The Protestant/Catholic Divide Still Matters

A warning against undiscerning co-belligerence

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” - Galatians 1:6–10 (ESV)

Never was there a more fiercely passionate letter from the Apostle Paul than his epistle to the church in Galatia. The judaizers had crept in, and had corrupted the pristine Gospel of God’s unmerited grace and favor and taught that men must not only believe in the Person of Jesus, but also do the works of the Law of Moses in order to be justified—specifically, the act of circumcision.

One of Paul’s apologetic arguments against the Galatian heresy is that if one seeks to be justified by Law, it can’t just be one work, rather he must keep all the Law of Moses (Galatians 3:10). But as for the nature of the Galatian heresy, the only thing we know in particular that they were doing wrong was adding one singular work to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no evidence that they were teaching heretical doctrines of God, Christology, eschatology or anything like that. They simply add one work to the Gospel of grace and Paul says, “let them be accursed”.

Hear his distress and lamentation in the first chapter of Galatians. By adding just one work they have “quickly deserted him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel”.

It is evident, then, that any soteriological system which teaches a Christian is to be justified in God’s sight by works (in some manner or another) is found to be a heretical position, and those who teach and believe such things are cut off from Christ. “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4 ESV).

Under any meaningful Biblical examination, Roman Catholicism with its many, many additions to the Gospel (including the blasphemy which is the Roman Mass) is found to be a heretical institution. It is not a religious system which contains the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, and since there is no other Gospel it is not a system that can save anyone.

Cobelligerence?

Imagine for a second, that after Paul writes his letter to the Galatians, someone writes back and asks, “Okay, so I know that the circumcision party is heretical, anti-Christ, anathema and all that, but we can still partner with them for social issues, right?”

The very concept seems absurd on its face. One would have to imagine that Paul’s response would be something like, “Um, what fellowship hath darkness with light?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Now we live in a day where many evangelical Christians have fallen into a shameful pragmatism. They might recognize, theologically, that Roman Catholicism is a heretical system; but they (arbitrarily) separate their doctrine of God from their doctrine of life and think that what we should do, because of the dire cultural period of time we live in, is set aside these issues (that Paul thought were enough to anathematize one) so that we can work together to fight the culture. This has been the driving force behind such movements as the (supposed) Moral Majority, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, but also the modern “Christian Nationalist” movement (or dissident right, or ascendant right or whatever else they are calling themselves this week). Controversy arose online when it was discovered that Anglo-Catholic Fr. Calvin Robinson was to be taking Jeff Durbin (a Reformed Theonomist) at the Christ is King! Defeating Trashworld conference held in Georgetown Texas. It was questioned by many (including myself) at the time why a conference put on by ostensibly Reformed teachers would host someone like Robinson with his Romish views.

The pushback against critics has essentially been to accuse dissenters as “purity-spiraling pietists” who don’t know what time it is! As an advocate of abortion abolitionism I have been accused of this several times, and I have come to wear the term as a badge of honor.

Some of the more sober pushback against dissenting voices has been to invoke Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer’s (1912-1984) views on cobelligerence. The idea is that we can simultaneously know we don’t agree with Romanism while also working together for certain cultural or political ends that we do agree on. However, what is often left out is what Schaeffer himself actually had to say on this topic:

“Christians must realize that there is a difference between being a cobelligerent and an ally. At times we will seem to be saying exactly the same thing as those without a Christian base are saying. If there is social injustice, say there is social injustice. If we need order, say we need order. In these cases, and at these specific points, we would be cobelligerents. But we must not align ourselves as though we are in any camp built on a non-Christian base. We are in ally of no such camp. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is different—totally different; it rests on the absolutes given to us in Scripture… So if I seem to be saying the same thing at some one point, understand that I am a cobelligerent at this particular place, but I am not an ally.” - Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th Century, works vol. 4, pgs. 30-31, Crossway: 1982

At no point was Schaeffer attempting to come up with an excuse to work together with Roman Catholics, or any non-Christian group. His point was to say that, when we seem to be in alignment at one point or another, not to confuse this as an alliance.

And so what, someone might ask, would be an appropriate cobelligerence? Well, I would say that various groups all agreeing to support one particular policy would be an acceptable form of cobelligerence. At the time of my writing this, I know that there is a bill of equal protection to abolish abortion underway in my state of Ohio. Am I going to cease my support if I find out a Roman Catholic representative supports the bill as well? Obviously not, that would be absurd.

The line between lawful cobelligerence and alliance is crossed when evangelicals then start inviting Roman Catholics to speak at their events, evangelize alongside one another or any other such action that would say to the world “we are partners”. The simple truth is that we as Christians are forbidden by the word of God from partnering in this way with non-believers (2 Cor. 6:14).

