"Whether it’s pragmatism, individualism, or some other -ism without a name, it is deep in Protestant theology, deep enough that it is as ubiquitous in the original movement as its descendants today. It’s in the DNA."
I am fairly convinced it's what Paul Hacker calls "reflexive faith" in his book "Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion": the peculiar doctrine that belief in one's individual salvation is the key to salvation itself. It's the animating principle behind essentially all the Protestant distinctives, and once I saw it I cannot unsee it, everywhere from the stereotypical question "do you know whether you're saved", to the liberal Protestant existential dialectic between faith and skepticism, to the fundamentalist recoil at any hint of doubt as a sure sign of damnation.
It perfectly explains why even Protestant spirituality revolves around assurance of salvation, justification, etc, in a way completely out of step with the Catholic tradition.
It certainly was the point I felt the most dissonance with Catholicism before my conversion (from a vague Protestant mishmash that includes everything from evangelicalism to confessional Lutheranism, but that's a story for another day), as well as the point I feel the most dissonance with Protestantism now.
Extremely interesting. That might be right, I'll have to look into Hacker's book. Initially, I can see how it would help explain two other attitudes that are themselves peculiar and seemingly inexplicable, namely, that the only truths that REALLY matter in Christianity are those which I go to hell for willfully rejecting, and that the Bible (and then only the seemingly-clear passages) is all we need because its teachings are sufficient for individual salvation. The move from "We want to be saved," to "therefore we don't want anything else" is very counterintuitive to me now. I want as much Christianity as I can get, thank you!
Another point that I only recently realized is that the Protestant emphasis on getting saved and the Catholic emphasis on what you're saved for (theosis) is actually unified in a Catholic both/and, because theosis *is* salvation. The worst pain of hell is not actually the punishment for our sins, but the "pain of loss", of missing out on perfect union with God in the beatific vision, and thus literally one cannot be saved from hell without also perfectly undergoing theosis.
I loved this piece, very well done. This lays bare the problem with evangelical holiday services.
I am always confused by Christmas Eve services at evangelical churches which focus on Christ's redemptive work on the cross. This misses the point of Christmas as an individual holy day. The incarnation not atonement should be the focus of Christmas. They are related for sure but to the over emphasis on salvation shows the deep seated overemphasis on "personal salvation"
Absolutely. Sometimes there is a kind of playful debate about whether Christmas or Easter is more important, and while I wouldn’t say I have the question settled, it’s telling that the value of Christmas in these conversations is always that it enables Easter—I don’t think I ever heard anyone (in this specific context) intuitively grasp that the event is significant, even paramount, in its own right.
I’m assuming from your post that you haven’t read anything by the late Dallas Willard and others who are currently popularizing his approach to younger and wider audiences. Willard taught that discipleship isn’t just believing in Jesus—it’s learning to live with him, day by day, as an apprentice whose life is being quietly reshaped from the inside out. As a philosopher, he had a rare gift for weaving deep, academic insight together with the down-to-earth practices of spiritual formation.
To my great shame, I haven’t read Willard, but I’ve heard only good things! Does he talk about participation in the divine nature? If so I would gladly add him high in the queue!
Yeah, that’s a great question, and honestly, it’s one a lot of people miss about Dallas Willard.
He doesn’t often use the phrase “participation in the divine nature” (from 2 Peter 1:4), but he’s really talking about the same reality. Willard’s whole vision of discipleship is built around the idea that we’re invited to share in God’s own life—not just believe in him from a distance. He’d call it “living in the kingdom” or “sharing in the life that Jesus himself has.” In Renovation of the Heart, he even says that spiritual formation is “participation in the life of God.” He’s just using more everyday language than the old theological word theosis.
If you think about it, this is the same thread that runs through a lot of writers across the centuries. The early church fathers like Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become god,” meaning we’re drawn into his life, not turned into little gods. That’s the same current that flows into thinkers like C.S. Lewis; he talked about how Christ “will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant,” in Mere Christianity.
And N.T. Wright picks it up too, though again with different language. For him, sharing in the divine nature isn’t some mystical escape…it’s what happens when God’s Spirit renews our humanity. We become fully alive, fully human, because we’re being remade in the image of Christ. In After You Believe, Wright says virtue and transformation are how we learn to “share the very life of God himself.”
So yeah, Willard absolutely talks about participation in the divine nature; he just uses language like “kingdom life” and “becoming like Christ by training, not just trying.” He’s coming at it as a philosopher and a practical theologian, not a mystic, but it’s the same truth: life with God, not just belief about him.
