Protestantism’s “Alone’s” Versus Rome’s “And’s”

Dr. Robert L. Reymond

As I begin to bring this monograph to a close, I must say, sadly, that where the Holy Scripture and classical Protestantism have placed their solus (“alone”) (see their sola scriptura, sola gratia, solus Christus, sola fide, soli Deo gloria), Roman Catholic theology has continued to place its et (“and”) (recall here its doctrines of Scripture and Tradition as its authority).

Rome’s “And” in the Accomplishment of the Atonement

Rome has placed its “and” in its teaching on salvation when it insists that both God and man play a determining role in the accomplishment of salvation. But the Bible and classical Protestantism teach that Christ’s saving work at Calvary was a “once for all” atoning work which he alone accomplished. Christ’s cross-work satisfied divine justice once and for all with respect to the sin of all those for whom he died, as witnessed by Holy Scripture and by the fact that God raised him from the dead, and it does not require any repetition:

Romans 6:10: “The death he died, he died to sin once for all [ἐφάπαξ, ephapax].”

Hebrews 7:27: “Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day.… He sacrificed for their sins once for all [ἐφάπαξ, ephapax] when he offered himself.”

Hebrews 9:12: “He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all [ἐφάπαξ, ephapax] by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.”

Hebrews 9:25–26, 28: “Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again … now he has appeared once for all (ἅπαξ, hapax] at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself … so Christ was sacrificed once for all [ἅπαξ, hapax] to take away the sins of many people.”

Hebrews 10:10–14: “… we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all [ἐφάπαξ, ephapax] … But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

1 Peter 3:18: “For Christ died for sins once for all [ἅπαξ, hapax], the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”

And the author of Hebrews informs us that once we have received the forgiveness of sins by Christ’s “once for all time sacrifice,” “there is no longer any sacrifice for sins” (Heb 10:18).

Now the Roman Catholic priest can only be a priest either in the order of Aaron or in the order of Melchizedek since the Scriptures recognize no other priestly orders. Which one? Gratian’s Decretum I. xxi and Peter Lombard’s Sentences IV. xxiv. 8–9 declare that the Roman priest serves as a priest in the Aaronic order, as does the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The liturgy of the Church … sees in the priesthood of Aaron and the service of the Levites … a prefiguring of the ordained ministry of the New Covenant.… At the ordination of priests, the Church prays: “Lord … You shared among the sons of Aaron the fullness of their father’s power.” (paragraphs 1541–42)

But then the Roman priest should understand that that priestly order has been superseded by the priestly order of Melchizedek and rendered obsolete (Heb 8:13) by the priestly order of Melchizedek which is founded upon a “better covenant” (Heb 7:22) and “better promises” (Heb 8:6), which introduces a “better hope” (Heb 7:19), and which serves with “better sacrifices” (Heb 9:23) “the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made” (Heb 9:11). About the Aaronic priestly system the author of Hebrews distinctly states:

Hebrews 7:11: “If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood …, why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron?”

Hebrews 8:6–7: “… the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to [the Aaronic ministry] as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one.… For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.”

Hebrews 9:9, 13–14: “… the gifts and sacrifices being offered [in the Aaronic order] were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper … [their offerings made the worshiper only] outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ … cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God.”

Hebrews 10:1, 12, 14: “[The Aaronic sacrifices which can never take away sin, Heb 10:11] can never … make perfect those who draw near to worship.… But when [Christ] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God … because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

In light of these biblical affirmations the Roman priest must face this question, and I am not trying to be cute when I pose it; I am very serious when I ask it: Is the Aaronic “sacrifice” that he makes in the Mass imperfect or perfect? If it is imperfect, then he must be able to explain why he is offering it, since it is incapable of clearing the conscience of the worshiper, can never take away sin, and can never perfect those who attempt to come to God by it? If it is perfect, then he must be able to explain how it is that he, an Aaronic priest, has a perfect sacrifice to offer when Aaron himself, the head of his order, never had such a sacrifice? Moreover, if it is perfect, then he must be able to explain why he needs to keep repeating it? For Christ sat down; his work was done! Why do the Roman priests still stand and offer him?