Now the response will be, “Oh, but we’re not having a conference on the Gospel, we are simply talking about political engagement”. But this kind of thinking commits the deadly sin of separating one’s political theology from the rest of his theology. Ironically, thanks to the influence of Rome’s “Angelic Doctor” Thomas Aquinas, many have bought into such a radical nature/grace distinction, that they believe there are things that are entirely dealt with in the realm of nature, and since “grace doesn’t eradicate nature” as the Thomists like to say, Christians and non-Christians are both equally able to deal intellectually in areas such as politics. This is because Aquinas does not see the fall of man as having a meaningful effect upon the mind of the unbeliever, despite what the Scriptures so clearly teach on the matter. “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 10:4 ESV).

Here is where we can begin to see part of the problems with an allegiance between Protestants and Catholics, and that is that while we may seem to agree on particulars as it relates to social and political ethics, the Protestant (specifically the reformed Protestant) does not view political or social ethics the same way as the Roman Catholic, and therefore does not give the same answers as the Roman Catholic.

The Message We Must Proclaim

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) once wrote a series of essays (published in Greg Bahnsen’s Van Til’s Apologetic) where he deals with three characters: Mr. White, Mr. Black and Mr. Gray. Mr. White is the reformed apologist, and Mr. Black is the atheist. Mr. White is attempting to evangelize Mr. Black and explain to him the fullness of the Christian faith, when along comes Mr. Gray (a synthesis of both the believing and non-believing perspective, representative of the Arminian or Roman Catholic apologist) who tries to make an appeal to Mr. Black by granting certain aspects of his nonbelieving perspective. In doing so, he eventually said things that were contradictory to the message Mr. White was attempting to get across.

Van Til’s point was to illustrate that, when you get down to it, Reformed Christians are really presenting a different message than Roman Catholics (or Arminians) and thus there is going to be a clear difficulty in seeking to do apologetics alongside representatives of these groups.

The first and most obvious example is that we present two entirely different Gospels! If we are at an abortion mill, or out witnessing in the streets and someone asks the question, “what must I do to be saved?” the reality is that I am going to give a completely different answer to that question than the Roman Catholic, and as a matter of fact our answers will be explicitly contradictory and antithetical to one another! I am going to preach about a God of grace who can only be known by faith apart from works, whereas the Roman Catholic is going to present a God who really doesn’t want to interact with you directly, and so you must ask Mary or the saints for intercession and hopefully after being baptized you continue to do enough penances so as not to fall out of the state of grace.

This just won’t work.

What we must remember is that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The Gospel is God’s way of changing hearts and minds, and thus the Gospel is our only means to ending abortion, at the personal level and in the eschatological grand scheme of things.

Secondly, what about political engagement and ethics? Although Roman Catholics and Protestants both say that abortion is murder, that does not mean they go about fighting the issue the same way on the political front. As mentioned earlier, thanks to Aquinas the Roman Catholic sees politics as primarily in the realm of nature. To be fair, he believes that the Bible does have some things to say about civil government and ethics, but even these things he wants to synthesize with a theory of natural law. When I refer to natural law here, I specifically refer to the notion that there is a scheme of morality or ethics agreed upon by both Christians and non-Christians, that Biblical revelation is not needed to have an understanding of ethics. The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia says, “Natural Law generically describes ethical theories that determine what is right or wrong on the basis of the common humanity that all human beings share” (pg. 578). What this has led the Roman Catholic to do is try and incorporate pagan philosophies about government and society with his religious commitments.

Much could be said about this topic, but my focus right now will be limited to how this has played out in the fight to end abortion. The Roman Catholic believes in the false notion of “common humanity” in the sense that all human beings basically share certain commitments about ethics. The Biblical view contradicts this, by teaching that though all men are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) there is a great antithesis fixed between believer and unbeliever (Genesis 3:15). What has been the result of Roman Catholic notions of natural law has been a weak, sorrowful Pro-Life movement. The desperate attempt to find some kind of common ground with modern secular humanists has led to compromise after compromise. Heartbeat bills written to excuse murderers from facing punishment. Prominent Pro-Life leader (and Roman Catholic) Kristan Hawkins has even described the mother who murders her child as a second victim! (See my article here for more: https://www.ljramsey.org/p/blind-justice-and-the-pro-life-failure)

The Pro-Life movement is the greatest demonstration that not only does the Roman Catholic offer a different soteriology than the Reformed Protestant, but the Roman Catholic also operates (due to a faulty epistemology) upon a false notion of pretended neutrality and common natural law, that he cannot even engage in politics in the proper fashion.

I am an abortion abolitionist (see The Norman Statement) because I am a Reformed Protestant. I say with Kuyper that there is not a square inch of this universe that does not belong to my Lord Jesus Christ. And so I do not look at the world with a false dualistic dichotomy between nature and grace, but rather I see the revelation of God as being authoritative in all aspects of life. Therefore, I look to the word of God and see what my Lord tells me about equal weights and measures, impartiality in justice and I apply that Biblical teaching to the issue of abortion, and I go forth with the message of salvation in Christ’s name so as to steer hearts towards him. It is with the Bible, Law and Gospel both, that we must engage in politics.

We can all recognize that the rise of secular humanism is a threat, but we should be weary about abandoning our Christian commitments as we fight, lest we abandon the only remedy we have to the culture of death.