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From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
John Paul II points out that Jesus encourages us to penetrate past the boundary of the fall to the state of innocence: In the beginning it was not so. How can we do this?
John Paul II suggests that the “redemption of the body” gives us this access. If it were not for the redemption of the body, we’d be hopelessly caught in the historical state of humanity in sin, incapable of reclaiming innocence.
Eschatology offers access to protology.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Why is it not good for man to be alone? John Paul II said it was because Adam needed an other in order to realize the relation of mutual self-gift that is the fullness of humanity’s imaging of the Triune life. In the process he suggests a kind of theistic proof from sexual difference.
The reality of mutual reciprocity is evident in the body, and in the specific forms of the bodies of male and female: “Exactly through the depth of [Adam's] original solitude, man now emerges in the dimension of reciprocal gift, the expression of which – by that very fact the expression of his existence as a person – is the human body in all the original truth of its masculinity and femininity. The body, which expresses femininity ‘for’ masculinity and, vice versa, masculinity ‘for’ femininity, manifests the reciprocity and the communion of persons. It expresses it through gift as the fundamental characteristic of personal existence.”
The similarity and difference between male and female bodies, their created suitability and “fit,” points to the fact that male and female are created to give themselves to one another. And this is a theistic proof of sorts:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 12:32 pm
In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defines sex as “the mutual use which one human being makes of the sexual organs and faculty of another.” This mutual use aims at pleasure. He acknowledges that in using the sexual organs of another, one is acquiring use of the whole person, since “the person is an absolute unity.”
At the same time, sexual intercourse represents a profound alienation: “In this act, a human being makes himself into a thing, which is contrary to the right of human nature to one’s own person. This is possible only under one single condition: when a person is acquired by another in a manner equal to a thing, correspondingly the former acquires the latter, for in this way the person gains itself back again and reconstitutes its personhood. . . . this personal right is nevertheless at the same time also a right in the manner of a thing,” and this is clear since “when one part of the couple has run away or has given itself into the possession of another, the other spouse has the right at any time and without any condition to take it back into his or her power like a thing.”
Sex is not self-gift, but only the gift of sexual organs for use; it is self-alienation, not self-gift. A sexual ethic more deeply formed by modernity is hard to imagine.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:46 am
John Paul II warned in his Letter to Families about the neo-Manichaean perspective that has infected modern views of sex. According to this view “body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object.”
This can only lead to sexual exploitation: “This neo-Manichaean culture has led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as an area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’”
The Manichaean label is counter-intuitive: How could a culture so devoted to the body be anti-body? Counter-intuitive, but correct. John Paul II discerned that we cannot really affirm the value of bodies unless we at the same time recognize that we are more than bodies.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:27 am
Descartes aimed for an objective science, not the science of the scholastics. And that meant, especially, the deletion of final cause from science: “The entire class of causes which people customarily derive from a thing’s ‘end,’ I judge to be utterly useless in Physics.”
“Cause” is reduced to efficient cause. Purposes and ends might be nice for morals and literature. But they are not scientific, not knowledge strictly speaking.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 9:04 am
Bacon distinguishes three “grades of ambition in mankind.” First, there is the ambition to exert power over one’s native country, but this is a “vulgar and degenerate” ambition. More dignity is evident in “those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion among men,” though along with dignity there is of course “covetousness.” The most noble ambition, however, is “to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe,” a “more wholesome and more noble thing than the other two.” This is the work of art and science.
Bacon is picking up on the biblical theme of dominion in the last of these ambitions, but he links this with an optimism about human uses of power that is not biblical at all: “Only let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest, and let power be given it: the exercise thereof will be governed by sound reason and true religion.” Apparently, the sheer fact of dominion will overcome original sin with the light of reason and religion. Such is the pure empire of science.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 8:59 am
The Vatican II document Gaudium et spes includes this packed summary of Trinitarian and anthropological self-gift: “the Lord Jesus, when he prays to the Father, ‘that all may be one . . . as we are one’ (Jn 17:21-22) and thus offers vistas closed to human reason, indicates a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons and the union of God’s sons in truth and love. This likeness shows that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 8:42 am
Ephesians 4:8: When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.
How do we reach maturity in Christ? Paul gives us a clue when he quotes from Psalm 68, a Psalm of ascension. The Psalm begins as a plea for the Lord fight for David. He calls on Yahweh to arise, scatter His enemies, and make them melt like wax before the fire. Yahweh responds. He marches through the desert from Egypt, and ascends through the parched land toward a land of milk and honey, with Israel joining the procession of the King to His throne-land.
