Dr. Mohler Is Not Offended

      Who is Dr. Albert Mohler, and at what and why is he not offended?  Well, he certainly is not a nobody; on the contrary, he’s presently the ninth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an ordained Baptist minister, a theologian, a family man, and a frequent and intelligent commentator on numerous subjects.  Such men, I would suggest, are really not easily offended.  But at what?  Dr. Mohler explains in a very interesting article from his website (www.AlbertMohler.com):

Aren’t you offended?  That is the question many Evangelicals are being asked in the wake of a recent document released by the Vatican [Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church].  The document declares that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church – or, in words the Vatican would prefer to use, the only institutional form in which the Church of Christ subsists.

      And Mohler gives a number of good reasons why no one really should be offended.  His first reason is truly a breath of fresh air:  “...I am not offended because this is not an issue in which emotion should play a key role.   This is a theological question, and our response should be theological, not emotional.”  Secondly, Mohler points out that this Vatican document is really nothing new, only a recent clarification and reiteration of what the Catholic Church has always held to be true.  And thirdly, the document, in its candor, sincerity and clarity “brings attention to the crucial issues of ecclesiology, and thus it presents us with an opportunity.” 

      Yes, indeed, a genuine opportunity, and for this reason:  Dr. Mohler realizes, and says as much, that this is the only kind of venue in which a true and honest discussion can occur, where both sides in the debate really do want to state their beliefs clearly and are unwilling to compromise what they believe to be the truth.  How different from so many ecumenists who see their role as attempting to come up with a formula of “unity” to which each party can give its own interpretation.  Here, Mohler, is right on target, “siding” with the Catholic Church in her two thousand year history of refusing formulas of “unity” that compromise the truth. 

      Nevertheless. I would say that in spite of Dr. Mohler’s good intentions, his politeness, and his willingness to dialogue, he is still, to some degree, offended by what this recent Vatican document reiterates, even if not by the document itself. “We should realize and admit,” he writes, “that this is an issue worthy of division.”  And if that is so – that an issue has the power of dividing Christians – then the opposing viewpoints have to be offensive to one another in some sense. 

      As in every ecumenical endeavor, what comes to the forefront in authentic discussion is the question of the nature of the Church.  From ancient times, according to her earliest creeds, the Catholic Church has always maintained that one can know the one true Church by the marks of it’s being “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”  Dr. Mohler counters that with the mere assertion:  “Martin Luther and John Calvin both made clear, [that] the first mark of the true Church is the ministry of the Word – the preaching of the Gospel.”  This assertion of a new “first mark” is at odds with what Christians had held up until then for fifteen centuries:  neither Protestant Reformer, Luther nor Calvin, could at all claim that the movements they started bore the marks of “one, holy, catholic and apostolic,” and so they introduced this new “first mark of the true Church” and then went on to form ecclesial communities, Lutheran and Calvinist, which could not even agree with each other.  One wonders, then, how the Protestant Reformers, disagreeing even with one another, could indict, as Mohler put it, “the Roman Catholic Church for failing to exhibit this mark, and thus failing to be a [sic] true Church.”  Said more boldly:  how could a German, one-time Augustinian monk from Wittenberg and a French lawyer from Picardy take upon themselves the authority to make such a judgment?  To authoritatively proclaim this new “first mark” of the ministry of the Word and then begin the tragic process of Protestantism breaking up into thousands and thousands of communities, sects, splinterings, and denominations?  Whatever the case, this much is certain:  that the very men Mohler now appeals to against the claims of the Catholic Church are men with whom he, a Baptist, would disagree over any number of doctrines.  Otherwise, why not be a Lutheran or a Presbyterian?  Which is wiser, to adhere to the apostolic Tradition of the Church, traced historically back to Christ Himself, or to trust a Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, or any of the Reformers, when they could not even agree among themselves?  And further:  if “the ministry of the Word” is the now the “first mark” of the true Church, what does one do when different ministers cannot agree on what that Word really says?

      Through the centuries there certainly have been irruptions of disagreements within the Catholic Church, but the Church had, and has, the means to deal with them and resolve them – her magisterium, the presence, in every age of the Church’s history, of the authority of Peter, the Rock, upon whom Christ explicitly founded His Church, and of Peter’s company of Apostles, whose successors are the bishops.  And the audacious “indictment” of the Church by Luther and Calvin flies in the face of the promise Christ made to the Apostles concerning the Church founded on Peter:  that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.  This is that mark of the Church called “apostolic,” referring both to the apostolic tradition of doctrine handed down in the Church and to the apostolic succession of the bishops as the means of upholding, guarding, and teaching that Tradition, the heart and center of which is, indeed, the preaching of the Gospel.  Mohler wants to invent a dichotomy between the Catholic insistence on apostolic succession and the preaching of the Gospel, when, actually, only the former insures the latter.  He does this, I believe, in good faith.  I just hope he really does take this opportunity, provided by the Vatican document, to explore further.  And may God lead him on....