Author: JenniferFitz

Book Review: The Salvation Controversy by James Akin

The Salvation Controversy

by James Akin

Catholic Answers 2001

 

So I used to have this bad habit of making jokes about double predestination (gross violation of my own combox rules, you might notice) . . .  until the other week when a pair of friends called me on it using the highly effective Stony Silence method.  Point taken.  And that was the week that The Salvation Controversy turned up on the Catholic Company’s list of blogger-review product choices.   What with the promised Tiptoe Through The TULIP, how could I say no?

Verdict: Excellent book – highly recommended.  But only if you are the intended audience.  (Otherwise you might be kind of lost and bored – it’s a soteriology book.  And yeah, I had to look up that word too.)  So here’s a synopsis of what is in the book and who is the audience, to help you decide if this is for you.

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Contents: The book is about everything that has to do with what Catholics believe about salvation, and how that stacks up to common protestant views of salvation.  (“Soteriology” is the branch of theology devoted to the doctrine of salvation.  Per the glossary in the back of the book, verbatim.)

The first several chapters lay the groundwork, looking at what the Bible says (and hence, what Catholics believe) about the when’s and how’s of salvation.  Key concept: the word “salvation” refers to more than just a single instant when your eternal fate is sealed.   So when debating “salvation” it is important to make sure you know what kind of salvation you are debating.

→ These chapters are essential.  Jimmy Akin is notoriously meticulous in how he examines a topic a builds arguments.  If you jump ahead to the the really gory stuff – indulgences, predestination, faith-versus-works – without reading the front chapters, you will be lost.  Maybe without realizing. Gotta read those laying-the-groundwork chapters.  (If you are a catechist, you should read those chapters just for an “Aha!” about what it is Catholic believe about salvation.)

After these preliminaries, there are chapters tackling all the hot topics:

-Penance

-Indulgences

-Predestination (per Calvinism)

-Faith versus Works

-The Joint Statement between Lutherans and Catholics on salvation

And then it ends there.  This is a handbook; no great thesis being pushed, just a thorough explanation of the issues at hand.  In addition to the glossary, there is an index to all the scriptural citations, and a topical index.

The Reading Level: Jimmy Akin writes very clearly, and in ordinary language.  Nothing at all like some horrid paper you had to read for an upper-level elective.  BUT, he uses big words where necessary.  I had to look up maybe four big words (I lost my list – I was keeping one for you) towards the beginning of the book, mostly ones I more or less knew what they meant, but wanted to make certain.  There’s a glossary at the back of the book to help you keep your vocabulary straight.

The arguments are not difficult, but they are very precise, and laid out very carefully.  Which means you need to pay attention and follow them step-by-step, both within and across chapters.  At times this requires patience.  Definitely not a three-quick-bullet-points approach to apologetics.

Pre-requisites: First, you need to have a basic understanding of the christian faith – that Jesus died to save us from our sins so we could live with Him forever in Heaven, all that. In no way is this an “introduction to Christianity” book.  Just not.

Secondly, you need to be familiar with at least the broad lines of debate between protestants and catholics.  Jimmy Akin is essentially walking into the midst of the argument, holding up his hands and saying, “Ho now guys, let’s get our terms straight, and then see how much we really disagree after all”.  If you haven’t been immersed in these topics already, I think you might get lost.

And finally, you will want to be knowledgeable of the Bible.  All arguments revolve around the study of scripture, and I expect you’d get exhausted if you had to go read all the citations for the first time.  You should be at that point where when you read, “It says in Romans 2:6 . . .”, you can at least nod and have a rough idea of what Romans is all about, even though how many of us go around thinking, ‘Oh yeah, 2:6 . . . oooh . . .”.  Maybe you need to go back and re-read, but the epistles should not be new material for you.  (The word “epistle” should not be new to you.)

→  FYI Catholic Answers and the Enjoy Institute are both excellent sources for entry-level materials if you are just wading into the world of apologetics for the first time.  Come back to this book later.

