Prepared To Answer Gordon Ferguson Pt. 4

Note: I started this post as a non-Catholic. But then I stopped. I converted, and thought it wasn't necessary for me to finish this anymore. I want to review two other books, and I want to finish this review before I move on, for integrity's sake.

Ferguson’s next target is the priesthood. This is not a doctrine that especially thrills me, and I suspect there is much equivocation happening on Ferguson’s part, looking at words and what they mean to denote what a thing is over looking at what the function of a thing is first and then putting its title secondary.  Also, Ferguson dismisses the Catholic explanation as “just human reasoning” and so debating the issue is not necessary; the topic is ceded. But I will briefly touch on it and move on.

  

  If God establishes a Church to do things, then it makes sense he would appoint people to administer those things. This is all the Catholic Priesthood is, aids to the Bishops. Ferguson wants to make these new priests and the Old Testament priests identical, and hence unnecessary due to the general theme in the book of Hebrews (but going down that route won't help much either). The restrictions on being a priest then and now are obviously not the same, but they do share some basic common features, such as offering the sacrifice of Jesus during the Eucharist and forgiving sins (John 20:23). Is there biblical evidence to suggest that such a position, from the apostles to today, is to be continued? Yes, like when Jesus said he would be with them (the apostles) until the end of the world. Obviously, the world has not ended, so where did the apostles go? Or was Jesus just kidding?

   There is an interesting passage in Acts 1, which does necessitate the replacing of Judas, and so one can infer the necessity of replacing any apostle, which Ferguson argues is no longer applicable today because the qualifications needed then are no longer able to be met today. What are those qualifications? Being present when Jesus was around. This is only problematic if Ferguson can show that this qualification is necessary for anyone else henceforth. There are a couple things to make one think that this is not the case. Judas died before the beginning of the first church, and so an apostle was needed who could, at the initiation of the church at Pentecost, faithfully pass on the teachings of Jesus without a middle man. Because it was only for initiation, such a qualification can be dropped afterwards. Peter finds the command to replace Judas in the Old Testament, yet how that is done seems to be by Peter's own fiat. But if it is by Peter’s own choosing of standards and not by the divine command, then I do not see why that standard cannot change. The divine command to replace is still active (why would we want to ever change or stop God’s commands?) but because he does not tell us how this process is supposed to be done (apparently left to mere chance in the case of Judas and Matthias), the qualifications needed to replace an apostle can still be met today. Also, Paul was an apostle. I wonder how Ferguson explains that. He does not mention Paul in this context.

    What about calling the Priests father? The explanation is quite simple, really. Because the Church is a spiritual family, we have a spiritual father as well. We have a divine one, but that does not supplant the spiritual ones on Earth. I am pretty sure we can all relate to this. In my former congregation, we call one of our Elders “Papa” Joe. When someone baptizes someone else, we often call them their spiritual mom or spiritual dad. The same state of mind is in the ICOC and should therefore not be controversial in the ICOC. 

    Ferguson then argues for the priesthood of the laity. He cites 1st Peter 2:5,9 for this, but there is nothing there to suggest or imply such a conclusion, even with a generous interpretation. Ferguson then says, “One of the main emphases in Hebrews is that we no longer have to go through humans as intercessors with God….To bring back an inferior system is to do the very thing Hebrews warns us against (Hebrews 7:18-28), and that is precisely what the Catholic Church has done.” What does Ferguson believe intercession is and is that the same that was practiced in the Old Testament? Does Ferguson believe that intercession means going to God on behalf of someone else? If so, then almost every Christian intercedes. When I ask someone else to pray for me, I am asking them to intercede for them. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "To intercede is to go or come between two parties, to plead before one of them on behalf of the other." There is nothing controversial about this since we do it all the time.

     Hebrews is vaguely cited as a counter-example for the discipline of being a priest by saying Jesus was our High Priest. Indeed, he is. But what follows exactly? What does Ferguson think it means to be a High Priest? Once we figure that out, we can see if it really does contradict the general Catholic Priest. When one reads Hebrews, one learns about the sacrifices done by the Old Testament High Priests. What was their function? Their function was this: only they were allowed into the Tabernacle to offer sacrifices for people in general. This could be done (I think) only once a year (maybe more, but not often). How then, do we understand Jesus in this regard? It's simple. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. When Jesus died, the temple split in half. How beautifully symbolic! That we need someone else to offer up sacrifices for us for our redemption is no longer needed. That is what it means for Jesus to be a High Priest. But when you understand this, you see this has nothing to do with the Papacy or with priests in general. Ferguson simply doesn't understand what a High Priest does. We go straight to God, true, when we do sacrifices, but then he has an additional misunderstanding on what the sacrifice is. That sacrifice is Christ! We go to God for God the sacrifice! We are all able to participate in the sacrifice of the tabernacle, which contains the Holy Eucharist! Not "spiritual sacrifices", whatever that means.

