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How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith Scott Hahn
Alinari/The Bridgeman Arts Library. Cover Design by Judy Linard First published in. Great Britain in 2007 by Reprinted 2009 First published in the USA in 2007 by Doubleday, an imprint of the
The right of Scott Hahn to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998. Book design by Michael Colica Nihil Obstat: Monsignor Michael F. Hull, STD, Censor Librorum. The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or ISBN-10
0-232-52713-X A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in Great Britain by
UK Publisher Ordering Information USA Publisher Ordering Information
To David Timothy Bonaventure Hahn On the occasion of his First Communion
Catholicism's leading evangelist and bestselling author Scott Hahn explains the 'how and why' of the Catholic faith—drawing from his own struggles and those of other converts, as well as from everyday life, from philosophy, and from science. He shows that reason and revelation, nature and the supernatural, are not opposed to one another; rather they offer complementary evidence that God exists. But He doesn't merely exist. He is someone, and He has a personality, a personal style, that is discernible and knowable. Hahn leads readers to see that God created the universe with a purpose and a form—a form that can be found in the Book of Genesis and that is there when we view the natural world through a microscope, through a telescope, or through our contact lenses. Reasons to Believe unravels mysteries, corrects misunderstandings, and offers thoughtful, straightforward responses to common objections about Catholicism. It is the ideal book both for Christians who want to grow stronger in their faith and to share it with others, and for enquirers in search of a belief that satisfies both the mind and the heart. At the heart of the book is Hahn's examination of the ten "keys to the kingdom"—the characteristics of the Church clearly evident in the Scriptures. As the story of creation discloses, the world is a house that has a Father, a palace where the king is really present. God created the cosmos to be a kingdom, and that kingdom is the universal Church, fully revealed by Jesus Christ. The extraordinary vision and panache of Scott Hahn's writing have made theology thrilling and accessible for millions of readers inside and far beyond the boundaries of the Church. He is the author of nine other DLT books: The Lamb's Supper, Hail, Holy Queen, First Comes Love, Lord, Have Mercy, Swear to God, Letter and Spirit, Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace: My Spiritual Journey in Opus Dei, Signs of Life and Covenant and Communion. He is Professor of Theology and Scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Endorsements/Reviews
—Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR
—Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. (Denver Archdiocese)
—Marcus Grodi, TV host, The Journey Home
—Jeff Cavins, author of My Life on the Rock
—Patrick Madrid, author of Search and Rescue and Does the Bible Really Say That?
—Dave Armstrong, author of A Biblical Defense of Catholicism
—John Michael Talbot, songwriter;
—Fr. C. J. McCloskey III,
—Mark P. Shea,
—Thomas Howard,
—Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl
Contents
I Natural Reasons 1 MORE THAN A FEELING: ON THE LOVE OF LEARNING AND THE DESIRE FOR DUNKING . . . . .3 2 OURS TO REASON WHY: ON SEEING, BELIEVING,AND FLYING . . . . . . . . .. . . .15 3 NATURAL REASONS: ON THE PERSUASIVE POWER OF THE UNIVERSE . . . . . . . . . .27 4 RIGHT AND WRONG: ON DOING AND DENIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 5 THE LIMITS OF REASON: ON THE TESTIMONY OF MIRACLES AND PROPHECY. . . . . . ..56 II Biblical Reasons 6 BIBLE STEADY: ON THE CHURCH AS ONE FOUNDATION . . . . . . . . . . . .67 7 SAINTS ALIVE: ON LOVE AND THE LIMITS OF HUMAN FELLOWSHIP . . . . . . . 93 8 A MASS OF EVIDENCE: ON THE EUCHARIST AND THE PURIFYING FIRE OF SACRIFICE . . .111 9 PEACE OF THE ROCK: ON THE PAPAL OFFICE AND ITS PAPER TRAIL . . . . . .. . 127 10 REASONS OF THE KINGDOM: ON ANSWERING WITH YOUR LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 III Royal Reasons
11 CREATED FOR THE KINGDOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143
12 THE FLEETING AND FUTURE KINGDOM: THE DIFFERENCE DAVID MADE . . . . . .. . . . . . . .151 13 THE KINGDOM COME: ON CHRIST THE KING,THE SON OF DAVID . . . . . . . . . 163 14 WHEN THE REIGN COMES: THE CHURCH IS THE KINGDOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 15 THE CATHOLIC LIFETIME READINGS PLAN: AN APOLOGETIC EXHORTATION . . . . . . . .. . . . . .189 NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . .199
