In Many Bookshops with Pastor Charmley: St. Paul's, Westminster

Last time I was in London, I sang the praises of the Catholic Truth Society Bookshop. This time it is the turn if its near neighbour in Westminster Cathdral's piazza, St. Paul's Bookshop.

St. Paul's is a proper bookshop, though it does sell other items, such as vestments and church furnishings (including some very nice lecterns, if you're looking for one that doesn't look like a music stand and have a spare three hundred quid or so). Refreshingly there was no canned music in the shop, which is dominated by towering bookcases arranged in an attractive number of spaces, so that the main shop feels like a maze of books - though an easy one. This shop feels like a serious bookshop, and is all the better for it. It also sells serious books, though of course there is some popular stuff in there. It had in the sets of the Church Fathers published by Hendriksen, and the sort of serious books that the student will welcome. Of course it is a Roman Catholic bookshop, and the stock is slanted towards Roman Catholicism. But on the other hand, it is serious Roman Catholic material, and not all of it is Roman Catholic. Visiting bustling London, I was very glad to be out of the bustle for a while in this literary oasis. The atmosphere of the shop is enough to lead the serious student to enter St. Paul's and to wonder why on earth there aren't more bookshops like this in the world? I suspect the answer is economics, and the relentless dumbing-down of Christianity in this country.

Review: 'The Trail of Blood'

J.M. Carroll: The Trail of Blood (Ashland Avenue Baptist Church, Lexington, KY)

This booklet of 55 pages is famous. It has practically given its name to the whole Baptist Successionist dogma, and is referred to by just about everyone in that context. But how good is this booklet? Frankly, I was disappointed. There is no detail at all given of the supposed 'ancient Baptist groups', they are assumed, not proven - and yet no reputable historian today would agree with this. In fact, outside of a very small group of fundamentalist Baptists, no-one today would agree with the Successionists - and that includes many, many Evangelical Christians, even the Baptist writer N.R. Needham. Successionists like Carroll rely on a highly speculative historiography that is based in particular on works written before the 1890s.

Carroll's work contains no original research - and avowedly so, it is after all a record of a course of popular lectures, not an historical work. Yet even so, the work is lacking in details of the 'ancient Baptist groups'. In fact he has assumed that practically every heretical group from the early Church through the Middle Ages rejected infant Baptist, and that these groups were connected. So on P. 19 we read of "'Montanist,' 'Tertullianists', 'Novationists', 'Paterines,' etc." Now these are three different groups (no-one today thinks that a group called 'Tertullianists' ever existed). The Montanists were a charismatic group that taught the continuance of prophetic gifts, all centred on Montanus, their founder, who was regarded as a prophet. The Novatian Schism, on the other hand, was over the question of church discipline - Novation refused to re-admit those guilty of 'Mortal Sin' to the Church on profession of repentance. Both of these groups may have re-baptized, but that would have been because they did not recognise 'Catholic' baptism as valid! 'Paterines' is another name for the Medieval Bogomil movement. They were dualists of a sort, who believed that Jesus was the brother of Satan, and whose'baptism' was being patted on the head with a copy of John's Gospel! Thus each of the three groups mentioned here that actually existed were very different theologically.

More seriously, Carroll's understanding of the history of the Church is rather sketchy at times. He writes: "The fourth [ecumenical council] met at Chalcedon, AD 451, and was called by Emperor Marian; 500 or 600 bishops or Metropolitans... were present. During this council the doctrine of what is now known as Mariolatry was promulgated. This means the worship of Mary, the mother of Christ" (P. 21). In fact Chalcedon was called to correct mistaken view of the person of Christ, and the title 'Theotokos' applied to Mary was Christological in intent - to emphasise that the one born of Mary was indeed God. Only later was the Chalcedonian declaration used to glorify Mary herself (see K.S. Latourette, A History of Christianity [London, Eyre and Spottiswoode Ltd., 1964] 171-2 and Harold O.J. Brown, Heresies [Peabody, Mass., Hendrickson, 2003] 172-3). Harold O.J. Brown writes: "The term theotokos originally was intended to affirm the deity of Christ, but it gradually came to be a title of honour for Mary." Mariolatry was not imposed at Chalcedon - it arose as a corruption in popular piety.