If you want to go deeper on that theme, Willard, N.T. Wright, and C.S. Lewis form a really nice trio. Willard shows you how, Wright shows you why, and Lewis shows you what it feels like. 😀
That’s great to hear! I think Lewis represents one of the high points of Protestant reflection on the supernatural end of man, in part because he was steeped not only in Catholic theologians of the patristic era, but even makes references to Maritain and apparently quotes Francis De Sales from memory, in French no less! Wright, influenced by Lewis and no slouch himself, would be a natural thinker to pick this thread up.
It sounds like Willard might be having a similar insight to Ratzinger, who thinks of Jesus bringing, more than anything else… Himself, God. Which I still haven’t finished absorbing in its full implications. And yet if we stop there, even if we have a richer version of moral formation under the heading of Discipleship, we haven’t quite made it. The idea that you are being let into the inner life of the Trinity does not come through in Lewis. In the Weight of Glory I learned to long for it, but it was still inarticulate. There’s something like theosis, to be sure, but it never comes through very clearly what, exactly, is on offer, and how it relates to the Persons of the Godhead as a Communion.
In any case, as I say near the end of the article, I am very happy to grant stand-out theologians and pastors, and would be delighted if a full-orbed Trinitarian vision of our destiny were to infuse as much of Protestantism as possible! I simply suspect that in fact it won’t really ever catch on because it will just feel to many that it doesn’t have any “practical application.”
I think a lot of Protestants, like Willard, or much more obviously figures like John Wesley, have an intuitive sense for the central importance of divinization in the Christian life, but are straitjacketed into a Protestant terminological framework that prevents them from fully expressing their ideas. From a Catholic perspective, "discipleship" feels like an almost laughably weak label to slap onto the riches of the spiritual life, and whatever deep understanding of union with God is likely to be obscured by framing it as simply an opinion on what broader evangelicalism terms discipleship.
There are younger whipper snappers like John Mark Comer who pick up on all this stuff. And he loves Ron Rolheiser and has turned a lot of people on to him.
"Whether it’s pragmatism, individualism, or some other -ism without a name, it is deep in Protestant theology, deep enough that it is as ubiquitous in the original movement as its descendants today. It’s in the DNA."
I am fairly convinced it's what Paul Hacker calls "reflexive faith" in his book "Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion": the peculiar doctrine that belief in one's individual salvation is the key to salvation itself. It's the animating principle behind essentially all the Protestant distinctives, and once I saw it I cannot unsee it, everywhere from the stereotypical question "do you know whether you're saved", to the liberal Protestant existential dialectic between faith and skepticism, to the fundamentalist recoil at any hint of doubt as a sure sign of damnation.
It perfectly explains why even Protestant spirituality revolves around assurance of salvation, justification, etc, in a way completely out of step with the Catholic tradition.
It certainly was the point I felt the most dissonance with Catholicism before my conversion (from a vague Protestant mishmash that includes everything from evangelicalism to confessional Lutheranism, but that's a story for another day), as well as the point I feel the most dissonance with Protestantism now.
Extremely interesting. That might be right, I'll have to look into Hacker's book. Initially, I can see how it would help explain two other attitudes that are themselves peculiar and seemingly inexplicable, namely, that the only truths that REALLY matter in Christianity are those which I go to hell for willfully rejecting, and that the Bible (and then only the seemingly-clear passages) is all we need because its teachings are sufficient for individual salvation. The move from "We want to be saved," to "therefore we don't want anything else" is very counterintuitive to me now. I want as much Christianity as I can get, thank you!
This video simplifies and polemicizes it quite a bit, but is a great summary of Hacker's main thesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irXpVByUIU8
Another point that I only recently realized is that the Protestant emphasis on getting saved and the Catholic emphasis on what you're saved for (theosis) is actually unified in a Catholic both/and, because theosis *is* salvation. The worst pain of hell is not actually the punishment for our sins, but the "pain of loss", of missing out on perfect union with God in the beatific vision, and thus literally one cannot be saved from hell without also perfectly undergoing theosis.
Thanks for this. I appreciate your good faith in asking hard questions of Protestants. This will be one I’ll periodically return to.
I loved this piece, very well done. This lays bare the problem with evangelical holiday services.
I am always confused by Christmas Eve services at evangelical churches which focus on Christ's redemptive work on the cross. This misses the point of Christmas as an individual holy day. The incarnation not atonement should be the focus of Christmas. They are related for sure but to the over emphasis on salvation shows the deep seated overemphasis on "personal salvation"
Absolutely. Sometimes there is a kind of playful debate about whether Christmas or Easter is more important, and while I wouldn’t say I have the question settled, it’s telling that the value of Christmas in these conversations is always that it enables Easter—I don’t think I ever heard anyone (in this specific context) intuitively grasp that the event is significant, even paramount, in its own right.
