Bringing People to Jesus
A bit more than a month ago, Charlie Kirk, when conversing with Michael Knowles, argued that our goal should be to bring people to Jesus not to Catholicism, to which Michale Knowles asked in reply, 'what's the difference?' Kirk responded that your goal should not be to bring people to a specific sect of Christianity, but to bring people to The Cross.
The issue with this line of thought though is rather simple; there were many people at the Cross, some were faithful, like Mary and St. John, but others were not, like the Pharisees and Roman Soldiers, we don't want people to be at the foot of The Cross for no reason, nor for a bad reason. We want to bring 'their hearts' to Jesus, and there is a right way to do this, and a wrong way to do this.
Jesus himself said: "Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be" and so we want to bring people to 'treasure' Jesus, and what is it to treasure something? Well the example the Bible gives us of this is precisely one of those who were at the foot of the Cross, namely, Jesus own Mother: Mary.
There are a two occasions in Scripture where we hear of Mary 'treasuring' things in her heart. The first was the details surrounding Jesus birth (Luke 2:19), the second was finding the child Jesus at the Temple when he had been lost. (Luke 2:51) in each case we hear that Mary 'treasured up all these things in her heart'. It is also possible that Luke 2:51 also includes the prophecy she received from Simeon at the Temple, since in both occasions we are dealing with events at the Temple, and the text is not utterly clear as to what 'these things' are meant to be, either just the episode of the loss of the Child Jesus, or also including the episode of prophecy of Simeon. In either case, we have at least two, and possibly three cases where someone is presented to us as treasuring something in her heart. In the first case it is also said that she 'pondered' these things, suggesting she did not fully understand them; that they were to some extent a mystery to her; but that she nonetheless continually sought to understand them.
In either case, it seems to be being suggested that she is keeping these things in memory, that to treasure something is to remember it, but not merely as a fact, for since there is a relationship to pondering; so also it involves remembering it so as to continue to reflect upon it, to try to make sense of the matter, and perhaps, to incorporate it into our lives, as we see by the faith of Mary at the foot of the Cross.
So then if we are to bring people's hearts close to Jesus, the first thing we need to do is to get them to remember him, but clearly it's not any memory; for the pharisees, in plotting to kill Jesus, clearly remembered him in a sense, they bothered to recall him, but only to do ill. Likewise, the people of Israel in the Old Testament would often remember God in a sense, yet still Jesus himself recalled the prophecy saying this: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me". Clearly then to treasure something in one's heart is not mere remembrance, but specifically a 'loving' remembrance; for, among us creatures, who loved Jesus more than Mary? Hence she hastened to find the child Jesus when lost, while the pharisees did not think in this way.
So then the question becomes, how to we bring people to love Jesus? For there are many in this world who are indifferent and even hostile to him, and even of those who speak well of him, there may yet be many whose hearts are far from him. Well we might as a more general question: how do we bring people to love anyone? For if there is a general answer here, perhaps we can then apply it to Jesus.
Now of course, we cannot force anyone to love anything, love is a choice; and I don't imagine Kirk was suggesting we force anyone to come to Jesus. Still what we can do is present the option; but naturally to love someone you have to know them, at least to some degree. Mary was Jesus mother, and so she had that intimacy of knowledge that all loving mothers have of their children; this is one of the most intimate personal relationships. So likewise surely there is a call here for closeness; again, Jesus complains of those whose hearts are 'far' from him, implying a lack of intimacy. To treasure someone in one's heart is to lovingly remember them, and you can't remember them if you don't know who they are, so as to remember them in the first place; and this also naturally means we need to be able to distinguish who they are from who they are not.
Thus we have two questions to ask, two questions Jesus himself asked of his disciples: "Who do people say that I am" and "Who do you say that I am" i.e. what are the general 'ideas' of Jesus that people have, which are not accurate; and what are the ideas that 'someone who is close to Jesus' would have of him. For if we have errant ideas of Jesus, then clearly if we bring someone to the foot of the Cross of a false Jesus, then we are not bringing them to the True Cross, but to a false cross, and so are doing them no good. We want to bring people to the True Cross, and so also then, to the True Christ.
