Preface: This post is not delving into these high-sounding words in the title because, quite frankly, I don’t know that much about them and don’t want to.
A humorous video to kick off the discussion (via Mark Shea):
The word the Calvinist says while doing the karate motions is “monergism“, the belief that God saves people without any cooperation on their part. This teaching is believed by many (most?) Presbyterian Communities and those who generally put “Reformed” in their name. Christ died for some rather than for all; if you are one of the elect, then nothing you can do or not do can cause you to lose your salvation; if you are not one of the elect, nothing you can do or not do can cause you to be saved (sorry).
Ah, I get it, a Star Trek Borg joke
However, there are also many Protestant Communities that believe in “Arminianism“, which holds that grace is resistible; that Christ died for all not just for some, salvation is conditional upon the person persevering in belief.
Catholics believe in something closer to “synergism“, that man cooperates with God’s grace, though some parts of Calvinism and Arminianism are compatible with Catholic teaching, I understand (Google Jimmy Akin and Tulip and read the first article on a “tiptoe through Tulip”).
My Point
But like I said in the beginning, I am only listing these three points on the spectrum to make the point that the Bible is not clear on which of these is true (or which blend of them is true).
Faithful, intelligent people have believed in each of them (Aquinas, Charles Wesley, and Calvin to name three).
Further, depending upon which of the above teachings you accept, upon reading the Bible you can interpret any of the relevant passages to support your belief and contradict the others. I am not saying that all of the interpretations are equally valid but rather that a faithful and intelligent person (see above list) after thought and prayer could choose to believe in any one of the three teachings.
Even if I were an Arminian, I wouldn't wear this shirt
I’ve read the Bible. I read the verses on predestination, on election, on free will, on falling away, on being condemned or saved for not serving our brothers and sisters (e.g. Matthew 25), on putting your faith into action or its dead, on being justified by grace through faith and not by the works of the law, on not being justified by faith alone, etc. etc.
And the way that I decided what to believe on this subject was not by studying the Bible and deriving the truth of it from exegesis, comparative analysis, and Holy Spirit bosom-burning, but rather as an Evangelical Protestant I accepted my Baptist church’s (Arminian) beliefs on the subject, and they seemed reasonable, but then once I came to believe that the Catholic Church was true and accepted her authority, I believed in the Catholic teachings on them.
If the Bible were perspicuous and if Tradition were not needed, then you would not have the state we are in today where millions of faithful and intelligent Christians adhere to these very different doctrines.
But we are in that state, which is strong evidence against the doctrine that the Scriptures are perspicuous. It also casts grave doubt on the doctrine of sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the sole infallible rule of faith and the claim of its formal sufficiency. Finally, it demonstrates all the more the need for an infallible interpretive authority, which could only come from God. Without that (the Magisterium), we are left with faithful and intelligent–but all too fallible–human beings interpreting the Bible and inevitably coming to false conclusions about what God teaches through it.
Oh man…you just know I’m gonna jump in here, guns a blazing- gotta run now, but just a quick thought- (and I want to be more careful and less long winded this time)
“monergism“, the belief that God saves people without any cooperation on their part.
The ‘saves people’ is via regeneration, and that is a gift from God. That we would not seek after God (the true God, not one of our making) at all with out Him regenerating us. It is typical for the opponents of this view to say it is a ‘forced’ conversion- it is not. It is the beautiful restoration of our souls, being born again, becoming children of God, a precious gift- without which you would not seek Him at all- but would rather find Him repulsive, brutish, and unthinkable.
One of my favorite websites-
http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Regeneration/
God bless you,
and will chat later,
Garret
I knew you’d want to weigh in on this one, Garret.
I would say that I was using a quick description of each term (which can really represent an entire set of beliefs, as going to the wikipedia entries on them demonstrate.) Each of these beliefs can be considered “good” and “beautiful” when seen in a sympathetic light, otherwise faithful and intelligent people like you would not believe in them. Your response itself actually helps prove my overall point. Feel free to weigh in more later!
Hi Devin,
Yeah I figured you’d know I’d see it and react! I will be true to your ‘thesis’, and not go to the specifics of monergism/synergism. Other than to say when you said RC is closer to synergism- it is absolutely synergism, as with out the merit of the works you do, your salvation would be very much in question. The Council of Trent addressed that.
If the Bible were perspicuous and if Tradition were not needed, then you would not have the state we are in today where millions of faithful and intelligent Christians adhere to these very different doctrines.
The irony is, the Roman Catholic Church with Scripture+tradition is far from achieving theological or social unity in her own body- so the objection that Sola Scriptura doesn’t produce “millions of faithful and intelligent Christians who adhere to these very different doctrines” is the pot calling the kettle black. Take for instance a liberal priest, and a conservative priest- these men have very different views on God, man, Biblical reality versus biblical myth, miracles versus superstition, philosophy, and natural history. There are Thomists and molinists , the Vatican II controversies and the stances individual Catholics take on them- etc! Change happens in the RCC, and RC’s disagree constantly.
The controversies and turnabouts in this article-
http://vintage.aomin.org/YouTell.html
In this article, notice R Sungenis confirming what I’m saying here- http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3435
Disobedience is the problem, not lack of clarity. It should be obvious, I would think. Could you explain how these things are not a problem for the RCC?
But we are in that state, and it thus demonstrates that the Scriptures are not perspicuous. It also casts grave doubt on the doctrine of sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the sole infallible rule of faith and the claim of its formal sufficiency.
False. This does not demonstrate the scriptures are not perspicuous, unless you mean that you have to understand all the minutiae of all the doctrines that will arise. That would be an unrealistic expectation given the nature of the revelation. For instance- the Protestant knows he is saved given clear parameters, which the Scriptures give. But exactly how and in what order salvation is achieved is up for debate- He chooses you, or you choose Him, for instance. The point is that you are saved you are given the clear and easy to understand parameters! This is perspicuity. It is not necessary to exhaustively know everything, but you are given enough and given it clearly, to enable an accurate understanding of what you are to do. I happen to believe that these controversies serve to get people to actually study and read and talk about the Scriptures- Do you think that might be something God would want to have happen?
Thanks,
and God bless you and your lil’ ones!
Garret
Hi Garret,
Tim Troutman (a convert to Catholicism from Reformed Protestantism) answered this question in response to a commenter on Called to Communion beginning here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/on-perspicuity-and-commentaries/#comment-2006 (Tim’s comment is right below the one making the same argument as you by JJS.)
Excerpt:
“People disagreeing on a thing does not prove its lack of intrinsic perspicuity, but it does constitute evidence against such perspicuity.
The second part of our problem with the perspicuity claim is its implication that the Scriptures are perspicuous on what is required for salvation. But this presupposes that the Salvation process is reducible to much less than what Christianity has always taught it to encompass. How can the salvation process not include the very life of corporate worship within the Church? Yet the Scriptures are far from perspicuous there. Yes, the Eucharistic celebration is mentioned, but that’s about as far as it goes. A reminder: I am not making an argument that such a thing exists, but that an living infallible magisterium would add clarity to the message of salvation.
So I agree with you that it’s not a sound argument to say that if people disagree then a thing can’t be perspicuous. I only pointed out the fact of wide disagreement there to show that if there is so much disagreement on a simple thing, then we can expect much more on the complex things. It is strong evidence against but not an absolute refutation of the Protestant doctrine of Perspicuity.”
He says more that responds to your challenge in his full comment.
Also, I would point out that heterodox Catholic priests know very well that they are dissenting from what the Catholic Church teaches. They couch their dissent in clever language at times, and they are certainly confused by their rejection of “thinking with the Church”, but what the Church teaches on the matters they question (whether homosexuality, women’s ordination, contraception, abortion, etc.) is never in doubt.
One of the common principles of Protestantism is sola Scriptura, including the perspicuity of Scriptures, but this principle has not resulted in a unity in _the teachings_ and _the doctrine_, even on core issues of faith and salvation, amongst the thousands of Protestant Communities. They differ in _their teachings_, saying nothing of the beliefs of the individual members of these Communities, which no doubt often vary widely even in one Community.
Hi Devin,
Thank you, I pray that everything is well with you and the family.
I have to say, I take the answer as a dodge. It does not effectively address the issue. In fact, it would seem that because the Bible does not impart Tim’s theology on salvation, that it is not clear- when the fact is that it is not clear because it teaches SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER. Tim is making assumptions that are not valid given the claims of the Apostles and early church Fathers. In particular, Tim’s statement- But this presupposes that the Salvation process is reducible to much less than what Christianity has always taught it to encompass. How can the salvation process not include the very life of corporate worship within the Church? Yet the Scriptures are far from perspicuous there.
Christianity has always taught what- that salvation is through grace imparted through sacraments? That is not Biblical, so it can be rejected outright as being non Apostolic. Of course the Scriptures are not going to teach what the writers did not believe, of course its not going to be clear on something they did not know about, nor would recognize.
I suggest you quit fighting Irenaeus- he said-
the entire Scriptures, the prophets, and the Gospels, can be clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood by all, although all do not believe them; Against Heresies Book 2 XXVII
He seemed to believe they were clear and easy to understand- and used them to fight Gnosticism. The Gnostics used the Scriptures against the orthodox, and the orthodox used the Scriptures back against them- that is the context of ‘Against Heresies’. The Scriptures were clear enough to do this.
He said in the same chapter-
A sound mind, and one which does not expose its possessor to danger, and is devoted to piety and the love of truth, will eagerly meditate upon those things which God has placed within the power of mankind, and has subjected to our knowledge, and will make advancement in [acquaintance with] them, rendering the knowledge of them easy to him by means of daily study. These things are such as fall [plainly] under our observation, and are clearly and unambiguously in express terms set forth in the Sacred Scriptures.
It takes eager study to get at the truths- you have to WORK and strive and wrestle with the concepts, but they are there to be understood. You can compare what you claim the Scriptures teach against the claims of others and come up with a result- whether the losing side caves in and comes to ‘see the light’ is up to God Himself.
In fact Irenaeus condemned people who claimed that the Scriptures were not perspicuous-
When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but vivâ voce: wherefore also Paul declared, “But we speak wisdom among those that are perfect, but not the wisdom of this world.”
Back to Devin-
One of the common principles of Protestantism is sola Scriptura, including the perspicuity of Scriptures, but this principle has not resulted in a unity in _the teachings_ and _the doctrine_, even on core issues of faith and salvation, amongst the thousands of Protestant Communities. They differ in _their teachings_, saying nothing of the beliefs of the individual members of these Communities, which no doubt often vary widely even in one Community.