MORE THAN A FEELING On the Love of Learning and the I was the freshest of freshmen. Like almost everyone in that incoming class, I was living away from my home and family for the first time, and I was hungry for everything that Grove City College had promised us. Indeed, I'm sure that I wanted it more than most of my classmates. I had been an academically inclined high school student, the type who was tempted to capitalize the word "Learning" when it was used as a noun. I was a relatively new Christian, but already steeped in theology, and there at Grove City College I could study with noted thinkers of the evangelical and Calvinist worlds. What's more, Grove City was not an isolated Christian institution.. It was part of a cultural movement. Two other evangelical Calvinist campuses sprawled nearby, Westminster College and Geneva College, and all the lands in between those campuses and ours—mostly small towns and farming communities—were dotted with pastoral and communal experiments that drew inspiration, energy, and even members from the colleges. So, as I took my first steps away from home and into the wider world, I had a true freshman's openness to new experiences and ideas. And the college and its orbit had plenty to occupy my mind and senses. Still, it wasn't an easy transition for me. The college couldn't fit all the first-year men in the freshmen dorms, so some were dispersed to live with the upperclassmen. I was among the dispersed. The upperclassmen were kind and welcoming; but, I have to admit, I felt isolated. Some of this feeling, I'm sure, was just garden-variety homesickness. Some of it, too, was the sense of being the "odd man out" among a horde of old buddies—the guy to whom they had to explain all their inside jokes. But a big part of it was a mismatch of interests and ideals: here I was, eager for Learning and intellectual companionship—maybe even a disputation or two. And there they were, world-weary juniors and seniors, for whom college had long been demystified and its professors demythologized. Gradually, though, I reached out across the gulf that separated me from my fellow freshmen. I got to know two guys, Doug and Ron, especially well, as they shared my interests and my longing for like-minded—but, even more, like-hearted—Christian fellowship. Those two were easily the most popular first-year men on campus. Getting to know them over the opening weeks of the semester, I heard a lot about the church they attended. In fact, Doug and Ron were so enthusiastic about it, they talked about little else; and all other subjects seemed to lead them back to the main theme of their conversation, which was their newfound church. "DUNKED FOR REAL" The place was more than ten miles away, between our campus and Westminster's. Every Sunday its worship service was standingroom-only. The singing raised the roof; the preaching was electric. The congregation was a mix of local farmers and students and professors from the colleges. They had built up a network of social services, including adoption, foster care, and programs for troubled youth. Every service ended with a "laying on of hands," at which people were apparently healed of ailments ranging from depression to cancer. Every month or so, after the service, many new members would be baptized by total immersion in the nearby creek. These events were the favored topic of conversation on the way to and from classes, and they were the inevitable destination of our table talk in the dining hall. A few weeks into the semester, I finally agreed to join my newfound friends for their Sunday worship. Our anticipation grew during the long ride out to church. And the service itself didn't disappoint us. There was exuberant singing, powerful preaching, and the laying on of hands. I found myself wondering why my Presbyterian worship couldn't be this way. My church generated excitement in special programs like Young Life, but we could accomplish it only by segregating teens from the staid older folks and the distraction of small children. Yet here was a true cross-section of local life, and it was alive and engaged. On the drive back to campus, Doug and Ron began talking about how soon they might make their own trip to the creek for baptism. There was no question whether this would be the next step. The only question was when. And it was only then—when they began speaking in terms of baptism—that my own mind stopped racing with excitement. Indeed, the racing vehicle screeched to halt. The conversation continued back on campus, where a number of students were talking about getting "dunked for real." We had all been baptized as infants, but now my friends were repudiating the very idea of infant baptism. When I raised a caution, they replied, "Scott, what do you remember from your baptism?" On the other hand, they pointed out, we all could vividly remember what we had seen, heard, and felt at our newfound country church that very day—a church whose truth was evidenced in apparent miracles. I still hesitated. "But is it biblical to get baptized again? And are you sure that infant baptism is unbiblical?" One of the guys answered my question with a question: "Okay, Scott, where do you see infant baptism in the New Testament?" I had no ready answer. REBAPTISM AND RESEARCH My friends weren't ridiculing me. They were merely discouraging what they saw as my "overly intellectual hang-ups." Don't get me wrong: they were very intelligent kids. They just felt they didn't need further reasons after the continued experience of such exalted worship. They felt that their experience was reason enough for them to take action. The problem occupied my mind. These new friends meant a lot to me, and their church excited me. But the prospect of rebaptism troubled me, and I wasn't sure why. I decided to mention it to a professor I deeply respected, Dr. Robert VandeKappelle. I was taking his course titled Biblical Ideas, and I was loving it. The ink wasn't yet dry on Dr. VandeKappelle's doctorate from Princeton, and his love for scholarship shone in his lectures and in his smiling