It was a Friday night. I was standing at a bus stop across the street from the campus of Ohio State University on the night before the game-the Ohio State-Michigan game, of course. It was Halloween night (this makes a lot of difference on a campus where I once stumbled onto a meeting of the local vampire cult-in front of the main library, no less-black robes and all). As I stood there, waiting for the bus, I saw three students approach who seemed, well, a little different. They looked happy enough, but they were reasonably well-dressed and seemed to be oriented to time and place (no small feat on the OSU campus on a football Friday night). Oh no, I lamented to myself, this could only mean one thing . . .
“So, who do you think is going to win the game tomorrow?” one of them asked me.
I, of course, being the aloof academic, replied, “Well, I suppose whoever plays better.” The answer seemed reasonable and just noncommittal enough that if I had made a mistake, and they were not who I thought they were, they could write me off as some poor schlep with a profound sense of the obvious . . . but then it happened . . .
“Mister, could I ask you-What do you think about God?”
My mind began to race. As a logic theoretician, I assume that one correct proof of a theorem is enough to stop debate on the topic. Okay, so I’m naive. You just can’t say to a street evangelist (or a group of them), “See Bellarmine’s proof about faith and works. It was published in the 1580s, I think. Corollaries and extensions have been made since then, although an early sketch of the proof can be traced as far back as Augustine, who developed the proof based upon the groundwork laid by Paul of Tarsus. Please, go read the appropriate literature sources, and then see me again if you need any help.”
Naive and a bit too elitist an approach. . . . No, this called for the Socratic method (it was, after all, Halloween, and I could pretend to be whomever I wanted to be).
“What do you mean?” I asked in my most innocent tone.
“I mean, are you saved?”
Quickly, I tried to think of all of the arguments in the field of soteriology. Depending upon the particular day, my approach to a street evangelist is either calm and deliberative or overzealous in extremis (I figure, if you can’t beat them, outdo them). Unfortunately, that night I was standing at a bus stop with only minutes-seconds really-to summarize a probable ninety-minute conversation, so I began to compress. I hate it when a professor says to a class during a theoretical exposition, “It can be shown that . . . ” and then writes down the answer.
“Look, I often find when discussing this matter with Evangelicals that the terms are not clearly defined. What exactly do you mean by ‘saved’?”
He replied, “If you died tonight, would you be assured of going to heaven?”
“That’s not really what salvation means. You should read up on this,” I suggested.
Taking me a bit too literally, he pulled out his pocket edition of the New Testament and began to flip through the pages. “What do you think about . . ?” I don’t really remember the exact passage he quoted (it was in 1 John, I believe), but I began to sense that this was going to turn into a session of, “My out-of-context quotation is better than your out-of-context quotation.” The student then began to quote Romans. Ah, but I was prepared for that.
“No, you’re misinterpreting that. Paul is contrasting the Jewish method of following God (via the Mosaic Law) and the Christian method (faith enlightened by charity) in the early chapters of Romans. You really must read it with that perspective.”
Argumentative tensions were mounting, but just then, the bus pulled up.
“I really have to go. It was nice talking to you-”
This situation or a variant thereof happens to many Catholics. In fact, I have a name for this type of single-question approach that some Evangelicals use to spread their doctrine of salvation. I call it “kamikaze Christianity.” One can just imagine the evangelist running up to a person and asking, “Are you saved, bonzai?” as he launches headfirst into the bow of an oncoming conversation about Christ. I do not mean to poke fun at our Evangelical brothers and sisters, but this does seem to summarize the extent of the discussion that often follows. But what happened to me that night as the events continued is a bit more instructive about something we Catholics often do not think about when we are in the midst of the frustration that often comes with discussing the faith with an opponent who is (to paraphrase Thomas Aquinas) a man “of one book.”
As I got off of the bus, I began to think about my encounter with the street evangelists. They were not really OSU students but a group from a Baptist college in the southern part of Ohio. They have the habit of visiting campus on Friday nights during football season. They no doubt think the density of student traffic on High Street across from campus and the reprobate moral condition of many young adult college students indicate a true missionary landscape.
