A Universal Apology — A Personal Note: Shooting Oneself in the Foot

By rights, I should explain what might be called my procedural decisions. I did not, for example, demand a sign from the Lord as to which denomination is correct.

My very strong intuition and inspiration, amounting to a personal dogma, is that the Lord of Light is more concerned for whether a man is helping the poor, visiting the prisoner, aiding the widow, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and baptizing the lost, that He is concerned about our opinions about mysteries the human mind is not constructed to be able, in this life, to understand. I am convinced that the Lord regards discussions of the differences between denominations with hatred. I expected no sign.

Nonetheless, thanks to the followers of Christ who ignored and betrayed Christ’s last prayer spoken on Earth, which was for radical unity between His followers, I nonetheless had to choose between the denominations. Staying at home on Sunday and inventing my own personal brand of Christianity, known perhaps as Wrightinanity, was not an option, and departing the house required I either take the road to the left or to the right, since the church buildings of the different denominations lay in different directions. Which way to go?

Not without prayer, I set about to reason my way through the conflicting accounts of history and theology. I knew that I had no formal training in theology, nor any but a smattering of Greek and Latin and nothing of Aramaic or Hebrew, so I knew that revisiting each and every case of every opinion called heretical was beyond my powers. Even to read two or three books on the history of heresies was nearly beyond my powers, or at least my patience. I knew I had no ability to come to an independent yet sound conclusion about the nature of the Filioque controversy, nor to comb through such records as the obliterating gluttony of history had spared of the debates of the councils and synods grappling with that issue.

I decided at once not to heed any argument about non-essentials, that is, arguments which, even if proved true, would not change the verdict on the merits. For example, suppose that the Council of Trent is wrong about the doctrine of the Real Presence, or wrong about the doctrine of justification by faith alone rather than faith and works? Would I in either case refuse to take the Eucharist or refuse to have faith or refuse to do good works? Would anything in my behavior be changed, or anything in my prospects of salvation be changed?

The answer was no.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.