This _is _due to the _fallen_ nature of _man. Period. No other _explanation_ is _valid_ the _scriptures_ are _clear to _achieve their_ purpose. The disobedience of the priests who know they are wrong has the same basis! Period. It can be demonstrated to those who hold strange unbiblical doctrine that they are not justified Biblically in their beliefs. For some strange reason, they don’t listen. Well, the reason is not strange when you study the Bible- see the first sentence of this paragraph.
Thanks,
God bless you and yours-
Garret
Hi Garret,
Thank you for your kind wishes.
It is always dangerous to bring in the Church Fathers, for in a few passages they might seem to support a position like sola Scriptura or the perspicuity of Scriptures, but then when read more fully their Catholicity is soon discovered, and it is clear that those isolated passages were read with a lens looking for support of a doctrine that would have been strange to them.
Irenaeus was refuting the Gnostic heretics of the 2nd century, who claimed that secret knowledge was given only to an elite group, “the Perfect” from which salvation could be found. Some Gnostics appealed only to this secret knowledge; others like Marcion also appealed to Scripture and interpreted it perversely, against the teaching of the Apostles, which was publicly taught and found in the written Scriptures (such as they had been collected at this time) as well as in the unwritten Tradition entrusted to the Church. There was no private revelation or hidden truth that only these other men knew. This is the context to understand his writings, including the passages you quoted.
Irenaeus was the Bishop of Lyons, the disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of St. John the Beloved. Lest your one quote that uses the word “tradition” be construed to indicate that he meant the Apostolic Tradition, here is more from Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3.3.2):
“‘Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successors of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere’”
Hmmm…Apostolic Tradition praised and preserved through successors of bishops, in union with the pre-eminent church of Rome. Garret, I believe you are Reformed Baptist: What is the name of your bishop, and who ordained him (that will help me know his succession from the apostles)?
So Irenaeus in the quote you mention using “tradition” must be speaking of another “tradition”, a Gnostic hidden tradition which the Scriptures and the Apostolic Tradition refute.
Following up directly after your first quote: “Since, therefore, the entire Scriptures, the prophets, and the Gospels, can be clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood by all, although all do not believe them; and since they proclaim that one only God, to the exclusion of all others, formed all things by His word, whether visible or invisible, heavenly or earthly, in the water or under the earth, as I have shown from the very words of Scripture; and since the very system of creation to which we belong testifies, by what falls under our notice, that one Being made and governs it,—those persons will seem truly foolish who blind their eyes to such a clear demonstration, and will not behold the light of the announcement [made to them]; but they put fetters upon themselves, and every one of them imagines, by means of their obscure interpretations of the parables, that he has found out a God of his own. For that there is nothing whatever openly, expressly, and without controversy said in any part of Scripture respecting the Father conceived of by those who hold a contrary opinion, they themselves testify, when they maintain that the Saviour privately taught these same things not to all, but to certain only of His disciples who could comprehend them, and who understood what was intended by Him through means of arguments, enigmas, and parables. They come, [in fine,] to this, that they maintain there is one Being who is proclaimed as God, and another as Father, He who is set forth as such through means of parables and enigmas.”
We see that he is (rightly) appealing to the Scriptures’ clear description of the creation of the world by the Father of Jesus (and not an inferior and evil Demiurge as the Gnostics maintained since the world was evil.) They take some parables that are more obscure and interpret them according to their false (hidden) traditions (not the Apostolic Tradition) and avoid reading the clear passages that speak of the Father’s creation of the world.
Irenaeus had a high view of Scripture, as does the Catholic Church, as do I; it is not that the Scriptures are completely unclear and cannot be understood at all, but rather they must be understood in their full context of the Apostolic Tradition with the successors of the bishops who lead Christ’s Church in union with the Bishop of Rome. Otherwise you have unstable men like the Gnostics misinterpreting them according to their false tradition.
Arius did the same thing a century later. And the list goes on.
The Church teaches the material sufficiency of Scripture: In it is contained all the bricks you need to build the house, but the house does not construct itself; you need the builders that God-ordained, following the blueprint that the Holy Spirit drew up and then uses to help the builders construct the house. Trying to build upon a different foundation gives you a house that doesn’t look like it is supposed to, and in the many Protestant Communities that is what has happened.
As to your last comment, there are many Protestant Communities who you would say hold “strange, unbiblical doctrine” and charge as not “being Biblically justified in their beliefs” because “they don’t listen”, but they DO study their Bible, and they ARE earnest, and they DO pray and try to listen to God as you do. The problem isn’t that they are not pious enough or intelligent enough or faithful enough or that they don’t listen to God enough or study their Bible enough; no, it is that they are trying to come to the fullness of the truth in a way that God did not intend. He promised to lead His Church into all truth, and that Church is not a purely invisible collection of believers but is a hierarchically organized, visible Church led by the successors of the apostles, as Irenaeus so clearly points out, in union with the Pope. Those Protestants, and you among them, are doing their best but have chosen to believe in novel doctrines proposed by men who schismed from the Church in the 1500s. In your case, you follow Calvin most closely. Others follow Luther most closely; others the Radical Reformers (Anabaptists), and other the Anglican Reformation. I know that you think you have studied the Bible and come to the clear truth in your teachings, but in reality you have first accepted a set of traditions largely constructed by Luther and then Calvin and their later followers, then you have taken that paradigm to the Scriptures and verified that they can be interpreted to support it.
I do want to know who your bishop is, and if you do not have one, how you explain what Irenaeus possibly meant by his clear explanation.
Devin-
I’ve been doing copious amounts of reading of the Fathers while I have time.
“It is always dangerous to bring in the Church Fathers, for in a few passages they might seem to support a position like sola Scriptura or the perspicuity of Scriptures, but then when read more fully their Catholicity is soon discovered, and it is clear that those isolated passages were read with a lens looking for support of a doctrine that would have been strange to them.”
Amen! I say the same to you regarding doctrines that would be strange to them in the Catholic realm! There are many I would argue. But alas, for now I will only assert the claim. But I will show that it is not the mere appearance of a sola scriptura type argument.
Re: (Adv. Haer. 3.3.2) and your comment-
Hmmm…Apostolic Tradition praised and preserved through successors of bishops, in union with the pre-eminent church of Rome. Garret, I believe you are Reformed Baptist: What is the name of your bishop, and who ordained him (that will help me know his succession from the apostles)?
I addressed that quote with our friend Kevin on His blog here- http://journeytorome.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/christs-body-the-church-have-it-your-way/#comment-331
I will paste my relevant response to that very passage here-
I hate to inform you, but he is not talking about the modern Roman Catholic Church. It is a far different thing for a man so historically close to the Apostles to trace a lineage, which he does, back to the Apostles, and claim that as authority, than does anybody since then! 1,800 years later, through the dark ages, evil church men, bishops who bought their posts, corruption and ‘power plays’ galore etc., the crust of time has built up many a false teaching that the RC cannot match to the Scriptures. Therefore, the Scriptures are insufficient in your minds, there was an oral tradition passed on which God has preserved- but these are in contradiction to the Scriptures! So what goes? The Scriptures! For instance-The Roman Catholic concept of grace is absolutely not biblical, and would be foreign to the Apostles.
Also, thanks for the history lesson I am fully aware of the purpose of against heresies- I agree with you for the most part- with the notable exception of the following-
but rather they must be understood in their full context of the Apostolic Tradition with the successors of the bishops who lead Christ’s Church in union with the Bishop of Rome. Otherwise you have unstable men like the Gnostics misinterpreting them according to their false tradition.
This is false. The context and content of the Scriptures are fully and completely knowable outside of the tradition! Irenaeus made that very point! Irenaeus made a two prong argument in book 3- Scripture (the ground and pillar of our faith-his words) and Tradition. Scripture is perspicuous he argued- you can understand it alone, he makes that point very clearly. The Gnostics chose not to believe it in spite of its clarity. Notice his opponents DID NOT have the tradition of the Apostles (he makes that argument later)- yet Irenaeus tells us that they should have clearly understood the Scriptures! That completely takes the rug out from under your argument. They, without Tradition, have the capability of understanding the scriptures- that is what Irenaeus said, and it is undeniable. Moving on to his tradition argument-
His tradition is firmly anchored in the Apostles with a direct and named lineage, this forming ITS OWN SEPARATE prong of the argument (book 3 chapter 4). He wrote this about 100-120 years after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul- the lineage is easy to trace at that point- and Apostolic. It is a completely different argument to say that 2000 years later, you have the same lineage and tradition! You would need to do that work of demonstrating your tradition now is the same as it was then if you were going to make a case. You have to do more than say he believes the same as you, Devin.
The Church teaches the material sufficiency of Scripture: In it is contained all the bricks you need to build the house, but the house does not construct itself; you need the builders that God-ordained, following the blueprint that the Holy Spirit drew up and then uses to help the builders construct the house. Trying to build upon a different foundation gives you a house that doesn’t look like it is supposed to, and in the many Protestant Communities that is what has happened.
But history shows that the Roman Catholic Church became a power hungry, greedy, murderous monster at various times in history- where was the Holy Spirit then Devin? Is that part of tradition?- No, I imagine. Why does the link to the past seem so smooth to you? Was it merely preservation?
And if the Holy Spirit works through such a murderous, worldly mess that your church HAD been- why would it not work through a theologically confused mess? A mess is a mess- that is the state of fallen man. Do you accept the possibility that God works in a spiritual body of believers outside of Rome?
I do want to know who your bishop is, and if you do not have one, how you explain what Irenaeus possibly meant by his clear explanation.
Hopefully I have answered your question about Irenaeus. Episkopos- Translated Bishop, sometimes elder or overseer. Episkopos is translated elder at my Church, I will have to confirm, but I believe that is correct, and then there are deacons (diakonoi). This is an action of the Holy Spirit, not lineage. It would be false to assume, as you know, that the lineage of bishops is anything other than an action of the Holy Spirit- confirmed through, prayer, fasting, and laying on of hands.
If you are historically honest, I believe that you will find that the plurality of episkepoi was replaced by the time of Irenaeus with one monarchical Bishop, or overseer. My Church has sought to restore plurality, hence we have two elders, two pastors.
Thanks for your time- and please respond to my ‘two prong’ argument of Irenaeus.
