My introduction to Thomas Howard. Absolutely phenomenal. I was addicted to reading this book. Worth it even just for the prose alone.
Admittedly, I exMy introduction to Thomas Howard. Absolutely phenomenal. I was addicted to reading this book. Worth it even just for the prose alone.
Admittedly, I expected the book to discuss only surface level points that are so commonly found in Catholic apologetic material - 鈥渂eginner-friendly鈥 pamphlet statements, with historical citations from Church Fathers and everything I鈥檇 already heard before, as a 鈥渞ecent鈥 convert. But Howard thoroughly explores the ideas and contrasts the underlying worldviews of these very different threads of Christianity.
鈥滿y debt to Protestantism is incalculable.鈥 Howard walked a path familiar to many American Christians, marked by names such as Billy Graham, Scofield, Moody, Wycliffe, Tyndale, and groups such as Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ. His high praise and appreciation for his Evangelical upbringing was welcome. More than just a passing praise, Howard brings the reader to such a point as to make him wonder, why? 鈥濃f home base was that good, what is there to seek? If the Reformation may be credited with fostering this sort of Christian earnestness, zeal, and fidelity, where else would anyone want to turn?鈥
Every Catholic should read this for its beginning chapter alone; the importance of and reverence for Scripture, while it is certainly present in the Church, could do to be enkindled more particularly! Howard鈥檚 gratitude towards and defense of evangelicalism also opened my eyes to some prejudices I have unknowingly held onto concerning our Protestant friends. The bit about a hillbilly 鈥減leading the blood of Jesus鈥 not being so very different from our own devotion towards Our Lord鈥檚 Most Precious Blood was a check on my own pride. His stance is that evangelicalism truly taught him orthodox doctrine - but was incomplete.
Howard seeks a balance between the all-too-true Protestant argument of avoiding self-delusion and superstition, and the all-too-true Catholic argument of avoiding self-delusion and gnostic heresy. 鈥滲ut it is one thing to see dangers; it is another to be true to the Faith in all of its amplitude. By avoiding the dangers of magic and idolatry on the one hand, evangelicalism runs itself very near the shoals of Manichaeanism on the other. 鈥 To correct a flood, one does not want a drought.鈥
An argument in favor of ceremony, of ritual, of liturgy, and of sacrament, drawn from the viscerally real and Incarnate drama of the Gospel.
Life is mystical - this is the truth. Reality is more glorious and mysterious than we can imagine. The gnostic decries the material world as evil, cleaving it entirely from the 鈥渟piritual world鈥, unknowable but by their secret rites. The creation that we know to be formed by the hands of God and declared by His mouth as *good* - to them it is an abomination and a hindrance to 鈥渢rue鈥 good. How ridiculous! Reality is Incarnational. The fact and paradox of God鈥檚 becoming man is the most real thing of all existence.
鈥漈he Incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed.鈥
鈥滻s it objected that this [worship by bowing 鈥渨ith kneebones and neck muscles鈥 with our feet, singing great hymns with our tongues, our nostrils full of the smoke of incense鈥漖 is too physical, too low down on the scale for the gospel? Noses indeed! If the objection carries the day, then we must jettison the stable and the manger, and the winepots at Cana, and the tired feet anointed with nard, and the splinters of the cross, not to say the womb of the mother who bore God when He came to us. Too physical? What do we celebrate in our worship? It is Buddhism and Platonism and Manichaeanism that tell us to disavow our flesh and expunge everything but thoughts. The gospel brings back all of our faculties with a rush.鈥
I need to prevent myself from quotemining to the point of reproducing the entire book - so just go ahead and read it!...more
Phenomenal. I have dipped my toes into ex-gay literature and was hesitant to read this alternate perspective -- mostly for fear of liberalism and a luPhenomenal. I have dipped my toes into ex-gay literature and was hesitant to read this alternate perspective -- mostly for fear of liberalism and a lukewarm stance against the related sin -- but am so very glad I did! Tushnet's point of view seems to be much more wholesome and fruitful (for my own self) and addressed fears I had but couldn't articulate with "ex-gay" rhetoric and programs. Where Dan Mattson's Why I Don't Call Myself Gay mentions in a brief chapter the "temptations of friendship", I didn't feel that he offered much of a solution. Tushnet knocks it out of the park with total humility and self-awareness (and genuinely funny humor). This is all without compromising Christian faith and morals. Caritas in veritate!...more
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