eves. With his wire-rimmed glasses and conservative neckties, he even looked the part of the prof. Gently inquisitive, he fostered the kind of Learning I'd dreamt about when I first applied to Grove City College. In his office one afternoon, I mentioned, as casually as I could, that some friends and I were planning to get rebaptized. He raised an above above the wire rims. but his eyes kept smiling, and he spoke gently as always. "Rebaptized? Why?" He knew, of course, about the church we were attending. Everybody knew about it. I said, "I was baptized as a baby, and it didn't mean anything to me." He kept smiling. "So?" "Besides," I said, "where is it in the New Testament?" Still smiling, he asked, "Have you looked into it?" My silence answered him well enough. He said, "Well, maybe you should," and then the clincher: "Scott, why not make infant baptism the topic for your research paper in my class?" The next Sunday my friends got "dunked," but I stayed back and worshiped closer to campus. Meanwhile, I had checked out all the books the college library had to offer on the subject of infant baptism, a contentious issue from the earliest days of the Protestant Reformation, dividing the classic Reformed strains (Lutheran and Calvinist) from the Anabaptist (Baptist and Mennonite). I loaded the volumes onto my library card, into my backpack, and into my dorm room, where I pored over them late into the night. What did I learn? I learned that the custom of infant baptism was very ancient indeed, and those who held on to it had good scriptural reasons for doing so. Jesus Himself had said: "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 19:14). The Lord made clear that the kingdom belongs to those children, and baptism is somehow the sign of the kingdom's coming (see Mt 28:18-19). When Peter preached the Gospel for the first time on the first Pentecost, he put the matter in the same terms: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children" (Acts 2:38-39). These New Testament passages made the case for infant baptism plausible to me, if not quite as explicit as I would have preferred. But when I read the reasons that scholars and sages had marshaled from the whole Bible—both testaments—the case was overwhelming. When I considered Jesus' "New Covenant" in light of the history of God's covenants with His people, I saw that provision was always made for the inclusion of infants. If God welcomed newborns into Israel by means of ritual circumcision for two thousand years, why would He suddenly close the kingdom to babies because they could not understand ritual baptism? And if He had intended to make such a radical change in the terms of the covenant, wouldn't He have said so explicitly? When I read the New Testament in light of the Old, the New became more luminously clear. And I knew what course I should take—and what course I should not take—in my life as a Christian. I had reasons to believe what my Calvinist ancestors and teachers had believed about infant baptism. I will not bore you with a detailed summary of the paper I wrote. Suffice it to say that I made a firm decision not to be rebaptized. And I did get an A from Dr. VandeKappelle. Then I joined one of those staid and lackluster local congregations—a congregation that baptized infants "for real" and that worshiped in more conventional ways. College had given me my first experience of disciplined Learning as well as a life-changing Learning experience. I learned to test every spirit—to check my feelings against right reason, and to check my reasoned hunches against the Christian churches' heritage of reflection on biblical faith. It is this method that would, some years later, give me reasons to believe in the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. and then to be received into full communion with that Church. But that's another story, for another book. BE PREPARED The moral of the story in this book was set forth many years ago, in the First Letter of St. Peter: "Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (I Pet 3:15). There are times in life when we have to make a leap into darkness, go with our gut instinct, or settle for blind faith. But those are not "normal" times. They're usually times of extreme emergency. We shouldn't strive to live our lives in a constant state of crisis. Our ordinary way is evident from St. Peter's use of the word "always." We should, like the Boy Scouts, always "be prepared" to explain the reasons why we believe what we believe. That statement assumes that our beliefs are defensible on rational grounds, and that we're willing to spend a lifetime preparing to defend what we profess in the articles of faith. When I was an undergraduate, I was vulnerable because I had never bothered to study the meaning of baptism. Yet I was intensely aware of how I felt when I was in that zealous, rebaptizing congregation. What I needed to learn was that the laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them. They are inexorable, and God has willed them to be knowable, even in the absence of strong emotion or apparent miracles. I needed to learn how to place my reason at the service of the mystery of baptism. For baptism is a sacred sign instituted by Jesus Christ, but made up of the most common and unimposing matter: water. After thirty-one more years of Christian living, I'm still learning that lesson, and I hope to be learning it on the day I