     There is short section on saints. Again, he thinks Catholics make no distinctions between a special type of sainthood and a sainthood of the laity. Maybe if he were more informed, there would be something to talk about.

   The next target is Mary. It is here that we see Ferguson’s vicious anti-Catholicism. In the very first sentence, Ferguson claims not only that Catholic’s worship Mary, but that such a worship is the cornerstone of our Faith! This is nothing but slander (and sin! It may not be for a lay person, but for an author who is supposed to do his research, the standards are higher). Did Ferguson even attempt to understand what the Catholic position is on Mary and worship? Obviously not. Marian devotion is very ancient, even invoking her as the Thetokos to ensure our salvation.

Ferguson gives us three bullet points, two of which are not relevant to Mariology, but I’ll say something about them. The first claim is that incense was brought into Christianity to appease the Jews. Was John trying to appease the Jews with his references to incense when he wrote Revelation? No, obviously not. Incense was maintained from Judaism to Christianity. Then Catholic holidays were established, which is, like, not even an issue. For example Christmas. Is christening days so bad? I think not. And the third point says that the exaltation of Mary was used to promote and attract those who were used to worshipping goddesses. Even if this were true, it does nothing to Mariology for that would be a genetic fallacy.

Mary is correctly identified as having been without sin, and Ferguson cites Romans 3:23 as a counter example. But of course, Paul was speaking in generalities. There are exceptions. If Ferguson doesn’t think this plausible, then let him be reminded that he thinks infants are exempt from this statement of Paul’s, saying that all humans have sinned. So exemptions are not at all implausible. But being without sin does not mean Mary did not need a savior. The point of Romans 3:23 is that we need a savior, and Mary, though she was without sin, did need Jesus as a savior, though her grace was preemptive. The preemptive grace, and the Bible declares Mary  was “full of grace”, prevented her from sin that she would have otherwise done if she did not have that grace, like the stain of original sin.

     Mark 3:20-21, 31-35 are quoted as evidence for Mary’s sins. But there is nothing there to suggest that. Did they doubt? Yes, they did. But since when is sin and doubt synonymous? When I have a doubt about God, whatever it may be, am I in sin? It doesn’t seem like it. Ferguson then reads into the text that Jesus refused to acknowledge them for their lack of faith. But that’s not in the text. How one concludes this is a mystery. More will be said about this when we get to a Jewish understanding of Family.

Mary’s perpetual virginity is then attacked as being influenced by Gnosticism and other Greek thinking. This is not likely, and even if it were, it would be, again, a genetic fallacy. Did some people in the early church have negative views about marriage and sexuality? Yeah, they did, and that was erroneous, but it has never been Church teaching. It was G.K. Chesterton who said, “I read the astounding statement that the Catholic Church regards sex as having the nature of sin. How marriage can be a sacrament if sex is a sin, or why it is the Catholics who are in favor of birth and their foes in favor birth control, I will leave the critic to worry out for himself.” The Catholic church, like many other churches should, should embrace and encourage virginity and chastity, and I grant that maybe some of the early Church fathers took it to an extreme, but such an extreme has been silenced and the Church has spoken, marriage, and the act of consummation, is sacramental. Even St. Thomas Aquinas fought the idea that the act of sex is intrinsically evil.

After yet again slandering Catholic teaching, claiming we teach that one worships Mary, he writes two odd sentences, which, if interpreted ungraciously, could be a historical blunder. Ferguson says that Mary was commonly called Mother of God after the Council of Ephesus. The next sentence says that the original intent was to emphasize the deity of Christ. There are two ways to interpret this. The first is, “At Ephesus, Mary was called Mother of God to emphasize the deity of Christ” which would be incorrect. Or, with some grace, we could interpret it historically correct by reading it as, “Though originally invoked to emphasize the deity of Christ, such a title became more popular after the council of Ephesus.” The title, which is loosely translated as “Mother of God”, is Theotokos. It was invoked by Athanasius at the council of Nicea to stress the deity of Christ, but it exploded in popularity when Cyril employed the term to emphasize the humanity of Christ, and hence, his hypostatic union, at the council of Ephesus. Maybe, in a 3rd edition, Ferguson would like to edit this for clarity. But my point here is this, Theotokos, or the Mother of God, was promoted not to defend Gnosticism as Ferguson continuously accuses us of doing, and without evidence at that, but to promote and defend Jesus.