Now I will not here go through a survey of errant ideas of Christ, for that would risk begging the question; I am here trying to show an issue in the mindset Charlie Kirk was proposing, and am doing so by appealing to the authorities we share, namely reason and scripture; I believe there are more authorities than that, authorities that reason and scripture themselves bear witness too; but none the less I recognize that Kirk would not agree with these; but we do both agree with the authority of reason and scripture, this is our common ground, and it is from this ground that I am proceeding. It suffices to note that the apostles answered Jesus question by appealing to such ideas of their own time; 'some say Elijah, Some say John the Baptist, others say the Prophet' etc.
When Jesus asked them who do they say that he is; Peter stood up before them, and answered in this way; "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" and this was Jesus response: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
One may recognize this verse as one of the main verses we Catholics use to defend the Papacy. Now protestants have their own interpretations of it, and I may get into that later down; but at present I'm not commenting on this. What I am commenting on however, is how intimately connected this verse is to the question of the very 'identity' of Jesus Christ.
We must remember that Mary too knew who Jesus was in this way; for the St. Gabriel the Archangel revealed to her that her son would sit on David's throne and would be called the Son of God, and this was one of the things she treasured and pondered in her heart. David too was God's anointed, and so she would have known at least implicitly what Peter had stated explicitly. In this way Peter and Mary were similar, that in their hearts they knew Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God; and so they treasured him in this specific way; and it is this way that Jesus presents to the rest of his disciples as so exemplary as to say that it comes not from flesh and blood, but from God himself. As St. John, who was also at the foot of the Cross, would later go to teach: "By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God."
So then surely here we see the first step. To love Jesus you must know who he is, and who he is, is the Christ, the Son of God. Now of course, we might ask what that means; for there are many who would claim to accept these words, but would interpret them in vastly different ways. We Christians typically o not consider Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses to be Christian on account of their rejecting the Trinity, and we would typically take this verse as suggestion an element of Trinitarian Doctrine i.e. Jesus is 'the Son of the Living God' in an exceedingly deep way. Indeed, even to say he is 'the Christ' may be interpreted as suggesting the Holy Spirit; for when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit came down upon him, as though anointing him. In either case, we take Peter's confession to have Trinitarian significance at least regarding his relation to the Father; while others do not; and naturally there are apt to be disagreements on Further implications here; so that once more there is a mystery. So it is not enough to accept the words of Mary and Peter, it is required for us to take them in the right way; with the right understanding.
Hence Mary pondered what she treasured, she sought to understand it properly. We can perhaps bring people to treasure and ponder scripture; and so hopefully through this come to know Christ; but we have many who love Scripture but who may not know Christ. An atheist can be a competent bible scholar, and may quite love his job, but may remain unconvinced of the Bible's truth; seeing it as mere myth and fable; as a scholar who may love the works of other ancient religions but remains unpersuaded of their truth. A Christian can be a scholar of the stories of the ancient greeks, but be not an iota closer to becoming a pagan; so likewise to love scripture is not the same as to love Christ. To think otherwise is to risk Bibliolatry i.e. committing the sin of Idolatry by turning of the Bible into one's Idol.
Surely the Bible is the word of God, and Jesus himself is also rightly called The Word of God, and the Bible surely is itself a means of coming to know Jesus, even to know him intimately; but only provided one understands it properly. Like the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 reading Isaiah and telling St. Philip that he cannot understand the text unless someone guides him, so it seems we need a guide to understand scripture aright.
It is hard to say that this guide is simply reason added to scripture, for we know that scripture can be hard to understand and that we can twist scripture, as scripture itself warns in 1 Peter 3:14-15. Which is not to say that we should not appeal to reason when reading; we surely should, and I will continue to do so here now. Instead, I'm merely noting that the very difficulty of the matter is apt to lead to diverse conclusions, even on important issues. Hence Peter says that people twist scripture 'to their own destruction', and we surely would not be destroyed if we merely differed on minor matters.