Would a Protestant Hate This Book? Mmn, I’m not sure.  I was tempted to ask some friends to test-read for me, but in the end I didn’t.  As apologists go – apologists are notoriously snarky and triumphant – Jimmy Akin is the picture of charity.  He does indulge in the periodic “Catholics are just using the words of scripture” observation, which is of course very encouraging for Catholics, but if you were a sensitive non-catholic, that could rub the wrong way.  (Unless you happened to agree with the catholic position on the particular point in question.)

To the best of my knowledge, Akin is very careful to state protestant beliefs accurately, and never to argue against a straw man.  If anyone finds otherwise, I would like to hear about it.  (Obviously in a short book he isn’t going to address every possible position on the various controversies. But my impression is that he builds fair arguments.)

→ Which makes sense, since one of his goals is to demonstrate that the catholic position is not necessarily an impossible leap for assorted protestants.  So if you are a non-catholic trying to figure out “Is my position on salvation consistent with catholic teaching?”, this is the manual to assist you. [Good news: the odds are in your favor.]

Conclusion: This boy is not leaving my shelf.  Immensely useful if you are ready to tackle the material.  Clear, concise, well-explained, and covering material that was new to me.  Due for a periodic re-read, because there’s no way I mastered everything on the first read-through.

(→  Luckily I lost my original copy for a while and had to buy a second, so I do have a loaner available for my handful of real-life friends who fit the target audience.)

Not a beginner book, but if you are looking for a very approachable take on advanced-intermediate, this one is superb.  I give it a firm ‘buy’ recommend if this is the topic you want to study.

Time for Silence

(From this morning’s first reading).  That time is upon us again.   Hands have gone AWOL, and typing is right out.  My review of The Salvation Controversy is written and awaiting a final edit with hyperlinks, so I will get that up when I can.  (Update: It’s up!) Otherwise, we’re on blog silence.

Update 10/14/10 – hands are 98% better, so long as I take it easy on them.  Yay.  But not typing much these days, still need to limit that.  Foot, btw, is still doing its wonky thing.  See doc again Tues for new ideas.  Meanwhile, school has never been better.  No really.  Turns it out homeschooling works better if you both stay *home*, and do *school*.  Go figure.

Praying for a Miraculous Cure . . .

. . . of my ability to manage paperwork.

Not kidding.  Not being cute or flippant.  Totally mean it, have totally prayed for it, and promised God that if He came through, I would not forget where my help came from nor fail to give credit.

Because yeah, it’s that desperate.   I am no star pupil in the housekeeping department, but the other kinds of messes I can more or less manage, if only spasmodically.  Papers have me stumped.  Totally blown away.

And yes, I am an accountant.  I love love accounting theory.  Give me some sordid out-of-balance problem, and I am all over it like a little financial P.I.  Tell my you need xyz report from some bizarre, disobedient accounting software, and I will find a way to give you your data.   I even — sit down for this — *enjoy* doing my taxes.  In fact my tax file looks pretty good.

–> It’s all the other papers that are killing me.

So anyway, that’s what I’m praying for these days.  And working on from my end.  So far God has helped me move a few little rolling-hills at the foot of the mountain, which I take to be a good start.  But I had to post here as part of the bargain.  So that if one day I’m this super amazing organized lady with beautiful files and a shiny desk-top, you can remind me that it was through no talent of my own that I got to be that way.

Review – St. Francis DVD

DVD Review: St. Francis (2002 – English version distributed by Ignatius Press).

I received this DVD as part of the Tiber River blogger-review program; when I realized that I absolutely could not stand the film, I e-mailed our longsuffering review-program director for guidance. He pointed out that his army of bloggers is hired to post honest reviews, not marketing copy. Well I hate posting bad reviews, but I’ve got my orders, so here goes:

First of all, you should know that the film is really very beautiful. Lovely medieval sets, sweeping vistas of Italian countryside, fun being had in the costuming department. I am not qualified to give you a historical-accuracy rating on those details, but certainly as a lay-viewer I felt happily immersed in turn-of-13th century Assisi. So I really wanted to like this film.