Ferguson quotes Vatican II (and here he finally quotes an appropriate authority for Catholic doctrine!) as encouraging the cult of Mary. To a Catholic, there isn’t anything particular wrong with this. However, what Ferguson wants to emphasize is the word “cult”. He uses the word in the connotative sense instead of the denotative. When Vatican II employs the word “cult”, we could take them as saying “culture” for “cult” is the root word. But Ferguson wants you to think it’s like a Jim Jones sort of thing, or some pagan kind of cult. But no, as Vatican II and many of the Counsels are written in Latin, we do come up with some tricky language and some not commonly used root words that seem strange to the English speaker.

It takes a whole page for Ferguson to actually give a valid reason to disbelieve the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary (he’s just bashing Catholicism meanwhile). He cites Matthew 1:25 which he believes demonstrates that Mary had sexual relations with Joseph and  Matthew 13:55 as evidence for siblings, which implies sexual relations. These attempts fails for a few reasons. There is no Hebrew or Aramaic word for cousin. So any cousins of Jesus would fall under the label “brother” or “sister”. This alone does not prove Mary was a virgin, all this proves that interpreting the way Ferguson does is not necessary. But there are reasons to believe at least some of those called “brothers and sister” were not deserving of the title in the modern way that we use it. For example James is commonly thought of a brother of Jesus, but we know this isn’t so in the modern sense. We know that a couple of Marys were present at the Crucifixion. Matthew accounts for “Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” In Mark, he accounts, “Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joseph, and Salome.” Then in John we have Jesus’ mother, “Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” What we infer from these three passages is that the mother of James and Joseph is also the wife if Cleophas. Mary mother of Jesus is not the wife of Cleophas so that Mary could not have James and Joseph as her offspring. Further, if Jesus indeed had siblings, he would not have left the care of Mary to John, when he died on the cross.

The Greek word being used is “adelphos” which is translated at “brother” though it doesn’t have the modern meaning we use today. For example, it is used in Genesis 14:14 to describe Lot and Abram as brothers, but Lot was Aran’s son, Abraham’s brother as indicated in Genesis 11:26-28. That was an uncle/nephew relationship. Jacob is called the brother of his uncle Laban in Genesis 29:15. Same thing goes for Cis and Eleazar in 1st Chronicles 23:21-22. There are multiple other passages where “brothers” or the plural “brethren” is used, and I won’t go through them all, but here is a list: Deuteronomy 27:2-7, Jeremiah 34:9, 2nd Kings 10:13-14, 2nd Samuel 1:26, 1st Kings 9:13, 20:32, Amos 1:9 and Acts 1:15-16.

This might seem strange to us today, but it was not in the mind of an ancient Jew. In Jesus’ day, the family was anybody who descended from a particular patriarch. Israel was a family as they all descended from Jacob. Jacob’s sons provided a family identity for the twelve tribes and those tribes identified themselves through these tribes, even associating their family heirs with land. Their God was tribal and based on family as well, like when we hear the phrase “the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob and the God of our fathers” such as in Acts 3:13, Matthew 22:32, Mark 12:26, and Luke 20:37. If you’re part of that family, or covenant, this is your particular God. This mentality is very common in ancient civilizations spanning the whole globe. One’s family, and the title of brother and sister, is not limited to the immediate domestic family, but to the entire culture or civilization. When we understand family in this way, we better understand the situation in Mark 3:31-34, which Ferguson cited as evidence for Mary’s sins. Jesus was not refusing to see her. What he was doing instead was correcting the notion of family that he was presented with. The people in the crowd he was talking to did not include those he could say are in his family, as in, the tribe and land of Judah. There were people from “Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon” as told in verse 8. Jesus was now establishing a new covenant, or family, that was not limited to tribes, but to whomever followed Jesus. This family included his mother and brothers, but was not limited to them, or even the tribe of Judah. This passage had nothing to do with Mary’s alleged lack of faith or sinfulness, but the establishing of the new covenant to form a new family of brothers and sisters.

