RSSRe: Jape Caleb Stegall I do think Fr. Jape gets t…
Re: Jape
Caleb Stegall
I do think Fr. Jape gets the question of catholicity wrong in his overly developed animus towards the doctrine of election. Augustine, at least, accepted and taught both the coextensive nature of the church universal and affirmed election. To quote Figgis on Augustine:
“Yet the Civitas Dei in its strict sense is not the Visible Church. It is the communio sanctorum, the body of the elect, many of whom are to be found in pre—Christian times or in heathen peoples—while from this body many among the baptized will be excluded. This communio sanctorum is the true recipient of the promises to David and of the gifts of eternal peace and beatitude, those promises which Augustine sets forth with moving eloquence in Book XX. The Visible Militant Church is never more than a part of either—nor does it ever attain. Its peace and beatitude are in hope. It is always in via.â€
What Figgis describes as Augustine’s view is a pan-human potentiality to be saved or damned. This is a catholic understanding of the church being “coextensive with humanity.†Augustine accepts both the outside-of-time ontological fact of predestinarian/elect salvation and the necessary blindness/humility of inside-of-time free will and essential unknowability of the fact of salvation. The church is the predestined elect, but the elect are not identical to the baptized/confessing. The wheat and tares are forever mixed in a non-static always-becoming way that cannot and will not be finally resolved until the coming of the harveter.
That said, I think a pre-Vatican II Catholic perspective such as Fr. Jape’s is helpful for the discussion.
For example, what do you think of this entry and the various linked discussions? Here is where the rubber really hits the road in discussing Christian politics, etc., no?
D Hart
June 9th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Caleb, I’m ready to call your bluff, that is your call for Christian Machiavellians. I just hope you’re not a very good poker player. (Didn’t the RP’s prohibit cards?)
I agree that natural law is a thin veneer for arguing for a Christian moral and political order and Patrick Allitt’s book on Catholic conservatives (Buckley et al) more or less makes this point. But for the life of me I can’t see how a Christan Machiavellian will look either like Chuck Colson or Jerry Falwell. Or might there be a way of updating Rutherford for today? Of course, Colson and Falwell are not the only options, but they are doing that for which you’re calling.
W.H. Chellis
June 12th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
The Jape strikes again…
“Augustine accepts both the outside-of-time ontological fact of predestinarian/elect salvation and the necessary blindness/humility of inside-of-time free will and essential unknowability of the fact of salvation.”
“But is that Calvin’s view? THE Calvinist view? A Calvinist view? It’s never been sorted out, has it? You still have unreconstructed Calvinists today who aspire to know, in this life, if they (and occasionally their children and others) are elect or not. (They also continue to fear and loathe the Jesuits beyond all reason–sadly–but it warms my sould nonetheless.) And then you have the liberalizing sort who say this was all a regrettable overemphasis of things Calvin didn’t want emphasized. Which brings us back to an ecclesiological problem, and the the problem of authority and tradition in sects that have problems with both. “