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A couple of times in the last month I’ve been accosted by Evangelicals wanting to “witness” to me about their faith. I think this is more likely to happen to you if you live in the South, if you’re young, if you’re female, and if you like walking for exercise so that you’re often on foot in places where you might be accosted. Also my husband says that something about me must attract people who like to talk. He’s amazed how often random strangers (on planes, in line at the DMV, over the counter at the deli, etc.) will open up and start telling me all about themselves. Maybe I look friendly?
Anyway, unless I’m in a hurry to be somewhere, I usually let them tell me about Jesus. The conversation usually starts by either 1) offering me a Bible (which of course I don’t need) or 2) inviting me to some local church. In the latter case I promptly explain that I am Roman Catholic. This does not usually lead to the end of the conversation. They obviously think Catholics very much in need of conversion.
Obviously the game, if I decide to play, is turning the tables on them and using the opportunity to teach them something about Catholicism. Most of the time this is pretty easy to accomplish. Though they usually have a lot of Scripture memorized, most of these folks aren’t terribly theologically sophisticated, and the subjects they choose give me lots of good lead-ins. I like it when they ask me about whether I’ve “truly acknowledged my sins,” because that allows me to explain about the confessional and how great it is for helping us to deal with sin in a concrete way. I like it when they talk about all the evil non-Biblical “accretions” of the Catholic church, because then (in addition to pointing out that the “Sola Scriptura” principle fails its own test) I can give a rudimentary explanation of what liturgy is, and why it is not, as so many seem to think, a form of Pelagianism. I love it when they ask whether I think “the spirit really dwells” in my church, since it enables me to get into an explanation of what a Church really is, which as Protestants they naturally don’t understand.
There’s just one for which I can’t find a satisfactory answer. What should I say when they ask whether I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Personal Lord and Savior?
To Evangelicals, this is often at the heart of the faith. This is what it really comes down to: accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. To answer, “well, let me qualify that a bit…” causes a shadow to pass over their faces. I’m equivocating. Just what they would have expected from a Catholic.
But I can’t answer ‘yes’ either, because that question is loaded with so many misunderstandings that it wouldn’t be right to endorse it. The errors mostly break down, I suppose, into two. First, that “accepting” Christ is a kind of discrete event, clearly recognizable to the believer himself. Many Evangelicals think it’s something that can be done once and for all, and that once they’ve been “saved” they’ll be henceforth assured of salvation. It would be impious to kill themselves at once to attain the goal, and yet, presumably it would work. But even those who don’t endorse the once-saved-always-saved doctrine do tend to think of the “accepting” as a fairly definite and recognizable event, apparently marked by particular warm emotions that certify its authenticity.
The second mistake is to think of the “personal” relationship as the most fundamental. This individualistic approach ties into all the Protestant confusions concerning authority, the nature of a Church, and all the rest of it. To a Protestant mind, an unmediated Jesus-and-Clara relationship should be the most basic one for my religious life. Churches are just organizations for people who have something in common (namely, a personal relationship with Christ), and their main function is to help strengthen the “personal” relationship. When it comes down to it, a Protestant church is really a kind of religious club, and fellow members are more or less just fellow Christianity enthusiasts.
Of course, these are both serious confusions. Accepting grace is not just a matter of a snap decision, and I’m not necessarily in a position to know when I’ve done it. And while it isn’t always bad to contemplate Our Lord loving me personally, it’s really most helpful to think of him as the Head of the Body of Christ of which I’m a member. It’s in and through the Church that we come to know her founder. If we think of Christian life as first and foremost a private sojourn, there are no guarantees as to what we’ll really find.
For all these reasons, a simple ‘yes’ doesn’t seem an appropriate answer to The Evangelical Question. That would be scandalous. But deconstructing the question as I did here would be difficult. It’s so close to their hearts that a cool academic treatment like that would probably look gravely impious to them. I worry about causing scandal of a different kind.
If there others out there with experience talking to Evangelicals, have you found any satisfactory answers to this one?
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
“It’s so close to their hearts that a cool academic treatment like that would probably look gravely impious to them. I worry about causing scandal of a different kind.”
I don’t think there’s any way around it. If they’re going to be scandalized by the truth as you report it, that’s their problem, not yours.
Clara, I love your posts, but I’m beginning to wonder — are there any other bloggers still active on this blog?
I usually approach that particular one with something along the lines of, “yes, of course! But being a Catholic has helped me understand a lot better what it means for me to accept Christ.” Whence follows some kind of question back that challenges one of the fundamental misunderstandings that you’ve mentioned. For instance, you can say, “So, right, I know Christ is the unique Savior for everyone, including me. But I guess, now that I know that through His grace, I worry a lot more about how to keep that personal relationship with Him that He gave me through His grace. Don’t you worry that your sins damage your relationship with Christ?” The idea being that you can take even this question and turn it into a learning opportunity. Since that phrase “Jesus-Christ-is-my-personal-Lord-and=Savior” is so oft repeated, slowing down and going through it, asking what each word means — not abstractly, but with a kind of concrete logic — can help to keep the conversation going in the right direction.