Should Rome respond to these questions by saying that its priests are also serving in the order of Melchizedek, then it must be said that the Roman priest serves in an earthly order created out of whole cloth that has no scriptural warrant whatsoever. Jesus Christ, being “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens” (Heb 7:26), is the only high priest in the order of Melchizedek, who as such is a priest forever (Heb 5:6; 6:20; 7:3, 17, 21), who possesses an “indestructible life” (Heb 7:16) and a “permanent priesthood” (Heb 7:24), who is “able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb 7:25), and who, unlike the high priests of the Aaronic order, “does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people” since “he sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7:27–28), that is, when “he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb 9:12). In other words, there is no further need for an earthly priesthood to continue to offer a carnal sacrifice to God, either animal or human. And nowhere does Scripture teach that he appointed within the Church a special order of priests to offer him again and again to the Father in and by the Mass. What Christ the heavenly high priest has done is to make his people—all of them—“priests to serve his God and Father” (Rev 1:6; 5:10; 20:6), indeed, he has made them a “holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5) and a “royal priesthood” that they “may declare the praises of him who called [them] out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet 2:9). Such people need no other priest before God than the one high priest Jesus Christ who is the propitiation for their sins and their Advocate before the Father at his right hand (1 John 2:1–2). Finally, if ministers of Jesus Christ have a “priestly duty” in this present age—and they surely do!—it is the “priestly duty” about which Paul writes in Romans 15:16, namely, the “duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (see Isaiah 66:20), which is precisely the one duty which is not listed under the tasks of the priest in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (790). Charles Hodge correctly observes on Romans 15:16:

In this beautiful passage we see the nature of the only priesthood which belongs to the Christian ministry. It is not their office to make atonement for sin, or to offer a propitiatory sacrifice to God, but by the preaching of the gospel to bring men, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, to offer themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. It is well worthy of remark, that amidst the numerous designations of the ministers of the gospel in the New Testament, intended to set forth the nature of their office, they are never officially called priests. This is the only passage in which the term is even figuratively applied to them, and that under circumstances which render its misapprehension impossible. They are not mediators between God and man; they do not offer propitiatory sacrifices. Their only priesthood, as Theophylact says, is the preaching of the gospel, … and their offerings are redeemed and sanctified men, saved by their instrumentality. (Emphasis supplied)¹

Is it any wonder that John Calvin declared that Rome is “attempting something ingenious: to shape one religion out of Christianity and Judaism and paganism [he refers here to the “fiction” of transubstantiation² and the concomitant adoration of created things] by sewing patches together” (Institutes, 4.19.31), and that the unscriptural Roman priesthood as it goes about its offerings of an “unbloody sacrifice” in the myriad Masses it offers daily, blasphemes Christ, suppresses the eternal power of his cross work to save sinners once and for all, wipes out the true and unique death of Christ, robs men of the benefit of his death, and nullifies the true significance of the Lord’s Supper (Institutes, 4.18.2–7).

But in spite of these clear biblical affirmations Rome teaches that the Roman Catholic priest must continually “sacrifice” Christ for sins after baptism in and by the “unbloody sacrifice” of the Mass.³ Moreover, Rome asks its communicants to commit idolatry when it instructs them that they should regard the bread and the wine after their consecration in the Mass as having become God the Son himself and to bow down and worship that which hands have made.⁴ Regarding all such teaching the Scriptures are silent; the Lord’s Supper is a sacramental remembrance, not a sacerdotal reenactment!

