US-Evangelical-Protestant- turned-Catholic Steve Ray topples the arguments he once used to induce Catholics to abandon the Church and tells how he discovered the fullness of the Catholic faith
By Anthony Barich
Evangelical Protestants are taught to recruit Catholics by exploiting their lack of Bible knowledge, but use Scripture out of context to make Catholic beliefs look flawed.
This is the claim of Catholic apologist Steve Ray, in Perth from the United States of America earlier this month as part of a national tour. Mr Ray used to take on this role.
“We were trained to evangelise Catholics – we believed you are not saved, that you are going to hell as you follow the Pope instead of Jesus, you pray to Mary instead of God, you have tradition instead of Scripture, you thought you got saved by doing good works instead of by faith in Jesus,” he told about 60 people on Thursday, 8 July, at Trinity College, East Perth.
“It was our job to get you saved and become real Bible Christians. This is what Evangelicals think – most of them, even in Australia.”
He said that he was taught the right questions to ask and memorised up to 15 verses that “were good to use with Catholics”.
Mr Ray, married to Janet for 33 years with four children, said he and his wife went from being “anti-Catholic Baptists” to “crossing an uncrossable chasm and becoming Catholics”.
The Rays were not alone. They opened their home for two years to people seeking to discuss their differences with Catholics and explained why they converted, “even if people hated Catholics”.
In that time, Mr Ray said over 200 people joined the Catholic Church.
Addressing several key issues that cause the at-times vicious divide, especially in the United States, between Protestants and Catholics, Mr Ray said he achieved “great success” by asking carefully selected questions and backing them up with isolated Scripture quotes.
Through his journey towards conversion to Catholicism, which was heavily criticised by his family, he discovered that such Scripture quotes were taken out of context with no regard for the continuity between the Old and New Testaments.
Mr Ray found it especially ironic that, while his Protestant family believed Christians are saved by faith alone and not by works, “they questioned my salvation once I told them I was becoming Catholic”.
Mr Ray’s talk, which detailed differences between the denominations on key subjects including Mary, the Eucharist, the notion of being “born again”, infant baptism, the notion of being “saved by faith alone”, purgatory and Confession, was in itself a catechesis of the Catholic faith.
Born again
One of the most bitter arguments stems from a question Mr Ray said has great success in confounding Catholics – asking them if they are “born again”.
“They say you’re born again by accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour and asking Him into your heart; but nowhere in the Bible does it say that,” he said.
“This is Baptist man-made tradition, not [from] the Bible; it comes out of American fundamentalist ‘pop-psychology’ Christianity from the 1900s. They think that because the Bible is made of chapters and verses they can pull quotes out of context, but originally the Bible was one big letter, the chapters were only added recently.
“They don’t know what being born of water and spirit means (from Jesus’ quote to Nicodemus) because they don’t read it in context. You’d almost always have great success by asking ‘are you born again?’. The answer usually was ‘I’m Catholic’. They didn’t know how to answer it.
“I’d then show Catholics the Bible – John 3:3 – ‘Unless you are born again you will not see the kingdom of God’; and you have been born and raised in the Catholic Church, which you say is Christian, yet your priests don’t tell you about this. They tell you you’re saved by rituals and water and Mass, but that’s not what Jesus said.”
However, this argument is without basis in Scripture, he said. The passage where Jesus talks to Nicodemus about what is required for salvation is key. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless he was born again he would not see the kingdom of God, but Protestants, Mr Ray said, left out the important next part, where Jesus spoke of the need to be reborn ‘of water and the spirit’. He cited several Old Testament precedents for this:
– Genesis 1 – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; and the earth was formless and water covered the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the water, then with God’s Word, up from the power of the Spirit came the land, from which God takes the dust and makes man. God, therefore, made the first creation out of water and spirit.
– Exodus – Egypt represents the world, Pharoah represents the Devil, bondage and slavery represents sin and the flesh – the three enemies of the Christian. The Israelites are freed through water and spirit: Moses led them through the Red Sea, and above them was a pillar of fire and smoke – the Spirit of God.
– Noah – in an arc, goes through water, hovering above the arc is a white dove representing the Holy Spirit with an olive branch, representing peace, in His beak – so water and the spirit.
– Ezekiel – reveals what the new covenant will look like – when the Messiah comes and there will be a new covenant, “you will be sprinkled clean with water, and the Spirit will come within you and the goal is that you will obey my laws.”
And again, in the New Testamant:
– Paul 1 Cor 10:1-4: ‘As the children of Israel were baptised in the water and the cloud, so have you been baptised into Christ.’
– 1 Peter 3:21 – there were eight people saved through water. Corresponding to that, that Baptism now saves you.