I tracked along with the director’s artistic-license version of St. Francis’s early life until we got to the battle between Assisi and Perugia. Which, in this version of events, is not merely a battle between two cities, with Francis as a would-be knight. Instead, we have a worker’s uprising in Assisi, with Francis as a proto-Marxist, encouraging his father’s employees to abandon the cloth-works and fight for freedom against their noble oppressors.

Mmn, I dunno.  The truth is I know very little about 12th and 13th century Italian city-states.

–> In researching some Francis-biographies to fact-check later scenes, I did find instances where a scene that played as melodrama in the film was in fact taken from the historical record. But I was unable to find anything corroborating the early-revolutionary take on the the Assisi-Perugia battle. If someone can point me the appropriate source, I would be most grateful.

But I let that go until Francis showed up in prison. Now again, I could be missing sources in my fact-checking. But the accounts I have read (from contemporary-to-him and contemporary-to-me biographies), tell of Francis being taken prisoner in Perugia, where he spends a year until his father ransoms him. During which time there are some stories of him cheerfully encouraging the other captured knights, and befriending one particularly surly knight. It’s all very . . . Inquisition-Deficient.

So our director’s version was not what I was expecting: A fellow prisoner going to his death for heresy covertly passes Francis his contraband bible. Francis exclaims: “It’s in the vernacular!” Amazed by the possibility of reading the scriptures himself, he becomes a new man – and is eventually tortured and left for dead because he is caught reading the forbidden bible to another prisoner.

Did this happen in real life? Because I’m seeing nothing in any biography I read, including the Ignatius Press study guide that came with the film. Awaiting evidence to support these claims (I’m ready to be corrected!) this is why I’m giving the film a low orthodoxy-rating. There’s a necessary amount of could-have-happened pretending that goes with any dramatization of a historical figure; but these accusations, if fictional as I think they are, cross the line into slander. Not to mention gratuitous sadistic-voyeurism.

(There are not lingering torture scenes. We hear brief sound effects, see the set where the torture is going to take place — and see discarded bodies tossed into a pile. Francis’s father comes and claims his son’s body from that pile.)

From there we get one more set of just plain weird fake-biography. Francis comes home and succumbs to the long illness well-known to history. Now in the written versions of the saint’s life, we see a young man who struggles to work out his vocation for a time after his recovery. He attempts to become a knight again, but is turned away; he gives alms, but continues to live in the world and cavort with his friends, albeit more soberly than before. His charitable fundraising is halting and at times immature. It is a process. (And yes: there are records of temper-tantrums as part of that process.)

In the film, Francis wakes up from his illness, sneaks downstairs, and in one manic episode breaks into his father’s strong-chest and proceeds to throw money and treasures into the streets. It is a violent, mindless rage, made all the worse when the recipients pile-on the tossed-out gold in a melee of their own. Conversion-as-psychosis.

(Later one of his companions will convert with the same money-tossing-tantrum process, fist-fighting beggars inclusive.)

After that, the movie is mostly just sort of dumb. Members of the nobility and the church hierarchy are played obtuse, arrogant, and one-dimensional. Francis preaches a gospel devoid of any real mention of Jesus Christ. And there is almost zero action.

→ Now that last complaint is a question of taste. I like action. The real life of St. Francis is loaded with action. Our director prefers long dramatic scenes of moodiness. Lots of pained looks, the occasional gaze-of-wonder, and characters who eventually get to say “Now I understand!”. The part where Francis travels the world and builds up a religious order is summarized in a minute-long voice-over in between the early-life dramatic angst and the end-of-life dramatic angst.

So that wasn’t for me. But other people might find it beautiful and moving. Seriously. I’ve discovered most of my smart catholic friends prefer this stuff to my Hardy-Boys type taste. I’m under-artsy. So if you like literary drama, really you might find this film just your cup of tea.

And that’s my review. I watched it once with the English voice-over (not recommended) and made an attempt to view it again in the original Italian (strongly preferred), but didn’t have the patience for a second sitting. [Plus I didn’t want the kids seeing that torture scene again.] Given the egregious nature of the apparent historical errors, I was surprised Ignatius Press put their stamp on this film.