(By that same token though, it's hard to imagine that God would not have provided us with a way to resolve such issues; that was consistent with reason and scripture, but did not 'reduce' to reason and scripture. It at least makes sense he should give us further aids, aids indicated by reason and scripture themselves; such as the reason I'm giving right now, and the indications we Catholics frequently point out in diverse places.)
However, I'm getting ahead of myself. Remember that I'm going into all of this to figure out how it is we are to bring people to Jesus, to the Cross; and that is by means of treasuring him, that is, by having a loving remembrance of him; and this requires us first and foremost to know him. However knowing someone alone does not guaruntee we shall love them; Judas knew Jesus quite well, but he betrayed him. Again, though Peter knew Jesus so well that Jesus commended his knowledge of Jesus as being from God; still Jesus soon rebuked Peter for resisting his claim that he would be put to death; and Peter would go on to reject him three times; though he would swiftly repent. All the apostles knew him well, but all also fled when he was caught. Something more is needed then.
So the question is, what is needed, for us to love Jesus?
Well, Jesus himself gives us the answer, as the apostle who was at the foot of the Cross records: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15) and again "Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.” (John 14:21) and once more “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words." (John 14:23-24)
So we see that loving Christ has to do with having and keeping his word and commandments. Indeed, this is also suggestive of how we are to know him, and in turn, how we are to treasure him in our hearts, and so be close to him, and so how we are to bring others close to him likewise. So then if our hearts are to be close to him, we must remember and obey his words and commandments. This comes to the question of course, as to what his commandments are?
Jesus gives a number of these in scripture:
"A new commandment I give you, love one another, as I have loved you." This is the commandment to imitate Jesus, showing that Jesus sets us an example in his life for how we are to act.
"Go out and make disciples of all people's and nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to do all I have commanded you." See here we are commanded to specifically to teach people Jesus own commandments, to baptize them, and so to make disciples of them, as we are.
Depending on how we read it, the Sermon on the Mount can be said to have quite a few commands. Settle matters with our brothers, forgive, do not look with lust, do not be angry at someone in your heart, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, do not judge, etc.
Clearly he gives us many commandments; and so it seems that if we are to love him, we must follow these. However this leads to a similar interpretive issue: how do we know if someone is following these commandments? How do we know if a brother is sinning against him and agains us? Well again, Jesus provides us with an answer: "If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector." (Mathew 18:15-18)
We see that it is assumed, to some extent, that we know what is or is not sin; and that the final way to settle such a matter is through the Church. This of course brings us to the question of where the Church is though, but well, we already got the answer to that above: "upon this rock I will build my Church" and so we must go to the Rock, hence it's worth noting that in the verse directly after speaking of bringing our sinning brother to the Church, Jesus reiterates what he said to Peter abound binding and loosing: "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matt 18:18)
The question then comes as to what that 'Rock' is upon which the Church is built. If the Rock is nothing more than Peter's confession, then we shall run into the same interpretive issues noted above. However, if the Rock is a person, if it is Peter himself, whose very name given to him by Jesus means 'Rock', then we do have a source in principle. Though insofar as Peter has gone on to his reward, we would require his office to continue on even now; which we Catholics hold to be the case.
Still, this is itself just one interpretation, but the point here is that I'm making an argument in favor of it. For, as noted parenthetically, it makes sense that God should provide us with a means consistent with reason and scripture, for settling disputes 'about' reason and scripture, which is not itself 'reducible to' reason and scripture i.e. it makes sense he would institute a Church structure to resolve these issues.
For we want to bring people closer to Christ, we want to bring them to know and love him, to treasure him in their hearts; and so to remember and keep his word and commandments, we want them to love one another as he loved us, to cooperate with us in making disciples of all people's and nations, and to do all those things which define being a Christian, a good and loving disciple of Christ.
