I am a Protestant who has a deep appreciation for Catholicism. I have been to Mass a few times and, like most Protestants, got a bit lost in the liturgy, but still had positive experiences. I have read a number of Catholic authors for whom I’m grateful, people like Pope Francis, Robert Barron, Gregory Boyle, Richard Rohr, Frances MacNutt and Henri Nouwen. I’ve dabbled with St. John of the Cross, Thomas a Kempis, Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Merton, and I’ve read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I have Catholic friends and some former Protestant friends who have converted to Rome. I love Catholicism’s deep appreciation of history, its penchant for beauty and mystery, and its spiritual life. While I have holy envy about some aspects of Catholicism, I have not had a deep desire to become Catholic. Lord knows my own tribe of United Methodism has issues, but there is much about it that I love, and it has been a good boat from which to fish.
I recently finished reading Roman but Not Catholic by two United Methodist scholars, both of whom either are or have been affiliated with Asbury Theological Seminary. Kenneth Collins is a former Catholic and a professor of historical theology, and Jerry Walls is a philosophical theologian who got his PhD at a flagship Catholic institution, Notre Dame. This is a polemical book, and they critique some of the claims of Catholicism, past and present. The clever title gets at their thesis, that some of the claims of the Roman Catholic Church actually prevent a more fruitful unity that could be enjoyed among all Christians.
I’d give the book 4 stars. Where it’s good, it’s very good. There were a few parts that were a bit overboard or annoying. The book has an academic bent to it, but the strength of that is the authors deal with some of the best arguments made by some Catholic scholars. If you’ve been to seminary, you probably won’t have any issues, but this book could be a tad difficult if you haven’t. It's also 410 pages, so it's not the quickest read.
Unlike some less charitable Protestants, Walls and Collins wholeheartedly affirm that Catholics are fellow Christians. I think it’s unfortunate whenever Protestants or Catholics assume the other doesn't have a saving relationship with Jesus. Walls lifts up commonalities between Catholics and Protestants. We all believe Jesus is our Savior and Lord who died for our sins. We all believe salvation is by the grace of Jesus. Most all of us affirm the early creeds given to us by church tradition, like the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Definition. We perform the same practices and understand God to be involved in them, though we may label them differently. We share in the mission of making disciples of Jesus, and we all are empowered by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. What we share is deeper than our differences, but the differences still remain and it can be helpful to explore them.
Collins maintains that the main disagreement between Protestants and Catholics comes in the role tradition plays in shaping the church. To be sure, only some of the Radical Reformation (the Anabaptists), not the Magisterial Reformers (Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans), sought to get rid of tradition altogether, in the sense of an ongoing interpretive deposit that must be passed on from generation to generation. So then, the great debate between most Protestants and Roman Catholics over the authority of Scripture and tradition is actually in the end a dispute, to use [Heiko] Oberman’s own language, over “two concepts of tradition” (p. 26).
Collins goes on to say Protestants view the Bible as the primary, most authoritative source of revelation, with tradition also being useful, though not on the same level. Protestants hold that later tradition is worthy of being critiqued by the earliest Christian traditions found in Scripture. Catholics view Scripture and tradition as having equal value, and that tradition itself is what gave us the Bible, showcasing that tradition is at least on par with Scripture when it comes to its authority. Most Protestants would acknowledge that yes, God did give us the Bible through tradition, but that doesn’t mean church tradition has the same level of authority as those initial inspired writings. Rather, it means God led the early church to recognize that which most clearly represented God and was inspired by him. Walls devotes chapter 5 to how Protestants can make a case for biblical authority and the importance of the early creeds without having to hold to the claims of the magisterium or view tradition on the same level. This chapter was probably the one I wrestled with the most, and I'm not sure if I'd use the same language as Walls on some things.
In chapter 4, Walls does a good job critiquing John Henry Newman’s book An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, particularly how Newman forces things into an all-or-nothing argument when it isn’t required, and how Newman’s own rhetoric gets away from him at times. In chapter 8, Walls also deals adeptly with Catholic critics who claim that Protestants are their own popes, sifting everything through their own individual interpretations, while Catholicism can claim an intellectual high ground. He replies that most Protestants, like Catholics, are formed and make interpretations in community, and that Catholics make individual judgments and interpretations too. There is no convincing basis for Catholics having an epistemic high ground.
Another interesting tidbit is a question lifted up by Collins: if a Catholic converts to Protestantism, does paragraph 846 of the Catechism teach they will be damned and lost? The paragraph reads as follows (emphasis mine):
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.
