Karl Keating’s E-Letter (BRAININESS: GOOD BUT NOT SUFFICIENT)

July 22, 2008

Karl Keating, in his Oct 21, 2003 E-Letter, discusses an article in Modern Reformation Magazine on the subject “We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”

The full text of the article BRAININESS: GOOD BUT NOT SUFFICIENT follows with some comments at the end. Emphasis in italics mine.

“Modern Reformation” is a bimonthly magazine published by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Its editor is Michael Horton, and among its advisors and contributors are W. Robert Godfrey, Ron Rosenbladt, R. C. Sproul, Timothy George, Douglas Groothuis, Carl F. H. Henry, and John Warwick Montgomery. If you read the more scholarly Evangelical journals, you will recognize some of those names.

Once upon a time, “Christianity Today” was the intellectual center of Evangelicalism, but CT long ago ceased to devote its pages to serious writing. Today it represents Evangelicalism Lite–not a liberal version of Evangelicalism but an intellectually lightweight version. “Modern Reformation,” which is a dozen years old, has filled much of the gap.

A recent issue was devoted to the theme “We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” And these Evangelicals do, but it is one thing to believe in something and another thing to locate it. I admire the seriousness that infuses the articles in this special issue, and I wince in sympathy at the lack of success in finding that one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

In his contribution, Michael Horton tries to define what is meant when one says the Christian Church is “catholic.” “At one end of the spectrum are Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and specific Protestant bodies that often claim simply to be the catholic church without remainder.” This won’t do, he says, because the real Church is not mainly a visible body, and these churches are all visible.

“On the other end are most evangelical and pentecostal groups that, in their ‘nondenominational’ denominationalism, understand the church as simply the sum total of individuals who are truly born again.” That won’t do either.

The answer is to be found among the “churches of the Reformation,” Horton says. They “reflect a somewhat mediating position.” They have visible elements, such as “faithful preaching and right administration,” but they also take into account that the true Church is present wherever the gospel is preached. These Reformed (Calvinist) churches thus are one step up from the atomism of nondenominationalism but one step down from the rigor of the pre-Reformation churches of the East and West.

As I said, I wince when I read such arguments. I wince because the arguments are so unconvincing, as splitting-the-difference arguments usually are. I don’t want to pick on Michael Horton. Those writing in “Modern Reformation” on the three other marks of the Church are in the same predicament.

Paul C. H. Lim, for instance, laments that a friend has left Evangelicalism for Rome, but this only encourages Lim “to take a journey of his own to discover what true unity means and why, as a Protestant, he can assent to being part of ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ church.”

Well, Mr. Lim can assent to that, but he is not assenting to a fact, because the church he belongs to does not in fact have those four marks. Wishing does not make it so, and, reading between the lines and taking into account the evident intelligence and sincerity of the writers, I am led to think that they know–either consciously or subconsciously–that their position is not tenable.

Some Catholics think that Protestantism, being a truncated form of Christianity, must appeal only to people of restricted intelligence. Sure, there are many fine people in Protestantism, but those with brains move elsewhere. It’s not as simple as that. I know many highly intelligent Protestants, including several of the men whose names are listed above, and their remaining Protestant is not a matter of a lack of brains.

Why do they seem convinced by arguments such as those in this issue of “Modern Reformation,” when I and others think the arguments are so weak that, in a way, they prove the opposite of what they were intended to prove–that is, that they prove the necessity of joining the real Catholic Church (I mean the one headed by the Pope)?

Why are these intelligent people happy with arguments that others find flawed–and not just flawed on the periphery but flawed in their core? I have no answer for that. The situation may be something like that famous line drawing of a vase. Squint your eyes just so, and the image becomes two faces. Squint again, and it’s back to a vase. So near, yet so far.

Mr. Keating in saying the following presumes we trust he understands and is part of the one true church, that being the Roman Catholic church.

I wince in sympathy at the lack of success in finding that one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church…. I wince because the arguments are so unconvincing.

Keating argues that the Reformed understanding of the church is unconvincing yet offers no defense of his own position on the definition of the church.

Keating goes on to say, speaking of those in the Reformed camp:

I am led to think that they know–either consciously or subconsciously–that their position is not tenable…. Why do they seem convinced by arguments such as those in this issue of “Modern Reformation,” when I and others think the arguments are so weak that, in a way, they prove the opposite of what they were intended to prove–that is, that they prove the necessity of joining the real Catholic Church (I mean the one headed by the Pope)? Why are these intelligent people happy with arguments that others find flawed–and not just flawed on the periphery but flawed in their core?

It’s interesting to me that Keating expects readers to move in his direction simply because he and others think the Reformed view of the church is weak. Keating is hardly convincing to me. Really, who does Mr. Keating think he is?

In the absence of Keating’s defense of his idea of ‘the church’ and his lack of reference to scripture, I will provide here a summarized explanation of the Reformed understanding of the church with scripture references.

systematic theology, chapter 44, the church: its nature, its marks, and its purposes — Wayne Grudem

The church is the community of all true believers for all time. This definition understands the church to be made of all those who are truly saved. Paul says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). Here the term “the church” is used to apply to all those whom Christ died to redeem, all those who are saved by the death of Christ. But that must include all true believers for all time, both believers in the New Testament age and believers in the Old Testament age as well. So great is God’s plan for the church that he has exalted Christ to a position of highest authority [not a Pope] for the sake of the church: “He has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph. 1:22-23).

Jesus Christ himself builds the church by calling his people to himself.

A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, chapter 20, the nature and foundation of the church

…. we can assert here that the church in Scripture is composed of all the redeemed in every age who are saved by grace through personal faith in the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ, “the seed of the woman” (Gen. 3:15) and suffering Messiah (Isa. 53:5-10).

The church is one by virtue of its union with Christ. All its members are baptized by one Spirit into one body having one Head and one Lord. There is one building with one foundation, one flock under one Shepherd. Dissensions and divisions among Christians obscure the oneness of the body of Christ. Hence, we have various appeals in the epistles for unity through patience and love [not through a Pope]. The church’s “oneness,” as both fact and ideal to be achieved, is taught particularly by Jesus and Paul. [John 10:14-16; John 17:20-23; Romans 15:5-6; Galatians 3:28; 1 Corinthians 1:10-13; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13; Ephesians 2:14-16; Ephesians 4:3-6; Philippians 2:2; Colossians 3:12-14]

To rap this up, I would just say there is an overwhelming body of biblical evidence to support the Reformed concept of ‘the church’ as being the body of Christ; those who are partakers of Christ and the blessings of salvation that are in Him.

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