Page through a pile of early Christian writings, and your thumbs won’t be wiggling long before you find mock dialogues, fictional back-and-forth conversations about theology, church practice, you name it. They are fun to read and usually offer refreshingly clear communications about complex issues. Below, a pretend “Pastor Mark” becomes a contemporary pop-Evangelical interlocutor with “Cardinal Cajetan,” an actual person who was writing during the controversies sparked by Martin Luther. With minor adaptation, Cajetan’s words, here, are otherwise direct quotations drawn from his letter to Pope Clement VII in 1532; hence, the imaginary hybrid dialogue.
This is the final installment in a three-part series. In Part 1, Cajetan argues that “faith” is not to be understood equivocally with “conviction of belief.” In Part 2, Cajetan pushes back on the idea that the human act of believing is what causes God to save people. And here, in Part 3, you will see Cajetan strike hard against the notion that one who does not love can have forgiveness of sins; that is, forgiveness of sins does not happen before one loves God. Notice how he ends with a call to have a concretely “informed faith” rather than abstracted conception.
Pastor Mark: Here’s what you need to know, ... Read More »
