Is there a difference between an “apostle” and a “disciple”?

This is an especially important question in deciding who exactly has the authority to bind and loose as conferred in Mt 18:18—all Christian believers or the apostles and their successors alone?

There were only 14 apostles: the original twelve (including Judas), Matthias, and Paul. No more. Now, Jesus had more than 14 followers, or disciples, as the Gospels tell. I consider myself a disciple of Christ, not an apostle. Indeed, all the apostles were explicitly CHOSEN either by Christ himself (Paul and the Twelve, see John 6:70 and Acts 1:2) or by the apostles themselves as a group (Matthias). (The latter is also evidence of the concept of apostolic sucession with Catholic bishops as the apostles’ successors.)

In Mark 6:30 and Matt 10:1-5, the twelve are specifically referred to as apostles. The latter Matthew citation shows the interchangeability of the terms “disciples” and “apostles,” at least for the 12. For they are called the “12 disciples” in the first verse and the “12 apostles” in next one:

“And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew….”
-Mt 10:1-3

Disciples are called; apostles are sent. All apostles are disciples; not all disciples become apostles.

At various times in Matthew, it says the “disciples” got in a boat (e.g. Mt 14:22). Is it plausible that this referred to all Jesus’ followers? Again, in Mt 19:25-28, Jesus speaks to his “disciples” and refers to “12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel” that will be theirs. See also Mt 20:17 which says “12 disciples.” The Last supper passage Mt 26:18-20 also refers to 12 disciples. Mt 28:16 refers to the “eleven disciples” (Judas had already betrayed Jesus). 

Thus, it is quite clear that throughout the book of Matthew that the term “disciples” almost surely refers ONLY to the Twelve. And this makes sense: Matthew is the the most Jewish of the gospels and the Jews did not let just anyone make binding Scriptural interpretations! The notion of an authoritative hierarchy and the importance of tradition that came from Judaism were not done away with in the formation of Christianity.

Consequently, since Jesus is not speaking to a crowd of followers/disciples but to the Twelve in Mt 18 when he confers the authority to “bind and loose,” it is the Church leadership, NOT all Christians, who receive this authority. And this interpretation is born out in descriptions of Church organization in Acts and Paul’s letters as well as in the history of early Church practices.

“The Rock” in Scripture

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus designates Peter as “the Rock” upon which he will build His Church. Protestants, so reverent of Scripture in all other cases, seem to blithely dismiss this title of Peter as of little significance.

But what exactly does the word “rock” mean in a Jewish/Scriptural context? After careful Scriptural study, Protestants might want to think twice before ignoring the preeminent authority that Scripture confers upon Peter. For in Scripture, “the Rock” is identified with shelter/refuge, strength, security, the foundation of an altar to God, the place of sacrifice to God, a stumbling block to the stubborn and disobedient, life-giving water (foreshadowing baptism?), the source of life and existence, salvation, the divine, Yahweh Himself, and Christ Himself.

“Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.”
-Exodus 17:6 (KJV)

“Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.”
- Numbers 20:8

“And he looked on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwellingplace, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock.”
-Numbers 24:21

“He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”
-Deut 32:4

“How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up? For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.”
-Deut 32:30-31

“And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted….”
-Deut 32:37

“But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.”
-Deut 32:15

“Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.”
-Deut 32:18

“And build an altar unto the LORD thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down.”
-Judges 6:26

“So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD: and the angel did wonderously; and Manoah and his wife looked on.”
-Judges 13:19

“And they turned and fled toward the wilderness unto the rock of Rimmon: and they gleaned of them in the highways five thousand men; and pursued hard after them unto Gidom, and slew two thousand men of them.”
-Judges 20:45

“There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.”
-1 Sam 2:2

“And he said, The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence.”
-2 Sam 22:2-3

“For who is God, save the LORD? and who is a rock, save our God?”
-2 Sam 22:32

“The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of the rock of my salvation.”
-2 Sam 22:47

“The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.”
-2 Sam 23:3

“And gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and promisedst them that they should go in to possess the land which thou hadst sworn to give them.”
-Nehemiah 9:15

“They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.”
-Job 24:8

“Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place.”
-Job 39:28

“The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”
-Psalm 18:2

“For who is God save the LORD? or who is a rock save our God?”
-Psalm 18:31

“The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted.”
-Psalm 18:46

“For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.”
-Psalm 27:5

“Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.”
-Psalm 28:1

“Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.”
-Psalm 31:2-3

“He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”
-Psalm 40:2

“I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
-Psalm 42:9

“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
-Psalm 61:2

“He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved.”
-Psalm 62:2 & 6

“In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.”
-Psalm 62:7

“Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress.”
-Psalm 71:3

“He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.”
-Psalm 78:16

“Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people?”
-Psalm 78:20

“And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their redeemer.”
-Psalm 78:35