I think if anybody ever asks me if I have accepted Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour, I’d respond, “no, I acknowledge him as Lord and Saviour of all mankind.”
I’ve only once dealt with being accosted by Evangelicals. It was in a mall. My friends all continued walking, but I stop for a moment to see what the crazy looking people wanted, and they open up with the ever so tactful, “If you were to die right now, are you sure that you would go straight to heaven?” I couldn’t help but grin when I responded with, “Of course not, sir. I’d have to spend a bit of time in purgatory first.” They hit me with another question or two and tried to get me to pray with them, but as my friends were waiting for me I was just trying to disengage from them. I can’t help but wonder if they ever get converts from this sort of “witnessing.” The whole thing just seems so uncouth.
“Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?”
“I accept Him very personally every time I receive His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion. This is how He commanded us to accept Him, ‘Unless you eat my Body and drink My Blood, you shall not have life in you.’” This is one of the few passages of the Bible that Protestants don’t take literally.
Clara, if that happened to me, I might try to overload them with data to analyze like this:
“More or less, yes. I believe that I have been saved (in Baptism), and I believe that I AM BEING saved (by sanctifying grace right now), all in hopes that I WILL BE saved (at the moment of death), should I endure to the end.”
Then, after a bit of discussion I would quote Gal. 5:24 at them “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts.” and explicate it this way: “This indicates that those who truly belong to Christ have crucified THEIR OWN flesh. IT DOES NOT SAY that those who are Christ’s have invited Christ in to crucify their flesh for them. Therefore, those people who claim to be “saved,” but cannot say that they have in fact already crucified THEIR OWN flesh, regardless of whatever profession of faith they claim to have made, have NO HOPE of salvation contrary to what they might think about themselves.” Thereafter would follow a discussion of James 2 and how anyone who holds to Sola Fide in its litteral or grammatical sense must be a heretic, for he refuses to believe what the Scriptures actually teach, all in the name of preserving his protestant tradition. Be sure to spit that last word back in their faces to see how they react.
If you want to unarm a Hare Krishna soliciting funds, just say, “I gave in my previous life.”
Oh, very good! Thank you all. Though I must say, while all those answers would have their particular merits, I find Discipulus’ particularly delightful. Something like:
“I receive Him on my very tongue in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,” might be exactly the sort of hard-hitting response that would stand a chance of leaving an impression. In a way, it cuts to the heart of both the “errors” I mentioned without seeming pedantic. In the first place, it forces the question: “what does it really mean to accept Christ?” But also, by referencing the Sacraments, it touches on the other classic Protestant deficiency — the necessary role of the Church. I’m not saying that most of them would get all of this out of that one line. But the thing I’m trying to avoid in this situation is coming across as excessively dry and pedantic. I know (my experience with the Mormons taught me!) how easily that kind of thing is manipulated into “heart vs. head” kind of talk. I would like them to see that we Catholics have plenty of heart too, even if we don’t usually accost people in malls.
There have already been so many great responses to your question, Clara, but I would also answer the Evangelical that IF Jesus is THE way, truth, and life, AND that if the Church is His Body, then to separate oneself from that Body is to separate oneself from Him who is the only means of salvation. I was raised very fundamentalist Protestant in the Deep South, and it was only after my salvation in the Protestant religion was questioned that I began seriously looking into Catholicism. I would never wish to be rude, but I know that touchy-feely does not work with these people because, at most, it would only persuade them to now place you in their mental category of “Saved,” instead of causing them to question their own theology. It’s not a great response to “Have you accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior,” but I think it’s a good approach if you can get further into the discussion.
My response is “Have you ever recited the Creed?”
It’s nexis is the profession that Peter makes to Christ saying that He is the Son of the Living God.
The church provides us you claim Christ as our Lord and Saviour every single Sunday. And to ensure that we have a fully developed understanding about God we proclaim that we know God as Three Persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Then if their open I go into a bit of church history on how many Christians have witnessed (which explicitly isn’t just “claiming Jesus” but being martyred for believe in Him).
As a disclaimer however is that fact that I’m married to a baptist wife, so it’s apparently not that effective. But I think perhaps it’s like Jesus being unable to preach in His home town.
Clara,
I would appreciate if you would also share your explanation of what a Church really is.
My answer to the question would be “Of course.” It’s not the lordship of Christ which is at issue, after all, but rather the Evangelical’s strange belief (which is really very hard to back up from Scripture without explaining away a lot of verses) that anyone who has accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour must be saved no matter what he does.
So I’d answer yes, because I accept Christ as Lord and Saviour every time I pray or recite the Creed. The fact that evangelicals might misinterpret my answer to mean that I share their view of “eternal security” is unfortunate, but would not deter me from answering thus. Of course, if they followed up the question with “So you know that if you died today you’d go to Heaven?” then I would, of course, set out the Catholic point of view.
Brian, I think though, that “personal Savior” means something *specifically* Protestant when evangelicals use it.
