What is Roman Catholicism & what do Roman Catholics teach? w/ Gregg Allison -Podcast Episode 83 Pt 1

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Are Roman Catholics saved? How can we minister to Catholics? w Gregg Allison-Podcast Episode 83 Pt 2

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Welcome to the God Questions podcast. So many of you know that in our attempt to answer questions biblically, we occasionally get people from a different faith perspective as us who will ask us questions, or people who maybe are evangelical

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Christians who are asking questions about something else. And of all of the questions that are along these lines, the most frequent ones are questions about Roman Catholicism.

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Whether that's Catholics trying to help, trying to understand maybe Protestantism better, or Protestants, evangelicals, want to understand

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Catholicism better, we get a lot of questions about this. So today I have a special guest,

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Dr. Greg Allison. Greg is a professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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He teaches annually on Roman Catholicism for the Rome Scholars and Leaders Network, and regularly teaches seminary courses and church seminars on Catholic theology and practice.

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So Greg, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Shay, for having me on. So what

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I'm going to do today is I'm going to ask Greg some of the questions that we've found are most frequently asked of us about Catholicism.

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He has an excellent book out called 40 Questions About Roman Catholicism, and we'll include links to where this book can be purchased on the show notes, on the description field on YouTube when this video goes up, and also at podcast .gotquestions

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.org. So it's a great book, highly recommend it, gives a great breakdown, covers more thoroughly what we're going to discuss in brief here today.

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So Greg, question number one, most popular Catholic -related question that we receive is, do

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Roman Catholics believe in salvation by works? Shay, I think that's a common misunderstanding on the part of many

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Protestants, on the part of many evangelicals. They think Roman Catholics try to earn their salvation by doing good works.

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And actually, Roman Catholic process of salvation is very much a grace -oriented, grace -saturated, because that grace comes to the

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Catholic faithful through the sacraments. These sacraments then, through this grace, transform the very being, the essence, the nature of the

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Catholic faithful, which then enable them to collaborate with this grace, engage in good works, and thereby merit eternal life.

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So we often focus on this last part, we see they're engaging in good works to merit eternal life, but again, all that is made possible, according to the

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Roman Catholic Church, by this grace which is infused into the Catholic faithful by the sacraments.

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So for example, take the Eucharist, and we'll come back to that later, right? So they're receiving the body and blood of Jesus Christ, this grace is infused through the sacrament of the

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Eucharist that changes the Catholic faithful, rendering them able to engage in good works, please

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God, and thereby merit eternal life. So it's not a salvation -by -works system, it's salvation by grace, then enabling the

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Catholic faithful to engage in good works for salvation. Excellent explanation.

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Let me ask you this, because I think this will touch on several of the different questions we get. It seems to me that there is an official teaching of the

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Roman Catholic Church, and then there's actually the beliefs and practices of most Roman Catholics.

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So on this issue, the salvation -by -works, I have found a lot of Roman Catholics who will actually say they believe they are saved by observing the teachings of the

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Roman Catholic Church, or by doing good works. So that's not the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, but that does seem to be what a lot of Catholics believe.

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So what, in your experience, is the disconnect between the official teachings and the day -in -day -out practice of most

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Roman Catholics? Yeah, that's an excellent point. There's often a very strong disconnect.

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Can we put it this way, between doctrine and practice? So the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation would include grace infused into the

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Catholic faithful through the sacraments so that they can engage in good works. Often that is understood by Catholics to mean,

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I have to engage in good works and earn my salvation, and they have very little emphasis on grace.

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So there is this disconnect. Yeah. So question number two, this will be a really good one to kind of illustrate what we're just talking about with the disconnect.

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Why do Catholics worship Mary? By even asking that question, most

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Catholics would say, we don't worship Mary. We venerate her in the Catholic Church.

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So it's the official teaching, we don't advise anyone to worship Mary or to worship the saints. But an observation, at least from a evangelical

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Protestant perspective, it sure seems like they're worshiping Mary. So how do you answer this question when it's asked of you?

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Yeah, I would begin just the way you began. The Roman Catholic Church denies that Mary is to be worshiped, right?

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Worship, adoration is reserved for the triune God alone. So by no means do

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Roman Catholics worship Mary. They worship God, whose Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just like you and I do.

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Rather, they reserve veneration for saints and hyper veneration for Mary.

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This would be devotion that is not worship. It's not adoration, but it's a service to Mary.

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It's reverence for Mary. It's veneration, but it by no means mounts up to the worship which is reserved for God alone.