→ I made an honest attempt to check on the facts, but plainly admit I’m not an expert. I will happily retract this review and adjust my orthodoxy-rating if it turns out I overlooked some key historical evidence.  [So somebody please speak up and correct me!  I would really much rather this be a beautiful film that isn’t to my taste, but that I could still recommend to those who do like this style of cinema.]

-Jen.

[Editing to clarify: It was my much more sensible co-catechist who proposed we do the journals.   Needed to give credit for brilliance where it really belongs.  I was too chicken to mention it myself.]

Peeking in to say an enormous thank you to Dorian Speed, whose  Journal thing we copied wholesale with the 5th graders.  First night of class.  Went beautifully — kids had something to focus on during those first fifteen minutes of class when everyone is still trickling in, and for me as a catechist it was a privilege to have this way of connecting to each student.  Our choices for topics were:

1) What’s on your mind this week?

2) What prayer requests do you have for us?

3) What questions would you like answered this year in Religious Ed.

I will concede we’ve been spoiled — pretty much someone stacked our class with all the best kids.  (Well, okay, I looked at the roll and the other 5th grade class got some of the best kids too.)  Once again proving my end-of-year fear wrong: I always wonder how my next year’s class can possibly hold up to the standard set by the current year.  But they do.  Every time.  Man I love that job.

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H/T to Domenico Bettinelli for this happy little video:

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Upcoming on the blog:

-I owe you my review of the St. Francis DVD from Tiber River.  Draft is on my PC, waiting for me to do a final edit and stick in the necessary links.  Coming soon.

-Still reading The Salvation Controversy by Jimmy Akin. (That’s my current Catholic Company review title.)  So far it’s a recommended read, if you are the target audience.  I have a spare copy, btw, if you are local and a real-life friend and would like to borrow it.  A spare because, of course, I lost the first one, and had to order a replacement.  I assume that was all part of the Divine Will.  In a chaos-redeemed kind of way.

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Foot news: No change.  Getting about 20 min/day of walking out of it, and then it’s all over.  More or less, depending on everything else.  Have a call in to the referral lady to get an appointment with the foot guy.

–>  Discovered that my girls can be very helpful and cooperative in the grocery store when I actually need them to be.  (Well, Squeaky just likes to ride in my lap.)  So that’s nice.  Taught Aria about unit pricing.   Been a little overwhelmed other wise, and must tell you that my attention to blogging responsibilities is about representative of the rest of my life.  Ah.  Go watch that video again.

Welcome Fellow Catechists . . .

I see that Nick Senger has added me to his list of “catechist blogs”, even though I don’t always write all that much about catechesis.  Or about anything, I noticed, scrolling through the blog.  Apparently a lot of things I thought I’d posted only made it as far as my head . . . oops.

[For my non-catholic readers: “Catechist” is the catholic word for “Sunday School Teacher”.  With the difference being that a) there’s a 6/7 chance we don’t actually teach on Sunday, and b) we’re Catholic, so we are required to use as many Greek and Latin words as possible.]

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Since I was just thinking the blog needed some attention, and now we have a topic, I’ll quick toss out my thoughts for what I want to make new-and-improved this year:

-Well, we’ve got to learn those new Mass responses.  So as soon as we get the green light, my kids will start practicing.  Until then, I’m going to teach some other prayer forms, and let the creed and so forth take a back seat until Advent or whenever we’re told to start teaching the new responses.

-Once again, I’d like to try to get the kids singing.  I say this every year.  Small problem being I am not a very good singer.  Enthusiastic?  Yes.  On key?  Not so much.  I keep trying to persuade other people to do music for us.  So far no takers.  So that leaves me.

-Last year I got really bogged down in going through our textbook chapters too slowly.  This year, I want to look through each chapter and prioritize: What are the must-learn items, what are the “just if you need to fill time” items, and what are the “introduce-but-don’t-memorize” items.