Infant Baptism
“Baptists say the Bible says you must believe and be baptised,” Mr Ray said.
“Can an infant believe? I always think it’s funny we call ourselves Baptists, when we believe that Baptism didn’t really do anything; that it wasn’t even necessary. Jesus told us to baptise so we did it out of obedience to Him, but not because it did anything.”
This belief sprang, he said, from the Reformation – or what he likes to call the Rebellion, when Protestants said: “the Baptism you Catholics received as infants was invalid as you couldn’t believe it. Now you must be baptised again once you believe”. So they called themselves Anna (again)-Baptists.
“Origen (not a Father of the Church or a saint but a man considered one of the greatest teachers of the early Church in the second century) said: ‘We have learned from the Apostles that we are to baptise old and young men and women, our servants, slaves’ – and even our infants,” Mr Ray adds.
Doctor of the Church St Augustine, respected even among secular philosophers, said: “Who would be so wicked as to forbid an infant from being born again through water baptism?”
Mr Ray said that the early Church universally accepted water baptism for infants as the means by which they would be born again.
The theology behind this, simply told, is based on the earliest story.
“Adam and Eve were told if they ate of the tree they would die. While they were body and soul, inside of them was the very life of God – what we call today sanctifying grace, part of their being. Their children should have been born with that same sanctifying grace in their souls; but as they sinned that life died in them, their bodies began the slow process of decay and they died. Adam and Eve’s sons were therefore (for want of a better description) born with a genetic deficiency,” Mr Ray said.
“That is what God does through Baptism – restores that sanctifying grace to the soul of the infant, he doesn’t have to wait until he’s 12, as it’s a free gift of God.
“I used to say that Catholics don’t understand it, that we believe in the free gift of God by faith, but we didn’t realise how much of a gift it was by God.”
It even has precedents in the Jewish culture, he said. When Abraham circumcised his son Isaac at eight days, he became a member of the covenant people of God. But now Baptism replaces circumcision as “the mark on our flesh”, Mr Ray said.
Back to that most controversial of arguments, “Peter (who Jesus appointed as the head of His Church) did not say ‘accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour’, he said repent and be baptised for the remission of your sins’. It also says many times in the New Testament that the father came forward with his wife and family and the whole household was baptised.
“It doesn’t say except for the infants,” Mr Ray added. “Infant Baptism was understood from the very beginning as the doorway into becoming the covenant people of God into this new Kingdom.”
Faith alone
Another prize question Steve Ray used to pose in his attempt to sway Catholics, was what would you say if you were to die today and stand before God and be asked why should I let you in?
Most Catholics, he said, would say without much conviction, “… I’m Catholic”, to which he would respond: “God will say: ‘I didn’t ask you if you’re Catholic, it’s not the religion I’m worried about. Why should I let you in?’
“The Catholic would then say: ‘… I tried to be good, I’m doing good works and I haven’t killed anyone’. I’d say you don’t have a clue. We’ll say one word, it’ll be ‘mercy’.”
He would go on to argue that “you’re saved by faith alone not by works”, and would direct the hapless Catholic to Romans 3:23 – ‘if by faith and not by works of the law’.
Many Protestants, he said, would use this quote to set up the now tired confrontation between Catholics and Protestants, but in doing so miss the point that Paul is not presenting a Catholic-Protestant argument, but a Jewish-Gentile argument.
“This is why Protestants going around using this against Catholics are doing themselves and Catholics a great disservice, as they are taking it completely out of its historical context,” he said.
In Jewish culture, he said, you had to be brought into the Kingdom of God through circumcision with the flint knife to be set apart from the nations, which, along with 613 rules of Moses, were considered ‘works of the law’. The ceremonial washings and cleansings and Sabbath laws were also part of this.
The ‘works of the law’ as referred to here by Paul is not about feeding the poor and tending the sick – the good works that the Church teaches are part and parcel of loving Christ, because in loving these, we are loving Christ.
“You are made right by faith and obedience just like your father Abraham,” Paul said.
On this misinterpretation, Mr Ray was scathing of some Protestants: “You use the Bible to hit people over the head and you have no idea what the Bible is even talking about. This is why it’s important to be a Catholic and to have your roots deep into the Church, as the Church understands these things, and it’s why she teaches what she teaches.”
The biggest issue many Protestants have, Mr Ray said, is with the letter of James in the New Testament, where he says: “So you see brothers, we are saved by works and not by faith alone” (2:24). “The Bible does not teach faith alone like Evangelicals – like I used to – present it,” Mr Ray said.