The point is not that we should not have our own intepretations and go with them, but rather that those very interpretations should be such that they do not move us to measure other things by our interpretations, but measure even our own interpretations by other things. The whole idea of an authority or standard is that it serves as a kind of 'check' upon our own reasoning and interpretation, so that we do not get caught up in our own minds. Sure, our own belief that said standard or authority is legitimate is itself the result of our own reasoning and interpretation, but it is still by that fact a point at which our own reasoning and interpretation has 'opened itself up' to correction from an external source; an external source whose activities, while consistent with our reasoning and interpretation about it's authority, are still not reduced to our reosoning and interpretation, and so are able to correct our reasoning and interpretation 'on other matters' and indeed, even develop our reasoning and interpretation on the matter of it's own authority; giving a more clear, distinct, and precise rendering of the exact nature and extent of said authority.
The same idea arises for anyone who submits to scripture. Before accepting scripture as an authority, you would not try to bend your beliefs to anything it seemed to say; but would rather accept or reject this or that part of scripture only insofar as it met with your own reason. However, when by reason or some religious experience or such like, you come to conclude that scripture is authoritative; then you begin to try and amend your beliefs to scripture; to make sure that whatever your belief is at the very least not in conflict with scripture, and ideally is well and truly informed by and possibly rooted in scripture; for scripture stands as a kind of external authority to you. You do not presume to edit its words; to add or take away at will, but rather hope to slowly conform your mind to its content. Taking in yet another authority would be a similar process, and one scripture itself can be fairly argued to suggest as necessary, indeed, that 'Jesus himself' can be fairly argued to be such.
Even supposing I'm wrong there though, and scripture does not teach Catholicism, I think at least my point on the issue with Kirk's point has been made. It is not enough to say we must bring people to Christ; for this very claim has a deeper meaning, and that deeper meaning cannot be inherently unbound from the question of who has the right view of who Christ is and what his teachings are. It is by means keeping his word that we love him, and so grow close to him, and so by means of teaching and preaching his word that we bring people closer to him; and one of the fundemental issues among different Christian denominations is that we don't fully agree upon what Jesus means by his word, and so what it is that we are to teach, and so how it is we are to bring them to Christ. Some of us hold that Christ's word implicitly requires us to bring people to Catholicism, others do not; and so some hold that loving Christ and growing closer to him 'just is' to bring him to Catholicism, while others do not. Hence Michale Knowles initial question 'what's the difference?' it makes sense that one who holds to the Catholic position should ask this; or indeed, anyone who holds to any given denomination should ask what's the difference between bringing people to Christ and bringing them to their denomination.
Kirk's claim then, you see, is ultimately begging the question. He wants to propose a neutral ground between Protestants and Catholics in our love for Jesus, and leave aside questions of which denomination has the right views. The issue however is that the very idea that we 'can' leave these questions aside and still get to Christ, 'is itself one of the questions', and as such, Charlies move is not neutral, but biased.
To wit, while I think he has fallen into bias, I do not blame Charlie Kirk for seeking a neutral way of approaching these things, I think it can be done to an extent, C.S. Lewis came the closest arguably in his work 'Mere Christianity' (though I think he was not entirely free of bias either), but then in the very preface of that Work he noted that Mere Christianity was not meant to be a permanent position; that the question of which denomination if any is the right one remains a grave and important question; one which cannot long be set aside.
We can thus only set it aside provided we make such initial concessions; noting that the question of denomination is indeed gravely important, even important to bringing people closer to Christ; but that it aids to look into what we have in common 'first' before getting into the difference; since that gives us a good bit of common ground from which we can work to get the answer as to whose view of the Church is the right one. We must never then seek to neutralize the question of which denomination if any is the right one; for that is to neutralize a deepening of our closeness to Christ; what we can do is emphasize what we have in common as a preliminary measure; for closeness admits of degrees, and at least by this means, we may bring people 'closer' to Christ, even if one of these denominations has a greater fullness of Truth, so that full unity with Christ shall be found only in them. We should never detract from that Unity, nor turn people away from seeking it; but rather we should cooperate so far as we can to aid people to grow in it; and that initial neutrality is indeed a preliminary aid in doing just that. We just must be wary of making an idol out of neutrality, lest in so doing we end up rather barring people from getting closer to Christ, rather than bringing them to him, as we had initially intended.