“He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.”
-Psalm 89:26

“To shew that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”
-Psalm 92:15

“But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge.”
-Psalm 94:22

“O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.”
-Psalm 95:1

“He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river.”
-Psalm 105:41

“Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.”
-Isaiah 2:10

“Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips….”
-Isaiah 17:10

“And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out.”
-Isaiah 48:21

“Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.”
-Isaiah 51:1

“O ye that dwell in Moab, leave the cities, and dwell in the rock, and be like the dove that maketh her nest in the sides of the hole’s mouth.”
-Jeremiah 48:28

What else does the Gospel of Matthew say about rocks?

“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
-Mt 7:24-25

What else does the New Testament say?

“He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.”
-Luke 6:48

“And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”
- 1 Cor 10:4

“And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.”
-1 Pet 2:8

Search Bible Gateway for yourself: http://www.biblegateway.com

Dobson accuses Obama of ‘distorting’ Bible

Dobson is right about Obama distorting biblical teaching. Hopefully, every Christian will recognize this. 

At the same time though, I can’t help but laugh ironically at conservative Protestants like Dobson who try to argue with liberal Protestants like Obama based on the ”traditional understanding of the Bible.” Tradition?! What happened to sola Scriptura? Surely, Obama can read the Bible for himself and reach a correct conclusion inspired by the Holy Spirit and by his own private judgment and reason, no? Seems like an arbitrary appeal to obedience to tradition when it suits one’s own personal preferences. Obama and his church embody the real and deep divisions within Christianity that were created by Protestantism and sola Scriptura.

Dobson is right, but his own theology leaves him helpless to combat the false doctrines and interpretations of Obama. When will Protestants realize that sola Scriptura inexorably leads to theological relativism which in turn leads to moral relativism which in turn strengthens liberalism and corrupts American politics?

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080624/D91G8E200.html

By ERIC GORSKI 

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement’s biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.

The criticism, to be aired Tuesday on Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization’s headquarters here, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.

The conservative Christian group provided The Associated Press with an advance copy of the pre-taped radio segment, which runs 18 minutes and highlights excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Obama mentions Dobson in the speech.

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy – chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.

“… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for Obama’s campaign, said in a statement that a full reading of Obama’s speech shows he is committed to reaching out to people of faith and standing up for families. “Obama is proud to have the support of millions of Americans of faith and looks forward to working across religious lines to bring our country together,” DuBois said.

Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama’s argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion’s terms but in arguments accessible to all people.

He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the “lowest common denominator of morality,” labeling it “a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” Dobson said. “What he’s trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”

The program was paid for by a Focus on the Family affiliate whose donations are taxed, Dobson said, so it’s legal for that group to get more involved in politics.

Last week, DuBois, a former Assemblies of God associate minister, called Minnery for what Minnery described as a cordial discussion. He would not go into detail, but said Dubois offered to visit the ministry in August when the Democratic National Convention is in Denver.

A possible Obama visit was not discussed, but Focus is open to one, Minnery said.

McCain also has not met with Dobson. A McCain campaign staffer offered Dobson a meeting with McCain recently in Denver, Minnery said. Dobson declined because he prefers that candidates visit the Focus on the Family campus to learn more about the organization, Minnery said.

Dobson has not backed off his statement that he could not in good conscience vote for McCain because of concerns over the Arizona senator’s conservative credentials. Dobson has said he will vote in November but has suggested he might not vote for president.

Obama recently met in Chicago with religious leaders, including conservative evangelicals. His campaign also plans thousands of “American Values House Parties,” where participants discuss Obama and religion, as well as a presence on Christian radio and blogs.

A Fictional Dialogue on Penance

http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2005/11/fictional-dialogue-on-penance.html

By David Armstrong

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

[written in 1995]

Calvin: You know, Joe, you Catholics ought to get rid of penance – punishing yourself to please God. Don’t you know God has already forgiven you?

Joe: We would, Calvin, if the Bible allowed us to, but it teaches that there is a penalty to pay for sin in this life, too. For instance, David had to suffer terribly even though God had forgiven his sin (2 Sam 12:13-14).

Calvin: That’s in the Old Testament, so it doesn’t apply anymore. God is only merciful now.

