I am delighted that Dean Obeidallah has graciously responded to my tweets about his recent article.

Dean is concerned that the rise of Mike Hucakbee and Rick Santorum may lead to what he calls a “Christian Sharia”.  And given Dean’s misunderstandings of the Bible, I can certainly see his point.  After all, if you think Deuteronomy 22:20-21 is representative of true Christianity then his fear may well be justified.  But I think Dean has missed the point and I would like to set the record straight.  In his recent tweet to me he expressed concern that our laws should not be based on the Bible.

First of all, America’s laws are already based on the Bible.  Nine of the thirteen colonies that came together to form the United States had established Christian religions.[i] The Founding Fathers were Christians and were committed to creating a new system based on Christian principles.   And that trend predated the Constitutional Convention by at least 150 years.

In 1636 the General Court of Massachusetts resolved to make a code of laws “agreeable to the word of God.”[ii]

At the time of the Convention, Delaware require the following oath of all people “appointed to any office or trust” including representatives to the Constitutional Convention:

” I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”[iii]

And Pennsylvania, likewise:

I do believe in one God, the Creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration. [iv]

And Massachusetts, likewise:

[All persons elected to State office or to the Legislature must] make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. “I, _____, do declare that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth.”[v]

And many more colonies had similar provisions but I hope the point has been made with these few.

So when the Founders came together in Philadelphia they were not acting contrary to the history of the colonies they there were there to represent.  In fact, the Christian foundation of the American culture was so established around the world that the famed German historian, Leopold von Ranke declared that John Calvin was the true founder of America! [vi]

Lastly, Dr. Eidsmoe documents how the Bible was the source most frequently cited by the Founders.  And that John Locke’s ideas of liberty and the “consent of the governed” are biblical concepts themselves:

The concept of “consent of the governed” has its roots in John Locke’s social compact, which is in turn rooted in the Calvinist concept of the covenant, by which men, in the presence of God, join themselves together into a body politic. And correctly understood, the concept is biblical.[vii]

In sum, when America’s Constitution – the “Supreme Law of the Land” – was contemplated and enacted it was done by professing Christians whose intent was to create a Christian nation.  The colonies that sent representatives to the Constitution had either established Christian religions supported by the taxpayer or had overwhelmingly Christian populations without an established church.  They only sent people to represent them at Philadelphia that could swear allegiance to a Trinitarian Christianity.

Were America’s laws based on the Bible?  How could they not be?

Thanks again, to Dean Obeidallah for this dialogue.

You can find Dean on Twitter here:  @Deanofcomedy

You can follow me here:  @Colossianstwo8

According to a Newsweek study 70% of Americans don’t know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.  Or that Susan B. Anthony fought for women’s rights – or that John Boehner is the Speaker of the House of Representatives!  And that is a problem specifically because the freedoms we all enjoy as Americans are apt to be lost in this sea of ignorance.  So I recommend that you put John Eidsmoe’s book, “Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers” on your reading list.Dr. Eidsmoe divides his study into three parts: the first is a study of the philosophical and theological roots of America’s founding followed by an examination of thirteen of the Founding Fathers and how those roots impacted their thinking.  He concludes with an examination entitled, “The Constitution: Then and Now” which outlines the vast distance we have traveled since our founding.

The first surprise is that ideological father of America is not George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin – but John Calvin!  Eidsmoe shows fully “two-thirds of the colonial population had been trained in the school of Calvin.”  And that fact underscored the very essence of Americanism.  To begin with, the Calvinistic notion of the “total depravity” of man (based on Genesis 6:5 and 8:21) required the extensive system of “checks and balances” that are built into the DNA of the American government.  Secondly, the notion Calvin promoted of the “priesthood of all believers” required everyone to be conversant in the biblical principles upon which this country was founded.  And this required that everyone be able to read the Bible and hence to read generally.  This produced the highest literacy rate in the then known world.  Lastly, Eidsmoe shows how the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura – the doctrine that the Word of God is the sole, infallible standard for faith and morals – produced an objectivity in the nature of law at the time.  One of the master strokes of Eidsmoe’s work is his documenting of America’s departure from this idea of an objective standard of law into something that looks at the Constitution as a “living document”.  That concept was foreign to the Founders precisely because of Calvin’s influence but has crept in to American life through the influence of other religions which hold that “objective truth” can be determined outside of God’s Word through the functioning of a human magisterium, quorum or other governing body.

I suspect that the respondents to the Newsweek survey are much less acquainted with the work of John Calvin than they were with that of the Founders.  But I believe that recent history proves the worst fears of those Founders – that a government unchecked becomes tyrannical and that the best check against tyranny is an educated, Calvinistic society.  Whatever your take on the matter, this book provides myriad insights into what gave the world the greatest government in history.  And it is to be hoped that more than 30% of us would avail ourselves of that understanding.

