Luke 11:28 is a common anti-Marian prooftext, and our old friend TurretinFan — known on this blog as Mr. X — revives it in a recent blog post from July. In Luke’s gospel, a woman approaches Christ and says, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” Jesus replies, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” The anti-Marian apologist claims that, by these words, Jesus rejects Marian veneration. According to Mr. X, “blessed is the womb that bore thee” is “the earliest record we have of something approach[ing] Marian veneration.”
Does Jesus object to Marian veneration in Luke 11:28?
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 7, 2021 • Apologetics; Marian Dogmas
Jason Engwer is a Calvinist who blogs over at Triablogue. He appears to now be the site’s main blogger, after the passing of Steve Hays. Mr. Engwer thinks he can break through all the misunderstandings about sola scriptura, and he sketches out a brief (the blog post is a mere one paragraph) action plan. Five centuries of schism and discord, and JE comes along on Tuesday, October 5, 2021, and ends it all in a paragraph. Shazaam.
A blog — any blog, including this one (maybe especially this one) — is only as good as the evidence. Blogs aren’t peer-reviewed and privately-run blogs don’t have fact checkers. (Even when they do, errors notoriously creep in — sometimes inadvertently, but sometimes from bias or, just as often, the writer’s blithe disregard for truth.) Any schmo can start a Catholic blog and call himself an apologist; it’s not like it’s a doctoral dissertation or anything, and there’s no such thing as an official apostolate of Catholic apologists supervised by some bishop. A Catholic apologist is accountable to no one.
When someone is wounded — whether it’s a parent who lost a child and blames God, or someone who’s been sexually abused and is struggling to figure out who they are, or someone who’s been falsely accused by people he knew — the last thing they are looking for is the Right Answers. And certainly they’re not looking to be interrogated by someone who wants to know if they’re still following all the moral laws. There are times when this kind of response only makes their hurt worse. They want love.Apologetics has an important place, but this is what God revealed to Julian of Norwich: “I saw that God is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. God is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for love, which is so tender that God may never desert us.”
It’s possible St. Thomas More is responsible for the fact that so many Catholics like to cite John 20:30 – 31 and John 21:25 as proof texts against sola scriptura. I haven’t tried to trace the argument forward. Certain it is, however, that you’ll hear it a lot if you watch “The Journey Home” on EWTN, and every now and then you’ll find it on Catholic apologetics Web sites and in longish apologetics “guides.” Here’s John 20:30 – 31 in the RSV-CE: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
You nullify the word of God by your tradition!” Christ tells the Pharisees in Mark 7:13. Mark 7:13 is a common Protestant proof text for sola scriptura and, specifically, against the authority of tradition — so much so that Dr.* White ends his opening statement with it. See? he cries. Jesus condemned tradition! We’ll get there. But first let’s join Dr.* White around 35:45, when he turns to an oft-stated and, truth be told, bizarre claim: The decision to convert to Catholicism is a fallible decision. No doubt it is, but who denies it? It’s hard to tell what Dr.* White thinks he proves by pointing this out.
If Dr.* White wants to claim that “blueprint for anarchy” is a bad argument, he’ll need to prove why it’s a false argument. Take up Mr. Madrid’s challenge and show us sola scriptura “actually working.” It will not be enough for Dr.* White to merely complain that he doesn’t like those words. Nor can he just scoff at an exaggerated number of denominations as a substitute for addressing the problem of division itself — as though, having proved the number ain’t that high, he can pull the covers over himself and sleep the sleep of the just.
Protestants know that if the Church Fathers did not talk about sola scriptura, then it really would be an invention of the Reformation that was unknown before. Surely, if it were a true doctrine, someone knew about it before the sixteenth century! So they go plowing through volume after volume of the Church Fathers trying to find it by force of divination, which they call sound exegesis. In the earlier parts of his opening statement, Dr.* White has claimed to find it in St. Cyril, in Theodoret, and in St. Augustine. Now he tries to pile on St. Athanasius. St. Athanasius is a real hero of Dr.* White’s.
This article is a companion piece to an earlier one from 2017, about Pope Honorius I; and one from last year, about Pope John XXII. These are the three popes people will often cite to prove that popes can be heretics. Sometimes anti-Catholic Protestants are looking for an example of why infallibility can’t be true and the papacy is a tradition of men. Other times, anti-Catholic Catholics (for they too exist) are looking for a precedent as they seek to justify themselves in their belief that Pope Francis is a heretic.
This is the first of a new series entitled “Bad Apologists Say,” in which I review some remarkably ineffective arguments for the faith, or against others, that Catholics tend to be mysteriously attached to. I begin here with the myth of “33,000 Protestant denominations,” which is usually associated with Steve Ray. If you take a look at the actual source Mr. Ray uses, you will find all sorts of problems, one of which is that it counts only 9,000 denominations, and another of which is that its definition of “denomination” is practically designed to give you inflated numbers. It even includes denominations of groups that can’t even be called Christian in the first place.
Two Catholics—a writer for Catholic Answers as well as an actual archbishop–are claiming that it is obedience to the law that merits heaven and allows us to avoid Hell. This is painful, because I spent a lot of time during my conversion working past a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching I was conditioned to believe: that the Church teaches justification by work. It doesn’t, and it’s actually a heresy to which the Council of Trent attaches the penalty of excommunication.
Atheists sometimes have the same obsession with biblical literalism that Fundamentalists do. One such atheist is Tim Sledge. Mr. Sledge used to be a Baptist pastor. He now has two books out. Goodbye Jesus is his deconversion story. The follow-up is called Four Disturbing Questions With One Simple Answer, and even Dr. David Madson, whose Ph.D. is in biblical studies, thinks it’s a slam-dunk against Christianity. The book is full of dumb questions like Why didn’t Jesus tell us about germs? But apparently people with Ph.D.‘s in biblical studies take the poor guy seriously.
TurretinFan is back! We’ve missed him. Longtime readers will remember this crack, Reformed theologian who, because of his anonymity, is known here as Mr. X. I thought his blog was dying a protracted death. There would be long silences; then, he would flicker up again for a post or two; then, slump into another doze. Perhaps he thinks I have forgotten him and he can now resume his raison d’être: plowing wild and unhinged and desperate through the Bible and Church Fathers for evidence of Protestant doctrine.
It would probably be a bad idea if someone at the Vatican were to fix Pope Francis with a device that gave him a small little shock every time he used the word “justification,” or maybe squirted him with a water gun. It might condition him against saying it, but I don’t think you can do that. Maybe someone has a more ethical idea. A few years back, the pope said that Catholics and Lutherans agree on justification now; we’re all copacetic. He said Luther “did not err.” It was one of the few times you’ve heard me criticize the poor man. Theological chaos occurs any time justification comes up with Frank.
I did not want to write about Steve Ray again after yesterday’s post. But by chance I noticed that he has a brand, spanking new article today that once again peddles the myth of 33,000 Protestant denominations. And because I refuted the number four years ago for the National Catholic Register, I decided I probably needed to revisit the topic. Mr. Ray knows the number is fiction, for he has been told many times. But he weirdly insists upon it; he’ll use the expression “the myth of 33,000 denominations” but put scare quotes around the word “myth.” It’s as though he thinks it’s a truth divinely revealed.