Rome’s “And” in the Application of the Atonement

Rome has done the same again when it places its “and” in the sphere of the application of salvation. The Bible teaches that Christ, by his Word and Spirit, applies the benefits of his redemption to his own, but Rome adds the “meritorious” work of Mary, not to mention the supererogatory work of its other saints, to this applicational work of the Godhead. In his papal encyclical Redemptoris Mater issued on March 25, 1987 Pope John Paul II teaches that Mary, having been assumed bodily into heaven and being absolutely pure and sinless (1) cooperates in her Son’s work of redemption, (2) unceasingly intercedes for believers and for the world,⁵ (3) protects God’s people and the nations, and (4) reigns as Queen of the Universe. He writes:

Mary’s motherhood continues unceasingly in the Church as the mediation which intercedes, and the Church expresses her faith in this truth by invoking Mary “under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediator.” (39)

We believe that the Most Holy Mother of God, the new Eve, the Mother of the Church, carries on in heaven her maternal role with regard to the members of Christ, cooperating in the birth and development of divine life in the souls of the redeemed. (47)

She is also the one who, precisely as the “handmaid of the Lord,” cooperates unceasingly with the work of salvation accomplished by Christ, her Son. (49)

Mary, though conceived and born without the taint of sin, participated in a marvelous way in the sufferings of her divine Son, in order to be Coredemptrix of humanity.

In this encyclical, by giving to Mary the titles he does, from Mediatrix to Morning Star, from Most Holy Mother of God⁶ to Mother of the Church, from Advocate to Adjutrix, from Protector to Perfect Model, Pope John Paul II has taken the attributes and accomplishments rightly attributable only to the Father, to Christ, and to the Holy Spirit and has applied them to the sinful creature. Nevertheless, he believes that this emphasis on Marian devotion and on “Mary’s role in the work of salvation” will help the divided churches on their path toward unity:

By a more profound study of both Mary and the Church, clarifying each by the light of the other, Christians who are eager to do what Jesus tells them—as their Mother recommends (cf. Jn. 2:5)—will be able to go forward on “this pilgrimage of faith.” Mary, who is still the model of this pilgrimage, is to lead them to the unity which is willed by their one Lord and so much desired by those who are attentively listening to what “the Spirit is saying to the Churches” today (Rev. 2:7, 11, 17). (30)

Moreover, in the conclusion of his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) Pope John Paul II calls upon all the bishops of the Catholic Church to entrust themselves, not to Jesus Christ, but to Mary, “the Mother who obtains for us divine mercy” (para. 118, 120)!

The reality, however, is that there is no biblical warrant for such Marian devotion anywhere in Scripture. Nowhere does the Bible exalt Mary in the manner that Rome does. In fact, Mary needed a Saviour (Luke 1:47), as does all mankind. And the Gospel record suggests that she erred at times when she attempted to inject herself into her Son’s ministry, for which Jesus always firmly reproved her (Luke 2:48–50; John 2:3–4; Matt 12:49–50; Mark 3:34–35). According to the Matthean and Markan passages just cited, our Lord, upon hearing that his mother and brothers were calling for him, pointed to his disciples and declared: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” In Luke 8:21 he declared: “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.” When a woman on another occasion said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” he expressed the same sentiment: “On the contrary [Μενοῦν, Menoun], blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:27–28). By these declarations Jesus implies that Mary’s physical relationship to him as his biological mother, while not unimportant to him, was not all-important either. His disciples’ doing the will of God, that is, hearing and obeying God’s word, was what ultimately mattered to him, for such submission to God places one in Christ’s spiritual family—a family that transcends any and every earthly familial relationship. His precious disciples Christ loved, cherished and honored as his “family” above even his biological family, including (at that time) Mary his mother. Which is just to say that his disciples comprise the only “family” within mankind that Jesus recognizes.

Moreover, Rome’s idolatrous view of Mary is anything but a unifying feature in its theology. To the contrary, its unbiblical exaltation of Mary continues to be one of the major blocks to reunification of the church as it diminishes the uniqueness of Christ’s saving work, weakens the sense of immediate access to Christ that is every Christian’s birthright, and undermines the Pauline solus Christus and sola fide of justification. By its exaltation of Mary the Roman Catholic Church makes itself the largest cult in Christendom—the Marian cult.

