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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 2, Number 1
 January 1991 
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WAS SADDAM ANOTHER ANTICHRIST?
Q: How do I answer a Fundamentalist friend of mine who insists he knows Revelation is speaking about the present Middle Eastern situation? He claims his pastor has it all figured out.
A: Remind him that others have thought similar things and have made predictions about how things were supposed to unfold and yet were absolutely wrong. For example, Pat Robertson, former presidential candidate and host of the "700 Club," once taught there were clear signs in the Bible that the Soviet Union would invade Israel in 1982. Of course, this didn't happen.
Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth and father of the contemporary end-times mania, has also made prophetic gaffes. For years Lindsey hinted that the rapture (Jesus' coming to take the Church to heaven before the last seven years of the current age) would occur in 1988. When this didn't happen, he then claimed he not only had never exactly said the rapture would happen in 1988 (which is true), but that he hadn't even implied it (which isn't true).
Then there's Edgar C. Whisenant, who also claimed he had cracked the biblical code and had unlocked the time table in his book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. He too was proven mistaken.
And what about all the other Bible prophecy scenarios outlined by Fundamentalist preachers in the last fifty years? Ask your friend why you should think his is any different from these other (erroneous) interpretations.
During World War II many radio preachers (yes, they had them back then) were convinced Hitler was the Antichrist and Mussolini (or perhaps FDR) was the False Prophet (Rev. 16:13). These folks produced all sorts of biblical texts to prove their statements, yet they were all wrong. The moral of the story is we should be careful about interpreting a highly symbolic and apocalyptic book such as Revelation and not be so quick to claim our views represent "the sure word of prophecy." As for refuting your friend's current view, time will take care of that.
Q: What is the Angelus?
A: It's a three-part prayer said thrice daily, usually at six in the morning, noon, and six in the evening. The name of the prayer is taken from its opening line in Latin, "Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae" ("The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary").
The prayer itself consists of three Hail Marys, versicles, and a collect focusing on the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Annunciation.
Q: I heard there was a pope in the thirteenth century who resigned. Is this true?
A: Yes. Pope St. Celestine V reigned for about the last five months of 1294. He resigned with these words:
"We, Celestine V, Pope, moved by legitimate reasons . . . do freely and voluntarily resign the Pontificate, the place, the dignity, occupation and honors which we expressly renounce, and we give full and free faculty to the College of Cardinals canonically to elect a Pastor of the Universal Church."
Celestine had been elected pope after a papal interregnum of two years, during which time there had been fierce fighting between rival factions within the cardinalate. A Benedictine monk and hermit almost eighty years of age and unaccustomed to ecclesiastical politics, Celestine found the office too much to handle and resigned. He was succeeded by Boniface VIII.
Celestine died shortly after his resignation and was canonized within twenty years of his death.
Q: I'm confused. I was always taught you could receive Communion only once a day. My pastor says this isn't correct. He says you can receive the Eucharist twice a day.
A: Your pastor is correct. Canon Law says a person may receive Holy Communion a second time, provided he does so during a celebration of the Eucharist in which he participates (canon 917). The stipulation that one receive the second Communion at a Mass "in which he participates" doesn't apply in the case of those in danger of death (canon 921).
The confusion about this subject is due to post-conciliar changes in Church practice regarding the Eucharist. In the old 1917 Code of Cannon Law, reception of Holy Communion more than once a day was prohibited. After Vatican II this restriction was mitigated to permit reception twice on the same day. The 1983 revised Code of Canon Law incorporated the post-conciliar change in practice into the law of the Church.
Q: Please explain the difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees in the Gospels.
A: Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were religious parties in Jesus' day. Both were critical of and were criticized by Jesus.
The Sadducees thought of themselves as "conservatives," as the Old Believers. This is because they accepted only the written Law of Moses as authoritative and rejected subsequent revelation. As a result, the Sadducees denied many of the doctrines held by the Pharisees and by Jesus, including the resurrection of the dead, the existence of angels and spirits, and the meting out of rewards and punishment after death. These beliefs were thought by the Sadducees to be Zoroastrian corruptions of the authentic faith of Israel.
Although a religious party, the Sadducees were more important as a political force. They represented the priestly aristocracy and the power structure of Israel. For them, the duties of religion centered primarily around the Temple.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, were a lay group more representative of the common man. In addition to the written Law of Moses, the Pharisees accepted as authoritative the rest of what is for us the Old Testament, as well as the "tradition of the elders."
Whereas the Sadducees saw worship at the Temple as the main focus of the Law, the Pharisees believed this to be but one component among many of proper Mosaic observance. It was over the interpretation of the Law and which understanding of it represented the authentic tradition of Israel that Jesus and the Pharisees disagreed.