God bless you and yours,
Garret
Hi Garret,
Okay, so you responded that your elders do not have Apostolic Succession (you seem to be ascribing to “Apostolicity” instead.) This concept is contrary to what St. Irenaeus describes, what the Fathers describe, and what is found in Scripture with St. Paul to St. Timothy. The authority of bishops comes from their succession from the Apostles, and this authority is given by the Holy Spirit; you present a false dichotomy when you say This is an action of the Holy Spirit, not lineage. It would be false to assume, as you know, that the lineage of bishops is anything other than an action of the Holy Spirit.
As for your description of St. Irenaeus, you are claiming that his praise of Scripture means he would agree with your definition of the perspicuity of the Scriptures–you have not demonstrated this. As I mentioned, his words demonstrate that against the Gnostics who claimed God the Father did not create the world by referring to parables and giving them a false interpretation, the Scriptures clearly show them to be wrong, and I agree. The Scriptures also clearly show that Christ is God and rose from the dead after dying for our sins, yet the Ebionites and Arians denied these things. We love Scripture; we have a high view of it because it is God’s inspired word, but you remove it from its proper context, the Church Christ established, and interpret it apart from the living Tradition of the Church. St. Irenaeus’ writings are fully compatible with the teachings of the Church. You have not demonstrated that your definition of perspicuity and sola Scriptura are supported by St. Irenaeus.
I hate to inform you, but he is not talking about the modern Roman Catholic Church. It is a far different thing for a man so historically close to the Apostles to trace a lineage, which he does, back to the Apostles, and claim that as authority, than does anybody since then!
What happened to the Church that he was talking about? Where did it go? Where do I find it?
When did it become invalid to claim authority from apostolic succession? What event occurred such that authority was no longer given nor could be claimed in that way?
1,800 years later, through the dark ages, evil church men, bishops who bought their posts, corruption and ‘power plays’ galore etc., the crust of time has built up many a false teaching that the RC cannot match to the Scriptures.
The “corruption creep” theory. Corruption crept into the Church that Christ established until it no longer resembled the early, more pure Church. When did the corruption of the teachings get so bad that the Church essentially became a false one? For how long did God allow this apostasy to continue?
There were “evil men” in the Church from the beginning, starting with Judas Iscariot. There were evil men in every century in the Church, even the early ones where it was ostensibly more “pure”: Marcion, Montanus, Sabellius, Novatus, Donatus, Arius, Nestorius: priests, deacons, sometimes even bishops who murdered Christians and sought power above all and promulgated their evil ideas. The idea that “evil men during the dark ages corrupted the Church and it fell away from the truth” is ad hoc and invalid, for these men were always in the Church, the weeds and the wheat.
Therefore, the Scriptures are insufficient in your minds, there was an oral tradition passed on which God has preserved- but these are in contradiction to the Scriptures! So what goes? The Scriptures! For instance-The Roman Catholic concept of grace is absolutely not biblical, and would be foreign to the Apostles.
The Scriptures are sufficient materially. They are not sufficient formally; they do not claim formal sufficiency, nor has the Church ever taught that. That idea is an innovation needed to support the further innovation of sola Scriptura. Yes, there was an oral tradition, as St. Paul speaks of in Thessalonians and elsewhere, and as we read about in the writings of the Fathers. They never contradict Scripture. The Catholic concept of grace is totally Biblical. Does doctrine develop? Yes. Our understanding of the truth once handed by God to the Apostles in His Church deepens over time but does not become false because the Holy Spirit guides the Church into all truth.
His tradition is firmly anchored in the Apostles with a direct and named lineage, this forming ITS OWN SEPARATE prong of the argument (book 3 chapter 4). He wrote this about 100-120 years after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul- the lineage is easy to trace at that point- and Apostolic. It is a completely different argument to say that 2000 years later, you have the same lineage and tradition! You would need to do that work of demonstrating your tradition now is the same as it was then if you were going to make a case. You have to do more than say he believes the same as you, Devin.
My questions from earlier apply to these claims you make as well. Demonstrating that the Catholic Church is the same as the one throughout history is easy. Few people deny this. If she is not that Church, then please explain to me what happened to “that Church”–the one that Christ founded–since you claim that the “Catholic Church” fell into corruption.
Devin
When you said- Okay, so you responded that your elders do not have Apostolic Succession (you seem to be ascribing to “Apostolicity” instead.) This concept is contrary to what St. Irenaeus describes, what the Fathers describe, and what is found in Scripture with St. Paul to St. Timothy.
The historical fact is that neither do you! Not only do you lack the same faith as the apostles, but your ‘succession’ is a via a VERY broken chain. I will demonstrate this.
You have not demonstrated that your definition of perspicuity and sola Scriptura are supported by St. Irenaeus.
I am not saying he held to what I would call ‘sola scriptura’ as a doctrine. I said specifically that his tradition is apostolic, yours is NOT. So tradition to him is not tradition to you in spite of your claim. I have demonstrated not only within reason, but beyond a shadow of a doubt that he considers the scriptures perspicuous. I mean the same thing that Irenaeus does when he speaks of the capability of Scriptures being understood properly outside of Tradition. I am now in Book 4, and he continues to refer to the Scriptures in an objective fashion, fully intending for the Gnostics to understand that their interpretations are wrong! He never claims that the reason they don’t understand is because they are outside of the context of Apostolic authority- that is your claim. They do not have the same tradition as Irenaeus, YET, they are expected by him to understand the Scriptures! This is perspicuity- you cannot deny it, and frankly if you continue to, I chalk it up to stubborness. I have demonstrated it very clearly.
What happened to the Church that he was talking about? Where did it go? Where do I find it?
When did it become invalid to claim authority from apostolic succession? What event occurred such that authority was no longer given nor could be claimed in that way?
A great series of questions.
It became invalid when God removed His blessing. He removed His blessing when turmoil, intrigue, greed and murderous rampage, nay- full on vengeful blood-lust entered into her. Fraudulent documents, such as the ‘donation of Constantine’, ascribed ‘Vicar of Christ’ to the position of pope, removing that authority from the Holy Spirit. Pope Nicholas I, used this false document to leverage the papacy into a very dark and sinful era. You should actually be ashamed of the hundreds of years of apostasy that your Church endured, but somehow according to modern Catholics, the Church emerged ‘unscathed’. Well, we can read the Scriptures and see that this is false. We can also see documents from this era are still valid. The pope is still proclaimed ‘vicar of Christ’. The Scriptures, the ground and pillar of the faith were downgraded. In the words of Ricky Ricardo to his redhead wife “ju got a lotta ‘splainin’ to do” Read this article here-
http://www.bereanbeacon.org/history/history//Papcy_An_Overview_of_Its_History_and_Nature.pdf
Whole generations of priests and bishops went without familiarity with the Scriptures. You are an American ex-Protestant, and this has a huge impact on your worldview. You THINK that the Scriptures are valuable to the Catholic Church as a whole- you are wrong on a huge scale-
Robert Sungenis says-
from this article- http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3435
Georgetown University, The Jesuit School of Theology, Union Theological Seminary, Catholic Theological Union, Boston College, Franciscan School of Theology, St. Patrick’s Seminary) and their allegiance to the liberal institutions for which they write and work (The Catholic Biblical Association, Catholic Theological Society, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, The Collegeville Bible Commentary) I could not recommend any of them to you. To a man (and woman) these teachers believe the Bible is riddled with historical and “religious” errors… For them, the Bible is mainly the work of man, and only a few parts were actually inspired by the Holy Spirit. They do not believe most of the historical narratives in Scripture ever took place (e.g., Adam and Eve, Noah) and they believe much of the Gospels were made up by either the evangelists or the generations that came after them.
This is the norm, these are among the most well known and beloved institutions your Church has. Europe’s faith went down the tubes long ago. Naturally, this does not match the early Church Fathers beliefs on Scripture.
And from former Roman Catholic nuns and priests here- http://www.bereanbeacon.org/testimonies.php
The testimonies confirm the complete lack of connection with the Holy Spirit, and the Scriptures in a meaningful way. God called them out of the false Church.
Your attempt to blow these issues off as an AD HOC argument is ridiculous. The history of your Church has a VERY REAL impact on todays theology in her.
From James White- now try to answer to these, not merely shuffle them aside with the wave of a hand- ANSWERS ARE NEEDED-
The Church of Nicea was not the Roman Catholic Church because that Church did not hold to certain fundamental, definitional beliefs that mark Roman Catholicism today. Specifically, the Church of Nicea did not:
1) look to the Bishop of Rome as the Vicar of Christ, the head of the universal Church, the pastor of all Christians;
2) believe in the Marian doctrines that set Rome apart, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary and her Bodily Assumption;
3) embrace such concepts as the thesaurus meritorum, purgatory, and indulgences;
4) believe in the Roman concept of authority, replete with extra-biblical, revelatory or inspired “traditions” that add to the “deposit of faith” items and beliefs not found in Scripture;
5) nor practice the necessary devotions to reserved, consecrated hosts that would substantiate the leap from a belief in “real presence” to the much later belief in “transubstantiation.”
If the Church is not the same, the Church is not the same. Period.
Your answer is this- Yes. Our understanding of the truth once handed by God to the Apostles in His Church deepens over time but does not become false because the Holy Spirit guides the Church into all truth.
And that is confirmed via what- burning in the bosom? Can’t be confirmed by your history. Or is it because your Church claims itself THE authority, via Christ. We can tell it is not that at all, we have eyes, we can read. But you tell us we cannot understand, we have bricks and no blueprint- that is unspeakably lame, it is dishonest, disingenuous, and a dodge to beat all dodges. It is the very definition of a non-answer ‘you can’t understand” Well I have been explaining it to you- HELLO!?. Irenaeus would expect me to read and understand, and so would Paul. The Scriptures are formally sufficient, otherwise Pauls claim in 2 Timothy would loose its meaning over time. The formal sufficiency of Scripture would be a necessity given the nature of man- the Scriptures have as their very nature the impact and Truth, that sprouts where it is planted. They are God breathed. The material sufficiency only argument fails to meet the very real condition of man- his fallen nature. Man cannot be trusted, man will corrupt what he touches- the survival of the Scriptures is the survival of a touchstone to the Apostles that serve as a unchanging standard. This is a necessity, this is preservation, this is Gods will.
The Catholic concept of grace is totally Biblical.