Joe: That’s just wishful thinking. In Malachi 3:3 God purifies His people “as gold and silver” to make them righteous. He hasn’t changed His mind. In Hebrews 12:6-8 He still “chastens” and “scourges” his “sons.” Jesus commands us to “take up a cross” if we want to follow Him (Mt 10:38, 16:24), and St. Paul wants us to compassionately suffer with fellow Christians (1 Cor 12:26).

Calvin: Well, God can discipline us since that is His prerogative, but the Catholic Church acts like it can give out penalties. Isn’t that an abuse of love and Scripture?

Joe: No, not at all, since the Lord Himself gave St. Peter and the disciples the power and authority to “bind and loose” (Mt 16:19, 18:17-18). St. Paul imposes a penance for the well-being of a straying Christian (1 Cor 5:3-5). Later on, he issues an indulgence by lessening the temporal penance for sin of this same brother (2 Cor 2:6-11). This is all that the word “indulgence” means, despite all the rhetoric against it from Luther and Protestants ever since, absurdly implying that it winks at, or “indulges” sin!

Calvin: But Jesus suffered for us so we wouldn’t have to, as it says in Isaiah 53:4-5.

Joe: He took away the penalty of eternal hellfire for those who obey His will and accept His work as our Redeemer, but not all suffering. That’s a candy-coated gospel. In fact, in a sense, we even
participate in this Redemption, by our intercessory prayers and penitential acts and suffering. St. Paul repeatedly speaks of suffering with Christ, almost in a literal fashion (Rom 8:17, 2 Cor 4:10, Phil 3:10, and especially Col 1:24; cf. 1 Pet 4:1,13). He even considers himself an “offering” (2 Tim 4:6; cf. Ex 32:30-32).

Calvin: Man, you sure quote Scripture like a “Bible-thumping” Protestant! I’ve never seen a Catholic do that! I thought that all your doctrines were gullibly accepted on unquestioned authority and blind faith alone, from the nuns!

Joe: Well, I’ve gotten to know the biblical evidences for my beliefs because I’ve studied the Bible, Catholic catechisms and Catholic apologetic works, which give a biblical defense of Catholic doctrine, along with logical reasons and the history of Christian teaching on any given doctrine. Unfortunately, many Catholics settle for their childhood instruction in the faith and never progress or grow any further by reading and pursuing theological truth on their own.

Calvin: That’s for sure, and many Protestants do the same. But on our subject, I still don’t understand the purpose of penance. Why can’t God just forgive and be done with it?

Joe: He could, but penance is for our benefit, due to our stubbornness and rebelliousness. Sin causes a disorder in the universe, and Justice requires that it be punished. You know, Calvin, even your own life is an illustration of this spiritual principle. You’re in this jail, and have a broken arm and suspended driver’s license due to the sin of drunk driving. This is your “penance,” in a legal, secular sense.

Calvin: But I’m very sorry and the judge believes I’m sincere and will reform my behavior.

Joe: That’s the whole point. You have “repented,” but still a penalty must be paid for your own good and society’s. Even though the judge likes you, he is bound by law to jail you for a time. That’s how it is with God and sin, since He is perfectly holy. Purgatory continues the process after death, until finally we enter into Heaven, for which all our sufferings have prepared us (Rom 8:18, Heb 12:14, Rev 21:4).

Calvin: I still have trouble with this whole idea because it seems to me to be perverting the grace of God and making us do works in order to be saved (Eph 2:8-9). That’s a losing battle because none of us can be good enough (Ps 53:3).

Joe: You’re constructing a false dichotomy: Because God is perfectly good, therefore we cannot be good at all. But the Bible teaches that we can cooperate with God in our salvation, even though all grace and good always comes from Him (Eph 2:10, 1 Cor 3:9, Phil 2:13). Grace is entirely God’s work, but that doesn’t make us mere puppets or robots. The Council of Trent declared that:

“Neither is this satisfaction so our own as not to be through Jesus Christ. For we can do nothing of ourselves; He cooperating strengthens us (Phil 4:13) . . . No Catholic ever thought that, by this kind of satisfactions on our parts, the efficacy of the merit and of the satisfaction of our Lord Jesus Christ is either obscured or in any way lessened.”
(On the Sacrament of Penance, chap. 8, session 14, November 25, 1551)

A Heart Both Frightened and Free/Love Isn’t Just for Day

This is one of my favorite hymns. It expresses what our relationship with God should be and what love really means.
We are called to both love and fear God. We are called to love Him, each other, and especially our spouses as He loves us: not “just for a day,” but with a “faithfulness [that] never grows old.”

All That We Have

Refrain:
All that we have and all that we offer
comes from a heart both frightened and free.
Take what we bring now and give what we need.
All done in His Name.

