College Apologetics

Proof of the Truth of the Catholic Faith

Rev. Fr. Anthony Alexander

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 1954
• ISBN:
  9781618903051
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Proof of the Truth of the Catholic Faith. The classic apologetics for adult level. Ironclad logic! The existence of God, immortality of the soul, necessity of religion, reliability of the Gospels, nature of the Church, proof of her truth, etc. A work of genius; irrefutable!

Part One

THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION

Chapter I

The Importance of Apologetics

Definition

THE WORD “apologetics” is derived from a Greek verb which means “to defend.” An apology is usually a defense of an intellectual nature. It consists of the listing of the reasons for some particular course of action or for holding a certain belief. We shall see that in this book it has a more technical meaning.

The history of religious thought shows that there are two positions which have led to absurdity. They are faith without reason and reason without faith. It will be shown that truth is to be found in the position which holds that reason proves the fittingness and necessity of faith.

Before a religion can claim to speak with divine authority, it must prove that it was endowed with it by God. It cannot demand assent to its doctrines unless there is a solid basis for this faith. Before it speaks, it must present its credentials. If it demands faith without presenting these credentials, then it will be moving in a vicious circle for faith is believing on the authority of another.

The Christian Era was not very old when there appeared an error which will always remain as a good example of what can develop when a religion completely divorces faith from reason. Within a century after the death of Christ there appeared the error known as Gnosticism. Its devotees claimed to have a superior knowledge of religious matters but they could never prove their connection with the source of this “superior knowledge.” They demanded blind faith of all who would join their sects. But since they had no touchstone or rule by which they could periodically check on the truth of their doctrines, these Gnostics lost themselves in all sorts of vagaries. Their imaginations became the chief source of their tenets. St. Irenaeus said that by the latter part of the Second Century, there were over eighty of these sects in existence. What we have said of Gnosticism is true of almost all the religions of history which have insisted on faith in their doctrines without establishing a basis for this faith.

Opposite Gnosticism is the almost equally absurd position of rationalism which insists on reason without faith in religious matters. It holds that reason unaided by revelation is sufficient in discovering these truths. Regardless of a religion’s validity or the authority of its proponents to teach, this error holds that every doctrine must pass the test of comprehensibility; if the inner nature of a mystery cannot be understood, then that doctrine must be rejected. This error makes divine revelation unnecessary.

The history of the pagan nations abundantly shows that, practically speaking, divine revelation is necessary if man is to learn the truths of even natural religion clearly, quickly and infallibly. Experience teaches that man cannot comprehend many things in the natural order and so he a fortiori cannot unaidedly discover truths of the supernatural order. Common sense tells us that since divine revelation in no way contradicts the nature of God Who makes it and the nature of man who receives it, it is fitting and possible.

To be assured of truth in matters of supernatural religion, there must be a combination of faith and reason. This union is not artificial but one demanded by the nature of the case and the testimony of human experience. An agency or an individual must present its credentials before it can claim to be God’s mouthpiece and the validity of these credentials must be established by reason. Apologetics is the study in which we prove by reason that the Church is the agency set up by God to carry on His work of teaching the doctrines of supernatural religion. This branch of learning is defined as: the rational science which establishes the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church as the rule of faith.

Divisions

All the people of the world are divided into three main groups according to their religious convictions. It seems reasonable, therefore, to divide the treatment of apologetics into three parts. In each part we briefly discuss the truth or error of the convictions of one of these groups of people. When the three sections have been completed, the arguments for the teaching authority of the Church will have been outlined.

In the first subdivision of apologetics we discuss the reasons why men should hold that God exists and that the practice of religion is necessary. It will be shown that those who believe in the existence of God are logical in their convictions, while those who deny it a fortiori are not. The topics treated in this section are more or less of a philosophical nature. They are the arguments for the existence of God and the existence of a spiritual soul in man. An examination of the relationship which exists between the soul and God leads us to conclude that the practice of religion is of strict obligation. The section is concluded by calling attention to the fact that although man has the powers to arrive at the truths of natural religion, it is very difficult for most men to do so without the aid of supernatural revelation.

Since the conclusions of the first section of apologetics are so clear and cogent, it follows that those who deny them must be labeled illogical in their denials.

1. Those who deny the existence of God are atheists.

2. Those who deny the existence of a spiritual soul in man are materialists and positivists—they will admit the existence only of material things.

3. Those who deny the strict obligation to practice religion are called indifferentists.

4. The fourth group of those in error are rationalists who deny the necessity or possibility of God’s making a supernatural revelation to man. They deny the truth of any religious doctrine which cannot be fully understood and so eliminate religious mysteries from the realm of possibility.

The second section of apologetics is devoted to the search for evidence of God’s revelation to man. Let us examine the validity of Christianity first, for Christ claimed to impart to man the articles of divine revelation. We begin the inquiry by investigating the worth of the historical documents which are said to be the record of the beginnings of Christianity. Those documents are called the Gospels. Their trustworthiness is first proved and then they are examined. Their theme is Jesus Christ. The reason for the great emphasis on Christ in these writings is that He claimed and proved to be God. He came to earth for several reasons but the one which interests the student of apologetics is that He came to teach what all men must do and believe to be saved. He came, in short, to impart supernatural revelation to man.

After we prove what is stated in the preceding paragraph, it will be apparent that the true religion must be a Christian religion and that all non-Christian religions are false. The notable non-Christian religions of the world are Buddhism, Confucianism, Mohammedanism and Judaism. Their great age is absolutely no guarantee of their worth. If Christianity is true it is because it has authority to teach. These are false because they lack it. Even though they hold to the existence of God and the necessity of religion, the fundamental reason why they are false is that they refuse to accept Christ and His teachings.