Please demonstrate that. Where is infusion of grace? Where is it taught that we BECOME righteous in ourselves, as opposed to the righteousness of another, Jesus Christ being applied to us as in a FINISHED work? The enmity of God has been abolished- shalom- the state of peace that has no potential of warfare at all, not a mere cease-fire. The Roman Catholic does not know when he puts his head on the pillow tonight whether he has commited a mortal sin that dooms him forever- this is NOT ‘shalom’. the gospel is Shalom with God, no more enmity. The gospel of Rome does not provide this- mortal sin, anyone?
God bless,
Garret
You THINK that the Scriptures are valuable to the Catholic Church as a whole- you are wrong on a huge scale-
Robert Sungenis says- from this article-http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3435
Georgetown University, The Jesuit School of Theology, Union Theological Seminary, Catholic Theological Union, Boston College, Franciscan School of Theology, St. Patrick’s Seminary) and their allegiance to the liberal institutions for which they write and work (The Catholic Biblical Association, Catholic Theological Society, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, The Collegeville Bible Commentary) I could not recommend any of them to you. To a man (and woman) these teachers believe the Bible is riddled with historical and “religious” errors… For them, the Bible is mainly the work of man, and only a few parts were actually inspired by the Holy Spirit. They do not believe most of the historical narratives in Scripture ever took place (e.g., Adam and Eve, Noah) and they believe much of the Gospels were made up by either the evangelists or the generations that came after them.
This is the norm, these are among the most well known and beloved institutions your Church has. Europe’s faith went down the tubes long ago. Naturally, this does not match the early Church Fathers beliefs on Scripture.
And from former Roman Catholic nuns and priests here- http://www.bereanbeacon.org/testimonies.php
The testimonies confirm the complete lack of connection with the Holy Spirit, and the Scriptures in a meaningful way. God called them out of the false Church.
Devin
When you said- Okay, so you responded that your elders do not have Apostolic Succession (you seem to be ascribing to “Apostolicity” instead.) This concept is contrary to what St. Irenaeus describes, what the Fathers describe, and what is found in Scripture with St. Paul to St. Timothy.
The historical fact is that neither do you! Not only do you lack the same faith as the apostles, but your ‘succession’ is a via a VERY broken chain. I will demonstrate this.
You have not demonstrated that your definition of perspicuity and sola Scriptura are supported by St. Irenaeus.
I am not saying he held to what I would call ‘sola scriptura’ as a doctrine. I said specifically that his tradition is apostolic, yours is NOT. So tradition to him is not tradition to you in spite of your claim. I have demonstrated not only within reason, but beyond a shadow of a doubt that he considers the scriptures perspicuous. I mean the same thing that Irenaeus does when he speaks of the capability of Scriptures being understood properly outside of Tradition. I am now in Book 4, and he continues to refer to the Scriptures in an objective fashion, fully intending for the Gnostics to understand that their interpretations are wrong! He never claims that the reason they don’t understand is because they are outside of the context of Apostolic authority. They do not have the same tradition as Irenaeus, YET, they are expected by him to understand the Scriptures! This is perspicuity- you cannot deny it, and frankly if you continue to, I chalk it up to stubborness. I have demonstrated it very clearly.
What happened to the Church that he was talking about? Where did it go? Where do I find it?
When did it become invalid to claim authority from apostolic succession? What event occurred such that authority was no longer given nor could be claimed in that way?
A great series of questions. I actually answer your questions- I wish you would answer mine. It is only fair- you seem to put the burden on me, yet enjoy not taking much on yourself.
It became invalid when God removed His blessing. He removed His blessing when turmoil, intrigue, greed and murderous rampage, nay- full on vengeful blood-lust entered into her. Fraudulent documents, such as the ‘donation of Constantine’, ascribed ‘Vicar of Chris’t to the position of pope, removing that authority from the Holy Spirit. Pope Nicholas I, used this false document to leverage the papacy into a very dark and sinful era. You should actually be ashamed of the hundreds of years of apostasy that your Church endured, but somehow, it emerged ‘unscathed’. Well, we can read the Scriptures and see that this is false. When the Scriptures, the ground and pillar of the faith were downgraded. In the words of Ricky Ricardo to his redhead wife “ju got a lotta ‘splainin’ to do” Read this article here-
http://www.bereanbeacon.org/history/history//Papcy_An_Overview_of_Its_History_and_Nature.pdf
Whole generations of priests and bishops went without familiarity with the Scriptures. You are an American ex-Protestant, and this has a huge impact on your worldview. You THINK that the Scriptures are valuable to the Catholic Church as a whole- you are wrong on a huge scale-
Robert Sungenis says-
from this article- http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3435
Georgetown University, The Jesuit School of Theology, Union Theological Seminary, Catholic Theological Union, Boston College, Franciscan School of Theology, St. Patrick’s Seminary) and their allegiance to the liberal institutions for which they write and work (The Catholic Biblical Association, Catholic Theological Society, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, The Collegeville Bible Commentary) I could not recommend any of them to you. To a man (and woman) these teachers believe the Bible is riddled with historical and “religious” errors… For them, the Bible is mainly the work of man, and only a few parts were actually inspired by the Holy Spirit. They do not believe most of the historical narratives in Scripture ever took place (e.g., Adam and Eve, Noah) and they believe much of the Gospels were made up by either the evangelists or the generations that came after them.
This is the norm, these are among the most well known and beloved institutions your Church has. Europe’s faith went down the tubes long ago. Naturally, this does not match the early Church Fathers beliefs on Scripture.
not a mere cease-fire. The Roman Catholic does not know when he puts his head on the pillow tonight whether he has commited a mortal sin that dooms him forever- this is NOT ‘shalom’. the gospel is Shalom with God, no more enmity. The gospel of Rome does not provide this- mortal sin, anyone?
God bless,
Garret
Garret,
Instead of us both continuing to assert that St. Irenaeus is supporting our belief about how and to what degree the Scriptures are internally “clear”, we really need to define the terms.
Please define what “perspicuity of Scriptures” means, exactly, to you.
Just so you know, I have been more or less conjecturing what you mean by it. For example, here’s Martin Luther:
“All the things, therefore, contained in the Scriptures, are made manifest, although some places, from the words not being understood, are yet obscure . . .And, if the words are obscure in one place, yet they are clear in another . . . For Christ has opened our understanding to understand the Scriptures . . .
Therefore come forward, you and all the Sophists together, and produce any one mystery which is still abstruse in the Scriptures. But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth . . . Let, therefore, wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their own heart to the all-clear scriptures of God . . .
If you speak of the internal clearness, no man sees one iota in the Scriptures, but he that hath the Spirit of God . . . If you speak of the external clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that are in the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimed to the whole world.”
So which things do you claim are clear internally from Scripture? Luther seems to indicate all things. I assume you would say only “essential” things. If you say “essential”, please tell me which teachings, exactly, are the “essential” ones and which are “unessential” and tell me how you make that determination. If your definition ends up being so pliable as to fit any facts of history of different interpretations, etc., then I don’t doubt you could construe that the Scriptures seem perspicuous to you, and no matter what quotes I produce from the Fathers which praise the Apostolic Tradition and the necessity of it, you would claim they mean something else.
Still, I await your response. We can’t get anywhere if we don’t know how you define this term.
So did “my” Church become apostate or did the Church that Christ established become apostate? If it was only “my” Church, what happened to the Church Christ established during this time of apostasy of “my” Church?
Also, it seems you claim this happened in the 5th century, is that right?
Comment note: Garret, WordPress got mad and put your comments into the Spam category, I think because they had multiple links, so I just found that out tonight and moved them out of Spam and approved them, but that meant that you made several comments before I made my last reply (which appears just above this comment), and I didn’t realize when I wrote that one that you had made more.
So I am going to read your other comments and reply more fully as I am able–you wrote a lot, so i cannot promise that I will respond to everything.
Thanks for your patience and effort to look into these important topics.
Garret,
Okay I just read the comments and I see that you split them up after wordpress moderated some of them as spam. I am going to try to delete the duplications.
Garret,
Alright, there is still some duplicate comments, but it is worked out well enough for me to understand. My comment in #11 was to the portion (about half) of your comment, so the questions i ask there still stand and need your responses so we can know what you mean by the terms.
I want to mention another point: you claim St. Irenaeus believed in your definition (whatever that might be) of the perspicuity of Scriptures, but assuming temporarily that that is true, several problems emerge:
1. He also taught the pre-eminent authority of the church of Rome built on Sts. Peter and Paul, something you do not believe to be true, and
2. He taught that authority came through the succession of bishops, something you said ended in the 5th century (this is arbitrary and ignored my counter that there were corrupt men in leadership of the Church in every century, including the 1st – 5th), and
3. He taught that there was *something* (you challenge that this is the same as Catholic sacred Tradition–that’s fine for the purposes of this point) called the Apostolic Tradition which was important, so
Problem 1) If he taught your definition of perspicuity of Scriptures, why doesn’t that teaching get thrown out along with all the other teachings he taught (see above) which you reject or say “ended”? How is it not arbitrary for you to decide that one of his teachings persists for all time but the others went into the garbage bin of history?
Problem 2) The fact that he taught these other things at the same time as he taught your definition of perspicuity means that they all have to be reconciled together, but how does the following reconcile with your view of perspicuity:
“that [apostolic] tradition…of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul….For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere”
Your view of perspicuity (which in your mind is of course an important corollary to the doctrine of sola Scriptura which you also believe in) does not seem to square with St. Irenaeus’ other statements but rather you are plucking some statements he made to refute the Gnostics and claiming that “he taught the same thing you believe” about the Scriptures. If you are going to read your beliefs back into his statements, you have to then reconcile all of his teachings with your beliefs.
This incongruity between your beliefs and his other teachings is strong evidence against your claim that he thought what you think about perspicuity.
The solution is that he taught the Scriptures were clear (in some sense, not necessarily what your definition is of perspicuity) but within the assumed context of the Apostolic Tradition, of which the Scriptures were the written part. It would have made little sense to ask him “are the Scriptures clear outside of the Apostolic Tradition?” or “Are the Scriptures clear regardless of whether the church of Rome has pre-eminent authority and someone from a church not in agreement with the church of Rome interprets the Scriptures?” These ideas must be taken as a whole, otherwise, you truly do risk reading in some doctrine that he never would have taught.
