {[0]——-[1]——-[2]}

A contains an infinite number of points.

B, on the other hand, contains all the infinite number of points of A and an infinite number of other points.

As such, B’s infinity is greater than A’s infinity.

Interestingly, this gives us a good chance to delve into some quantum theory. (Hey, I told you I was weird.)  Let us look at temperature for an example.

Suppose the temperature is 70 degrees and you want to raise it to 75.  You turn the heater on.

Before the temperature can rise to 75, it must first raise to 71.  But before it can raise to 71, it must first raise to 70.5, which we will re-write as 70 1/2 for further ease.  Before it can do that, it must first reach 70 1/4…etc to 70 1/(infinity -1).  (I put the -1, because 1/(infinity) = 0.)

Now, obviously the problem is that if we are to raise the temperature incrimentally, we must raise it through an infinite fraction of degrees.  But the furnace doesn’t work this way!

Instead, it give heat in quantized units.  Say, 1 degree “packets” (just for illustration–I don’t feel like taking the time to actually expirement and figure out the correct units!) 

Thus, the temperature raises instantly from 70 to 71 degrees without passing through any of the fractions of degrees between them!  This is basically the same thing that occurs during a quantum leap, where a sub-atomic particle “leaps” a distance without crossing the space between origin and destination.

And the reason why is because the quantized units themselves contain their own “infinities.”  In other words, if a quantized unit is 1 degree, it is akin to numberline A in our first example.  The packet contains all the infinite points between 0 and 1.  Thus, adding the infinite points of A to [1 -> 2] contains all the infinties of A plus the infinities of 1 -> 2.  Or, to go back to the furnace illustration, the temperature instantly rises from 70 to 71 degrees because we are adding a unit that contains all the infinite points between 70 and 71, to 70 (ie. 70 + [infinite number of points between 70 & 71] = 71).

Since the same thing works for distances (e.g. quantum leaps), it also helps to solve Zenon’s Paradox.

And now back to your regularly scheduled boring day :-D

I had almost forgotten the joy that is internet Catholic apologists.  Then, I asked one simple question and get the full wrath of them brought upon me.

And it wasn’t even a doctrinal issue.

Dave Armstrong has this interesting habit of labelling everyone who disagrees with his view of Catholicism as an “anti-Catholic.”  So I asked: “Since everyone who disagrees with you is automatically an ‘anti-Catholic’ can I just call you an ‘anti-Calvinist’ from now on?”

Dave decided to first ignore that, leaving it to Jason Cebalo to charge me with not reading anything Dave writes (yeah, that must be why I see how many people he calls anti-Catholic; because I’m not reading anything he writes).  He claimed that Dave calls Steve Hays an anti-Catholic because Hays supposedly says Catholics aren’t Christian.

This despite Steve’s direct statements to the opposite that he does, indeed, view salvation as possible within Roman Catholicism.

Jason did later appologize for his “intemperate” tone, and finally concluded by stating:

Its just that the aproach of certain Calvinists to the whole “anti” thing really annoys me.

 

To this final quote, Dave Armstrong finally responded to what I said by saying:

 

I didn’t have the patience to answer the post, so I appreciate your doing so.

 

Gee, thanks, Dave.

Armstrong continues:

 

I made a clear distinction between anti-Catholic and Protestant in a recent post on Triablogue (as I’ve done probably 300 times by now in many many papers). These anti-Catholic clowns half the time don’t even read what we write, let alone comprehend it.

 

Yet Dave’s “distinction” is this:

This distorts what I wrote, which was that Steve might reason himself out of anti-Catholicism, not Protestantism. The two are not identical. The vast majority of Protestants are not anti-Catholics.

But this doesn’t show us how Dave is distinguishing between the two.  He is only mentioning that he does do so.

But we don’t know the inner workings of Dave Armstrong’s mind.  How are we to know how he distinguishes between anti-Catholics and Protestants in general?  The only thing we have are his words.

Based on other things he has written, it seems to boil down to this: if you object to anything Dave Armstrong says about Catholicism, you are an anti-Catholic; if you don’t say anything, you can still be a Protestant.  True Prots will just shut up and stay on the sidelines and not meddle wtih important folks, such as Dave Armstrong.

What Armstrong and his followers don’t realize is that the term “anti-Catholic” is a very specifically designed term.  It is their attempt to impute irrational bias onto the Protestant such that the Protestant is just a hate-filled, bitter person who is incapable of seeing the truth of Catholicism.  Thus, he is forced to rage in his anti-Catholic pride, unable to see the light of reason.

Armstrong never considers that maybe there are people who just disagree with him.  No, if you disagree you must be disagreeing out of hateful spite.  It must be because you’re an anti-Catholic, not because you’re confident of your own position.

Calling someone an anti-Catholic is like calling someone an anti-semite.  The connotations are the same, and Armstrong fully knows that.