Rome’s “And” in Its Ecclesiology

Rome has done the same again when it teaches that the proper object of saving faith is Christ and the Roman church (which it would appear for most Catholics becomes faith in the Roman church and its sacraments). William F. Lynch, S.J., who describes the uniqueness of Roman Catholicism precisely in terms of its perception of the Roman church as the on-going incarnation of Christ, writes that “the Church claims resolutely, scandalously, to be Christ Himself.”⁷ Joseph Ratzinger speaks of the Roman church as “a single subject with Christ.”⁸ “For the Catholic,” Richard John Neuhaus writes, “faith in Christ and faith in the Church are one act of faith.”⁹ And the Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts that “Christ and his Church … together make up the “whole Christ” (Christus totus).”¹⁰ Accordingly, Friedrich G. E. Schleiermacher, professor of theology at the University of Berlin who became the “father of liberal theology”, rightly observed many years ago: “For Protestants the individual’s relationship to the Church depends upon a relationship to Jesus Christ, whereas in Catholicism the reverse is true.”¹¹ This is just to say that, according to Rome, to have implicit faith that whatever the church teaches is true and to submit to its teaching, even though Scripture is silent on or opposed to such teaching and even though one may not even know what the church teaches, is to have explicit faith in Jesus Christ. Rome urges its faithful that they need not fear committing themselves with implicit faith to the church’s teachings since the church’s Magisterium cannot err in matters necessary to salvation because, as the continuing “whole Christ,” it is being guided by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, whatever dogma it proclaims, even if that dogma cannot be found in the written Word of God, should still be accepted as a sure oracle of God.

Such teaching is erroneous in the extreme.¹² The Scriptures teach that the church in all its teaching must be subject to the written Word of God and that the Holy Spirit guides the church only by means of the written Word (John 15:12–15; 1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Tim. 3:15–4:2). This means that the church, if it makes its sole appeal to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, cannot safely go its own way without the written Word. John Calvin, the sixteenth century Reformer, warned against this isolated appeal to the Holy Spirit as a colossal error that has done great harm to the church:

… it is easy to conclude how wrong our opponents act when they boast of the Holy Spirit solely to commend with his name strange doctrines foreign to God’s Word—while the Spirit wills to be conjoined with God’s Word by an indissoluble bond, and Christ professes this concerning him when he promises the Spirit to his church … [Christ] forbade anything to be added to his Word or taken away from it. It is this inviolable decree of God and of the Holy Spirit which our foes are trying to set aside when they pretend that the church is ruled by the Spirit apart from the Word.¹³

Rome grounds these teachings in its theological extrapolation from the biblical metaphor of the church as the “body of Christ” with Christ as its “head” and the Pope as the vicar of Christ on earth so that the church is objectively the mystical prolongation of the Incarnation and as such has Christ’s authority to issue its Roma locuta, causa finita est—“Rome has spoken, the matter is settled”—in doctrine. Hence for Rome the church is the proper object of faith. The New Testament, however, employs more than eighty metaphors for the church,¹⁴ and the burden of proof rests upon Rome to show that this image is the one image among them that is to be construed not metaphorically but literally. Moreover, in the New Testament the church always preaches Christ and never self-reflectively itself (see, for example, John 1:12; 3:16; Acts 5:42; 8:5; 9:20, 22; 18:5, 28; 26:22–23; 28:23, 31; Rom 10:13; 1 Cor 12:3; Col 1:28), that is to say, the church’s gospel is always theocentric and christo-centric and never ecclesiocentric. In the New Testament it is always Christ, never the church, who is the single subject of salvific activities: it is he who loved (Eph 5:2), he who died for (Rom 5:6), he who gave himself for (Tit 2:14), he who suffered for (1 Pet 2:21), he who redeemed (Gal 3:13), he who quickens (John 5:21), he who washes (Rev 1:5), he who grants repentance to (Acts 5:31), he who gives eternal life to (John 10:28), he who gives peace to (John 14:27), and he who nourishes and cherishes (Eph 5:29) the church. In the New Testament the church’s call to faith is always a summons to trust in Christ as Messiah and Lord, as Redeemer and Savior (Acts 2:21; Rom 10:13). Never does the New Testament church in its proclamation self-reflectively represent itself in these roles as the object of saving faith.¹⁵ Indeed, faith itself in Christ is never represented in the New Testament as the gift of the church but as the gift of God (Eph 2:8–9; Phil 1:29). Finally, in the New Testament “all authority” has been given, not to the church, but to Christ (Matt 28:19), and the church is to be subject to him as he has revealed himself through the writings of his apostles as authoritative teachers of doctrine. One must conclude with sadness that Rome’s “high” ecclesiology, created in the interest of establishing its ecclesial stability, authority, and unshakeability, has correspondingly resulted in a “low” soteriology.

