Truth, Salvation & Baptism

A Response to Jimmy Swaggert Ministries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The Question

You begin your tract entitled, "A Letter To My Catholic Friends," with a question: Can a Roman Catholic be born again and saved while remaining affiliated with the Catholic Church? (p. 2). This is indeed an important question. The acceptance of an evangelical interpretation of salvation over the classical understanding might already connote an ideological dissension from the special community established directly by Jesus. Of course, though with the slant that the Catholic Church (with a large "C") would in your appreciation be considered a diabolical institution, you would insist that Full-Gospel Christians evacuate it before forfeiting their immortal souls. I know that there is very little chance to mollify your position in this regard; your anti-Catholicism is infamous. However, even if your mind should be closed to any further intellectual inquiry; I would like to offer my own brief and I trust honest appraisal of your insights into the faith which has brought me to Jesus Christ. I take you for your word when you say that you love Catholics. If it was not for that, I would have no respect at all for you. As a simple man of faith, I must also confess to caring for you with a Christian love which even seeks out the betterment of those who hurt and offend our sensibilities.

Communications Vacuum

You feel yourself entrusted by God with a special burden to the Catholic people. Indeed, in the midst of a vacuum among the Catholic leadership to reach out in the electronic media, you have opted to fill this need. Throughout the world, even in nations possessing Catholic majorities, you evangelize with impunity in regards to pre-existing religious loyalties. It has been my hope that this would shake Catholics to be more aware of their spiritual commitments and less preoccupied by concerns, however important, in the social agenda. Of course, as you have discovered, the great perils in a ministry such as yours is that more faith might be placed in the evangelist than in the message, Jesus Christ and his Gospel. Your recent involvement with scandal has illustrated this dilemma. The recourse which you have taken, and it has been quite wondrously incredible, has been to publicly repent and to continue the ministry. The only thing which has marred this course, has been your excommunication from your own ecclesial community.

You say that you are compelled to speak the truth out of love for Catholics (p. 3). However, now that your denomination has disowned you, what checks remain in place to insure fidelity to the Gospel? Private revelation has historically been detailed as the significant theology of fragmentation. One church breaks into two, the two into four, etc. This is a negative witness in the cause of Christian unity. How can we trust that your truth or your interpretation of the truth is the one and only?

Greatest Enemy

You are quite correct when you write that the one who would treat us dishonestly is our greatest foe (p. 3). Of course, you will later make the connection, though it is hidden here in elusive language, that this enemy is the Roman Catholic Church. However, other evangelists, suffering under serious clandestine sins, have made similar misrepresentations of Catholic faith, a strategy which, if deliberate, is diabolical. If you have been in such a bondage, and not in the freedom of Christ's Father, then I praise God for your recent repentance and conversion. Of course, God's grace can turn around our minds as well as our hearts and souls. Otherwise, the conversion is incomplete. The dark subliminal forces which control the lives of many today, also blurs their reasoning toward the truth. Turning toward your situation, you say yourself that you are no expert in Catholic teaching. If so, how can you so fervently and unreservedly criticize it? The testimony of Catholics who failed to explore the depths of their heritage or the confused rambling of priests and religious who were ill-prepared for the roles they accepted, is not sufficient.

Certainty of Salvation

You rejoice in those who are born-again, and certainly, I also thank God for the opportunities people have to reaffirm their faith in Jesus Christ. However, a point of traditional clash between Catholics and Protestants emerges over the question of salvation. You state that all persons are immediately saved who accept God's conditions for salvation and accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior (p. 7). This analysis of the datum of Scripture and tradition only goes back five centuries. Martin Luther was a man who experienced serious distress over his salvation. He could not imagine how his stern God could possibly save a wretch like himself. He consequently opted for a view that all remain unworthy but that somehow justification is imputed upon us by God since Christ has carried all the weight of our sins. Once we accept Jesus, we are saved. What about the person who later rejects Jesus or who falls into some kind of immorality? The usual Protestant answer, now leaning more towards the Calvinists then the Lutherans, is that such a person really did not have faith to begin with. Otherwise, if such a person died, you might have wicked people among the "saved". According to this view, were you even a Christian when you wrote your tract in 1983? The Catholic view approaches the question with a more dynamic interpretation of human nature. We believe in such a thing as a real faith turning bad. Just as there can be a conversion (toward God); there can also be reversion (away from God). Maybe this is why sacraments like reconciliation and Eucharist are so important in the life of the Catholic? Reaching the goal of our eternal destiny is seen as more of a process than as a one-shot deal. Salvation is thus not absolutely assured although we live in the most optimistic hope of it. Salvation is also understood, not merely as an intensely personal experience, but as a reality which joins one to the Catholic community. This communal emphasis (revolving around the sacraments) is in stark contrast to the inordinate stress upon the individual offered in your reckoning.

Baptism

Allowing the Holy Spirit to flood one's heart and life, being temples of the Holy Spirit, has long been a theme in Catholic baptismal and confirmation theology. I am uncertain, given your interpretation of being born-again, whether or not you would require an act of baptism with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I would hope so, considering that Christ said that unless you be born-again by water and the Spirit, you can have no part of him. We recognize such baptisms in other ecclesial communities and in dire necessity, those without the forms in baptism by blood (martyrdom for the faith) or by desire (wishing but unable to receive the rite). The latter one would seem to be the closest to your line of reasoning. However, I can speak more accurately about the theology of my own faith than yours.