Why Jason Stellman has Protestantism nailed.

ere is an arti­cle which, if you haven’t read, you should. On his blog Creed Code Cult, Catholic con­vert and for­mer PCA min­is­ter Jason Stell­man posts this arti­cle on the fun­da­men­tal par­a­digm dif­fer­ence between the Catholic Church and the Protes­tant “eccle­sial com­mu­ni­ties” (to use Bene­dict XVI’s more accu­rate descrip­tion). Mr. Stell­man man­ages to write his arti­cle with­out using the word “par­a­digm,” but at heart, that is what he is talk­ing about. And you should read it because he flat-out nails it.

Here’s why: Because he says the words that many Catholics have thought but haven’t said; for, to say them will most cer­tain­ly ran­kle. But Mr. Stell­man says them and lets them stand with­out either over­wought hyper­bole or cow­er­ing apol­o­gy:

One thing I have begun to notice—especially after start­ing to fall in love with G.K. Chester­ton about five years ago—is how prac­ti­cal­ly and eccle­si­o­log­i­cal­ly athe­is­tic Protes­tantism seems from a Catholic per­spec­tive.

Mr. Stell­man is will­ing to explain what he means by com­par­ing Protes­tantism with athe­ism, but he does not backped­dle on the com­par­i­son. The gist of the com­par­i­son is that Protes­tantism, his­tor­i­cal­ly, has entailed an exci­sion of the super­nat­ur­al from the Chris­t­ian imag­i­na­tion. Oh, Protes­tants believe in super­nat­ur­al events—when the Bible has record­ed them. But out­side the con­text of what Protes­tants are bound by sola scrip­tura to believe, the super­nat­ur­al is noth­ing bet­ter than super­sti­tious:

Yes, Gabriel appeared to the young teenag­er Mary in the year 9‑months BC, but no, Mary did not appear to that young teenaged girl in France in 1858 A.D. Yes, the Holy Spir­it took a gag­gle of sin­ful fish­er­men and pro­tect­ed them from teach­ing error so that they could pen the New Tes­ta­ment, but no, the Holy Spir­it could not pos­si­bly have super­nat­u­ral­ly pro­tect­ed their suc­ces­sors from teach­ing error when they con­tin­ued their min­istry of gov­ern­ing the Church that Jesus found­ed.

That is spot-on in its expo­sure of the Protes­tant dou­ble-stan­dard on infal­li­bil­i­ty: We believe that Peter was infal­li­ble when he wrote two epis­tles, but not when he taught as pope. Protes­tant apol­o­gists fail to explain how the Holy Spir­it could guide the authors of Scrip­ture but not the Mag­is­teri­um of the Church. They fail to explain how God is capa­ble of turn­ing water into wine in 30 A.D., but just could­n’t have appeared before a poor Pol­ish nun in the 1930s to tell her about His great mer­cy. They fail to explain how the one is the action of God, but the oth­er lit­tle bet­ter than igno­rant super­sti­tion.

Protes­tant apol­o­gists want to con­fine the mir­a­cles of God to the pages of a book, because in their hands the pages of a book are safe and unthreat­en­ing. A book can be con­tained; it can be sub­mit­ted to exe­ge­sis, to cool rea­son, to the canons of aca­d­e­m­ic the­ol­o­gy. Thus they can­not fath­om the full­ness of the unbind­able glo­ry of God; and that is, in fact, to be atheistic—in both eccle­si­ol­o­gy and the reli­gious imag­i­na­tion. An image of Mary on a 16th-cen­tu­ry tilma is as super­sti­tious for a Protes­tant apol­o­gist to believe in, as the Res­ur­rec­tion itself is super­sti­tious for an athe­ist to believe in.

It was G.K. Chester­ton who helped reveal this truth to Mr. Stell­man because of his insis­tence that Chris­tians “recov­er that sense of child­like won­der which humil­i­ty tends to fos­ter. … [R]ed drag­ons are need­ed to amaze us because red apples no longer do.” That is cor­rect, and I would add anoth­er Chester­ton­ian obser­va­tion to the mix. In his great book Ortho­doxy, Chester­ton (who hat­ed Calvin­ism, which is why I love Chester­ton) talks about what it means to be mad. He says that the error in the way we think about mad­ness is to attribute it to the loss of rea­son. The truth is, rather, the oppo­site. “Poets do not go mad,” he says, “but chess play­ers do. Math­e­mati­cians go mad, and cashiers; but cre­ative artists very sel­dom. … The mad­man is not the man who has lost his rea­son. The mad­man is the man who has lost every­thing except his rea­son” (10–11, 13).

But there­in is the Protes­tant par­a­digm: Protes­tants are very good at scrip­tur­al exe­ge­sis (albeit with­in their own hereti­cal frame­work), and they are very good at ana­lyt­i­cal homilet­ics. But they have lit­tle sense, in their the­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, of won­der or mir­a­cle or the super­nat­ur­al. To the super­nat­ur­al, such as they accept it, they bring mere cold rea­son and emp­ty white rooms. They do not know what Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins meant when he wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” And that is why they—and espe­cial­ly the Calvin­ists in their midst—are mad.

All this is what Mr. Stell­man has come to under­stand over the past years; and that is why his wit­ness and tes­ti­mo­ny are of such great val­ue to the Church—to those who are in it, and those who will be brought to it because of what he has writ­ten.

Kudos, and a belat­ed “Wel­come home,” to Jason Stell­man.