Category: Apologetics

Eastern Catholics? An interview with Fr. Maximos

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Yesterday I gave a brief presentation on Eastern Christianity with my friend Kate, who is Eastern Orthodox (ROCOR). It was so much fun – I had a blast talking about my love for the East 🙂

Eastern Catholicism is a bit of a mystery to a lot of people. Honestly, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians often look at Eastern Catholics and scratch their heads. Are they Catholic? Are they Orthodox? I’m sure similar questions are going to be raised tomorrow so I thought I’d post the following YouTube interview of Fr. Maximos from Holy Resurrection Monastery since it deals with many of these questions surrounding Eastern Catholic identity:

If you’d like to learn more, I’d invite you to check out these other posts:

Quick Apology: Chained Bibles

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In today’s Quick Apology post I wanted to turn to the subject of history…

Objection

When speaking about the Catholic approach to Scripture, some Protestants will make the following accusation:

“The Catholic Church used to chain up Bibles!”

Response

The statement is absolutely true; it was not uncommon prior to the Reformation for Bibles to be chained up. When I am told this in a discussion I concede the point, but I then ask the person speaking if they know why this was done…

It is not uncommon to receive as a response, “They chained them up to stop people reading the Bible!”. While the initial statement was true, this explanation as to why Bibles were chained is completely incorrect. In fact, Bibles were chained for completely the opposite reason. Bibles were chained up so that more people had access to the Scriptures!*

You see, prior to the Fifteen Century and the invention of the movable type printing press, Bibles were hand-written. This was an colossal undertaking and therefore extremely costly. This meant that Bibles were expensive items liable to be stolen by thieves. Therefore, in an attempt to provide people with access to the Scriptures, it was common for a Bible to be made available in or around a church building, but to prevent theft, it was chained to a heavy object. If you had a Bible worth tens of thousands of dollars, would you want to leave it unsecured and unattended in a public building?!

If you visit a post office or a bank, you will often see pens chained to immovable services. Do these institutions chain these pens because they don’t want you to use them? Of course not! They want you to use the pens, but they want to make sure nobody steals them! Why? Because if they are stolen then other people won’t have the opportunity to use the pens. It is the same logic at work concerning the chaining of Bibles.

Chained Bible

* It is probably worth pointing out that literacy rates were also extremely low even until the 19th Century. It is for this reason that the most common way of learning the Bible throughout Christian history has been the hearing the Scriptures proclaimed at the Eucharistic liturgy.

Quick Apology: Is Mary “Mother of God”?

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Objection

In today’s post I’d like to offer a quick apology to the following objection:

“Mary is the mother of Jesus, she’s not the ‘Mother of God'”

The idea being expressed here was championed by Nestorius in the 5th Century and condemned at the Council of Ephesus (AD 431). Unfortunately, this is a sentiment often expressed by many Protestants when they hear Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians refer to Mary as “Mother of God”.

Response

In responding to this objection, I simply put forward a few logical statements:

1. Jesus is God

2. Mary gave birth to Jesus

3. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God

I then ask the person with whom I am speaking to identify the perceived error. Does he deny that Jesus is God? Does he deny that Mary gave birth to Jesus? If Jesus is God and Mary gave birth to Him, doesn’t “Mother of God” seems to be an appropriately descriptive title?

To put it in terms of Scripture, in Luke’s Gospel, St. Elizabeth says to Mary “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). Is Elizabeth’s “Lord” God? Yes or No? If her “Lord” is God then Mary is “the mother of [her] Lord[/God]”.

One might also consider the Deuteronomic command to “Honour your father and mother” (Deuteronomy 5:16). As we all know, Jesus fulfilled the Law perfectly. So, in fulfilling this command, whom did He honour?

Contrary to what is often proposed, Mary being “Mother of God” does not make her greater than Jesus. It simply establishes her relationship with her Son and Saviour and, like the pronouncements of the Council of Ephesus, safeguards the Church’s teaching concerning the divinity of Christ.

Mother of God

Quick Apologies

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I’ve recently had a couple of people tell me that they like my blog because my posts are…short. Well, I guess there are worse compliments you could get! Seriously though, one of the reasons that people seem to come back to my blog is that my articles are rarely very long and therefore easily readable during a short coffee break.

In light of this, I’m going to start doing something new. I’m now going to try and post a “Quick Apology” most weeks. These will be articles on apologetics, but they will be short and snappy. The goal is to help readers better defend their faith by consuming bite-sized posts.

I’ve often found that when I’ve been called to give an account for my faith (1 Peter 3:15), I am rarely granted much time to give a response. There isn’t time to offer a thorough explanation or refutation. Instead, I have to give an “elevator pitch”, a short 30 second response. That is how these posts will be structured. I will present an objection to the Catholic Faith and then give an extremely short response designed to answer the objection and open up the conversation to further dialogue.

In my next post I’ll respond to the objection given by some to calling Mary “Mother of God”…

“But that’s not in the Bible!”

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As a Catholic, I often hear  from Protestants the exclamation of “But that’s not in the Bible!” during our discussion of Catholic doctrine and practice. Now, while I think that Catholicism can be more than adequately defended from the Bible, during these conversations I always feel that it’s necessary to point out some general issues with this objection. In today’s post I would like to outline the three main problems that can be highlighted…

Bible

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Oral Tradition and the Fathers

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Last week I did a post on “Peter and the Fathers” where I posted the quotations which our pastor included in our parish’s newsletter. Today is another reproduction from our bulletin on the subject of Oral Tradition:

“For wherever both the true Christian rule and faith shall be shown to be, there will be the true Scriptures, and the true expositions, of all the true Christian traditions
– Tertullian, The Prescription of Heretics, 19 (AD 200)

“Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us ‘in mystery’ by the tradition of the Apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. And these no one will contradict; no one, at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the Church. For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority, on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure the Gospel in these matters…”
– St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 27 (AD 375)

“I have often then inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men eminent for sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and so to speak universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of Catholic faith  from the falsehood of heretical depravity; and I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or anyone else should wish to detect the fraud and avoid the snares of heretics as they arise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways: first by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.
– St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory 2 (AD 434)

Mosaic

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