The ascent in Paul’s quotation is, in the Psalm, the ascent of Yahweh to Sinai. “The chariots of God are myriads,” David sings, “thousand upon thousand. The Lord is among them at Sinai, in holiness. Thou hast ascended on high, Thou has led captive thy captives.” It is from Sinai that Yahweh gives gifts to men, the gift of the tabernacle, the gift of the covenant, most especially the gift of Torah.
Paul, however, shifts the emphasis.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 7:37 am
“Fullness” is a key word in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The Lord has made known the mystery of His will in a way “suitable to the fullness of the times” (1:10). Christ is exalted above every name, and about all rule and authority, and is head over the church, His body, the “fullness of Him who fills all in all” (1:23).
Paul wants the Ephesians to grasp Christ’s love in four dimensions, so that “you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (3:19), and in Pastor Purcell’s sermon text today Paul talks about the process of maturation by which we grow up to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:13).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 6:48 am
“Be wise as serpents,” Jesus says. How?
The first wise serpent in the Bible is a deceiver. Is Jesus encouraging His disciples to use deception to protect themselves? In part, the answer is qualified Yes. Jesus wants us to let our Yes be Yes, and our No No. He exhorts us to straightforwardness.
But there are times when deceit is righteous. Paul escaped the ethnarch Aretas in a basket let down through a window in the wall of Damascus, and we can be certain that he didn’t inform Aretas of his plans beforehand. Deception is a tactic of war, and the apostles were at war. When the disciples leave a town where they’ve been persecuted, they don’t leave a forwarding address. They slip out and go somewhere else. They might wear disguises, as Calvin had to do at times when he traveled.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 6:33 am
What does Paul mean in Ephesians 1:23 when he describes the church as the fullness of Christ? Does it mean that the church is completed and filled up by Christ, or does it mean that Christ is completed and filled up by the church?
Certainly the first. But the second is also true. According to 1 Corinthians 12:12, “Christ” names the head-and-body totus Christus, and Christ-head without a body would be a monstrous Christ. A Christ without a body would be a dis-embodied Christ.
It seems a perichoretic relation: Christ is filled with all the fullness of God, and fills God; we are brought into that relation of mutual indwelling, so that as we are filled with Christ in whom the fullness dwells, we also fill and complete Christ.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 7:00 am
Gnostics used the term pleroma, fullness, to describe the realm of emanations from the high God, the realm of perfection and life.
Paul had pre-refuted this later development by giving pleroma an earthly address and a history. The body, He says, is the pleroma of Chrit (Ephesians 1:23), and this fullness is not achieved all at once but over time, as we all mature into the “fullness of Christ” (4:13). Gnostics looking for the pleroma did not need to ascend beyond this world or the body, because the fullness was right there in front of them, in the body of the one in whom all the fullness dwelt in bodily form.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 6:23 am
PROVERBS 28:12
The proverb is structured in parallel:
In the triumph of the righteous
Much glory
But in the rising of the wicked
Hide men.
“Triumph” doesn’t quite capture the force of the Hebrew verb ‘alatz. It is used only a handful of times in the Hebrew Bible. Hannah “exults” in Yahweh because the Lord has vindicated her by giving her a son, vindicated her against her rival wife; she exults because the Lord has raised up her horn (1 Samuel 2:1). 1 Chronicles 16:32 calls on the fields to “exult” before the Lord. Exultation is connected with victory (Psalm 5:8-12 [v. 11]; 9:2, with the context of verses 3f.; 25:2; 68:1-3), but the word doesn’t refer to the victory itself so much as the praise and emotional high that comes with victory. “Boast” would not be a bad translation, and that brings Proverbs 28:12 directly into contact with Paul’s repeated references to the “boasting” of the righteous (Romans 15:17; 1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17; Galatians 6:14).
When the righteous exult in victory, the proverb says, there is glory. This particular word for glory is first used with reference to the “beauty” of priestly garments (Exodus 28:2, 40; cf. Psalm 96:6), and can mean not only physical, external beauty but the “glory” or honor that we pay to God in our praise (Psalm 71:8). In context, the glory that accompanies the exaltation of the righteous is contrasted with men going into hiding when the wicked arise. That implies that glory refers to something visible, evident. When the righteous are victorious, it is safe to bring glory, talent, gifts, treasures out in the open.
When the wicked achieve primacy (are raised up on high, as stars in the heavens), then it is dangerous for glory to be seen. Men go into hiding. This is an important dynamic of political history. Wicked rulers suppress talent and energy by pushing men into hiding. They may hope to achieve glory, but they achieve the opposite – a drain of glory.