I have seen Protestants do this in earnest with many of the Church Fathers. They isolate some passage of Augustine where he praises Scripture and then say see! see! he is teaching sola Scriptura or Protestant perspicuity or something, but they never say how they fit with his teachings on Purgatory, on Tradition, on the Catholic Church, on his deference to the Pope, and so on.
Did you read my recent post linking to a Baptist preacher who warned his fellow Protestants (including brother Baptists like you) not to read the Church Fathers, because it is clear from their writings that they were “heretics”? http://www.devinrose.heroicvirtuecreations.com/blog/2009/08/28/the-church-fathers-a-door-to-rome/
It seems an odd mix to me: He read them and claims they are heretics because of their beliefs, and you claim here that a Father taught Protestant perspicuity of Scriptures: Who are we to believe?
You next listed several universities and institutions that Sungenis claims are not faithful to what the Catholic Church teaches. To which I respond, what does that prove? We already went through the issue again of individuals rejecting the Church’s dogmatic teachings versus Protestant Communities _teaching_ conflicting things in their doctrines. What the Church teaches is at question here, not what some Jesuit priests think about what the Church teaches.
And some nuns and priests left the Church–this again is not surprising; it is sad but not surprising. If I get a list of 50 or 500 people who have left a Baptist church, will that prove Baptist teachings are wrong?
You then listed some things James White claims differ between “the Church of Nicaea” (325 AD) and the Catholic Church.
If the Church is not the same, the Church is not the same. Period.
And if it is the same, it is the same. I can respond to his specifics later perhaps, but please first answer the broader questions I posed in #11 (which can even assume that Mr. White’s claims are true):
“So did “my” Church become apostate or did the Church that Christ established [the Church of Nicaea using White's terminology] become apostate? If it was only “my” Church, what happened to the Church Christ established during this time of apostasy of “my” Church?
Also, it seems you claim this happened in the 5th century, is that right?”
You wrote while condemning my belief in the material sufficiency of Scripture…
the material sufficiency only argument fails to meet the very real condition of man- his fallen nature. Man cannot be trusted, man will corrupt what he touches- the survival of the Scriptures is the survival of a touchstone to the Apostles that serve as a unchanging standard. This is a necessity, this is preservation, this is Gods will.
I agree that the material sufficiency of Scripture “fails to meet the very real condition of man”, but the Scriptures, Tradition, and the God-guided Magisterium of the Church to truthfully interpret them meets the real condition of fallen man perfectly.
One wonders why you would believe that the corrupt Catholic Church monks and priests who copied the Scriptures to preserve them for you didn’t also make changes to them–we do not have the originals or even copies of the originals, after all.
More directly to the point you want to make, however, is that by your theory man will also corrupt his interpretation of the Scriptures. Here is one important difference between us: I admit that the Scriptures can be interpreted in (very) different ways, even falsely, and so I also admit that there is a need, when we speak about the Scriptures, to make very clear Who is interpreting them. What authority does that interpreter have? Why do we believe them?
You do not admit that an interpreter is needed but would like to claim that the Scriptures interpret themselves and that man does not interpret them because they are clear to anyone with the Holy Spirit and who *really* listens to God and *really* studies them, which is a small subset of all Christians currently living who believe in Reformed Protestantism, specifically Reformed Baptist Protestantism. Other Protestants (not even to speak of the Catholics and Orthodox) do not listen to God correctly and so do not see the clear meaning of the Scriptures that you do.
In reality, you are interpreting the Scriptures according to a tradition that derives from the Catholic Church as modified by Luther as modified by Calvin as modified by the Radical Reformers (Anabaptists et. al.), but you refuse to admit that you are interpreting them and instead claim that “they clearly say what I think they do”.
The Scriptures don’t change (excepting the Protestant removal of 7 of the books), but the countless Protestant Communities that claim the True Interpretation of the Scriptures changes weekly, along with whatever they teach is “truth” from their interpretation. The Scriptures do us little good if there is no infallible interpreter for them, which means God guides the interpreter. This is what he has done, since the beginning, for His Church, which subsists in the Catholic Church.
Each Protestant Community and in truth even each individual Protestant makes himself his own “Magisterium” and unintentionally ascribes to himself infallible interpretation through the false assertion that the Scriptures are perspicuous. He says “all the things in Scripture are clearly seen for one passage illuminates another” and what he means is “my interpretation of what the Scriptures say is clearly correct because it seems so clear to me [given his biases and tradition of course]“.
Alright, that enough for now. I look forward to your reply.
Hi Devin,
Thank you for your calm response. I am undergoing some personal issues, and I don’t want to come off too harshly. Please remember me in your prayers.
So which things do you claim are clear internally from Scripture? Luther seems to indicate all things. I assume you would say only “essential” things.
Clarity is not immediate, that needs to be said right off the bat. Work needs to be done, the Scriptures have to be mined. Martin Luther, I would argue, did not see everything with perfect clarity, but neither do I. He was an Augustinian monk, and had A LOT of baggage, and did not unpack all of it. I was an agnostic hedonist sinner who loved his sins, and have remnants of that worldview pounding me from all sides, sometimes in very subtle ways, sometimes obvious.
That being said, when all is said and done, everything that needs to be known to achieve salvation of your eternal soul can be known from the Scriptures, and with clarity. Not everyone will have that clarity in ALL areas, even though they claim it, including myself. Salvation is not dependent on us- it is dependent on God- Romans 9:16. Obviously Martin Luther would not be saying everything about everything can be known from the Scriptures, it has to be limited to what the Scriptures themselves affirm as true.
For instance- you can’t come away from the Scriptures not understanding that a believer is to be baptized, and participate in the Lords Supper. That is very clear. Stop right there- that is clear, that is perspicuous- the rest of my paragraph will not change the fact that you are to be baptized and participate in the Lords Supper- and that those things are clear! Paedobaptists appeal mainly to a covenantal promise to justify baptizing babies, but the Scripture is silent on baptizing babies. The Baptism controversy is not a clarity of Scripture issue as strange as that might sound, rather, it is about the nature of the old versus new covenant. It is clear that the old covenant directly included babies- circumcision. Why wouldn’t the new? Those who baptize babies trust that God will honor the entry into the new covenant in the same way, even though the Scriptures are silent on baptizing babies. Its a ‘non-Scriptural Scriptural’ argument. I do not take baptism as regeneration, but as an important covenant sign, which is done by regenerate adult believers. The Scripture affirms adult believer Baptism VERY clearly. To extend baptism beyond adults is not clear, in spite of Martin Luther, and in spite of Acts 2:38-39, which is a promise to all who are called. Your children may or may not be called, but the promise is for them if they are. Again, work is to be done to get at these truths, prayerfully, and contemplatively.
no matter what quotes I produce from the Fathers which praise the Apostolic Tradition and the necessity of it, you would claim they mean something else.
Tradition is necessary, and very valid for the Fathers to appeal to. Large thumping sound, pause- now that you have picked yourself up off the floor- realize I am not anti-tradition. You have to consider that Irenaeus to the Apostles is the equivalent of Devin to Abraham Lincoln, time-wise. That is a vital point. To ignore it is to court disaster. It is very different for Irenaeus to talk of tradition then in the year 180, than it is to claim the same tradition today, 2009. That would be a historical claim, and that claim would be a monumental failure as a historical claim.
So did “my” Church become apostate or did the Church that Christ established become apostate? If it was only “my” Church, what happened to the Church Christ established during this time of apostasy of “my” Church?
Yes, your Church became apostate. Christs Church, his body, is built up of those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells (Romans 8:9), those whom the Father draws (John 6). It is composed of physical believers, (and those who are no longer physical) but that does not mean they are located under one human ecclesiastical umbrella. If the ‘ecclesia’ in question is unbiblical in its theology, and you are a believer, you have no business being in it at all. You agree, and that what you say about me, so there we have it.
Also, it seems you claim this happened in the 5th century, is that right?
Please ignore that 5th century claim, I cannot substantiate a century in particular. I meant to delete that.
Please answer to how you can be confident that your ‘chain’ of bishops is unbroken to the Apostles, when there were so many clearly ungodly (and not just your average ‘run of the mill’ ungodly either) who are in that list.
Thanks for your time,
God bless you and yours,
Garret
Hi Garret,
Know that you are in my prayers; I know what it is to be dealing with hard personal issues.
I just wanted to make sure you saw my comment just above this one, which I think was probably responding to my previous one (that is okay, since those questions still applied, too.)
I have a response to this most recent comment of yours but to avoid confusion want to make sure you have the chance to respond to mine in #14.
Hi Devin-
Okay, I see the reply there, thank you for the prayers.
First, the tenor of your objections shows that you seem to not understand my objection about modern Rome. If you do understand my point, almost all of your objections ignore what I have been saying. This is the point-
It is very different for Irenaeus to talk of tradition then in the year 180, than it is to claim the same tradition today, 2009. That would be a historical claim, and that claim would be a monumental failure as a historical claim.
In otherwords- the early Church Fathers have a different faith than you do- that is my claim. That is what I mean by apostasy.
On to your objections-
1. He also taught the pre-eminent authority of the church of Rome built on Sts. Peter and Paul, something you do not believe to be true, and
He would be in a good position to know that- but would he not believe that ALL Churches were founded by the Apostles, or just Rome? I do believe that the Apostles founded Churches all Christians believe and know that!- its right there in the Bible. Paul wrote Romans, to the Roman Church, BUT he had never met them before- Romans 1:11-13. He did not ‘found’ a Church at Rome, it preexisted him. The preeminent authority during the Apostles lifetimes was Jerusalem. That city fell in 70 AD.
2. He taught that authority came through the succession of bishops, something you said ended in the 5th century (this is arbitrary and ignored my counter that there were corrupt men in leadership of the Church in every century, including the 1st – 5th), and
The reason he taught that ‘authority’ in context is that the Gnostics had no such claim. Corruption in the papacy means their were false popes, false bishops which means the chain is broken, which means you have no intact link to the Apostles. That’s okay, the link to the Apostles is in their writings, and in their faith, which is from and in Jesus Christ.
Problem 1) If he taught your definition of perspicuity of Scriptures, why doesn’t that teaching get thrown out along with all the other teachings he taught (see above) which you reject or say “ended”?
I don’t see how that is a valid problem at all. I agree with point 1 and 2 and 3- but it does not establish Rome 2009 AD. Just because the validity of Romes claim expired at some point, does not refer to the Scriptures and perspicuity.