In other writings the blow is softened a bit for those who are born or raised in a Protestant church and never become Catholic, but for those who have been baptized Catholic and convert to Protestantism, the teaching of paragraph 846 seems ominous indeed, implying such people will be damned. Collins plays with the logic here:
…since Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin both left the Roman Catholic Church, whereas John Wesley did not, having been born into the Church of England and baptized as an infant, Zwingli and Calvin are both schismatics and therefore likely lost (bearing in mind Rome’s earlier language of “hence they could not be saved…”), though Wesley may yet be in heaven since he is by no means personally chargeable with the sin of schism (p. 119)!
This sounds a particularly sour note for the many Latinos today who have left Catholicism for Pentecostal Protestantism.
Collins is good at calling into question some of the historical claims of Rome, showing that some of the church’s assertions are not present in Scripture and the earliest traditions of the church fathers and mothers. He says Rome is often guilty of anachronism, of reading later understandings back into earlier times where those understandings were not present. He does this effectively concerning apostolic succession, the papacy, mariology, transubstantiation, the priesthood, and more. Collins is also the one I got frustrated with the most, however.
His calling the adoration of the host idolatrous (p. 167) is over the line. He is too nitpicky in chapters 17-19 on justification, where aside from some salient points, Collins passionately splits hairs. This could’ve been one chapter instead of three. I don’t think he grapples sufficiently with some of the representatives of the New Perspective on Paul–he dismisses N. T. Wright’s conception of justification in a paragraph. Having delved through Wright’s Romans commentary, I’m more sympathetic to his view over Collins’, who may be shaped more by the reformers than by Paul himself. I like how Fleming Rutledge writes of justification in her book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. She uses the term rectification (we are not just seen to be right, but made right within, rectified) as a better way of capturing more of what Paul means by justification. Collins seems very intent on keeping justification and regeneration as separate concepts and works, while nothing is lost if the concepts bleed into each other. He would affirm that justification and regeneration always come together anyway, so I grew a bit puzzled by his insistence on keeping them conceptually separate.
One could almost get the impression in the justification chapters that Collins doesn’t have a synergistic (working together) view of God’s grace, but a monergistic (working alone) view. Calvinists tend toward monergism, claiming that God alone sovereignly works salvation according to his will, and there is nothing humans can do to accept, reject, or change it. Wesleyan/Arminians tend toward synergism, that God’s prevenient, preceding grace enables us to receive and respond to God and make decisions to receive more of God's grace or resist God. United Methodists have a synergistic conception of God's grace, and are probably more similar to official Catholic teaching in that regard than to our Reformed Protestant sisters and brothers. Collins does highlight some nuance between Methodist and Catholic conceptions of sin and grace, but in many ways the practical nuts and bolts of our theologies in this regard are very similar. He fails to celebrate the commonality of synergistic grace and comes across as overly critical. He also has some comments pertaining to sacramental theology that seem out of step with his own tradition. Collins has a lot more good than bad, but these things detract from the book.
In chapter 20, Walls explores the divisions within Catholicism, calling into question the assertions about it being the one true church with unbroken historical consistency. He makes the case that even though the RCC talks a good game about infallibility and being the one, true, holy, and apostolic church, in reality it is a deeply divided church. He compares Roman Catholicism to a pluralist Protestant denomination, in which many of its people either disagree with or violate official church doctrine. At times laity, priests (Richard Rohr and Gregory Boyle, for all their pluses, are examples of this), professors, and bishops push against the official teachings of the church. A very striking example of this is the church’s total ban on all forms of contraception. A worldwide poll of Catholics indicated 78% supported the use of contraceptives in some form, with some countries getting results of over 90% (p. 382). There are further disagreements around divorce, the ordination of women, same-sex intimacy, the validity of Vatican II and the popes after that time, when it is appropriate to serve someone Holy Communion, and more. Walls shares a quote from Carl Trueman that rings true: “At least Protestantism has the integrity to wear its chaotic divisions on its sleeve” (p. 394). Here’s another quip from Walls on the topic: “Protestant converts to Rome who imagine they are joining a church that is free of the divisions and disagreements that plague Protestantism are quite mistaken. Indeed, far from escaping those problems of Protestantism they disdain, they are in fact joining a church that is functionally a radically pluralist Protestant denomination” (p. 399).
I’m a Protestant, so this book is preaching to the choir. Still, it’s good at exploring some of the fault lines that still exist between Protestants and Catholics 500 years after the Reformation, and to look at some of the deeper arguments made on both sides. I think some of Collins and Walls’ suggestions to Rome could lead to a wider catholicity among all Christians if implemented. At the very least, even if we never think alike, couldn’t we at least join together in celebrating at the Table of the Lord?