The Proverbs specifically says that adam hides when the wicked rise up, and that takes us back right to Genesis 3. Adam went into hiding when he gave way to the serpent’s temptation. The serpent, the wicked one, was raised up above him, and instead of exulting over the serpent, he hid from God. Throughout the old covenant, the wicked are continuously rising and the righteous are hidden. In Jesus, however, the righteous one finally exults in triumph over all His enemies. He is raised up, and Adam comes from hiding to share in the glory of the Last Adam.
PROVERBS 28:13
Again, the proverb is structured in parallel:
Whoever hides his rebellion
Succeeds not
But whoever makes known and forsakes
Finds compassion.
Another proverb about hiding, though using a different verb. The word for “transgression” means “rebellion” or trespass, and describes not inadvertent sins but willful trespasses against others. Hiding a rebellion might take several forms: It might be that one rebels, and then tries to cover up the rebellion; or, one might promote covert rebellion, hiding the rebellion even as the rebellion is taking place; or, one might hide rebellion within, in the heart, while making a hypocritical show of deference and submission. Any sort of hiding, though, is counter-productive. God sees the heart, and He sees the secret things; everything is open and laid bare before Him, and so we can never hide rebellion.
And the Lord frustrates rebels: They do not succeed. Perhaps for a time, perhaps for what appears to be a long time. Even when they look like trees, they are grass and will fade away.
Importantly, the contrast in the verse is not between rebels and non-rebels. Like a good Calvinist, Solomon assumes that everyone is a rebel. The only difference is what one does with the rebellion. And, paradoxically, the way to success is uncovering the rebellion. It seems that the best way to escape the consequences of rebellion is to keep it in hiding forever. Solomon says, “Cause it to be known.”
Confession and making-known is important, but Solomon adds “forsake.” It’s the word used of a man leaving home for his wife (Genesis 2:24) and it’s used of physical bonds and burdens. Making rebellion known is the first step. Cutting ties is the second.
This proverb rings changes on the paradoxes of concealment, covering, and unveiling that are at the heart of the sacrificial system. When Adam sinned, he went into hiding, seeking to conceal his rebellion and shame. To be redeemed, he had to come out of hiding, and had to strip off the fig leaves that covered him. Only then did he receive a proper covering, an “atonement” covering of garments, which were also garments of glory and beauty.
Those who confess and forsake rebellion find “compassion.” In the structure of the verse, that is the counterpoint to “no success.” They don’t seem to be opposites; in fact, they don’t even seem to be within the same realm of discourse. What hath prosperity to do with compassion? But of course, what ensures that our way succeeds (in the proper sense) is that our way is overshadowed by the compassion of God.
PROVERBS 28:14
Fear is not always a blessing. The curse of the covenant is that Israel will be in continuous dread (Deuteronomy 28:66-67), and Job (4:14; 23:15) dreads God. When Yahweh comes to the wicked, He strikes fear into them (Psalm 14:5), but if the wicked are fearful before His face, the righteous are secure and rejoice. If the Lord is with us, whom shall we dread (Psalm 27:1). But the proverb tells us there is a kind of fear that is healthy, and a kind of fear that should be permanent. Blessing comes to the fearful in this sense, and the implied object of fear is Yahweh. Fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom; continuous fear of Yahweh is the beginning of blessing.
It’s the adam who fears here. The word for man in each of these three verses is adam, and that suggests that they are all reflections, in one fashion or another, on the first man in the garden. Adam was cursed precisely because he failed to fear always, but the Last Adam is the truly blessed man, who fears and obeys His Father.
The “Blessed is he” form reminds us of Psalm 1 and Psalm 32. The man who fears is likewise the man whose transgression is forgiven, and the man who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night. “Continuously” in Proverbs 28:14 translates tamid, used originally for the various “continuous” rites and institutions of the tabernacle worship: Showbread is continuously before the Lord, the lampstands continuous burn, Aaron wears a memorial on his heart and on his forehead continually before Yahweh, incense ascends perpetually, and the fire of the altar is to be kept burning. The tamid offerings are the daily, continuous ascension offerings. That one fears continuously thus hints at continuous sacrifice: The one is blessed who fears and continuously offers himself as a living sacrifice.
