What we say and do when someone is dead is more to do with ourselves than it is to do with the deceased, even if we talk in terms of respecting them or their wishes. The things we say in eulogies, obituaries and articles analysing a person’s legacy tend to tell us more about ourselves than about them.
I think this is true when it comes to the Evangelical responses we are seeing to the death of Pope Francis. Let me start with a personal example and confession. When you read my response, you will notice that I’m cautious about making a pronouncement on personal faith, I leave open the possibility that a person may in the last hours, unknown to most of us meet with God. I am grateful that my parents were able to be there when my grandad was in his final days and so his encounter with God happened with witnesses present. I also remember when a relative of one of our then church members was entering their late stages. They had dementia and there hadn’t been any real opportunity for cognitive conversation but when I visited and when their niece visited, we would pray. Apparently in his last few hour, he kept saying “But I’m too heavy, you cannot carry me.” This went on for some time until he reached a stage of peace and it was at that point that he passed. Make of that what you will.
But, if I look for hope in a situation, on the basis that we don’t know what has happened, that perhaps tells you more about me and my own experience of having people close to me die where we lacked clarity about where they stood. I don’t think it is unreasonable not to push to make a judgement. However, that is more for our own comfort isn’t it? I work on the basis that when we really need to know, then God will provide us with all that we need to discover the truth. The point is that I have no knowledge about Francis and no particular need to know his eternal fate. When we express a wishful hope that maybe, despite all of the issues we might have with his theology that we will see him in the Resurrection, we are really expressing our hope for all the people that do matter to us. It’s also important for those of us commenting and responding to those kinds of comments to remember this and its pastoral implications.
That little example is a reminder that when we read Evangelical responses to the Pope’s death, that those responses tell us far more about the state of current Evangelicalism than they do either about Pope Francis personally (most commentators did not know him personally) or the Catholic Church generally.
It’s helpful to remember this when noting the different mistakes that Steve Kneale highlights here and that we’ve all observed over the last few days. Triumphalist responses may express our need to feel secure in being right but may also reflect real anger and bitterness at our experience of the damage that Catholicism has caused.
There has also been a “straining at gnats” response. For example, one response to another person saying that we should hope to see the Pope in Heaven was to accuse him of Platonic heresy because we hope for the resurrection. Now of course, we do hope for that day of physical resurrection. That’s the certain hope we have. However, what happens to believers after death and before the final judgement day is still an open question. There are, I believe, enough hints in Scripture for us to be open to the possibility of conscious existence in Heaven.
Meanwhile, another Evangelicals Now article sees the death of the Pope as an opportunity to bury the phrase “rest in peace.” The reason being that this really means “may they” whereas we are certain of the final destination of believers and we cannot pray to save the lost after death. I’m not sure why the Pope’s death is the cue for this particular author’s bug bear to be dealt with. However, the point is that it is his bug bear and frankly if we are focusing on a sentimental expression then we have probably missed the point.
However, those comments and articles that tend towards a kind of fluffiness are also telling us something about Evangelicalism. Take this article from Russell Moore published in Christianity Today and then for some reason, republished in Evangelicals Now, as though the article they had already published did not say things well enough.
This section of Moore’s article is both illuminating and alarming. Illuminating and alarming both that they reflect the personal views of a leading American Evangelical and that what would be seen as the main conservative Evangelical journal in the UK, having already published something about the Pope went out of the way to publish this themselves as though unsatisfied with what their chosen author had initially written. Moore says:
Perhaps one of the reasons for better relations between Catholics and evangelicals is that both have changed for the better.
Apart from the writings of “integralists,” mostly in ivory towers, the Catholic church has revised its previously authoritarian views of human rights, religious freedom, and the relationship between church and state, as well as its conclusions about the eternal destiny of “separated brethren.”
Evangelicals — for the most part — no longer think of the Pope as the “antichrist” or of the Roman church as the “whore of Babylon” from the Book of Revelation.
But better relations might be a sign of something else — of the ways a secularised Western culture has affected all of us, to the degree that we no longer feel the existential weight of the arguments that once led to reformations and counter-reformations, inquisitions and uprisings.
Those are not minor matters, after all. The books of Romans and Galatians are all about what it means to say that God justifies the ungodly — what could be more important? And if the Roman church is right that Jesus’ promise to build the church “upon this rock” (Matt. 16:18) is about a Petrine office continuing from then until now, then what follower of Jesus could ignore that?
Notice that Moore comments that both Catholics and Evangelicals have changed for the better. What are we meant to make of this? Well, first of all, there is an implication that the actions and words of the reformers were in some way regrettable, perhaps that they had overstated their case.
