DBCunderground

by Michael

Sorry I've been away for so long. This is the part where every blogger says real life intruded on their blogging, but real life hasn't been any busier than any other time. I'm just a bit uninspired. Or at least I was uninspired. There is one thing that has caught my interest lately. Two prominent evangelical ministers I know (or know of) have decided to join the Catholic church. With the philosophical journey that I have been on the last year or so, I can't even fathom why somebody would sacrifice their freedom in Christ for the slavery of Catholicism. It would be like the Apostle Paul deciding to go back to being a Pharisee after writing Romans. OK, that was a bit over the top, but my gut reading of history is that men were never well served in their efforts to institutionalize Christianity. Simple is always better, at least in church (and maybe everywhere, but I'll have to think about that one).

Let me make an analogy to further drive my point home. For a long time it seemed the best way to have quick access to a lot of information was to spend $1000 on a set of Encyclopedia Britannica (EB). Well, who is planning on buying EB now? And why not? Because most of you have used Wikipedia. It's free, it has about 10 times more articles than EB, it never goes out of date and it is easily accessible anywhere you find the Internet. The secret of Wikipedia's vast knowledge and efficiency is that the whole world can easily update it. There are no paid contributors. But if anyone can add content to Wikipedia, then how can you trust the content? The first time I heard about it, this was my very concern. I honestly thought it would end up being unusable with the chaos of vandals overwhelming legitimate experts. However, it turns out that Wikipedia is nearly (I don't have the exact stat) as reliable as a purchased encyclopedia. The reason for this is that Wikipedia is as easy to fix as it is to break, and there are more people fixing articles than there are people "breaking" articles. It's genius.

The Catholic Church is like Encyclopedia Britannica. All the information is controlled by a large staff of paid contributors. Distribution is expensive. Everyone is terrified of introducing errors into the content, but when errors get through they stay in there forever. A lot of money is spent on binding and paper quality (things that have nothing to do with the purpose of an encyclopedia). The content is culturally biased (Western and Greek). There is no pop-culture information. And if you suggested that everyone should be an equal contributor and no one be paid for it, they would cast you out on your ear like an ignorant plebeian.

Wikipedia is like the "free" church. It doesn't always read smoothly because there are so many contributors. It addresses information in hundreds of cultures. It is easy to introduce bad information. It is easy to fix the problems caused by bad information. Every contributor is a volunteer. Every contributor is equal. There is a vast amount of information and it is continually updating. It is always culturally relevant. It is doesn't cost the user anything. And it is putting the traditional encyclopedia out of business.

I wouldn't recommend becoming an EB door to door salesperson, and I also don't recommend joining the Catholic church (or any highly structured church for that matter (did I just take a stab at the Megachurch? (Yes I did))). I know the chaos of a billion priests with no pope is a sobering thought, but maybe, just maybe, God can keep everything under control. The question is will men trust God enough to let Him produce a "reliable" church without all of our human control structures in place?

by Michael

Additional Thought
I realize that I have not discussed one Biblical doctrine pertaining to the Catholic/Protestant issue and I will give three reasons for this. The first is that it would require a very long post and we don't claim to attempt a discussion on every single issue here at DBCunderground. I just wanted to share my Wikipedia thought without getting into every disagreement I have with Catholic doctrine. The second reason is that there are better people than me for arguing about doctrine. I probably have a clever thought to add here or there, but on the whole I haven't spent much time debating Catholic Biblical interpretation. The third reason is that at best, I see the Biblical debate between C's and P's as a stalemate.

Let me flesh out that last point. It would be wrong for any Protestant to suggest that Catholics are un-Biblical. we should rather see them as extra-Biblical. They use a lot more material than just the Bible to form their theological viewpoint. To be fair, so do we (Protestants), we just aren't as honest about it. We say that we have only the Bible, but there are some doctrines that require us to think beyond the pages of scripture, or read between the lines, or draw conclusions, or whatever you want to call it. The Catholics have a name for this, and they call it "tradition". Their full understanding of theology comes from the Church's "tradition". The reason we all need more than the Bible to form full blooded doctrines is that the Bible is not a doctrinal thesis, but rather it is a story. Interpreting a story or narrative is not always a straight forward process, and we should be humble about how we do it and where we might be introducing our own un-Biblical bias.

Where the Protestant view point really diverges from the Catholic viewpoint is that Protestants only give honor to the Bible, and not the tradition that has formed so many of the ideas we have inherited. That means that we would, in theory, be willing to jettison any doctrine that appeared to be "inconsistent" with the original Biblical narrative. Once again, it is a matter of interpretation as to what is "inconsistent" and what is not. Most of the areas of debate are doctrines that have formed where the Bible is mostly silent. Things like the veneration of Mary or the authority of the Pope (and thereby the supremacy of Rome) or the Baptism of infants. When we begin debating points that the Bible doesn't debate, we find ourselves outside the comfortable warmth a solid Biblical authority.

I'm OK with that and I accept that if I am going to enter the debate I must be willing to fight for ideas that are not explicitly stated in scripture. Ideas like my disdain for combining cultural bias with Gospel requirements. I am also willing to give Catholics their due and accept that they are not being irrational when they claim that the bread and wine actually transform into the flesh and blood of Christ. I know why they believe that and it isn't just a matter of proving that they contradict clear scripture. I hope we will all keep these things in mind as we engage our Catholic brothers and sisters. If God starts judging bad Biblical interpretation, we are all in trouble.