“that [apostolic] tradition…of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul….For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere”
Get me a time machine, because there is nothing there for me to disagree with- though as I have shown, his definition of primacy of Rome is something completely different from what you mean today.
Part II forthcoming
Peace and blessings to You,
Garret
Part II
Your view of perspicuity (which in your mind is of course an important corollary to the doctrine of sola Scriptura which you also believe in) does not seem to square with St. Irenaeus’ other statements but rather you are plucking some statements he made to refute the Gnostics and claiming that “he taught the same thing you believe” about the Scriptures. If you are going to read your beliefs back into his statements, you have to then reconcile all of his teachings with your beliefs.
This incongruity between your beliefs and his other teachings is strong evidence against your claim that he thought what you think about perspicuity.
You are playing games here! That is a logical fallacy. Your claim that you have to believe all or none is obviously false. Besides that fallacy, I am saying nothing more than Irenaeus says -the entire Scriptures, the prophets, and the Gospels, can be clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood by all, although all do not believe them Yet, you seem to imply that because he could have believed there was a race of 17 foot tall trolls living in the hills outside Rome, that means, I cannot believe 1) anything he says and 2) I cannot properly understand that he was convinced that the Scriptures he extensively quotes could be understood outside of his tradition. Irenaeus intended for the Gnostics to read him and understand him, and REPENT! This is not rocket science! You are the one trying to force Irenaeus into an untenable position, because his argument on Scripture, meant to be taken outside of his tradition, into another tradition, and understood by another tradition such as to disprove that other tradition as being false based on Scripture is to you untenable! They could not possibly understand Scripture then! Could you at least give Irenaeus the decency to know what the Scriptures are capable of doing?
It would have made little sense to ask him “are the Scriptures clear outside of the Apostolic Tradition?” or “Are the Scriptures clear regardless of whether the church of Rome has pre-eminent authority and someone from a church not in agreement with the church of Rome interprets the Scriptures?” These ideas must be taken as a whole, otherwise, you truly do risk reading in some doctrine that he never would have taught.
Do some work and prove that statement please Devin. Obviously he would say those outside of his faith could perfectly understand- otherwise his argument would not be expected by him to work on those outside of his tradition. The whole point was not for entertainment, but for enlightenment, to bring people out of a false faith. His opponents did not have his tradition Devin, can you explain how he could argue using the Scriptures, and further, how he could expect them to not abuse the Scriptures? He constantly addresses their arguments of the Scriptures and corrects them using sound methodology. He expects them to understand, to get it! He holds them accountable to the Scriptures, even though they do not share his tradition.
I have seen Protestants do this in earnest with many of the Church Fathers. They isolate some passage of Augustine where he praises Scripture and then say see! see! he is teaching sola Scriptura or Protestant perspicuity or something, but they never say how they fit with his teachings on Purgatory, on Tradition, on the Catholic Church, on his deference to the Pope, and so on.
Allow me to explain. Purgatory is not sola Scriptura, they have different evidences, and are based on different claims. They don’t fit because they are not related. A person who refers to the Scriptures can use those Scriptures to point out an absence of doctrine, that is legitimate.
RE the Preacher_It seems an odd mix to me: He read them and claims they are heretics because of their beliefs, and you claim here that a Father taught Protestant perspicuity of Scriptures: Who are we to believe?
He needs to not be lazy and tackle the work of reading the Fathers and coming to terms with them in a balanced way.
One wonders why you would believe that the corrupt Catholic Church monks and priests who copied the Scriptures to preserve them for you didn’t also make changes to them–we do not have the originals or even copies of the originals, after all.
We can be very confident in the Scriptures due to sound methodology inherent in textual criticism.
when we speak about the Scriptures, to make very clear Who is interpreting them. What authority does that interpreter have? Why do we believe them?
And yet we trust ourselves. Even if you have an ‘infallible’ source you can trust, ultimately, WE are fallible. You cannot escape our your own fallibility. See my post here- http://reformnow-garret.blogspot.com/2009/08/note-to-teri.html
In reality, you are interpreting the Scriptures according to a tradition that derives from the Catholic Church as modified by Luther as modified by Calvin as modified by the Radical Reformers (Anabaptists et. al.), but you refuse to admit that you are interpreting them and instead claim that “they clearly say what I think they do”.
Of course I am interpreting them. You have to do more than say I am misinterpreting- you have to show me that I am wrong. Irenaeus recognized that need, as do all who write books delving into exegesis. Some interpretations are better than others, that is, better justified textually and historically. That can be done with all writing. my lens might not be wrong. It sounds like you are heading in the skeptical direction again, ad hoc. It of course serves you to say I could not possibly understand the Scriptures from my worldview. Lets talk about specifics then!
The Scriptures do us little good if there is no infallible interpreter for them, which means God guides the interpreter. This is what he has done, since the beginning, for His Church, which subsists in the Catholic Church.
HA! http://www.cogwriter.com/peterkeys.htm
Devout Catholic historian von Dollinger reminds us of the following facts:
Of all the Fathers who interpret these passages (Matthew 16:18; John 21:17), not a single one applies them to the Roman bishops as Peter’s successors. How many Fathers have busied themselves with these three texts, yet not one of them who commentaries we possess–Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, Theodoret, and those whose interpretations are collected in catenas–has dropped the faintest hint that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the commission and promise to Peter!
Not one of them has explained the rock or foundation on which Christ would build His Church as the office given to Peter to be transmitted to his successors, but they understood by it either Christ Himself, or Peter’s confession of faith in Christ; often both together (Cited in Hunt D. A Women Rides the Beast. Harvest House Publishers, Eugene (OR) p. 146).
One of MANY examples. your Church changes its mind just like everyone else- welcome to planet earth, enjoy your stay!
He says “all the things in Scripture are clearly seen for one passage illuminates another” and what he means is “my interpretation of what the Scriptures say is clearly correct because it seems so clear to me [given his biases and tradition of course]“.
And as to your tradition and bias? Irenaeus’ tradition and bias? We are all subject to that. Peter made mistakes to, we get that ‘tradition’ from him.
Thanks,
God bless.
Hi Garret,
From a comment a little ways up:
For instance- you can’t come away from the Scriptures not understanding that a believer is to be baptized, and participate in the Lords Supper. That is very clear. Stop right there- that is clear, that is perspicuous
If your definition of perspicuity is that someone can read the Scriptures and come away knowing that they teach that Jesus is God and became a man, giving his life on the Cross to die for our sins, and that it says we are to be baptized and (perhaps) to receive the Lord’s Supper at some regularity, then I agree that the Scriptures are clear enough for that. If that is your definition of perspicuity, then I think that 1) I can totally agree with it and 2) it’s not what Luther and most Protestants believe perspicuity is.
After all, as you later demonstrate, once we get into the important matters of what, exactly, baptism means and does (or does not do), what the Lord’s Supper is (or is not), how Jesus saves us and who can be saved, the Scriptures lack the perspicuity you talk about. They are not clear enough about baptism (infant or adult only, regenerates or not) for us to all find agreement. Something more is needed: The Apostolic Tradition and the God-guided interpretive authority of His Church.
Tradition is necessary, and very valid for the Fathers to appeal to. Large thumping sound, pause- now that you have picked yourself up off the floor- realize I am not anti-tradition.
I know that you say you believe in some notion of “tradition”, but what exactly is it? Where does it come from, and how does it work? What does it hold to be true? (I’ve read James White on this question, so I can hazard a guess but would like to hear if you say the same thing.) Protestants also say they believe in “the communion of saints”, so long as it coincides with their changed definition of it over the Church throughout history. They also say they believe that “the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” as long as “Church” is redefined as immaterial and purely spiritual (rather than also visible), “one” is defined similarly loosely, “holy” is defined as not truly made holy, “catholic” is universal in the sense that there are believers everywhere who are Christians, and “apostolic” means apostolicity, not a direct connection to the Apostles via the laying on of hands, which is Biblical and historical.
You have to consider that Irenaeus to the Apostles is the equivalent of Devin to Abraham Lincoln, time-wise. That is a vital point. To ignore it is to court disaster. It is very different for Irenaeus to talk of tradition then in the year 180, than it is to claim the same tradition today, 2009. That would be a historical claim, and that claim would be a monumental failure as a historical claim.
The Catholic teaching on the living Tradition of the Church is that it contains the deposit of Faith given once and for all to the Apostles (and thus the Church) by Christ. It has a written portion (the Scriptures) and an unwritten portion (also just called Tradition). This Apostolic Tradition, therefore, does not “change” in the sense that things are added to it or removed from it, no more than the Scriptures can be added from or removed from and still be the Scriptures, so the Apostolic Tradition that St. Irenaeus and the other Fathers speak of is the same one. Is your tradition the same as St. Irenaeus’? You say mine is not and it is a historical error of monumental proportions to say so. I can seek to prove it, but I don’t think you are in a place to listen to my evidence; better that you continue to read the Fathers yourself.
Yes, your Church became apostate. Christs Church, his body, is built up of those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells (Romans 8:9), those whom the Father draws (John 6). It is composed of physical believers, (and those who are no longer physical) but that does not mean they are located under one human ecclesiastical umbrella. If the ‘ecclesia’ in question is unbiblical in its theology, and you are a believer, you have no business being in it at all. You agree, and that what you say about me, so there we have it.
So were there any true believers, those in whom the Holy Spirit dwelled, after “my” Church became apostate sometime in the 1st millennium? Where were they? How did they believe in the “Biblical truth” when most of them could not read and were told what was true by apostate priests and bishops who led the apostate Church? If they did not believe in the truth but in Catholic lies, then were they true believers in whom the Holy Spirit dwelled? If everyone believed in these lies, then was there any Church at all for 1,000 years? If there were people who didn’t believe in the false teachings, who were they? Any names in any century after the apostasy happened?
Please ignore that 5th century claim, I cannot substantiate a century in particular. I meant to delete that.
Please answer to how you can be confident that your ‘chain’ of bishops is unbroken to the Apostles, when there were so many clearly ungodly (and not just your average ‘run of the mill’ ungodly either) who are in that list.
I will ignore the 5th century claim, but that means I don’t know when the apostasy happened nor which event could have caused it.