Then it occurred to me. This was not only Halloween (the secular-pagan holiday) but also the vigil of the feast of All Saints Day (All Hallows Eve, to use an earlier English phrase). I began to think of all of the men and women who had died for the faith, a discussion of which I had just dismissed much too easily. My battle cry seemed not to be something as noble as “Give me liberty or give me death!” but rather “Give me the faith or an easy way out!” I realized there and then that I owed something better to these men and women who have died for the faith. I could at least have stood at a bus stop.
Now, I do not encourage people to pray this way, because it borders on tempting the Almighty, but I said to God, “Look, I didn’t do very well back there. Tell you what, I’m going to go back to that bus stop. You send me another evangelist. This time I will talk to him. In fact, I will tell him I am a Catholic” (something I had neglected-or was afraid-to say in the earlier encounter). “This time, I will talk about the faith for which the saints died.” So, I jumped on the next bus going in the opposite direction and soon found myself standing once again at the same bus stop.
God was listening. Not more than thirty seconds after I arrived at the bus stop three different clean-cut, well-oriented students approached me. I was not so much amazed as expecting it. Faith really is a matter of life and death, and God deserves our best effort . . . and the saints were looking on.
The conversation might have followed the same outline as the prior one except that I informed my new trio that I had just finished talking to a similar group a few minutes ago. I thanked my new discussants for coming out on Halloween night, as I was sure that their presence on campus was a good and necessary one, since of all nights that night most desperately needed the presence of people who were willing to talk about God out loud, in public.
This is exactly what we did. I asked them what they meant by salvation. Once again, I heard the standard tactic of trying to get me into heaven by extortion-“Don’t you want to be sure of your salvation?” Coincidentally, I had recently given a talk on the topic of salvation to a Catholic prayer group, so I was prepared for this subject. Since I realized that one of my mistakes with the last group was letting them get control the conversation, I decided to put my notorious big mouth to good use first.
“Look, I’m not sure that you understand the term you’re using. You see, no first-century Jew or Gentile would have had the vaguest idea about what you’re talking about when you phrase the question like that. Their concept of the word salvation would have been derived from their experiences of what was known by the Hebrews as ‘debtor’s prison.’
When a first-century person could not pay his debt, he was often thrown into prison until the debt was paid. To further humiliate him, the debtor was forbidden to pay the debt himself, even if he came into some money while in prison. A relative had to come and pay the amount owed. This paying of the bill was called redemption. Now, look, before Christ came, we were all in a sort of debtor’s prison because of the sin of Adam. We could not pay the debt ourselves. A relative had to come and pay it for us. This may be one reason why Christ became man, became our relative by blood, so to speak.
In any case, once the debt was redeemed, the relative was then given the right to walk back to the prison cell, open it, and escort the debtor out of the prison. This second process-the application of the ‘right-to-leave’ that the relative had purchased for the debtor and the debtor’s willingness to be so publicly humiliated in being led out of the prison-is what a first-century person would have understood by the term salvation.
“Catholics believe that the world was redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, but the second part of the process, the salvation part, depends partially on us. You see, even when Christ walks into the prison and takes us by the hand to save us-Christians almost universally call this initial step “baptism”-we still have to walk with him out of the cell. And we can let go of his hand at any time before we get to the door, if we are sufficiently cantankerous or too ashamed to be recognized as his kin. We certainly can lose (technically, give up) our salvation, as any good first-century Jew or Gentile would have realized.
“Anyway, a person isn’t fully saved until he’s actually crossed the threshold of the cell-for us, by analogy, the prison of this world-into the daylight-heaven. If you told a first-century person that they could be sure of their salvation, they would have looked at you as if you were speaking a foreign language.”