The issue with this line of thought though is rather simple; there were many people at the Cross, some were faithful, like Mary and St. John, but others were not, like the Pharisees and Roman Soldiers, we don't want people to be at the foot of The Cross for no reason, nor for a bad reason. We want to bring 'their hearts' to Jesus, and there is a right way to do this, and a wrong way to do this.
Jesus himself said: "Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be" and so we want to bring people to 'treasure' Jesus, and what is it to treasure something? Well the example the Bible gives us of this is precisely one of those who were at the foot of the Cross, namely, Jesus own Mother: Mary.
There are a two occasions in Scripture where we hear of Mary 'treasuring' things in her heart. The first was the details surrounding Jesus birth (Luke 2:19), the second was finding the child Jesus at the Temple when he had been lost. (Luke 2:51) in each case we hear that Mary 'treasured up all these things in her heart'. It is also possible that Luke 2:51 also includes the prophecy she received from Simeon at the Temple, since in both occasions we are dealing with events at the Temple, and the text is not utterly clear as to what 'these things' are meant to be, either just the episode of the loss of the Child Jesus, or also including the episode of prophecy of Simeon. In either case, we have at least two, and possibly three cases where someone is presented to us as treasuring something in her heart. In the first case it is also said that she 'pondered' these things, suggesting she did not fully understand them; that they were to some extent a mystery to her; but that she nonetheless continually sought to understand them.
In either case, it seems to be being suggested that she is keeping these things in memory, that to treasure something is to remember it, but not merely as a fact, for since there is a relationship to pondering; so also it involves remembering it so as to continue to reflect upon it, to try to make sense of the matter, and perhaps, to incorporate it into our lives, as we see by the faith of Mary at the foot of the Cross.
So then if we are to bring people's hearts close to Jesus, the first thing we need to do is to get them to remember him, but clearly it's not any memory; for the pharisees, in plotting to kill Jesus, clearly remembered him in a sense, they bothered to recall him, but only to do ill. Likewise, the people of Israel in the Old Testament would often remember God in a sense, yet still Jesus himself recalled the prophecy saying this: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me". Clearly then to treasure something in one's heart is not mere remembrance, but specifically a 'loving' remembrance; for, among us creatures, who loved Jesus more than Mary? Hence she hastened to find the child Jesus when lost, while the pharisees did not think in this way.
So then the question becomes, how to we bring people to love Jesus? For there are many in this world who are indifferent and even hostile to him, and even of those who speak well of him, there may yet be many whose hearts are far from him. Well we might as a more general question: how do we bring people to love anyone? For if there is a general answer here, perhaps we can then apply it to Jesus.
Now of course, we cannot force anyone to love anything, love is a choice; and I don't imagine Kirk was suggesting we force anyone to come to Jesus. Still what we can do is present the option; but naturally to love someone you have to know them, at least to some degree. Mary was Jesus mother, and so she had that intimacy of knowledge that all loving mothers have of their children; this is one of the most intimate personal relationships. So likewise surely there is a call here for closeness; again, Jesus complains of those whose hearts are 'far' from him, implying a lack of intimacy. To treasure someone in one's heart is to lovingly remember them, and you can't remember them if you don't know who they are, so as to remember them in the first place; and this also naturally means we need to be able to distinguish who they are from who they are not.
Thus we have two questions to ask, two questions Jesus himself asked of his disciples: "Who do people say that I am" and "Who do you say that I am" i.e. what are the general 'ideas' of Jesus that people have, which are not accurate; and what are the ideas that 'someone who is close to Jesus' would have of him. For if we have errant ideas of Jesus, then clearly if we bring someone to the foot of the Cross of a false Jesus, then we are not bringing them to the True Cross, but to a false cross, and so are doing them no good. We want to bring people to the True Cross, and so also then, to the True Christ.
