QUICK SEARCH

THIS ROCK

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Subscribe

Permissions

LIBRARY

God & Christ

Scripture & Tradition

Church & Papacy

Mary & the Saints

Faith & Science

Morality & Ethics

Sacraments

Salvation

Last things

Non-Catholic groups

Anti-Catholicism

Practical Apologetics

Fathers Know Best

Permissions

OUR SPONSORS

Please support our sponsors

BOOKLETS

PillarofFire

Pure Love

12WaystoEvangelize

Permissions

SPECIAL OFFERS

S  i  d  e  b  a  r

IS THE MASS PROPITIATORY?

This Rock Volume 4, Number 7   July 1993     Up Front By Karl Keating   Letters   Dragnet   FATALLY FLAWED THINKING By JAMES AKIN   Is The Atonement Limited-And Are You Out of Luck?   Is The Mass Propitiatory?   White's Scholarship Problems-And A Mysterious Ph.D.   Iron Sharpens Iron Transubstantiation for Beginners By Canon Francis J. Ripley   Fathers Know Best Confirmation   Old Testament Guide Leviticus By Antonio Fuentes    Subscribe    Permissions

IN personal correspondence with me, James White made a special request that I respond to his book's charge that Catholics add to the sacrifice of the cross by claiming that the Mass is propitiatory. How can the Mass be propitiatory, White asks, if the sacrifice of the cross was propitiatory?

The answer is simple. To propitiate means to turn away wrath. While the sacrifice of the cross was propitiatory in that it paid the price for God's wrath to be turned away from us, there still remains the question of how this propitiation is applied to us. Either it was applied to us when Christ initially offered himself, or there is a sense in which it remains to be applied today. (These alternatives are not mutually exclusive.)

The first option is held by radicals known as hyper-Calvinists. Even White repudiates these people. The idea that God's anger was forever turned away in A.D. 33 would lead to theological absurdities.

It would force us to say God is never angry with anyone who will end up saved, even when that person is still an unrepentant sinner spitting in the face of his Creator.

It would require us to say a person is forgiven, justified, and reconciled to God not just before he has repented, and turned to God, which is odd enough, but even before he exists. Yet this is impossible, since the Bible indicates that we are only put right with God when we have repented and believed (Rom. 5:10-11, 2 Cor. 5:20, Gal. 2:17, Col. 1:21, Titus 3:7).

Furthermore, Paul indicates Christians have to face the prospect of some judgment and wrath even though they have already been justified (Rom. 14:10, 12, 1 Cor. 11:32, 2 Cor. 5:9-10, Eph. 5:6-7). Even after our justification, God can become angry when we commit sins, and this anger also needs to be turned away, as it is when Christ's work on the cross is applied to us throughout our lives as believers.

The same was true in the Old Testament. God was angry with Old Testament saints, even though they had already been put right with him (Deut. 3:26, 4:21, 1 Kgs. 11:9, 1 Chr. 19:2-3). Someone might object that this was before God's wrath was turned away on Calvary, but such an objection doesn't do justice to Scripture's teaching that Christ was slain "from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8).

Since the Mass is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the cross (not merely its symbolic retelling), the Mass itself turns away wrath; it is a means by which the forgiveness Christ earned is applied to us.

Protestants often are encouraged to use the prayer of the tax-collector, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13). What they fail to realize is that in Greek this is "Lord, be propitious to me, a sinner." If Christians can pray this prayer, then in some way even they need propitiation.