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So as a evangelical Protestant, which I know you are as well, that's very difficult because we don't worship, adore or venerate anyone or anything other than the triune

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God. So how, maybe a little bit more in depth, how would you explain it, the difference to a

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Protestant who really struggles with what they observe in the Catholic Church? It's like, if I were doing that for me, that would be worship.

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So how do Catholics really draw the line and where does it cross the line between worship and veneration and adoration?

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It's hard for us evangelicals to understand that difference because what we see actual

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Catholics doing looks to us like worship. But I think we go back to the official position, the doctrine of the

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Catholic Church, and it very explicitly denies that's what Roman Catholics are doing. They're not worshiping

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God. And we can relate to that. We can understand that worship is to be reserved for God alone.

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So whatever we see Catholics actually doing or whatever they may be explaining to us what they're doing, we must kind of translate and say, but I know they're not worshiping, even though it appears that they're worshiping

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God. They're asking Mary to intercede for them. They're viewing

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Mary as a stellar example of holiness. But that's not worship.

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It's not to that degree. So I've had the privilege of going on several international trips with Compassion International to countries in South America, which are largely

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Roman Catholic in their population. And I have found, and tell me if I'm right or wrong on this, that there's the difference between most

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Catholics in the United States and Catholics in other parts of the world in terms of this, where Catholics here may be a little bit less into the

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Mary adoration, worship, veneration, whatever we call it. Other countries, even in like Italy, where the

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Catholicism is stronger, there tends to be more of that and definitely more abuses of that than we see here in the

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United States. Is that accurate? That's very accurate and gives this idea. The Roman Catholic Church is a very broad tent, right?

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And the manifestations of the Roman Catholic faith differ, like you just said, from country to country, right?

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There are certain countries which are much more oriented to Mary. John Paul II, the former pope, right from Poland, was obviously very engaged with his

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Maryology. Contrast that with many Catholics in the United States. I'm just even going to talk about my evangelical friends who have become members of the

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Roman Catholic Church. They've left their evangelical churches. They've become associated with members of the

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Roman Catholic Church. But when I ask them the question about Mary, they go, oh, yeah, you know, we don't find a biblical basis for all this

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Maryan doctrine. We don't agree with veneration of Mary. We don't engage in that. And so they pick and choose, if you will, and they decide this whole area of Maryan devotion, we're not going to follow it.

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But that contrasts again all across the world with different practices. Yeah. So just the sheer number of statues you see to Mary and or saints in Latin America, South America, in parts of Europe.

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It's just astounding because to Protestants, that's anathema to have any sort of statue up front.

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I mean, stained glass, that's one thing. Most Protestant churches are even gone away from that. But having a statue and bowing before a statue to us, it's like, how could you do that?

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But understanding the difference in culture and understanding that they separate veneration from worship,

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I think is important. I would still question whether even that level of veneration is right, but it is helpful to at least know from their perspective that they do see that as distinct.

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And you point out it's disconcerting to us evangelicals. So my wife and I lived in Rome for three and a half years.

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We go back to Rome every year. It's disconcerting to go into a Catholic church and see an area of it with a statue of Mary or a statue of the saints and see these devotive candles, you know, hundreds of them.

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And then in another section where you might have a statue of Jesus, there may be a couple some score, a few scores of of candles and you go, there's something imbalanced here.

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But but still on this, we evangelicals look at Mary as scant.

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And I don't think that's right either. We may swing the pendulum from this, what appears to us to be worship, worshiping

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Mary or venerating her. And we go the opposite way. And about the last person we would ever talk about, even though she's mentioned often in the

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Synoptic Gospels and John, we say, no, we're not even going to talk about her. But she is a stellar example for us of the obedience of faith.

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She said to the angel Gabriel's announcement that she would become the mother of the incarnate son.

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She said, let it be done to me according to your word. I want that kind of the obedience of faith.

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She's a model of that. And we should honor her, respect her as the one whom

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God, through whom God brought about the incarnation of his son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the

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Virgin Mary. And historically, we should agree with all Christians that Mary is

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Theotokos, she's the mother of God, which originally was not a statement about her and her exaltation, but a statement about the one whom she bore in her womb, the one to whom she gave birth.

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Jesus, the son of God, is fully God, not partially God, but fully God. So there's ways that we evangelicals should engage with Mary while avoiding this idea of worship or even veneration.

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Absolutely. In some of the conversations I've had, it's been really helpful to hear some of these things from the

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Catholic perspective. Even if I disagree or strongly disagree, I at least want to understand things from their perspective.

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And we as Protestants can take things too far the other way, as you just described.

