Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
bringing you news, views,
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discussion, insight,
and up-to-date information
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on religious liberty events in
the U.S. and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on this
program is Dr. Ed Cook,
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minister of religion,
author, including many articles
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in Liberty Magazine,
and a successful lecturer
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on religious liberty.
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Because your doctorate
is in church-state studies
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from Baylor University, the
now defunct JM Dawson Institute
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for Church-State Studies.
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A little correction I
would add on that, though,
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is that, yes, as far as
offering doctoral degrees,
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they don't do that any
longer, but Masters degrees
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in church and state,
they still do all that.
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~ But JM Dawson is gone.
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And you know, things
come and go at universities,
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but from my perspective
on religious liberty,
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it's regrettable
because I think it signaled
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somewhat of a
sea-change within the Baptist
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and how they see
church/state separation.
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Now JM Dawson
Institute thought very much like
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Seventh-day Adventists
on the necessity for a
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true separation of church and
state, à la the constitution,
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where many religionists,
and Baptist included nowadays
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in the United States, they want
to see sort of a closer tie-up,
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the government more
supportive for religion.
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Which is an
attractive argument, isn't it?
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- But dangerous way to
hit. ~ That is certainly true.
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Now talking about dangerous,
I want to really dialogue
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with you about something
that I know you're going to
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write for Liberty Magazine.
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You're under assignment.
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An article on the Jesuits.
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In the last few months
some of your predecessors
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on this program have shared
with me and with our viewers
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good discussions
on the Reformation.
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But many things came
out of the Reformation.
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What was one from the
Roman Catholic perspective?
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I think that, you know, dealing
with that aspect of the Jesuits,
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they ended up developing
into the most prestigious
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Order within the
Roman Catholic Church.
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And their initial beginnings
in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola...
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~ An ex-soldier, right?
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He had been, yes.
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Wounded in battle, and therefore
devoted himself to spiritual
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exercises and
becoming more devout.
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And eventually
decided to organize a society,
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a group of men,
dedicated to serving the church.
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~ Society of
Jesus, it's called. - Yes.
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And in the beginning they
were not specifically dedicated
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to overthrowing, or defending
the Catholic faith through
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overthrowing Protestantism.
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Although in later years by 1550,
that became a very specific
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part of their mission.
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But it seems to me,
from the very beginning
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he had this dream of
what amounted to a military
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structure designed to
advance the cause of the church.
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Yes, very disciplined,
one can certainly say that.
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Because from 1534
until roughly about 1556
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he spent those years
studying how to, as he believed,
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to lead the believers that were
part of the company of Jesus,
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becoming Jesuits, to practice
their spiritual exercises
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to become more
devout, more pious.
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I think that one of the
things that he saw by that time,
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by 1556, was recognizing
the advances that Protestantism
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was making in many
former Catholic countries,
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and therefore trying
to lead former Catholics,
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and even those that
were still Catholics,
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leading them into a
more pious experience so they
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would remain within the church.
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Yeah, and it's a good
point you're bringing out.
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And of course, you would
expect that as a church Order
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within the
Roman Catholic Church,
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you'd expect there to be a
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distinct
element of spirituality.
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It's not just
church and plays, right?
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But I think it is significant
that Loyola, in his early days
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particularly, it was a
spirituality, not in my view,
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divergent from what in recent
years the larger world has seen
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popularized, I guess is
the word, in Dan Brown's book,
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with the Opus Dei.
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Again, this is almost a
mystical religiosity, isn't it?
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Yeah, I would say that,
you know, the primary book that
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Loyola wrote dealing
with spiritual exercises,
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is bears that
title, Spiritual Exercises,
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in the sense that
over a period of weeks
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the devotee is to
dedicate time in isolation,
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and fasting, and
taking time for prayer,
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learning of the Catechism
and the Catholic faith.
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In essence, deepening
himself, trying to find a deeper
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spiritual experience with God.