1. Some men rely on their power,
Others put trust in their gold.
Some men have only their Savior
Whose faithfulness never grows old.

2. Sometimes the road may be lonesome;
Often we may lose our way.
Take courage and always remember,
Love isn’t just for a day.

3. Sometimes when troubles are many,
Life can seem empty, it’s true,
But look at the life of the Master,
Who lovingly suffered for you.

Contraception: Why Not?

Dr. Janet Smith explains why the Catholic Church keeps insisting, in the face of the opposite position held by most of the rest of the modern world, that contraception is one of the worst inventions of our time.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html

My topic for tonight is the Church’s teaching on contraception and various sexual issues. As you know, we live in a culture that thinks that contraception is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind. If you were to ask people if they wanted to give up their car or their computer or their contraceptive, it would be a hard choice to make. It’s really considered to be something that has really put us, greatly, into the modern age and one of the greatest advances of modern medicine and modern times. Yet, there’s this archaic church that tells us that, really, this is one of the worst inventions of mankind. According to the Church, contraception is one of the things that’s plunging us into a kind of a disaster.

So we have this great polarization: a world that thinks contraception is one of the greatest inventions of our time and the Catholic Church that says it’s one of the worst. I am going to try to help people see tonight why the Church’s teaching certainly deserves serious consideration.

How Catholicism Created Capitalism

http://www.acton.org/publications/randl/rl_article_344.php

How Christianity Created Capitalism

By Michael Novak

Capitalism, it is usually assumed, flowered around the same time as the Enlightenment–the eighteenth century–and, like the Enlightenment, entailed a diminution of organized religion. In fact, the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was the main locus for the first flowerings of capitalism. Max Weber located the origin of capitalism in modern Protestant cities, but today’s historians find capitalism much earlier than that in rural areas, where monasteries, especially those of the Cistercians, began to rationalize economic life.

It was the church more than any other agency, writes historian Randall Collins, that put in place what Weber called the preconditions of capitalism: the rule of law and a bureaucracy for resolving disputes rationally; a specialized and mobile labor force; the institutional permanence that allows for transgenerational investment and sustained intellectual and physical efforts, together with the accumulation of long-term capital; and a zest for discovery, enterprise, wealth creation, and new undertakings.

The Protestant Ethic without Protestantism

The people of the high Middle Ages (1100—1300) were agog with wonder at great mechanical clocks, new forms of gears for windmills and water mills, improvements in wagons and carts, shoulder harnesses for beasts of burden, the ocean-going ship rudder, eyeglasses and magnifying glasses, iron smelting and ironwork, stone cutting, and new architectural principles. So many new types of machines were invented and put to use by 1300 that historian Jean Gimpel wrote a book in 1976 called The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.

Without the growth of capitalism, however, such technological discoveries would have been idle novelties. They would seldom have been put in the hands of ordinary human beings through swift and easy exchange. They would not have been studied and rapidly copied and improved by eager competitors. All this was made possible by freedom for enterprise, markets, and competition–and that, in turn, was provided by the Catholic Church.

The church owned nearly a third of all the land of Europe. To administer those vast holdings, it established a continent-wide system of canon law that tied together multiple jurisdictions of empire, nation, barony, bishopric, religious order, chartered city, guild, confraternity, merchants, entrepreneurs, traders, et cetera. It also provided local and regional administrative bureaucracies of arbitrators, jurists, negotiators, and judges, along with an international language, “canon law Latin.”

Even the new emphasis on clerical celibacy played an important capitalist role. Its clean separation between office and person in the church broke the traditional tie between family and property that had been fostered by feudalism and its carefully plotted marriages. It also provided Europe with an extraordinarily highly motivated, literate, specialized, and mobile labor force.

The Cistercians, who eschewed the aristocratic and sedentary ways of the Benedictines and, consequently, broke farther away from feudalism, became famous as entrepreneurs. They mastered rational cost accounting, plowed all profits back into new ventures, and moved capital around from one venue to another, cutting losses where necessary, and pursuing new opportunities when feasible. They dominated iron production in central France and wool production (for export) in England. They were cheerful and energetic. “They had,” Collins writes, “the Protestant ethic without Protestantism.”

Being few in number, the Cistercians needed labor-saving devices. They were a great spur to technological development. Their monasteries “were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time,” Gimpel writes.

Thus, the high medieval church provided the conditions for F. A. Hayek’s famous “spontaneous order” of the market to emerge. This cannot happen in lawless and chaotic times; in order to function, capitalism requires rules that allow for predictable economic activity. Under such rules, if France needs wool, prosperity can accrue to the English sheepherder who first increases his flock, systematizes his fleecers and combers, and improves the efficiency of his shipments.