Then, there is the suggestion that the Catholic Church has changed for the better. Perhaps there have been improvements in the areas that Moore picks up on but that is to miss the point that the primary reason that caused the rift between Rome, Luther and Calvin was not to fo with how the Church and State related or human rights. Those were not the issues that caused Protestants to apply apocalyptic language to the Roman Catholic church or the Pope.
Moore slips in the real issue in his final paragraph, the question of justification by faith, he acknowledges it as important, as I’m sure would Catholic Theologians and asks “what could be more important?” However, he doesn’t follow through on this. The unstated answer is that “nothing could be more important.” This means that a supposed pastor/leader/theologian and a Church/Denomination that denies justification by faith alone is going against God’s Word on the most important of issues, the Gospel itself.
Moore suggests we can give Catholics including Francis a free pass exactly because we take the Doctrine of Justification seriously. We accept that it is the faith that matters not the formulation of the doctrine. This works if we are dealing with muddled articulation, especially from those immature in faith. Take for example, the recent profession of faith by Russell Brand. Now, I don’t know if it is genuine or not but any assessment is not going to be determined by how close to Calvin, Turretin and Bavinck he gets in doctrinal articulation. Rather we will look at his testimony and the fruit evidenced. However the Catholic doctrine is not merely confused and nor does it reflect immaturity but centuries of reflection that has led to clear denial of the belief.
It is possible therefore for a Catholic to be truly born again but only by them in their beliefs contradicting the official church teaching.
Incidentally, it is exactly because The Roman Catholic Church and therefore the Pope denies Justification by Faith alone and Salvation by grace alone that Francis did and said the very things that exasperated Moore so much. Consider the example he gives:
“The Pope exasperated me theologically when he told a little boy that his atheist father would be in heaven because he had been a “good father.” But at the same time, I teared up with admiration to see him hug that little boy — grieving the loss of his dad and fearing what must seem like an eternal orphanhood.”
Funnily enough, I watched one of those whimsical Facebook videos the other day telling a similar story about King Charles comforting a young girl who had lost a parent and thought Jesus hated her by telling her that Jesus loved her because she was good. Now, I have no idea if the story is true but in that case would suspect that it represented typical human sentiment. In the Pope’s case, the answer reflects a genuine, thought out theological position that aligns with current Catholic teaching.
Specifically, the belief is that we are not justified by faith alone, so that saving faith is in Christ’s death and resurrection. Rather, it mixes up grace and works together but primarily salvation is found within the Church. Whilst Catholics have found ways to sound more ecumenical, the foundational belief that Salvation is in the Roman Catholic Church has not been reversed. Rather, ways have been found to do two things. First to identify people as anonymous Christians based on their ethics and to find posthumous opportunities for second chances.
It is therefore exasperating to hear the King, or a well-meaning church member to get into a muddle, want to be encouraging and say something along the lines of “they were a good person. However, it should not be mere exasperation we feel when the person who is seen by many to be the lead spokesperson for Christianity proclaims something which is opposite to and in fact, anti the Gospel. We should be recognising this for the false teaching it is.
What about admiration? You know, when I was a student at Theological college, our seminary was linked to the Church of England and so was required to haver visiting Bishops speak at the weekly communion service. We tended to give a sigh of relief if the Bishop was able to find his way to the Bible and then say something pleasant that didn’t mutilate God’s Word. Yet, surely we should not have had our sights set so low. These should have been the best of pastor-teachers and we should have looked forward to them visiting and opening Scripture. Similarly, we should be looking for far more from the person meant to represent Christianity than the ability to show a little empathy to someone grieving.
Now, as I said, this tells us more about our present Evangelicalism than it does about the state of Catholicism. Perhaps we are so used to Evangelicals denouncing empathy as sin that when we see someone else showing a bit of basic human concern for a child that we have pangs of jealousy?
More importantly, I’m concerned though at the way in which we seem to lack sharpness to be able to identify the real problem with Catholicism and to explain why we are Protestants and Evangelicals. It seems that we are too willing to see divisions and distinctions as minor differences. This is true of course, not just between Rome and Protestantism today. It is behind the willingness of Evangelicals to keep overlooking the serious departure from the Gospel within the Church of England, looking for possible red lines today whilst forgetting that a church which promotes liberals who deny the virgin birth and the physical resurrection into senior positions.
We end up in a situation where even liberals are seen as merely mistaken on ethical issues rather than completely wrong on the Gospel itself. Perhaps it won’t be long before we are hearing about how Evangelicals and liberals are doing better. After all, we would have denounced the infamous Bishop of Durham as a heretic and wanted to know why he wasn’t kicked out of the church thirty years ago. Now, it seems that we are okay with such men to represent a legitimate strand of Christian belief, so long as they get their gender and sexual ethics right. And even then, all we ask is for alternative oversight.
The death of Pope Francis and the resulting Evangelical obituaries have been illuminating. They’ve shone a light on the state of our own situation and it doesn’t look great.
Faithroots 