Now I will not here go through a survey of errant ideas of Christ, for that would risk begging the question; I am here trying to show an issue in the mindset Charlie Kirk was proposing, and am doing so by appealing to the authorities we share, namely reason and scripture; I believe there are more authorities than that, authorities that reason and scripture themselves bear witness too; but none the less I recognize that Kirk would not agree with these; but we do both agree with the authority of reason and scripture, this is our common ground, and it is from this ground that I am proceeding. It suffices to note that the apostles answered Jesus question by appealing to such ideas of their own time; 'some say Elijah, Some say John the Baptist, others say the Prophet' etc.
When Jesus asked them who do they say that he is; Peter stood up before them, and answered in this way; "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" and this was Jesus response: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
One may recognize this verse as one of the main verses we Catholics use to defend the Papacy. Now protestants have their own interpretations of it, and I may get into that later down; but at present I'm not commenting on this. What I am commenting on however, is how intimately connected this verse is to the question of the very 'identity' of Jesus Christ.
We must remember that Mary too knew who Jesus was in this way; for the St. Gabriel the Archangel revealed to her that her son would sit on David's throne and would be called the Son of God, and this was one of the things she treasured and pondered in her heart. David too was God's anointed, and so she would have known at least implicitly what Peter had stated explicitly. In this way Peter and Mary were similar, that in their hearts they knew Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God; and so they treasured him in this specific way; and it is this way that Jesus presents to the rest of his disciples as so exemplary as to say that it comes not from flesh and blood, but from God himself. As St. John, who was also at the foot of the Cross, would later go to teach: "By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God."
So then surely here we see the first step. To love Jesus you must know who he is, and who he is, is the Christ, the Son of God. Now of course, we might ask what that means; for there are many who would claim to accept these words, but would interpret them in vastly different ways. We Christians typically o not consider Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses to be Christian on account of their rejecting the Trinity, and we would typically take this verse as suggestion an element of Trinitarian Doctrine i.e. Jesus is 'the Son of the Living God' in an exceedingly deep way. Indeed, even to say he is 'the Christ' may be interpreted as suggesting the Holy Spirit; for when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit came down upon him, as though anointing him. In either case, we take Peter's confession to have Trinitarian significance at least regarding his relation to the Father; while others do not; and naturally there are apt to be disagreements on Further implications here; so that once more there is a mystery. So it is not enough to accept the words of Mary and Peter, it is required for us to take them in the right way; with the right understanding.
Hence Mary pondered what she treasured, she sought to understand it properly. We can perhaps bring people to treasure and ponder scripture; and so hopefully through this come to know Christ; but we have many who love Scripture but who may not know Christ. An atheist can be a competent bible scholar, and may quite love his job, but may remain unconvinced of the Bible's truth; seeing it as mere myth and fable; as a scholar who may love the works of other ancient religions but remains unpersuaded of their truth. A Christian can be a scholar of the stories of the ancient greeks, but be not an iota closer to becoming a pagan; so likewise to love scripture is not the same as to love Christ. To think otherwise is to risk Bibliolatry i.e. committing the sin of Idolatry by turning of the Bible into one's Idol.
Surely the Bible is the word of God, and Jesus himself is also rightly called The Word of God, and the Bible surely is itself a means of coming to know Jesus, even to know him intimately; but only provided one understands it properly. Like the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 reading Isaiah and telling St. Philip that he cannot understand the text unless someone guides him, so it seems we need a guide to understand scripture aright.
It is hard to say that this guide is simply reason added to scripture, for we know that scripture can be hard to understand and that we can twist scripture, as scripture itself warns in 1 Peter 3:14-15. Which is not to say that we should not appeal to reason when reading; we surely should, and I will continue to do so here now. Instead, I'm merely noting that the very difficulty of the matter is apt to lead to diverse conclusions, even on important issues. Hence Peter says that people twist scripture 'to their own destruction', and we surely would not be destroyed if we merely differed on minor matters.