Rome’s “And” in Its Eschatology

Rome teaches that the great mass of Christians, who are only imperfectly “justified” in this life, dying in communion with the church, go to purgatory after death where they “undergo purification [by suffering in the fires of purgatory], so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 1030).¹⁶ Rome’s teaching on purgatory, based as we have already noted, on 2 Maccabees 12:46 and a very strained exegesis of 1 Corinthians 3:15, 1 Peter 1:7 and Jude 22–23, may be found in seed form in Tertullian where prayers for the dead are mentioned, in Origen who speaks of a purification by fire at the end of the world by which all men and angels are to be restored to favor with God, and in Augustine who did express doubt about some aspects of it. But it was specifically Gregory the Great who “reigned” on the papal throne from A.D. 590 to 604 who “brought the doctrine into shape and into such connection with the discipline of the church, as to render it the effective engine of government and income, which it has ever since remained.”¹⁷ It was finally formulated into and proclaimed an article of faith at the Councils of Florence (1439–1445) and Trent (1545–1563).

Rome also teaches, because it believes that “a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins [sic!] in purgatory and those who are still pilgrims on earth” (emphasis supplied),¹⁸ that Christians still living on earth can aid sufferers in purgatory to get to heaven by obtaining “indulgences” (temporal remissions of sin before God) on their behalf.¹⁹ An elaborate doctrinal scheme underlies this teaching. Because the pope, it is said, holds “keys” given to him by Christ, these keys are obviously keys to something. To what? Rome teaches that the church is in possession of a “treasury of supererogatory merit” (thesaurus supererogationis meritorum) consisting of the infinite worth of Christ’s redemptive work, “the prayers and good works [of supererogation] of the Blessed Virgin Mary” which are “truly immense, unfathomable, and even pristine in their value before God,” as well as “the prayers and good works [of supererogation] of all the saints” who by their good works “attained their own salvation and at the same time cooperated in saving their brothers in the unity of the Mystical Body” (see Pope Paul VI’s Indulgentiarum doctrina, 5).²⁰ According to Romish dogma the pope has the authority to declare the terms of indulgences, and in exchange for the faithful Catholic’s doing what the indulgence requires of him the pope dispenses out of this “treasury of the Church,” through the administration of the priests, the merits of Christ, of Mary and of the saints in behalf of and for the benefit of loved ones suffering in purgatory. This teaching points up as plainly as any teaching could that Rome teaches that salvation is grounded in Christ’s merit plus Mary’s and the saints’ good works which also have merit before God, plus their own expiatory suffering in purgatory—all the expression of its philosophy of the analogia entis in the sphere of soteriology.