Pharaoh, we might said, is the counterpoint. He has no fear of Yahweh. “Who is Yahweh?” he asks, and then hardens his heart (Exodus 7:3). Israel often enough acts like Pharaoh, hardening their necks instead of receiving the easy yoke of Yahweh (2 Kings 17:14). The histories of Pharaoh and of Israel are, as Paul indicates (Romans 9-11), cautionary tales for the nations. Their histories are summed up by this proverb: hard-hearted men and nations are destined for a fall into “evil.”
PROVERBS 28:15
Rulers are supposed to be protective of their people. They are shepherds. Rulers are also compared to powerful predators: David’s Son is the “lion” of the tribe of Judah. When righteous rulers are compared to lions, it is because they are a terror to the enemies of their people. Yahweh Himself is a lion who is roused to roar against and defend Israel. Rulers are not to prey on the flock. Proverbs 28:15 describes wicked rulers as predators who are revved up for attack. Roaring is a prelude to the kill, as Isaiah says about the “distant nation” that the Lord is raising up against His unfaithful people (Isaiah 5:29-10). The bear in the proverb rushes around like an army scurrying over a defeated city (Isaiah 33:4; Joel 2:9; Nahum 2:4).
The threat of uncontrolled, wicked rulers falls especially on a poor people. They are defenseless against the predatory rulers, and have no recourse to bride him or hire protection. They are entirely vulnerable before the roaring lion and rushing bear.
The word for ruler, mashal, describes the government of the stars over the night (Genesis 1:18) and other forms and types of government. It is, however, also a pun on the word for proverb or parable (Number 21:27; Proverbs 1:1, 6; 10:1; Ezekiel 12:23). The wicked ruler is somehow being associated with the wisdom of the proverbs themselves. Perhaps this indicates that the ruler is sly and cunning, operating by a wicked form of wisdom.
Jesus is the poor one, who is oppressed by bulls of Bashan who open their mouths like lions against Him (Psalm 22). He is the Lamb led to slaughter, who gives Himself to be torn in pieces like a kid.
PROVERBS 28:16
Yet another proverb about rule. Here, the word for ruler is not mashal but nagid, derived from nagad, “announced one.” In technical terms, the nagid is the crown prince. The syntax of the Hebrew is different from that the NASB translation. Instead of “the prince who is a great oppressor lack understanding” the relation is reversed, “the prince lacks understanding and increases oppression.” The lack of understanding seems to be the root and cause of the oppression, rather than being an inference from the oppression.
“Understanding” is among the gifts of the Spirit given, along with wisdom, to Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 31:3; 35:31; cf. 1 Kings 7:14).
Just as a craftsman must have understanding of his materials, tools, and goals in order to produce a beautiful object, so there is a craft to rule – state-craft. That is what the oppressor lacks. He doesn’t understand the materials that he is manipulating (that is, people), doesn’t understand how to use the tools without ripping the materials apart, doesn’t know what’s he’s trying to accomplish. Lacking this understanding, he will end up being oppressive and abusive to his people.
“Oppression” seems to be more precisely “unjust gain” or “extortion.” Extortion from the people reveals a lack of understanding of rule. Rulers who extort from their people – whether they extort through high taxes, through conscription, through other means – are enriching themselves, so they think. They believe they will enhance their rule by squeezing more from their people. The result is the opposite. They don’t understand that the glory of the kingdom comes from the flourishing of the people. They don’t understand their material or their tools.
A good ruler is full of hate – hate for rape and predatory confiscation from his people. The word for “unjust gain” in the second half of the proverb means plunder from enemies (Judges 5:19; Micah 4:13). The ruler lacking understanding treats his people like enemies, plundering them as if he has defeated them in battle. A ruler who renounces extortion, and suppresses unjust gain within his kingdom, is prolonging his days. He will rule for a long time, and will live a long life.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 1:52 pm
A summary of Part IV of Milbank’s book.
Milbank argues that a proper theological response to postmodernism must be discriminating. He accepts the postmodern critique of “substance,” and thinks that Christianity can get along without employing this notion. But other aspects of the postmodern attack on traditional philosophy cannot be admitted by theology.
His critique of postmodernism proceeds by three steps: first, he argues that genealogy requires an ontology of violence; second, he claims that this ontology has no claim to being anything more than another myth, another way of telling the story: ahs no justification for claiming to be more than just another contingent description of the world; third, he concludes that this is “an entirely malign mythology.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 10:46 am
A summary of some arguments from Part II of Milbank’s book.It is important to Milbank’s approach that he does not treat sociology as a “discipline” but as a worldview, philosophical standpoint, or theological perspective. He calls it a theology and a church in disguise, offering an account of history that is irreconcilable with Christianity’s. He makes two subordinate points.