Nor is Armstrong alone.  He has much company in the internet realm of Catholic apologists.  For instance, listen to the rantings of Roman Catholic Miki in her “discussion” with James White.  Compare that to what you read from her and others here. Check out the ad hominem used in criticizing James White here. Suddenly, the claims of folks like Dave Armstrong seem to ring dreadfully thin.

Given recent history, the first Catholic response to this will be to say that I’m just a James White sychophant.  This despite the fact that White and I disagree on some very important issues (I, after all, am a Presbyterian, not a Reformed Baptist).  No, I must be one of his mindless #pros drones (after all, I once was a constant feature in #prosapologian!).  Thus, I am obviously just another one of those anti-Catholic, hate-mongerers…dismissed out of hand by the application of a stereotype that exists only in the minds of rabid anti-Calvinists, such as Dave Armstrong and his sychophants.

I find it sad on both sides, actually.  I would love to live in the idealistic dream-world where everyone listened to the strengths of the arguments instead of focusing on the personality of the proponent of the argument.  Sometimes I think James White goes a little too far; but he’s downright restrained compared to the folks that write about him.  And White, at least, doesn’t say something without the ability to back it up with examples (thus, even when he engages in ad hominem (which is nowhere near as often as folks like Armstrong claim), his statements are still factually true).  This is not the case in reverse.

Frankly, the state of internet Roman Catholic apologists is one of the best arguments against their position that I can think of.

Well…

I was supposed to get my CPAP machine the first week of August.  I got it yesterday.  Hurrah for the medical industry!

In any case, last night I got to assemble the machine, plug it in, and test it out.  So today is my first day after having it.  Thus far, I can say that I do feel better than normal, but not quite “refreshed.” (Those of you who are thinking “What is he talking about?” check this blog post.)  One thing I’ve discovered that’s extremely weird is that having air pumped into your nose tends to make your ears feel all plugged up.

Oh well.  I will keep y’all informed, whether you want it or not, about how it goes from now on.  All in all, I’m optimistic that in a few weeks when I’m completely used to the CPAP, my overall health will be vastly improved.

If you read between the lines, Al Gore admits that taxes are punative!  Gore suggested that we tax pollution instead of payroll.  In doing so, he said:

Penalizing pollution instead of penalizing employment will work to reduce that pollution.

Thus, Al Gore acknowledges that taxes are a penalty!  Furthermore, he admits that payroll taxes are tantamount to “penalizing employment.”

Too bad he doesn’t realize he has admitted this.  Too bad that more people in Congress don’t realize what has slipped through inadvertently….

Natural Selection is a theory that proves too much.  Ask why a man is unfaithful to his wife: Natural Selection creates pressure on the male to spread his genes as far and wide as possible, thus making him unfaithful to his wife.  Ask, on the other hand, why a man is monogamous: Natural Selection creates pressure to have whole families (since they tend to produce better children who have greater chances at survival to pass on genes), thus making a man faithful to his wife.

Darwinists do not realize that both of these positions cannot be right.  Nor, for that matter, do they realize that a theory so plastic as to prove both sides of a contradiction is really not a theory at all.

They are rioting in Budapest.  Why?  Because of

prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s admission that he had lied “day and night” to win power in April’s elections.

See what happens when a politician finally honestley admits all he does is lie?  It sparks riots!

Methinks I should file this one under a new category called “Machiavellian Schemes” but I’m too lazy to create it…. :-)

Since I mentioned to some people that I can post online with my PDA, I figured…why not prove it?

So here’s a post from my PDA, pecked out letter-by-letter at a wonderous 2.8 wpm. Don’t you feel blessed?

There are so many ways to go with this one.

Two parents are charged with kidnapping their 19-year-old daughter in an attempt to force her to get an abortion.  This just needs to be satirized.  So…..

 

FALSE HOPE, NY.  Nicholas Kampf, 54, and Lola, 53 were arrested earlier today after they attempted to abort their daughter 19 years after she was born.  Arguing that if they could have done it in 1987, they ought to be able to do it in 2006, the parents abducted their daughter, Katelyn and attempted to drive to New York.

The parents left Maine because Maine state law does not allow abortions after the fetus is viable outside of the womb.  The parents were taking Katelyn to New York because New York only “prohibits abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy unless the woman’s life is at stake.”

Nicholas Kampf was arrested with a .22 rifle and a loaded clip of .22 ammunition in his pocket.  He said, “The plan was to go to a Planned NonParenthood and say, ‘If you don’t perform an abortion on my daughter I’m going to shoot her mother.’  That way, we’d establish that her life was most definitely at stake and it would be legal for the abortion to go through.”

Legal experts say that this is the best legal maneuver they have seen since 1925 when Clarrence Darrow switched John Scope’s plea to guilty so Darwinism wouldn’t be cross-examined, and then waived a closing statement (which, under Tennessee Law, meant the prosecution could not have a closing statement either), thus giving Bryant no chance to try to refute the claims of Darrow during the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” and thus resulting in a highly historically inaccurate movie just thirty years later.  Experts are expecting “Inherit the Casing” to be released in 2036.