With respect to the indulgence system itself, Philip Schaff, professor of church history at Union Seminary, New York, notes in his discussion of Rome’s sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages that the expression plena or plenissima remissio peccatorum (“full remission of sins”) occurs again and again in papal bulls granting such indulgences.²¹ Such indulgences, confined mainly to the Germanic peoples of Europe, were granted for all sorts of purposes: for crusades against the Turks, for the building of churches, hospitals, and bridges, and for the repair of dikes. Among the more famous indulgences for the building of German churches were those for the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Constance, the building of the Dominican church in Augsburg and the St. Annaberg church, and the restoration of the Cathedral of Treves. And there were the indulgences granted for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In this last case, according to Martin Luther, Tetzel the indulgence hawker, by the authority of Leo X, offered indulgences for the “complete absolution and remission of all sins,” both for the living and the dead. Tetzel even declared that no sin—not even the sin of violating the Virgin Mary, if such a thing were possible, or a sin that one was planning to commit—was too great to be covered by the indulgence! Needless to say, such preaching led to great licence.

Always one-third to one-half of all indulgence money collected in these nations—from Switzerland and Austria to Norway and Sweden—would go to Rome. These vast sums of money were handled by the powerful Banking House of Fugger for a five-percent commission for changing the money, transmitting the money to Rome, and overseeing the money chests there. And this loathsome practice was carried out in spite of the fact that Peter, Rome’s purported “first pope,” had declared to his readers: “… it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life … but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Pet 1:18–19). True, the Vatican’s quite recent deliverance on indulgences, its Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, declares that the church will no longer sell indulgences as it did in the Middle Ages; now Catholics are going to have to earn them by their good works! This is less crass, perhaps, but hardly an improvement! It is still legalism.

Linked to the matter of indulgences is the related matter of the so-called Christian relics that also became a major source of income for those who collected them. And special indulgences were granted to those who collected these relics for the people’s veneration. With the collection, for example, of the 8,133 relics at Halle billions of days of indulgence were associated. To be precise, the indulgences granted for the veneration of these relics were good for pardons totaling 39,245,120 years, and 220 days of suffering in purgatory! Even Wittenberg, Martin Luther’s own city of professorial labor, had become a major relic center due to the zeal of Luther’s protector, Duke Frederick, Elector of Saxony:

… Saxony had collected almost 18,000 relics, ranging from a twig from Moses’ burning bush to a tear that Jesus shed when he wept over Jerusalem. Money from this traffic in relics provided the endowment for the University of Wittenberg. Pilgrims came from miles around, for by making the proper prayers and offerings, one could earn indulgences which would cancel out 1,902,202 years in purgatory.²²