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And part of that involves the
aspect of, through the fasting
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over a period of
days, sometimes weeks even,
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the individual has a
revelation from God that
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leads him to dedicate his
life to the mission of the work
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and at the church.
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You know, my Seventh-day
Adventist ministers...
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And that's no
secret on this network.
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Although we're
talking to a larger audience.
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But it's worth noting that
our church has long struggled
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with the need for
revival and spirituality.
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And at the moment there's
a movement that some of us
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find a little problematic.
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We call it, spiritual formation.
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And many of the proponents
of that take their inspiration
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from Loyola's type
of spiritual exercises
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and some other Catholic mystics.
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Is that all good? Why
would that be problematic?
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Well I think that, you know,
when we take time to have our
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foundations on Scripture,
of course, and you know,
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Jesus does admonish us to pray.
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You know, Paul even said
that we should pray always.
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He tells us that
in 1 Thessalonians 5.
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But at the same
time, we also recognize
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that any kind of
spiritual experience we have
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needs to be
grounded in Scripture.
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So the idea of looking for
an experience that involves
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a revelation...
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Like, if I'm fasting to
the point that I end up going
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into some kind of, as
Catholic terminology would be,
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a spiritual ecstasy...
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~ Almost a trance,
isn't it? A trance like state.
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...one would question and say,
"How can I discern this spirit
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that is actually
revealing itself to me?"
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And that's where, you know, in
1 John he tells us, chapter 3,
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that we should take time
to, excuse me, chapter 4,
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we should test the
spirits to see whether
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they're from God or not.
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~ Yeah, very good answer.
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Yeah, because it's
not just Jesuit exercises,
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and it's not even
just in Christianity.
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You know, you can see that
humans seem to have a propensity
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to meditate, and to think
and to self-induce a sort of
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an altered state.
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~ Self-hypnosis,
almost. - Yeah, yeah.
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Where they often feel that
something powerful is happening.
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And it may be on
occasion that there's even some
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spiritual entity
taking possession.
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But even absent
that, it's a delusion.
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You can feel that you've
been led, that you know better.
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And you're right, it
can become divorced from
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plain statements of Scripture.
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And that's what we're afraid of.
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And I think
there's plenty of evidence
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that Ignatius Loyola was
into that sort of dynamic.
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And I've got to say this, there
is a strength, in my view...
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Tell me, you studied
the Roman Catholic Church,
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the Reformation, and
this whole thing deeply.
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I think that's structurally
part of the strength of
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the Roman Catholic Church,
that it has strong dogma.
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Not a loose organization
in the sense that, you know,
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you have to
acknowledge the pope, and so on.
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But they can embrace within this
larger thing quite divergent
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Orders and carve out a
little space for themselves.
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And they're doing things
that are in some levels almost
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antithetical to
the larger picture.
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But they're
controlled, they're managed.
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Yeah, I would say that
the hierarchical structure
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of the church; you know, with
the pope, and then you've got
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your cardinals, bishops,
and so forth down the line
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to the lay priest,
that is something that
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is very organized as a
body, as a church organization.
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And of course, they do have
their dogma that they uphold.
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But at the same
time, like you pointed out,
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they do have Orders that
are down at the lower levels
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that in essence adapt
themselves to specific
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circumstances or cultures.
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And that's how even Matteo
Ricci, one of the first Jesuits,
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managed to go all the way to
Japan and actually was able to
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reach the Japanese, as
well as some of the Chinese,
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just by adapting Catholic
teachings to the culture and
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their viewpoints.
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Yeah, you know, that
part of the Jesuit story
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is a matter of history.
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I think it's a great model for
Christian endeavors everywhere.
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The Jesuits early on clearly
had a vision of expansion
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and they went to
areas that the western
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influence really
had hardly reached.
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And in many places they
were the horse whisperers
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to the rulers.
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But that didn't come easy.
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I mean, they really
crossed great cultural divides
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to get into those positions.
