‘Blessed assurance’? Sadly not for Catholics

In my conversations with Catholic friends, I have found it useful to reference the five “magnetic points” expounded by British theologian Daniel Strange. There are five fundamentals that all human beings are looking for and to which they are magnetically drawn. Because of their universal presence in people’s lives, they can be seen in Catholics.

According to Strange, each religion responds in various ways to these five questions. Their responses are points of attraction for people to be drawn to them. The questions are:

1. The search for totality: a way to connect to reality (see this article here)
2. The need for a norm: a way to live (see this article here)
3. The yearning for deliverance: a way out of oppression (see this article here)
4. The sense of destiny: a way to control
5. The reality of a higher power: a way to measure up to the supernatural

Every religion, Roman Catholicism included, provides improbable and insufficient answers to the magnetic points. The gospel subverts these answers and fulfills the magnetic points. Let’s talk about the fourth magnetic point of the list: the sense of destiny.

When we engage our Roman Catholic friends on the issue of our destiny, there are two frameworks that are at work in their hearts. On the one hand, the traditional teaching that was presented at the Council of Trent (1545–1563) about the impossibility of any assurance. This belief scared Catholics because it gave the idea that there is no sure destiny to look forward to. On the other hand, the present-day emphasis on universalism that stemmed from the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) whereby hope is given that in the end all will be saved. Our Catholic friends live between these two worlds: absence of assurance and confidence in an unwarranted certainty.

As far as the lack of assurance is concerned, the “anathemas” (curses) of the Council of Trent are addressed against those who upheld the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone. Here is what Trent (Sixth Session, 1547) says: “Canon XV. If anyone saith, that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema.”

“Canon XVI. If anyone saith, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he has learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema.”

Trent shaped its doctrine of salvation around a complicated sacramental system administered by the Roman Church and grounded it on the need for our works to co-operate with God’s grace. Since no one accomplishes what he/she is supposed to do, certainty about salvation is unattainable. Purgatory was meant to be the intermediate state where most people would end up.

Taking a different direction, Vatican II re-launched a more “catholic” (i.e. universal) view of salvation. The Council taught that each and every person is somehow inhabited by grace; religions are positively viewed as legitimate pointers to salvation; peoples of other faiths pray to the same God (e.g. Lumen Gentium 16). Basically, Rome today stresses the fact that we are all “children of God” because we are human beings. A false certainty is given that God will ultimately save, regardless of one’s own faith.

These two worlds may seem contradictory to evangelicals (indeed they are contradictory!), but they make sense in the Roman (no assurance) and Catholic (unwarranted hope) system. Roman Catholicism swings between the two.

What is at stake is the lack of the Biblical gospel in the Roman Catholic account of it. Rome does not believe that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone based on the work of Christ alone. Only if we trust Him can we be assured of our destiny, not because of anything we have done, but because of what He did for us!