I can give you the list of the 265 popes, the direct succession of the bishops of the church of Rome from St. Peter himself, but obviously you would still reject it as an unbroken chain because you have made a decision that the criterion for the chain to be unbroken is a Donatistic purity of belief or action, as if the authority Christ gives depended upon the holiness of the person holding the office. This criterion is ad hoc and also a heresy condemned by the Fathers in centuries before the apostasy you allege occurred (assuming you think the apostasy was after 311 AD – 411 AD). Please explain how your criterion is not ad hoc and how it avoids Donatism.
Now onto more recent comments:
It is very different for Irenaeus to talk of tradition then in the year 180, than it is to claim the same tradition today, 2009. That would be a historical claim, and that claim would be a monumental failure as a historical claim.In otherwords- the early Church Fathers have a different faith than you do- that is my claim. That is what I mean by apostasy.
You make this assertion, and I assert that the Catholic Church (and therefore my faith) is organically connected to the Church of the Fathers and their faith because it is the one and the same One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. So we both assert against each other. Sounds like we understand what the other believes, so we have to go into specifics to see who has the more credible claim.
He would be in a good position to know that- but would he not believe that ALL Churches were founded by the Apostles, or just Rome? I do believe that the Apostles founded Churches all Christians believe and know that!- its right there in the Bible. Paul wrote Romans, to the Roman Church, BUT he had never met them before- Romans 1:11-13. He did not ‘found’ a Church at Rome, it preexisted him. The preeminent authority during the Apostles lifetimes was Jerusalem. That city fell in 70 AD.
Yes the other Apostles founded many churches all around the known world, all in union with the church of Rome, the seat and home of St. Peter, bishop of Rome, which had, as St. Irenaeus says, “pre-eminent authority” which every church must agree with. St. Peter was martyred in Rome around 67 AD. If you desire to try to nullify the authority Christ gave explicitly to Peter in the Bible, that is fine with me, but if you are trying to deny it based on the Bible, the “clear” evidence is against you.
Corruption in the papacy means their were false popes, false bishops which means the chain is broken, which means you have no intact link to the Apostles. That’s okay, the link to the Apostles is in their writings, and in their faith, which is from and in Jesus Christ.
Your reasoning here is the same as the Donatist heretics’ who claimed that valid bishops, sacraments, and the true Church depended upon the holiness or faithfulness of the men themselves. This heresy lasted for 100 years from 311 AD to 411 AD, when the great Church Father Augustine finally defeated it. (Interesting to note that if your faith is the Church Fathers’ and mine is not, why is that you are with the Donatists while the Fathers are with me on this issue?) Emperor Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan, which largely ended the horrific persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire. The Donatists were a rigorist group which, in their disgust with those Christians who, under the duress of torture, had renounced their faith or handed over the sacred Scriptures to the Romans, sought to forbid these repentant Christians from returning to the Church. They claimed that they were the true, “pure” Church because their bishops and priests had not become corrupted by recanting their faith and handing over the Scriptures to the Romans (who destroyed them). At the time of the heresies defeat in the early 400s, they had around 300 bishops in Africa, equal to the number of orthodox bishops!
Devout Catholic historian von Dollinger reminds us of the following facts:.
If you are talking about the same von Dollinger, he was excommunicated and died in that state, outside of full communion with the Church. That doesn’t negate everything he did or said, by any means, but claiming him to be an authority who is also a “devout Catholic” is misleading.
Just because the validity of Romes claim expired at some point, does not refer to the Scriptures and perspicuity.
This claim is based on Donatist ideas.
Get me a time machine, because there is nothing there for me to disagree with- though as I have shown, his definition of primacy of Rome is something completely different from what you mean today.
I do not recall you demonstrating this claim.
This is not rocket science! You are the one trying to force Irenaeus into an untenable position, because his argument on Scripture, meant to be taken outside of his tradition, into another tradition, and understood by another tradition such as to disprove that other tradition as being false based on Scripture is to you untenable! They could not possibly understand Scripture then! Could you at least give Irenaeus the decency to know what the Scriptures are capable of doing?
I think St. Irenaeus understood Scripture and that it can be understood. I think that the Gnostics twisted Scripture, as all heretics do and have done. From your narrow definition of perspicuity, we agree that the Scriptures are perspicuous. However, if you decide to make your definition broader and closer to what I have read other Protestants teach, then we will disagree again. If you take Scripture and interpet it through a Scientology tradition, you are going to get something bizarre. He interpreted it within the Apostolic Tradition, as he said:
“2. But, again, when we refer them to that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition, saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth. For [they maintain] that the apostles intermingled the things of the law with the words of the Saviour; and that not the apostles alone, but even the Lord Himself, spoke as at one time from the Demiurge, at another from the intermediate place, and yet again from the Pleroma, but that they themselves, indubitably, unsulliedly, and purely, have knowledge of the hidden mystery: this is, indeed, to blaspheme their Creator after a most impudent manner! It comes to this, therefore, that these men do now consent neither to Scripture nor to tradition.”
So the only contention between us is, what is that “tradition” that St. Irenaeus is speaking of. I know you have some discussions in parallel on Kevin Branson’s blog right now on this same topic.
His opponents did not have his tradition Devin, can you explain how he could argue using the Scriptures, and further, how he could expect them to not abuse the Scriptures? He constantly addresses their arguments of the Scriptures and corrects them using sound methodology. He expects them to understand, to get it! He holds them accountable to the Scriptures, even though they do not share his tradition.
He could not expect them to not abuse the Scriptures given their false beliefs. However, it was still right for him to argue against them by appealing to the Scriptures using “sound methodology” which means interpreting them as the Apostles intended them, but how do we do that? That’s the big question. It seems that you want to say he was saying to remove the Scriptures out of everything and somehow read them in a vacuum by themselves apart from any tradition as if that could be a sound methodology. I don’t think he was saying that. He could still say, however, that the Scriptures clearly teach X, where X is that the Father created the world. I think they are clear on that point. Again, we seem to agree that the Scriptures are “clear” on some basic things but beyond some very simple things we differ immediately. The Gnostics decided they had secret knowledge, and that secret stuff contradicted the Scriptures and Apostolic Tradition. Hence, “these men do now consent neither to Scripture nor to tradition.”
He needs to not be lazy and tackle the work of reading the Fathers and coming to terms with them in a balanced way.
That Baptist preacher reads the Fathers and sees false teachings everywhere, therefore he rightly calls into question all their teachings. If they are not sound, faithful men who followed God but were men who were led astray on such important doctrines, then their credibility is grievously impugned and Baptists would do well to not listen to them. He sees that either his Baptist beliefs are true or the Fathers are true, but since the Fathers don’t align with his interpretation of Scripture, they must be wrong and therefore they are not to be trusted.
And yet we trust ourselves. Even if you have an ‘infallible’ source you can trust, ultimately, WE are fallible. You cannot escape our your own fallibility. See my post here- http://reformnow-garret.blogspot.com/2009/08/note-to-teri.html
You are again making the error of conflating “the susceptibility of an agent to err, and the possible falsehood of any proposition held or stated by that agent.”
It of course serves you to say I could not possibly understand the Scriptures from my worldview. Lets talk about specifics then!
You can understand much of the Scriptures at some level, however, given your particular Reformed Baptist Protestant interpretive tradition, you are going to make errors, with significant consequences, due to this tradition not being the Apostolic one nor you being in full communion with the Church Christ established. We can talk about specifics, sure, but the higher level questions about the Church and authority control the specific beliefs.
Sincerely,
Devin
Hi Devin-
Thank you for your lengthy answer. I will not answer to everything there, we need to keep it a little simpler between us, so I will whittle it down to points I think are important, and if I neglect to answer what seems most important to you, please ask again. That being said, as a lay apologist, my answers probably and frequently will not be the best answers that can be provided, nor will I always take the time to properly lay out all of the arguments, in all of their points. Thanks, I will promise my best as time permits however!
This Apostolic Tradition, therefore, does not “change” in the sense that things are added to it or removed from it, no more than the Scriptures can be added from or removed from and still be the Scriptures, so the Apostolic Tradition that St. Irenaeus and the other Fathers speak of is the same one. Is your tradition the same as St. Irenaeus’?
As far as the texts of the Fathers in the early Church go, there are severe limits as to what you can determine they believed about the Eucharist and the efficacy of the sacraments, and even whether they had all of the sacraments or held to sacramental theology in any modern sense at all! Therefore your claim is reduced to an ‘trustful authority claim’ of the RCC that has no solid historical backing at all! Why are there priests and nuns who sit down, read the Bible, and then leave the Catholic Church eventually? Because there is no basis within the Scriptures for believing that the RCC has the theology of the Apostles right! Where are the commands to do the sacraments to be saved!? Paul and the others would absolutely have NOT neglected to pass that on in writing considering how thorough he was. Otherwise 2 Tim 3:16,17 would not be a truth statement, it would have been false to say Scripture was useful for correction, when you cannot even use Scripture to achieve the salvation of your souls!
So were there any true believers, those in whom the Holy Spirit dwelled, after “my” Church became apostate sometime in the 1st millennium? Where were they? How did they believe in the “Biblical truth” when most of them could not read and were told what was true by apostate priests and bishops who led the apostate Church? If they did not believe in the truth but in Catholic lies, then were they true believers in whom the Holy Spirit dwelled? If everyone believed in these lies, then was there any Church at all for 1,000 years? If there were people who didn’t believe in the false teachings, who were they? Any names in any century after the apostasy happened?
Many of these questions I cannot answer. There are alternate Christian histories, outside of the Roman Catholic faith- see this article for instance-
http://www.bereanbeacon.org/history/history/Identifying_the_Early_Church.pdf
Especially starting around page 5. Either way, God does not fail to save who He intends to save. There could have been whole doomed generations for all I know!
If you desire to try to nullify the authority Christ gave explicitly to Peter in the Bible, that is fine with me, but if you are trying to deny it based on the Bible, the “clear” evidence is against you.
When did your Church figure that out? Carefully explore this article-http://www.cogwriter.com/peterkeys.htm
The Biblical evidence is not your friend on this issue.
Your reasoning here is the same as the Donatist heretics’ who claimed that valid bishops, sacraments, and the true Church depended upon the holiness or faithfulness of the men themselves. This heresy lasted for 100 years from 311 AD to 411 AD, when the great Church Father Augustine finally defeated it. (Interesting to note that if your faith is the Church Fathers’ and mine is not, why is that you are with the Donatists while the Fathers are with me on this issue?)