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I can't say that was wrong.
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And they became
heroes of Catholic missions.
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And as I've even
told Adventist audiences,
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for example,
with the Mormons too.
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Obviously, I don't share
their doctrinal standards
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or their doctrinal positions.
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But their mission
structure is very admirable.
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~ Yeah, their zeal for missions
is something that's notable.
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And the way they
organize, and so on.
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We can learn from
other human beings,
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if they're not
even other churches,
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on mechanisms for outreach.
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And you know, I admire them.
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And at the same time, I
think that kind of maybe the
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cautionary note
would be that the Jesuits,
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in their adaptation to
those people of other faiths
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in other countries and cultures,
the challenge that the Jesuits
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ran into is that the
work that Matteo Ricci did
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there in Japan and China was
such that it gave Catholicism
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an inroad, they got
a foot into the country
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by meeting the people
kind of at their level.
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But some of the adaptations
that he did were recognized
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more so as syncretism.
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So in essence he was
taking Catholic doctrine
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and adapting it to such an
extent that it actually lost
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its distinctive
Catholic teaching,
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to adapt to the religious
beliefs of the people there.
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But that was historically
never a huge problem as long as
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there was an
acknowledgment of the primacy
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of the church and the pope.
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There's a little bit of
a checkered history within
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Catholicism, first in the point
that there did reach a time
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when the papacy actually
recognized and questioned
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some of Matteo Ricci's
methods in those countries
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and actually banned the
approach that he was taking.
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Now in other areas...
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~ As in the 70's when
John Paul II came along.
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The Jesuits in his
view were in overreach with
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the liberation theology and they
were reigned in and redirected.
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Even banned. They were silenced.
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Well, there was an intention for
a while to disband the Order.
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But instead there was a
new director, and then they
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were all asked to
swear personal fealty.
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So they're sort of
the Order out in our era.
00:11:23.75\00:11:26.68
But it's an interesting Order
and it's a story, as I say,
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I think needs to be
told and discussed because
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it's so tied up to the
whole story of the Reformation
00:11:32.79\00:11:36.02
and the response of
the Roman Catholic Church.
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And indeed their role
is quite prominent today.
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I mean, you would have to
be tone deaf and never watch
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television to miss the
fact that in the United States,
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a once Protestant country,
almost any major appointment
00:11:50.77\00:11:54.91
nowadays they are
either, well not either,
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they're nearly
always Jesuit educated
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or Roman Catholic
with Jesuit connections.
00:12:00.82\00:12:03.25
Now you know, that's not
sinister in the narrowest
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sense, but it just shows
how diligent they've been to...
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~ Their educational mission.
00:12:08.96\00:12:10.29
...inculcate their
values and prepare the way
00:12:10.33\00:12:12.59
for a wider influence.
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One of the things that
I would mention, you know,
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tying back in with the Jesuits,
and your initial question was,
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what came out
of the Reformation?
00:12:19.83\00:12:21.47
So the Jesuits being founded
in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola,
00:12:22.10\00:12:25.67
it was in 1540
that Pope Paul III
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actually recognized
them as an official Order
00:12:30.25\00:12:32.95
and gave them the
blessings of the church.
00:12:32.98\00:12:34.92
The papal bull that he wrote was
Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae;
00:12:35.32\00:12:40.79
the militant
regiment of the church.
00:12:40.82\00:12:43.12
Which is back to
my comment that it was
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militaristic in
style from the beginning.
00:12:44.63\00:12:46.29
~ Very structured, very
rigid in its discipline.
00:12:46.33\00:12:48.50
Now, we'll take a break now.
00:12:48.73\00:12:50.10
You know, I want to
discuss this a little further,
00:12:50.13\00:12:51.77
and I'm sure you
have questions on this.
00:12:51.80\00:12:53.30
So stay with us and
we'll be back very shortly.
00:12:53.34\00:12:55.60