First, Milbank wants to show that theology entered into the construction of sociology, and he spends a good bit of one chapter reviewing several 19th-century Catholic social theorists and showing the continuity between their metaphysical assumptions that those of Durkheim and Comte. Again, the point is that theology has helped to construct a secular sphere, and he locates a heresy regarding the role of secondary causes in the doctrine of providence.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 7:26 am
What follows is a summary of the first part of Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Political Profiles)
Once, Milbank begins, there was no secular.
And the appearance of the secular is not merely a matter of removing something superfluous, as sociology generally tells it in its theories of “desacralization,” the image of the stripping of a sacred covering so that some realm of pure humanity and nature is brought into the open. That portrayal assumes that there is such a thing as a pure humanity, which is always there under the surface of the sacred and of religion, which has nothing to do with the sacred, and it assumes that humanism is the natural destiny of history, the inevitable telos toward which all human societies move. Both of these assumptions must be contested.
This is an important theme throughout Milbank’s book: there is no “natural” human ordering of life.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 7:02 am
Milbank again, summarizing Hegel’s critique of Fichte’s political views: “In a political world where anything can be made of anything, the only common standard is protection of the finite ego, which, according to Fichte, must extend not only to the prohibition of deliberate crimes against person and property, but also to the numerous ways in which individuals may accidentally interfere with, and inhibit, the freedom of others. To prevent this happening, to ensure the smooth operation of the free market, and the maximum spread of available information and predictability of outcome, there must be a vast extension of the State ‘police’ in the sense of ’surveillance.’ Hence Fichte’s real positing is of a world of identity cards, internal passports, overseers of overseers, and proliferating bureaucracy. But this circumspection will never be satisfied, and in the course of its progress, protection of freedom will pass over into its gradual inhibition.”
Milbank notes that Hegel is anticipating Foucault’s emphasis on surveillance, but adds that Hegel sees more clearly that “absolutism is merely the reverse face of liberalism.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 6:01 am
Milbank criticizes Hegel for the philosophical “error” in his “myth of negation.” The issue is how difference arises, the logic of difference. Milbank points to Leibniz by way of contrast, who “conceived logic as a ’series,’ which unfolded by infinitesimal steps such that every act of analysis of a ’single’ thing revealed a slightly ‘different’ aspect of possibility.” That is, difference does not arise negatively, by way of contradiction, by unfolds.
Hegel is more “conservative” in rooting his logic and his myth of negation in the principle of identity. Given A:A, “difference cannot here result (as for neo-Platonism, stoicism and Leibniz) from analysis, or the unfolding of a series, but must imply contradiction, or denial of the ultimate identity.” Hegel could have avoided this only by removing himself from his “panlogicism” and admitting “‘other’ identities,” but that wouldn’t do. Difference arises from negation, a position that, Milbank points out, “coalesces nicely with the fiction of a polarity between subject and object,” which for Hegel are “comprehensive, totalizing genera” that can only relate “in terms of opposition.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 5:27 am
Milbank notes in Theology and Social Theory that there are two modern responses to skepticism. One is the Cartesian view that “thinks of the known object both as something ‘beneath’ the subject, and so as under the subject’s control, like the instruments of technology, and also ‘within’ the subject to the degree that it is fully known.” The Cartesian responses attempts to “conceal the abyss opened to view by the post-Renaissance discovery that language creates rather than reflects meaning. This abyss is hidden by the attempt to establish a new pre-linguistic stability for meaning in the ‘internal’ domain of the ’subject.’”
To the Cartesian mind, the rhetorical emphasis of the Renaissance appears to lead only to relativism and skepticism, but Milbank argues that the “aesthetic” and linguistic outlook of the Renaissance, reflected in Herder and Hamann, is as anti-skeptical as Descartes, but in a different way.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 3:33 pm
John Ratzinger offers this neat summary of the relation of local and universal church: “the Church is realized immediately and primarily in the individual local Churches which are not separate parts of a larger administrative organization but rather embody the totality of the reality which is ‘the Church.’ The local Churches are not administrative units of a large apparatus but living cells, each of which contains the whole living mystery of the one body of the Church: each one may rightly be called ecclesia. We may then conclude that the one Church of God consists of the individual Churches, each of which represents the whole Church.” Of course, for Ratzinger, the definition of “local Church” will include references to a bishop and communion with Rome; but as it stands his summary is something Protestants can agree with.
But how are local churches “catholic”? Gerardo Bekes explains:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 5:52 am
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