On P. 23 we have another catalgue of names by which 'True Baptist Churches' were called: "Donatists, Paterines, Cathari, Paulicians... Petro-Brussians, Arnoldists, Henricians, Albigenses, and Waldenses." Who were these groups? The last was indeed an orthodox evangelical group - but today is rather inconveniently paedobaptist! The Donatists, like the Novatians, rejected all Catholic Baptism, but were not necessarily anti-paedobaptist! They could also be quite violent against Catholics. Paterines, Paulicians, Cathari and Albigenses are all names given to Medieval dualist groups. The Petrobrussians were the followers of Peter of Bruys, an ascetic who burned crosses and opposed the Catholic Church. He was, however, the originator of his party, not a member of an existing group. The Petrobrussians did not last long after Peter's death - unsurprisingly, really. The Arnoldists and Henricians were similar groups, also about the same time. All of these thrived in the 12th century, but they all have the same problem - they do not emerge from existing groups, but begin with a charismatic, ascetic leader. They were reactions against the corruptions of the Catholic hierarchy, and certainly de Bruys and his followers rejected infant baptism. It seems, however, that Henry of Lausanne, founder of the Henricians, and Arnold of Bresica, did not. Henry did however reject all sacraments administered by corrupt priests as invalid - so that he would re-baptize his followers if he had any doubt about their baptisms!

Waldensianism seems to have begun a little later, as a lay-renewal movement in the Catholic Church. Originally it was accepted, but in 1179 the 3rd Lateran Council refused to authorise them, and they were excommunicated in 1184, after which they merged with an Italian group called the Humiliati, who had broadly similar aims. Unlike the Petrobrussians they were not violent, and unlike the Arnoldists they did not ally themselves with political dissidents. As a result they remain in existence to this day. They sought to follow the New Testament. Although at first they tried to remain within the Medieval Catholic Church, they were finally forced into a separate existence. Persecution finally restricted them to the valleys of the Italian Alps, where they remained until the Reformation. Since at least some of them held, with the Henricians, that sacraments administered by corrupt priests were invalid, many joining the movement were re-baptized. The Waldensians themselves did not oppose infant baptism if performed by godly clergy.

Baptist successionism relies on the idea of an unbroken 'trail of blood' through the centuries. The book The Trail of Blood fails to establish such a trail - and indeed Carroll admits that he is assuming, against the evidence, that these groups were all orthodox!

On Pp. 32-33 we read, "During all these hard struggles for Reformation, continuous and valuable aid was given to the reformers, by many Ana-Baptists, or whatever other name they bore. Hoping for some relief from their own bitter lot, they came out of their hiding places and fought bravely with the reformers." This makes for good rhetoric, but is unfortunately untrue - I have been unable to discover references to any pre-existing baptistic groups who joined with the Reformers. All of the Reformation-era Anabaptist leaders, Balthasar Hubmaier, Conrad Grebel, Hans Denck, Menno Simons, were former Catholics. Hubmaier and Simons were both former priests, and they were by no means alone among Anabaptist leaders in being so. Grebel and Denck were both humanist reformers who rejected infant baptism. It is a fact that not one Reformation-era Anabaptist leader was from a pre-existing group, or gained his views from one.

In short, Baptist successionism is a speculative dogma, not a proveable historical fact. It is therefore something that should not be stated as such, and certainly cannot be the basis of any doctrine of the Church, any more than the dogma of Apostolic succession.

Utter Silliness!

Editing my review of Bennett's Catholicism: East of Eden, I came across this quotation from Faber's History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses on P. 67. My reaction was one of disbelief followed by deep disquiet that this sort of thing is still believed by a worryingly huge number of Protestants. I quote:

"The Albigenses were a group of Christians, influential for their godly lives, who were condemned by the Church of Rome. George Stanley Faber, writing in 1838 provides an example of papal work, 'Avcording to the plan adopted by the inquisition of Langedoc, it was morally impossible for any of the accused Albigenses to escape [the charge of Manichaeanism]... No rational being can, by any conceivable possibilty, believe a syllable of the tales of Manicheism related of the Albigenses, when those tales rest upon such a foundation as that which has been laid by the Council of Narbonne..."

Note well. What Faber is in fact saying is that, because of the methods adopted by the Roman Catholics, we should discount all the evidence then available as to what the Albigenses believed. Faber's method utterly amazes me. Remember, the only actual evidence of the beliefs of the Albigenses (otherwise known as Cathars) available to Faber was found in the registers of that inquisition. Yet Faber decided to discount that, and amazingly to assume that in fact these people were "Protestants before the Reformation', on the basis that the Roman Catholic Church persecuted them. Yet we know that the Roman Catholics persecuted Jews in Europe and Muslims in Spain. In other words, merely being persecuted by Rome is no sign of orthodoxy! At most, therefore, all Faber should have been able to conclude is that the charges of dualism against the Albigenses were not proven. Instead he assumes them to be false, and projects onto the Albigenses the character of the Waldenses, an entirely different group!