Jeff, I’ll put your question on my mental queue for future posts. It would be rather a long one to explain here. The short answer is that a Church is defined by a central, divinely instituted authority, and that it enjoys the definite protection of the Holy Spirit. But perhaps I can post something longer about that question on another day.
Nowhere is it ever to be found in official Catholic Church (or Eastern Orthodox Church) writings or documents where the Church ever refers to non-Catholic denominations (even the Anglican communion) as “churches”. (Nor does the Catholic Church ever refer to herself as the “Roman” Catholic Church, but that’s another subject altogether.) This is because of Protestantism’s collective lack of Apostolic Succession. Protestantism has no valid episcopate, therefore they are not “churches” in the ecclesial sense. The Church will indeed refer to our various separated brethren as the “Methodist Church”, the “Anglican Church”, the “Lutheran Church”, etc., (even the “Mormon Church”) but this is done in the colloquial or everyday speech sense and so as not to offend. In fact, the Church goes rather out of her way to come up with terms such as “communion”, “tradition”, “ecclesial communities”, so on and so forth to deliberately avoid using the word “Church” when referring to these religious bodies. Interestingly, the Church does use the term “Church”/”Churches” when referring to Eastern Orthodox and the Ancient Apostolic Churches. This is, of course because they are in the line of valid apostolic succession and their bishops are validly consecrated.
All perfectly right, James! Does that satisfy you, Jeff? I thought you were asking for something more like an apologetic tactic — that is, the methods I use for trying to persuade Protestants of the truth of these claims. But maybe that’s all you wanted.
Thanks James, but I was looking for something apologetic; specifically for fallen-away Catholics who don’t understand the distinction.
Jeff:
Just a suggestion, but you might start by saying that, sadly, Christianity has broken and fractured into thousands of Protestant denominations within the last 500 years. The Catholic looks upon this disunity as a tragedy, not something to be celebrated. When a person says they are a “Christian”, it could mean anything from Catholic or Eastern Orthodox to Lutheran or Methodist or all the way to the off-the-wall sects such as Mormon or Jehovah’s Witnesses. We call ourselves Catholic. The word “catholic” means “universal.” The Christian Church has been called “Catholic” since around the year 101 AD. We find the first written mention in history of “the Catholic Church” by St. Ignatius of Antioch who wrote, “Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church” (To the Smyrnaeans 8:2 ). The second century of Christianity had hardly begun when Christ’s Church was already being called “Catholic.”
One major difference between Catholics and Protestants is their belief in the Church. (Catholic always use the word [C]hurch with a capital C and non-Catholic Christians use the word [c]hurch with a lower case c. Catholics believe that Christ and His Church are one. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. You cannot separate Jesus from His Church. He founded it in the year 33 and it’s the exact same Church in existence today. Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is his bride. They are one flesh in the same way that a husband and wife are the same flesh. Pope Benedict is a direct successor of St. Peter, the 1st bishop of Rome. Remind them that nowhere in the Bible does it say that scripture is the final authority in matters of faith. In fact, in 1st Timothy 3:15 it states that “the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth.” The Catholic Church was in existence 360 years before the New Testament was even fully defined. The New Testament is a collection of writings/letters to the early Catholic Church. Inform them that a book cannot interpret itself just as the U.S. Constitution cannot. That’s why we have a supreme court, for otherwise we’d have anarchy in the streets. The fact that there are so many competing Protestant denominations all believing different things based on their own interpretation of the Bible is living proof that it doesn’t work. It’s the perfect example of religious denominational anarchy.
When dealing with fallen-away Catholics, ask them if they really understood their Catholic Faith before opting to leave it for a denomination. I’ve talked to a lot of people on this subject an I can honestly say that I’ve literally NEVER met a Catholic who left the Church for a Protestant denomination who truly understood their Faith in the first place. If they did, they’d never have abandoned it.
There are many good and holy things about the various Christian denominations. They all have some elements of truth. The difference is that Catholicism (which is exactly NOT a denomionation, but rather “the Church”) has the fullness of truth. Invite them to study the Catholic Church from within and discover the fullness of truth. When studied with an open mind and looking toward Catholic sources instead of by authors and preachers who hate the Church, most reasonable people find that it all makes sense.
“Christianity has broken and fractured into thousands of Protestant denominations within the last 500 years.”
This seems to be a misstatement, at least on the literal level. “Christianity” cannot be broken or fractured. Wayward Christians (heretics, schismatics) have formed thousands of denominations, but the Christian Church, aka the Roamn Catholic Church, is unbroken. If Christianity means a body of people, then it is the Church, which is indefectible. If it means a set or system of beliefs, then it is the Faith, which is still one. To say “Christianity has broken” may reinforce the Protestant’s errors.
You’re correct Tobias Petrus. I stand corrected. I should have said “Protestant Christianity has broken and fractured into thousands of denominations within the last 500 years.” The Catholic Church has never ceased being One,Holy Catholic and Apostolic.
Thank you both, James and Tobis Petrus.