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So similar to the worship of Mary, do Roman Catholics pray to Mary and the saints?

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Not in the way we might think of it. The Roman Catholic Church emphasizes the communion of saints, the communion of all members of the

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Roman Catholic Church, which has three aspects to it. There's the earthly church or what they call the militant church, the church on earth that is sojourning and fighting against sin and Satan and death and all like that.

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There's the purgatorial church consisting of the souls of the Catholic faithful who have died in the grace of God and the friendship of God, but they're not fully purified.

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So their soul is undergoing a purging or purgation in purgatory.

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You can hear that, those words together there. So there's the earthly church, there's the purgatorial church, and then there's the heavenly church, the church triumphant consisting of the saints in heaven,

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Mary. And so there's an interchange between these three aspects of the

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Catholic Church. There is a communion, a fellowship that's not broken between these, but continues.

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And so, for example, the saints and Mary in the heavenly church can pray for the

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Catholic faithful on earth and can pray for the souls of the

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Catholic faithful in purgatory, asking God to release their souls right from purgatory, asking for God to direct and empower and comfort us on earth.

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So there's this interchange of spiritual goods, which includes interceding for one another.

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So it's not really praying to Mary or praying to the saints, but expecting them, anticipating them, welcoming them to pray for us and for the souls of the

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Catholic faithful in purgatory. So the way I had it explained to me by a

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Catholic friend was it's no different than asking. So like me, Shay, asking you, Greg, Greg, could you pray for me?

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It's no different doing that than asking a saint in heaven to pray for me.

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And that was at least helpful. OK, I get it. But the Bible does talk about Christians asking other people on earth to pray for them, those who are living.

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And to me, that's the key difference. So if a Roman Catholic were to ask you, what do you think about praying to saints in heaven or asking them to pray for you?

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How do you respond with whether that's biblical? I mean, I see where they're going. I see why they hold that.

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But how do you respond? I'd respond the exact same way that you responded, right?

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We have a biblical basis for praying for one another. It's all over scripture, praying for one another.

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Paul's letters are saturated with his prayers for the church. And we model ourselves after that.

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So there's a firm biblical basis. And we, as Protestants, believe in the priesthood of all believers that we can pray for one another.

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It's one of our responsibilities. But there's no biblical basis for the saints in heaven praying for us.

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We don't, as Protestants, believe in a purgatorial church either. But just in terms of the heavenly church interceding for the earthly church, there's no biblical basis.

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So we can understand how they get there through this communion of saints, but we don't find any biblical basis.

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And so we say we don't engage with those who have gone before us, who are deceased, who are with the

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Lord. We're not asking them to pray for us. Yeah. And another most common thing we'll hear from those who oppose this is that, like in Hebrews, where it says we can approach the throne of grace boldly.

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So if we can, if we can approach God, we know that he loves us. We know that he hears. Why in the world would we need saints in heaven to pray for us?

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Well, if we can apply that principle in that way, the same thing would apply to asking other people on earth to pray for us.

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So I've found that's not a great argument to use, but I'd like to point people back to Scripture and that we have a biblical basis for asking other believers to pray for us.

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There is no biblical basis to communicating with people in heaven and asking for them to also intercede for us.

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Good point here about the end of Hebrews 2 and the end of Hebrews 4. We do have a high priest who has been tempted and tried and suffered in every way like us.

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The lone exception, he never sinned. And so we can approach his throne boldly and ask for mercy and grace.

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We know that the Son of God is interceding for us. We know the Holy Spirit is interceding for us. That's the heavenly reality that we cling to on the basis of Scripture.

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Yeah. So you mentioned briefly earlier about purgatory. I found there's a lot of misunderstanding among most evangelicals and Protestants about what exactly

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Catholics believe about purgatory. So give us a quick breakdown and just a humorous memory that I have.

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I remember attending a conference once about Catholicism, and there was a little booklet in the back.

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And on the cover, it said everything the Bible says about purgatory. And then you open it up and all the pages are blank.

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So to me, that was a very interesting thing. But as I've talked to Catholics over the years, there are some

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Scripture passages they point to which to them teach at least something akin to purgatory.

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So explain for us what is purgatory and why do Catholics believe in it?

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Yeah, purgatory is the state and place of the souls of Catholic faithful who have died in the friendship and the grace of God, but are not perfectly purified.

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They still bear the taint, the mark of forgiven mortal sins and venial sins.

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And so they must render passive satisfaction to God by undergoing the suffering in purgatory.