Historians can only work with what exists, not with what does not, but Faber in effect reverses this procedure. Rome cannot be trusted, Rome says that the Albigenses were dualists, and therefore the Albigenses were in fact orthodox Protestants. Such reasoning condemns itself.

Contrast this method with the account of Albigensianism given in Harold O.J. Brown's magisterial Heresies Pp. 256-261. In brief he shows its links with Eastern dualistic groups, from which it derived its ordination. He writes: "As far as the Bogomils and Cathars are concerned, the testimonies that attribute moral purity to the leaders, but license to the generality of followers, are too numerous and unanimous to suppose them all to be hostile fabrications" (P. 257). This is the historical method - we use what sources we have, not uncritically, but with care. As far back as the 18th century, the Lutheran historican von Mosheim affirmed that the Alibigenses were dualists, and as Church history moved into the 20th century, so did other writers, for example the Frenchman Andre Lagarde, in his The Latin Church in the Middle Ages (Edinburgh, T. T. Clark, 1915), and Principal Adeney of Manchester in his The Greek and Eastern Churches (Edinburgh, T. T. Clark, 1908). By the time of K.S. Latourette's A History of Christianity (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964), a clear distinction is made between the Albigenses and the Waldenses. A modern work by a conservative Reformed Christian, N.R. Needham's 2000 Years of Christ's Power takes this line as well - one now taken by all but a few who cling to works that are derived from such unhistorical writings as that of Faber.

Thus we see (or ought to see) that the whole 'Trail of Blood' theory is based on writings that simply do not take history seriously!

Don't Call it Persecution!

What is religious persecution? Le me state what it is not. It is not religious persecution to say that another person is wrong, and that their religion (or lack of it) will land them in hell if they do not repent. Sadly some people seem to think that is the case. Let me be a little more provocative - it's not even rudely telling someone that their religion (or lack of it) will land them in hell if they do not repent. That's just bad manners, but it's not persecution. It's my opinion that Christians ought to politely disagree with people. I have been trying to model that with a Jehovah's Witness on my doorstep recently. We finally parted still disagreeing, but amicably, and with him saying that we could be friends if it was not for the fact that we disagreeon some fundamental issues. But the people who rudely told him to push off were not being persecutors!

No, religious persecution means (as the dictionaries say) "to oppress or harrass with ill-treatment" for religious reasons. Ill-treatment is important. In a world where people are routinely killed for their religious convictions, to call being insulted by some witless fundamentalist hell-bent on living up to Lord Soper's definition "persecution" is an isult to those rotting in prison for the sake of Christ. The funny mentalist may be rude, he may be obnoxious, but he's not a persecutor. I speak as one who has been on the receiving end of King James Onlyism! Let's reserve 'Persuction' for the real thing, and adopt 'Religious irritation' for everything else. I speak as a former rligiously-irritating student! Not that I am any less outspoken - I'm just generally more polite!

Very Disappointing

What is? This is. Now, I am just a pastor in a small Church in a small city in the Midlands. They call it 'The Church next to Tesco', and Tesco is due to move this year. But then, perhaps I'm representing all small-church pastors, especially those with a small mosque round the corner, where the second largest religious group (though by quite some way) is Islam (3.2% at the last census).

As Islam becomes more visible in the UK, and minarets start to join the spires and church towers in our cities, pastors and other Christians look around for books and resources to help us to understand this newcomer religion (the oldest mosque in Britain is only about 100 years old) in our land. The tragic thing is that some people will do what I did a few years ago, and buy Unveiling Islam by the Caner brothers on the basis that these two men are former devout Muslims. The trouble is, they're not! Ergun has pretended to speak Arabic, but has in fact been speaking gibberish. They pretended to be experts in Islam, in fact they are not. The use of references to 'Hadith such-and-such' should prove that - as I now know, there are no fewer than 6 authoritative Hadith collections, all different!

The facts are known now. But Ergun Caner is, according to this article, quite unrepentant. To be honest, it saddens me. First of all, and most importantly, because Dr. Caner shows his own condition to be bad. He has not repented of bearing false witness, and therefore shows that he is in a morally precarious position. He needs our prayers. Secondly, it saddens me because it affects our witness to Muslims. They already believe a lot of nonsense about us (my fellow ministers and I in this city have to reply to the assertion that we are paid by the government!), the last thing we need is Ergun Caner making things up about them!