Have you considered Western Orthodoxy?
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-165999349?r=1nm0v2&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
I’m assuming from your post that you haven’t read anything by the late Dallas Willard and others who are currently popularizing his approach to younger and wider audiences. Willard taught that discipleship isn’t just believing in Jesus—it’s learning to live with him, day by day, as an apprentice whose life is being quietly reshaped from the inside out. As a philosopher, he had a rare gift for weaving deep, academic insight together with the down-to-earth practices of spiritual formation.
To my great shame, I haven’t read Willard, but I’ve heard only good things! Does he talk about participation in the divine nature? If so I would gladly add him high in the queue!
Yeah, that’s a great question, and honestly, it’s one a lot of people miss about Dallas Willard.
He doesn’t often use the phrase “participation in the divine nature” (from 2 Peter 1:4), but he’s really talking about the same reality. Willard’s whole vision of discipleship is built around the idea that we’re invited to share in God’s own life—not just believe in him from a distance. He’d call it “living in the kingdom” or “sharing in the life that Jesus himself has.” In Renovation of the Heart, he even says that spiritual formation is “participation in the life of God.” He’s just using more everyday language than the old theological word theosis.
If you think about it, this is the same thread that runs through a lot of writers across the centuries. The early church fathers like Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become god,” meaning we’re drawn into his life, not turned into little gods. That’s the same current that flows into thinkers like C.S. Lewis; he talked about how Christ “will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant,” in Mere Christianity.
And N.T. Wright picks it up too, though again with different language. For him, sharing in the divine nature isn’t some mystical escape…it’s what happens when God’s Spirit renews our humanity. We become fully alive, fully human, because we’re being remade in the image of Christ. In After You Believe, Wright says virtue and transformation are how we learn to “share the very life of God himself.”
So yeah, Willard absolutely talks about participation in the divine nature; he just uses language like “kingdom life” and “becoming like Christ by training, not just trying.” He’s coming at it as a philosopher and a practical theologian, not a mystic, but it’s the same truth: life with God, not just belief about him.
If you want to go deeper on that theme, Willard, N.T. Wright, and C.S. Lewis form a really nice trio. Willard shows you how, Wright shows you why, and Lewis shows you what it feels like. 😀
That’s great to hear! I think Lewis represents one of the high points of Protestant reflection on the supernatural end of man, in part because he was steeped not only in Catholic theologians of the patristic era, but even makes references to Maritain and apparently quotes Francis De Sales from memory, in French no less! Wright, influenced by Lewis and no slouch himself, would be a natural thinker to pick this thread up.
It sounds like Willard might be having a similar insight to Ratzinger, who thinks of Jesus bringing, more than anything else… Himself, God. Which I still haven’t finished absorbing in its full implications. And yet if we stop there, even if we have a richer version of moral formation under the heading of Discipleship, we haven’t quite made it. The idea that you are being let into the inner life of the Trinity does not come through in Lewis. In the Weight of Glory I learned to long for it, but it was still inarticulate. There’s something like theosis, to be sure, but it never comes through very clearly what, exactly, is on offer, and how it relates to the Persons of the Godhead as a Communion.
In any case, as I say near the end of the article, I am very happy to grant stand-out theologians and pastors, and would be delighted if a full-orbed Trinitarian vision of our destiny were to infuse as much of Protestantism as possible! I simply suspect that in fact it won’t really ever catch on because it will just feel to many that it doesn’t have any “practical application.”
I think a lot of Protestants, like Willard, or much more obviously figures like John Wesley, have an intuitive sense for the central importance of divinization in the Christian life, but are straitjacketed into a Protestant terminological framework that prevents them from fully expressing their ideas. From a Catholic perspective, "discipleship" feels like an almost laughably weak label to slap onto the riches of the spiritual life, and whatever deep understanding of union with God is likely to be obscured by framing it as simply an opinion on what broader evangelicalism terms discipleship.
There are younger whipper snappers like John Mark Comer who pick up on all this stuff. And he loves Ron Rolheiser and has turned a lot of people on to him.
Totally—I have a different set of reservations about Comer’s theology, but regard him as a genuinely wonderful man!
You inspired me to write this! https://open.substack.com/pub/judsontaylor/p/more-than-forgiven?r=2m736&utm_medium=ios