In one of the best known of his treatises, “An Admonition, Showing the Advantages which Christendom Might Derive from an Inventory of Relics,”²³ John Calvin, endlessly and monotonously to accomplish his desired effect, enumerates, out of the four thousand dioceses, thirty thousand abbacies, forty thousand monasteries, and the multitude of parishes and chapels that existed then throughout Europe, the relics of which he was aware in only six or so German cities, three or so cities in Spain, fifteen in Italy, and between thirty or forty in France which were exposed for the veneration of the people. Since this treatise is not readily available to the Christian reading public, permit me to list some of the relics he mentions. With respect to Christ these relics included his teeth, his hair, his sandals, and his blood, not to mention the manger in which he was laid at birth, the swaddling clothes in which he was wrapped, the cradle in which his mother later laid him, the altar on which he was circumcised, and his foreskin—displayed at three different sites simultaneously (!); a picture of him when he was twelve years old, a pillar against which he leaned while disputing in the Temple, the water pots employed in his first miracle including some of the wine he created on that occasion, five pieces of the bread he created when he fed the five thousand, and the earth on which he stood when he raised Lazarus from the dead; the branch he purportedly carried when he rode into Jerusalem, the tail of the ass on which he rode, the table of the last Passover, some of the bread he broke on that occasion, the knife which was used to cut up the Paschal Lamb, two cups, one in a church near Lyons and one in an Augustinian monastery, both purported to have contained the sacrament of his blood, three dishes—at Rome, at Genoa, and at Arles—all three purported to have been the dish in which the Paschal Lamb was placed, the linen towel—one at Rome and another at Acqs, the latter with the mark of Judas’ foot on it—with which he wiped the apostles’ feet; the money which Judas received to betray Jesus and the steps of Pilate’s judgment-seat (the steps Luther climbed); his cross the fragments of which if gathered together, Calvin estimated, would require more than three hundred men to carry; the tablet which Pilate ordered affixed over the cross—but displayed both at Rome and at Tholouse simultaneously; fourteen nails purported to be the nails driven into his hands and feet, the soldier’s spear—but displayed at Rome, also at Paris, yet again at Saintonge, and still a fourth at Selve; the crown of thorns, a third part of which is at Paris, three thorns of which are at Rome, one at Vincennes, five at Bourges, three at Besançon, and three at Köningsberg, an unknown number in Spain, and twelve in almost as many cities in France; the robe in which Pilate clothed Christ located in at least four different sites; the reed placed in his hand as a mock scepter, the dice which were used to gamble for his robe but in appearance resembling more what we know today than what was known in Roman times, and the sponge containing vinegar mixed with gall which was offered to him at the cross; the napkin wrapped around his head in burial—but on display in eight different cities simultaneously, and a piece of the broiled fish Peter offered him after his resurrection, not to mention the numerous claims of possessing his footprints as well as crucifixes that grew beards, that spoke, and that shed tears.

With regard to Mary, two churches claimed to possess the body of her mother, while three churches claimed to possess one of her mother’s hands. The churches displayed Mary’s hair, her combs, pieces of her wardrobe, four pictures of her purported to have been painted by Luke, a very valuable wedding ring purported to have been Mary’s, and even vials of her milk, with so many towns, so many monasteries, so many nunneries laying claim here that, as Calvin writes, “had she continued to nurse during her whole lifetime, she scarcely could have furnished the quantity which is exhibited.”

Six different churches claimed to possess the finger John the Baptist used when he pointed his disciples to Christ, while others claimed to possess his sandals, his girdle, the altar on which he purportedly prayed in the desert, and the sword that was used to cut off his head.

With regard to the apostles, the church at Lyons claimed to possess the twelve combs of the twelve apostles. Half of Peter’s and Paul’s bodies was said to be at St. Peter’s, half at St. Paul’s in Rome, while the heads of both were purportedly located in yet a third church. This did not stop other cities from claiming to have Peter’s cheekbone, many bones belonging to both, and one claimed to have Paul’s shoulder. Rome claimed to have the sword Peter used to cut off Malchus’ ear, the “throne” on which he sat, the robe in which he was attired when he officiated at and the altar at which he said mass, the chain with which he was bound, and the pillar on which he was beheaded. Regarding the rest of the apostles, the church of Tholouse claimed to have six of their bodies, namely, those of James the Greater, James the Less, Andrew, Philip, Simeon, and Jude. But Andrew had another body at Melfi, Philip and James the Less had each another body at Rome, and Simeon and Jude had second bodies at St. Peter’s. Bartholomew’s body was exposed both at Naples and at Rome simultaneously. Three different churches claimed to have the body of Matthias, with a fourth claiming to possess his head and an arm. Most were purported to have body parts on display throughout the realms.²⁴

The church even boasted of possessing relics of an angel—the dagger and shield of the angel Michael!

