Episode 66: Year B – 2nd Sunday of Lent
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on three details that come into play when engaging in apologetical discussions. The first two come from the first reading, which is taken from the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac in Genesis 22:1-18. The relevant topics here are several. First, there’s the issue of whether it’s consistent with God’s goodness for him to will the death of an innocent human being and command someone to carry out that will. The others deal with the topic of justification—that it’s a process and works do justify. The relevant topic that comes to the fore for the detail in the Gospel reading, which is taken from Mark 9:2-10, is the invocation of the saints.
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going to focus on three details that come into play when engaging in apologetical discussions. One comes from the first reading, which is taken from the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac in Genesis 22:1-18. The relevant topics here are several. First, there’s the issue of whether it’s consistent with God’s goodness for him to will the death of an innocent human being and command someone to carry out that will. The others deal with the topic of justification—that it’s a process and works do justify. The relevant topic that come to the fore in the Gospel reading, which is taken from Mark 9:2-10, is the invocation of the saints.
Let’s get started with the first reading.
I’m not going to read the whole passage. But suffice to say that God commands Abraham to take his son, Isaac, up to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him. God then sends an angel to stay Abraham’s hand and provides a ram to offer as a holocaust in Isaac’s place.
God then tells Abraham,
“I swear by myself, declares the LORD,
that because you acted as you did
in not withholding from me your beloved son,
I will bless you abundantly
and make your descendants as countless
as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore;
your descendants shall take possession
of the gates of their enemies,
and in your descendants all the nations of the earth
shall find blessing—
all this because you obeyed my command.”
God’s command for Abraham to kill his innocent son is always the sticking point here. Since I’ve already dealt with this issue of whether God is morally justified to directly will the death of an innocent human being and command someone to carry out that will in episode 49 of the Sunday Catholic Word, I’m going to skip over this detail and refer you to what I say in episode 49. My commentary there provides an answer to the question here dealing with God’s command to Abraham.
The detail that I want to focus on here is Abraham’s obedience to offer his son Isaac. In the second chapter of his letter, James identifies this act of obedience as an act by which Abraham is justified and uses it as an example of his teaching that we are justified by works and not by faith alone. Here’s what James writes in verses 21-24 of James 2,
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Now, as many of you listening already know, this is relevant to apologetics because many Protestants deny our good works as having any role to play in our justification. In other words, our works play no role in us being at peace with God or having a right relationship with him. Faith alone plays that role, so it’s said.
But James here says the direct opposite. Works do justify us, and an example of this is Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac.
It makes sense why James would see Abraham’s offering of Isaac as an act that justifies him because God’s response to Abraham after making the offering is similar language used when God reckons Abraham as “righteous,” or justified, in Genesis 15:6. The promise to have descendants as numerous as the stars is present in both texts.
Now, it’s important to note that Abraham’s justification at this moment in his life is not Abraham’s initial justification. According to the author of Hebrews, in 11:6-8, Abraham exercised “the faith without which it’s impossible to please God” (v.6)—that’s to say, justifying faith, when he “obeyed God . . . to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance” (v.8). Abraham was also justified in Genesis 15:6 when he believed God’s promise to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.
This reveals to us that justification is not a one-time event in the past. Rather, it’s a process with multiple stages. It also reveals that works don’t serve as a cause of our justification until after our initial justification.
Now, some Protestants will counter that the above line of reasoning wrongly assumes James is talking about justification in the sight of God. It’s argued that James is rather talking about justification in the sight of men.
I deal with this counter argument in much detail in my book Meeting the Protestant Response: Answering Common Comebacks to Catholic Arguments. I’ll just share a few responses here that deal specifically with Abraham.
First, Abraham’s justification couldn’t have been in the sight of men because there was no one around with Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah for Abraham to be justified in the sight of! (Neither James nor the author of Genesis gives us any indication that Abraham was justified in the sight of Isaac).