A good friend of mine gave me a print copy of this article whose authors think the new pope may end priestly celibacy.  Apparently, Pope Francis was supportive of a woman who was romantically involved with a bishop and was eventually married to him.

That possibility will certainly cause the far-right Catholic epologists some considerable heartburn.

Soli Deo Gloria

In my ongoing interaction with my friend, Joseph, it is very clear that Joseph doesn’t want to believe what I say that the Catholic Church actually teaches with regard to the use of Holy Scripture. Fair enough. So I thought I would provide some further historical evidence to help us in our discussion.

It is well to remember Joseph’s recent question to me in order to understand his concern:

What makes Protestants able to offer their own interpretations of Scripture, and Catholics unable?

I explained earlier that the answer to that question is Rome itself, specifically in the canons and decrees of the Councils of Trent and both Vatican Councils as well as the dogmatic Creed of Pope St. Pius IV. That is the Tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.

But just to augment that further, I would like to focus some attention on another dogmatic Catholic document, “PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Study of Holy Scripture.”[i] This is important for several reasons and the most important for our purposes is that this encyclical, like all others, is “irreformable”. That means that Catholics must believe it as if it were written today. Additionally, PD accurately cites Catholic Tradition to that point and provides the groundwork for the later second Vatican council.

So let’s see what Pope Leo XIII had to say about Catholics and Bible study:

1. “For the language of the Bible is employed to express, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, many things which are beyond the power and scope of the reason of man…”[ii]

This should be helpful in understanding why it is that Catholics cannot rely on their own “reason”.

2. “Wherefore it must be recognized that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide…”[iii]

This aligns clearly with what we saw earlier about the Magisterium being the “sole” (only) interpreter of Scripture. Even where Catholics are permitted to engage in the study of Scripture they must always adhere to the “true sense” which only the Magisterium can pronounce.

And then Leo goes on to lay out Catholic Tradition further….

3. “His [Irenaeus’] teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in renewing the decree of Trent declares its “mind” to be this – that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church, whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.”

Here we clearly see the use of the idea of the “true sense” of Scripture which Leo traces back to Irenaeus and which we have seen was codified at Trent. And it must be remembered that Trent put two qualifications on this “true sense”: it must be officially pronounced by the Magisterium and it must be consonant with Tradition. What else is clear is that “no one” may interpret Scripture against that sense, that is, in any other way.

The noted Catholic historian Dr. Garry Wills writes,

A further implication of Leo’s position is that the church, as the guardian of the historical tradition, holds a monopoly on the relevant evidence: [quoting from Providentissimus Deus] “The uncontaminated sense of Holy Scripture cannot be discovered at all [neutiquam] without the church. And laypersons cannot study scripture on their own since, “no one can penetrate its ambiguities without moral guidance [aliquo vitae duce].[iv]

Dr. Wills, it should be noted, was educated in a Jesuit seminary. He went on to earn one of his two Masters degrees at Xavier University in Cincinnati which is also a fine Jesuit institution.

What Happens when Catholics rely on Tradition and dispense with Reason

Shortly after Leo penned PD, he established the Pontifical Biblical Commission. The PBC’s function was to “police Catholic thought on the Bible, threatening and punishing any exegetes who departed from its directives.” In effect, Leo was using the PBC to enforce the “true sense” interpretation of Scripture that the Roman Catholics had reserved to the Magisterium for the last 500 years. So how did that work out? Not so well, it seems.

Dr. Wills, once more:

The pope did his most lasting damage to Bible scholarship when he set up the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1902, which for decades would police Catholic thought on the Bible, threatening and punishing any exegetes who departed from its directives. These directives included, in the decades to come, that Catholic priests must be taught in their seminaries that the first five books were written personally by Moses, that Eve was literally created from Adam’s rib, and that the Beloved Disciple wrote the fourth gospel. Catholic professors, thus fettered, became a laughingstock in the world of biblical scholarship.[v]

This incident shows two things that are important for my interaction with Joseph. First, that the PBC under the direction of five popes guided Catholics away from using reason. Second, it shows that the final authority for interpreting the Scriptures is only the Magisterium – even when it contradicts reason.

Soli Deo Gloria

[i] http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus_en.html

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Wills, Garry. Why I am a Catholic. New York. Houghton Mifflin Company: 2002. P. 202

[v] Ibid.

Steven Wedgeworth has a work posted here (http://calvinistinternational.com/2013/01/17/literary-habits-of-the-pre-modern-clergy/).  It struck me as I have found the same sort of thing in the various sources I have read.  The illiteracy of the priesthood at and before the Reformation is rather striking.

Timothy Dalrymple has offered some interesting insights into the theological themes of this recent movie here…

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/12/29/the-theology-of-les-miserables/

I’ve been a fan of Les Mis for decades and have seen several outstanding live performances.  Unfortunately, those set the bar so high as to dull my appreciation for the movie.  I much prefer the Queen’s Company Production from 2010 which is currently airing on PBS.