–> For example, I’m a big fan of studying the lives of saints.  But as I think through it, really what I want is for the kids to make friends with the saints.  They don’t necessarily need to memorize life stories.  In contrast, understanding the Real Presence or the Trinity, those are some fundamental teachings you need to have straight in order to build a healthy spirituality.   (Inasmuch as any of us understand such things — they are mysteries after all.  But goodness let’s not throw out all the work of so many councils).

So there we go.  A nice catechist post for you.  BTW I have been absolutely hanging on to Dorian Speed’s catechist series.  Go read that.

PS: Wednesday is our start-of-the-year catechist meeting.   So then I’ll *really* know what I’m doing this year.   Which might involve puppets.  Or a note about how I am to never, ever, stage another VBS play involving so many teenagers with swords.  We’ll see.

Possible to Attach a File?

Anyone happen to know if you can attach an excel spreadsheet somewhere on a wordpress blog?  You know, so we can do some exciting accounting? Actually because we were putting up the timeline in the hallway today, and I thought some of my readers might find it useful to borrow.

Speak up if you have the secret knowledge.

Thanks!

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PS: Foot is doing way better.  I got my neighbor to mow my lawn, and within hours of him finishing, I was miraculously cured!  Well, not quite.  But I can walk on it normally (not limping!) for short distances.  Like inside-my-house short distances, not “2 miles” or “around the block” or anything crazy like that.

I will add in my defense: What I asked was, “May I borrow your riding lawnmower?”  What he said is “No way I am letting someone with your mechanical skills touch my beloved machine, I will do it myself.”  (Only he said it much more tactfully.)

More humor from Mr. Boy

What shotgun do priests use?

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The M-26 MASS.

He also observes:

Bishops like to wield the . . . M7 Priest.

The tank best used for claiming the Promised Land is the . . . M1 Abrams.

And after 40 years in the desert, you might also want the . . . Jericho 941.

In case of Saracens, consider the . . . F-8 Crusader.

And if under fire from Demons or Hellcats, you might ask for assistance from the . . . Blue Angels and VCF-13 Saints.

Foot update: Big Fluffy Sneakers

Apparently I had a fashion problem.

Doctor dx’d me with ‘metatarsalgia’, which is the technical term for “your foot hurts, and if it doesn’t feel better in a month, we’ll try to find out why”.    (Fair enough: ruled out a visible break or some other quickly-diagnosable ailment, and since the other choices require massively expensive and complicated testing to detect, makes sense to see if the time-n-rest cure doesn’t fix the whatever-it-is.)

Meanwhile he referred me to his shoe guy (that is, the store where my athlete-physician shops himself), who specializes in picking out big fluffy sneakers that take the pressure off whatever part of your foot tends to get pressurized.

Wow.  Magic.  Went from “No way I’m walking on this thing, BAD BAD BAD” to, “Hey, look at me, I can limp and it’s okay!”.

So maybe some more days of giant fluffy sneakers and I’ll graduate to regular walking.

Happy happy.

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(Just in time to really get my nerd-mother look fully-formed before my children turn into teenagers.  Would be tragic to miss out on the maximum adolescent-embarrassment potential.  Maybe soon I’ll develop some kind of disorder that requires me to buy all my clothes at the same shop as my doc.  Or maybe I already do that, and don’t even know it . . .)

Inexcusable.

After a long hiatus for practical reasons (newborns and newsprint don’t mix), I re-subscribed to the Wall Street Journal about two years ago.  Bit of a vice, really, but I enjoyed it.   Would have gladly re-subscribed if they had sent me a proper renewal notice.

Instead, I got a credit card statement today charging me for a “renewal” I never authorized.

So that’s the end of that.  I have a strict rule against doing business with anyone who thinks they can use my credit card at will, to charge me for products I never agreed to purchase.

FYI, they did promise to refund my card when I called to complain.   (Good thing, since using my credit card without my permission is theft.)

Too bad.  I’ll miss my morning paper.

If anyone can recommend a good print periodical that doesn’t engage in sleazy business practices, I’m looking for one.