After the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, Sadducaic Judaism disappeared and Pharisaic Judaism became dominant. It is from the Pharisees, then, that contemporary Judaism is primarily descended.
Q: Is it true that the apostle Thomas wrote a Gospel which was recently discovered in Egypt? If so, why don't we have it in our Bibles?
A: As far as we know, the apostle Thomas never wrote a Gospel. The writing to which you refer is spurious and was composed by a member of a gnostic sect, probably in the late second century, which explains why it's not in the Bible. It was discovered, along with many other writings, in 1946 near the village of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Our version comes to us in Coptic, but there seems to have been a Greek original behind it.
The so-called Gospel of Thomas really isn't a Gospel at all, but a collection of 114 sayings or logia attributed to Jesus. Approximately one-fourth of these sayings are the same as those found in the canonical Gospels. Of the remainder, some are very similar to those in our Gospels, but have been adapted for gnostic purposes. Others are completely gnostic in origin and form.
While the Gospel of Thomas purports to have been written by the apostle, there's nothing to support this, and there's a great deal that argues against it. To mention only one example (and this example applies to gnostic writings in general), the milieu is all wrong. The peculiar sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas are, for the most part, light-years away from the kind of thing a Jewish rabbi would have said in the Palestine of A.D. 30. Contrast this with the very Jewish flavor of Jesus' words found in the canonical Gospels.
For this reason alone, we're forced to conclude that the Gospel of Thomas doesn't compare with the canonical Gospels when it comes to telling us what Jesus really taught.
Q: If the Catholic popes are infallible as you claim, then how can they contradict each other? Pope Clement XIV condemned the Jesuits in 1773, but Pope Pius VII favored them again in 1814.
A: When Catholics say popes can't contradict each other, we mean they can't do so when they teach infallibly, not when they make disciplinary and administrative decisions. The example you cited is a case of the latter and not the former.
Pope Clement XIV didn't "condemn" the Jesuits in 1773, but he did suppress the order--that is, he "shut it down." Why? Because the Bourbon princes and others hated the success of the Jesuits. They pressured the Pope until he gave in and suppressed the order. Even so, the decree which the Pope signed didn't judge or condemn the Jesuits. It merely listed the accusations against them and concluded that "the Church cannot enjoy true and lasting peace so long as the Society remains in existence."
As you noted, Pope Pius VII restored the order in 1814. Was the suppression of the Jesuits by Clement a mistake? Did it evince a lack of courage? Perhaps, but the important thing to note here is that it in no way was concerned with papal infallibility.
Q: A friend of mine attributes his new job to prayer. I think, given his qualifications and circumstances, he would have gotten the job anyway. Is it right to consider as an answer to prayer something which would have happened anyway?
A: Your question overlooks the possibility that your friend's prayer may well have been a factor in God granting him the qualifications and circumstances required for the job in the first place.
In his book Miracles, C. S. Lewis noted that the question of prayer and what "would have happened anyway" is like asking whether or not in Hamlet Ophelia (who falls into a river and drowns) dies because the branch upon which she climbs breaks or because Shakespeare wanted her to die. The answer, says Lewis, is both. He writes:
"Every event in the play happens as a result of other events in the play, but also every event happens because the poet wants it to happen. All events in the play are Shakespearian events; similarly all events in the real world are providential events. All events in the play, however, come about (or ought to come about) by the dramatic logic of events. Similarly all events in the real world (except miracles) come about by natural causes. `Providence' and Natural causation are not alternatives; both determine every event because both are one."
What "would have happened anyway" isn't something we can know, because what actually happened is influenced by our prayers (or our failure to pray). Even though the thing we're praying for presently has, in a sense, already been decided by the events which preceded it (excluding miracles) and these events (ultimately) by divine providence from all eternity, this doesn't make our petitions to no effect.
One of the things God took into account in deciding how things would come out was our prayers here and now. In this way our prayers can be, under God, real causes of events set in motion before the foundation of the world.
Because we're in time and God isn't, we have trouble seeing how this can be. While we must talk as if God exists on the same timeline as we do (even if we imagine that his presence on it stretches infinitely back and infinitely forward), this isn't really the case because he is outside time altogether.
This means the events which happened yesterday and which went into our present state of affairs are as present to God as the prayers we utter today. Confusing? Yes, but that doesn't mean such an explanation is illogical. Because of our limited (and fallen) reason, there's much we can comprehend only partially--or not at all. Time is one of those things. But don't worry: We'll all understand this perfectly in, say, ninety years.
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