In the third section of this study we attempt to determine whether or not all Christian religions are true. This inquiry will yield the following evidence. Christ intended that the doctrines which He taught be transmitted to all the races of people in the world from His time down to the end of the world. But He himself chose not to remain on earth to do this teaching. To carry out this task, He founded a teaching agency called His Church. But Christ foresaw that, in the centuries to come, there would arise wrong churches which would teach doctrines contrary to those taught by His Church. He could see that, in the conflict of teachings, the ordinary person would become confused and soon despair of finding the True Church. To protect the honest inquirer from making a mistake in finding the True Church, Christ impressed four identifying marks on it. The name of the True Church is derived from these four marks. It is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Christ pronounced condemnation on all who refused to accept His teachings as they were taught by this Church. It teaches by divine authority and so God protects it from error in teaching doctrines which concern faith and morals.

Since none of the non-Catholic Christian sects have the four marks of identification which Christ impressed upon His Church, they are wrong and unauthorized. The principal non-Catholic Christian groups are made up of the Orthodox and Protestant sects.

The general conclusion which can be drawn after the discussion of the three parts of apologetics has been completed is that for one to be logical in the matter of religious belief, it is not enough simply to believe in God or be a follower of Christ. Besides this, one must also admit the authority of the Catholic Church as the rule of faith.

Mistaken Rules of Faith

From time to time in the ages past, wrong rules of faith have appeared. Some of them have persisted to the present day and have arrested the attention of many people. Since their proponents have been tireless in propagating their opinions, we deem it fitting to appraise each rule briefly.

1. Protestantism holds that the Bible alone, privately interpreted, is sufficient to point out what all must do and believe to be saved. It denies the existence of any divinely-appointed, living intermediary between God and man. It says that except for the Bible, man needs no outside help in discovering how God expects religion to be practiced. The reading of the Bible will teach all necessary truth.

In answer to this we say that the Bible is indeed God’s inspired word and contains some of His revelation to man. The Church has always encouraged the reading of the Scriptures as a salutary practice. But there are several notable weaknesses in the Protestant position of the surpassing importance of the private interpretation of the Bible as a rule of faith.

1. It cannot be proved from the Bible itself or from any ancient Christian source that private interpretation of the Scriptures is the authentic rule of faith, nor can it be proved that the Bible is the sole vehicle of God’s revelation to man.
2. Private interpretation of the Bible, upon which Protestants say salvation is contingent, was and is impossible for a great many people because they are illiterate. If an illiterate person accepts another’s interpretation, then it is not his own private one.
3. Before one can interpret, he must understand. The average layman will find many parts of the Bible very difficult to understand. It was written from two to three thousand years ago in languages very different from our own, and filled with figures of speech, idiomata, and sentence structures which in many instances are almost impossible to translate literally. Any understanding of the Bible will be a superficial one unless the reader is well acquainted with the Oriental culture of most of the writers and with the political, social, and geographical factors which often color the narrative.
4. Those who hold that salvation rests upon the private interpretation of the whole Bible are forced to conclude that there was a time when Christians could not be saved because in their day the Bible was not yet completed. Christ died about the year 30 A.D. The first book of the New Testament to be written was probably St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians written about 51 A.D. and the last book written was St. John’s Gospel composed toward the year 100 A.D.
5. In the last chapter of the last book of the New Testament to be written, it explicitly states that all that Christ said and did was not committed to writing.

2. Another wrong rule of faith is religious liberalism. In general this opinion holds that in religious matters, the intellect should abdicate its superior position in favor of emotion and sentimentality. It holds that feeling is the best guide to truth and the best norm by which to solve a moral problem. Religion should be looked upon as something which soothes and reassures one in time of distress. It is closely linked with the false doctrine of Modernism which was condemned in 1907 by Pius X in the encyclical entitled Pascendi dominici gregis. These are its main tenets:

A. Man is autonomous in the field of religion. He must, therefore, reject all external authority that would propose to him a religion binding him to accept definite articles of faith and a code of morals. He condemns them because they are inflexible and rigid.

In answer to this principle we must say briefly that religion is based not on whim or fancy but on the fact that man is dependent on God. Since he cannot escape this dependence, neither can he escape the obligation to practice religion imposed by God.

B. Having proclaimed its autonomy in religious matters, liberalism goes on to state that one should search his heart to discover “truth.” In this search one should minimize the roleof the intellect and stress the role of the emotions. It further limits the importance of the intellect by saying that it is valid only in the realm of the visible and the sensible.

We shall treat this principle of liberalism more fully in our chapter on the necessity of religion. Suffice it here to state that the obligation to practice religion and the elements of which religion is constituted, make it stable and permanent. The rule of sentimentality attacks the unchanging character of religion for the emotions are neither stable nor permanent. They are variable. By this we mean that although all have the same number of them, their intensity varies at different times and with different persons. They can never be the uniform guide to the truths of religion. No one will deny that the emotions have a place in man’s worship of God, for we must worship Him with our whole being. These emotions can be a powerful driving force for good, but liberalism gives them a role which is entirely out of proportion and erroneous.

The powers that make man superior to animal are his intellect and will—his ability to think and to choose. The emotions are blind and indifferent things and therefore inferior to the intellect. They receive their direction from the higher powers and should always be controlled by them. The false rule that we are examining would invert the order of importance of the intellect and will to travel paths dictated by the emotions. Sentiment and emotion is a false rule of faith because it is based on disorder.

C. Religious liberalism gives to the terms faith, revelation and dogma very peculiar and wrong definitions. By faith they do not mean the accepting of a truth on the authority of God Who has rev...