This man is not an expert on Islam, he pretends to be. Avoid him, and tell your Muslim neighbours that he does not speak for you - he certainly does not speak for me!

[Additional note: I am reading right now the Autobiography of R.F. Horton, a noted Congregational pastor in London about 100 years ago. In it he refers to a difficult period he had when a cousin of his decided to become a Roman Catholic, and repeats, a statement this young man made when confronted with an example of deceit by a man who was in the process of becoming an RC. The cousin said, "But you may deceive in the interest of Religion." Now, I hope that today no Roman Catholics would agree with that statement. "Love hopeth all things". In 1917 Horton could count on all Protestants to agree with him. But by approving Ergun Caner, many Evangelicals have practically affirmed the sentiment of Horton's cousin. This is why I have been one with Dr. White from the beginning on this controversy, unless I condemn unequivocally the lies of Dr, Caner, I cannot hold up my head as an Evangelical. Those men like Norman Geisler who continue to give Caner a platform and credibility are bringing disgrace upon Evangelicalism. Had I been a Roman Catholic in the room with Horton and his cousin, I would have hung my head in shame at the statement. Now I say this - you may not deceive in the interest of religion. And if any man does so, let him beware of falling into the condemnation of the father of lies.]

Illustration: The former Bedford Chapel in Shelton, now a mosque

On Reading Good Books

One does not have to read a lot of books on any subject, if one reads good books on the subject. It was the wisest of men who said, "Of the making of many books there is no end" (Eccles 12.12). It is simply impossible to read every book published on many subjects! So the answer is to read good books. To give an example. In her latest brick, Gail Riplinger has a (thoroughly unnecessary) section on the Knights Templar. When I criticised it, Riplinger's defender accused me of having made a special study of the Templar. The accusation is false - I had merely given a lecture on the Da Vinci Code, and read two books on the Knights Templar to do so, both popular books, not academic volumes. In contrast Riplinger's section on the Templar quotes more than a dozen works - all of them completely worthless! Why? Because they are books of fables and myths! (The reader is directed to Riplinger, Hazardous Materials [A.V. Publications, 2009] Pp. 843-851). They include the books underlying the Da Vinci Code, works by men described by leading British academic historian Prof. John Charmley as "Fabulists" (to come clean, he's my Dad, and it was a private conversation. The full quotation was "They're not historians, they're fabulists"). Therefore before reading a book one has to consider several points. First of all, origin. Who wrote it, and what else have they written? What qualifications do they have for writing it? If there is a brief description of the author on or in the book, what does it say? Then look at the bibliography, if there is one. Who are they citing? A large number of self-references and references to self-published works ought to set the alarm-bells ringing. Some authors are always worth reading, such as D.A. Carson and John Calvin.

Time is limited, so ask the question, is this the sort of book I'm looking for? If it's for leisure reading, the style is most important. Some academic writers have a terrible written style and should be avoided as leisure reading. So don't get Martin Gilbert's volumes on Churchill, get a smaller biography. Reading for serious information, make sure that the author has actually researched the book, and always be aware that where a passing reference is made to a person or event in a book not specifically dealing with that person or event, the author may well be in error. For example, John Pollock's description of Spurgeon in Moody Without Sankey is utterly inaccurate, but then it's not a biography of Spurgeon!

Particularly in terms of history and biography, there are volumes that are basically 'fluff', popular-level book relying on other popular level books. Avoid them like the plague they are. They will not help you at all. On the other hand, some classics ought to be read by everyone. In theology, where there is an early Cunningham Lectures volume on a work, it is usually worth reading ('Early' referring roughly to the preiod before 1900). This series produced Buchanan's standard work on Justification, Smeaton's on the Holy Spirit, and A.B. Bruce on The Humiliation of Christ. If you read the best, you will not have to worry so much about the rest.

Read more than one era. Old books are always worthwhile if they are good. But also modern writers are building on what has gone before. In terms of history it is most important to remember that historical research is always going on. Older books may be based on mistakes committed in the past that have now been corrected. And remember, a popular-level writer may well simply be repeating the mistakes of others!

And read well-written books. Reading good English will help you to write good English. Conversely, reading bad English will have a detrimental effect on your English style!