I will not weary the reader any longer by detailing an account of the thousands of other relics to which Rome laid claim—the Ark of the Covenant and Aaron’s rod, the bones of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the bodies of the Magi and of the Bethlehem “Innocents,” the body of Stephen and those of other lesser known martyrs—only some of which Calvin methodically itemized in turn. It only remains for me to remind him, first, that Rome instructed the common people in Calvin’s time that they should make their pilgrimages to these relic sites and revere these relics and employ them in their approach to and worship of God, and, second, that nothing has really changed since Calvin’s day. For example, one is still shown today in the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome the chain that allegedly bound Peter; one is still shown in the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome the Scala Sancta that Christ allegedly climbed in his trial before Pilate (this church also claims to possess the heads of Peter and Paul); one is still shown and allowed to kiss in the Santa Chiara Cathedral in Naples the alleged vial of the martyred San Gennaro’s powdered blood that supposedly “liquifies” every first Saturday in May and on September 19, the saint’s feast day; one may still visit the “weeping” Madonnas in Civitavecchia, Italy, in Benin, France, in Rincon, Puerto Rico, in Wicklow, Ireland, and in scores and scores of other places, and seek miraculous healings from these pilgrimages. Little wonder that the unthinking masses adore them all as miracle workers and mediators between God and man, thereby diminishing Christ’s sole mediatorship between God and man!

Protestants quite rightly reject entirely Rome’s doctrines of purgatory, indulgences, and relics as being unscriptural and dishonoring to God. To suggest that a finite sinful creature could by his suffering for a finite number of years expiate the infinite disvalue of his sin against the one living, true, and holy God or could purchase indulgences for his own or another’s sins is a pernicious error of massive proportions. Not only is it “another one of those foreign growths that has fastened itself like a malignant tumor upon the theology of the Roman Catholic Church,”²⁵ but also it is a doctrinal promulgation devised in the interest of sustaining the Roman Catholic priestcraft and the entire indulgence system of that church which is one of its chief sources of income.²⁶

Continue…The Conflict Must Continue for the True Gospel’s Sake!

---

Reymond, Robert L. 2001. The Reformation’s Conflict with Rome: Why It Must Continue. Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications.

1. Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, reprint of revised 1886 ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 439.

2. On the doctrine of transubstantiation, see the Fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215. For medieval development, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, and the liturgical Feast of Corpus Christi.

3. Council of Trent, Session 22, Chapter 2 (September 1562), on the sacrifice of the Mass.

4. Council of Trent, Session 13, Chapters 4–5 (October 1551); Westminster Confession of Faith, XXIX/vi.

5. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater (March 25, 1987), Vatican.va, paras. 39, 47, 49.

6. Ibid., para. 30.

7. William F. Lynch, “The Catholic Idea,” in The Idea of Catholicism, ed. Walter Burghardt and William F. Lynch, expanded ed. (Cleveland: World, 1964), 59.

8. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (London: Burns & Oates, 1969), 179.

9. Richard John Neuhaus, “The Catholic Difference,” in Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, ed. Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus (Dallas: Word, 1995), 216.

10. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Ligouri, MO: Ligouri, 1994), para. 795.

11. Friedrich G. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 103.

12. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), “Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France,” sec. 6.

13. Ibid., IV.8.13.

14. Paul Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960).

15. On the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed, see Creeds of Christendom, ed. Philip Schaff, and compare with NT language in Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13.

16. Creed of the Council of Trent (1564), in The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H.J. Schroeder (Rockford, IL: TAN, 1978), 353.

17. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, n.d.), 3:770.

18. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 1471–79.

19. Loraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), 264–65.

20. On the Jubilee indulgence and treasury of merit, see Boniface VIII, Bull Unigenitus Dei Filius (1343); also Clement VI and Paul II in Documents of the Christian Church, ed. Henry Bettenson.

21. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprint of 1910 ed.), 756–57.

22. Clyde L. Manschreck, ed., A History of Christianity: Readings in the History of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 2, 5.

23. John Calvin, “An Admonition, Showing the Advantages which Christendom Might Derive from an Inventory of Relics,” in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, trans. Henry Beveridge, ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 287–341.

24. Jean Ferrand, cited in Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 6.

25. R. Laird Harris, Fundamental Protestant Doctrines (booklet), V, 7.

26. On Rome’s teaching on purgatory and its psychological appeal, see discussion in Boettner, Roman Catholicism, 272–75.