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So their souls are purged. Once purged, then those souls go immediately into the presence of the

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Lord in heaven. And that's where they will live eternally. For Catholics who commit mortal sin, so a heinous premeditated sin that they're fully aware of, conscious of, if they commit mortal sin and they do not avail themselves of the sacrament of penance, if they die with mortal sin on their soul, there's no chance for them to go to purgatory.

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They certainly don't go to heaven, but they go to hell. And so those who have committed mortal sin go to hell.

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The saints in Mary, those who have died in the friendship and the fellowship and the grace of God and have done more than what they were responsible for doing, their souls go immediately into heaven.

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But for the vast majority of the Catholic faithful, their souls will go to purgatory where there is this temporal punishment, this purgation or cleansing of sin so that they're undergoing this passive suffering.

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And thus they will be cleansed and be enabled to go to heaven. And importantly, then, going back to our last question,

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Mary and the saints in heaven can pray for the souls in purgatory. You and I can pray for the souls in purgatory.

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Catholic family members can pay for masses that will be said for the dead to release those souls from purgatory.

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You can engage in by indulgences or earn indulgences for the souls of people in purgatory.

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So there's this whole system that most of us Protestants are pretty unfamiliar with.

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Yeah. So how would you respond to someone who's like, OK, that doesn't seem biblical to me.

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So why do you think what are the primary errors of believing in something like purgatory?

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Why do we as Protestants, as evangelicals, reject the idea of purgatory? Because one of the two key principles on which our

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Protestant faith is grounded is justification by God's grace alone, accomplished by Christ alone and appropriated by faith alone.

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Justification is God's declaration. I am not guilty, but righteous instead, because God imputes to me the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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That's my standing before God. So I have no need of purgatory for a final purgation of my sins because I stand forgiven and I stand clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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The Protestant view of justification has no need of purgatory. And then there's no biblical basis.

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Really, the key basis for the Roman Catholic doctrine and practice of purgatory is an apocryphal book.

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It's an extra book in the Catholic Old Testament called Second Maccabees, Chapter 12 in particular, which becomes the, in their mind, the biblical basis for purgatory.

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But we Protestants don't consider Second Maccabees to be part of inspired Scripture. Catholics may also point to First Corinthians, Chapter 3, 10 through 15, this idea of God burning up the works, testing the works of believers by fires, and they will be saved.

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I think Catholics misinterpret that passage and apply it to the notion of purgatorial suffering and fire to cleanse one of these taint of sin.

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And so we don't agree that there is a biblical basis for it. And there's no need for purgatory within a system where justification is our standing before God.

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Yeah, for sure. Excellent explanation. So next question, and we could probably spend a whole episode on this one just because it's such a key point.

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What do Catholics believe about the Lord's Supper communion, also called the Eucharist or the Mast? And how is that different from what evangelicals typically believe?

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Yeah, we could spend a whole long time on this one, right? So the Catholics generally refer to what we would call the

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Lord's Supper as the Eucharist. They could call it the Lord's Supper communion. There's lots of different names, but it's a sacrament.

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And it's one of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. It's the apex, the climax to which all the other six sacraments point because in it, the body and blood of Jesus Christ is sacramentally really present so that the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary 2000 years ago, it cannot be locked in space and time, but is transported, if you will, and re -presented at the mass today in every

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Catholic parish around the world. It's not a re -sacrifice. Jesus is not being re -sacrificed for the four billionth, 375th, millionth, et cetera, et cetera time.

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Christ died with sacrifice, His atoning sacrifice once and for all. But that atoning sacrifice is re -presented when the

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Catholic priest consecrates the bread and the wine, they are transubstantiated or changed into the very substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

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The bread still looks like, smells like, tastes like bread. The wine still looks like, tastes like, feels like wine, smells like wine.

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But the substance, the very nature, the very essence of these two elements of nature are changed so that they become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

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There's nothing like that within Protestant circles. Martin Luther, Zwingli, Calvin all denounce transubstantiation as being without a biblical basis.

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It does not have a strong historical attestation. It's philosophically grounded.

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Many reasons why they rejected it. But we Protestants have nothing close to transubstantiation.

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So most Protestant churches today would probably go the memorial view where the

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Lord's Supper is a do this in remembrance of me. Or even like the spiritual presence route where Jesus' body and blood are spiritually present within and under the elements if you want to describe it.

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But you bring up a really important point in the difference between a re -sacrifice of Christ in the

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Eucharist versus a re -presentation. I think that's something a lot of Protestants really struggle with. So just break that down a little further for us.