Perhaps a Protestant might respond and say Abraham is justified in our sight. After describing Abraham’s offering of Isaac, James begins his concluding sentence about Abraham’s faith with “you see”: “You see that faith was active along with his works” (v. 22a). Perhaps James is saying Abraham’s offering of Isaac confirms for us that he had faith—not that his works justified him in the sight of God.
The problem with this is that James explicitly teaches that Abraham’s faith was “completed by works” (v. 22b) by offering Isaac. The Greek word used for “complete,” teleioō, means “to complete, bring to an end, finish, accomplish . . . to make perfect.”[i] How can Abraham’s faith be made complete if he is justified merely in the sight of men? If Abraham’s work of offering Isaac confirmed merely for us that he had faith, then Abraham’s work would have no effect whatsoever upon his faith, and still less make it “complete.” But this contradicts what James teaches in verse 22.
Furthermore, James’s emphasis on Abraham’s faith being made perfect indicates that it’s the same faith that justified him when he first believed. James speaks of Abraham being justified by his obedience in verse 21 and then indicates that his faith was completed by works in verse 22. And without breaking his train of thought, James quotes Genesis 15:6 in verse 23: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” All Protestants agree that this event refers to Abraham being justified in God’s sight.
James quotes Genesis 15:6 in direct connection with Abraham’s justification by works and gives no indication that the two must be viewed in contrast with each other. This tells us that the justification James has in mind in verse 21 (Abraham’s justification by works) is the same justification spoken of in Genesis 15:6 (“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”). It’s a justification in the sight of God, not men.
Abraham’s justification in the sight of God is further confirmed by Abraham being called “the friend of God” as a result of his obedient action. For James, Abraham’s offering of Isaac set off a chain reaction. His faith was “completed by his works,” the “Scripture was fulfilled” whereby Abraham was reckoned as righteous, and he was called “the friend of God.”
We know that God is the one valuing what was done, because after the angel intervenes and stops Abraham from killing Isaac, God says, “For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Gen. 22:12). God valued what Abraham had done, and thus Abraham stood justified in God’s sight. God reiterates his approval of Abraham in Isaiah 41:8, when he calls Abraham “my friend.”
So if Abraham was justified in the sight of God by offering Isaac, and our justification by works that James speaks of (2:24) is like Abraham’s justification, then it follows that justification by works is a justification in the sight of God.
The last detail that I want to focus on briefly is Jesus’ communication with Moses in the Gospel reading. This detail plays into apologetical discussions involving our invocation of the saints in heaven.
Some Protestants argue that we shouldn’t communicate with the dead when the contact originates with us. Of course, this makes the invocation of the saints out of bounds for a Christian to practice because it involves communication with the dead that originates with us.
But Jesus’ conversation with Moses on Mt. Tabor proves this Protestant argument to be unsuccessful at undermining the practice of invoking the saints. On the mount of transfiguration, Jesus is seen talking with Moses (Matt. 17:1-13), whom we know died (Deut. 34:5). It’s Jesus who choreographed an exchange where contact with the dead originates with someone on earth.
Now, given that we must imitate Jesus, this would be a grave scandal for us as Christians if we couldn’t initiate a conversation with those who have gone before us in the way that we do in the invocation of the saints. Jesus would be giving us an example of doing something that would be sinful for us to do. Rather than say that Jesus is leading us into grave scandal, we should reject the idea that we can’t initiate communication with the dead.
So, Jesus’ conversation with Moses provides us a way to respond to a common Protestant objection to our invocation of the saints.
CONCLUSION
Well, my friends, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming Second Sunday of Lent, Year B provide us with much to think about when it comes to apologetics. We have opportunities to think about
- The role of works in our justification,
- The nature of justification as a process and not a one-time event of the past, and
- The Christian practice of communicating with the dead by invoking the saints to pray for us.
These are all topics that the details in the first reading and Gospel reading directly relate to.
As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well at sundaycatholicword.com. You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Cy Kellet’s Catholic Answers Focus, Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s A Daily Defense, all of which can be found at catholic.com.
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I hope you have a blessed 2nd Sunday of Lent, Year B. Peace!
[i] A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 996.