In his 1991 Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II points out that the main cause of the wealth of nations is knowledge, science, know-how, discovery–in today’s jargon, “human capital.” Literacy and study were the main engines of such medieval monasteries; human capital, moral and intellectual, was their primary economic advantage.

The pope also praises the modern corporation for developing within itself a model of relating the gifts of the individual to the common tasks of the firm. This ideal, too, we owe to the high medieval religious orders, not only the Benedictines and the Cistercians, but the Dominicans and Franciscans of the early thirteenth century.

Jump-Starting a Millennium of Progress

The new code of canon law at the time took care to enshrine as a legal principle that such communities, like cathedral chapters and monasteries before them, could act as legal individuals. As Collins points out, Pope Innocent IV thereby won the sobriquet “father of the modern learning of corporations.” In defending the rights of the new Franciscan and the Dominican communities against the secular clergy and lay professors at the University of Paris, Thomas Aquinas wrote one of the first defenses of the role of free associations in “civil society” and the inherent right of people to form corporations.

The Catholic Church’s role helped jump-start a millennium of impressive economic progress. In ad 1000, there were barely two hundred million people in the world, most of whom were living in desperate poverty, under various tyrannies, and subject to the unchecked ravages of disease and much civic disorder. Economic development has made possible the sustenance now of more than six billion people–at a vastly higher level than one thousand years ago, and with an average lifespan almost three times as long.

No other part of the world outside Europe (and its overseas offspring) has achieved so powerful and so sustained an economic performance, raised up so many of the poor into the middle class, inspired so many inventions, discoveries, and improvements for the easing of daily life, and brought so great a diminution of age-old plagues, diseases, and ailments.

The economic historian David Landes, who describes himself as an unbeliever, points out that the main factors in this great economic achievement of Western civilization are mainly religious:

• the joy in discovery that arises from each individual being an imago Dei called to be a creator;

• the religious value attached to hard and good manual work;

• the theological separation of the Creator from the creature, such that nature is subordinated to man, not surrounded with taboos;

• the Jewish and Christian sense of linear, not cyclical, time and, therefore, of progress; and

• respect for the market.

Capitalism Infused with Caritas

As the world enters the third millennium, we may hope that the church, after some generations of loss of nerve, rediscovers its old confidence in the economic order. Few things would help more in raising up all the world’s poor out of poverty. The church could lead the way in setting forth a religious and moral vision worthy of a global world, in which all live under a universally recognizable rule of law, and every individual’s gifts are nourished for the good of all.

I believe this is what the pope has in mind when he speaks of a “civilization of love.” Capitalism must infused by that humble gift of love called caritas, described by Dante as “the Love that moves the Sun and all the stars.” This is the love that holds families, associations, and nations together. The current tendency of many to base the spirit of capitalism on sheer materialism is a certain road to economic decline. Honesty, trust, teamwork, and respect for the law are gifts of the spirit. They cannot be bought.

Origin of the Spirit of Capitalism: Middle Ages Scholasticism, not Protestantism

In the lecture at the link below, Samuel Gregg, Director of Research at the Acton Institute, critiques Weber’s claim that Protestantism gave rise to the spirit of capitalism. He argues that medieval scholastics actually gave rise to the ideas that would form the foundation of the spirit of capitalism.

http://www.isi.org/lectures/lectures.aspx?SBy=search&SSub=title&SFor=Commercia

Protestantism and Liberalism: Sola Fide and Good Intentions

Aren’t the good intentions of modern American liberals merely the secular counterpart to sola fide? It would seem intentions trump consequences for liberals, and faith (merely mental assent or intention and thus not faith at all) trumps actual obedience and good works for Protestants.

But we know that the professed intentions of liberals are not good enough. Good politics MUST have good consequences. Likewise, a saving faith MUST have good works and obedience (unless one is instantaneously in a state of grace and die before one has the opportunity to live out one’s faith).

Is this merely an analogy or perhaps a discovery of cause and effect?….

Can Homosexuals Be Saved by Faith Alone?

I wonder if looking at the issue of sola fide from the perspective of homosexuality will foster a different type of discussion than usually happens.

So, I ask you, my Protestant friends, evangelicals and those of the more conservative and traditional denominations (yes, tradition…): can a practicing homosexual (i.e. engages in acts of sodomy; not merely has feelings or urges) be saved by faith alone? Can this person’s mere mental assent to Jesus’ divinity and sacrifice secure salvation despite this sinful behavior, which is an “abomination” according to Scripture?

I should probably say no more and wait for responses.