die, because the mysteries of Christianity are unfathomable. They're a participation in the very life of God, and none of us will ever be able to attain mastery over God's life. Again, the mysteries are unfathomable—inexhaustible—but they are eminently knowable, because God Himself has willed them to be known. That is the very reason He revealed Himself in the book of Scripture. That is the very reason for His self-disclosure in creation, "the book of nature." God and His ways are understandable and defensible; and, as Christians, we have the sweet obligation of coming to know them and coming to their defense as often as we please. There is no shortage of opportunity for study, contemplation, and evangelization. Wherever we go, we are in God's presence and in His world. And in most places we go we can take a good book along for stolen moments of study. It's the work of a lifetime. SEEDS OF THE WORD This book is a summons for Catholics to fulfill the duty that St. Peter spelled out. It's not enough for us just to feel hopeful, and then hope that our hope will be contagious. St. Peter wants us to prepare a defensible account of our hope, showing that its foundations are unshakable, grounded as they are in ultimate reality. Again, we're talking about much more than a feeling. We're talking about theology. Specifically, we're talking about that branch of theology known as apologetics—the art of explaining and defending the faith. Students of history perhaps know that there is, among the ancient Church Fathers, a category called "the apologists." These were men who took it upon themselves to spell out Christian doctrine in terms that ordinary non-Christians might understand. They appealed not so much to God's special revelation—not to the Bible or the creeds—but to logic, science, nature, history, and common sense. They even appealed to the highest principles of pagan philosophy and religion, showing that these were better fulfilled by Christianity! One of the Church's greatest early defenders, St. Justin Martyr, distilled this approach to a handy principle: "whatever is true is ours." Since God created the world and everything in it— including the pagan philosophers—Justin could treat almost everything he encountered as "seeds of the Word." This was true of many of the apologists. Not all of them were as polite and "catholic" in their tastes as Justin was, but most of them took special care to provide reasoned responses to their contemporaries' objections to Christian doctrine and practice—even when those objections were slanderous, untrue, or downright surreal. Well, like those ancient Fathers, we live in a culture that is baffled by Christianity and skeptical of the Church's claims to divine revelation. We live in a culture that often caricatures faith as being nothing more than credulity, bigotry, and superstition. And there is no shortage of people who want us to step up and give a credible accounting for the things we believe. Some of them are hostile; some are curious; some are amused; and some are sincerely searching. In any case, and in every case, we, like our ancient ancestors, need to take up the art of apologetics. We must be ready to give our reasoned defense. Step one is simple. We mustn't be "ashamed of the Gospel" (Rom 1:16). We mustn't be ashamed of the things that unbelievers despise and disdain. We mustn't be afraid to take ownership of the gifts God had given us—gifts like Christian dogma. The historian Lionel Trilling, an agnostic, observed that "when the dogmatic principle in religion is slighted, religion goes along for a while on generalized emotion and ethical intention—'morality touched by emotion'," but soon it "loses the force of its impulse and even the essence of its being." For secularists, dogma is the antithesis of reason. It is—or so they believe—something imposed upon the mind from outside, and imposed with violence, against the very nature of the mind. It's the job of the Christian apologist to demonstrate that the dogmas of faith are compatible with reason. Though the articles of the creed often surpass the limits of human reasoning power, they are not unreasonable. But secularists are not the only ones who take a dim view of dogma. For my college buddies and me—though we were devout Christians—dogma had almost become irrelevant when compared to the intensity of our feelings at those worship services. We feared that the sober study of dogma might threaten our faith, dampen our zeal, or even mock the marvels of God. We were wrong, as Dr. VandeKappelle allowed me to discover. We Christians must "always be prepared to make a defense." ROTE TO REASON Yet, as the old saying goes: the best defense is a good offense. Apologetics should never be merely a grown-up and Christian version of Mad magazine's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions (a book I devoured when I was a kid). We're not looking for the quick comeback that will silence our obnoxious neighbors or coworkers. We're looking for answers that will satisfy—first ourselves and then others. Apologetics is a theological art that must rest on a firm foundation of theological science. If our defense does not flow from deep preparation, deep Christian formation, it will be unconvincing at best, but merely offensive at worst. The remainder of the chapter cannot be displayed due to publisher's limitation.
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