(By that same token though, it's hard to imagine that God would not have provided us with a way to resolve such issues; that was consistent with reason and scripture, but did not 'reduce' to reason and scripture. It at least makes sense he should give us further aids, aids indicated by reason and scripture themselves; such as the reason I'm giving right now, and the indications we Catholics frequently point out in diverse places.)
However, I'm getting ahead of myself. Remember that I'm going into all of this to figure out how it is we are to bring people to Jesus, to the Cross; and that is by means of treasuring him, that is, by having a loving remembrance of him; and this requires us first and foremost to know him. However knowing someone alone does not guaruntee we shall love them; Judas knew Jesus quite well, but he betrayed him. Again, though Peter knew Jesus so well that Jesus commended his knowledge of Jesus as being from God; still Jesus soon rebuked Peter for resisting his claim that he would be put to death; and Peter would go on to reject him three times; though he would swiftly repent. All the apostles knew him well, but all also fled when he was caught. Something more is needed then.
So the question is, what is needed, for us to love Jesus?
Well, Jesus himself gives us the answer, as the apostle who was at the foot of the Cross records: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15) and again "Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.” (John 14:21) and once more “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words." (John 14:23-24)
So we see that loving Christ has to do with having and keeping his word and commandments. Indeed, this is also suggestive of how we are to know him, and in turn, how we are to treasure him in our hearts, and so be close to him, and so how we are to bring others close to him likewise. So then if our hearts are to be close to him, we must remember and obey his words and commandments. This comes to the question of course, as to what his commandments are?
Jesus gives a number of these in scripture:
"A new commandment I give you, love one another, as I have loved you." This is the commandment to imitate Jesus, showing that Jesus sets us an example in his life for how we are to act.
"Go out and make disciples of all people's and nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to do all I have commanded you." See here we are commanded to specifically to teach people Jesus own commandments, to baptize them, and so to make disciples of them, as we are.
Depending on how we read it, the Sermon on the Mount can be said to have quite a few commands. Settle matters with our brothers, forgive, do not look with lust, do not be angry at someone in your heart, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, do not judge, etc.
Clearly he gives us many commandments; and so it seems that if we are to love him, we must follow these. However this leads to a similar interpretive issue: how do we know if someone is following these commandments? How do we know if a brother is sinning against him and agains us? Well again, Jesus provides us with an answer: "If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector." (Mathew 18:15-18)
We see that it is assumed, to some extent, that we know what is or is not sin; and that the final way to settle such a matter is through the Church. This of course brings us to the question of where the Church is though, but well, we already got the answer to that above: "upon this rock I will build my Church" and so we must go to the Rock, hence it's worth noting that in the verse directly after speaking of bringing our sinning brother to the Church, Jesus reiterates what he said to Peter abound binding and loosing: "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matt 18:18)
The question then comes as to what that 'Rock' is upon which the Church is built. If the Rock is nothing more than Peter's confession, then we shall run into the same interpretive issues noted above. However, if the Rock is a person, if it is Peter himself, whose very name given to him by Jesus means 'Rock', then we do have a source in principle. Though insofar as Peter has gone on to his reward, we would require his office to continue on even now; which we Catholics hold to be the case.
Still, this is itself just one interpretation, but the point here is that I'm making an argument in favor of it. For, as noted parenthetically, it makes sense that God should provide us with a means consistent with reason and scripture, for settling disputes 'about' reason and scripture, which is not itself 'reducible to' reason and scripture i.e. it makes sense he would institute a Church structure to resolve these issues.
For we want to bring people closer to Christ, we want to bring them to know and love him, to treasure him in their hearts; and so to remember and keep his word and commandments, we want them to love one another as he loved us, to cooperate with us in making disciples of all people's and nations, and to do all those things which define being a Christian, a good and loving disciple of Christ.