St Paul, in answering the Philippian jailer’s question of ‘what must I do to be saved’, simply said ‘repent and be baptised – you and your whole family’. This is the core of the Gospel, Mr Ray said.
There is a division between the idea of believing in the Biblical sense and the Evangelical Protestant way where a kind of ‘intellectual assent’ is required.
It is important to note, he said, that the opposite of believing in the Bible is to disobey.
John 3:36 backs this up: “Those who believe in the Son of God will have life and those who disobey the Son of God will have damnation.”
“To believe in Jesus means to obey Jesus. It’s not just an intellectual assent,” Mr Ray said.
Jesus told the Jews in John 6 that to do the work of God is to believe in the one whom He sent. Again, in Romans 9: ‘If you confess Jesus Christ with your mouth you’ll be saved’. Paul also says twice that we will be saved by coming to a knowledge of the truth. Therefore, three requirements are made for salvation – coming to a knowledge of the truth, obeying Christ and confessing Him with one’s mouth.
“To believe means to commit ourselves to Him enough to obey it and put ourselves in His hands and do everything He requires, like Baptism and obedience to the Church and coming to a full knowledge of the Truth, and confessing with our mouths even though we don’t want to confront people that Jesus Christ is Lord to the world, as if you don’t you won’t be saved,” he said. “Many Evangelical Protestants say that if I have anything to do with my salvation by good works, you’re denigrating the work Christ accomplished, as Christ said on the Cross: ‘It is finished’. ‘You can’t do anything more to contribute to your salvation, everything that needs to be done has been done’. So they say once saved always saved.”
Mr Ray disagreed with this view and mused on how, in contradiction to their beliefs, his family questioned his salvation when he converted to Catholicism.
Confession
There are precedents for Confession in the beginning of the Church, when you had to stand up and confess out loud to everybody and the Church forgave you your sins, Mr Ray noted. It was the Irish, he said, who came up with the idea to personally confess your sins to a priest. And yet Catholics are attacked on this front because confessing to a priest, detractors say, is not in the Bible.
“Where do you find in the Bible that you have to find everything in the Bible? There’s much in the Bible that says I can find things elsewhere – like Peter, who has the Keys and the authority to bind and loose, and the pastors and elders, prophets and teachers of the Church who help to bring you to mature manhood, and Paul says ‘hold fast to the traditions I left you – by word of mouth or in writing’,” Mr Ray said.
“Even in the Old Testament you had to confess what you did wrong to the priest before you offered a sacrifice at the temple.”
In the Upper Room, Jesus told his 12 Apostles those whose sins you forgive are forgiven. He’s giving authority to forgive and retain sins, as they stand in Persona Christi in the sandals of Jesus, to do it in the name of Christ.
Eucharist
Though the Eucharist is the “Source and Summit” of the Catholic faith, as Pope Benedict said, is it seen as one of the most grave errors Catholics make to presume to worship a piece of bread and will lead them to damnation.
“When I was a Baptist I used to make fun of you for worshipping bread,” he said.
“We’d never met a Catholic and didn’t even want to meet one. I called it a cookie Christ, graven bread, and ranted on how Catholics disobeyed God who said don’t make any graven images, you make a graven image out of bread and worship it. Not only is adoration idolatry of the grossest form, it’s stupid – why worship a piece of bread.
“I realised in the process of my conversion that there’s not a lot of options – it’s either idolatry and stupid or it’s the Body and Blood of Christ, and if you mock it or ignore it you’re in big trouble.
“If it’s not the Body and Blood of Christ and you worship it, you’re in big trouble, so there’s a lot at stake. Every human being on the face of the earth has a huge decision to make.”
Mr Ray provided the following examples of how the Old Testament prepares the way for the Eucharist:
l Book of Genesis – Adam and Eve sin, God kills an animal and makes a sacrifice and covers them with skins – a sacrifice had to be made; a pre-figurement of Eucharist.
– When the children of Israel need to escape Pharoah, they were told to kill an innocent lamb without blemish, put its blood on vertical and horizontal beams and the angel of death will pass over, the real Passover lamb is Christ, on the Cross. Pilate, too, said “of Him (Christ) I find no fault” – hence the blameless lamb.
– The Israelites in the desert woke up to see the ground covered with white flakes, ‘what is it?’ they cried. The term for this is ‘manna’. They eat what comes down from heaven as food for the journey to sustain them; our food for the journey is Eucharist, after we pass through the Red Sea (Baptism, water and spirit), we go into the wilderness that’s this life, we need the Eucharist to sustain us, Mr Ray said.
– Micah 5:2 – Oh Bethlehem, though you are small among the tribes of Israel, yet from you will come the king.
By the way, Bethlehem means ‘house of bread’ in Hebrew.