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What exactly is the difference between Christ's sacrifice being redone or, as Catholics try to explain, being represented?

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What are actually the differences between those two terms? Both Roman Catholics and Protestants reading the letter to the

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Hebrews see this repeated theme. Christ died once and for all.

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Christ was sacrificed once and for all. And so you can't maintain that Jesus is re -sacrificed a second time, a 300th time, a four billionth time.

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That would be against the Bible, right? So Catholics agree, Protestants agree, He's sacrificed only one time.

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Now, Roman Catholics believe that that atoning sacrifice of Christ, Christ dying on the cross, participates in the a -temporality or the eternality of God.

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Thus, it cannot be locked in space and time because it's an a -temporal reality.

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It did happen 2 ,000 years ago. But it also happens today in every mass, a

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Catholic mass worldwide. So that event 2 ,000 years ago, participating in the a -temporality or eternality of God can become represented today.

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And that's what happens in the Eucharistic celebration. For a lot of these issues that we've been talking about, he's going back to whether something is taught in the

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Bible. So as in the Reformation, sola scriptura, the Bible alone, the idea that the

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Bible is supposed to be our sole authority for faith and practice, that's the rallying cry of the

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Reformation. It's something that's the foundation of the Protestant Church. But for Catholics, that's not the case.

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So how do Catholics view the Bible, and how does understanding how the Catholics view the Bible help us to better understand where they come up with some of these ideas, these practices, these beliefs that aren't taught in the

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Bible? Yeah, I like what you said about sola scriptura, Scripture alone.

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So in an earlier question, we talked about one of the two key principles of Protestantism being justification.

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This now, as you've just said, is the second key principle of Protestantism, sola scriptura,

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Scripture is our ultimate authority. So how does God speak to people today?

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It's through the Bible. It's through his word, which is written Scripture. That's God's revelation of himself and his ways to us.

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Roman Catholics agree that, yes, God does reveal himself in his ways to us through the

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Bible, but not through the Bible alone. Because there's another aspect of divine revelation, which is called tradition, which contains other truths, inspired truths about God and his ways.

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So divine revelation for Roman Catholics consists of both the Bible and tradition.

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Two examples of tradition, the immaculate conception of Mary. That is,

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Mary, when she was conceived, was conceived without sin. That's part of Roman Catholic tradition that was proclaimed by the

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Pope in 1854. A second example of tradition proclaimed by the Pope in 1950 is called the bodily assumption of Mary.

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That is, at the end of her days, when she died, her body was not placed in a tomb or a grave for decay, but was assumed or taken up into heaven so that she rose, she was assumed in heaven, body and soul.

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So she is there with her son, Jesus Christ, in terms of her, in the integrity of her soul and her body.

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So those are two examples of tradition. And so Catholics derive some of their doctrine and some of their practices, not from Scripture, but from this tradition.

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This is where we come into conflict. I would add there's a third aspect to the authority of the

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Roman Catholic Church. In addition to Scripture and tradition, there's also the magisterium or teaching office of the church, the

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Pope and the College of Bishops together with him. They are the ones who determine what books belong in the

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Bible. They are the ones who determine the official interpretation of the Bible. They are the ones who determine what elements, tradition, what elements consist in tradition and what's the proper understanding of tradition.

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So we've got Scripture, the written word of God. We've got tradition, the teachings of Jesus that he orally communicated to the apostles who in turn orally communicated that teaching to their successors, the bishops in the

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Catholic Church. That teaching continues to be nurtured and fostered in the magisterium of the church.

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So you've got Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium would be the authority structure in the

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Catholic Church, thereby giving rise to doctrines and practices which are foreign to us as Protestants.

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I think understanding that Catholics don't believe in just the Bible, they also believe in Catholic tradition and the magisterium, as you said, it's helpful for us to understand that that's why

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Roman Catholics have these beliefs that for most evangelicals are like, why in the world do you believe that?

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That's definitely not in the Bible. So seeing that the Bible is not their only source of authority, I think really help us to understand, not agree with, but at least understand better where these beliefs are coming from.

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So this has been part one of our podcast discussing different issues about Catholicism.

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The top questions were asked about Catholic related issues, whether that's from Catholics or whether that's from Protestants or evangelicals trying to understand

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Catholicism. In part two, we'll be getting a little more practical about how do we minister to Roman Catholics?

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How do we present things to them a little more clearly? How do we have a productive conversation with Catholics?

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So please tune in for episode two. This has been the Got Questions podcast with Dr.

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Greg Allison. Got questions? Bible -ize answers. We'll be fine.