The point is not that we should not have our own intepretations and go with them, but rather that those very interpretations should be such that they do not move us to measure other things by our interpretations, but measure even our own interpretations by other things. The whole idea of an authority or standard is that it serves as a kind of 'check' upon our own reasoning and interpretation, so that we do not get caught up in our own minds. Sure, our own belief that said standard or authority is legitimate is itself the result of our own reasoning and interpretation, but it is still by that fact a point at which our own reasoning and interpretation has 'opened itself up' to correction from an external source; an external source whose activities, while consistent with our reasoning and interpretation about it's authority, are still not reduced to our reosoning and interpretation, and so are able to correct our reasoning and interpretation 'on other matters' and indeed, even develop our reasoning and interpretation on the matter of it's own authority; giving a more clear, distinct, and precise rendering of the exact nature and extent of said authority.
The same idea arises for anyone who submits to scripture. Before accepting scripture as an authority, you would not try to bend your beliefs to anything it seemed to say; but would rather accept or reject this or that part of scripture only insofar as it met with your own reason. However, when by reason or some religious experience or such like, you come to conclude that scripture is authoritative; then you begin to try and amend your beliefs to scripture; to make sure that whatever your belief is at the very least not in conflict with scripture, and ideally is well and truly informed by and possibly rooted in scripture; for scripture stands as a kind of external authority to you. You do not presume to edit its words; to add or take away at will, but rather hope to slowly conform your mind to its content. Taking in yet another authority would be a similar process, and one scripture itself can be fairly argued to suggest as necessary, indeed, that 'Jesus himself' can be fairly argued to be such.
Even supposing I'm wrong there though, and scripture does not teach Catholicism, I think at least my point on the issue with Kirk's point has been made. It is not enough to say we must bring people to Christ; for this very claim has a deeper meaning, and that deeper meaning cannot be inherently unbound from the question of who has the right view of who Christ is and what his teachings are. It is by means keeping his word that we love him, and so grow close to him, and so by means of teaching and preaching his word that we bring people closer to him; and one of the fundemental issues among different Christian denominations is that we don't fully agree upon what Jesus means by his word, and so what it is that we are to teach, and so how it is we are to bring them to Christ. Some of us hold that Christ's word implicitly requires us to bring people to Catholicism, others do not; and so some hold that loving Christ and growing closer to him 'just is' to bring him to Catholicism, while others do not. Hence Michale Knowles initial question 'what's the difference?' it makes sense that one who holds to the Catholic position should ask this; or indeed, anyone who holds to any given denomination should ask what's the difference between bringing people to Christ and bringing them to their denomination.
Kirk's claim then, you see, is ultimately begging the question. He wants to propose a neutral ground between Protestants and Catholics in our love for Jesus, and leave aside questions of which denomination has the right views. The issue however is that the very idea that we 'can' leave these questions aside and still get to Christ, 'is itself one of the questions', and as such, Charlies move is not neutral, but biased.
To wit, while I think he has fallen into bias, I do not blame Charlie Kirk for seeking a neutral way of approaching these things, I think it can be done to an extent, C.S. Lewis came the closest arguably in his work 'Mere Christianity' (though I think he was not entirely free of bias either), but then in the very preface of that Work he noted that Mere Christianity was not meant to be a permanent position; that the question of which denomination if any is the right one remains a grave and important question; one which cannot long be set aside.
We can thus only set it aside provided we make such initial concessions; noting that the question of denomination is indeed gravely important, even important to bringing people closer to Christ; but that it aids to look into what we have in common 'first' before getting into the difference; since that gives us a good bit of common ground from which we can work to get the answer as to whose view of the Church is the right one. We must never then seek to neutralize the question of which denomination if any is the right one; for that is to neutralize a deepening of our closeness to Christ; what we can do is emphasize what we have in common as a preliminary measure; for closeness admits of degrees, and at least by this means, we may bring people 'closer' to Christ, even if one of these denominations has a greater fullness of Truth, so that full unity with Christ shall be found only in them. We should never detract from that Unity, nor turn people away from seeking it; but rather we should cooperate so far as we can to aid people to grow in it; and that initial neutrality is indeed a preliminary aid in doing just that. We just must be wary of making an idol out of neutrality, lest in so doing we end up rather barring people from getting closer to Christ, rather than bringing them to him, as we had initially intended.
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