"HOW SHALL WE THEN LIVE?" Francis Schaeffer

Thursday, April 21, 2005

More on Cardinal Ratzinger from Dr. Al Mohler


"One of the strange dimensions of this entire picture is the fact that evangelicals, concerned with the preservation of biblical truth and determined to defend biblical morality, will share much common ground with this new pope. In a sermon delivered to his fellow cardinals just two days prior to his election, Cardinal Ratzinger issued an eloquent and profound critique of postmodern relativism.

""How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many waves of thinking . . . The small boat of thought of many Christians has been tossed about by these waves--thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth," he declared. As he continued, "We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain, and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.""

There is not one syllable in those statements with which evangelicals would not be in full and enthusiastic agreement. Indeed, Ratzinger's writings reveal a keen theological mind that understands the contours of the postmodern crisis and signal a staunch defense of truth against a posture of relativism.

Similarly, in a lengthy interview published in 1985, Ratzinger went after liberal biblical critics who subvert the authority of Scripture. "Ultimately the authority on which these biblical scholars base their judgment is not the Bible itself but the [worldview] they hold to be contemporary. They are therefore speaking as philosophers or sociologists, and their philosophy consists merely in a banal, uncritical assent to the convictions of the present time, which are always provisional."

Once again, evangelicals would be in fundamental agreement with that assertion.

Today's evangelicals find themselves in a situation well described by J. Gresham Machen almost a century ago, when that great evangelical defender of the faith launched his attack on Protestant liberalism as a fundamentally new religion at odds with Christianity. Machen no doubt surprised many of his evangelical readers when he declared that evangelicals committed to the defense of the Gospel actually have more in common with orthodox Roman Catholics on issues such as the person of Christ and the Trinity than they would with their own liberal Protestant counterparts......"

JB here: What happens in the coming years to the Roman Catholic Church should be interesting.

No comments: