Jason Stellman Tells His Conversion Story
Mar 21st, 2013 | By Bryan Cross | Category: Blog Posts
Regular readers of Called To Communion are familiar with Jason Stellman. In September of last year we posted an article he wrote for us titled “I Fought the Church, and the Church Won.” In November of last year, I interviewed Jason regarding his conversion from Presbyterian pastor to Catholic, and posted the podcast of that interview here. On March 9 of this year, Jason Stellman gave a talk at the Holy Family Conference at Holy Family Parish in Kirkland, Washington. Jason had been planning to talk about “The cruciform life” during that session of the conference. But in the hour before his talk was scheduled to begin, he had lunch with Scott Hahn, who convinced him to tell his conversion story instead. So he did, and thankfully the event was recorded:
Download the mp3 by right-clicking here.
Jason blogs at CreedCodeCult.com.
So I found this post at 1:35 a.m. on a worknight. Thanks a lot C2C. Clicking play now.
Thanks, Bryan, (et. al.).
Very sad to hear him.
“…That moment when you say ‘look, I can fit that verse into my paradigm, but someone holding my paradigm would never say that.’” (22:40)
Bingo. That paradigm shift is a wild ride.
Nice to have you on board Francis’ boat Jason.
Jason, I can’t believe you didn’t find my “We’re “ƒ%#@!” answer satisfying.
I appreciated the task of reading the NT again and highlighting phrases and passages that wouldn’t be said if the author held your paradigm. I’d love to see your notes on this. Even if it only got to Mt 18. Has anyone else here made a similar list?
Jason, I listened to all 3 of your recent conversion accounts from your blog. As an ex-”truly reformed” Christian, I can relate to much of what you went through. Your observations on the Catholic bloggers/authors attitudes, in general, contrasted with the reformed attitudes, in general, resonated powerfully to my wife and I. I’ve commented here previously that the arrogance sometimes displayed by many popular reformed apologists (which I was encouraged to read by the reformed to get “both sides”) did contribute to my conversion. Thanks for your testimony.
Hugh (#2):
What is sad to you about this testimony? He sounds to me to be full of the Lord’s joy. Finding the True Church is in no ways at odds with finding Jesus Himself; quite the contrary, I’d say.
isaiah.
Did I understand correctly that his wife and kids are still with the PCA, or did they eventually the Church?
Isaiah,
He sounds like Luther in reverse – running away from the light of Christ to structure, hierarchy, centralized authority, sacred tradition, no eternal assurance, but plenty of temporal and temporary assurance (until he morally sins again), etc.
Gullible, Jason, you are gullible. Deceiving and being deceived, as Paul put it. There is no way to prove this, any more than you can prove your side.
You claim no one had a good argument against your queries. I would maintain that you simply don’t believe the arguments of your professors and others. (I loved the reference I believe to Steve Baugh!)
So be it. Seeing eyes and hearing ears must be granted one from above. May God have mercy on you.
Hugh McCann,
Why would you speak that way to Jason? You didn’t lay out a single argument as to why your paradigm is preferable to his. No one had good arguments for my queries either, and I was honestly alarmed that its been this long since the Reformation and the Reformed System has so many glaring holes that even a lay person like myself could spot them. I don’t blame the Magisterial Reformers, but I sure was surprised that so much has gotten past so many for so long.
Since there is no such thing a universal salvation, how do you know that you are not one of those “who went of from us because you were not among us?”
You’d think that since he can’t help it that God wasn’t merciful to him like He was to you because he doesn’t have seeing eyes and hearing ears, his haters would be really kind so as to win him back with the love of Christ, or ignore him altogether.
This behavior is so cruel, and people hurt. Please seek to make it right.
Susan
Hugh,
Did the Apostles believe in an authority structure? If they did and if they began churches with a structure for authority, then was this authority the kind which can just spring up anywhere and at anytime through the proper understanding of Scripture? If so, which of the many communities which have done this has the structure which if of divine authority that make up the varied groups of Protestantism today? If you are thinking along the lines that all the diverse communities have the number of the elect scattered and sub-grouped within them, then can all the Elect have mutually exclusive understandings about the gospel? If they cannot, then this means that only a sub-groups out of all the protestant groupings are within your standard of being able to be saved or elect. If then there are only a sub-group of communities which are protestant wherein a person who submits to the ecclesiastical teaching authority (which Hebrews 13:7 teaches) can be genuinely saved, which groups are these? How can you know these groups are the ones whom God accepts alone?
It is clear that you believe that Catholics, who believe in Catholic theology, are lost and condemned because of their doctrine. If this is the case, then you have applied a certain standard to be able to put Catholics on the “hell-bound” line unto the final judgement. If this is case as well, then you have a standard by which to put the Elect on the “heaven-bound” line unto the final judgement. Since there is no choice for you but to accept this logic (unless you deny it in the name of some invisible revelation to the inner senses), could you be a loving person and share with us what the standard of doctrine determining whether someone “can” be saved or definitely lost.
If you see all these questions as superfluous and inferior to the inner revelation which the Holy Spirit alone gives to man, then do you reject Protestant apologetics to the unsaved? If you reject Protestant apologetics to the unsaved, does this not require the use of reason and fine questioning? If you accept Protestant apologetics, why would you denounce the same kind of logic which undermines and falsifies the protestant conception of the gospel? If you accept Protestant apologetics, then you believe there are arguments which can potentially lead one to see that Catholicism has demonic doctrine, using logic and reason, while not resting on logic and reason as the foundation of persuasion. If you believe that logic and reason can and will do this, given that the person is illuminated by the Holy Spirit, then why would you not provide some reason as to why you believe what you believe?
This is a good time to remind everybody of our posting guidelines.
That means that you may not criticize or insult or belittle or judge or mock any person, his character, intelligence, education, background, or motivations. Attacking persons is fallacious and uncharitable and will not be permitted here.
Hey Matthew,
You understood correctly, my wife and kids are still attending Exile Pres, which I planted.
Thanks, Jason. I’m glad Scott talked you into this.
I can tell you from personal experience that as a new convert, you will come under attack from the Enemy, trying to convince you to leave the Church, or not to pursue it so deeply. So, I will be praying for you and the strength of your family!
God bless.
I’m listening to your talk now Jason so you may cover this but was your wife willing to convalidate your marriage so you could enter the Church?
That has got to be tough, Jason. Do your wife and children not share your views on Catholicism?
How do y’all work out your differences in your family life?
I apologize if this is too personal. I’m in a similar spot myself, almost ready to make the leap, without wife and children.
Dan,
No, they do not share my convictions. My wife is awesome and totally respects me, but she also thinks I’m kind of nuts!
Jason, I have followed your story for some time now and have prayed for you and your family and also requested prayers for you from our Adoration teams. I came back to the one holy catholic and apostolic church after over 25 years of fully embracing Evangelicalism/Protestism. I am back in the church today for many of the same reasons that you converted. Like you it hasn’t always been easy and many of my friends and family think I have lost my mind and thats ok because to lose myself is to gain Christ. Once the scales fell from my eyes I honestly had no other choice. I finally know true peace and God is sculpting me one day at a time. Thank you for sharing your story. God be with you and grant you peace. P.S. It took 14 years but Tim Staples family finally converted and his brother became a Priest. ; )
(Re #16-18): St. Monica, pray for us!
Jason,
Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful testimony. Please know there are so many praying for your job search and your family during this time. We all are so excited to see your vocation in the Church take flight.
Peace of Christ,
Patrick
Thanks Susan. To your concerns: Why would you speak that way to Jason? You didn’t lay out a single argument as to why your paradigm is preferable to his.
>You’re right – I wasn’t arguing at all. I wasn’t posting to argue as had Mr Stellman’s seminary profs (many of whom I had in the late 1990s).
Since there is no such thing a universal salvation, how do you know that you are not one of those “who went of from us because you were not among us?”
>Only by faith. :)
You’d think …his haters would be really kind so as to win him back with the love of Christ, or ignore him altogether.
>No, Ma’am. You might think that, but not we all. But if Mr Stellman wishes to report his being hurt, I will gladly reconsider my comments. As to winning him with the love of Christ – that was laid out by better, more sanctified, more erudite, and I expect certainly more loving teachers of the Word than I; and they (we) all have failed. You last option is a good one. But we also believe that men who defect from Christ (just as your church teaches about those who defect from Catholicism) are actually under God’s curse, barring their repentance & returning to the biblical faith. I won’t try to argue it here. It appears such is a lost cause @ CTC. But I wanted to address your concerns. We are of different spirits, different gospels, different Christs.
You’d think that since he can’t help it that God wasn’t merciful to him like He was to you because he doesn’t have seeing eyes and hearing ears, his haters would be really kind so as to win him back with the love of Christ, or ignore him altogether.
>I am close to this last suggestion of yours.
This behavior is so cruel, and people hurt. Please seek to make it right.
>You have also made assertions w/o argumentation, just as I have. I believe that unless we violate some other criterion of this site’s posting policy, we are both free to do so.
Thanks for clarifying, Jason.
Hey, Erick (#11),
Did the Apostles believe in an authority structure?
>Sure – they instituted bishops and deacons.
If they did and if they began churches with a structure for authority, then was this authority the kind which can just spring up anywhere and at anytime through the proper understanding of Scripture?
>Yes, in many cases there are no missionaries to stay behind. Natives have to fend for themselves with only God’s Word – which claims self-sufficiency.
If so, which of the many communities which have done this has the structure which if of divine authority that make up the varied groups of Protestantism today?
>Couldn’t tell you. You guys love tidy packaging, I know. Sorry.
If you are thinking along the lines that all the diverse communities have the number of the elect scattered and sub-grouped within them, then can all the Elect have mutually exclusive understandings about the gospel?
>You define ‘gospel’ much differently than I. By PAUL’S gospel (1 Cor. 15:3f), no, the elect cannot have “M.U.E.” about the gospel. The gospel and the gospel alone is the way of salvation: Christ dying and rising again for his own.
If they cannot, then this means that only a sub-groups out of all the protestant groupings are within your standard of being able to be saved or elect. If then there are only a sub-group of communities which are protestant wherein a person who submits to the ecclesiastical teaching authority (which Hebrews 13:7 teaches) can be genuinely saved, which groups are these? How can you know these groups are the ones whom God accepts alone?
>Answered above. One must believe the true gospel about the true Christ to be saved. S/he may differ with others on baptism issues, church polity, eschatology, etc.
It is clear that you believe that Catholics, who believe in Catholic theology, are lost and condemned because of their doctrine. If this is the case, then you have applied a certain standard to be able to put Catholics on the “hell-bound” line unto the final judgement. If this is case as well, then you have a standard by which to put the Elect on the “heaven-bound” line unto the final judgement. Since there is no choice for you but to accept this logic (unless you deny it in the name of some invisible revelation to the inner senses),
>Sounds sound.
could you be a loving person and share with us what the standard of doctrine determining whether someone “can” be saved or definitely lost.
>Yes, as the Apostle says in 1 Cor. 15:3f – keep in mind THAT gospel, and you’ll be saved.
If you see all these questions as superfluous and inferior to the inner revelation which the Holy Spirit alone gives to man, then do you reject Protestant apologetics to the unsaved? If you reject Protestant apologetics to the unsaved, does this not require the use of reason and fine questioning? If you accept Protestant apologetics, why would you denounce the same kind of logic which undermines and falsifies the protestant conception of the gospel? If you accept Protestant apologetics, then you believe there are arguments which can potentially lead one to see that Catholicism has demonic doctrine, using logic and reason, while not resting on logic and reason as the foundation of persuasion. If you believe that logic and reason can and will do this, given that the person is illuminated by the Holy Spirit, then why would you not provide some reason as to why you believe what you believe?
>”Protestant apolgetics” is a wide field. I reject empiricism and evidentialism. I embrace Scripturalism.
>You’ll have to be specific about “the same kind of logic which undermines and falsifies the protestant conception of the gospel.”
>One reason not to go too far in arguing, is that it is fruitless with those who have been trained in Reformed theology, and have even argued for it. Think of Mr Cross or Mr Stellman, for example. But what exactly do you want?
>Thank you.
Hugh:
Do you have life in you?
Keep in mind that in order to have life in you and be raised up on the last day, Jesus says you must eat His flesh and drink His blood.
Do you, in absolute point-of-fact, do that?
The Scriptures are perfectly and plainly literal on this point, you know. And it’s the only thing that allows Christianity’s connection with the Old Testament to make sense!
The people of Israel remained under the covenant and in the people of God because when they celebrated the Passover, they ate the lamb. Christ our Paschal lamb has been sacrificed; we are the People of God; we are bidden to come enjoy the feast; we must therefore Eat The Lamb.
Likewise we must drink His blood. The Old Testament is very specific: The life is in the blood. God, who never intended to fill His people with the merely organic life of an animal or a man, forbade the drinking of the blood of animals or of men. It is not that kind of life that we are to drink. He desires something better for us: He specifically promises to give us Eternal Life. Not merely everlasting life, mind you, such as every human soul has, but Eternal Life: No beginning, no end. Only one such has that life: God Himself. Is it any wonder that He bids us drink His blood, so that we might have life in us, and be raised up at the last day?
Nor is this any novel interpretation of Scripture. It’s the way the first-century Christians interpreted it, according to their own writings. And the second-century Christians, according to theirs. And the third-century Christians. And the fourth. And the fifth. And, and, and, and…it is only those who came along fifteen hundred years later, plagued with the errors of human reasoning and divorced from the Jewish roots of Christianity by a vast cultural gap, who are confused enough to see it any other way. It is their modernism, their secularism, their theological liberalism, which prompts them not to Take Christ At His Word, and to deny that He Said What He Meant And He Meant What He Said.
So I ask you, Hugh: Do you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood? Do you have life in you?
Or do you have a 16th-century anachronism derived from a watered-down, modernized, and secularized institutional memory? Are you, like Luther, a theological liberal?
Respectfully, I exhort you: The Lord Jesus Christ thinks it matters.
Hugh,
Thank you for your responses. I happen to be very open to Protestant arguments, as I do not always appreciate the arguments that Catholics give in response. I particularly have a bit of difficulty with how Protestants can maintain their view of the the Scriptures with a robust logical exegesis of the texts. I happen to believe the texts of Scripture lean more toward a the traditional way of understanding Christianity. If you had to nail it down, what makes you believe that Catholics are hell-bound if they really do believe in Catholic doctrine?
Is it justification? Well, even as a Protestant, you cannot subjectively “know” you are justified (depending on which reformed church you are in) until you have reached a certain confirmation that your “fruit-bearing” or “repentance” is of a God-accepting level. If you come from a protestant camp which is more reformed baptist or independent baptist (Richard Owen Roberts, etc,etc), you are constantly warned of “false-conversion” or “counterfeit repentance”, to the extant that one is always doubting and questioning one’s own conversion and repentance. If you are hyped up in this kind of “holiness” environment, then your assurance of your acquisition of Christ’s righteousness is not stable, but always dependent upon you passing the bare minimum level of which you think is “true” repentance. At times, the level of your standard can go down or up, depending on what you’ve been learning or who you’ve been influenced by. For instance, those who love RC Sproul and Burk Parsons have a bit of a more easy way of balancing the Christian life so that the person has assurance and yet is still under the fear of God and obligation to live in holiness. But others, who dive into Matthew Meade’s Almost Christian, may find themselves going through a doubting depression for years. You yourself may be in the camp which says, “Amen! The Christian life is Hard! And one must really sacrifice all the desires of the flesh for the glory of God!”…..but you see……one wonders what effectiveness this more “grace-filled” gospel has in the life of the human being. You are consistently taught that human works have no cause in the salvation of the human being, and yet you are constantly being told that only works evidence the prior work of God, and then even more constantly reminded that there are so many counterfeit versions of the evidence, and that there is a very difficult, even impossible, single and genuine evidence which can grant one assurance of salvation. And it becomes an even more difficult rubix cube when a Person who has been serving Christ in this way for years, and then dives into a couple of years of fornication. And the worst part about it is this, God is controlling everything. God is ordaining the doubt in salvation. If you are truly lost, despite all the energy and effort to be saved, this is also an immutable energy of God working in the life of the person.
At this point, one wonders how Protestants consider themselves to have more “grace” in their gospel. Catholics believe that Jesus loves all people and wishes all to be saved. He doesn’t think that his cross loses glory because some of those for whom He died reject him ultimately and go to hell, because it remains a loving act towards the world, something that is in the heart of God (John 3:16). Calvinists are so proud of protecting God in His glory in the unmitigated and undiluted sovereignty and predestination of God, that sometimes you really do not know if God loves you or if you are one of those Christians who are self-deceived (in the truest sense) for 50 years and then by 51 years of age you become a reprobate, and all along God has hated you and purposed you for wrath and destruction. You take away the very thing which human beings are to know about God, that He loves them and cares for them and wishes them to be saved, by this sovereign salvation and damnation apart from human works. It is almost as if since works play no part in the predestination of the elect, works also play no part in the predestination of the wicked. There is a settled determination before all creation, and everything in our time is simply an outplay of this pre-determined plan. This creates much confusion with the theology of the Old Testament, Jesus, and the apostles.
What else is it? The Papacy? The wickedness? The lukewarmness? The false holiness? The praying to the dead?
Still waiting for Jason to answer my question in #15 I have a very good reason for asking it so if you could do so I would be most appreciative?
Wayne, (re: #26)
You may have a very good reason for asking your question. But rather than insist that Jason publicly answer a personal question before laying out that reason, a more charitable approach on your part would be simply to explain your reason, and let Jason see whether it applies to his case.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Dear Susan (@ #10),
I appreciate your post the more I think about it.
Prov. 15:1 & 2 Tim. 2:23ff came to mind as I read Titus 2:7-9 today.
Many thanks for your admonition to caritas!
Hugh
Erick #25: I will try to reply ASAP, and as I am allowed to here,
but perhaps we &/ or the moderator may want us to discuss this
in emails rather than here @ CTC.
R.C. #24: I will likewise try to reply to you ASAP.
Both your posts are great, and I am honored to be asked these things.
Thank you.
Sure Bryan. I am considering converting to the Church but my wife refuses to convalidate our marriage so I may have to seek a radical senation from the Bishop. And yet this situation has also given me pause and I am proceeding with caution as I know I am the Spiritual Leader in our home.
Hope that helps and my apologies if my question was too personal and would be happy to receive a reply privately.
In His Blessed Name,
Wayne
Hugh:
I find your position rather mystifying. On the one hand, you claim that neither side can “prove” the superiority of its interpretive paradigm as applied to the Bible; on the other, you claim the Bible is “self-sufficient.” How the Bible can be self-sufficient if it doesn’t decisively settle the question which paradigm to adopt for its interpretation is rather mystifying, wouldn’t you say?
Best,
Mike
Michael #30,
The Bible, the Faith, is only discernable to those whose eyes and ears it opens. Faith comes by hearing* the Word of God.
*That hearing is not from one’s free will, nor a Spirit-aided freed will, but regeneration must precede belief. By proclaiming the true Word of God, we have confidence that it w/ the Spirit will enliven and saved whom God will, and harden whom he will. See 1 Cor. 1:18-2:16.
Thank you.
Hence, the Bible is self-sufficient and decisively settles the question for those who are first enlivened to believe it.
Hugh:
I agree with everything you say in #32, but I don’t think what you say in #33 follows at all. In fact, the latter is incompatible with the former.
You write:
If something beyond just reading the Bible with literary understanding is necessary for understanding the truth conveyed by the Bible, then the Bible alone does not suffice for understanding the truth it conveys. Indeed, according to you, the grace of the Spirit is also necessary for understanding the truth conveyed by the Bible–a claim I agree with. But in that case, something beyond just reading the Bible with literary understanding is necessary for understanding the truth conveyed by the Bible. Hence, “the Bible” is not self-sufficient for the purpose stated.
If we can agree on that much, the next question becomes: “How does one know when one is interpreting the Bible by the grace and light of the Spirit?” Your statement: “The Bible, the Faith, is only discernable to those whose eyes and ears it opens” won’t do, for two reasons. First, even though that statement is true, it doesn’t answer the question; second, it assumes one of the very theses at issue, which is whether the contents of the Bible are identical with “the Faith.” Thus your statement is question-begging in two ways.
Best,
Mike
Hey Wayne,
That’s rough, buddy. Have you tried the romance approach: be really sweet, go on lots of dates, dial up the affection? Also, is there a way to bing her to social events in which she will encounter and befriend happy, faithful Catholic women?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Mike @34 – You are rockin’ it!
Great point. I erred here. The Bible is sufficient as to things here on Earth – no magisterium or pope (in- or semi-fallible) necessary.
One knows anything spiritual by the Spirit. One knows he is interpreting the Bible by the grace and light of the Spirit by the Spirit’s witness/ testimony, just as one knows his adoption/ sonship per Romans 8:14ff ~ For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
Are these helpful? I’m not sure I am answering you to your satisfaction.
Thank you.
Hugh
> Do you have life in you?
Hey, R.C. (@24),
Yep! :)
> Keep in mind that in order to have life in you and be raised up on the last day, Jesus says you must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Do you, in absolute point-of-fact, do that?
By faith alone [not transubstantiation]: John 6:35, 40, 47f.
> The people of Israel remained under the covenant and in the people of God because when they celebrated the Passover, they ate the lamb. Christ our Paschal lamb has been sacrificed; we are the People of God; we are bidden to come enjoy the feast; we must therefore Eat The Lamb.
“This is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life” (John 6:40). That is to “eat Jesus Christ.”
> Likewise we must drink His blood. The Old Testament is very specific: The life is in the blood. God, who never intended to fill His people with the merely organic life of an animal or a man, forbade the drinking of the blood of animals or of men. It is not that kind of life that we are to drink. He desires something better for us: He specifically promises to give us Eternal Life. Not merely everlasting life, mind you, such as every human soul has, but Eternal Life: No beginning, no end. Only one such has that life: God Himself. Is it any wonder that He bids us drink His blood, so that we might have life in us, and be raised up at the last day?
No, sir.
> So I ask you, Hugh: Do you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood? Do you have life in you?
Yes & yes.
> Or do you have a 16th-century anachronism derived from a watered-down, modernized, and secularized institutional memory? Are you, like Luther, a theological liberal?
Acc. to you, I guess so!
Thank you.
…we may not criticize or insult or belittle or judge or mock any person, his character, intelligence, education, background, or motivations. Attacking persons is fallacious and uncharitable and will not be permitted here.
Hugh, relating to your comment 33,
Please enlighten me, Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley had some pretty strong differences on the nature of salvation.
Calvin, Luther, and Wesley believed that baptism was necessary and that infant baptism baptism was valid. Zwingli did not on either account.
Calvin believed in once saved always saved. Wesley believed you could lose your salvation.
Calvin and Luther practiced devotions to Mary and saw this as laudable, but Zwingli saw it as a hell-worthy abomination.
There are dozens of other salvation related issues which they disagreed.
These are issues of salvation so one cannot claim they agreed on the essentials and disagreed on the nonessentials.
Your understanding of salvation also contract Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley.
So my question to you is, which of you are Spirit-aided and have truly listened to what scripture says? Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley all seem pretty sincere in their convictions and you do also, and all believed they were listening to the Holy Spirit. But clearly someone has to be mistaken, since you can’t all be right.
So how do *you* know you are correct an they are wrong?
Hi Jason S. We have to meet sometime! I just had coffee recently with Fr. Bryan Ochs –this week.
I am entering the Church next WEEK in fact.
My wife is not opposed, but neither is she 100% supportive. She is NOT anti-Catholic by any means, she just doesn’t see the point. After all, can’t we just simply be GOOD Protestants. She was fine as long as Catholicism was merely “interesting”. It was only when I started talking about it as if were TRUE that she started to have a problem.
It hurts for my wife and family to NOT see the beauty and fullness of Catholicism. I’m praying daily she’ll warm up to it.
I have never heard of “convalidating” a marriage before. Maybe someone could fill me in on that. Our RCIA director didn’t mention anything like that to me.
Wayne,
I highly recommend that you write the diocesan marriage tribunal for your local diocese and describe in detail the circumstances of your marriage regarding:
- baptism (or not) of each party
- previous marriages if any
-were any of the previous marriages in the Catholic Church
- whether either party has ever been Catholic
- whether the marriage was civil or religious
In addition it will probably be very helpful to speak to a priest at a local parish, and possibly contact a canon lawyer. You could also call Catholic Answer apologists off-air and they will get you started 619-387-7200
Monday–Friday, 9 AM–4:45 PM, Pacific.
Still the Diocesan Tribunal is the highest authority and deals with this all the time. Local Priests and knowledgeable can sometimes be misinformed or not aware of certain conditions.
I hesitate to offer any solid guidance because there are nuances I don’t understand always and I am not an expert BUT…
In general the Catholic Church does recognize marriages of other Christians as valid. There are however two types of marriage: Simply a valid marriage, or Sacramental Marriage. If I understand correctly your marriage may not be Sacramental without convalidation, but it is very possible that your marriage would be recognized as valid and you would be able to participate in the sacramental life of the Church.
Particularly, if this is a first marriage for both of you and neither of you was baptized in a Catholic Church and neither of you has ever been Catholic, you probably have a valid marriage from what I understand.
Non-Catholics are not subject to Canon law, and are not subject to the requirements the Church places upon Her members regarding marriage. Marriage is a Sacrament that is properly instituted by the Couple themselves, not by the priest. The Priest is a witness and blesses the marriage and the Mass is for the marriage and celebrates and solemnizes the occasion, but the marriage itself is contracted entirely between the two partners.
Sorry for my in-expertise. I hope I am sure I have this mostly correct, but you are best served by going to the tribunal.
Prayers for you! And really, regardless of your marital status, the Church is still the True Church. In my mind, better to be imperfectly a member and bear the cross of an irregular situation than to remain outside of visible communion with Christ’s Church.
To Hugh and To Wayne
Dear Hugh,
Glad you are interested in doing what is good. Your change of heart has touched mine:)
I can commiserate to some degree, because while I didn’t plant a church and I don’t have his position as authority nor his amount of learning, I am in a situation near to his. I entered that Catholic Church this past December, and I am the only person in my family to go this route. My husband and children still attend a Reformed church in Southern California. We go our separate ways every Lord’s Day and it is terrible hard.
Those people at their church have been very kind to my family but it I do’t see any of them in social settings anymore. I haven’t seen my former pastors since last summer. The whole situation is very weird.
I know that I am always welcome to any social situation, but I feel that they think I have the plague:) I don’t want to deal with people showing me sorrowful eyes as if they pity me for my poor choice. I am pleased to have found the Church! But, I also understand how they view me now. They are mistaken however, and so I hand onto the truth, I have received by faith. Also, happy to hear that you desire to continue communicating on this site! Blessings to you.
Dear Wayne,
My husband was extremely hostile to me before I converted. He didn’t attend my reception and first communion. It has gotten easier. The yelling has stopped( from both of us) ,and he puts up with my Catholic books. I haven’t even tried to ask him for any icons…it’s too soon.
He was not willing to have our marriage convalidated, but since we had both been baptized after we were married, it wasn’t needed.
Hang-in there and keep being a loving husband.
I will pray for your situation.
~Susan
Hi Wayne,
It really depends on your wife. Scott Hahn converted long before before his wife agreed, and Kimberley Hahn admitted that she was so fixed in her intellectual views that she would have stonewalled his conversion forever if Scott Hahn didn’t act unilaterally. The unilateral conversion forced her to be serious about examining the claims of the Catholic Church.
For other women (e.g. more “Heart Christian” than “Head Christian”), a hard unilateral approach is the worse possible thing you could do and might do irreparable damage to your marriage. For these women, it is critical that you don’t pressure them and it is important that you first live the Catholic life (i.e. attend mass but abstain from the Eucharist, practice Catholic devotions, care for the family from the Catholic perspective, etc) and give her space before even attempting a conversion. Eventually she will see that Catholicism is “safe”, that you are a better husband, father, and person for being Catholic, and see your suffering at not being able to receive the Eucharist or go to confession that she will support you as a Catholic and all obligations you have as a Catholic. This may take years, the suffering of waiting and constant prayer for full reconciliation will not go to waste.
You know your wife better than anyone here. But in either case, you can’t force your wife to convert. If it happens, it is by God’s grace and you’re personal piety will play an crucial part in lowering the barriers to her conversion.
Wayne,
Feel free to write me privately: j(dot)stellman(at)comcast(dot)net.
Michael Liccione: you wrote: “you claim that neither side can “prove” the superiority of its interpretive paradigm as applied to the Bible; on the other, you claim the Bible is “self-sufficient.” How the Bible can be self-sufficient if it doesn’t decisively settle the question which paradigm to adopt for its interpretation is rather mystifying, wouldn’t you say?”
But how can the pope settle anything when Garry Wills is on the loose?
Sean Patrick (or whomever), RE #36 – thanks! ;)
Dear Anil @38 ~
Please enlighten me, Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley had some pretty strong differences on the nature of salvation.
>I believe that I am in essential agreement with Luther and Calvin, but am not conversant with Zwingli and am not in essential agreement (as far as I know of him) with John Wesley.
There are dozens of other salvation related issues which they disagreed.
>Yes. Some issues of salvation and some not. You & i would probably disagree on which these are.
These are issues of salvation so one cannot claim they agreed on the essentials and disagreed on the nonessentials.
>That’s your opinion, and you have the right to hold that opinion, but with due respect, I believe it is incorrect. >Infant baptism is not an issue of salvation. But could otherwise good men err on this?
Your understanding of salvation also contract Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley.
> You mean “contradict”? How? I may disagree with Wesley, but how do I differ from Calvin & Luther?
So my question to you is, which of you are Spirit-aided and have truly listened to what scripture says?
Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley —
>That seems a fair Best-to-Worst rating, as far as I know. :)
So how do *you* know you are correct an they are wrong?
>I believe that I am in essential agreement with Luther and Calvin, but am not conversant with Zwingli and am not in essential agreement (as far as I know) with John Wesley.
>To the best of my knowledge, I am in agreement with Paul and Jesus. Infinitely more important. :)
>Thank you.
Thanks to each of you who provided me with counsel, prayers, and recommendations above in my particular circumstance. It’s been quite the struggle over the past year or so but God is in control.
Jason, Susan, and Wayne,
I am very sorry to read of the marital problems your conversions to Rome are causing (exposing or exacerbating). I am writing the following sincerely.
Given that you are leaving a grace-only religion (that holds orthodox Trinitarianism & Christology), and that claims that one can know whether s/he is destined for heaven through her/ his faith in Christ Jesus, why not for the sake of peace and marital harmony stay in the “lesser” church?
Rome claims that we’re separated brethren, not the heretics Trent threatened to burn, right? Then why not for your family’s sake stay in communion with your spouse & children in a Presbyterian or Baptist or Reformed church?
I grant you that Rome has the corner on venerability, incense, liturgy, Latin rite, bonus Bible books, catechism, canons, councils, decrees, dogmas, and promises of sacramental grace, but no sure eternal hope, only maybes.
Why go where eternal life is merely a possibility (if you’re good enough) and not stay where faith in Christ as the soul’s sole Mediator is the watchword?
Why leave a church where the family is united, and grace is secure, and separate the family for “maybe”?
Hugh (#36):
I appreciate your humility, and I mean that. I do not often encounter theological opponents who actually admit they’ve erred when I point out their error. You refresh! Thank you.
Even so, I’m not sure you’ve taken my larger point. You write:
I think what you mean is that no ecclesial teaching authority is necessary for interpreting the Bible correctly, but only the Holy Spirit. At least that’s what I take your position to be; it’s the position of many Protestants. But it doesn’t really answer my question: How you know when you are interpreting the Bible by the Spirit, who has divine authority, and not just according to your own or some other people’s understanding, which has no authority?
You seem to be getting at an answer by quoting Romans 8:14ff and commenting:
Very well then: How do you distinguish between “the Spirit’s witness” and those of people who just happen to agree with you about how to interpret the Bible for doctrinal purposes? It won’t do to cite the fact–if indeed it is a fact–that you “know” your adoption as a child of God. I too believe I am an adopted child of God (though I hold that belief by faith, not as an item of knowledge), but I don’t think that status guarantees that I’ll be able to tell the difference between the Spirit’s authoritative witness and my own or others’ merely human interpretive opinions. For that, I look to the Magisterium; as a Catholic, I believe the bishops are successors of the Apostles, to whom Jesus Christ gave his divine teaching authority, and who passed that authority on to their successors. To whom or what do you look for the Spirit’s authoritative witness?
Best,
Mike
Hey, Mike,
> I think what you mean is that no ecclesial teaching authority is necessary for interpreting the Bible correctly, but only the Holy Spirit. At least that’s what I take your position to be; it’s the position of many Protestants.
Yes sir!
> How you know when you are interpreting the Bible by the Spirit, who has divine authority, and not just according to your own or some other people’s understanding, which has no authority?
> …How do you distinguish between “the Spirit’s witness” and those of people who just happen to agree with you about how to interpret the Bible for doctrinal purposes?
> To whom or what do you look for the Spirit’s authoritative witness?
Again, the Rom. 8 & 1 Cor. 1-2 refs. give us proof that we can know certain terribly important spiritual things.
I only have the clear passages to help me with the less clear ones. As one Prot. Confession (from Jason’s ex-denom) put it in chapter 1:
Hey, Mike,
How you know when you are interpreting the Bible by the Spirit, who has divine authority, and not just according to your own or some other people’s understanding, which has no authority?
…How do you distinguish between “the Spirit’s witness” and those of people who just happen to agree with you about how to interpret the Bible for doctrinal purposes?
…To whom or what do you look for the Spirit’s authoritative witness?
I cannot believe there is a higher or holier authority than sacred Writ itself and its Author.
Darryl (#44):
I occasionally permit myself that kind of wit, but I don’t take it as seriously as you do. Here’s why.
Anybody who cares to can learn what the definitive teachings of the Church are. What the Church has taught definitively is thus “settled.” The technical term for that is ‘irreformable’, which does not mean ‘cannot be improved’, but rather ‘may never be contradicted’. By the same token, anybody who cares to can tell that Garry Wills rejects many irreformable teachings of the Church. Materially, he is a heretic. The only reason he isn’t formally branded a heretic by the Church is that the canonically required trial and conviction is ordinarily reserved for clerics and theologians, and even then only rarely, for what I consider sound pastoral reasons.
Accordingly, from the fact that many “Catholics” are allowed to get away with material heresy, it hardly follows that nothing is settled. Sin and error have plagued the Church since her first generation, and will not be “settled” in the sense you mean until the Eschaton.
Best,
Mike
Hugh (#50
Isn’t there a problem here? Can we be sure that the things that we think less clear are not themselves necessary for salvation? Evidently the Trinity itself is not that clear; at least millions of JWs, Muslims, and, in the past, Arians, think it clear that the Bible is not Trinitarian. Would you say the doctrine of the Trinity is not necessary for salvation, since it is not clear to many?
jj
Mike, so you mean the Roman Catholic Church is not disciplined? Sounds like Protestantism.
‘morning, JJ @ 54 *
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture. …those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.
The doctrines necessary for salvation are not clear to those to whom these things are not given. As I referenced in 1 Corinthians (1:18-2:16); 1:18 ~ the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
And 2:14ff ~ the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Your examples are of those who not only deny the Trinity, but also the person and work of Christ. Many other doctrines they misunderstand as well. The Confession is not speaking of things in Scripture being understood by all men, but by those whom God enlightens. Or, as I said above, those to whom he first gives eyes to see and ears to hear. Your examples are of apostate (blind) groups.
Thank you,
Hugh
* How’d you do that with the #50?
I tried copying and pasting the date & time,
but couldn’t get it to work as a number.
Darryl,
# 54.
Human beings are often not disciplined. Paul didn’t get out of Corinth without learning that. But what is your point? You sound like an atheist giving the classic atheist apologetic of, ‘Look at those hypocritical and sinful Christians!’
Sean @56,
We Prots never claim a boffo Magisterium or infallible Petrine chair, as y’all do.
I expect that Herr Hart is merely just sayin’ that like Protestantism (regularly slammed by some for its splintered schizophrenia) and the vaunted papacy are more alike in their brokenness than is sometimes allowed by those who contend for protecting beastly priests b/c their office is so holy and their transubstantival ministrations so indispensable.
Just sayin’…
Thank you,
Hugh
Hugh (#55)
OK, but it seems to me this means that it is not true that, regarding the “whole counsel of God,” “…those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” “Ordinary means” are insufficient. You have to be one of those whom God enlightens. That appears to me considerably more than “ordinary means.”
jj
JJ @ 58 – Good points to clarify!
Again from the Westminster Confession:
Thanks!
Hugh
Thanks again for sharing your testimony Jason, and thank Scott Hahn for encouraging you to do so.
Regarding your wife and family, I just want to tell a quick story. My wife wanted to convert/revert to the Catholic faith and I just about flipped out! I told her that Christ would never be the “head of a church of pedophiles.” It was 2002 and the sex scandals from Boston were making front page news just about every week! To say I was anti-Catholic is an understatement.( I had left the Catholic faith as a young teen reading lots of Chick tracts and became a devout evangelical. ) I asked my wife to throw out all the Catholic books and tapes she had amassed in her pursuit of Truth in the Catholic Church. She never once attempted to cajole, convince or coerce me to join the Catholic faith. She said she only prayed God would allow her to become Catholic, never believing I would ever come home to the Catholic faith. Long story short, 5 years later I was on my knees in confession and then in Mass after having our marriage convalidated and receiving Christ in the Eucharist. It has been 9 years now that I have been blogging about the faith, sharing with family (to some degree) and friends, and writing and performing music about this treasure we have discovered in the Catholic Church. I would encourage you and Wayne to hang in there and pray, and I will join my prayers with others for spiritual harmony to come to your home. I offered my Communion for you and your intentions this AM at the shrine of Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal in Harrisburg. God bless
Hugh:
As I understand your last several comments, your position is that of the Westminster Confession. Very well. My problem with the WC is the same problem I have with confessional Protestantism quite generally: its interpretive paradigm is neither rationally compelling nor otherwise authoritative. Hence the foundational documents of confessional Protestantism–be it the Westminster Confession, the Augsburg Confession, or any similar confession–can only be presented as theological opinion, not as authentic expressions of divine revelation. As such, they cannot command the assent of faith at all.
They are not rationally compelling because they fail to achieve the main purpose of any theological IP, which is to enable us to distinguish between authentic expressions of divine revelation and mere theological opinions. They fail to achieve that purpose because those who composed and profess them do not claim to be divinely protected from error in producing them and professing their contents; hence, the documents themselves cannot plausibly claim divine authority, even for their premise that the Protestant canon is divinely inspired and thus inerrant. Given that they cannot plausibly claim divine authority, such documents supply no principled criterion for distinguishing between the authoritative witness of the Spirit to what they say and the merely human belief that the Spirit witnesses to what they say. By the same token, Protestant confessions are not otherwise authoritative. They can claim no more authority than the churches that produced them and believe them, and those churches cannot plausibly claim divine authority, because they do not claim to be divinely preserved from error under any conditions.
Best,
Mike
Darryl (#54):
Following up on Sean’s #56, you seem to be suggesting that nothing is doctrinally settled unless the Church’s discipline ensures that there’s little or no dissensus within the Church. Sts. Peter and Paul didn’t seem to think that. Indeed, whether from a Protestant or a Catholic standpoint, accepting such a suggestion would render any criterion of orthodoxy epistemically useless. And that’s because you fail to distinguish between empirically and deontically normative conceptions of orthodoxy.
From a Protestant standpoint, one can define “the Church” as the people who, across space and time, concur about the “correct” interpretation of Scripture on matters they deem “essential” and who aim to live accordingly. In fact, that’s what conservative Protestants typically do. And prima facie, it all sounds pretty normative. On such a picture, when people within “the Church” obstinately dissent from the “correct” interpretation of Scripture on matters deemed essential by “the Church,” they are sometimes excommunicated, thus maintaining the doctrinal purity of “the Church.” But whether they are excommunicated or not, the dissenters typically hive off to join or start another church. Having done so, they proceed to define their new church as at least part of “the Church” in the way I described above, often to the detriment of the church they left, which of course continues to claim that it, not the church joined or started by the dissenters, is orthodox. Does such a process “settle” anything, even by the criterion you suggest? Of course not. Accordingly, what counts as “orthodox” doctrine, and with it as “the Church,” becomes purely a matter of opinion, which cannot claim divine authority and thus cannot command the assent of faith. For few Protestant churches claim, and none can plausibly claim, to be divinely protected from error under certain specifiable and concrete conditions. So, what’s considered “orthodox” from a purely empirical standpoint can, does, and must vary considerably among churches, given their objective lack of divine teaching authority.
Now if the Catholic Church conceived of her own identity and authority as conservative-Protestant churches typically conceive of their own, then she would indeed be just one more denomination, with no more divine authority to define and impose orthodoxy in a deontically normative way than any other denomination. But in point of fact, she does claim to be divinely protected from error under certain specifiable and concrete conditions, so that whatever she teaches with her full authority is inerrant and irreformable. If such a claim is correct, then no matter how many nominal Catholics dissent from such teaching or hive off to join or start another church, the divine authority, and thus the deontic normativity, of Catholic teaching remains intact, and thus with it, the epistemic utility of Catholic teaching for distinguishing between orthodoxy and heresy. Thus Catholic orthodoxy would be normative in a sense in which no Protestant “orthodoxy” can ever be.
Of course, the above is in no sense a proof that Catholicism is true or even orthodox. Like liberal Protestants, you could always just say that religion is a matter of opinion, full stop. But what I have shown is that the Catholic Church at least has a criterion of orthodoxy that could qualify as something more than a merely empirical norm, thus constituting a truly deontic norm. And that’s what’s necessary for distinguishing between authentic expressions of divine revelation, and mere theological opinions that could turn out be wrong, pending further evidence and historical developments.
Best,
Mike
Mike @ 61 –
As I understand your last several comments, your position is that of the Westminster Confession.
> Sometimes, yes. I am not wedded 100% to any of ours, but the WCF is generally very much a goody.
Very well. My problem with the WC is the same problem I have with confessional Protestantism quite generally: its interpretive paradigm is neither rationally compelling nor otherwise authoritative.
> Right! Only Writ.
Hence the foundational documents of confessional Protestantism–be it the Westminster Confession, the Augsburg Confession, or any similar confession–can only be presented as theological opinion, not as authentic expressions of divine revelation. As such, they cannot command the assent of faith at all.
> Absolutely, amen, & smiley icon here!
They are not rationally compelling because they fail to achieve the main purpose of any theological IP, which is to enable us to distinguish between authentic expressions of divine revelation and mere theological opinions. They fail to achieve that purpose because those who composed and profess them do not claim to be divinely protected from error in producing them and professing their contents; hence, the documents themselves cannot plausibly claim divine authority, even for their premise that the Protestant canon is divinely inspired and thus inerrant.
> Amen! I love this! Right on!
Given that they cannot plausibly claim divine authority, such documents supply no principled criterion for distinguishing between the authoritative witness of the Spirit to what they say and the merely human belief that the Spirit witnesses to what they say. By the same token, Protestant confessions are not otherwise authoritative. They can claim no more authority than the churches that produced them and believe them, and those churches cannot plausibly claim divine authority, because they do not claim to be divinely preserved from error under any conditions.
> Wow! This is awesome! Totally in agreement with you, man. (Darryl might take umbrage, but then he’s an Orthodox Presbyterian. To such, I am neither…)
> We repuditate the implicit faith explicitly enjoined upon the Romish faithful in their magisterium. I agree with your Pontiff Emeritus that, “The Holy Spirit, who gives life to the Church, enables us to interpret the Scriptures authoritatively. The Bible is the Church’s book, and its essential place in the Church’s life gives rise to its genuine interpretation.” But all who are born from above have the same Holy Spirit. John Chrysostom no more than I; Luther no more than Calvin. I would reverse Augustine here: I would not believe the authority of the Church had not the Spirit’s tranformational power through the gospel led me to do so.
> So, we are opposed to the following by our biblical hermenuetic:
But it got better:
Found @ http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini_en.html#_ftn86
> We’re agreed that Scripture is not be read apart from wise men who’ve gone before, but none of these are absolutely authoritative when they veer from the Text. Needless to say, we Prots find much such ‘veerage’ in Rome.
> We Prots cannot receive that there is another source of divine truth on a par with [& able to validate or confirm our understanding of] the Bible. It alone is God’s word to us.
> Thank you,
> Hugh
* Jerry’s here taken from Paul to Titus, 1:9!
Hey Darryl and Hugh.
Your bible must not really be authoritative because so many Christians fall short of the bible’s precepts.
Signed – Atheists
S/b: Scripture is not to be read apart from wise men who’ve gone before…
Sean’s atheists –
Aha!
You’ve found us out!
Drat!
;)
Sean @ 64,
The syllogisms DO differ, you realize.
The atheist claims that our Bible is bogus because some of its admirers are such dogs.
It only proves that some of its admirers are not living up to what’s written therein.
It does not prove that the Bible (the very standard of morality the atheist is using against us!) is unauthoritative.
The Protestant claims that Rome’s claims to an infallible chair and Spirit-sanctioned conciliar dogmas (on a par with the inspired Book) are bogus because
(1) the Bible doesn’t speak of such post-canonical authorities on a par with Itself, and,
(2) the popes and councils have erred. Scripture never does.
Hence, our sins do not vitiate the Bible – they would merely vitiate our claims to occasional infallibilty, if we made such. But your establishment’s claims to occasional infallibilty are seriously threatened by her many scandals.
Thank you,
Hugh
Hugh McCann,
I am happy you are interacting. I would like to hear you respond to my comment #11. The protestant gospel claims to be the gospel of grace which Paul preached, and yet I argued that it actually creates a certain bondage at times. For you are told on the one hand, that you cannot work or earn salvation and that it is faith alone which brings salvation, but then on the other hand, you are told that good works prove your faith and so unless good works are there you cannot know if you are saved or not. Therefore, there is practically the same, in theory, view of assurance between Catholicism and Protestatism. I lean more toward Catholicism providing a deeper assurance of salvation, for in Protestantism, when you are so focused on your works, you then hear a sermon which says that the proud focus on their works and the real elect rest on the works of Christ…..and then you think your faith is not real saving faith because you are so convicted over sin and trying to obey the Lord, when the real faith is recognizing that one cannot be good in themselves….etc,etc,etc. .
Secondly, the “faith alone” conception of Protestantism makes the “faith” of the human being something which Satan and His demons can exercise. Since protestants see Romans 4:1-4 to prove that faith is has no worth or value in itself, else otherwise it would have a value to barter with God, and that faith is simply resting and trusting in the alien righteousness of Christ…..well then Satan can do this if salvation was opened to him. I understand that salvation has not been offered to fallen angels, but if we were to just compare justifying faith, which is widdled down to have absolutely no merit or worth in itself, then what makes this kind of faith different than what the demons have?
As soon as you begin to qualify faith as an “obedient faith”, then you insert the requirement of internal righteousness as a necessary co-op to faith, which then moves you into the historic understanding.
I know, I know, Erick Y!
Yours takes more thought, prayer, & savoir faire, ya know!
I did #11 in #23. I owe you for #25, correct?
Erick – Short answer tonight for #s 25 & 68:
The Puritans are not the zenith of Protestant thought. Sure, they got some things right, but they navel-gazed too much and failed (unlike earlier Reformers, Luther, Tyndale, Calvin) to point us to solus Christus!
At least, the English. I am not conversant at all with the Lutherans.
Prolly agood thing, too! ;)
Also, the problem is not the biblical (Protestant) gospel, but in how it’s @ times misunderstood, misrepresented, and misapplied!
I want to address your questions about assurance, too, but am very busy tonight.
Also, please email me if you wish: HUGHMC5 [at] HOTMAIL [dot] COM
Blessings galore,
Hugh
Sean Patrick, I am not pointing out hypocrisy. I am simply noting that converting to Roman Catholicism does not remove the problems that converts think they are leaving in Protestantism. If Protestantism is so bad, and if Rome has the same problems, then Rome is not superior. In fact, with all that authority, history, and apostolicity, you’d think Rome would be way better than it is.
Look, people have been looking for Rome to reform itself for 500 years. How long, O Lord, how long?
Mike, you wrote: “Of course, the above is in no sense a proof that Catholicism is true or even orthodox. Like liberal Protestants, you could always just say that religion is a matter of opinion, full stop. But what I have shown is that the Catholic Church at least has a criterion of orthodoxy that could qualify as something more than a merely empirical norm, thus constituting a truly deontic norm.”
But that is just your opinion. The Eastern Church doesn’t believe this and it is as old (if not older) than Rome and has as much apostolicity. Plus, you never cited an iota of Scripture. Don’t you think it odd that when the apostles write about the assurance that believers can have (Heb. 6), they never mention the church or the apostles but actually rest their claims on the promises of God? And is it not strange that when Christ promises that his people will be preserved from error, he promises the Spirit (John 16).
So while you keep trusting in the papacy, I’ll keep trusting in God.
Sean Patrick, so you do acknowledge that Rome has a problem with error and hypocrisy. Then exactly how is it superior to Protestantism or to Eastern Orthodoxy (aside from the circular claims it makes for itself)? Communists also claimed to be superior to the liberal West and they had the philosophy and history to prove it.
Erick, Per #25
> Is it justification?
Yes sir!
>
> Well, even as a Protestant, you cannot subjectively “know” you are justified (depending on which reformed church you are in) until you have reached a certain confirmation that your “fruit-bearing” or “repentance” is of a God-accepting level.
Some may teach & believe that, but not all of us. Some merely say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”
>
> If you come from a protestant camp which is more reformed baptist or independent baptist (Richard Owen Roberts, etc,etc), you are constantly warned of “false-conversion” or “counterfeit repentance”, to the extant that one is always doubting and questioning one’s own conversion and repentance. If you are hyped up in this kind of “holiness” environment, then your assurance of your acquisition of Christ’s righteousness is not stable, but always dependent upon you passing the bare minimum level of which you think is “true” repentance. At times, the level of your standard can go down or up, depending on what you’ve been learning or who you’ve been influenced by.
Amen! Sadly…
>
> For instance, those who love RC Sproul and Burk Parsons have a bit of a more easy way of balancing the Christian life so that the person has assurance and yet is still under the fear of God and obligation to live in holiness.
J’appreciate Dr Sproul!
>
> But others, who dive into Matthew Meade’s Almost Christian, may find themselves going through a doubting depression for years. You yourself may be in the camp which says, “Amen! The Christian life is Hard! And one must really sacrifice all the desires of the flesh for the glory of God!”…..but you see……one wonders what effectiveness this more “grace-filled” gospel has in the life of the human being. You are consistently taught that human works have no cause in the salvation of the human being, and yet you are constantly being told that only works evidence the prior work of God, and then even more constantly reminded that there are so many counterfeit versions of the evidence, and that there is a very difficult, even impossible, single and genuine evidence which can grant one assurance of salvation.
Bad news, this. It ain’t the gospel!
>
> And it becomes an even more difficult rubix cube when a Person who has been serving Christ in this way for years, and then dives into a couple of years of fornication. And the worst part about it is this, God is controlling everything. God is ordaining the doubt in salvation. If you are truly lost, despite all the energy and effort to be saved, this is also an immutable energy of God working in the life of the person.
Truly God is sovereign. Absolutely.
>
> At this point, one wonders how Protestants consider themselves to have more “grace” in their gospel. Catholics believe that Jesus loves all people and wishes all to be saved.
Erick – reread that sentence of yours: Think about it. How is loving for a god to love ‘em all, wish (sort of) for all to make it, sends his son to die for all mankind, and then, leaves it up to them to find the Catholic Church, receive sacaramental grace, and persevere therein by their synergistic [cooperative] efforts!
>
> He doesn’t think that his cross loses glory because some of those for whom He died reject him ultimately and go to hell, because it remains a loving act towards the world, something that is in the heart of God (John 3:16).
But you have a god wanting to save them, but not to the point of violating their ‘free will,’ thus it’s sadly a religion of works, with nothing but possiblities (no assurances) @ the end of the day.
>
> Calvinists are so proud of protecting God in His glory in the unmitigated and undiluted sovereignty and predestination of God, that sometimes you really do not know if God loves you or if you are one of those Christians who are self-deceived (in the truest sense) for 50 years and then by 51 years of age you become a reprobate, and all along God has hated you and purposed you for wrath and destruction.
Ungospel!
>
> You take away the very thing which human beings are to know about God, that He loves them and cares for them and wishes them to be saved, by this sovereign salvation and damnation apart from human works.
Your religion and the Bible paint different portraits of God. We maintain that he only loves and effectually saves only his elect.
>
>It is almost as if since works play no part in the predestination of the elect, works also play no part in the predestination of the wicked.
By George, I think he’s GOT it! Per Romans 9:11 – “before they had done anything good or bad… that the purpose of God according to election might stand…”
>
> There is a settled determination before all creation, and everything in our time is simply an outplay of this pre-determined plan. This creates much confusion with the theology of the Old Testament, Jesus, and the apostles.
Not really, but it’s a different paradigm, for sure!
>
> What else is it? The Papacy? The wickedness? The lukewarmness? The false holiness? The praying to the dead?
All of the above are problems for us, as you know. But the core issue is what did Jesus accomplish – redemption for some or potential redemption for those who rightly exercise their ‘free will’?
Thanks,
Hugh
Hugh,
It is not a misunderstanding of the protestant gospel. Faith alone, understood as simply receiving benefits from an outside source all the while remaining inwardly dead and enslaved to sin is a false concept of faith. Abraham’s believing in God is his giving of Himself to the will of God and not to whatever his own mind told him. It was a virtue that God was pleased to see, just as any Father is pleased to see a son trust in Him all the way to protect him. Abraham was being tested with all the delays…and yet Abraham did not lack in faith but gave glory to God, and this is why faith was reckoned for righteousness, because He gave God his whole person, mind – body – and will. Abraham could have simply not wanted to hope for a child anymore, could have ceased any relations with Sarah, could have left Canaan for Ur, etc,etc,etc…..and yet his faith caused him to remain in God’s will…and this is why it is righteousness. God gave Abraham this faith, and he no reason to boast, for God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to perform for Abraham what only God could do.
To think that faith is this completely un-virtuous and of no value with God is to say that God reckoned Abraham’s assent to the facts or even his trusting in the facts (aside from obedience) as righteousness itself. Protestants want to maintain the “gift” status of justification by excluding almost any human co-operation, but it is precisely God who calls men to repent in order to be justified. Do you not believe that repentance is a condition for salvation? That right there is giving up the immoral life of sin to live in righteousness and holiness, and such a thing is a condition for the remission of sin and a right relationship with God. Was it a work? Not an outward work, but it is an inward change of the heart whereby man detests sin and moves into the holy life of God…and this is before any works are done. God considers this act of repentance and faith as righteousness, and this puts you into the right relationship with God, and of course this relationship is not one where God controls the will. Protestants like to say that the “elect” cannot die in their sin. What keeps them from dying in their sin? The protestant says God. The Catholics asks: Well then his will is under control? The protestant says no, God is sovereign and there is a mystery to His works….He wills to never allow the elect to choose mortal sin. The Catholic confirms that this is simply a way to avoid the necessary and logical conclusion, that if the justified person cannot enter back into the slave life to sin, then his/her will is under the control of God.
If however, our wills can re-enter the life of sin, which many protestants have done, he is cut of from Christ Jesus and is no longer a participant in the glory to come. He can regain that status through conversion to Christ, and true genuine repentance. This is the belief of the historic church.
Protestants also wish not just to procure the responsibility to God in the salvation of sinners, but also in the damnation of the non-elect. Just as God made the decision (positively) that certain men, without considering their own life or faith or holiness or sinfulness, should be destined for salvation, so also he has pre-destined certain men, apart from their own sin, that they should enter into eternal hell. This is the salvation apart from works and the damnation apart from works which is marvelously accepted in protestant circles. In the attempt to rescue God’s glory from human works mixed in the salvation of souls, they also want to rescue God’s glory from human sin in the damnation of souls, otherwise he is not sovereign, in their minds.
Erick, Per #25,
~ Cleaning up the italics (I hope…) ~
> If you come from a protestant camp…the level of your standard can go down or up, depending on what you’ve been learning or who you’ve been influenced by.
Amen! Sadly…
>
> There is a settled determination before all creation, and everything in our time is simply an outplay of this pre-determined plan. This creates much confusion with the theology of the Old Testament, Jesus, and the apostles.
Not really, but it’s a different paradigm, for sure!
>
> What else is it? The Papacy? The wickedness? The lukewarmness? The false holiness? The praying to the dead?
All of the above are problems for us, as you know. But the core issue is what did Jesus accomplish – redemption for some or potential redemption for those who rightly exercise their ‘free will’?
Erick @ 75 ~
> It is not a misunderstanding of the protestant gospel. Faith alone, understood as simply receiving benefits from an outside source all the while remaining inwardly dead and enslaved to sin is a false concept of faith.
Agreed!
Abraham’s believing in God is his giving of Himself to the will of God and not to whatever his own mind told him. It was a virtue that God was pleased to see, just as any Father is pleased to see a son trust in Him all the way to protect him. Abraham was being tested with all the delays…and yet Abraham did not lack in faith but gave glory to God, and this is why faith was reckoned for righteousness, because He gave God his whole person, mind – body – and will.
That’s the RCC definition of faith? OK – but it ain’t ours…
> To think that faith is this completely un-virtuous and of no value with God is to say that God reckoned Abraham’s assent to the facts or even his trusting in the facts (aside from obedience) as righteousness itself.
The value was not in the believing or in the regeneration of Abe’s spirit, but in Christ alone, the grand object of Abe’s faith!
Protestants want to maintain the “gift” status of justification by excluding almost any human co-operation, but it is precisely God who calls men to repent in order to be justified. Do you not believe that repentance is a condition for salvation?
Yes, Mark 1:15. It is given us, as is faith. Regeneration precedes repentance & faith, and necessarily gives both to God’s elect.
That right there is giving up the immoral life of sin to live in righteousness and holiness, and such a thing is a condition for the remission of sin and a right relationship with God. Was it a work? Not an outward work, but it is an inward change of the heart whereby man detests sin and moves into the holy life of God…and this is before any works are done.
The change is God’s monergistic work, sans man’s cooperation of any kind.
God considers this act of repentance and faith as righteousness, and this puts you into the right relationship with God, and of course this relationship is not one where God controls the will. Protestants like to say that the “elect” cannot die in their sin. What keeps them from dying in their sin? The protestant says God.
Yes. The keeping power of Christ. AS you read John’s gospel in particular (esp. ch. 10), you’ll hear Christ promising his keeping his sheep for whom he died.
The Catholics asks: Well then his will is under control? The protestant says no, God is sovereign and there is a mystery to His works….He wills to never allow the elect to choose mortal sin.
We of course consider all sin to be of your ‘mortal’ variety.
The Catholic confirms that this is simply a way to avoid the necessary and logical conclusion, that if the justified person cannot enter back into the slave life to sin, then his/her will is under the control of God.
Right
> If however, our wills can re-enter the life of sin, which many protestants have done, he is cut of from Christ Jesus and is no longer a participant in the glory to come. He can regain that status through conversion to Christ, and true genuine repentance. This is the belief of the historic church.
I know; at least a big chunk of the visible, institutional part of it…
> Protestants also wish not just to procure the responsibility to God in the salvation of sinners, but also in the damnation of the non-elect. Just as God made the decision (positively) that certain men, without considering their own life or faith or holiness or sinfulness, should be destined for salvation, so also he has pre-destined certain men, apart from their own sin, that they should enter into eternal hell. This is the salvation apart from works and the damnation apart from works which is marvelously accepted in protestant circles. In the attempt to rescue God’s glory from human works mixed in the salvation of souls, they also want to rescue God’s glory from human sin in the damnation of souls, otherwise he is not sovereign, in their minds.
In SOME Prot circles (not enough! imho), yes. Well-stated. Cain, Esau, Pharaoh, OT Saul, Judas – all were vessels of God’s wrath made to be destroyed in the fires of hell (Rom. 9; 2 Peter 2:12).
Thank you,
Hugh
Erick @68
>…the “faith alone” conception of Protestantism makes the “faith” of the human being something which Satan and His demons can exercise. Since protestants see Romans 4:1-4 to prove that faith is has no worth or value in itself, else otherwise it would have a value to barter with God, and that faith is simply resting and trusting in the alien righteousness of Christ…..well then Satan can do this if salvation was opened to him. I understand that salvation has not been offered to fallen angels, but if we were to just compare justifying faith, which is widdled down to have absolutely no merit or worth in itself, then what makes this kind of faith different than what the demons have?
“Whittled,” perhaps?
Satan does not have salvation open to him as an option. Demonic faith is unsaving because it cannot trust Christ alone, and hence being a bogus ‘faith,’ it produces no abiding fruit. The notion that there is a God is little help, as James points out. 1 Cor. 15:3f is salvific. Much different content!
> As soon as you begin to qualify faith as an “obedient faith”, then you insert the requirement of internal righteousness as a necessary co-op to faith, which then moves you into the historic understanding.
Agreed. It is a faith that moves us to work, but not a faith that has works within it. Love is not a component of faith, for example, but a fruit thereof. Etc. Saving obedient faith is a redundancy. But faith that doesn’t produce works is dead, as St James saith.
Thanks,
Hugh
P.S. I will never out-type you, Ybarra!
Erick – let’s do this offsite, in emails.
Hugh
HUGHMC5atHOTMAILdotCOM
Darryl,
“Sean Patrick, so you do acknowledge that Rome has a problem with error and hypocrisy.”
No. I did not say that Rome has a problem with ‘error.’
As to the rest of what you’ve written, I might suggest that you actually take a moment to try to understand what the claims of the Catholic Church mean. Nobody has ever claimed that the Catholic Church is a magical place where sinners stop being sinners and all the billion Catholics in the world conform perfectly to the precepts of the Church. We did not leave Protestantism because we thought we’d escape sinful and hypocritical people.
So, your entire line of argumentation is attacking a straw man. If you want to know why we became Catholic, all you have to do is ask. Jason Stellman described some of his reasons in this interview. Note that he did not at any point say, “Well, all the Protestant churches are full of sinful people who adhere to the bible to varying degrees and some Protestants completely disregard biblical teaching and I heard that Catholics are all better at obeying so I became Catholic.”
If I do say so myself, you and Hugh are really quite late to the conversation here. You both are playing cards that have played by others on Called to Communion before.
Instead of playing the same old tired typical apologetics that don’t address the issue at hand and largely rely presuppositions that what we believe is not ‘in the bible’, why not actually engage with what Jason said in his talk?
# 67.
All of that begs the question.
Sean,
Better late than never, as I alawys say! :)
Et. al.,
Seriously, and I repeat myself, I know, but the severity of the charges of just the past decade, the payoffs and even confessions, weighed against very lofty claims unheard from any other Christian communion make one dubious about Rome’s unique self-description. Can you at least, please, admit that much wickedness has been carried out under Church leadership protection in the name of holiness and piety and the need to protect the institutional machinery?
And that this understandably doesn’t sit or play well with not just conservative Protestants, liberals, or atheists, but among the Catholic faithful as well?
The last time I tried bringing this up, I was castigated and discouraged from posting. I am am pleading with my Romanist friends @ CTC – please own up to Rome’s disgraceful sins, and acknowledge that not all who bring it up are demons.
The Church MUST reform itself, police itself, even the world sees it. Please.
Thank you,
Hugh
Which question is begged, Sean?
Question to all. If the Bible is the only real authority necessary for salvation, what did the earliest Christians do before there was a New Testament, fully defined and certified kosher? You tell me how many 1st and 2nd Century Christians ever saw a written scripture? Yet many were heroic martyrs, were they not saved? Even if they had pieces of the New Testament from say the letters of St. Paul in their community, they certainly never had a full Bible, Old or New Testament. Who could even afford to possess a fully written Bible or any book for that matter? They only had the verbal tradition, taught to them by their bishops and priests. Doesn’t this blow apart the whole Protestant position? Am I missing something?
So God makes men for the purpose of molding them into sinners so that He is the one responsible for their wickedness?
Sean, You’ve avoided my point.
Your witty atheist gag about Prots’ Bibles is one thing.
We claim a perfect Book, not perfect followers.
You claim a sometimes infallible pope and cardinals.
Yet these who call for implicit and unquestioning fealty
and who claim to the one true church established by Christ,
with all the deposit of the fulness of the Holy Spirit,
with a man [today, two*] claiming to be God’s vicar on earth,
also commit fairly heinous sins & cover-ups.
These are quite different things, my question-begging notwithstanding.
Thanks,
Hugh
* I am unclear – has Ben16 forfeited his vicarage?
Darryl, (re; #71)
You wrote:
It does if the fundamental problem one finds oneself in, as a Protestant, is being in schism from the Church Christ founded. It isn’t ultimately about whether the Catholic Church is “better;” it has ultimately to do with the Catholic Church being the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” Christ founded, and the failure within Protestantism to preserve conceptually the very possibility of schism from the Church, and thus distinguish non-arbitrarily between a schism from the Church and a branch within the Church.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hugh,
Question: how do you know you have a “perfect Book? Who told you that it is perfect? Prove it!
Michael J. @84 – They would have had to rely on oral tradition. That was enscripturated in the biblical canon. The church recognized it years later.
But when Paul speaks of traditions, how do you know that what’s been passed along to today are his (& the Spirit’s) direct commands?
Erick @85 ~ Some men, yes. St Paul calls them vessels of wrath made for destruction. Romans 9 & 2 Peter 2:12.
Thanks,
Hugh
Michael @88 – I cannot do this last request, “Prove it.”
I answered the first two questions above in #s 50, 55, 59, 63.
Thank you,
Hugh
Must be going.
Goodnight, all!
Hugh
I asked this very question of a leading Calvinist pastor in Geneva. I have yet to get an adequate response from him. I asked the same question of a Baptist minister, friend of mine from high school….no answer either. The reason is because they both have to admit that some early Catholic bishops in Africa said it like 1600 years ago. The New Testament is our family book, written by Catholics. A part of the truth, but not the complete truth. Yet the Protestants act as if it is the only game in town. I submit that is a form of idolatry…
# 89. So Hugh you’re telling me that the earliest Christians didn’t have the “perfect Book,” and that these earliest saints didn’t have the full truth as you Protestants assert is necessary for salvation? If they did have the “Truth,” it was from their Church, taught by their bishops and priests, who learned it from the Apostles? The very same truth passed down by the very same Church to this day?
#89. How can you ensure that oral tradition, which was later “enscripturated,” was at all accurate in the first place? Prove it to me….It’s the Church( with a capital C) that guarantees it. The same Church whose authority you deny! How do you know the written translations from that same dysfunctional Church weren’t corrupted at some point over the past thousands of years?
I think that if you were to transport Calvin, Luther, Wesley, any other 16th Century Protestant “scholar” back to the 1st Century and they espoused some of their “truths,” the early Christians would stare at them like they had come from an alien planet, had three heads, or laughed them out of the catacombs!
Michael,
Just checking in – yes, we believe in the Scriptures as being the written record of all the tradition God wanted the Church to have. Nothing extra-canonical is of the same weight, of divine authority.
We have implicit faith in the Book, while yours rests on the RCC’s recorded dogmas & rites. All taken by faith, eh?
We’re not charting new courses, here, but no one will. It’s the ages old argument of the Reformers and Rome.
@93 – the perfect Book was being assembled as the Apostles died off. It took the Church a few centuries to rightly acknowledge the canon.
Thanks,
Hugh
Hey Russ,
I really appreciate your comments and encouragement.
Not to change the subject, but is this the same “Hugh McCann” that taught my all-time favorite college course (Philosophy 361: Metaphysics) at Texas A&M University?
Sean, who said anything about “the Catholic Church is a magical place where sinners stop being sinners and all the billion Catholics in the world conform perfectly to the precepts of the Church”? I actually brought up the Syllabus of Errors and Unam Sanctum. All I’m asking is for a little coherence from your pontiffs. And the point is that Vatican II changed that but no one on your side seems to know what to do about that.
Bryan, but Jesus was never in Rome. How could Rome be the church that Christ founded? This is all based on what Roman prejudiced clerics say. You don’t find a whiff of it in Scripture. Remember John 16 — it’s about the Spirit, not about the pope.
Bryan, btw, but if you’re saying that Protestants are guilty of mortal sin and so are going to hell, that’s good to hear the straight dope rather than this “separated brethren” liberalism.
Hugh:
What this centuries-old dispute is really about is the nature of divine faith. As Catholics, we hold that one can only believe God as Revealer by trusting an ongoing human authority as an embodiment of divine authority. The Apostles directly and visibly experienced the primary Authority of that form: Jesus the Christ. We who “do not see, but believe” must rely in part on a secondary extension of that authority. On that point, we are all agreed. That disagreement is about the composition of that secondary authority.
Like all conservative Protestants, you hold that only a book constitutes that authority. I reply that the grounds for trusting that book as an extension of the Logos’ primary authority are only as strong as the grounds for trusting the human authorities who wrote, collected, and proclaimed the contents of that book as divinely inspired and thus inerrant. The belief that certain writers and not others were divinely inspired and thus inerrant would only be an opinion if the early, post-apostolic Church were not divinely protected from error in holding and teaching such a belief. If said Church could have been wrong on that matter, then said book can no more count as an object for the assent of divine faith, as distinct from that of human opinion, than the authority of the early Church herself. And the same goes for the ongoing interpretation of the Bible. Unless a particular, ongoing ecclesial authority since then is understood to be divinely protected from error when teaching under certain conditions, then neither its nor anybody else’s interpretation of the Bible for doctrinal purposes can amount to anything more than provisional human opinion. And such opinions neither command nor merit the assent of divine faith, “implicit” or otherwise. Therefore, to hold that the early Church was infallible when certifying the Bible as inerrant, but the Church thereafter is never infallible when interpreting the Bible for doctrinal purposes, is to render the Bible useless as a source of doctrine calling for the unconditional assent of faith, as distinct from that of provisional opinion.
This is why conservative Protestantism is just liberal Protestantism waiting to happen all over again.
Best,
Mike
Darryl (#72):
I had written:
To that, you first reply:
I’m afraid you’ve missed the point. I was not trying to establish that the Catholic Church actually does constitute the “deontic norm” of orthodoxy. I claimed only that the Catholic Church makes a key sort of claim that’s necessary for qualifying as such. I am well aware that the Eastern-Orthodox communion does the same for itself, in its own terms. And so I’m happy to acknowledge that it too makes the necessary sort of claim. But few Protestant churches do, and none can do so plausibly. So, although the argument of mine I quoted above does not suffice to validate the claim of the Roman over the EO communion to be “the” Church that teaches with Christ’s divine authority, it does suffice to rule out any Protestant church or communion.
Doubtless you’ll want to reply that that too is a matter of opinion. And as I had said, you can always hold, like liberal Protestants, that the Christian religion in general is a matter of opinion. But even aside from ruling out the assent of divine faith altogether, that stance would be too facile. If either the Roman or the EO communion is “the” Church that teaches with Christ’s divine authority, then the assent to what is taught by said authority is that of divine faith, not of that of opinion. Thus it would be self-inconsistent of me as a Catholic to treat my acceptance of the Church’s claims for herself as a matter of opinion. You cannot say the same about yourself in relation to your own church, whatever that may be.
You next write:
In the present context, there are two problems with that argument.
First, it’s a non-sequitur. From the fact that Hebrews 6 doesn’t talk about the Church, it doesn’t follow that the writer didn’t take believers’ reliance on the Church for granted. From the fact that Christ promises the Spirit to keep the Church indefectible, it doesn’t follow that an infallible teaching authority is not one of the means by which he chose to keep that promise. And your argument is that particular form of non-sequitur fallacy known as the “argument from silence.” It takes no account of other passages, such as “He who hears you, hears me” and the Church is “the pillar and bulwark of truth,” that should be understood as part of the exegetical context for the passages you quote. Of course you would want to say that the correct interpretation of the passages I’ve cited is not the Catholic. But that brings me to the second problem with your argument.
Citing Scripture in this context is merely question-begging for either of us unless and until two things are established: the grounds for holding that Scripture is a normative record of divine revelation, and the grounds for holding certain interpretations of it are authentic conveyances of that revelation, rather than merely human theological opinions. The Catholic interpretive paradigm supplies such grounds as themselves objects for the assent of faith. Your IP does not.
Finally, you write:
That begs the question in two ways: first, by assuming a dichotomy between the teaching authority of the papacy and that of God, which is exactly what Catholics would deny; second, by assuming that you know, without trusting the papacy’s teaching authority, that you’re trusting God’s authority, which Catholics would deny.
Best,
Mike
Bryan, but Jesus was never in Rome. How could Rome be the church that Christ founded?
Is this really what the argument has come to Darryl???
Jesus founded the Church on the apostles at Pentecost. This was not merely the ‘Roman’ church but it was the Catholic Church. One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The apostles went out from there and began to preach the gospel and baptize. Peter ended up in Rome and was the first bishop of that city. He died there and is still buried there.
Hey Mike @ 101 – good morning!
Amen and amen to your opening.
…the grounds for trusting that book as an extension of the Logos’ primary authority are only as strong as the grounds for trusting the human authorities who wrote, collected, and proclaimed the contents of that book as divinely inspired and thus inerrant.
> I’d say that the grounds are only as strong as the sovereign Lord who superintended the writing and collecting of his works. Again, you and I assert he’s revealed himself in different ways.
The belief that certain writers and not others were divinely inspired and thus inerrant would only be an opinion if the early, post-apostolic Church were not divinely protected from error in holding and teaching such a belief. If said Church could have been wrong on that matter, then said book can no more count as an object for the assent of divine faith, as distinct from that of human opinion, than the authority of the early Church herself. And the same goes for the ongoing interpretation of the Bible.
> So far, I’m with you…
Unless a particular, ongoing ecclesial authority since then is understood to be divinely protected from error when teaching under certain conditions, then neither its nor anybody else’s interpretation of the Bible for doctrinal purposes can amount to anything more than provisional human opinion. And such opinions neither command nor merit the assent of divine faith, “implicit” or otherwise. Therefore, to hold that the early Church was infallible when certifying the Bible as inerrant, but the Church thereafter is never infallible when interpreting the Bible for doctrinal purposes, is to render the Bible useless as a source of doctrine calling for the unconditional assent of faith, as distinct from that of provisional opinion.
> Agreed again! That’s why I haven’t said that the chruch never gets anything right, or “is never infallible when interpreting the Bible for doctrinal purposes,” but that your church has erred in many more ways than you guys allow. Most fundamentally, in the source of dogma and in the gospel of Christ.
This is why conservative Protestantism is just liberal Protestantism waiting to happen all over again.
:) !
> When I [briefly] taught N.T. at an Anglo-Catholic Anglican seminary, I recall the Archbishop remarking how Calvinists degenerated into Unitarianism. There are pitfalls all around – I pray I fall into none (tho’ you all would say I’m mired in one TODAY!).
Thank you,
Hugh
Feast of the Annunciation of Mary
Dear Joel, @ 97,
No, I am not Hugh J. McCann.* But I work with Robert Garcia’s mother-in-law. Does that count? :)
All Hugh McCanns & all philosophers should read Gordon H. Clark. For my pals @ CTC may I recommend his Lord God of Truth published with “Concerning the Teacher” [De Magistro] by Augustine?
Thank you,
Hugh T. McCann
(not nearly as smart as the TAMU philosopher!)
* http://philosophy.tamu.edu/People/Faculty/McCann/
Darryl (re: #99, #100)
We don’t have to choose between John 16 and Matthew 16, or between the Spirit and Christ, or between the Spirit and Christ’s Vicar, or between the Spirit and Christ’s Body (i.e. the Church). That sort of false dilemma was the notion of the second century Montanist heresy, and I’ve addressed it here. Yes, Jesus was never in Rome, but He did not need to go to Rome to found the universal Church and give the keys of His Kingdom to St. Peter. St. Peter did go to Rome sometime around AD 43, and was martyred there around AD 68, being crucified — though upside down, because he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as our Lord. The Church is the Kingdom prophesied in Daniel 2 and 7, as I pointed out in comment #428 of the “Christ Founded a Visible Church” thread, and thus receives the dominion of all the kingdoms, including the fourth kingdom of Daniel’s prophecies. It is not an accident that the one who had received the keys from Jesus went to Rome, to take the fourth kingdom not with the sword, but by testifying before Caesar, and not loving his life even unto death (Rev. 12:11). Christ’s Kingdom was to be *catholic,* not merely Hebrew, and so it was to be centered in Rome, built right over the heart of the fourth kingdom of men.
I have not said nor am I saying that Protestants are guilty of mortal sin or are going to hell. The One who sees the hearts of men will judge us all on that Day. The Catholic teaching that Protestants who have been validly baptized are attached to the Church by Baptism, but through no fault of their own remain separated from her both in doctrine and communion, are “separated brethren” is not “liberalism,” though if you have *argument* for that claim, you are welcome to lay it out.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hugh (#104):
You write:
I agree with your first sentence. But since it doesn’t address the issue I’ve posed, it’s irrelevant. As to your second sentence, I do not merely “assert” my position; I’ve argued for it. You don’t give an argument for your position in the above paragraph; instead, you adumbrate such an argument in your next. Thus:
But the first sentence in that paragraph is irrelevant, and the second simply begs the question.
The first is irrelevant for two reasons. For one thing, if you are indeed claiming that something called “the Church” is infallible under certain conditions, your claim is empty unless you say (a) which church is “the Church” Christ invested with his teaching authority, (b)under what conditions she exercises that authority infallibly, and (c) how you can present such infallibility as something other than the agreement of “the Church” with your interpretation of Scripture, which is itself fallible. As a Catholic, I can do (a)-(c) because the Church herself has already done so. But you have not. The other reason the above paragraph of yours is irrelevant is that no Catholic would deny that Church leaders have sometimes “erred” in the sense of “sinned,” but you haven’t shown that such moral deficiencies logically imply doctrinal deficiencies.
Your second sentence begs the question because it merely asserts your position without arguing for it.
Best,
Mike
Mike the Meticulous @ 107 ~
I agree with your first sentence. But since it doesn’t address the issue I’ve posed, it’s irrelevant. As to your second sentence, I do not merely “assert” my position; I’ve argued for it. You don’t give an argument for your position in the above paragraph; instead, you adumbrate such an argument in your next.
> Thank you for the correction. Agreed.
But the first sentence in that paragraph is irrelevant, and the second simply begs the question.
The first is irrelevant for two reasons. For one thing, if you are indeed claiming that something called “the Church” is infallible under certain conditions, your claim is empty unless you say (a) which church is “the Church” Christ invested with his teaching authority, (b) under what conditions she exercises that authority infallibly,
> You’re looking for a visible institution. I do not.
…and (c) how you can present such infallibility as something other than the agreement of “the Church” with your interpretation of Scripture, which is itself fallible. As a Catholic, I can do (a)-(c) because the Church herself has already done so.
> Right.
But you have not.
> I don’t see how I can. Or that I want to. Or need to; except that you folks claim to have it all dialed in, and therefore want us to answer you in kind. I don’t see that we can.
The other reason the above paragraph of yours is irrelevant is that no Catholic would deny that Church leaders have sometimes “erred” in the sense of “sinned,” but you haven’t shown that such moral deficiencies logically imply doctrinal deficiencies.
> That there are doctrinal errors in all our communions is not denied, is it? I am not arguing that “moral deficiencies logically imply doctrinal deficiencies,” but both happen in all our communions – we don’t disagree there, do we?
> Of course, our Prot list of Roman errors is much longer than yours.
> Hugh
Darryl (re: #98)
If you want to ask “for a little coherence,” from our pontiffs, first you’ll need to demonstrate or establish that there is some incoherence between pre-conciliar teaching and Vatican II. You have not yet done that, or even begun to do that. I already addressed (in comment #89 of the Habemus Papam thread) your claim (in comment #87 of that same thread) that pre-conciliar teaching pointed to eternal life as something we obtain in the life to come, while post-conciliar teaches that we receive eternal life in this present life.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hugh @ 105,
Thanks for confirming. Our textbook in that course would help Christians from all sides… like squat thrusts for the mind to prepare for theological discussions such as these… William Carter’s The Elements of Metaphysics weighs in at approximately 200 pages, is not a quick read, and will make you think about how you think… about God and how God thinks and whether or not you can even think about God on your own. Reminds me of what C.S. Lewis wrote, when recalling his debates with his logical monster of a schoolmaster, Kirk, “Some boys would not have liked it; to me it was red beef and strong beer.” (in Surprised by Joy, 1955)
Mike, I know, every time I say something it’s ad hominem, a straw man, or a begged question. At least I know a place where I can get the pre-Vatican II apologetic.
But from my paradigm, your philosophical claims are beside the point since they don’t actually address what God reveals. Sorry, but I still have great attachment for the Bible. But I know that book has not always been available to the RC laity.
Bryan and Sean, but wouldn’t it be nice if you had more than one verse on which to hang your claims or through which to read the rest of Scripture. I know, I have the wrong paradigm. The right one begins and ends with Matt. 16. But given the small role that Peter plays in the rest of the NT after Acts 15 (not to mention that Mary doesn’t even make a cameo appearance), you guys better run for cover to the early church fathers.
Bryan, do the current popes still affirm the Syllabus of Errors? Do they still ban books? Do they still follow Unigenitus?
One of the great things about being a Protestant is that we have a lot less to explain. You guys have a long history that gives you so many more problems than your average Wesleyan or your kooky Unitarian.
I recommend you take a look at pp. 281ff of Owen Chadwick’s book on the difficulties surrounding Unigenitus: http://books.google.com/books?id=fIo_5qn2o9kC&lpg=PP1&dq=popes%20and%20european%20revolution&pg=PA281#v=onepage&q=unigenitus&f=false
#112
Darryl,
You have been posting here for about a week but I have yet to see you make an argument or present something substantial. Its quick comments that ignore paradigms, as if paradigms are not important, or otherwise stock apologetic quips that do nothing to advance the conversation. “Jesus never went to Rome so He could not have founded the Roman Church.” Sorry Darryl, but that sort of comment isn’t going to get much traction.
Now you are moving onto stuff like, “You guys base everything on Matthew 16…!” Again, that won’t get you very far either. It begs the question and betrays the fact that the Catholic Church has never placed Her claims on one bible verse.
The funny thing is that you will show that you’ll post stuff here all day but you won’t engage in Jason’s talk. Why is that?
Joel @110,
Much smaller but no less profound (I’ll bet) and quite biblical are the works of the aforementioned Gordon Clark – the preeminent Protestant mind of the last century.
Please see his articles (and books) at http://www.trinityfoundation.org
Thanks,
This Hugh
Darryl (re: #112, #113)
You wrote:
The paradigm does not begin and and end with Mt 16, but it does include Tradition, and is not merely “solo scriptura.”
Again, see your “wrong paradigm” comment, regarding the question-begging character of trying to infer the relative importance or truth of a doctrine by the infrequency of its repetition in the New Testament or its non-explicit presence in the NT.
Books are no longer banned by the Index, but the pastoral principles regarding the right and duty of the bishops to ensure that no harm is done to the faith and morals of the Christian faithful through social communication remain part of canon law. (see canons 822-832) And the errors pointed out in the Syllabus are still errors, and remain condemned. And the errors condemned in Unigenitus are still errors and remain condemned.
Having no history is a “great” thing if the ultimate goal is to have “less to explain,” but not a “great” thing if the goal is to be in the Church Christ founded.
Thanks, done. Feel free to specify what you think is a “difficulty” regarding Unigenitus, and why it is a difficulty.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hear hear, Bryan.
Darryl – please specify what you think is a “difficulty” regarding Unigenitus, and why it is a difficulty. Amen & please explain.
Chadwick saith (p 282), “To a numerous body of men, especially in France, the bull was impossible, or only possible to to receive by a feat of intellectual gymnastics in the way of interpretation.” So, what else is new?
Hugh (#108):
I had asked you how
To that, you replied:
I know well that you can’t and don’t want to. But unless and until you do it all the same, you have no reply to my arguments. And if you’re going to show that your IP is at least rationally plausible, you “need” such a reply. Of course you might see no “need” to show that your IP is at least rationally plausible. In that case, you’d be stuck in fideism–a stance which supplies no reason for anybody to prefer your beliefs to theirs, or even to share your beliefs at all. That’s not a position I want or need to be in myself, and I don’t have to be.
Best,
Mike
Mike @ 118,
[1] What is “IP”?
[2] To clarify: You wrote:
[3] I get you – please hear me. I am saying that I don’t believe that I can prove our claims apart from sola scriptura. No other authority for us is equal to (much less, surpasses) it. You say that you “know well” that I cannot prove our position beyond what we’ve said for centuries. I agree. Call me “stuck in fideism” (or worse), but aren’t we in agreement here? If so, please stop demanding something that you and I agree I cannot produce!
Thank you,
Hugh
Darryl (#111),
You can add red herring to the list.
From Henry Graham’s book Where We Got the Bible, Ch.11:
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm#CHAPTER XI
The translators of the Authorised Version, in their ‘Preface’, referring to previous translations of the Scriptures into the language of the people, make the following important statements. After speaking of the Greek and Latin Versions, they proceed:
‘The godly-learned were not content to have the Scriptures in the language which themselves understood, Greek and Latin … but also for the behoof and edifying of the unlearned which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved as well as they, they provided translations into the Vulgar for their countrymen, insomuch that most nations under Heaven did shortly after their conversion hear Christ speaking unto them in their Mother tongue, not by the voice of their minister only but also by the written word translated.’
Now, as all these nations were certainly converted by the Roman Catholic Church, for there was then no other to send missionaries to convert anybody, this is really a valuable admission. The Translators of 1611, then, after enumerating many converted nations that had the Vernacular Scriptures, come to the case of England, and include it among the others.
…
Much about that time,’ they say (1360), even in our King Richard the Second’s days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age . … So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England [or others] … but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.’
…people who could read at all in the Middle Ages could read Latin: hence there was little need for the Church to issue the Scriptures in any other language. But as a matter of fact she did in many countries put the Scriptures in the hands of her children in their own tongue. (I) We know from history that there were popular translations of the Bible and Gospels in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian for the Catholics of those lands before the days of printing, but we shall confine ourselves to England, so as to refute once more the common fallacy that John Wycliff was the first to place an English translation of the Scriptures in the hands of the English people in 1382.
…
Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII who says: ‘The whole Bible long before Wycliff’s day was by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read’ (Dialogues III). Again, ‘The clergy keep no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be either not yet approved for good, or such as be already reproved for naught (i.e., bad, naughty) as Wycliff’s was. For, as for old ones that were before Wycliff’s days, they remain lawful and be in some folks’ hand. I myself have seen, and can show you, Bibles, fair and old which have been known and seen by the Bishop of the Diocese, and left in laymen’s hands and women’s too, such as he knew for good and Catholic folk, that used them with soberness and devotion.’
Combine the above facts with the facts that ANY book in the pre printing press era was worth months of wages, and that literacy was low, and the idea the Catholic Church kept the bible from the people is really strange. In fact, even when I was Reformed, I was defending Christendom on this point against KJV only fundamentalists.
[1] IP = “Interpretative paradigm” GOT IT!
You’ve got the CIP & I’ve got the PIP!
Darryl (#111):
You wrote:
There’s nothing particularly “pre-Vatican-II” about exposing fallacies as such. And even if there were, that would not be a defect if I’m correct. And you have said nothing to show I’m incorrect.
You wrote:
I hardly know where to begin with that. Let’s get the snark out of the way first.
As a Catholic, I too have “great attachment for the Bible.” Every day, I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, which contains psalms and Scripture readings. Every week, I conduct a Bible study incorporating various passages about timely and apposite themes of practical and spiritual interest to the participants. As an undergraduate, I studied Old Testament with Theodor Gaster, a Jewish rabbi and professor who, as much as anyone else in the world, was responsible for making the content and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to the general public. I studied New Testament with Elaine Pagels, a liberal Protestant who, more than any other academic writing in English, has been responsible for presenting the content and meaning of 2nd- and 3rd-century Gnostic writings accessible to the general public. I am by no means indifferent to the Bible either confessionally or academically, and I am as familiar with its larger context in the ancient world as with its content. What we disagree about is not the importance of the Bible or the study thereof, but about three other questions: (1) Why should the Bible be considered divinely inspired and thus inerrant, and (2) How should it be authoritatively interpreted? (3) Whatever the answer to (2), why should we accept it? As a Catholic, I can and do answer those questions. So far at least, you have not even attempted to do so.
Perhaps that’s because, as you further wrote:
That just adds another layer of question-begging, because we don’t agree on how to “address” what God reveals, nor do we even agree entirely on what God has actually revealed or on how we know it. To stop begging the question, you’d have to show why your paradigm’s not dealing with my philosophical arguments is rationally preferable to mine’s way of using them. That you have no so far done so, and show no inclination to do so, suggests that you aren’t interested in a rational comparison of paradigms. Which, of course, leaves you with nothing but question-begging.
Best,
Mike
Hugh:
Now that you understand that the question is which IP is the more reasonable one, you can appreciate an article I wrote a few years ago for CTC.
Happy reading!
Best,
Mike
David @120,
O.K…
“No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days, so that they may be burned…”- The Church Council of Tarragona 1234 AD; 2nd Canon – Source: D. Lortsch, Historie de la Bible en France, 1910, p.14.
Both quotes found @ http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=272675
Yours,
Hugh
Dear ‘Guest Author’ @ 123 –
Yippee!
Thanks,
Hugh
Hugh,
I’ll let other do the heavy lifting, but out of curiosity I’ve been doing some research on your #124 regarding “The Council of Tarragona, 1234 AD” and D. Lortsch Historie de la Bible en France 1910. This is a new one to me so I’ve been investigating. I haven’t found much so far, but from what I’ve seen I think this instances illustrates quite well how we get so much confusion in our discussion with well intended Protestants like yourself.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I’m guessing you have never read D. Lortsch Historie de la Bible en France 1910? Also, I’m guessing you have little personal familiarity with anything to do with any council of Tarragona or events in that region c.1330 (which is no defect on your part since neither and probably only maybe 20 or 30 people in the world do).
If my assumptions are true, then you are willing to quote a book making a claim concerning events and documents from a place and time in history that you have no real familiarity with. If I am wrong please feel free to correct me. I am not trying to offend you, or create acrimony. Rather, I want to help improve the dialogue between us all on CtC. I made the point in another thread to DGHart that we really need to go to source documents. I believe this is a particularly vivid example of why that is so.
Now, I obviously have not read the book either, but from the beginning my “smelltest-O-meter” was in the yellow zone. A book and author I have never heard of, quoting Canons from a “Council” I have never heard of … Regardless of what the actual quotation says, and even if it supports my own case, I want to find and read this in context of what is going on in Tarragona in 1334.
In my investigation, my first discovery is that there is no Council of Tarragona in 1334. There is a council or synod of Tarragona in 1329 and one in 1242 another in 1292. There is also a slightly more notable “Council of Tarragona in 516. The synod in 1329 was attended by at least 6 members of whom 2 are noted as Bishops. Clearly all of these are local synods (councils). My source is Landon, E. H. (1909). Vol. 2: A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church Edinburgh: John Grant.
At this point, if the quote is authentic I know it is addressing local concerns in the vicinity of Barcelona Spain. Also, the dates don’t quite match up. Lortsch could have erred or it could be a typo… The source above, MCHCC for short, mentions that in 1329 “Eighty-six canons were published, chiefly collected from those published in former councils.” MCHHC reproduces or summarizes about 20 of the canons, but does not mention Canon 2, or anything at all regarding banning the bible. That doesn’t prove that Canon 2 does not read as Lortsch quotes it, only that if it does, the editors didn’t think it was significant.
So with a little more poking I find I don’t have the resources to get much more on a Council of Tarragona in 1329 (or 1334, or 1292) I decided to see what I can find about Lortsch and Historie de la Bible en France. Again, not much, but…. Googling I find that the nearly every single internet references to Historie de la Bible en France are from Protestant websites attacking Catholicism the few exceptions are Catholics refuting Lorscht quotes. Googling and reading about Council and Tarragona I can piece together that the Cathars were active in that region of Spain earlier in the 13th century and that there were conflicts with the Templars in that area contemporaneously with 1329 to 1334. Also, a history of King Pedro of Aragon refers to a “council” at Tarragona in 1334 associated with an armed conflict with the Templars. All in all, I can’t find anything solid either way, but the indications support 1) that (if true) this was a local matter and a decision based (ill advisedly?) on heresy and local politics and strife, and 2) there is a lot of confusion.
What I find notable and I think you should find disconcerting Hugh, is the very large number of references to Lortsch and Historie de la Bible en France that come from Ellen G. White. It seems pretty apparent to me that this not a work that history scholars are referencing.
To sum up regarding Lorscht: I find that quote from Historie de la Bible en France to be Highly Dubius and simply without further corroboration from some respectable source, I refuse to acknowledge that a Canon 2 from any Council of Tarragona contains the text quoted by Lorscht.
Now, on to why I bring this up. It is clear that this text has been cited 100s of times on the internet and again, just guessing, that is where you found it. I assume that the majority of the writers also have not actually read or checked the source.
This is what Stephen Colbert calls “Truthiness.” A piece of seemingly factual information confirms what someone feels to be true and they accept it as Truth. Unfortunately this kind of practice (by either side) is extremely unhelpful for dialogue.
Hey G,
I am not an apologist for I merely found it at the Catholic Answers blog. I am not trying to prove anything by it. Sorry if it offends. I thought these were legitimate since they were posted on a Catholic chat blog.
As I said, Both quotes found @ http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=272675
No problem Hugh. Thanks for the response. I had skimmed through that thread myself. I find Catholic forums interesting. Always a lot going on. Misguided Catholics, and fledgling appologists and bomb throwing anarchists can all coexist. After 2 decades of the online dialogue I really appreciate CtC where Bryan et. al. really make the effort to move the dialogue forward.
Mike, you wrote: As a Catholic, “I too have “great attachment for the Bible.” Every day, I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, which contains psalms and Scripture readings. Every week, I conduct a Bible study incorporating various passages about timely and apposite themes of practical and spiritual interest to the participants. As an undergraduate, I studied Old Testament with Theodor Gaster, a Jewish rabbi and professor who, as much as anyone else in the world, was responsible for making the content and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to the general public. I studied New Testament with Elaine Pagels, a liberal Protestant who, more than any other academic writing in English, has been responsible for presenting the content and meaning of 2nd- and 3rd-century Gnostic writings accessible to the general public. I am by no means indifferent to the Bible either confessionally or academically, and I am as familiar with its larger context in the ancient world as with its content.”
Me: ad hominem.
Mike: “To stop begging the question, you’d have to show why your paradigm’s not dealing with my philosophical arguments is rationally preferable to mine’s way of using them.”
Me: I’m not begging. I’m not even asking that question. Paul talked about the Greeks who thought the gospel was foolish according to the wisdom of the world. The Pauline-Tertullian-Augustinian-Lutheran-Reformed strain of Christianity (minus the neo-Calvinists) believe that philosophy is overrated.
But if you want to parade your deontic claims before the working stiffs in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, have a nice day.
David Meyer: this is what is so annoying about you guys. You don’t tell the whole story:
“Question: You said that the Catholic Church forbade the common people from reading the Bible in their own language. Where’s the evidence for such a claim?
“Answer: There were times when the Catholic Church officially deprived the common people from reading or even possessing the Bible in their own language. The historical fact is admitted by Catholic writers:
“‘In early times, the Bible was read freely by the lay people, and the Fathers constantly encourage them to do so, although they also insist on the obscurity of the sacred text. No prohibitions were issued against the popular reading of the Bible. New dangers came during the Middle Ages. When the heresy of the Albigenses arose there was a danger from corrupt translations, and also from the fact that the heretics tried to make the faithful judge the Church by their own interpretation of the Bible. To meet these evils, the Council of Toulouse (1229) and Tarragona (1234) forbade the laity to read the vernacular translations of the Bible. Pius IV required the bishops to refuse lay persons leave to read even Catholic versions of the Scripture, unless their confessors or parish priests judged that such readings was likely to prove beneficial.’ (Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, The Catholic Publications Society Co., N.Y., 1887, p. 82).
“The following two quotations are taken from the Council of Toulouse and the Council of Trent in the thirteenth and sixteenth century respectively.
“‘We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old and the New Testament; unless anyone from the motives of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.’ (Edward Peters. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Council of Toulouse, 1229, Canon 14, p 195.)
“‘Since it is clear from experience that if the Sacred Books are permitted everywhere and without discrimination in the vernacular, there will by reason of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good, the matter is in this respect left to the judgment of the bishop or inquisitor, who may with the advice of the pastor or confessor permit the reading of the Sacred Books translated into the vernacular by Catholic authors to those who they know will derive from such reading no harm but rather an increase of faith and piety, which permission they must have in writing. Those, however, who presume to read or possess them without such permission may not receive absolution from their sins till they have handed them over to the ordinary. Bookdealers who sell or in any other way supply Bibles written in the vernacular to anyone who has not this permission, shall lose the price of the books, which is to be applied by the bishop to pious purposes, and in keeping with the nature of the crime they shall be subject to other penalties which are left to the judgment of the same bishop. Regulars who have not the permission of their superiors may not read or purchase them.’ (Council of Trent: Rules on Prohibited Books, approved by Pope Pius IV, 1564).
“This is in stark contrast to the Reformers like Wycliffe, Luther and Tyndale who laboured tirelessly to give the Word of God to the people in their own native tongue. In my country, Malta, which is intensely Roman Catholic, the first efforts to translate the Bible into the Maltese language were done by the handful of Protestants on the island. In fact the first complete Bible in Maltese was published by a Protestant society, despite all the opposition encountered from the Catholic establishment.
“Thank God the modern Catholic Church has changed its position. I rejoice that many Catholics are now reading God’s Word for themselves, and hopefully, through the message of the Bible, many will come to experience the grace of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
http://www.justforcatholics.org/a198.htm
Darryl (#129):
LOL! You’re not even using the phrase ad hominem correctly. I had described my interest in and qualifications for studying the Bible so as to show why your own ad hominem was baseless. That ad hominem is contained in the following, which you had written in #111:
The dig there was that your “attachment for the Bible” is greater than mine, and your not-so-subtle implication was that, since “that book has not always been available to the RC laity,” my supposed lack of due attachment to the Bible is understandable given the ignorance of it supposedly characteristic of my Catholic background. That’s an ad hominem fallacy, since it didn’t rebut my arguments, but only sought to explain why those arguments should be ignored, given my personal lack of attachment to and understanding of the Bible. In response, I supplied the evidence that I have quite a bit of attachment to and understanding of the Bible, thus exposing your ad hominem as baseless. Now you charge me with an ad hominem for doing that! But my response was not an ad hominem; for I did not meet your argument by criticizing your person or motives, but by addressing the substance of your (fallacious) argument. So anybody with basic critical-thinking skills can see that your new move is itself a tu quoque fallacy.
Addressing you, I had also written:
To that, you reply:
So you meet my criticism that you’re begging the question by rejecting the question. But the reasons you give for doing so are irrelevant. Your citation of Paul is irrelevant because, unlike the “Greeks” he cites, I do not regard the Gospel as “foolishness” at all, while you have said nothing about my arguments that would show otherwise. Your citation of a particular strain of theology is irrelevant because it does nothing to show what it is about my arguments that the strain of theology you cite would be justified in viewing as “overrated.”
I don’t know where you developed your critical-thinking skills, but wherever it was, you need to start from scratch.
Best,
Mike
Mike, so is this an ad hominem? “I don’t know where you developed your critical-thinking skills, but wherever it was, you need to start from scratch.”
BTW, I referred to your personal testimony about the Bible as an ad hominem simply to let you know how it feels. It worked.
Now for critical thinking skills, you haven’t proved why my rejection of your philosophical questions is irrelevant. As I indicated, I am not the first saint (yes, I am) to question the merits of philosophy over the wisdom of the cross.
Then again, it does seem that Roman Catholicism is appealing to those who like to think they are the smartest people in Christendom (which does not exist anymore). I see this impulse among the neo-Calvinists. I am sure any Van Tillian or Plantigaian could match philosophical wits with you. I am more interested in history and how Roman Catholic converts have to cover their eyes.
Of RCC Bible prohibition, this thread discusses it from the Catholic perspective and gives many references: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1604
Of Tarragona, I there found this: After the death of Innocent III, the Synod of Toulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred Scripture on the part of the Cathari: “prohibemus, ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laicis permittatur habere”* (Hefele, “Concilgesch”, Freiburg, 1863, V, 875). In 1233 the Synod of Tarragona issued a similar prohibition in its second canon, but both these laws are intended only for the countries subject to the jurisdiction of the respective synods (Hefele, ibid., 918).
* Online translators saith: “We forbid that they should not be permitted to have the books of the Old and New Testaments to the laity.”
Mike @ 131,
What is the proper definition of the gospel?
(I think we’ll probably differ, so I am curious.)
Thanks,
Hugh
All,
Daryl wrote:
I’ve been following the conversation as it has progressed and, while Daryl’s lack of philosophical argumentation (combined with your dubious historiography) is problematic, I do think he raises a good point here. I know there are many readers of this website who are currently in RCIA preparing to enter the Church this Easter – and since the “moment of truth” with respect to church membership is rapidly approaching, I hope what I write here is of some service to those persons.
As Chesterton noted at the beginning of Why I Am A Catholic, “The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true”. Ultimately, then, converts have to assent not to the fact that Protestantism is wrong (although if Catholicism is true it is), but to the fact that Catholicism is right. There might well be a billion and one reasons why Protestantism is wrong, or bad, or unlikable – but none of those reasons will be sufficient to join the Catholic church. That’s why, on Easter night, some of you readers will be asked to say the following:
Notice what is not being said here: You are not being asked to believe and profess that Protestants are confused and disorderly. You are not being asked to believe and profess that there are no problems in the Catholic Church, or to believe and profess that all one’s personal problems magically disappear once one becomes Catholic. In other words, don’t become Catholic because Protestantism is wrong! That’s not enough (and I think that’s what Jason was getting at in his talk when he mentioned that – even granting the problems in the Protestant position – it was still better to be a Protestant unauthoritatively right about justification than to be a Catholic whose position was authoritatively wrong).
Instead, one should become Catholic only if you believe that the Catholic church (and hence those bishops in full communion with the bishop of Rome), constitute the Church founded by Christ. It is in virtue of holding that that one can “believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God”. So in other words, don’t become Catholic because Protestants (or Protestantism) is wrong. Don’t become Catholic because we’ve got incense, or pretty windows, or you met a priest one time who was a real bang-up guy. Don’t become Catholic because you like our views on abortion, or the death penalty, or helping the poor, or whatever. Join if and only if you believe her to be the Church founded by Christ – the Church, in order words, to which you will submit even if she were to ever use her full doctrinal authority to teach something you think is wrong.
I’m not going to lie: being Catholic rocks. The Eucharist is amazing, our cathedrals are pretty, and (especially among the younger priests), there are a lot of good homilies (sermons) to be heard. It’s by no means the spiritual wasteland I’d heard about (especially if one’s parish is on the ball). But being Catholic for any of those reasons I just listed in this paragraph is intellectually unjustifiable – as is being Catholic because Protestants are confused and disorderly. But if you believe the Catholic Church is the one founded by Christ, join up. Lord knows there’s plenty of work to be done, and a few more hands to help us out would be great…
Yours Sincerely,
~Benjamin
PS: To anyone having an existential crisis shortly before entering the Church, I found Chesterton helpful (as I usually do) when I was in the same position last Easter. I’d recommend either Why I Am A Catholic (shorter read) or The Catholic Church And Conversion (longer read).
Hugh, re:#133
Thanks for following up. Since I responded yesterday and no one else has taken up the topic, I’ll keep with it. I have not studied a lot of this in detailed history, but over the years I’ve become roughly familiar with this topic. Personally I find it more disturbing than it seems some Catholic Apologists perceptions. I hope my comments yesterday reflected that I felt the quote regarding Tarragona was plausible even though I thought it might be fake. The reason it is plausible is that there are some actual cases where similar statements are authentic.
Apologetically the main point is these cases are LOCAL acts. The Church is UNIVERSAL. The Universal Church has never banned or discouraged bible reading. At some places and times local Churches in specific circumstances have banned private bible reading. This is an issue of a few Bishops in a certain geographic area (acting in concert with the local government) prohibiting private bible reading for the good of public order. Again, the main point apologetically is that this was a local, temporary order. Subsidiary to that main point are that the Bishops were confronting a heresy that was detrimental to the faith and the civil society. Also, subsidiary to the main point, the Bishops were also part of the local civil government. So this wasn’t solely a religious action but partly a civil action.
In the case of the Toulouse statement, that was issued during a time period near the end of the Cathar heresy and in the midst of the Albigensian heresy. The Cathars I know less about I have some interesting ideas and feel more sympathetic towards them mainly I think I read somewhere they were peaceful and their neighbors were sympathetic towards them over the government. Many Cathars were massacred by the authorities. The Albigensians I know a bit more about. They were dualistic manicheans. They were offended by procreation both human and animal. For that reason they preferred concubinage and temporary relationships. They avoided pregnancy. They thought suicide was a good idea. Generally, in society of the middle ages they were disruptive to the order. The Albigensians were particularly strong around Toulouse. Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Albigensianism for starters. The Albigensian’s ended up on the receiving end of the Albigensian Crusade – the only crusade launched on Europe itself.
I bring this up because the Canon banning the bible in Toulouse, although not doing nearly what anti-Catholic Protestant propaganda alleges, is actually the tip of an ice berg of ugly history.
Also, at this time the Bishops were officially part of the civil government. There was no separation of Church and state. Bishops were often appointed as favors to political families or might be younger sons of the nobility.
I find the whole thing shameful.
Going back to apologetics. The Catholic Church, being formally united, and having a long history, this ties directly to the “us” of Catholics today. Yes, Catholic Bishops made decisions that at least in our eyes today, look pretty bad.
Protestants have their own historical moments. No one really want to claim Calvin’s actions in Geneva. In the USA right up through c. 1950 protestant school boards wanted to indoctrinate Catholics and opposed Catholic Schools. Catholics had to go to the Supreme Court to be given the right not to be taught Protestantism.
The difference here is that the Catholic Church has a visible unity and continuous visible existence through history. We have a visible Hierarchy. It is possible to KNOW where (and who) the Catholic Church exists everywhere in history and today. Certainly there are episodes that seem like mistakes. But we can’t deny that they belong to us.
You may be happier being a Protestant who can join a denomination conceived last year, or join a fragment of a denomination that split from a split, then you don’t have to personally recognize that historically, yes that was my church.
Benjamin,
Those books by Chesterton are great. The latter was especially helpful to me in those last moments when I was already convinced, but still afraid.
Hugh (re #133),
That information comes from the old Catholic Encyclopedia article on Scripture, and can be found in the sub-section, “Attitude of the Church towards the reading of the Bible in the vernacular.” The article provides some of the context necessary for understanding the Church’s various directives concerning the use Sacred Scripture, which are prudential judgments relative to time and place. As you know, some things in the Bible, St. Paul’s writings in particular, are hard to understand, and ignorant, unstable persons twist these things to their own destruction. In some cases, apparently, the ecclesial authorities judged that there was imminent danger of this, should the Bible be made generally available for private reading. Maybe in each case it would have been better to risk it, maybe more good would have come by taking a more liberal stance, but I don’t know enough about the circumstances to make that judgment.
From a Protestant (and a modern) perspective, any restriction upon the reading of Sacred Scripture will seem tantamount to a restriction upon the Christian life itself. But from a Catholic point of view, those restrictions, even if they were unnecessary or counter-productive (again, I don’t know enough about the circumstances to make that judgment), do not necessarily amount to a restriction on the Christian life, since it is in the liturgy of the Eucharist that the Word of God comes to us in the fullest way (in this life), as spiritual food and drink. At Mass / Divine Liturgy, we step into the world of the Bible, we are (mystically) in the Garden of Eden, walking with God during the cool of the day, with Christ and the disciples in Bethlehem, Galilee, and Judea, at Calvary, and with the saints and angels before the heavenly Throne and the Lamb standing as though it had been slain.
Ultimately, the Word of God is not words on a page, but the Word made flesh, and he is our life. I like to read, and I love being able to read my Bible at home, whichever version I like best (provided it has 73 books; I don’t use the abridged versions). Still, I don’t want to end up like the theologian who, upon death, was offered the alternative of going to Heaven or going to hear a lecture on Heaven and chose the latter. Anyway, I’m glad to have access to the Word both in the Church’s liturgy and in the privacy of my own home, via the printed page. Bible study in my recliner with coffee and a good monograph on, say, the Abrahamic Covenant in the writings of St. Paul is great; but when its time to go to Liturgy, I don’t stay home for all that.
Darryl,
The reforms of Vatican II were certainly changes in the life of the Church, and of course the abuses that accompanied these reforms have not been helpful. I think that Bryan earlier alluded to the difference between a development and a corruption or abuse. In the Catholic Church, we’ve seen both running side by side for the past 50 years. Heck, we’ve seen both for the past 2,000 years. I wrote a little bit about the phenomenon of changes in the Church, in response to a couple of your former colleagues, in this post. Its a bit of a rambler, but at least I acknowledge the Church has changed a lot. Only, I argue that that’s because she is alive and well.
Oh, and yeah that last bit from Mike looked to me like an ad. hom. That type of thing is contrary to our comment policy. Of course it doesn’t matter where you learned your critical thinking skills. It only matters that we all think critically, in the sense of making and evaluating arguments to the end of arriving at unity in truth. As you know, we believe that this unity is bound to be Catholic. And I know that you disagree. But since we’re not fundamentalists, that disagreement doesn’t have to be a conversation stopper.
Andrew
Hugh,
The gospel has already been defined in the Nicene Creed.
Erick -@138: Thanks! The gospel is 1 Cor. 15:3f, which is not about what we do, what’s done inside of us, a universal atonement,* or anything we experience. Nicene only says this, re the gospel: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” *FOR OUR SINS!
GreatNorthWestPaul @136: “You may be happier being a Protestant who can join a denomination conceived last year, or join a fragment of a denomination that split from a split…”
~ I’ll just start my own cult, and that way can play pope to the lepers in my head… :)
Benjamin @135: Well put, this: “Join if and only if you believe her to be the Church founded by Christ – the Church, in order words, to which you will submit even if she were to ever use her full doctrinal authority to teach something you think is wrong.” Amen. The authority issue is foundational to the rest of it!
Thank you, men!
Hugh
I especially appreciate your gospel summary as you were coming to understand the Catholic faith. I know when I converted I was eagerly looking for an equivalent to the Four Spiritual Laws for Catholics. Something that “could fit on a dime.” I took the opportunity to transcribe your quick summery here. But I’d appreciate if others could point out simple descriptions of how Catholics understand (or communicate) the Gospel — particularly to those who are not even Christian. For example, as a Protestant if someone were to approach me and say, “How do I become a Christian?” I would have a quick, canned Gospel presentation ready. But as a Catholic, I sort of dance around a bit. I’m not as confident as I was as a Protestant. I certainly don’t have it down to “dime sized”. Anyway, I’d appreciate any links or short descriptions of the Gospel that you would use with someone asking how they might become Catholic. (More than, come with me to RCIA — they’ll tell you. ;) )
Without further ado… Jason Stellman’s transcribed description of the Catholic / Apostolic Gospel during his journey to the Church…
And, by the way, it might just fit on a dime…
Here are the links to the “near dime-sized” gospel presentations…
http://oi50.tinypic.com/301dpbs.jpg
http://oi48.tinypic.com/r1bn2c.jpg
;)
Eva @ 140 – Cute graphics! :)
But the the gospel is laid out in 1 Cor. 15:3f ~ Paul delivered to the Corinthians that which he’d received of the Lord: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
The Son of God assumes a human nature and human flesh together with His divine person. And he lived and died and rose again and ascended to heaven and gave the Holy Spirit. True enough! But more than this…
This death was not indiscriminate – it was to actually accomplish the salvation of his people from their sins, as the angel Gabriel had told Joseph he would, Matt. 1:21.
Not a potential redemption,
not a first justification to be later ratified through one’s efforts
(however Spirit-empowered or sacrament-stoked those may be),
not a possible salvation with a large IF hanging over it.
But a sure justification,
a washing of all our sins,
a definitive sanctification in the SON
(1 Cor. 6:11, cf. 1:30f).
Yours,
Hugh
I’m wondering what my brothers and sisters here think of this phrase as a Catholic understanding of justification by faith:
We are justified by faith expressing itself through love.
I think it encapsulates Paul and John and James.
Peace,
EJ Cassidy
Erick @138,
And notice that the Nicene Creed doesn’t say anything about our works contributing to, meriting, or being the reason for our salvation.
Eva,
Y e a h, I still may need to whittle that down a bit!
E. J. (#142)
The phrase is Paul’s (Galatians 5:6). I have heard that Luther strongly rejects the possibility that love can play any part in our salvation – that love is an assured result of our faith, but cannot itself be the instrument of our salvation. Don’t know if this is true or not.
jj
Galatians 6:5
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. {NIV, 2011}
For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,
but only “faith working through love.” {NAB}
~ Or, “faith expressing itself through love,” or “faith energized by [God's] love.”
ἐν γὰρ Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ οὔτε περιτομή τι ἰσχύει οὔτε ἀκροβυστία ἀλλὰ πίστις δι’ ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη
Hugh (re:#146),
Galatians 6:5 is appropriate for the discussion here in many ways– one of them being that, historically, to my knowledge, the Catholic Church has understood the “circumcision or uncircumcision” issue to be part of what St. Paul means by “works of the law.” That is, works of the Mosaic law. I’ll explain what I mean.
As a Reformed Baptist, I was taught that what the apostle is addressing in Galatians is the conflict between being “justified by faith alone in Christ alone” and the supposed attempt to “earn one’s salvation through works.” Through my research of both Catholic exegesis and more recent non-Calvinist Protestant exegesis though, I eventually came to a different perspective on Galatians, and I think that it makes more sense of the entire letter and of the New Testament as a whole.
That different perspective is thus: St. Paul is actually addressing a controversy in the church at Galatia between Jewish Christians (who made up the majority of the larger Church at that time) and newer Gentiles who had been converted to Christ. At least some of the Jewish Christians in the church at Galatia were trying to stipulate that Gentile converts to Christ must be circumcised (as all Jews were, obviously, as part of the Mosaic law) in order to be accepted as genuine followers of Christ. These Jewish Christians were basically saying, “True Christians must be circumcised, Jewish and Gentile.”
In opposition to this thinking, as a Jewish convert to Christ himself, St. Paul says, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” {NAB} The apostle is not saying that Christians can be justified by a “faith alone in Christ alone” without *any works of love for God and neighbor* at all. He is stating that Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are both united by faith in Christ– justified by faith in Christ *alone*, whether they are circumcised or uncircumcised.
However, significantly, St. Paul does not state that justification is by *faith alone*– and St. James explicitly says that justification is *not* by faith alone in James 2:14-26. Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians both must trust in Christ alone, but trusting in *Christ alone* (which is necessary for believers) does not equate to justification by *faith alone*. If trusting in Christ alone necessarily equated to justification by faith alone, there simply would not be so many passages and verses in the Bible that clearly indicate the contrary, such as Matthew 25:31-46 and Romans 2:6-13 and James 2:14-26, among multitudes of others.
I never would have imagined it, for most of my time as a Reformed Baptist, but the Catholic understanding of justification (which is not “earning one’s salvation through works,” but rather, faith working through love) actually makes more sense of the whole counsel of the Bible than the Reformed understanding of justification. It is that conclusion (which I found confirmed in the writings of the early Church Fathers) which played a pivotal role in my eventually having to leave Protestantism and return to the Catholic Church.
I realize that I’ve made some very controversial statements in this comment, and that many of the Protestants reading here will have strong objections. I understand– I used to be a Protestant myself! :-) Alas, for my part in the discussion, I am leaving tomorrow for travel related to a death in my family, and I likely won’t have much access (if at all) to the internet until after Easter.
In that light, I wish all Christians who observe Holy Week here at CTC a very meaningful one, and I wish a joyous Easter Sunday to all believers! May we all pray for ever deeper unity in Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life! In this Holy Week, Good Friday is still to come, but He, in whom we all trust *alone*, is eternally Risen! Thanks be to God!
#129 – An anti-philosophical reading of Paul is a strange reading of Paul, who is significantly influenced by the Stoic philosophy of virtue and by the rhetorical form of the Stoic diatribe, not to mention his famous allusions to the Stoic doctrine of natural law in Romans.
An anti-philosophical (or non-Platonic) reading of Augustine is a remarkable and rare achievement.
Tertullian, I grant you.
Benjamin– you nailed it.
Thanks, Chris @147 – Hope your trip is a safe & profitable one.
Quick query on this (anyone there can answer). You said
What does Christ’s death and resurrection effect in your scheme?
Thanks,
Hugh
Dear Ben @135,
You write:
BINGO. As St Joseph said, “You nailed it.” I mean, here it’s G.K.C. “nailing it,” but you have too, and not merely in quoting the big man. BTW, I’ve read his Orthodoxy.
Now THAT’S a big reading list! How long is RCIA’s catechesis?! Seriously – is this “merely” learning your latest catechism, or is one to have working knowledge of the Vaticans, the Nicaeas, the Constantinoples, Trent, Chalcedon, Ephesus, etc.? Papal encyclicals? More? Fewer?
If one needn’t be conversant with the catechism, is one is simply giving implicit assent to Rome’s claims of being the One True Church of Jesus Christ on Earth, and the Pope being his Vicar?
To profess that one believes EVERYTHING your organization “believes, teaches, and proclaims” without KNOWING it all seems problematic. How do you work around this? Surely you take in illiterates, too. How do they make such a profession?
Hmm – I think you’re spot on.
Sadly,
Hugh
Benjamin, how do you know Rome is the church Christ founded? Why not Antioch? Peter was there. Some think the Church of Cyprus rocks (and it’s like older than Rome’s church).
Hugh,
When Jesus asked the Twelve whether they would abandon him along with the rest of the crowd, Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have come to believe and are sure that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Whatever kind of reckless and potentially dangerous faith Peter exercised there is what every Catholic who enters the Church must exercise. It’s not like in Protestantism. There is only one Messiah, and he has only one Body and Bride.
(So much for the Tu Quoque!)
Andrew, how do you know what is a development or an abuse when popes themselves shift ground? Do you think Boniface VIII would have approved Vatican II? Do you think Francis will maintain the corrections to Vatican II of JPII and Benedict XVI? Reporters at NCR don’t think so: http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/editorial-francis-election-full-symbols-signs-new-era
Look, I know it’s hard to run things. Administrators always have to be political animals. But you guys construe the pope as the chief pastor. And what is good for the Curia is not always good for the laity. You would think that subsidiarity might be something the hierarchy might try to implement within the church.
dgh.
Just FYI, ‘the National Catholic Reporter’ is just about the most schismatic publication ever. They have no approval from the Catholic Church whatsover and even recently the bishop where their main office is located argued that they should remove the word ‘Catholic’ from their publication. If one spends five minutes on NCR’s website its clear that they have two main aims: 1) Gay Marriage and 2) Woman Priests. Most of their contributors are former Catholics including some defrocked priests.
Lastly, neither JPII or B16 ‘corrected’ Vatican II.
Jason,
So reckless faith means dismissing the lack of historical evidence for so many of Rome’s claims? Here I thought Aquinas was Rome’s main guy. I guess the work of Hahn and other Roman apologists and theologians is pointless, then.
Seems to me Jesus was all about telling people to go to Moses to see whether or not what He was saying was true.
Dear Hugh (@151),
Thanks for writing and for your kind compliments. Not to be too pedantic but, if you wouldn’t mind, please call me Benjamin. For whatever (probably arbitrary) reason, I’ve always preferred “Benjamin” to “Ben”, “Benny”, or any of the other variants. No offense taken on my part – but I thought it’d be okay to make the request. :-) Orthodoxy has been a favorite of mind (and I always read an excerpt from “Heretics” whenever I teach Intro to Philosophy), but frankly my favorite book of his has long been “The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare”. It’s a…strange book, but fantastically adventurous and, so long as one remembers that it’s a nightmare, the ending makes a lot more sense. The interchange between Syme and Gregory at the beginning of the book is amazing.
More substantively, you asked:
In my case, it was just shy of a full year. (For comparison, to join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I attended for awhile and met with the Session once. Once I told them I wanted to join it was a matter of weeks, but I guess I’d been attending regularly for a few months anyways. Then, come the next Sunday, boom! I was OPC). RCIA is partially so long because ours functioned as both an introduction to Christianity as well as an introduction to Catholicism. Our RCIA class was quite good, actually – so while I certainly wouldn’t say we got a “working knowledge of the Vaticans, the Nicaeas, the Constantinoples, Trent, Chalcedon, Ephesus, etc.?”, I’d say we did cover a lot of material contained in those sources (and related encyclicals). One can actually cover a fair bit of catechisis meeting 1x/week for 3 hours for the better part of a year (but our parish is good and I’ve heard horror stories of elsewhere).
With respect to knowing all those sources, hey, you can’t get everything in RCIA (and, obviously, what is expected of one scales to one’s age, maturity, etc. I’ve seen the same be true of joining reformed presbyterian churches – the level of understanding of Westminster expected of a 12-year old joining is rather less than that expected of an adult). I’d definitely say RCIA familiarized us with the CCC, of course, the CCC does a great job of pointing to its sources too (particular patristic sources, those councils you mentioned, various encyclicals, etc). Hopefully that gives you some idea of what sort of preparation we had. :-)
There’s a (potential) bit of ambiguity here. If you are asking must one be conversant with the catechism in order to be Catholic, then I think the answer is that it’s not an absolute requirement. Similarly, must one be conversant with the Bible in order to be a Protestant (or Reformed [or OPC/PCA/RPCNA])? I don’t think it’s an absolute requirement (that is, one can’t join, say, the OPC unless one is already conversant with the Bible) – but any of those denominations (as well as the Catholic Church) would say that everyone should grow in their faith as much as they can. Doing so, one presumes, entails learning more about the Bible and learning more about the Westminster Confession (or the CCC, or Augsburg, etc). Actually, a big part of our last RCIA class involved our teacher encouraging us to keep growing in our faith (and knowledge of what the Church teaches) even though RCIA was finished – and I can easily imagine a solid membership class at, say, the OPC saying basically the same thing.
Good stuff – and it illustrates one of the big differences between being Catholic and being Protestant. Since Catholics hold that their Church is the one founded by Christ (and hence cannot err), whatever the Church says is what I believe even if I don’t know all of it here, now, today. (Incidentally, what bothered me more than anything else in becoming Catholic was grappling with that submissive posture – that, in essence, when the Church uses her authority to say something, it’s not my,/i> way or the highway but rather the Church’s way or the highway. As a philsophy Ph.D. Candidate and as a lifelong Protestant, the appropriately submissive posture towards legitimate authority is not something that comes naturally to me). Regardless, insofar as my job is to “think with the mind of the Church” (or some similar formulation), I can do that without knowing every jot and tittle of everything that’s been dogmatically defined, to say nothing of the stuff that hasn’t been dogmatically defined but is still important to believe. But, of course, I am committed to retracting any particular theological position I hold if it can be shown to be contrary to what the Church has taught.
With respect to illiterates, I actually have no clue how that works in the Catholic church. (Relatedly, I have no clue how it would work in the OPC or RPCNA or whatnot). I assume such persons can join the Catholic church (or the OPC, etc.), but I don’t know how it works with respect to having adequate knowledge of the Bible/CCC/Westminster/whatever. However, obviously, one need not read truths of the faith to know truths of the faith. So, yeah, anybody who knows more than me can feel free to chime in with respect to stuff like this. Particularly Protestants – can illiterates join a conservative Presbyterian church? How does that work?
Another, hmm, query. You closed off your note by signing “Sadly, Hugh”. Why sadly? (Sadly because you don’t think the Catholic church is the church founded by Christ? That doesn’t seem to call for sadness insofar as it’s a factually true statement. Sadly because you think us Catholics have drunk the kool-aide and you can’t talk us out of it? I guess that might call for sadness. Sadly because you think the Catholic church is the church founded by Christ but you’re scared to join? Brother, if that’s it, you have no clue how much I can empathize). I’m not pretending to read your mind or anything – it just struck me that one generally doesn’t sign off notes “sadly” and I kinda wondered why. No need to reply to this part if it’s too personal. Just wanted to ask. :-) Thanks again for the kind words.
Yours Sincerely (and tiredly, because my daughter was up early this morning and I had to teach at 8AM!),
~Benjamin
Sean @ 55 – Does that mean you guys aren’t too keen on those hilarious, sedevacantist cut-ups the Dimond Bros’ @ @ Most Holy Family Monastery?
;)
Eva (140) and Hugh (134),
The gospel might be hard to fit on a dime.
.The catechism states:
We do have this good news that Jesus has come to save us. I think it is hard , at times, to make a statement to fit on a dime. When men preached the gospel in Acts the info depended on the state of the people being addressed since not everyone had the same understanding of life– that there is only one God, that we need a blood sacrifice etc. Some of the elements to be preached on might include the following, depending on the people being addressed:
1. God (who is Triune) is our Creator . Man is responsible to him.
Created by God Col 1:16
Made in God’s image Gen 1:26
Made to glorify God Rev 4:11, Made for God Col 1:16, Rom 11: 36
God desires our love Dt 6:5, Matt 22:37
2. Man’s problem
God is Holy Is 6:3
Man sinned and men are sinners Gen 2,3, Romans 5:19
Sin separates us from God Is 59:2
Sin results in death Rom 6:23
Sin results in judgment Heb 9:27
Sin results in eternal destruction 2 Thess 1:8-9
3. God’s remedy
God became incarnate (his Son) to make purification of sins Heb1:3
Christ is the only way to God Jn 14:6
Blood must be shed for forgiveness of sins Heb 9:22
Christ payed the penalty 1 Peter 3:18
Christ was made to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God 2 Cor 5:21
God provides a new heart and His Spirit Ez 36:26, 2 Cor 3:18, Acts 2:38
God provides by his divine power a participation in the divine nature 2 Peter 1:5
God provides a church I Tim 3:15, includes sacraments Jn 6, I Cor 11:23ff, leaders to whom we obey Heb 13:17
4. Man’s responsibility
Repent Acts 2:38, Acts 17:30-31, Luke 24:47
Believe Jn 1:12, James 2:19, Acts 16:31, Jn 3:36
Baptism Acts 2:38, 1 Peter 3:21
Walk in the Spirit Gal 5:13-25, Rom 8:12-13, Heb 13:20-21
Forsake not the church or assembly Heb 10:2-26, includes partaking of the sacraments, obey the leaders etc
The Gospel then includes the Good news of Christ and the knowledge that we can be joined to him Him 2 Peter 1:4,5 . But there needs to be a fuller explanation of who Christ is, what he has done, and what repentance , baptism, belief means when one explains the gospel to our generation, right?
Kim D
Jason @53 – Thanks for connecting. I don’t get it, though. Please if you would, connect the dots for me:
I get ‘reckless faith’ (like you, you may remember, I too went the “Calvary Chapel–> WTS/PCA–> out” route. I ended up in Anglicanism, you in Rome*). I think I get you, sort of, but please explain. And tie it if you would to what I wrote in #151 replying to Mr Keil. And how is tu quoque applicable. I apologize for being thick, here, but I truly want to understand your points.
Thank you,
Hugh
* Unlike you, I only came under care in the PCA, then trod the “Canterbury trail.”
I have since bid Anglo-Episcopalianism adieu, too.
Robert,
My point was simply that the faith required to come into full communion with the Church is akin to that required for Peter and the disciples to trust in Christ. There is always an element of fear and trembling involved since our religion is more than a set of scientifically demonstrable propositions that can be verified in a lab or under a microscope.
So Hugh’s sense of sadness over how much faith Catholicism requires can also be applied to Christianity as a whole. Faith seeks understanding, but the latter cannot be insisted upon before the former is exercised, that’s just not how revealed religion works.
Hugh,
My point in bringing up the Tu Quoque was to show how different embracing Catholicism is from embracing some form of Protestantism. There’s no finger-crossing, as though if the Magisterium gets something wrong I am free to simply bail and join some other church (or just start my own). In the same way Peter’s faith entailed the notion that Jesus is not just one religious leader among a host of other options, so the CC is not just one denomination that happens to line up most closely with my theology at a given moment. It’s more than that.
When conversion to the CC is understood on Catholic terms, the Tu Quoque sounds completely ridiculous, as if all that’s happening is no more significant than switching from Gold’s Gym to 24 Hour Fitness.
Thanks, Kim D @159. We are essentially agreed on your points. Well stated.
The debate betwixt us is whether 1 Peter 3:18 {Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit} means that
[1] he suffered to make it possible* for sinful folks to get to God (your story), or,
[2] “that he might bring us to God,” that is, actually, unilaterally, and securely reconcile us to God by his death on the cross alone.
As Paul said, God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.{Romans 5:8-11}
We see God’s love, Christ’s death, our justification, & salvation from God’s wrath as being of a piece.
A sure peace! Reconciliation, salvation (Paul appears to repeat for emphasis) via a sure atonement.
All these are inextricable parts of his grace-to-his-elect package for their sure salvation.
Thank you,
Hugh
* By fulfilling his responsibilities to repent, believe, get baptized, walk in the Spirit, attend church -includes partaking of the sacraments, obeying the leaders, etc. (How long should this list be?)
We Protestants see faith, repentance, & all obedience to be fruit from God’s prior regeneration.
(Mr Stellman is as versed in Reformed soteriology as any at this site, I imagine!)
Ps to my comment—This comment I just made did not even go into the aspects of grace and how it relates to all of this! Eph 1 :6 “For the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.” Needless to say grace is involved in all aspects, no? Someone needs to come along and make corrections to my outline. ;-)
Jason @ 162 & 153 – Got it.
Thank you!
As I read Benjamin’s #157 I will hopefully be better equipped to ask my next question about Tiber-crossing (addressing you both, if that’s OK).
Hugh
Hugh:
In #95, you wrote:
That’s basically right. So if “implicit faith” is a problem for Catholics, it’s a problem for you. But I don’t think it’s a problem for you. For the same reason, I don’t think it’s a problem for us.
Best,
Mike
Dear Daryl (@152),
I forgot to mention this in my last note but I read online that you’re teaching at Hillsdale now? I got my BA in Philosophy from there in ’06. :-) Hopefully you’ve had a chance to meet Dr. Stephens by now? On my best day I’m half the philosopher he is on his worst day. Hillsdale’s an amazing place – I hope you appreciate the gift you’ve been given by being able to teach there.
Anywhoo, you wrote:
Well, like all Catholics, we’re Catholics because the Catholic Church said she was founded by Christ, and she said she was right, and if she was wrong she wouldn’t say she was right, so yeah. Also, it helps if you don’t think too hard and just do whatever the Catholic church tells you. (Thanks, folks, I’ll be here all night! Don’t applaud – just throw money!)
Essentially, I think you’ve asked the million dollar question. I kinda doubt that you’re asking it seriously (meaning, I suspect Bryan’s argumentation hasn’t won you over such that now you’re just trying to figure out if you’ll be Catholic, EO, or Mormon) – but regardless, that’s a good question to ask insofar as you are actually interested in taking the answer seriously.
As Mike Liccione has argued at great length, conservative Protestantism does not fulfill a necessary condition of Christianity – that is, it provides no principled manner of specifying that which constitutes divine revelation (and hence requires the assent of faith) and that which constitutes human opinion (and hence requires the assent of opinion). But on the assumption that he’s right, and assuming that Catholicism fulfills such a necessary condition, that will not uniquely recommend Catholicism since other institutions also fulfill that same necessary condition. Put simply, if a magisterium is necessary for Christianity, then Protestantism ain’t got one (nor does the OPC, PCA, RPCNA, etc.). But Catholicism has one – as does Constantinople, Antioch, and Salt Lake City. How to choose between them?
I won’t lie: if a good choice requires that I “know” that the Catholic church is the church founded by Christ, and if by “know” you mean “prove”, I’ll just say that I can’t prove that the Catholic church is the Church founded by Christ (where “proof” is taken akin to geometry proofs – that is, proofs that cannot be rejected unless one is irrational). This is because the constitution of the church is a matter of faith, so geometry-proof like certainty is nowhere to be found (and if geometry-proof like certainty of the Catholic church’s identity were to be found, then it wouldn’t be a truth of faith anymore – it’d be a truth of reason). For what it’s worth, I also don’t think I can prove the divine identity of Jesus (son of Joseph) with geometry-like certainty – but I do know that if proving that “Jesus is the second person of the Trinity” were like proving that “Triangles have 180 interior degrees”, it would be a truth of reason, not faith.
So I can give no proof (in that strict sense) that the Catholic Church is the church founded by Christ – nor can you with respect to Jesus’ identity, and if you (or I) could do so then we wouldn’t be dealing with matters of faith anymore. But although I can’t prove the Catholic Church’s identity in that way, and we both can’t prove Christ’s identity in that way, neither you nor I are fidiests. We can give some reason (good reasons, in fact) to think that Jesus was the son of God – but such reasoning can be rejected without one’s interlocutor being a “fool or knave”. Similarly, I can give some reason (good reasons, in fact) to think that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ – but just as some persons can reject the divinity of Christ, so too some people can reject the identity of the Catholic Church. In so doing, they are neither fools nor knaves (even if they’re wrong).
As to what “good reasons” I could give for thinking that the Catholic Church is the church founded by Christ (rather than Antioch or Salt Lake City, et al.), just google “catholic motives of credibility”. Largely what you’ll find at those kinds of sites is what I’d endorse. I’d go into more specifics if you’d like (admins can get you in touch with my email address), but as I mentioned before I’m rather doubtful you’re actually too very interested in what historical reasons I’d adduce to find Rome more plausible than Constantinople or Salt Lake City. When this question has been asked in the past, it’s because the interlocutor has planned on saying “See – you left Protestantism because of a lack of certainty and now you still have no certainty – all you’ve got is those mucky motives of credibility!” If such a view is yours (and, honestly, I hope it’s not), then game, set, match. I can’t prove that the Catholic Church is the church founded by Christ. But since I can’t prove that Jesus is the Christ either, that doesn’t bug me overmuch – since good reasons can still be given to think that Jesus is the Christ and to think that the Catholic Church was founded by Christ. But such reasons can’t rise to the level of certainty insofar as we are talking about matters of faith (that is, revealed by God) as opposed to matters of human reason (where, again, certainty is understood as being generated by the kinds of proofs I mentioned above). But if you or anyone else wants to hear more precisely exactly which motives of credibility I found plausible, just have the admins give you my email. We can talk there for whoever is genuinely curious.
Sincerely,
~Benjamin
PS: If I goofed up something or other with respect to theology, I assume and hope one of the more knowledgeable Catholics will charitably correct me. There’s a reason I do philosophy, not theology. :-p
Dear Hugh (@165),
Sure ’nuff. If you want to talk offline, email one of the admins and they can give you my email address. And if you want to talk online, post here and I’ll reply as best as I can whenever I can. For what that’s worth. ;-)
Sincerely,
~Benjamin
Benjamin (#167):
I agree with everything you’ve written, but I think you omitted something important. The CCC says:
The content of the deposit of faith is knowledge, in the sense that God knows and reveals it. But for those of us who did not know Jesus the Christ as he walked the earth, our assent to it as the truth is faith, not knowledge. That’s because we can only assent to it on God’s authority, not verify it for ourselves, and we locate God’s authority as Revealer only by trusting some human authority as an embodiment of divine authority. Thus the certainty of faith is the result of a choice to trust–one that is made possible by grace and does not itself constitute knowledge, even though the reasons we should have for making that choice render the choice reasonable enough.
Best,
Mike
Dear Benjamin,
Don’t know that you’re pendantic, but I apologize for my offensive familiarity. Goodness knows I offend enough in many other ways! ;)
> In my case, it was just shy of a full year. …Our RCIA class was quite good, actually – …meeting 1x/week for 3 hours for the better part of a year (but our parish is good and I’ve heard horror stories of elsewhere). …I’d definitely say RCIA familiarized us with the CCC, of course, the CCC does a great job of pointing to its sources too… <
Thank you for sharing all this. 'Tis helpful! To be forthcoming, part of my reason in asking is that I am also looking at Orthodoxy (the Eastern variety) and their catechetical requirements or recommendations. (It's a year to two, bascially.)
I agree that Presby and other Prot churches are light-weight on requisite pre-membership catechesis.
> There’s a (potential) bit of ambiguity here. If you are asking must one be conversant with the catechism in order to be Catholic, then I think the answer is that it’s not an absolute requirement… Actually, a big part of our last RCIA class involved our teacher encouraging us to keep growing in our faith (and knowledge of what the Church teaches) even though RCIA was finished – and I can easily imagine a solid membership class at, say, the OPC saying basically the same thing. <
Sure.
> Good stuff – and it illustrates one of the big differences between being Catholic and being Protestant. Since Catholics hold that their Church is the one founded by Christ (and hence cannot err), whatever the Church says is what I believe even if I don’t know all of it here, now, today. (Incidentally, what bothered me more than anything else in becoming Catholic was grappling with that submissive posture – that, in essence, when the Church uses her authority to say something, it’s not my way or the highway but rather the Church’s way or the highway. As a philsophy Ph.D. Candidate and as a lifelong Protestant, the appropriately submissive posture towards legitimate authority is not something that comes naturally to me). Regardless, insofar as my job is to “think with the mind of the Church” (or some similar formulation), I can do that without knowing every jot and tittle of everything that’s been dogmatically defined, to say nothing of the stuff that hasn’t been dogmatically defined but is still important to believe. But, of course, I am committed to retracting any particular theological position I hold if it can be shown to be contrary to what the Church has taught. With respect to illiterates, I actually have no clue how that works in the Catholic church. …can illiterates join a conservative Presbyterian church? How does that work? Another, hmm, query. You closed off your note by signing “Sadly, Hugh”. Why sadly? (Sadly because you don’t think the Catholic church is the church founded by Christ? That doesn’t seem to call for sadness insofar as it’s a factually true statement. Sadly because you think us Catholics have drunk the kool-aide and you can’t talk us out of it? I guess that might call for sadness. Sadly because you think the Catholic church is the church founded by Christ but you’re scared to join? Brother, if that’s it, you have no clue how much I can empathize). I’m not pretending to read your mind or anything – it just struck me that one generally doesn’t sign off notes “sadly” and I kinda wondered why. No need to reply to this part if it’s too personal. Just wanted to ask. :-) Thanks again for the kind words.
> Yours Sincerely (and tiredly, because my daughter was up early this morning and I had to teach at 8AM!) <
Mine was sick yesterday – we got to sleep around 3:30am, and had to be up & at 'em early today!
Not sad, but exhaustedly,
Hugh[uenot]
I do not know why the posts are not formatting correctly, Sean.
Please remove these 170 & 172 and I will retry.
170 should read
Dear Mike @166, [not 156]
Ought I then sign off:
“Fideistically Yours,”
Hugh
?
I apologize for these inconveniences and thank you for your patience!
Hugh
Benjamin,
Please email me @ hughmc5 hotmail com
Thanks,
Hugh
Benjamin, I am trying to format the ending of # 170…
HM: To profess that one believes EVERYTHING your organization “believes, teaches, and proclaims” without KNOWING it all seems problematic. How do you work around this? Surely you take in illiterates, too. How do they make such a profession?
BK: Good stuff – and it illustrates one of the big differences between being Catholic and being Protestant. Since Catholics hold that their Church is the one founded by Christ (and hence cannot err), whatever the Church says is what I believe even if I don’t know all of it here, now, today.
HM: Bingo – you said as much repeatedly in #135, and I blockquoted in 151.
BK: (Incidentally, what bothered me more than anything else in becoming Catholic was grappling with that submissive posture – that, in essence, when the Church uses her authority to say something, it’s not my way or the highway but rather the Church’s way or the highway. As a philsophy Ph.D. Candidate and as a lifelong Protestant, the appropriately submissive posture towards legitimate authority is not something that comes naturally to me).
HM: As a rabid Prot, I can “Amen” this wholeheartedly!
BK: Regardless, insofar as my job is to “think with the mind of the Church” (or some similar formulation), I can do that without knowing every jot and tittle of everything that’s been dogmatically defined, to say nothing of the stuff that hasn’t been dogmatically defined but is still important to believe. But, of course, I am committed to retracting any particular theological position I hold if it can be shown to be contrary to what the Church has taught.
HM: Right.
BK: With respect to illiterates, I actually have no clue how that works in the Catholic church. …can illiterates join a conservative Presbyterian church? How does that work?
HM: Dunno that, either.
BK: Sadly because you think us Catholics have drunk the kool-aide and you can’t talk us out of it? I guess that might call for sadness.
HM: Yes, indeed. Again, you found the nail’s head.
BK: You closed off your note by signing “Sadly, Hugh”. Why sadly? …Sadly because you think the Catholic church is the church founded by Christ but you’re scared to join?
HM: Ha ha! Not yet, fer sure!
BK: Brother, if that’s it, you have no clue how much I can empathize). I’m not pretending to read your mind or anything – it just struck me that one generally doesn’t sign off notes “sadly” and I kinda wondered why. No need to reply to this part if it’s too personal. Just wanted to ask. :-)
HM: Not at all – and feel free to email if you want ask any personal questions you feel are inappropriate for CTC blog.
BK: Thanks again for the kind words.
Yours Sincerely (and tiredly, because my daughter was up early this morning and I had to teach at 8AM!)
HM: Mine was sick yesterday – we got to sleep around 3:30am, and had to be up & at ‘em early today!
Not sad, but exhaustedly,
Hugh
Hugh (163),
Yes, Christ made an atonement. The question I suppose is how /why to we preach the gospel? “But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?” Romans 10:14 How is the atonement applied to the individual? Does it have to be applied? Yes. Does God use men to bring the gospel? Usually, Yes.When the gospel is preached in Acts is it necessary to repent, believe and be baptized? Yes. There needs to be a response on the part of man. Can man do this apart from grace? No. We agree it is from Christ’s grace. The unilateral idea–that is the problemo. What does this unilateral belief entail? Does his grace, his sovereignty mean that the application needs no response on the part of man? No. Can man resist God’s grace is perhaps the question? This may be the area of disagreement. Acts 7:51 51 “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” 2 Cor 6:1: “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain” Hebrews 10:29 “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite (or insult) unto the Spirit of grace? ” So then you believe in irresistible grace or effectual grace? ….a grace that is different than these verses indicate I suppose.
Secondly–the regenerate still need to be exhorted to bear fruit. This happens all of the time in Scripture, and in Church. The New Testament is filled with exhortations of what God desires of us. God uses means . Therefore , although you say, “We Protestants see faith, repentance, & all obedience to be fruit from God’s prior regeneration”……this would not negate God’s use of means and the need to preach the means. This is what I was trying to put forth in the comment I made. There are certain things God gives to or in the Church to bring about growth in grace, correct?? Is there a continual need to repent of our sins? Yes,God uses means. You may say that God ordains these means, nonetheless the means need to be there and used.
Since, therefore, God uses means to bring about the application of the atonement to our lives, men are responsible to preach these means. The comment I gave showed some of the things we need to incorporate as means that God uses to bring about the salvation of a soul, no?
Benjamin, Jason, et. al.,
Is this an accurate description? (By James Akin – http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/how2.htm)
By James Akin – http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/how2.htm
[CAPS were used for words that are new vocabulary to me.]
Dear CTC-ers,
I think I’m getting it –
Hence, one must give assent to the validity, authority, and accuracy of the RCC even if/ when one believes her to be in error.
One is swearing fealty to Rome, not necessarily asserting the validity & the accuracy of all her teachings, right?
Thanks,
Hugh
Benjamin, who says a magisterium is necessary for a genuine Christianity? Do you understand how much of the New Testament is written without any reference to a magisterium or to the supremacy of Peter? No offense to Mike, but I do think the apostles have more authority than he does.
I appreciate your admission that you cannot prove Rome is the church Christ founded. It is something that needs to be taken with faith. This is different from the way Bryan Cross argues: http://oldlife.org/2013/02/the-limits-of-unlimited-authority/comment-page-4/#comment-73499
Jason, how do you know that your choice of Rome as opposed to Constantinople is any more than choosing Baptist Protestantism over Methodism? The Church of Antioch, where Peter ministered, has as much antiquity and apostolicity as Rome. But you believe what Rome tells you the way Protestants believe the Bible. That may explain why Roman Catholics can’t question the papacy even though they might wish they could when it comes to Unam Sanctum, Unigentius (1713), and the Syllabus of Errors.
Mike @ 169 ~
Thanks for your side’s take on this. You get us at this point, right?
The content of the deposit of faith is knowledge, in the sense that God knows and reveals it. But for those of us who did not know Jesus the Christ as he walked the earth, our assent to it as the truth is faith OR, knowledge. That’s because we can only assent to it on God’s authority, not verify it for ourselves, and we locate God’s authority as Revealer only by trusting THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE as THE embodiment of divine authority.
Thus the certainty of faith is trust (NOT OUR CHOICE, BUT GOD’S GRACIOUS GIFT) –one that is made CERTAIN by grace, and does INDEED itself constitute TRUE knowledge, SINCE THE SCRIPTURES ARE GOD-BREATHED AND SUFFICIENT TO SAVINGLY REVEAL CHRIST TO THE REGENERATE.
We equate faith with trust with “true knowledge.”
Just to remind all…
Hugh
Hugh (173 et passim)
It is impossible to know everything a Christian group believes, teaches, and proclaims, because what every Christian group is Christ – and He is infinite. Either you cannot make an act of implicit faith in a group, and thus always reserve for yourself the possibility of leaving the group if it teaches what you have judged to be error – the normal Protestant approach – or you believe that the group is, in fact, the Body of Christ – the continuation of the incarnation, as it is sometimes expressed (in words that shocked me when I, a Protestant at the time, first heard them). In the latter case, then, of course you can have no fear of making an act of faith. You know that if such a group ever “believes, teaches, and proclaims” something that you think error – it is you who are wrong.
jj
Huhg (#176)
One is swearing fealty to the Catholic Church because one believes it to be Christ’s ordained full presence in the world – that that Church is protected by Christ from teaching error (as a Church – not as this or that bishop speaking for himself) – and thus swearing fealty to the Church is necessarily asserting the inerrancy of her teachings – including those that have not yet been made explicit.
I say ‘the Catholic Church’ rather than Rome because it is a little misleading to say ‘Rome’ as though Rome were somehow of the essence. When the Papacy was in Avignon, the Church was still the Church. If Rome were nuked out of existence, the Church would still be the Church. And it is not the Pope personally that one is swearing fealty to (except, if I understand their situation correctly, the Jesuits); it is the Church. And it is not the Church on its own say-so but precisely because we think the Church is Christ’s Mouthpiece in this world.
You would really profit from reading Ronald Knox’s little book The Belief of Catholics. It is pretty short, very clear, and entertainingly written. You can even read it on-line for free.
jj
Hugh (#179):
You write:
Shouting that in caps doesn’t give us a reason to believe it. I believe that Scripture is God-breathed because the Church, as described by JTJ just above, so teaches. Why do you believe that Scripture is God-breathed? After all, you don’t believe that anybody who told you that is infallible. And it’s no good quoting 2 Timothy 3:16 to me either. That only works if that letter too is God-breathed, which just brings us back to my question.
Moreover, I do not believe that Scripture can be reliably interpreted in isolation from Tradition and the teaching authority of the Church. Why do you think it can?
You write:
Trusting an authority supplies knowledge when you have reason enough to believe that the authority you trust understands how the knowledge is acquired and has acquired that knowledge themselves. Thus, I trust astronomers when they tell me that the Sun is roughly 93 million mile away from us, even though I haven’t discovered that for myself as I could, because in college I acquired independent evidence that astronomers know how astronomical facts are discovered and have discovered such facts themselves. But in the case of divine revelation, its content is not something any of us could have discovered for ourselves; that’s why God had to tell us. Accordingly, access to divine revelation–for us in this life after the Apostles–cannot dispense with trusting some authority, the way science can dispense with that; and the reasons justifying that trust cannot constitute evidence that the authority has the relevant knowledge, because what the authority says is something human methods of inquiry cannot discover by themselves.
For reasons I explained above in this thread, it’s no good citing the authority of a book; for the book can have only as much authority as those who wrote, collected, and certified it as divinely inspired have themselves.
Best,
Mike
JJ @181 -
Thanks for Ron Knox tip.
This is curious: “…it is not the Church on its own say-so but precisely because we think the Church is Christ’s Mouthpiece in this world.”
But don’t you think the Church is Christ’s mouthpiece because she says so?
Thanks,
Hugh
Mike @182 -
The caps were merely meant to delineate where I had added to or changed your post. Sorry to sound loud.
You say, “Trusting an authority supplies knowledge when you have reason enough to believe that the authority you trust understands how the knowledge is acquired and has acquired that knowledge themselves.”
> If I understand this sentence (& I am unsure I do!), then OK. In the case of Scripture and its divine Author, I have the internal Holy Spirit witness (“reason enough”) to believe the authority and supremacy of Writ. Nothing above it & Him!
“…in the case of divine revelation, its content is not something any of us could have discovered for ourselves; that’s why God had to tell us.”
> Nor can it be externally verified, unlike the 93 million mile claim.
“Accordingly, access to divine revelation–for us in this life after the Apostles–cannot dispense with trusting some authority, the way science can dispense with that; and the reasons justifying that trust cannot constitute evidence that the authority has the relevant knowledge, because what the authority says is something human methods of inquiry cannot discover by themselves.”
> The only authority equal to Scripture is its Author who spiritually bears witness to facts stated in above posts. You claim a magisterial power as authoritative as Writ. We deny it.
Thanks,
Hugh
Hugh:
You write:
That just brings us right back to the question I posed for you when we started this whole conversation: How do you know that the Holy Spirit is witnessing to your belief, so that it’s not just yours and some others’ opinion?
Best,
Mike
dghart, (re: #177)
I invite Benjamin to clarify what he means when he writes that the constitution of the Church is a matter of faith. Protestants unfamiliar with Catholic teaching might interpret him incorrectly. The existence of God, for example, is a “matter of faith,” but it is also held that that existence of God can be known by the natural light of human reason. In the same way, the divine founding of the Catholic Church can be known by rational investigation. So Bryan is quite right in what he wrote in the linked thread. Here are some quotations from Catholic theologians:
Rev. George D. Smith, “The Teaching of the Catholic Church” :
Rev. John Brunsmann, “A Handbook of Fundamental Theology”:
And there are many more quotations that could be provided. The point is, what Bryan wrote is not peculiar. The divine founding of the Catholic Church can be known with certainty, apart from faith.
This threaded is getting a little crowded and going in many different directions, so I am going to drop the subject.
Brian (#186):
You posed that issue to Bryan and me in the thread on my article. I responded, and would be willing to continue the conversation there.
Best,
Mike
Thanks, Kim @174.
I agree that God uses means (preaching, as you showed). We disagree as to what some terms mean. I would say that irresistible/ effectual grace is God’s grace toward his elect, and would read the verses you quoted a bit differently.
Hugh
Mike @ 185. I take the Bible on faith, just as you do your authority, the RCC.
The Bible says that those believing in Christ will be saved.
I believe in Christ.
Therefore I will be saved.
Thanks,
Hugh
P.S. Conversely, your Church teaches that the faithful within her bosom have a good chance of trimming time off purgatory.
You are a faithful son of Rome.
Therefore. . .
Also, Mike, more to your point – I don’t know how better to answer you than I did way back in posts #32, 33, 36, 50 & 51. Help me here. Where are we misfiring?
Hugh
Mike, Please see: http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=84 | Therefrom:
Thanks,
Hugh
Hugh,
I had asked:
To that, you replied:
But that doesn’t really answer my question. For one thing, I too “take the Bible on faith.” But the faith I take it on is my faith in the word of the Catholic Church. She claims divine authority to teach infallibly under certain conditions, which are met by her claims that the Bible contains such-and-such writings, that no other writings are to be added to or subtracted from that canon, and that the contents thereof are God-breathed. And in the article of mine I linked you to, I gave my reasons for trusting the Catholic Church as such an authority. You, on the other hand, cite only “the internal witness of the Spirit” as the basis for your faith. But what I had asked is how you “know” that the Spirit is witnessing within you–more specifically, witnessing to your belief that the Bible contains such-and-such writings, that no other writings are to be added to or subtracted from that canon, and that the contents thereof are God-breathed. To say: “I take the Bible on faith” doesn’t answer that question because, for reasons I’ve explained above, faith and knowledge are not the same thing, You would have partially answered my question if you had said that you trust yourself, or at least something that goes on within you, as a bearer of divine authority to make such claims. I understand why you don’t do that, but in that case, what is the basis of your trust? Why do you think that the strength of your inner conviction is any reason at all to believe that the content of your faith is true?
In our previous go-round with this, you mostly quoted the Westminster Confession. Very well then: I pose the same question to its authors that I’ve posed to you. How did they “know” by the “internal witness of the Spirit” that their view of the Bible, and their faith generally, is true? Remember, you said your faith is “knowledge.” I don’t make the same claim for my faith, so your task is harder than mine.
Best,
Mike
Mike,
I hope to read your piece today.
I do not [yet] see the difference between our positions. You write:
OK, but how do you know the Church is right when she claims divine authority?
OK, will read. But is there an authority higher than the Roman Catholic Church? She is the norm that norms all norms, no? St Ig said: “We must put aside all judgment of our own and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, and Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.” *
You also said
Of course, I trust one thing that the Bible tells us that happens within us believers, and that is the Holy Spirit’s testimony. He bears witness that the words are true which he inspired the human authors to write. I believe this/ I know this.
As you believe Rome to be the authoritative Church that Christ founded upon St Peter, do you not also know such to be true? Why are not faith & knowledge synonymous in your epistemology. As I read your article, I ask you to please read the article I reference in post #191, above.
Thank you,
Hugh
Maundy Thursday
* Alternately, “Always to be ready to obey with mind and heart, setting aside all judgement of one’s own, the true spouse of Jesus Christ, our holy mother, our infallible and orthodox mistress, the Catholic Church, whose authority is exercised over us by the hierarchy.” Documents of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. [OUP], Henry Bettenson, ed., pp. 364-367. © 1999. Found at http://wps.ablongman.com/long_longman_lwcdemo_1/0%2C9493%2C1532993-%2C00.html
Hugh (#193):
I have read the article you linked me to. As a philosopher, I have serious problems with it, but most are not important for our immediate purpose. I shall bring up the one that is important after I frame the context of our discussion.
You write:
There are two key differences between our positions. First, I do not claim to “know” that the Church is right when she claims divine authority and uses that as her basis for saying that the Bible is the Word of God in written form. But you claim to “know,” without relying on the word of human authorities, that the Bible is the Word of God. By contrast, my trust in the Church is an assent of faith; but I have reasons for making that assent. Those reasons do not suffice to prove that the Church’s claims for herself are true, but they do suffice to make my assent of faith in her reasonable. And now that I have made an assent of faith in a teaching authority which claims to be divinely protected from error under certain conditions, I cannot see what I thereby assent to as mere opinion; I can only see it as an authentic expression of divine revelation. But in this life, that stance is faith on my part, not knowledge. Here, we only “see in a glass, darkly…”
Second, and unlike you, I do not claim that the Bible is the sole means by which we can identify the content of divine revelation as such. Rather, I claim that the triad: Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium is that means, where those are understood to be mutually attesting and interdependent. I think that’s historically as well as epistemologically far more reasonable than sola scriptura–a doctrine that is not even consistent with itself.
The article you linked me to claims that the believer can “know” that the Bible is the Word of God by “presupposing” that belief without evidence, as if it were self-evident. I consider that claim absurd. One cannot even know what such a claim means without holding and making inferences from more foundational beliefs.
Best,
Mike
Mike,
Thank you for reading and interacting with the article. And thanks for your two points.
As to the 1st, we have such divergent views on nearly every term* we use, it makes meaningful dialogue rather difficult.
As to the 2nd, I have 66 books, you have an enormous stack! We have such differing authorities!
Like you, I can also claim, now that I have made an assent of faith in a teaching authority [Holy Scripture, HM] which claims to be divinely protected from error under certain conditions, I cannot see what I thereby assent to as mere opinion; I can only see it as an authentic expression of divine revelation.
Thanks,
Hugh
* Epistemology, knowledge, faith, redemption, atonement, etc.
Hugh (re: #191)
In addition to what Mike just said, I have addressed presuppositionalism in both “Wilson vs. Hitchens: A Catholic Perspective” and in “Presuppositionalism: Fideism built on Skepticism.”
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Thank you, Bryan.
I note that we dialogued on the Wilson/ Hitchens piece late last year and earlier this month. I am repeating myself here with Mike, RE: the Clark article!
I hope that you & Mike understand the differences between Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til. They are at times, pretty significant.
Thank you all for interacting with me.
Hugh
Maundy, Maundy
(not by the Mamas and the Papas)
Hugh (#195):
I agree that we use all the relevant epistemological and theological terms differently. That points up the “difference of interpretive paradigm” I discuss in the article of mine I linked you to. The question before us is which IP is the more reasonable one to adopt. If you care to discuss that question, please do so in the combox under the article. Thanks.
Best,
Mike
Hugh (#183)
Absolutely not! What good would that do? It would be absolutely circular. I might as well tell you that I am God’s mouthpiece in the world and that you should believe it because I, who am God’s mouthpiece, say so.
This is the question of the ‘motives of credibility.’ I have quoted this from Knox several times on this blog before:
jj
jj,
Is Knox’s 1st point axiomatic?
How does he (or you) get a basis for #2* before getting to #4?
Thanks,
Hugh
* God “has made a revelation to the world in Jesus Christ.”
“…our Lord founded a Church.”
Dear Brian (@186),
You wrote:
Thanks for asking! Bear in mind that I’m a non-professional theologian and I’m also a neophyte (well, for the rest of this week!) So I could well just goof up on theology or use a relatively technical term wrongly. Here’s are two brief excerpts from the CCC that are relevant; I’ll try to explain what I think they mean (and if I mess something up, I trust somebody will let me know).
First, what are “motives of credibility”?
As far as I can tell, “revealed truths” are believed because of God’s authority – and these revealed truths are, well, revealed. Thus my contrast from my earlier post between matters “appear[ing] as true…in the light of our natural reason” (such as geometry proofs) and (what I called) “matters of faith”. I don’t know whether or not “matters of faith” is a term of art I’m misusing, but I intended it to denote propositions that are believed because they are revealed by God. However, as the CCC itself notes, there’s not a contradiction between between what is revealed by God and what is intelligible in light of natural reason – God’s revelatory process has conjoined external proofs accessible to all with divine revelation. So, for instance, the Catholic Church’s stability is something intelligible to all (as was recognized by an atheist and fellow grad student in our department the other day: “The most bizarre thing about the Catholic Church is that it’s still here!”) As I understand it, then, we make the assent of faith (rather than the assent of provisional human opinion) to that which is revealed by God, our assent of faith is aided (or perhaps “inclined”) without being necessitated by the motives of credibility.
Relatedly, then:
As I understand it, faith is required to recognize that the Catholic Church possesses the four marks of the Church identified in the Apostle’s Creed (and the Nicene Creed, etc.). However, these four marks have certain “historical manifestations” (such as invincible stability – which is what my fellow grad student observed even though he is an atheist). Natural reason, then, allows one to discern the motives of credibility and makes reasonable the assent of faith – but in a very important sense, the motives of credibility underdetermine the conclusions drawn from them. And, as I understand it, this must be the case insofar as we are discussing divinely revealed truths rather than truths of natural reason (geometric truths, say).
Similarly, as I tried to mention in my prior comment, that Jesus son of Joseph was the Messiah is a revealed truth. There are motives of credibility (his miracles, his ridiculously extensive fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah, etc.), but these data point in a very real sense underdetermine the conclusion that I draw from them: that Jesus son of Joseph was and is the Messiah.
I hope this clarifies matters sufficiently, at least with respect to my views. If these views evince an inaccurate understanding of matters Catholic, I trust one of the crazy smart people that regularly post here will charitably let me know. :-)
Yours Sincerely,
~Benjamin
Dear Daryl (@177),
You wrote:
Well, you’re quoting from my simplification rather than the more extensive way of formulating it I’d written earlier in the paragraph. Earlier in that same paragraph, I’d written that if Christianity requires a “principled manner of specifying that which constitutes divine revelation (and hence requires the assent of faith) and that which constitutes human opinion (and hence requires the assent of opinion)”, then Protestantism provides no such method. (Avoid, then, getting hung up on whether or not a “magisterium” is required, but instead focus on whether or not some principled way of distinguishing between divine revelation and human opinion is necessary). If you’re still OPC (or, heck, any kind of robustly confessional Protestant), then you do presumably believe that in fact a principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion is needed. If so, your disagreement with me isn’t over whether or not such a principled method is necessary – it’ll be over whether or not Protestantism provides such a method. This discussion has already been held at much greater length prompted by Dr. Liccione’s post. (I neglected to link to it in my previous post – my bad). If you want to seriously pursue whether or not Protestantism provides a principled way of distinguishing between human opinion and divine revelation, you’ll probably want to make a post over in that thread and interact with Dr. Liccione directly.
You wrote:
Yup. Of course, if the lack of NT reference is what suffices to make a doctrine heterodox, I’d really love to know how you think about the Regulative Principle of Worship. For, it seems that “much of the New Testament is written without any reference [to the Regulative Principle of Worship]” too. But you accept the RPW (presumably). So what’s the difference?
Of course that’s a bad argument to reject the RPW – the lack of mention in “much…of the New Testament” doesn’t show that a view is heterodox – as presumably we both agree (emphasis mine). Plus, since Catholics reject sola scriptura anyways, the lack of mention in Scripture isn’t a big deal for Catholics. So, if you’re assuming sola scriptura and then using sola scriptura to reject, say, papal supremacy, your argument will be unpersuasive to anyone who either rejects or is neutral towards sola scriptura. (Similarly, if I made an argument for papal supremacy implicitly based on, say, papal primacy, my argument would be unpersuasive to someone who rejects papal primacy already – namely, you. ;-) So if it’s bad for me to argue papal supremacy based on something you reject [papal primacy], it’s also bad for you to argue against papal supremacy based on something I reject [sola scriptura]). Make sense?
Finally, you wrote:
See the comment I posted shortly before this one for a bit more of an expansive clarification of what I meant. The sense in which I cannot “prove” the divine origin of the Catholic Church is the same sense in which I cannot “prove” that Jesus son of Joseph was divine. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it cannot be “proven”, it can be given good justification sufficient to constitute knowledge (this justification, however, is not sufficient to make all other options irrational, and hence is not sufficient to make all persons who reject it either fools or knaves). But all this is formed by my acceptance of the proposition that philosophy and theology are not ultimately contradictory – a proposition which I suspect you reject (or at least in #132 of this thread, you seemed to contrast the “wisdom of the cross” over the “merits of philosophy” – and a plausible interpretation of what you wrote is that you believe philosophy and theology are ultimately contradictory). If that is indeed what you hold, then you maintain a position for which no sound arguments can be given. Also, ironically, if that’s what you hold then you’ve managed to adopt a (controversial) philosophical position while simultaneously denigrating the merits of philosophy.
All that said, I don’t see any disagreement between what Bryan says and what I said – I read the link you provided and thought “Oh, dang, that’s pretty much what I said but a lot clearer”. So if your noting that Bryan and I explain things “differently” was intended to denote that we use different words to make the same fundamental point, then you (Daryl) and I agree. But if you mean that what I wrote and what Bryan wrote are fundamentally contradictory, then I’d love to see your argument supporting that. To demonstrate a contradiction, as K. Doran explained to you in another thread, just give a quote from me, then give a quote from Bryan, and then explain why you think those two quotes are contradictory (such that I am asserting X and Bryan is asserting ~X [not X], or vice-versa). But at least in my first pass through the link you provided, I didn’t pick up on any contradiction between what I wrote and what Bryan wrote.
Yours Sincerely,
~Benjamin
Ugh – HTML coding fails in both my comments. Also, Hugh, I sent you an email. If you didn’t get it, let me know and I’ll just drop my address here.
Sincerely,
~Benjamin
Hugh (#200)
If by ‘axiomatic’ you mean does Knox mean the existence of God is presupposed, or something that does not need proof, or something like that – then definitely not. The existence of God must be inferred from our experience (of the world, of ourselves) – standard Aquinas ‘five ways’ stuff. Similarly for the rest. They are all things we have to come to know from understanding the world – including, of course, history. In the case of #2, we are talking about reading the New Testament as history – not, initially, as revelation. We don’t know that yet.
These comboxes are not the place to go into this stuff in detail. If you want to know what Catholics consider as the reason for trusting the Church, I really recommend reading Knox.
jj
OK – Cross directed me to his two pieces.
Liccione’s sent me to the Mathison-bashing piece.
Thayer Jensen sends me to Knox (and by extension, the angelic Dr).
Keil is another fast typist I have to contend with in email. (A decided blessing, not a bane.)
I am again heavily outgunned & outmanned.
Vastly outnumbered, I fideistically retreat to the solace of sola scriptura,
curling up with my com’puter to read you stellar RC apologists.
I hope Jason will write up (or record) his pilgrimage for our side to hear from him.
I appreciate the above audio, but it’s directed to RCs.
May God savingly reveal himself this holy weekend to all readers here!
Forever your favorite fideistic Protestant,
l’Hughuenot
Benjamin, do you have a Facebook page? Can I friend you so that we can chat?
Ben, thanks for your response. Again, you assert something that is more a desire than a philosophical proof or deontic claim (whatever that is). You say that we must have “a principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion is needed.” Who says? It would be nice if we had it. But lots of things we would like in life we don’t have. So it seems like you establish a criterion for certainty and then say it exists. Didn’t Kant and Hegel do the same thing? Don’t feminists?
The lack of mention of the magisterium in the NT may not bother you, but you would think that with the very first pope writing two epistles you might have some mention of the import of the church and its offices — after all, the popes wrote pretty much about their power and ministry for the first 1000 years of encyclicals.
As for the RPW, it is taught in the Ten Commandments (our second your first). You do believe the 10 commandments are still binding, right?
I am not sure whether you actually disagree with Bryan or not. But you are actually human and a tad vulnerable in your comments.
BTW, men, it’s Darryl and Benjamin, if you’re keeping scorecards…
(Not Daryl & Ben.)
Darryl (#207):
Addressing Benjamin, you write:
I figured you’d end up saying that. Here’s what I say: If there’s no principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion, then the question what God has revealed can only be answered with human opinions. Now what God has revealed is to be believed on divine authority, with the assent of faith; but human opinions bear no such authority. Hence, if there’s no principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion, then nothing can be identified as calling for the assent of faith as distinct from that of opinion. The assent of faith thus becomes impossible.
Congratulations.
Best,
Mike
Mike, faith isn’t impossible. Epistemic certainty is. You’ve been harmonizing faith and reason so long reason has swallowed up faith, except for implicit faith, which I guess all the non-philosophical types have.
Darryl,
So you reject my argument that “the assent of faith is impossible” given your premise. Very well: Where’s the flaw in my argument? Which inference does not follow, or if it all follows, which premise of mine is false?
Regardless of how you choose to answer that, it’s not yet clear how our respective conceptions of the nature, as distinct from the content, of faith differ from each other. To explain what I mean by that, I shall first state the relevant aspect of my conception, which is the same as that set forth in the CCC (§156-157; emphasis added, footnotes omitted):
Now, you claim that faith is possible but that we nonetheless lack “epistemic certainty.” Since that assertion is ambiguous, however, it’s not clear yet how we disagree.
Your claim could mean simply that faith lacks the sort of epistemic certainty characteristic of some forms of human knowledge–for example, the sort which obtains when one knows how something “feels” or “seems” to oneself, or the sort we have about mathematical or scientific propositions that are “true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason.” If that’s all you mean, I agree–but that doesn’t tell against my position, as expressed by the CCC above. Or you could mean that faith lacks certainty because we can never be sure that the propositions we assent to by faith as authentic expressions of divine revelation really are such expressions. If that’s what you mean, then my argument and its conclusion stands–unless you can show what’s wrong with my argument.
Best,
Mike
Darryl, (re: #210)
Are you certain that epistemic certainty is impossible? If so, you are contradicting yourself, by possessing the certainty you are claiming cannot be had. But if you’re not certain that epistemic certainty is impossible, then your confident assertion that epistemic certainty is impossible is unjustified.
Skepticism is always self-defeating in this way, by denying itself in the very assertion of itself.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Mike, the assertion that “this is the church Christ founded” is one that depends more on faith than on epistemic/philosophical grounds. It is also a historical claim, subject to historical scrutiny. When such scrutiny happens, faith usually needs to kick. Philosophy might get you over the hump. But philosophy never proves what happened.
Bryan, knowledge of truth is possible but of ultimate truth it depends on special revelation and the work of the Holy Spirit (not the charism of the pope).
Darryl (#213)
Absolutely!! This is what I have tried to make clear, that Catholics cannot believe in the authority of the Church based on the Church’s own statement – and no more can Protestants believe in the inspiration of Scripture based on Scripture’s own statement.
Historical scrutiny (which is, after all, a part of philosophy) provides the ‘motives of credibility’ for believing in the Church – but faith, which is a free gift of God, must provide the certainty. It is precisely this sequence – historical examination (including looking at the contents of Scripture now as part of their history), philosophical reflexion, and then the gift of faith – which leads to trusting the Church – and it is trusting the Church that leads to faith in the inspiration of Scripture. There is no other philosophically acceptable way.
jj
Hi John (#215),
You wrote:
Absolutely!! This is what I have tried to make clear, that Catholics cannot believe in the authority of the Church based on the Church’s own statement – and no more can Protestants believe in the inspiration of Scripture based on Scripture’s own statement.
Response:
If we agree that a formal motive is necessary for believing, then your two examples are only material circles. The Church’s statement (faith proposal) about Church authority is the only way Catholics know the Church has authority (a supernatural thing). Protestants say that a scriptural statement is required to believe the inspiration of scripture. I am thinking of explicit statements in both examples.
Thanks,
Eric
Darryl (#213):
You write:
Well, given what I quoted from the CCC, I agree with all that. So now I’m even more puzzled as to how we disagree on the nature of faith. Perhaps a pair of supplementary notes on my part would help elicit some clarity from you.
1. What you say of the proposition: “This is the Church Christ founded” (where ‘this’ refers to a particular, visible body) is true of most doctrinal statements believed to express the deposit of faith generally. (I say ‘most’ for technical reasons I’m willing to discuss if you’re interested.) Hence the proposition in question presents no greater a difficulty for human reason than most other doctrines believed by most Christians. Indeed, I would argue that it presents less difficulty than the central doctrines you presumably hold along with Catholics: the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. The first says that three persons are each the same God as the others; the second says that one man was (and is) a divine person, fully God as well as fully man; the third said that that Person saved humanity from itself by letting a handful of people torture and execute him before he rose from the dead. My mind finds all that much harder to deal with than the proposition that he founded, and intended to found, what is now called ‘the Catholic Church’. And I am by no means singular in that respect.
2. The thrust of my argument was that “[i]f there’s no principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion, then the question what God has revealed can only be answered with human opinions,” and that if that’s all we’ve got, then “the assent of faith is impossible.” You rejected my argument in your penultimate comment. But in your last comment, instead of giving your reasons for doing so, you say something I agree with. It would almost certainly be rash of me to conclude that we agree on the nature of faith itself. But I am now clueless as to how that could be. Or not.
Best,
Mike
Eric (#216)
Huh? There are, I suppose, Protestants who believe in Scripture on Scripture’s say-so. If so, and if that were the real reason they believed it (I don’t think it is), they would be no different from Muslims or Mormons, who believe their Scriptures, apparently, for the same reason – or say they do.
Not sure what you mean by a ‘formal motive.’ My motive for making an act of faith is the very material arguments for the thing I am believing in – but my formal motive is the act of faith which the Holy Spirit grants and without which I cannot believe.
I think, in fact, that Protestants mostly believe in Scripture for the same reasons I believe in the Church. They have a variety of ‘motives of credibility’ (which are all material), including the very ordinary ones of having been reared in the faith, the arguments from fulfilment of prophecy, the empty tomb, etc – and they are granted the gift of faith. I really doubt there are any believers who, in the absence of external material motives, picked up a Bible, saw that it said “this is the Word of God” (the very existence of the Bible as a collected book, which does not say about itself as a whole that it is the Word of God is, itself, a material motive of credibility) – who saw that, and said, ok, it must be true. This is not the experience of real people.
jj
John (#218),
I agree with your comments about motives of credibility being the usual reasons for believing. The act of faith requires a formal motive or reason that belongs to the supernatural order. MOC don’t rise to this level. The formal motive I have in mind is the True God revealing or the authority of the God revealing. I cannot see how a catholic can affirm scripture’s inspiration without an actual explicit scriptural statement behind it.
Thanks,
Eric
Eric (#219)
OK, understood, and agreed – MOC do not rise to the level of formal motives. The formal motive for the Protestant is the belief in the inspiration of Scripture. The Catholic believes in the inspiration of Scripture, but he does so on the word of the Church. His formal motive, to use your language (which, I hasten to add, is probably the right language – I am no philosopher), is the divine mission of the Church. We believe the Church has been commissioned by Christ to teach the truth. The Church tells us, amongst other things, that Scripture is inspired.
jj
Eric – PS – we don’t start with the ‘formal motive’ of the inspiration of Scripture and derive the mission of the Church. It is the other way around.
jj
Eric:
You wrote:
and
All that is true as far as it goes, but an explication is needed to exhibit the relevant epistemic relations.
The Church’s “faith proposal” about her own authority is not by itself a reason to believe that proposal. Rather, it gives material content to what you call “the formal motive” for faith in general. Thus if the Church is what she claims, then she is the visible, living embodiment of the formal motive: God’s authority as Revealer. Those of us who, unlike the Apostles and other disciples who knew Jesus while he was visibly on Earth, lack direct experience of that divine authority, require such an embodiment in order to identify whom we trust by faith, and to identify all that’s proposed by that authority for the assent of faith.
As to the role of Scripture, JTJ has got it basically right. The proposition that just these writings are divinely inspired, and in that way inerrant expressions of divine revelation, is one of the propositions we believe by the authority of the Church precisely as a visible, living embodiment of divine authority. But as different kinds of authorities, Scripture, Tradition, and the Church are mutually attesting and interdependent: each points to the others, and the first two, which are the “sources” of divine revelation, can be authentically interpreted only by the last. You might call that a “material circle,” but a better analogy would be that of a three-legged stool holding up the deposit of faith as formal, proximate object of faith (FPOF) for us. To my mind, that makes good historical as well as epistemological sense.
Best,
Mike
John & Mike,
Did the teaching church draw from scripture to know that scripture was inspired ? perhaps from tradition alone or tradition / scripture together ? Vatican I said that it holds the “written books” as sacred and canonical because of there inspiration and divine origin.
Eric
Eric etal.
Just to propose my own logic, if its acceptable. It seems to me that Jesus did not write any Scripture. And God the Father only wrote the Ten Commandments. That may not seem significant, but bear with me.
It is interesting that we frequently ask ourselves, wwjd, what would Jesus do? So, let’s ask, “What did Jesus do? ”
1. He built a Church.
2. Taught the members of His Church.
3. Commanded them to pass on His Teachings.
Why? Why didn’t Jesus write a document? In my opinion, it is because He wanted us to look to the Church which He appointed to teach what He commanded.
Furthermore, the Teachings of Jesus Christ are His Traditions. And these Traditions tell us about Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. Therefore, it can be said that the Traditions of Jesus Christ are the fulfillment of the Old Testament because they contain the knowledge of He who fulfilled the Old Testament.
Still more, these Traditions are the basis of the New Testament. Because the authors of the New Testament were writing down the Teachings of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, in order for one to understand the Scripture, one must understand Sacred Tradition. But in order to understand Sacred Tradition, one must learn from the Church. Because it is the Church which Jesus appointed to teach His Traditions.
Does that make sense?
Sincerely,
De Maria
De Maria,
Thanks for responding. These things do make sense to me, but you highlight only one side of the coin. Continuing with Vatican I, the Apostles learned from the mouth of Christ to pass on His teachings. They were also inspired by the Holy Spirit to write. Do you think the Holy Spirit was continuing a written tradition beginning with the Father ?
You wrote:
Therefore, in order for one to understand the Scripture, one must understand Sacred Tradition.
Respond:
Jason Stellman recounts how he searched for the gospel in the scriptures (among other christian writings). A search for paradigmatic truths in the mind of an author was supposedly available from writings. His conclusions were judged to be the same as teachings of catholic tradition. Did he not understand tradition from understanding scripture ?
Why did the Apostles think that scripture was inspired ? Did they discover a paradigmatic truth implicit in Christ’s mind or explicit from His mouth (perhaps both) ? Christ’s command to pass on must have included the command to write.
Thanks,
Eric
Eric (#223):
De Maria has answered you mostly accurately (though I’d exegete the OT by opining that it was God the Son whom Moses saw and heeded). The OT scriptures were interpreted by the incarnate Son’s life and teaching, and the NT records how that played out. Once the overall canon was set, the Bible became the norma normans for the Church’s preservation and interpretation of the Tradition received from Christ.
The statement of Vatican I that you cite should be construed to mean that the writings contained in the Bible are canonical because the Church has discerned that they divinely inspired and thus inerrant. Their inspiration and consequent inerrancy is independent of the Church’s discernment, but our basis for saying that they are inspired and inerrant is the authority of the Church, which embodies that of her risen Head.
Best,
Mike
@Brian (#206):
Sure enough – just search for Benjamin Keil and I’m the one at the University of Kansas. I did a quick search and saw a bunch of Brian Ortiz’ which whom I have no mutual friends so I’m not sure which one is you. :-p If you can’t find me by searching (since I have my profile fairly locked down), let me know and maybe I can give you my email or some other way. We’ll figure something out. :)
Sincerely,
~Benjamin
@Darryl (#207),
Sorry for the delay in replying – Triduum time is busy (but fun!) time. :)
You wrote:
Ironically (or not), my former OPC pastor said pretty much the same thing when he and I were talking about Catholicism. Although I agree with what Mike and some of the other interlocutors have said, here’s my own take on this kind of question.
First of all, I definitely don’t (mean to) establish a criterion for certainty then say that the criterion exists – what I was trying to say was that if such-and-such actually is the criterion, then Protestantism can’t meet the criterion. So the argument I’ve got in mind is something like:
It seems like you and I agree on premise 2, at least given your comment to me, so then the only disagreement will be over 1 – and you are totally right to say that I gave no argument in favor of 1 in my comment (although Mike has). And something very much like your view is what my former pastor held – that some way to distinguish between revelation and opinion would be swell if it existed, but it doesn’t, so we just need to do the best we can despite being unable to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion.
I’ve got to admit – once my Pastor and I came to that point, there really wasn’t much more to say. It became apparent that he and I had pretty fundamentally different conceptions of the epistemic consequences of revelation – and, consequently, of Christianity itself. If we ultimately can’t distinguish between human opinion and divine revelation, then (as Mike said) we can’t give the assent of faith to any theological proposition. All your theological views, then, are held with the assent of human opinion rather than the assent of faith. But insofar as you assent to something via the assent of opinion, you are committed to holding it only insofar as the evidence allows. So, as with all your other opinions, if certain kinds of evidence came along you would be rationally committed to changing your views about your theology.
Here comes the theological liberalism of a kind, I think, far more insidious than anything you’ve accused Rome of holding. You know those views you have about the Trinity? You are rationally required to reject them (and become, say, a Unitarian) if the right kind of evidence comes along. Your views about number and nature of the sacraments? You hold those only provisionally and you’ll change them if the right kind of evidence presents itself. I could go on, but you get the point: Every theological opinion you hold is, well, an opinion – it’s provisional, and you’ll change it under certain circumstances.
When my Pastor and I got there, I realized that something was very wrong. Heck, I haven’t read much Calvin or Luther (probably wayyy less than you have), but my limited readings definitely did not give me the impression that Calvin held onto his view of Communion or the Trinity with the assent of human opinion such that, if certain evidence came up, Calvin would have become a Unitarian (or a transubstantiationalist, etc). That’s just not how Calvin rolled – or Luther, or Zwingli, or anybody back then. Both Calvin and Catholics agreed that we needed some principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion – Calvin thought he could do it, Luther thought he could do it, etc. Heck, I thought the big difference between liberal Protestants and conservative/confessional Protestants was that liberals thought religion boiled down to matters of opinion but confessional Protestants thought that religion boiled down to matters of divine revelation.
But apparently that’s not what you think – and, as I said, you and my former OPC pastor are expressing basically the same view. My discussions with him (and subsequent discussion with you) led me to conclude that the difference between the OPC (and other conservative/confessional Reformed denominations) and, say, the PCUSA was actually pretty small. That is, both the OPC and the PCUSA apparently hold that religion basically boils down to matters of opinion – and it’s just that the OPC has some human opinions about women’s ordination (they can’t be ordained) and the PCUSA has some other opinions about women’s ordination (they can). But in both those denominations, apparently, there was nothing in sight except merely human opinions about what God has revealed – and hence, the assent of faith was nowhere to be found. Thus, the assent of opinion was everywhere to be found.
I don’t want to minimize the difficulties of the historical concerns you’re raising. But conversion requires at least a two step process: At first, one has to reject Protestantism. Second, one has to accept Catholicism. What I’ve written above doesn’t say much about the second step since, even if Catholicism provides a principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion, Eastern Orthodoxy does too (as does Mormonism, etc). But all that stuff above does touch on the first step (the part about rejecting Protestantism) – and once one rejects Protestantism, then that makes Catholicism a viable step in a kind of way it wasn’t previously.
You wrote:
Eh, honestly, it used to but it doesn’t much anymore. Yeah, some of the big stuff in Catholic ecclesiology doesn’t get much “airtime” in Scripture as I might like. But once one conceptualizes of the Church as fundamentally a faith community (and a ~2000 year old old one at that), it makes sense that all kinds of important things wouldn’t be in its holy (inspired, God-given) book since the book wasn’t finished until, what, 60 some years after the community’s head ascended into heaven? All of that is to say that this is one of those issues which seems way more problematic from the Protestant vantage point than it is from the Catholic vantage point.
Oh yeah, and I wasn’t meaning to make too big a deal out of the RPW. It’s one of those nifty issues where, like some Catholic theologies, there just isn’t a lot of good clear scriptural support for it. I mean, I’ve read the 10 commandments plenty of times, but none of them brought to mind that “The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture” (WCF 21.1). Even if you think the RPW is in Scripture, I think it’ll be a stretch to say it’s clearly found in Scripture. Catholics can and have said (it seems to me) effectively the same thing about, say, the Real Presence (actually, the real presence seems to me more clearly in scripture than WCF21.1, but maybe that’s just me). Anyways, I didn’t mean to make too big a deal out of the RPW – I just was trying to show that we Catholics would make parallel moves to Protestants with some doctrines that aren’t so clearly found in Scripture.
Hehe – I think that’s a compliment. If so, thanks. :-) My vulnerability with respect to Catholicism hopefully doesn’t come from my seeming to think that Catholicism is false – I’ve got a lot personally riding on its being true, and I think it is true. But even if it’s true, Catholicism isn’t easy or straightforward (like the law of non-contradiction), and I recognize that smart guys like you disagree with me, so…well, it’s just my way of wrestling with the fact that lots of smart people are Protestants and lots of smart people are Catholics. I’m neither and, heck, I’m a philosopher anyways (so I’m really outside of my element). But there are my thoughts, such as they are.
Yours Sincerely,
~Benjamin :)
Mike (#226),
If what you say is true, then we can say that the Lord taught “All scripture is inspired by God” and identified some canon. The OT and the incarnate Son’s life / teaching provide no NT records or canon of the records, and the Tradition received from Christ allowed for more Holy Spirit inspired writings. This leads me to ask: Did the Lord reveal the doctrine of scripture’s inspiration or was it taught before His incarnation ? Could someone know which books were inspired without Christ’s authority ?
Eric
Eric (#225):
You write:
Jason concluded that the Catholic “paradigm” of justification and sanctification makes better overall sense of the relevant passages of Scripture than the Reformed. But that was only one step on his journey. He saw that the Reformed view does not exhibit any putative “perspicuity” of Scripture on the matter, but was only one interpretive opinion among others, and not the most defensible. But if he had left things at that, he could well have concluded that his preferred interpretation was itself only an opinion that might be wrong, and remained Protestant. In fact, the substance of the Catholic view is shared by some non-Reformed Protestants; but like the Reformed, they cannot explain why their view is anything more than one rationally plausible opinion among others. Catholicism can, and does.
Of course it is possible to “understand tradition from understanding scripture.” I believe Jason did understand the directly pertinent content of Tradition through his study of Scripture. But that doesn’t tell us whether Tradition has any normative content behind and beyond Scripture. To get beyond Protestantism, one must acknowledge that it does. But the only way to make that acknowledgement is to acknowledge the binding interpretive authority of the bearer of both Tradition and Scripture, i.e. the Church Christ founded. There is no other epistemic access to the deposit of faith as an expression of divine revelation, as opposed to a collection of human opinions. And that’s what Jason did.
You also ask:
Apparently, the Apostles believed that the books contained in the Septuagint are divinely inspired, for that’s the version of “Scripture” they knew and quoted. They probably believed that before meeting Jesus, but their experience of his person, words, and deeds gave them the correct interpretive key to those writings. We do not know whether Jesus commanded them to write, but we do know that he commissioned them as the core of his new Israel, his ecclesia, and commanded them to preach the truth to the world, starting with the Jews.
Best,
Mike
You’re welcome.
I don’t know what you mean?
Continuing with Vatican I? This has continued throughout the history of the Church.
So, perhaps I’m not understanding your meaning.
To write what? Let us look at Scripture:
2 Peter 1:19-21
King James Version (KJV)
19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy;
This is St. Peter talking. He says, “we”, meaning the Apostles. And he assures the reader that they have a more sure word than did the Prophets of the Old Testament.
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
And then he says that it would be wise for the reader to obey the prophecy of the Apostles.
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
Now, he speaks of Scripture and says that the reader is not free to interpret the Scripture according to his own whim.
21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:
Notice the distinction between prophecy and Scripture.
The prophecy did not come by any man’s will.
but holy men of God spake
But holy men spoke the prophecy in obedience to God. Let’s take a brief glance at Jesus’ command.
Jesus, God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, commanded holy men to speak and teach His commands.
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
Later those same men wrote the prophecies which God had commanded them to speak. They didn’t write anything different than that which God had commanded them to speak.
I think the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles to write down what Jesus had commanded them to teach. His Sacred Traditions. Yes.
Correct.
Paradigmatic truths? A paradigm is a system of thought. A set of logical deductions or adductions.
He was comparing paradigms to the Scriptures to see which paradigms fit the Scripture best.
Namely, he took the Catholic paradigm based upon Catholic Sacred Tradition and the Protestant paradigm based upon the Protestant tradition. He compared both to Scripture and decided that, in his opinion, the Catholic paradigm fit the facts better.
Correct.
He confirmed what he had begun to suspect. That Catholic Tradition is the basis of the New Testament.
They knew it was inspired because they were so taught, by their Jewish tradition and by Jesus Christ.
Yes to both.
If it did, why did most of the Apostles and disciples ignore that command?
No thanks necessary,
Sincerely,
De Maria
# 228 Benjamin,
I dealt with the same thing when I was leaving the Reformed church where I was a member. My pastors also didn’t think that they needed a principled way to determine human opinion and divine revelation. Protestantism is messy, heck Christianity is messy, I should just learn to live in the messiness. There’s nothing more I can have this side of heaven.
When I read Darryl’s words, “who cares?” I sorta scrunch my nose and squint me eyes, because I just can’t believe that he doesn’t see the implications in this idea.
Am I wrong to conclude that unless Reformers believe that their formularies are infallible, they have no way to principled way to critique anyone else’s doctrines?
You are extremelysharp and very gentlemanly.
Blessings,
Susan
Eric (#225 and 229):
If it did, they surely didn’t follow the commandment very well! Of the original Apostles, only three produced a Gospel (St. John, St. Matthew and presumably St. Peter, through St. John Mark), and there are a handful of other letters (St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude). St. Paul was responsible (directly or indirectly) for the rest. But I doubt that the other Apostles should be considered failures for that.
Mike alluded a little bit to this, but you seem to be conflating inspiration with revelation. Inspiration means that God was a co-author, but it doesn’t mean that one has a complete knowledge of the divinely inspired content. In other words, you can know that something has divine content without knowing what that content is. In fact, the Old Testament is evidence that people can know the Scriptures as inspired *without* knowing their content, since the Scriptures testify to Christ, but this was not apparent until Christ was revealed. And even the faithful, the Apostles themselves, did not understand how the Scriptures testified to His Resurrection until after the fact. So Christ had to lead them along the way, to hold their hands through the process, which is shown in the Gospels. Only after He shows someone in this way and they still refuse to see does He condemn them for failure to know, and even the Apostles themselves are rebuked in the Gospel of Mark repeatedly for their failure to understand. Generally, it is not as if they should have known that the Scriptures testified to Christ, but if they had known the Scriptures for what they *did* say (in terms of teaching love of God and love of one another), then they should have recognized the ultimate expression of God’s love: His own Son.
In terms of our understanding of the divine content, Pentecost changed everything. That was the birthday of the Church; until then, much of Scripture was hidden. It is no coincidence that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church was the turning point of understanding Scriptures, because that was the point at which the presence of the One Who Inspired began to dwell in the hearts of Christians. Before then, the community of God recognized that Scriptures were inspired; after, they recognized what they were saying. It was this common witness of the Church that caused people to recognize later additional documents as being inspired, and again, this was a process of collective realization in the Church, not an individual deliverance in the manner of the Old Testament prophets. Of the New Testament, only Revelation is in the prophetic genre, although there are some similar elements in the Gospels.
From the Catholic perspective, the fact that the Church comes before Scripture themselves in terms of understanding the divine content is itself a Scriptural teaching. People who recognized the Scriptures as inspired, even faithful people, did not understand the content until it was revealed to them by God. That is why St. Paul spoke of the “man of God” being equipped for good works by Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The collective witness of the Holy Spirit as to the content is primary, and because of that primary witness, we know what the content is. Consequently, we know the Old Testament better even than those who wrote it, because we have access to more of its content, even though we ourselves also see “as in a mirror darkly” in terms of ultimate vision. In principle, unlike the community of God before Christ, we could have done without any written revelation of the New Covenant at all, but God provided this as a help to us.
In short, there is a missing link in your logical chain from “inspiration” to “revelation,” and that link is the Church.
Thanks, Jonathan. I had just wandered back here to write a reply to Eric’s #229, but I see that you did it for me.
Mike (#230),
You wrote:
Apparently, the Apostles believed that the books contained in the Septuagint are divinely inspired, for that’s the version of “Scripture” they knew and quoted. They probably believed that before meeting Jesus, but their experience of his person, words, and deeds gave them the correct interpretive key to those writings. We do not know whether Jesus commanded them to write, but we do know that he commissioned them as the core of his new Israel, his ecclesia, and commanded them to preach the truth to the world, starting with the Jews.
Response:
Push through the “apparently”, “probably” and “we do not know”. These words indicate a problem within the catholic paradigm. The catholic paradigm still cannot explain how the Apostles believed and identified OT scripture without Christ proposing some canon for belief. Link the “written form”, known as the NT, to Christ’s teaching apart from the content of that form. The “written books” may be a form to transmit Christ’s teaching, but where in Christ’s teaching do we expect this form from His Apostle’s ? Why did the Apostles write anything when their Master wrote nothing ?
Eric
Eric (#235):
I see that Jonathan’s comment wasn’t enough. Oh well. Here goes.
You write:
First, we must be careful not to be anachronistic about such concepts as canonicity and inspiration. There was no formal Jewish “canon” when Jesus walked the Earth, and there was no prevailing agreement about what “inspiration” consisted in or what it applied to. The only set of writings everybody accepted as divinely inspired and binding was the Torah or Pentateuch. The Sadduccees, who were the predominant party among the wealthy and priestly families, accepted only the Torah or Pentateuch as inspired and binding, in part because the universal tradition was that Moses, recognized by all as a great prophet, had written it–a tradition which is unlikely to be true for each and every part of the Torah, and for which there is no good, independent evidence in any case. Like the Pharisees–the party Jesus seemed closest to–the Essenes seem to have accepted “the prophets” and “the writings” in addition to the Torah as inspired, or at least as authoritative, though perhaps not of the same degree of authority as the Torah. But the Qumran discovery indicates that they were busy producing writings of their own that they esteemed as highly as the prophets and the writings, which nobody else did. Jesus and his followers seemed to approach this matter, and indeed much of theology, as the Pharisees did, thus accepting the Septuagint as inspired in some sense, even though it was a Greek translation. But we didn’t get a formal Jewish canon until the end of the first century, after the destruction of the Second Temple, when the rabbis accepted only books originally written in Hebrew, and so rejected the Septuagint canon in favor of what later came to be called the “Muratorian” canon. Even today, that’s the canon Protestants accept as “the Old Testament,” rather than the Septuagint canon. So what, precisely, is this “OT” that Jesus is supposed to have taught the Apostles was inspired and canonical? From a purely historical standpoint, that’s a matter of opinion, which will probably never be resolved into knowledge.
And that brings me to my main point. This is not primarily a question of knowledge; from the standpoint of human reason, we have mostly just opinions about it. But opinions won’t do as answers to the question which writings are divinely inspired and thus inerrant. So for Catholics, the question what counts as inspired, inerrant Scripture must be and was left to the authority of the Church, founded on the Apostles. And that is not a “weakness” of the CIP. Why?
As God the Son, Jesus Christ is the primordial “Word of God” and thus “the” revelation of God to man. As such, he showed the Apostles how “the scriptures” were about him and what he would do. OT Scripture, whatever its exact contours, is only a written record of the divine revelation that was unfolding, and is not that revelation itself. And neither it nor the NT, taken separately or jointly, were ever meant to be the only authority about revelation, because the exact contours of the biblical canon had not even been set by the time the last apostle died. That’s why it matters little the we have no formal, written record of what Jesus told the Apostles about the concepts of canonicity and inspiration, and not terribly much clarity about how they applied such concepts. All that matters is that what counts as inspired, inerrant Scripture is a question that was left to the Church, the bearer of divine authority in the world, to resolve in due course.
Some of the Apostles wrote things that the Church has preserved not necessarily because Jesus ordered them to–there’s really no evidence of that–but because they and the Church as a whole found it pastorally necessary for them to do so. Without the four canonical gospels especially, there would have been nothing for the early sub-apostolic Church to point to as a clear record of the revelation in Jesus Christ, so that much would have been forgotten or distorted, thus making the challenge of heresy more difficult to meet. That’s why and how the challenge of the Docetists was met by John’s Gospel. That’s why and how the challenge of the Marcionites in the early and mid-second century was met by the Church of Rome’s setting most of the NT canon, comprised chiefly of writings traditionally read in worship synaxes before the celebration of the Eucharist. That’s why and how the challenge of the Gnostics was met by a reiteration of that canon along with the Church’s rejection of the Gnostic gospels. And that’s why and how East and West had to formally close the canon at Nicaea with the often-disputed Book of Revelation.
From the standpoint of the CIP, the main point to be made here about Scripture is that it was never meant to function as the sole authoritative presentation of divine revelation. Hence, the question what counted as Scripture for Jesus and the Apostles can, to a certain extent, safely be left to opinion. What matters far more is the question whether some living, visible, divinely commissioned authority is needed for telling those of us who come after the Apostles what is and is not an authentic expression of divine revelation. The Catholic answer is yes, and that the Catholic Church is that authority. If you reject that authority, you are left largely with opinions, even about the significance of such knowledge as we have.
Best,
Mike
Mike (re: #236),
As I have not been involved with the whole discussion, I would simply like to make a few comments on your last post.
You said, “…that’s why and how East and West had to formally close the canon at Nicaea…”
This seems to be a historical error or misrepresentation. It would be helpful if you could document what you are referring to, since I find it difficult to see how the canon could be “formally closed” if there were no formal decisions as to what constituted the canon.
You said, “The Catholic answer is yes, and that the Catholic Church is that authority. If you reject that authority, you are left largely with opinions.”
This affirmation puts the Roman Catholic in an odd position. Since the Council of Trent provided the only formal and binding declaration of the canon of Scripture, the Catholic seemingly must affirm that all those born before 1500 were left “largely with opinions.”
You said, “What matters far more is the question whether some living, visible, divinely commissioned authority is needed for telling those of us who come after the Apostles what is and is not an authentic expression of divine revelation.”
If that matters far more, then the following question also arises: Is some living, visible, divinely commissioned authority needed to tell us that the Catholic Church is the original, authentic, living, divisible, divinely commissioned authority? And then is another authority needed on top of that?Catholics seems to stop this infinite regress with the axiom of natural reason, while Protestants say it stops with with self-attesting Word of God.
De Maria (#231),
Here are some short answers to your questions and concerns:
Q. I don’t know what you mean?
Q. Continuing with Vatican I? This has continued throughout the history of the Church.
So, perhaps I’m not understanding your meaning.
A. See #223 for why I continued with Vatican I.
Q. Paradigmatic truths?
A. I meant that certain truths of Catholic Tradition must be in the minds of the NT authors.
Q. If it did, why did most of the Apostles and disciples ignore that command?
A. A general command to write was given with the Holy Spirit freely determining the specific occasions. If Christ did not command, then the “written form” specific to NT does not originate with Christ’s teaching. In some cases, a command can be given without an imperative.
Please feel free to respond to comment # 235.
———————-
You wrote:
They knew it was inspired because they were so taught, by their Jewish tradition and by Jesus Christ.
Response:
Is this your opinion ?
Eric
Jonathan (#233),
Thanks for responding. Your response was detailed and very informative.
You wrote:
If it did, they surely didn’t follow the commandment very well!…
Response:
I find this strange. Appeals to scripture show that Christ commanded the Apostles to preach and teach. Tradition is behind this scripture. What explains the fact that the Apostles wrote ? Possibly a command from the same Tradition ?
————————
You wrote:
In fact, the Old Testament is evidence that people can know the Scriptures as inspired *without* knowing their content, since the Scriptures testify to Christ, but this was not apparent until Christ was revealed.
Response:
For the sake of argument, I will grant *without* knowing their content. Consequently, the OT scriptures provide OT evidence that people can know the scriptures as inspired. Since Christ’s authority was not necessary for this, then the Church’s authority follows suit for the NT. If this is not the case, then “All scripture is inspired by God” is a doctrine originating with the incarnate Son or His Apostles.
Thanks,
Eric
John D (#237):
You wrote:
You are correct that Nicaea made no “formal decision” about the canon, and it was wrong of me to suggest otherwise. My ill-framed statement was, however, an inference from the following. The canon as formally enumerated by the Council of Rome (382) is exactly the same one later defined by the Council of Trent and used by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches even today. That enumeration came very not long after Nicaea I, before which the canonicity of the Book of Revelation was still disputed in some quarters; but after the 4th century, it no longer was. So, I concluded that the canon was effectively closed by joint East-West agreement by the mid 4th-century at the latest. My error consisted in suggesting that said closure was by a formal, joint East-West statement at Nicaea I.
I had written:
To that, you reply:
Given my citation of the Council of Rome just above, your first sentence is false. But even if that council had made no such formal declaration, for Catholics the question which writings belong in the biblical canon had been settled by Tradition long before Trent, by joint consensus of West and East. Formal dogmas propounded by the “extraordinary magisterium” of general councils or of popes are not the only way the Church infallibly teaches. The Apostles’ Creed is an example of infallible teaching by the “ordinary and universal magisterium,” and most of the Church’s irreformable moral teachings have been set forth infallibly by that same magisterium.
You also replied:
For Catholics, the formal, proximate object of faith (FPOF) is the triad: Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium, where those are understood to be mutually attesting and necessarily interdependent. Thus the first two transmit the content of divine revelation to us; the third ensures that those are authentically identified and interpreted, by divine authority. As I had written to Eric: “You might call that a “material circle,” but a better analogy would be that of a three-legged stool holding up the…FPOF for us. To my mind, that makes good historical as well as epistemological sense.”
Arguments of “natural reason” for accepting the FPOF in that sense do not generate an infinite regress. They merely present the Catholic Church’s conception of the FPOF as a more reasonable way of conceiving it than the alternative of a “self-attesting” Scripture. For the latter sort of attestation boils down simply to some peoples’ fallible, non-binding interpretations of Scripture.
Best,
Mike
Mike (re: #240),
Thanks for the reply. I would like to respond to a few things.
(1) You said:
I sense a bait and switch in your argument. You are correct that the Council of Rome (382) formally enumerated the same list later defined by Trent. However, you leave out that this was not an ecumenical council. So, although the council claims to this list is “what universal Catholic Church accepts and what she ought to shun” this council is not protected from error according to Catholic teaching. Moreover, I doubt you are willing to elevate all decrees of local councils to matters of dogma, even if we only count cases where the local council claims to speak on behalf of the universal Catholic Church. If that is the case, then it is accurate to state Catholics are left “largely with opinion” prior to Trent.
(2) You said:
How can a Catholic know that the ordinary and universal magisterium has decided a matter infallibly? I think your answer to that question would approximately parallel to how a Protestant knows what books constitute Scripture.
(3) You also said:
The only way someone could know which is “a more reasonable way of conceiving” is if they presuppose natural reason to start. How does the Catholic know that natural reason leads to Truth? It appears faith in God’s word is a more proper starting point. In response to the “fallible, non-binding interpretations” remark, I answer that the Catholic simply seems to prefer his/her fallible, non-binding interpretations of the historical record.
Peace,
John D.
John (#241):
You write:
Your argument is unsound. For one thing, a premise of it is a straw man. For I didn’t claim that the Council of Rome was infallible just by virtue of being a local council. And the conclusion of your argument is a non-sequitur. For I would argue that the Council of Rome’s enumeration of the canon was infallible for the reason I give next:
As a matter of historical fact, the “consensus” I cited was firm by the end of the 4th century.
To that, you reply:
There are three difficulties with that. Together, they suffice to rebut your objection.
First, you assume that Catholics are supposed to “know” when a doctrine has been taught infallibly. But that does not square with the Church’s understanding of the assent of faith. For in this life it is by faith, not by knowledge, that we believe that the Church teaches infallibly at all, and thus it is by faith, not by knowledge, that we believe any article of faith so taught. But for reasons I’ve often given, such faith is by no means unreasonable.
Second, you take no account of the fact that the Magisterium develops and clarifies particular answers to your question over time. It did so with the Apostles’ Creed in the 2nd century; it did so with the biblical canon centuries before Trent; and it has done so today on the question of women’s ordination. And those are just three examples. Formal definitions of beliefs belonging to Tradition are not always necessary for Catholics to “know” when the traditional conditions on definitive and infallible teaching have been met. If that were not the case, then the entire deposit of faith would have been a matter of opinion before the first ecumenical council, which is absurd.
Third, my answer to your question does not “approximately parallel to how a Protestant knows what books constitute Scripture,” in part because I would deny that Protestants as such “know” any such thing. In the 16th century, the Reformers rejected the Septuagint canon long established by the Catholic and Orthodox churches in favor of the Muratorian canon. Thus they reversed prior development of definitive doctrine, while citing no visible authority other than their scholarly agreement for doing so. That is unlike what either the Catholic or the Orthodox churches do.
Finally, you write:
I know neither what you mean by “presupposing natural reason” nor, whatever you mean by that phrase, why you think doing what it describes would be a mistake. It is undeniable that there is such a thing as natural reason, and if one is going to do apologetics at all, one must use it. Thus, what I described as a “more reasonable way of conceiving” the FPOF is what I exhibit as such using natural reason to make an apologetical argument.
Of course you claim that “faith in God’s word is a more proper starting point.” Well, that depends on the discipline one is engaged in. If one is doing theology proper, then one should indeed take “God’s word”–whatever that may consist in–as one’s starting point. That’s what all theologians as such do, regardless of which theology they profess. But when one is doing apologetics, then one of the issues needing to be addressed is, precisely, how we are to identify “God’s word” as such in the first place, given the widespread disagreement about what that word is and about how to identify it as such. And as I’ve said, that’s what I do using natural reason. There is no logical alternative.
Now you say that, like the Protestant, “the Catholic simply seems to prefer his/her fallible, non-binding interpretations of the historical record.” But a tu quoque objection of that sort misses the mark. If and when the context of discussion is apologetics, then indeed the arguments that Catholics or Protestants can give will be be “fallible” and “non-binding.” But from that fact, it does not follow that any teachings to which such arguments facilitate assent is itself fallible and non-binding. Arguments only show how and when the assent of faith is reasonable; they do not suffice to make that assent rationally inevitable.
Best,
Mike
Mike (#236),
I want CIP to explain a glaring discontinuity between Christ and the Apostles. Christ did not use his pastoral authority to write. Three things are clear: (1) The Father intended the NT scriptures (2) The law of Christ revealed and mediated the Father’s intentions (3) The actual NT scriptures fulfill the Father’s intention. I conclude that the NT scriptures are necessary by necessity of supposition and precept. Disagree ? If not, then provide catholic sources of revelation to substantiate my conclusion.
Eric
Eric (#243):
Your argument is sound. It does not follow, however, that that the Apostles knew your conclusion is true. All that follows is that, once the NT canon was established de facto (probably by the mid-2nd century), the early Church was in a position to verify your premises, and thus reach your conclusion.
Accordingly, we don’t have to identify something Jesus or the Apostles said in order to show that an NT was necessary or that it would end up containing what it does. All that’s necessary is to identify the Church Christ founded, and her authority. And Scripture helps us do that, while also being validates as such by the Church.
Best,
Mike
Hello Mike (re: #242),
Thanks for the response; here is my reply.
1. I did not intend to attribute to you the position that the Council of Rome’s pronouncement was infallible by virtue of their being a local council. However, you do go on to claim that the enumeration at the Council of Rome was infallible as the matter had been “settled by Tradition.” Herein lies the rub. Is that conclusion [that the Council of Rome’s enumeration was infallible] an element of the Catholic Faith that is formally protected from error? You seem to reply, yes since it is part of Tradition. However, this is your opinion. Even if it is based on a reasoned argument, it is licit for a Roman Catholic today to hold that the Council of Rome’s decision was not infallible. Therefore, the Catholic is back to square one of a canon based “largely on opinion” prior to Trent. He may accept your argument about the Council of Rome or he may reject it, but either way, he is the fallible agent making the decision.
2. I’m not married to the thesis that the way Catholics know the binding decisions of the ordinary magisterium is parallel to the way Protestant’s know what constitutes Scripture. Nevertheless, I will respond to some of your statements there:
A) You said,
Perhaps I was unclear, but I did not intend to assume this. Whether or not Catholics actually are aware of all the things that have been infallibly decided is irrelevant to my argument. Rather, I argue that it is impossible for a Catholic to know, with certainty, whether or not a matter has been infallibly decided by the ordinary magisterium.
B) You said,
On the Catholic paradigm, individuals cannot know, with certainty, without a formal definition of the belief. The reason is that all of their decisions as to what is in Tradition will be based on their evaluation of arguments that are not protected from error. You cited 3 examples which, conveniently for your argument, have not changed. However, I can cite examples of things that appeared to be settled only to be disputed later. One example is a literal six day creation, which Catholics are now free to disregard.
C) You said,
Protestants can know that canon at least as well as a Catholic can know if something has been infallibly decided by the ordinary magisterium. Also, it is not much of a point to say that Protestants, who deny the existence of an infallible, visible authority, did not appeal to one. Before examining the historical record, I would first ask how you interpret Romans 3:2?
3. (A) By “presupposing natural reason” I mean that a person has a more ultimate commitment to natural reason than to other things. When you say something is a “more reasonable way of conceiving” the FPOF, you are arguing that an individual ought to choose this way. However, how do you know that the “more reasonable way” is more likely to be true? At rock bottom, it seems that you propose natural reason is an axiom that must be accepted. How do you know natural reason is valid? If you give a reasoned argument in response, then you beg the question. Thus, you simply place your trust in it. Well, Reformed Christians place a similar trust in God’s Word at the outset.
(B) Reformed Christians propose the Word of God as an alternative, ultimate presupposition. Human reason is subordinate to God’s Word, but God’s Word provides the necessary foundation for valid, human reasoning. How do Christians know what the Word of God is? God tells them. He says, “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27). Dr. James White has framed it in the following way, “The New Testament canon developed in the consciousness of the church over time, just as the Old Testament canon did” [http://www.equip.org/articles/what-really-happened-at-nicea/
“Vatican I said that it holds the “written books” as sacred and canonical because of there inspiration and divine origin.”
Then my answer remains the same. The Church has always considered the Scriptures Divine. And the Church canonized the Scriptures. Therefore, this has been true throughout the history of the Church.
Correct. The Teachings of Christ preceded the NT Scriptures.
You are reading a general command to write into the Scriptures. But it is not there.
Correct. It originates with the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.
Agreed. But this is not one of them.
I’ll try to get to it later.
It is fact, Jesus said:
John 10:35
If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
Thus teaching that Scripture is the Word of God.
Sincerely,
De Maria
John (#245):
Addressing me, you write:
You’re presenting a false dichotomy: either “formal infallibility” or “opinion.” That is understandable, since many poorly catechized Catholics labor under the same misimpression about how infallibility manifests itself in the Church. But the dichotomy is not only false, but demonstrably so. How?
Suppose arguendo that the dichotomy is true: formal infallibility and opinion are the only epistemic alternatives. If so, then only dogmas formally defined by ecumenical councils or popes, as binding on the whole Church, are suitable for the assent of faith as distinct from that of opinion. But if that is itself a true norm of faith binding on the whole Church, then by its own criterion, it too would have to have been formally defined in the way specified. Yet it never has been. On the contrary, when the Magisterium has addressed the topic of infallibility, it has assumed that “the Church” as such–i.e., the body of the faithful as a whole–is infallible on matters of faith, and speaks of the infallibility of popes, general councils, and the college of bishops only as manifestations of such ecclesial infallibility. And things could hardly be otherwise; for prior to any ecumenical council or unilateral papal definition, the entire deposit of faith was infallibly held and professed by the Church “catholic,” albeit more explicitly by the college of bishops with divine authority over said Church. Thus, what counts as “infallible” teaching must be discernible in principle by Tradition without the intervention of the extraordinary magisterium. The latter only makes the prior faith of the Church more explicit and precise so as to dispel confusions or errors that contingently arise; it does not fashion the Faith along the way out of prior opinions. That’s what the first ecumenical council did, and that’s what all subsequent interventions by the extraordinary magisterium have done.
The mistake you’re making consists in a faulty inference. Thus, from the fact that many Catholics are unclear or wrong about which non-defined doctrines are irreformable in virtue of having been infallibly taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium, you conclude that everything short of formally defined dogma is a matter of opinion. But given how the Church works as I’ve described, that neither is nor could be the case. When the Magisterium clears up such confusion or error, it is not changing a matter of opinion into a matter of faith. It is making clear what the faith on the matter always was, so that those who don’t recognize it as such, or see the matter only as one of opinion, are better equipped to see that they were wrong (not that they always will). As I had said, there are many examples of that. The fact that not all such cases have been cleared up by formal magisterial statements does not mean that every such case is a matter of opinion until formally made otherwise.
Again, the biblical canon is a good example of what I’m talking about. What made the Council of Rome’s enumeration of the canon infallible was not the fact that the Council of Rome taught it, but the fact that said council was only articulating what had been come to be recognized as irreformable by means of Tradition as borne, professed, and known by the Church as a whole. The Council of Trent found it necessary to reaffirm the canon accepted by universal Tradition only because the Reformers presumed to delete the “deuteros,” thus treating the exact contours of the biblical canon as a matter of opinion and leading some to do the same.
Your objection to such a picture is this:
But the example you give is faulty. St. Augustine denied that Genesis had to be interpreted as positing creation in literally six days, and was never condemned for that. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for the Ptolemaic theory of geocentrism: Copernicus and Kepler were never condemned for proposing the hypothesis of heliocentrism, which was confirmed a few centuries later. The reason most Christians of whatever stripe believed young-earth creationism and geocentrism prior to the development of modern science–and some still do, much to my chagrin–was that there were no confirmed scientific alternatives to the biblical account of such matters. On reflection, the Catholic Church has come to understand that natural science is its own, legitimate form of inquiry whose conclusions need not and should not be understood as contrary to the Faith. So, as the CIP would have it, where exegesis and scientific knowledge conflict, it’s biblical exegesis which should change.
A better example for your purpose might be contraception, but even that one doesn’t work for you. Prior to the 20th century, the universal consensus of the Catholic Church in particular and of Christendom in general was that intentionally blocking conception where it could otherwise occur is gravely immoral. Since the 1920s, most Christians have rejected that past consensus, thus raising the question whether the consensus was always wrong, or whether it was always right, so that most Christians today–including most Catholics–are wrong. Only the Catholic Magisterium has consistently taught the latter; indeed a recent Vatican document has called the Catholic teaching “definitive and irreformable.” Thus on the CIP, the matter is not one of opinion–and the fact that most people think it is does not make it so.
You write:
As I have long argued, the fact that Protestants as such “deny the existence of an infallible, visible authority” renders religion simply a matter of opinion for them, whether some realize that or not. For without such an authority, there is no principled way to distinguish between authentic expressions of divine revelation and what some fallible people believe to be such expressions. The CIP does have such a principled means and uses it when necessary–although for the reasons I’ve given above, recognizing when a given teaching is irreformable is not limited to formal statements by such an authority.
As to Romans 3:2, my individual interpretation is not what counts. What counts is how the Church as a whole interprets it. The Church as a whole has always understood that verse to be literally true. Accordingly, the fact that most Jews don’t become Christians can only be explained by their unwillingness to see the Christ-event and the Church has the fulfillment of their own scriptures. The question when that unwillingness is culpable is, of course, another matter that cannot be judged in individual cases.
You write:
Your position amounts to a form of fideism that I don’t believe all “Reformed Christians,” let alone Catholics, would accept. Those who don’t accept it have very good reason to reject it. Why?
The questions you pose to me are of the form: “How do you know….?” Such questions can only be answered, whether well or poorly, using what you call “natural reason.” I could answer them and we could debate the answers; but given how you have framed the issue, that would be beside the point. The point is that there is no alternative to “presupposing” the validity of natural reason if we are going to conduct any inquiry at all with the aim of discovering truth. “Trust” in natural reason is accordingly justified on that basis, apart from any appeal to an authority one might also trust; to deny that would be to eschew reason altogether, which I don’t think even you want to do. But the same cannot be said of what you present as your presupposition. Unlike trust in reason, your presupposition is trust in what you take to be an authority that undergirds and can trump reason; but you cannot present that as knowledge if you present it as an alternative to trusting reason. Since you do present it precisely as such an alternative, you eschew giving any more basic “reasons” from which we could infer its truth. Accordingly, I can explain why my presupposition is justified as such, but you cannot do the same for yours–unless you argue that the entire system of belief involving your presupposition is, itself, at least reasonable. But that would have you doing the same thing on behalf of your belief-system that I do for mine. And that would be fine by me, since I believe I can make and have made the better case.
Yet you also write:
That is confused–so much so, that it is ultimately incoherent. There is of course a sense in which “human reason is subordinate to God’s word”: Where conclusions reached by the former conflict with the latter, it is the former that needs correction. But human reason has an unavoidable role to play in helping us determine what counts as “God’s word” in the first place. To deny that lands you inextricably in the difficulties I described in my previous paragraph. Indeed, it is simply incoherent to suggest that God’s word is the “foundation” by which we can validate the use of natural reason. Whatever A is a foundation for B can only be exhibited as such by making inferences by natural reason from A. So, where B is natural reason itself, presenting something called “God’s word” as the foundation for natural reason is self-defeating.
Best,
Mike
@Susan (#232)
Thanks for the reply. :) Just a few thoughts of my own, but nothing too serious…
You wrote:
Eh, at least speaking for my own (former) pastor, he was fully aware of the implications of his theology. He just didn’t think there was any (viable) alternative, and I thought there was. But, yeah, religion reducing to opinion definitely didn’t seem to bother him in a way that it did me. I think there are good reasons that it should bother someone, but, for any number of reasons, my former pastor didn’t find my thoughts compelling. Oh well – as a philosopher, one encounters this not infrequently.
You wrote:
Well, I’m not a trained theologian, but I think what you have there is a bit imprecise. If the Reformers are presenting their theologies as one human interpretation among many possible human interpretations of the Bible, then not believing your confession (Augsburg, Westminster, etc.) is infallible makes a lot of sense. After all, opinions can (and have!) been wrong plenty of times before. Further, even if one doesn’t think Westminster (say) is infallible, one can still say that it makes better sense of the Bible than Augsburg (say). So it’s not that the Reformers have no principled way to critique anyone else’s doctrines – it’s that their critiques fundamentally cannot rise above the levels of human opinions. And the good (or bad) things about human opinions are, first, one is rationally required to change her opinion if one finds enough information indicating that she was wrong and, second, one should not accept an opinion on authority but on the evidence. (These interrelate with each other, obviously – because opinions are based on the best available evidence, they are changeable if the right kinds of evidence later come into play).
All of that is how matters go if one thinks that religious matters ultimately devolve into human opinions about divine revelation. I’m not a Luther scholar (or a Calvin scholar, etc.), but I don’t get the feeling that those folks or their early successors thought that Calvinism or Lutheranism was merely the best-supported human opinion but that, in some broad sense, Calvinism or Lutheranism was what God had revealed – and hence, wasn’t to be accepted (or rejected) as an opinion, but was to be received with the assent of faith. Dr. Anders mentions this in his dissertation on Calvin (hopefully I understood his scholarship correctly):
Although Dr. Anders goes into (much!) more detail, my takeaway is this: Once Calvin starts arguing that churches may not only define their own doctrines but also saying that their doctrines must be accepted on grounds of implicit faith, we’re no longer talking about human opinions anymore. We’re talking about a kind of thing that has been given divine authority. In other words, having implicit faith in the proclamations of a merely human institution putting forth one human opinion among many is not only wrong but dangerous. But if an institution has been divinely established and preserved from error under some certain conditions, then its proclamations are not merely human opinions (that is, its proclamations are not merely one opinion among many) but are instead divinely authorized. And as divinely authorized proclamations they aren’t received as opinions but on the authority of the (divine) giver – and thus, our acceptance of such proclamations isn’t with the assent of opinion but with the assent of faith.
So that was a long and probably boring way of saying that, if the Reformers saw their views as nothing more than merely human opinions, they can still critique others’ views – but their critiques will never transcend human opinions about what God has revealed. But if the Reformers saw their views as (in some sense) authoritative expressions of divine truth (which thus call for the assent of faith), then now they’re sounding like Catholics (who also think that the Church can make authoritative expressions of divine truth which call for the assent of faith). But any Reformed Christian thinking in that kind of way is going to quickly butt up against “All synods or councils…may err; and many have” (WCF 31.3). So Catholics disagree with the WCF there – we hold that general councils may not err (under certain conditions) due to Jesus’ unfailing promise. Hence, whatever doctrines are proclaimed by a general council cannot be in error, and thus we submit to them not because we agree with them (the assent of opinion), but on the divine authority they come from (the assent of faith).
OK, enough rambling. I need to get back to dissertation writing. Thanks very much for your kind compliments at the close of your note; I hope what I wrote here was of some small service to you (or whoever else reads it). Have a great day!
Yours Sincerely,
~Benjamin
1. You, are jumping to conclusions.
2. Perhaps Mike is being cautious.
3. Perhaps Mike simply uses more words than he needs.
4. But it is simply wrong for you to claim that the problem is with the Catholic paradigm simply because YOU disagree with a Catholic who tries to explain Catholic Doctrine.
5. There is no problem with the Catholic paradigm.
6. The problem lies with the person who does not understand the Catholic paradigm.
First of all, what makes you think that the Apostles would turn to any Scripture INDEPENDENT OF CHRIST?
That makes no sense. Christ used the Septuagint, therefore the Apostles used the Septuagint and therefore the Catholic Church uses the Septuagint.
What does that mean?
St. Luke explains why he wrote his Gospel:
Luke 1
King James Version (KJV)
1 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
2 Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
3 It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
4 That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
So, it sounds to me as though he wrote his Gospel in order to help others understand the Teaching of the Church.
De Maria
Mike (re: #247),
Thanks for the response. Here is my reply to a few things that you said.
1) You said:
I admit to presenting a truncated version of church infallibility as you have corrected me. I was actually working off what I heard from a Catholic apologist, Marc Bonocore, in which he breaks down the Catholic faith in the following way. He says there is (1) dogma, which is binding on all the faithful (2) canon law, which the faithful must obey though they are free to disagree with it, and (3) theological opinion, which a catholic may adopt or reject. My mistake was to limit that first category to formal definitions by the extraordinary magisterium. However, I think my argument still holds water after considering this correction. I will elaborate below.
2) You said:
Ok, herein lies the rub. I would like to draw a distinction between the object of faith and the act of knowing that object. It makes sense on the Catholic paradigm that the magisterium does not change opinion into formal doctrine. Since truth is truth, restating/clarifying something that is true does not make it more true or less true. However, my objection is not that the status of the object of faith is changing, but rather, the status of an individual’s knowing changes when things are formally defined. My main point is that on the Catholic paradigm, outside of formal, dogmatic definitions, an individual’s knowing can never reach any objective certainty. An individual may be convinced in his or her own mind that the ordinary magisterium has decided X. But, that individual cannot declare X to be true independent of human opinion, since he or she has no authority to do so. Sure, the individual might provide reasoned arguments and give evidence that the ordinary magisterium has decided X. In fact, that is parallel to what the Protestant does to say the bible has decided X; he or she provides evidence and reasoned arguments. If there is no objection to this principle when it appears in the Catholic paradigm, it should not be rejected out of hand in a Protestant paradigm.
3) This last section is of a somewhat different nature, but still very important. You said:
You are correct that not all Christians openly accept this position. However, this “form of fideism” is consistent with Reformed theology, since a faith that is generated by God’s spirit in his elect is not a blind, irrational leap, but rather a complete trust in the substance of things hoped for [Hebrews 11:1].
You also said:
This is your “form of fideism.” You say we must trust natural reason, because there is no alternative. But, even if it is true that there is no psychological alternative, that does not show that natural reason leads to objective truth. Your view does not escape the possibility of Descartes’ evil demon.
Lastly, you said:
This is a misunderstanding of the term “foundation” which I did not specify. I did not mean that God’s word is the “foundation in a logical order” of natural reason. Rather, God’s Word and God Himself provide the ontological foundation for the validity of natural reason. Also, when I speak of presupposing God’s Word, I do not mean to imply the “pre” refers to the time at which I hold this supposition. Rather, God’s Word is held preeminently; it is the most ultimate of all the other Reformed Christian’s beliefs.
Peace,
John D.
John D (#250):
You write:
Thanks for that clarification of your argument. I have several interrelated points to make in reply.
First, your statement that on the CIP and “outside of formal dogmatic definitions, an individual’s knowing can never reach any objective certainty” is an overstatement. When adults are received into the Catholic Church, they profess their adherence to “all that the Holy Catholic Church professes and teaches.” Nobody thinks the neophyte thus explicitly affirms a comprehensive, completely accurate list of non-defined teachings set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium (‘OUM’), or even such a list of dogmas defined by the extraordinary magisterium. As far as I know, there are no such lists for people to memorize, and in the former case, I doubt there even could be. When I directed RCIA, however, the pastor and I made the standard, twofold presumption about the neophyte: (a) She has significant and generally accurate understanding of the particulars of the Faith, and implicitly affirms those particulars when professing her adherence to “all that the Holy Catholic Church teaches”; (b) She consciously affirms the Magisterium’s claims for itself in particular, such that she pledges her acceptance of whatever the Magisterium has taught and will teach as belonging to the deposit of faith and morals. Of course there will inevitably be cases of such teaching that the neophyte doesn’t know are such cases when she is received into the Church. Indeed most Catholics, whether cradle or convert, never quite reach the point of knowing what all of them are. It does not follow, however, that they can “never” know that a given teaching meets the conditions for having been infallibly taught by the OUM until the Magisterium explicitly says so. For instance, the binding character of the Apostles’ Creed neophytes recite while being baptized has never been formally defined by the extraordinary magisterium, whether piecemeal or as a whole; but it is uncontroversial that its content has been infallibly taught by the OUM. The same goes for the other examples I’ve given before, and for still-less controversial examples such as “God loves everybody.” Often people are vague or otherwise unclear about what such propositions mean, but Catholics as such are by no means uncertain about their truth.
But second, the content and degree of authority of many such teachings typically is “known” with “objective certainty” by neophytes and by Catholics generally. Of course there are also teachings in which that is not the case. But that is not a difficulty for the CIP. For one thing, the “objective certainty” borne by definitive Church teachings is intrinsic to them, but is not necessarily shared by a given person who knows their content. She might well be in doubt about some of them at particular times, but that is a defect of either the individual’s virtue of faith or the catechesis she has received–not of the objective criteria by which propositions are identified as objects for the assent of faith. For another, and even more important, the CIP contains a principled means of resolving cases in which many people doubt their binding character as authentic expressions of divine revelation as opposed to human opinions. It is that means which the Catholic as such affirms with the assent of faith and relies on.
Third and accordingly, although there is indeed a parallel between a Protestant’s understanding of the Bible and the Catholic’s of Church teaching, there is also a crucial difference. For many Protestants–mostly “conservative” Protestants, whether confessional or evangelical–and for Catholics as such, the Bible is to a certain degree an object of implicit faith. Both affirm that the Bible is a divinely inspired and thus inerrant record of divine revelation; yet since nobody has fully plumbed its depths and fully understands it, some interpretations, even when true, are reached and expressible only as opinions, and some of those interpretations will be false. Thoughtful Catholics as such often undergo the same sort of process when faced with the large body of Church teaching as well. But the crucial difference is that Catholics as such possess, and Protestants as such do not possess, a way of getting beyond mere interpretive opinions–about Tradition and magisterial statements as well as Scripture–to actual objects for the assent of faith. When the Catholic affirms, with an assent of faith whose object is partly implicit, “all that the Holy Catholic Church professes and teaches,” she is affirming that the Magisterium has the divinely bestowed authority to teach infallibly which theological propositions are authentic expressions of divine revelation and which are only opinions, whether such opinions happen to be true or false. That is the “principled means” by which the Catholic can distinguish between the two classes of proposition. Since, however, Protestants as such deny infallibility, ecclesial as well as individual, they have no principled means of making that distinction. So the mere fact that Catholics often don’t employ such means or do so accurately doesn’t mean it’s not there and not available to Catholics. In fact it is, and it increasingly manifests itself in the Church over time.
About what I called you “form of fideism,” you write:
That won’t do even for your own purposes, unless and until you can explain just how the “complete trust” you cite is not itself an irrational leap of faith.
You write:
Our trust in natural reason is not just the only “psychological alternative” available, but the only logically possible alternative as well. That’s what I meant when I said that there is no alternative to “presupposing” the validity of natural reason if we are going to conduct any inquiry at all with the aim of discovering truth. Your objection even to that appears to be: “…that does not show that natural reason leads to objective truth.” But that objection is weak. The undeniable fact is that natural reason often does lead us to truth, even though sometimes it leads us into error. But the fact that it sometimes leads to error is not a reason to distrust natural reason in general. For the only way to know that natural reason sometimes leads to error is to rely partly on it to discover the truths that serve to expose the previous errors. And we do that all the time. Hence natural reason is in general reliable, even though not in every particular case. That’s why we should trust it in general, even though we needn’t trust its conclusions in each and every case.
Of course, your general skepticism about natural reason as such is motivated by the fact that “it does not escape the possibility of Descartes’ evil demon.” But that is not a cogent reason to adopt your skepticism either. Although human reason cannot rule out the logical possibility of DED, the only reasonable stance is to rule out DED as a real possibility. To see why, consider another example. It is logically possible that the world came into existence five minutes ago, with exactly the observable features it has now; but that is not a cogent reason to believe it did, or even to believe that such is really possible. That’s because we know by experience that natural reason enables us to discover more and more truths over time, even though we may hold many false beliefs at any particular time. And one of those truths is that the world is more than five minutes old.
The mistake you’re making is to assume that to “know” something is to be certain about it on the ground that there is no logically possible alternative to affirming it. Descartes did not make quite that mistake, because he adopted that assumption only as part of his reconstructive method of “hyperbolic doubt.” But that was only a method for securing what he took (wrongly, in my view) to be the foundations of knowledge, not a criterion for each and every item of knowledge as such. The fact is that we know many things whose negation is logically possible, such as that the shape of our planet is roughly spherical, or that many diseases are transmitted by micro-organisms, or even how something “feels” or “seems” to us. To deny that we know such things is simply unreasonable; hence, so is your skepticism. That some doubt things that are facts, on the ground that the opposite is logically possible, is not a good reason to deny they are known facts.
You write:
Now that you’ve clarified yourself on the question of “foundations,” I must say that I agree as a Catholic. So I suggest you drop the idea that God’s Word is needed to ground natural reason epistemologically. The only possible basis for that idea is general skepticism about natural reason, which I have shown to be unwarranted.
Best,
Mike
Mike (re: #251),
Thanks for the reply. I don’t think I will be able to respond today, but I thank you for clearing up several of my misconceptions regarding the Catholic faith.
I will respond more critically in the coming days.
JohnD (re: #250)
The claim that there is no alternative to fideism was addressed in some detail in “Wilson vs. Hitchens: A Catholic Perspective” and the subsequent comments, as well as in the “Faith and Reason” podcast I did with Tim.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Mike (# 244),
Our exchange has provided good information to help sort out these issues. It’s important to highlight a main point to see what remains problematic for me.
(# 222) Thus if the Church is what she claims, then she is the visible, living embodiment of the formal motive: God’s authority as Revealer.
This is really the source of my problems. The authority is like a thread running through every interdependent aspect of FPOF. It explains three things: (1) Christ revealed through it. (2) The Apostles transmitted revelation through it. (3) The Church identifies, interprets and explains revelation through it. At many intersecting points, God inspired Scripture connects with this authority. Moreover, four more things appear: (1) God inspired by His own authority. (2) Christ’s law, received from the Father, excluded Him from writing. (3) The Apostles teaching and preaching includes writing. (4) The Church preaches, teaches and writes when proposing revelation.
Assuming God’s omnipotence and true free-will, He can and may continue “written books” during the Church age. Only a revealed truth, or necessary truth connected to revelation, limiting this can cause us to believe inspiration has ceased. How can scripture be limited to the Apostolic age when “God’s authority as Revealer” continues in the Church ? I’m unable to see how this authority can be a principled reason for distinguishing “inspired written books” and “uninspired written proposals of revelation”.
Thanks,
Eric
Eric (#254):
That’s kind of an odd question. Public revelation was closed at the end of the Apostolic age, so there can’t be any kind of further revelation either in written or unwritten form. We might realize additional significance of something else that has already been revealed (that is what development of doctrine is), but there is no new revelation after the death of the last Apostle. That is an (implicitly) revealed truth in the fact that the Holy Spirit, when delivered at Pentecost, led the Apostles into “all truth,” as taught by Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. That is why everything recognized as Scripture was reported from Apostles during their lifetime, even if the Apostle himself may not have dictated it or authored it verbatim.
We therefore can’t learn anything beyond what the Apostles knew in terms of the content of the Gospel; rather, we are working out various implications and applications of that content. That is, in essence, the problem of sola scriptura. It leaves us with no coherent path for development, only corruption. Scripture can never be reformulated or interpreted infallibly, so implications and applications can never be certain, meaning that there can be no such fixed public revelation. By contrast, Tradition and the Magisterium, as parts of the initial revelation, provide ways for infallible maintenance and development. In otherwise, the closure of public revelation does not prevent it from continuing to work in the Church, and to provide ongoing “authority as Revealer,” in the manner you described.
Eric (#254):
If I understand you aright, your “problems” center on what you see as the absence, within the CIP, of a principled distinction between the inspiration of Scripture and the infallibility of the Church. If there were no such principled distinction, then the CIP could not explain why the inerrancy of the Church’s developing, definitive teaching is compatible with the closure of the canon and the reservation of the term ‘inspiration’ for the source of the canon’s inerrancy. Well, the issue here is linguistic and logical, and can be resolved as such.
As a matter of linguistic usage, theologians and the Magisterium generally reserve the term ‘inspired’ for the men who wrote for the Church as the direct recipients of the revelation in Jesus Christ, authorized by him to teach in his name. The term ‘infallible’ is generally reserved for those who, although not direct recipients of said revelation, inherited the same degree of teaching authority from Christ through the Apostles, thus enabling the faithful to identify and interpret both Scripture and Tradition in ways that supply them with objects for the assent of faith, rather than just that of opinion. It does not follow, however, that the latter class of men–i.e. the college of bishops–is never “inspired” in its acts of teaching, or that the former class of men–i.e. the Apostles and their authorized collaborators–was never “infallible” in their acts of teaching. The former might sometimes be, even though we are not required to believe that; whereas the latter definitely was, and we are required to believe that. The point of maintaining the distinction of usage between ‘inspiration’ and ‘infallibility’ is to remind people that the latter class of men only transmits divine revelation with divine protection from error, while the former not only transmitted it with that protection but also had it because they received said revelation directly from the Revealer in person, who authorized them to transmit it. And that’s what explains why, on the CIP, the biblical canon could and ought be closed. The Bible records the once-for-all divine revelation, whereas the Magisterium only helps people identify and interpret said revelation in the “sources,” which include Tradition as well as Scripture.
Logically, then, the picture is this:
(1) Necessarily, whatever teaching is inspired is infallible, but not necessarily vice-versa.
(2) As the directly apostolic record of the once-for-all revelation in Jesus Christ, the written, inspired teaching of the NT is correspondingly once-for-all, so that the body of writings the Church has discerned over time to be such a record cannot be added to or subtracted from.
(3) By the same token, the “sources” of divine revelation’s transmission, i.e. Scripture and Tradition, are infallibly identified and interpreted as such by the Magisterium, not augmented by the Magisterium.
(4) On matters of interpretation, the Magisterium’s infallible teaching nonetheless augments our understanding of the once-for-all revelation transmitted to us through Scripture and Tradition.
I believe that supplies the necessary “principled distinction” between definitive, once-for-all divine revelation and the ongoing, developing interpretation thereof.
Best,
Mike
De Maria (# 246 & 249),
The reason I wrote “continuing with Vatican I” was to focus my attention on what it said. I was not claiming the Church did not always teach scriptures were divine.
You wrote:
You are reading a general command to write into the Scriptures. But it is not there.
Response:
See CCC #76. Writing was a way to keep the Lord’s command. NT writings fulfill a necessity of precept because the law of Christ mediated the intentions of the Father. Believers cannot doubt the Father intended the NT scriptures.
You wrote:
It is fact…..
R: Jewish tradition is not the authority of the Church. If JT knew certain books were inspired, then why do Protestants need Church authority to know ?
———————–
#1 through 6 is a rebuke. I accept it and don’t want to offend anyone.
You wrote:
First of all, what makes you think that the Apostles would turn to any Scripture INDEPENDENT OF CHRIST?
That makes no sense. Christ used the Septuagint, therefore the Apostles used the Septuagint and therefore the Catholic Church uses the Septuagint.
R: Jewish tradition and tests of a true prophet found in the Law are reasons I think they would turn. If the Septuagint was recognized like the Vulgate, then it would make more sense under the catholic paradigm.
You asked:
What does that mean ?
R: Scripture is a written form of transmitting revelation. The words are the content of the form. It is easy to link Christ’s teaching to the content, but what about this form ? Christ did not write, so what made the Apostles think they could ?
You wrote:
St. Luke explains why he wrote his Gospel….
R: This certainly explains why he wrote his Gospel and it serves to fulfill the law of Christ.
Thanks,
Eric
Eric on April 6th, 2013 6:49 pm, you said:
Got it.
This is what CCC#76 says:
76 In keeping with the Lord’s command, the Gospel was handed on in two ways:
- orally “by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit”;
- in writing “by those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to writing”.
That doesn’t say that Jesus instructed the Apostles to write. Again, as I have mentioned. If Jesus instructed the Apostles to write, it is surprising that so few obeyed His command.
Its hard to untie that knot. Let me see.
1. Before Christ and the Church, the authority was Moses and the Levitical Priesthood. It is they to whom Scripture refers where it says:
Acts 7:38
This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:
And also:
Romans 3:2
Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.
Then Jesus came and brought the Mosaic law to fulfillment and closed out the Old Testament:
Hebrews 9:
King James Version (KJV)
16 For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.
17 For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.
And the Catholic Church became the new ministers of the Word of God:
2 Corinthians 3:6
Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
1 Peter 4:11
If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
And Scripture says of the Church:
Ephesians 3:10
King James Version (KJV)
10 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,
The Protestants came many centuries later and have no authority but their own man made traditions.
———————–
Its a correction. There is a fine distinction. A rebuke would read something, “…and don’t do it again!”
re·buke
/riˈbyo͞ok/
Verb
Express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions.
A correction highlights the error and gives the proper understanding.
cor·rec·tion
/kəˈrekSHən/
Noun
The action or process of correcting something.
A change that rectifies an error or inaccuracy.
In addition, I posed the correction as a question and it is not rhetorical.
That is a fine attitude. Thanks for your patience and sorry for the misunderstanding.
To which tests are you referring?
I’m not sure what you mean because the Septuagint is included in the Vulgate.
Agreed.
Where do the words come from?
What form are you talking about?
Correct.
According to Scripture it is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
In my opinion, we can generalize that the other three Gospels were written for the same reason. St. John says:
John 20:31
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Yes, it does. But the primary law of Christ concerning evangelization is that the new disciples should be taught by word. Not that bibles should be handed to them and they learn on their own.
You’re welcome,
De Maria
Mike (re: #251),
(1) You write:
The Protestant can say the same regarding definitive teaching in Scripture. The Word of God is objectively certain and bears infallible authority.
(2) You also write:
And also:
I have several critical comments in response to this.
A. The Protestant paradigm is consistent with itself in that it affirms the perspicuity of Scripture. Here is the WCF to that end, “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all:yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
B. The Protestant paradigm is not without a principled way of distinguishing authentic expressions of divine revelation. That principled way is exegesis and hermeneutics which draw upon reason, evidence, tradition, and ultimately the Spirit of God who will guide believers into Truth. Remember, Jesus says “My sheep hear my voice.”
C. The principled way you speak of on the CIP does not escape the infinite regress of interpretation. That is, once the magisterium defines a dogma formally, that definition is then subject to interpretation. Those interpretations can then be debated. For example, Vatican I said, “If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God let him be anathema.” I have seen conservative Catholics argue that this canon makes Catholic belief in theistic evolution illegitimate. Also, would you say that magisterial statements are clearer than the Word of God?
(3) I will move my comments about presuppositions to the posts where Bryan Cross has directed me.
Peace,
John D.
Eric and De Maria,
Your conversation is deviating from the topic of this post, so please continue your discussion off the thread. Thanks!
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
John D (#259):
I had written:
To that, you reply:
It’s important here to note that infallibility is a property of persons, not of objects such as books. The infallibility borne by Scripture is that of the persons who wrote, collected, and certified those writings as, together, the normative written record of divine revelation. Writings are neither fallible nor infallible; they either contain errors or they do not. When they do not, that can be because those who wrote, collected, and certified them are infallible in those capacities, by divine gift. When that is the case, the writings are called ‘inerrant’.
With the above correction made, I agree with your point. But that only reinforces my own point. For conservative Protestants, Scripture is the formal, proximate object of faith (FPOF) inasmuch as it records divine revelation and is, itself, an embodiment of divine authority which must thus be believed with the assent of faith, not of opinion. For Catholics as such, the triad: Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium is the FPOF, where the three elements are understood to be mutually attesting and necessarily interdependent. Both Catholics and Protestants have an FPOF which they take to be the embodiment of divine authority, and thus as the means by which we identify what God has revealed. Hence the fact that Catholics sometimes err, as individuals, in how they interpret their FPOF is no more an argument against Catholicism than the fact that Protestants sometimes err, as individuals, in interpreting their FPOF. The fact in question thus does not settle the larger question.
The larger question is this: Who has the more reasonable way of conceiving what counts as the FPOF in the first place. I argued:
That difference is quite pertinent not only to the question how to interpret Scripture, but also to the question what counts as Scripture in the first place. Since Protestants deny that anybody after the Apostles is ever infallible, they are logically committed to affirming that the way the Church came to identify and close the biblical canon was fallible. And if that is the case, I would argue, then conservative Protestants have no principled basis for claiming divine authority for their belief that Scripture is an inerrant and thus normative record of divine revelation. Whereas Catholics do: the infallibility of the Church Christ founded.
To what I’ve just quoted from myself above, you reply with three paragraphs labeled ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ respectively. I shall now consider each.
You write:
Another commenter quoted that sentence from the WCF to me before in this thread. I suggest you check out my replies, especially #61. In the meantime I note two things.
First, what you call “the Protestant paradigm” is only the paradigm of some Protestants. By no mean do all Protestants affirm the “perspicuity” of Scripture, inasmuch as many Protestants deny, with some reason, that the interpretive method cited by the WCF suffices to settle all significant doctrinal questions. Of course you could try to get around that by suggesting that Scripture is perspicuous only on “essential” doctrinal matters. But that would only kick the can down the road, because there is no agreement among Protestants as a whole about which matters are “essential” and which are not, and the method you cite does not itself suffice to settle that disagreement either.
Second, even supposing for argument’s sake that Scripture is perspicuous in the way the WCF describes, so that “the Protestant paradigm” is self-consistent, that would do nothing to show that the conclusions reachable by such means are something more than human opinions about what some people have said and done about God–i.e. are actually authentic expressions of divine revelation. That’s because Protestants as such deny that anybody after the Apostles is infallible.
Nonetheless, you write:
But that won’t do for the purpose. As I’ve just said, the method you describe does not suffice to show that it yields anything more than human opinions. Talk all you want about “the Spirit of God”; everybody claims the Spirit of God for what they confess; what matters here is the method by which they discern that it’s the Spirit of God talking, not just their own opinions. Thus everybody uses “exegesis and hermeneutics which draw upon reason, evidence, tradition,” yet by such means, many reach doctrinal conclusions opposed to those of many others. Who has the authority to say that their conclusions are Spirit-certified? Catholicism answers that question clearly, with reference to the authority of the Magisterium as the authentic interpreter of Scripture and Tradition. To the extent your paradigm answers it, it does so only with an academic magisterium. Having spent a good portion of my adult life in academia, I am not impressed with that. If you put any random selection of people with terminal degrees in theology into a room together, you’ll get as many opinions as there are people in the room.
You write:
What you call an “infinite regress” is nothing of the kind. The mere fact that Catholics sometimes err in how they interpret dogmas does not mean that the dogmas in question settle no questions or that the Magisterium cannot correct interpretive errors along the way. Thus the dogma you quote says only that God creates everything ex nihilo. That settled a question definitively. Bu it does not address the further question whether God creates most of the species he creates by enabling some other species to act as secondary causes thereof. From the standpoint of Catholic dogma, that question remains open, even though from the standpoint of natural science, it’s closing. Although it’s true that doctrinal development is never complete, and that not all errors Catholics make are formally corrected by the Magisterium as they arise, that is not an infinite regress; it is just an ongoing process that is also cumulative in its results.
Best,
Mike
This might be a bit odd, but I want to avoid some of the attachment to church names so as to ask the question generally. Because I found this testimony puzzling.
The speaker testifies that he left church x for church y. He raised some sensible concerns about church x. His main one was that church x doesn’t have clear teaching authority. You can read the Bible and try to figure stuff out on your own, but unless there’s someone who can make the final call on competing readings, you’re just never going to know for sure that your reading is right. (Fair enough, let’s suppose that things are more ambiguous than they seem when we read the Bible. Maybe we’re fooling ourselves when we think certain significant things are fairly clear.)
His conversion story then goes like this: “I really began to study the claims of church y and read the Bible. And the more I studied things I discovered that church y really does have it right. And, given that they have it right, I now accept church y’s claim to authority.”
So he read the Bible, as he had before, and determined privately that some position was right. Then he moved to the church that had it right on his own reading. (Which he also did once before when he moved from church w to church x.)
He now accepts of authority of church y based on his own judgement about what the Bible does and doesn’t say, which is exactly what you’re not permitted to do if you accept the authority of church y. That seems like the wrong way to go about accepting the authority of church y. It can’t be based on your best reasons, otherwise it wouldn’t be authoritatively based. But then how can someone come to accept the authority of y? Is it the testimony of the Holy Spirit, because members of church x already have that in their favor, or so they will claim just as well as members of church y will claim.
Jones,
Just saw this comment. I will respond later this evening, as I’ve got something going on all day.
Jones,
While Jason is formulating his response, you can peruse these old articles which address your objection:
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/05/the-tu-quoque/
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/02/son-of-a-tu-quoque/
– dp
Jones,
This is kind of correct. What I would want to highlight is the fact that it is ultimately not a matter of comparing Rome’s views on each and every issue with Geneva’s, and then concluding that the former “has it right.” While that may correctly describe the move from Geneva to Canterbury or Wittenberg, it fails to capture a move to Rome. More on this below.
Not exactly. The convert to Catholicism weighs several strands of evidence when evaluation this issue, one of which is the Bible. But he also considers other matters, both philosophical and historical.
The authority-claims of the Catholic Church are rendered plausible by the evidence, but like any article of faith and teaching of special revelation, they cannot be demonstrated by the same means you would use to prove at what temperature water boils. Rather, the CC’s claims, once deemed plausible, still must be accepted with the assent of faith.
This is in no way the same thing that transpires when one switches Protestant denominations, for (as the articles linked above show) a convert to a Protestant denomination still retains his interpretive autonomy once he has changed churches, while the Catholic convert, while having employed his own investigative skills while considering the CC, vows to submit to the Magisterium once he has been convinced of the CC’s claims to authority.
In a word, there’s a big epistemological difference between submitting to a denomination because they’re right, and submitting to the Church because it is the Church.
I read the first article. If I’m understanding correctly, I would summarize this way:
“Yes, our own intellectual explorations and judgments play a role in coming to initially find that the Catholic Church, alone, has authority to teach Christian doctrine. The protestant will object, ‘But you’re relying on your own interpretation of Scripture and history to arrive at that conclusion.’ The Catholic responds that the ‘interpretation’ is not a sort of argumentative, deductive sort of conclusion, but something more like a personal discovery. It is like discovering the person of Christ and being moved by him; rather than discovering the doctrine of Christ and intellectually ascending to it.”
Is that near right?
If so, I can’t imagine this will be very persuasive. I understand the problem of authority and the question of how orthodox Christian theology comes to be formulated and believed. But if I’m supposed to rely on some mystical discovery, I’m not too optimistic. There are two broad interpretations of the development of Roman authority in the west: 1) it was political development that political leaders in the West’s strongest city baptized or 2) God really gave such authority to Rome.
I don’t know how one comes to believe 2.
Thanks for your reply, Jason. I was moved by your testimony and your boldness in making such a difficult move. It certainly takes a good bit of courage to do what you’ve done. I’m glad to have the opportunity to get your further comments on it.
You said: “In a word, there’s a big epistemological difference between submitting to a denomination because they’re right, and submitting to the Church because it is the Church.”
Yes, this is well-taken. I understand the problem you’re raising and about ecclesial authority, which can be all but non-existent in some protestant groups.
You say too that the claims that the Catholic church is precisely the Church which has such authority is plausible. I don’t know what else to say but that, according to my (perhaps insufficient) understanding of Christian history, it’s highly implausible. If Alexandria had been more politically powerful than Rome, Roman Catholicism probably not exist. In the very least, monophysitism would be orthodoxy and Chalcedon would have been anathematized.
In any case, that seems just as plausible to me than that Rome has any special authority. I don’t mean to push the conversation to places that have been thoroughly covered, so don’t feel the need to convince me if my historical knowledge just isn’t sufficient for me to see the authority of Rome the way others do. But, if I do have a point, I hope Catholic apologists will see that the “Return to Rome!” sort of triumphalism just doesn’t really register for so many of us. It’s not a matter of not seeing the clear reasons; as you say, it’s not entirely a matter of grasping the clear reasons.
Dear Jones the Seeker (re#266)
“And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”
God gave this authority to no other man, because only Peter is the Vicar of Christ. And Peter – as the first pope – is the visible sign of unity in the Universal Church.
This is how we know where the true Church is: find the successors of Peter and the Apostles.
The discovery is not mystical, but historical.
Pax Christi,
Frank
Thank you, Frank. I understand this claim of Catholic theology (I think). But, as you might guess, I don’t find it persuasive. The Catholic doctrine of authority is really built up from this somewhat cryptic starting point. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say anything like what we’re being asked to believe.
When you ask evangelicals and other protestants to see the clarity of Roman authority in this passage, don’t be surprised that we have a difficult time finding it because, again, it doesn’t really say it. That is, it doesn’t say that therefore Rome has a special privileged in the church and that the bishop of Rome is the Vicar for all Christendom, and so on. It’s just a lot to have to believe on the basis of this small statement. But you probably know all of this.
The Catholic doctrine is certainly consistent with this passage, but so are any number of ecclesial models. I’m only making the standard non-Catholic point that, “meh.”
Dear Frank and “Jones, the Seeker”
Thank you, and Amen, Frank. I always need this reminder….at least for now as I still adjust to having recently become Catholic. I feel sometimes I am in a witness protection program, and that my identity has been changed:) Thankfully I was Reformed before and that I was sorta prepared for the transition.
(btw, your music is beautiful)
I understand the kind of skepticism that Jones the Seeker has; I had it myself. Mine came when I questioned ( as a seeker must) my own presuppositions about the nature of the church. I am still having spasms of skepticism when I consider the plethora of denominations out there all saying that they are the place where truth resides. But, this is my Protestant self that I am trying to kill, and the only way to kill it is to submit to the historical truth, that God founded a visible church, and that everything…..yes everything… she teaches is the truth. I once thought Rome’s longevity was a matter of contingence too. But it really couldn’t have been otherwise. “I believe in one holy, apostolic church…..” after all:) http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/
~Susan
Jones the Seeker,
I just wanted to pop in with a comment. Jason and Frank both refer to history . This was what made me consider the Catholic faith. I am going to give a long quote from a comment made by Ray Stamper which summarizes what started many of us on this journey towards Catholicism. This quote is found in comment 8 here:http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/01/a-response-to-scott-clark-and-robert-godfrey-on-the-lure-of-rome/
Thanks, no need to respond–Kim D
Dear Jones the Seeker (re#269):
In Mt. 18, where Jesus founds the Church upon the Rock of Peter (the language could hardly be more clear), Jesus is hearkening back to another moment in Scripture, Is. 22:
“[20]And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliacim the son of Helcias,
[21] And I will clothe him with thy robe, and will strengthen him with thy girdle, and will give thy power into his hand: and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Juda. [22] And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.”
He is investing Eliacim with the authority (exercised in the King’s absence) to act as Regent – a “vicar” of the King. The image of the keys was understood by the Jews as a symbol of complete authority. And the House of David is the OT prefiguring of the Church of the New Covenant. Jesus appoints Peter and his successors as Regents of his Kingdom in his absence, using language that any Jew who knew his Scriptures would recognize.
The foundation for the Catholic claim is historical and eschatological. Jesus founded One Church (“one, holy, catholic and apostolic”) and appointed one man as his Regent: Peter. “Christendom” is the Kingdom of Heaven – the Church – with Christ as Her King. So the Regent of the One Church is the head of “Christendom.” “Christendom” is a meaningless construct borrowed from political language. There is only the Kingdom of Christ: and this is the Good News.
Pax Christi,
Frank
Jones the Seeker,
Further, if I am to believe that there is no continuity between the apostolic age and now,I am forced towards, at the very least, agnosticism concering God. The “Solo” in sola scriptura just doesn’t serve as a theological nexus, as is evident by the result that I can see around me. So, it’s either many churches with varying “essentials”(huh?) OR there really is a church founded by God Himself. Many varying churches each deciding what constitues an essential is harder for a seeker of truth to find viable. One has to jump through hoops to make-up a new definition of what constitutes “the church”( invisible and apostolic at the same time?)But, if one can believe that God, who is truth, wants seekers to find, one could conceive that he would have founded a living institution…..especially since the RCC has found a really clever way to use Matthew 16:18 to its own advantage, being the Roman megalith that it is! Why can’t you allow this in your schema, considering that God is God?
I’d really like to hear a response.
~Susan
Susan,
You asked for my response, so I’ll give a very brief (and almost certainly inadequate) one. There’s much to be said, much I can say which may not be useful, and much I don’t know. (And I thank those others who have contributed helpful comments. I appreciate your time.)
I do accept that there is one church which Christ established; after all, there’s only one Christ and, so, only one bride. But I am skeptical that the Roman church in its institutional and political form embodies that one true church. The true church consists of all those persons of all nations and ethnicities who believe in the Lordship of Jesus by the Holy Spirit’s illuminating and regenerating work. Some of those people are Catholics, some are evangelicals like me, and others are other kinds of Christians.
I realize that there are serious theological differences between Christians. But by “Christians” I mean those who accept the central doctrines of Scripture. Secondary doctrines (typically, the metaphysical explanations of those primary doctrines) are areas of great contention and when we misunderstand what other Christians are saying in explaining primary doctrines we might be apt to think they reject those primary doctrines. In time we often find that they don’t but they’re using terms that misleading to us.
The norm of Christian theology is the Bible and its perspicuous propositions taught to faithful Christians and Christian communities by the Holy Spirit.
In any case, I’ve said something that won’t be new to most people and have, no doubt, opened myself up to a number of criticisms. But that seems more plausible to me than that Rome represents the nexus of the one true church. Suppose that the proper ecclesiology is congregational, as I’ve said, and the proper approach to theology is biblicist. There is something radically democratic and even unsettling in that. It’s hard to accept that the Holy Spirit simply leads the church and that his wind blows as God sees fit. It would be tempting, for political reasons to insist that the proper ecclesiology is episcopal; and in times when heresy is hard to answer on biblical and rational grounds (due to a dearth of exegetical and rational tools) it would be tempting to insist that deviation from the institution is itself a heresy so that more difficult heresies need not be meticulously answered.
But, once again, I understand that I’m not telling any former evangelical/protestant anything that he or she hasn’t already thought through. I, however, can’t see how those doubts and objections might be convincingly overcome.
Jones the Seeker (#274
How do you know what are the central doctrines of Scripture? How do you know which beliefs, derived from Scripture, are central and which are not? Is the Trinity derivable from Scripture? If it is, is it central? If so, why?
A lot of questions, but the first one in the series is the real one. When I was Reformed I was told that the sovereignty of God – as explicated by Calvinists – was central, obvious, and to deny it (in its Calvinist form) was to risk damnation. Were they right? Would you agree? Would you call those who disagree not Christians?
jj
“How do you know what are the central doctrines of Scripture? How do you know which beliefs, derived from Scripture, are central and which are not? Is the Trinity derivable from Scripture? If it is, is it central? If so, why?”
Yes, I know. That’s why I mentioned that I have opened myself up to many criticisms. This is where I also wish to plead that the sine qua non doctrines aren’t as difficult to ascertain as RCC and EO try to make it out. No doubt, authoritarian (as opposed to biblicist) approaches to theology would like to emphasize the ambiguity of Scripture (as I might like to emphasize its perspicuity). In any case, there it is. I don’t think it’s always entirely obvious but neither is it entirely obscure. I’m sure I won’t convince, however.
To give some answer, I suppose, yes, the Trinity is a sine qua non doctrine; that is, neither modalists, nor Arians, nor tritheists are Christians. And we know the Trinity is true because Scripture teaches 3 things about God: God is one, the Father is God/Son is God/Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are not the same persons or individuals. Those are all biblical truths that can’t be avoided by the exegete. Heresies all make things more intelligible but they do so by neglecting some perspicuous strand of Scripture about God.
This should not, however, be confused with say Augustinian, or Cappadocian, or Thomistic accounts of divine triunity. Those accounts seek to answer “how” God is triune. Understanding and affirming those accounts certainly aren’t essential to Christian faith. I’m sure you’ll agree, most Catholics couldn’t explain those accounts.
Is Calvinist sovereignty a sine qua non? No, the Calvinist account isn’t per se. But a biblical statement of sovereignty is. In other words, I can’t imagine what it would mean to be a Christian while denying that God providentially orders the world according to his own will. A Christian who thinks things happen willy nilly or that God can’t control things as their unfold wouldn’t really be a Christian; barring times of deep confusion. But I can imagine a Christian who neither knows nor affirms double predestination.
So the “what’s” aren’t so controversial for anyone who has a passable grasp of the biblical God. The “hows” are always quite controversial. But if the “hows” are essential for salvation then very few have any hope.
Really enjoyed listening to this, particularly the point that what most people know of catholicism is obtained from the enemies of the church rather than from the church itself. God bless you.
@Jones the Seeker (#276
Thanks – I understand, I suppose – but I found myself, at least, unable to respond to my Calvinist elders when they insisted that their understanding of the sovereignty of God was as clear and Scriptural as was the Trinity. Reminds me of Newman in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine – one of the books that made me a Catholic, in which he argues – cogently, it seems to me – that many of the beliefs of the early Church, including the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the grievousness of the sin of schism, and the primacy of the Pope, are seen from Scripture by the early Fathers with greater clarity and conviction than the Trinity itself.
But, of course, the “ambiguity of Scripture” cannot be a reason for believing in the authority of the Church – though I think it is a motivation for seeking to know whether there are not good grounds for believing in the authority of the Church.
Anyway, this is probably off the topic of Jason’s conversion. I’d better stop here :-)
jj
Thank you for your response. I see that you believe that the scriptures are perspicuous and that a teaching authority isn’t required in order to discover what can be easily ascertained from simply reading.You do, however, believe that there are doctrines that a person, who wants to identify with Christ, must give intellectual assent to,but you don’t see the need of an interpretive authority to locate interrelated scripture, define parameters, or declare dogma that is sine qua non. At least, this is what I think you are saying.
You cite the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as an example of an idea that is easy enough to grasp; easy for us to say, now, after the 1st and 2nd Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople,and Florence. We are all piggy-backing of the apostolic faith. The language used to define the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t even found in the scriptures.
“In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop her own terminology with the help of certain notions of philosophical origin: “substance”, “person” or “hypostasis”, “relation” and so on. In doing this, she did not submit the faith to human wisdom, but gave a new and unprecedented meaning to these terms, which from then on would be used to signify an ineffable mystery, “infinitely beyond all that we can humanly understand”.82 (CCC 251)
It couldn’t be that easy to understand if it took hundreds of years to formulate.And who formates, but a body of believers who are moved by God? Somebody had to say, “no” to this or that idea, and “yes” to another. But you said that the Trinity is a biblical truth that can’t be avoided by an exegete, but clearly there were heretics exegeting scripture( and they had all 73 books) and there are heretics still. There are heretics still because they deny some part of the apostolic faith.
I don’t know…..you are not convinced of the petrine ministry, but you are certain about the “whats’ of Christianity. You must not place the petrine ministry in your category of “whats”, but I wonder how you can do this when even a scriptural canon( which Protestants depend on to get their biblical doctrine) can even be decided without appealing to something outside the scriptures. There are things that cause me to scratch my head about the whole Reformation. These things seem glaring to me, but they don’t bother some Protestants; I was thinking yesterday, how weird it is that Luther was (rightfully) angry about the selling of indulgences, but doesn’t this mean that indulgences was part of Christian belief for some extended period of time prior to the Reformation? The RCC has retained a doctrine of indulgences, but Protestantism has dropped it from their essential doctrines. Same thing concerning the altar; under the authority of Calvin, Catholic altars were destroyed. This makes me very suspicious that men were tweeking things, not to be in accordance with scripture, but to their own intepretation of scripture and I don’t see how this is any different than a private development of doctrine. I have digressed, and this is material for another conversation, but man, I don’t understand why Protestants are not convinced.
Finally you said: “But if the “hows” are essential for salvation then very few have any hope”
If there were no sects people could more easily find the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. And this is the direction to search. First believe that God has not left us orphans and then go from there.
~Susan
Dear Jones,
I meant to address you in my last response( #279) Sorry about that:) I realize that I probably sound cranky:), and I don’t mean to come across so upset, but being the only Catholic in my family is very hard. Most of my old friends have been nothing but kind, but I still get jibes about the Papacy and Mariology from time to time. “Papist”is the most recent jab I heard, but it has a negative connotation for no good reason. It rolls off the tongue, so I get why they like say it, but it means nothing other than the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. It doesn’t make a Catholic doctrine false if they say it 1000 times.
I will let others take over from here. Happy Seeking:)
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/07/the-vatican-files-n-4-a-reply-to-ref21s-leonardo-de-chirico
~Susan