Even if Mary had no other children, it doesn’t follow that she remained a virgin. Maybe Mary did have sexual union with Joseph, and Ferguson cites Matthew 1:25 in support of this proposition. But this fails as well. It reads, “But he [Joseph] had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.” Ferguson interprets this as saying Joseph had sexual relations with Mary after she gave birth to Jesus. But the ancient understanding of the use “until” did not have this meaning. It meant either all the way to, or all the way to and then some. It did not mean that the action did happen after an event. For example, we read in Psalm 110:1, which is quoted in Luke 20:42-43, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” Using Ferguson’s interpretation of “until”, what this Psalm means is that when his enemies are his footstool, he is to no longer sit at the right hand, thus never utilizing footstool, making the footstool unnecessary to begin with. But clearly this is wrong. He will continue to sit, even through the passing event of his enemies being made his footstool. In the same way, Joseph had no union with Mary, even through the passing event of Jesus birth.

This is nothing new. Mary’s virginity has been defended since ancient times. For example, John Chrysostom writes, “The expression ‘until’ need not lead you to believe that Joseph knew her subsequently; rather, it is used to inform you that the Virgin was untouched by man until the birth of Jesus. Scripture is accustomed to using the expression ‘until’ without intending thereby to establish a limited period of time.” At best, Matthew 1:25 shows that Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary before and after the birth of Jesus, and at worst, it remains silent on their relationship after the birth of Jesus. Either way, Ferguson has nothing to rely on with this passage.

Ferguson takes a swipe at Catholics once again by implying that we think of Mary as a goddess. Honestly, you would think he would have some charity or at least a vague understanding of Mariology that would give the reader a fair and balanced approach to Catholicism, but no. No, the point I guess is just to slander us. That’s okay, I suppose. Polemics do have their place. It’s funny when I read, “Let’s respect, admire and honor [Mary] in a right way…” I wonder, when was the last time Ferguson, or anybody in the ICOC for that matter, ever gave Mary respect, admiration and honor? I seriously doubt that has ever happened. But I’m open to being wrong. Maybe Ferguson has a Rosary stored away somewhere.

As usual, the quick reference guide concludes the chapter with a “Catholic Claim” versus a “Bible Truth”. The first “Catholic Claim” is that the Pope is the visible head of the Church and he counters with Jesus is the only head of the Church. But this is an equivocation fallacy. The Pope has a juridical function, as established by use of the keys. The second “Catholic Claim” is that the Pope is to be worshipped. This is foolishness. The third “Catholic Claim” is that Peter is the Rock upon which the Church was to be built, establishing a succession of Popes. But that’s also a misunderstanding of the Catholic understanding of Matthew 16. We believe that the keys are what established the office and hence successions, not that he was the Rock. The rock established the role, the keys established the successions. The fourth “Catholic Claim” is that Peter was the first Pope. The “Bible Truth” is that there is no evidence. It just seems that Ferguson either ignored it completely or refused to acknowledge it, but it is completely false that there is “not the slightest evidence” that Peter was Pope. He then goes on to argue that because Paul wrote more of the New Testament, therefore, Paul was more qualified to be Pope. How he concludes this, maybe only Ferguson knows. The fifth “Catholic Claim” is that the priesthood is based on apostolic succession. This is false. Bishops are the successors of the Apostles. Priests are merely deputized by the Bishops. Ferguson doesn’t want to understand this because the word “Priest” infuriates him and he refuses to acknowledge that a Priest is anything than what he says it is, even though it leads him to the biggest fallacy of equivocation he’s made yet. But even if he had put “Bishops” instead of “Priests” I already wrote about Acts 1:21-22 and Ferguson needs to account for Paul being an apostle even though he doesn’t meet the alleged requirements in Acts 1:21-22. The sixth “Catholic Claim” is that only special clergymen are priests. Again, he simply does not understand what a Catholic priest is and doesn’t deal with Catholic distinctions. The seventh “Catholic Claim” is that saints are special people versus the “Bible Truth” is that all men are saints. Again, he refuses to acknowledge that the Catholic Church makes a distinction between the two terms, the sainthood of the laity and the special designated class of sainthood. The eight “Catholic Claim” is that Mary was a perpetual virgin. Yes, she was, and Ferguson uses a different meaning of “brother” and “sister” because he doesn’t have the proper understanding of family, leading him to another equivocation fallacy. Further, Matthew 1:2 may even suggest that she was indeed a virgin all her life. The ninth and final “Catholic Claim” was that Mary was without sin. Correct, and Ferguson doesn’t seem to believe there are exceptions in Romans 3:23 even though he does believe there are exceptions, leading to an outright contradiction on his part, and he believes that doubt is a sin, which is not true. The opposite of faith is disobedience. He never showed that Mary was disobedient.