They seemed impressed by my description of the process of salvation, but I am not quite sure that they knew what to make of it. Not once had I mentioned the Bible. This put them in unfamiliar territory. They did, however, keep asking me for my e-mail address. I had the feeling that they were going to have to “get back to me” about what I had said.
They kept trying to change the subject back to more traditional and safe excursions into the land of I-think-I-can salvation phrases from the Bible. Somehow I think we got onto the subject of faith (you knew we would, didn’t you?), and they brought up the subject of “works righteousness.” How many Evangelicals have mistakenly believed that Catholics think they can earn their way into heaven? Our concept of faith is one that is informed by hope and charity, and, like the Trinity, no one member of the trio can work completely apart from the other. It never has seemed to occur to Evangelicals that if faith were only simply a matter of “believing” (it is, but so much more, as well), then they would be in the same situation as two young kids in a prayer war: “Lord, I believe stronger than he does, let me win.” While the other young person protests, “No, Lord, I believe more strongly, let me win.” Unless there is an objective element of faith, something that makes faith into the faith of the Catholic position, then faith will always have thresholds and limits. How can anyone be certain that they have believed strongly enough to be saved by this way of exercising faith?
Anyway, I started to answer some of their points, but I had the feeling that I had better regain control of the discussion quickly (although I know whole segments of the Bible from memory, it’s less impressive if you’ve never bothered to memorize those darn verse numbers!).
Taking an historical approach seemed to be working, so I quickly said that here we had an example of a continuation of the argument, I mean discussion, between Luther and Eck. I, of course was taking the role of Eck. Only one of the students (the oldest, it seemed) knew who Eck was (a polemic Catholic cleric sent to debate the early Lutherans).
Who won the apologetics debate? It’s hard to say, but they were hungry to discuss the issues with me, whereas I had heard most of their points many times before, although I could have been more prepared with chapter and verse citations. Maybe, however, I am just mistaking hunger on their part for sheer frustration at not being able to get that stupid Catholic to listen to them.
Regardless, the conversation went on like this for ninety minutes at the worst hours of the night on Halloween (10:30 p.m. to nearly midnight), on the sidewalk, in public, as many students dressed in ghostly or demonic attire passed by. The ghoulish pretenders walking past the four of us heard the name of God being referenced by all parties in our conversation, and yes, I did tell the three Evangelical at the outset that I am a Catholic.
I can only be filled with wonder at what God had in mind for the four of us that night. Not only was this a time for apologetics-defending the faith, it was also a time for witness-demonstrating the faith. It was a time not to be silent about God. Too few people speak about God in public these days without some degree of embarrassment, so a truly Christian discussion, even an argument (conducted in Christian charity) is sometimes an essential thing for evangelizing others, unawares. At least I hope the sounds of a Christian discussion of salvation were absorbed, at least subaurally, by the OSU students who passed by the bus stop that night.
Discussions about God offend today’s sensitive ears about the same way that a hypodermic needle might offend a patient with Alzheimer’s disease. He doesn’t really remember what it is; he just knows that pointy thing coming at him can’t be good. The loss of the sacred in cultures around the world today might be reckoned as a type of spiritual Alzheimer’s disease. We are losing the language and cognitive skills to talk about God and to recognize truth as well as losing the motor coordination to walk among men in the name of Christ. But unlike Alzheimer’s, which has so far resisted treatment, the loss of the sacred in society has a simple solution that God suggested long ago but which few seem to be willing to try: “Be holy, for I [the Lord] am holy” (Lev. 11:44-45).
My purpose in this set of reminiscences is not to discuss the idea of the holy (that may be for another article), but rather to make the point that we often do not realize the company we keep. In both of my examples above, all parties to the dialogues were surrounded by, as Paul puts it, “an invisible cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1). Someday we will have to give an account to these men and women for our own witness, an apology of our apologetics, so to speak. It should not begin, “Well, I had the chance there, but. . . . I mean, I could have here, but you see . . .”
After all, what’s the worst thing your opponent could do? Kill you? What do you think the saints would say then? “No problem, welcome to the club.”