A couple of theological matters

Andrew over at Theology of Andrew thinks and reads a lot. Sometimes his reading troubles him as was the case in a recent article by William Webster.

I won't get into the debate because I think much of it is just wheel spinning. Webster is correct in concluding that the argument for much Catholic doctrine is troublesome if you do not wish to accept the authority of the Catholic Church. But surely that is not something we didn't know already.

On the flip side, he is faced with two, I believe, insurmountable problems. The first is that sola scriptura is not scriptural. The second is that sola fide is empty. By the time he and others have finished making the qualifications  necessary to defend it from the obvious objections, the concept is drained of any meaningful content.

But there are two aspects of the Webster article that are worth commenting on

Godomatic
The fundamental problem I have with all theological argument of this sort is that God Himself gets swept under the concept of God. God is a being who exists and is free. He is not and cannot be enclosed by our concepts of Him. I don't mean some bit of trite negative theology by this but a  commonplace point that could just as easily be made about my friend Ellen. No matter how much I think I know about Ellen, she can still act contrary to what I expect of her. Too much theology reduces God to a mechanism, a sort of Godomatic.

To believe in God in any meaningful way is to accept that He is a real being who will decide what He decides. All this thinking about what is or is not justification runs out at some point and we turn to God and acknowledge our dependence on Him. For what is impossible for us is not impossible for Him and He will save whom He will. That may even include a shocking number of rich people for all we know.

The Mary conundrum
Webster says this in his discussion about the Assumption of Mary:

This Church is claiming the authority to bind men’s souls eternally by the promulgation of doctrines such as he Assumption of Mary that have neither scriptural nor traditional support based solely on her own supposed authority. Certainly there are many, many Roman Catholics who though they have never been formally excommunicated are nonetheless informally in that state since they do doubt and even deny certain dogmas and are thereby guilty of heresy.

I know this will trouble many people on my behalf, but I think the really telling thing about the doctrines about Mary is how little difference they make to Christology. They, in fact, make none at all.

If Mary was assumed after her death into heaven does that make her Christ's equal? No it doesn't. Is there any reason to believe that God couldn't have caused the Assumption? No there isn't. There is no reason to believe he had to do it either but he could have done it and nothing about our relationship with Christ changes if he did.

How hard is that to accept? To meet the letter of the law, that is all you have to do. You do not have to have a particular devotion to Mary to be a Catholic. All you have to do is accept these doctrines as true.

The Immaculate Conception is the same. God gave Mary a free choice. She could have said "no".

And here it strikes me that the hard argument is on the other foot. God chose to ask Mary to help him implement his plan to redeem humanity. The scriptural evidence for that is considerably plainer and more compelling than many other more easily accepted doctrines. And once we accept that, it's a little hard to believe that Mary is just an ordinary human being. Human and nothing but human to be sure but there are special human beings and she is undoubtedly one of the more special ones in God's eye.

Ora pro nobis
 To  say the Hail Mary is to do two things. It is to repeat what is in Luke and then it it is to ask Mary to pray for us much as I might ask my friend to pray for me. To ask a particular saint, such as Mary, to do this is to line ourselves up with a particular set of values that are connected with that saint; either you seek the particular virtues and graces this saint exemplified or you see some similarity between their trials and yours.

People who have a concern with this are often concerned that doing this is to step out onto a slippery slope at the bottom of which lies idolatry. And they are right, it's something that needs to be done with extreme care.

And that is the other thing I find odd about Webster's response. He ignores the more salient point. The Catholics who are informally excommunicated are far less likely to be the ones who hesitate at the doctrine of the Assumption but rather those who don't hesitate. This is an issue where we should proceed with doubt and hesitation. Not doubt about what the church teaches but rather in figuring out what it means to our life and if and how we will change our behaviour as a consequence. It's not my business to say who exactly has or has not plunged in too deeply but if I was going to look anywhere for the informally excommunicated, I'd look among those who are always trying to push the parallel between Mary and Jesus as far as they can.