Forty Answers to “Forty Reasons I Am A Catholic”: #14

Thanks for joining me today as we continue our series examining and responding to Catholic apologist and philosopher, Peter Kreeft’s book, “Forty Reasons I Am A Catholic” (2018).

Claim #14: I am a Catholic because of what the church has not taught as well as because of what she has.

In this chapter, Kreeft extols Roman Catholicism for its positions on the relationship between the church and politics/state and the relationship between God’s grace and man’s free will. He writes, “Two things the Church has not taught are: (1) which political system is best and (2) how divine grace and human free will work together. She does not know or claim to know these things with clarity and certainty, and neither should we” (p.47).

Response

My jaw dropped in amazement at the audacity of Kreeft’s lies regarding the Roman Catholic church’s historical position on government/politics. For 1500 years, the Roman church propagated a symbiotic relationship between church and state/monarchy, with the church insisting on its divinely-granted prerogatives over the state/monarchy. The papal tiara has three crowns that symbolize the alleged triple powers of the pope: “father of kings, governor of the world, and Vicar of Christ” (see here). As nations shifted towards democratic forms of government, the RCC sought to maintain its privileges as well as the attendant limitations of the rights of non-Catholics via negotiated concordats. Only in the late-20th Century did the RCC move toward a more neutral position regarding the state and politics, a change dictated more by shifting socio-political/religious realities than by choice. Peter Kreeft is not an ignorant man. He’s fully aware of the RCC’s symbiotic relationship with states/monarchies for a millennia and a half. His decision to present to the readers of this book the last sixty-years of relative Catholic political neutrality as being representative of the RCC’s overall historical position is shamelessly deceitful.

Christians have been debating the proper “relationship” between the seemingly contradictory truths of God’s sovereignty and grace and man’s free will for two millennia. The Bible teaches both. In the early 5th Century, Augustine and Pelagius famously opposed each other in debate over this theological question. While the RCC has always presented itself as anti-Pelagian, teaching that sacramental grace (baptismal regeneration) is a necessary first-step in its salvation process, it is actually bottom-line Pelagian in its insistence that its members must ultimately merit their salvation by obeying the Ten Commandments and performing works of charity. Kreeft claims that the RCC does not know how God’s grace and human free will work together, but Rome has always taught a synergistic soteriology, with man and God allegedly “working together” towards the individual’s salvation.

Next week: Claim #15: “I am a Catholic because of one thing that that I know with certainty, that I do not need belief or faith for”