Book Review: Catholicism: East of Eden

Catholicism: East of Eden – Richard Bennett. Pp. 336. £ 8.50. Paperback. ISBN 9781848710832
Banner of Truth



This is one of those books that I always want to be more positive about than I find I can be. One has a great deal of sympathy for Richard Bennett. He was brought up a devout Roman Catholic, and decided to dedicate himself to missionary work. He was priest in the West Indies, and clearly a very devout, though mistaken man. He is a very intelligent man, and his decision to dedicate himself to missionary work was at the expense of a university career.

As a former Roman Catholic priest, Richard Bennett has first-hand experience of the Church of Rome, and learned Roman Catholic theology from Roman Catholics. He is therefore qualified to present an insider’s view of Rome. This is the great strength of the book. Bennett is able to see through the smoke-screen Rome has erected, and through the confusion of ecumenical statements that are all give on the Protestant side and all take on the Roman side. The book is strongest as a personal testimony with theological reflection. Richard Bennett’s expertise and personal experience are obvious in his treatment of Roman Catholic theology and practice.

There is a very perceptive section on ecumenicism, pointing out that in fact what we have in the Ecumenical movement is a unity that is based almost ccompletely on the use of equivocal language. The chapter 'The Mystic Plague' is quite helpful too, and related. Mystical experience, divorced from doctrine, is a fruitful basis for the union of people belonging to groups with fundamental disagreements.

The section on marriage deals with matters that I for one was unaware of until quite recently, when another Christian remarked that a member of his family was kept from becoming a Roman catholic when he was told that, because his marriage was not a Roman Catholic one, it was no marriage at all, and his children were all illegitimate. Today Rome rarely speaks like that - but it lost at least one person many decades ago! If there is one criticism it is that perhaps Bennett tries to pack everything into a relatively short book. I personally prefer those works that seek to point out the most important differences between Rome and the Reformation churches - but that is just a minor criticism.

On the other hand, this book has a very serious weakness. In writing about the history of the papacy it is obvious that Bennett is far outside of his area of expertise, and he relies almost entirely on 19th century popular works that have since been superseded. The trouble is particularly with his treatment of certain medieval groups which 19th century Protestant groups assumed were evangelical, but which more recent discoveries have shown were not. This mars what is otherwise a good book. I was surprised that the only 20th century work he cites from is from a Seventh-Day Adventist.


Why is this a problem? It is a problem because all of these works treat the Albigensians and Paulicians as orthodox theologically. Yet today, with access to more information about these groups than 19th century Protestant historians had, no serious historian takes such a view. N.R. Needham's 2000 Years of Christ's Power is by no means an academic work, and he distinguishes between the orthodox Waldesians (whom he describes as "Protestants before the Reformation") and the heretical, dualistic Albigensians and Paulicians (Vol. 2, Pp. 114-7,309-313). Given that some of the works cited by Bennett are somewhat obscure, it will not do to say on this point "he is merely a popularizer". No, he has made the mistake of relying on outdated scholarship. We have to be very careful here. Our Protestant forefathers in their conflict with Rome often made the mistake of assuming that those who opposed Rome in the Middle Ages were of necessity in more or less full agreement with them. While there were such groups - like the Waldensians, the Petrobrussians and the Hussites, there were also groups that were not at all orthodox. Readers are directed to Harold O.J. Brown's magisterial work Heresies (Hendrickson, 2003) and chapter 14. For an in-depth study of dualist religions, see Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God (Yale, 2000). An older but still authoritative study is Sir Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge, 1947). It is telling that most of the works cited by Bennett are not actually studies of the Albigensians, but either Wylie's History of Protestantism, or studies of the Waldensians. This is undoubtedly the reason why they have merely repeated others' mistakes. However, given that Brown and Needham are on the market, there is really no reason for any modern writer to make such errors. Wylie in particular focuses on the Reformation era, not the Middle Ages.

It seems to me that Bennett is attracted to the idea of an alternative 'Apostolic Succession' of churches reaching back to before the rise of the Papacy and preserving the true doctrine. While understanding the appeal of such ideas to a former Roman Catholic, I have to dissent from it. For one thing, the Reformation came from inside the Medieval Catholic Church, not outside.

Having said this, it must not be forgotten that there is much in this book that the reader will appreciate, all relating to Bennett's area of expertise - modern Roman Catholicism. In my opinion it would be much improved if the ‘historical’ sections which deal with pre-Reformation times were either removed or revised in the light of research carried out in the 20th century. Read it carefully, and pay particular attention to the statements about modern Rome. The Reformation was necessary because of false teaching, and that teaching has not been reformed in Rome.