A nice and noble try, but it fails. I understand that perfection and complete sanctification is not necessary, neither is it tenable in this lifetime. But you cannot claim that I am a Donatist because I recognize the fact that there were popes (plural) who literally ordered the torture and murder of thousands of people because they did not submit to Rome. Then all of the sudden I am a Donatist to point out that the claim of those popes to be legitimate episkepoi in the Biblical and Apostolic sense and to imply that you should reject those popes! If then you should reject those popes, and I say you should, then you do not have an unbroken chain to the Apostles. Simple to understand, so can you then explain to me what exactly is wrong with my statements there? How can you embrace murderous and greedy popes who clearly are not led by God to be legit epikepoi?
Thanks, more in a bit!
God bless you!
Garret
Hi Devin,
Part II In regards to perspecuity, I do believe that the hard to chase out things can be clearly known, not just the ‘surfacy things’.
It seems that you want to say he was saying to remove the Scriptures out of everything and somehow read them in a vacuum by themselves apart from any tradition as if that could be a sound methodology. I don’t think he was saying that.
Well, he was asking them to reject their tradition based on the Scriptures and the proofs he offers from the Scriptures, rather than saying,’come to our tradition and understand, we have the authority’ anywhere other than book 3. For instance in Book 4 of ‘Against Heresies’ we see Irenaeus make some rather complex argumentation from the Scriptures en toto to make clear the wisdom and truths you can mine from them. Those arguments were not ‘surfacy’ obvious ones, but deeper truths that took work to get at.
I’m going to skip ahead to a claim that I would like to ‘chase out’
You can understand much of the Scriptures at some level, however, given your particular Reformed Baptist Protestant interpretive tradition, you are going to make errors, with significant consequences, due to this tradition not being the Apostolic one nor you being in full communion with the Church Christ established. We can talk about specifics, sure, but the higher level questions about the Church and authority control the specific beliefs.
Why in the world, would God entrust into the hands of fallible men, Tradition passed down with out ‘touchstoning’ it in writing in the same way it was clearly done in the Pentateuch? God is the God of the Pentateuch, and He blessed Paul to be so eloquent and thorough. Why would the salvific tradition (is there salvation outside of the sacraments?) appear in primitive forms, (slight hints really) in the early Church Fathers writings? And only centuries later, start to be written down? This does not sound like the God of the Bible and His technique- it sounds like man, and the claims that man would make to authenticate his own authority. Why when it comes to theological truth were Peter and Paul and James et al such failures in getting the theological truths across?
Thanks,
Garret
Garret,
I have a brief moment here and want to respond to one point in particular where you deny being Donatist:
A nice and noble try, but it fails. I understand that perfection and complete sanctification is not necessary, neither is it tenable in this lifetime. But you cannot claim that I am a Donatist because I recognize the fact that there were popes (plural) who literally ordered the torture and murder of thousands of people because they did not submit to Rome. Then all of the sudden I am a Donatist to point out that the claim of those popes to be legitimate episkepoi in the Biblical and Apostolic sense and to imply that you should reject those popes! If then you should reject those popes, and I say you should, then you do not have an unbroken chain to the Apostles. Simple to understand, so can you then explain to me what exactly is wrong with my statements there? How can you embrace murderous and greedy popes who clearly are not led by God to be legit epikepoi?
Let’s assume your statements about some popes is true.
What you are actually saying is that, though one doesn’t have to be perfect to be a “true” bishop in Christ’s Church, one cannot be, say, a murderer or order the killing of others.
So please tell me where, exactly, the bar of holiness has been set by God for a bishop of his Church to be valid? How is conditioning God’s divinely bestowed authority upon human holiness not Donatism?
And also meditate on this story from Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries:
Fr. Brown is a dumpy-looking but shrewd little priest who always solves the crimes. This one involved two men who had a duel, and everyone thought that Man A killed Man B for known reasons. The anti-Catholic “friends” in the story all sided with Man A, the killer, because they felt his reasons in some way justified the murder, even though they did not.
So these friends attack the Church and the priesthood and accuse them of making Man A live in guilt his whole life and driving him to seclusion. They also call for mercy and pardon for Man A. But Father Brown discovers and reveals to them that in fact, it was Man B who killed Man A and then impersonated Man A the rest of his life, so that he (Man B) could never be found out as the real killer.
The anti-Catholic friends start singing a different tune then:
“He ought to be lynched,” cried Cockspur…
“I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole myself,” said Mallow.
“There is a limit to human charity,” said Lady Outram, trembling all over.
“There is,” said Father Brown dryly; “and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity….For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.”
“But, hang it all,” cried Mallow, “you don’t expect us to be able to pardon a vile thing like this?”
“No, said the priest; “but we have to be able to pardon it.”
He stood up abruptly and looked around at them.
“We have to touch such men, not with a barge pole, but with a benediction,” he said. “We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them….Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came.”
Hi Devin,
Good reply, thanks for the story too, I like it- there are good things to ponder there about human nature and the nature of sin. For the record, I am not against Capital Punishment.
So please tell me where, exactly, the bar of holiness has been set by God for a bishop of his Church to be valid? How is conditioning God’s divinely bestowed authority upon human holiness not Donatism?
Please keep in mind that I would not presume to speak bad about those in the office of Bishop – episkopos, unless I thought there were guidelines to follow that were mandated by God. There are. The Pastoral Epistles come immediately to mind as the direct and easily understood ‘bar of holiness’.
We have to be able to judge righteously- John 7:24 “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.” Paul says Judgment is to be done inside the body of believers-”What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” Keeping your eyes open for heretics, wolves amongst sheep, etc are all things we are told to watch out for! So why in the world should anyone assume that righteous judgment is to be withheld from a bishop as though once he gets the title, he is impervious somehow to evil that could disqualify him from further office!? To stand under a Church that would do so would be madness, and leaving her would not be a theological stance per se such as ‘Donatism’, it would be justified sanity in the face of insanity. You should expect the Church to oust such a pope violently if need be, that would be sound! Would you honestly stand by the pope if he had me tortured for days by having my limbs crushed and bent back until I repented of heresy? If I didn’t repent of theological heresy, they might finish me off by opening my throat and pouring molten lead down my gullet- it is said to burst a person into flames from the inside- they literally glow like a lantern while they burn to death from inside. I am talking about popes that condoned those things, in their name they were done. A pope that would condone that might be forgiven by the families of the murdered, as it would be their burden to bear- but that certainly does not mean that that particular pope should continue to be pope, nor should be thought of as belonging in the papacy in the first place! This would be something that would tend to indicate through righteous judgment, that a mistake was made in calling that man the ‘vicar of Christ’ on earth. I have a feeling that many RC’s might agree with me on that point.
1 Tim 3:1-7 is the episkopate. It says that he must be above reproach to outsiders- not burn and kill and torture outsiders. One who did those things seems to be disqualified from office.
1 Tim 5:1,2
Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
Another mandate for episkepoi- Equality, humility. I can find many many examples in Gods word that make it painfully clear that the Apostles had very particular qualities in mind for the shepherds of the flock. This would include once that person is in office, as it would make no sense to say once a man is pope, he can rape, pillage ,plunder, torture- well no, its not good, but he will be forgiven, because that is what Christ would do, and you should do too! first of all, forgiveness belongs to the person and people wronged. It makes no sense for me to forgive my neighbors wife for what she said to him last week, that is up to him to forgive her, and he should, and Christ can and will if she is His.
God bless,
Garret
Hi Garret,
I have a few minutes. I also am not a pro-apologist. I don’t always answer the best way from the Catholic perspective, so we both just do our best, realizing that even if one of us seems to make a point that the other cannot rebut well, it might just be that the other doesn’t know a good counter-argument for it or got trapped into a corner earlier not realizing there was a way out. The goal of course to keep in mind is that we are both Christians seeking Christ, who is the Truth, and we hope our dialogue helps us to come to that truth in its fullness.
Where are the commands to do the sacraments to be saved!? Paul and the others would absolutely have NOT neglected to pass that on in writing considering how thorough he was. Otherwise 2 Tim 3:16,17 would not be a truth statement, it would have been false to say Scripture was useful for correction, when you cannot even use Scripture to achieve the salvation of your souls!
I would answer:
John 3 where Jesus says that one must be born of water and the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God: Baptism.
John 6: “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats 19 my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day”: Eucharist.
John 20: Confession
James 5: Anointing of the Sick
1 Timothy 4 (and others): Holy Orders
Confirmation is in there with all the anointing with oil combined with baptism. Marriage is obviously in there and we believe is a sacrament.
Do you interpret these passages differently or call them something other than “sacrament”? I am sure you do, but there is a strong case made for what these passages say “clearly”,
to use a word we have been discussing about the clearness of Scriptures. To me, these passages are clear, especially in light of others supporting them.
Could you pull up passages which could be interpreted as symbolic only baptism, Eucharist, no anointing of the sick, no confirmation, etc.? I am sure you could; I’ve read the Bible, as a Protestant several times and as a Catholic I continue to read it often. I have interpreted it through both paradigms (or traditions). Both can be accepted by reasonable and faithful people, as you and I are in my opinion. So what authority do we look to for the truth?
Mr. White says things like “the sacramental system” to try to denigrate the words used by Catholics to describe these things that we believe God instituted as the ordinary way of giving us grace. If it is a system God instituted, then I’m all for it. He can give us grace extraordinarily, too, and often does because He is generous and great and not bound by the sacraments. But if God wants to baptize you and cleanse your sins through it, incorporating you into His Body, the Church, and give you His Holy Spirit, well then let’s get baptized and believe God works through it!
Have to go right now; I plan to reply to more later. Feel free to respond as you like.
Hi Devin,
Thanks for the answers there, I will avoid delving into those Biblical issues for now, excepting one thing to ponder about John 3, that I loved discovering, This would apply to RC’s I think, as it does not militate against it per se, except I would use it to undermine baptism in John 3. That is this- Jesus faults Nicodemus for his failure as a teacher of Israel to not understand what He was telling him 3:9-10. Was this a reference to a learned man of Israel failing to looking forward to the prophetic promises of the Messiah and a future new covenant? Many think that yes, of course, Jesus faults this man for that lack, in a culture that craved its coming Messiah. Well, turn to one of the prophesies that directly refers to water and Spirit- Ezekiel 36:24-27
24″For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.
25″Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.
26″Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27″I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
The water is washing away uncleanness, including idolatry. The heart of stone is done away with – replaced with a heart of flesh, putting the Spirit in you- being born again! Thank you Lord! I think that is what He was referring to, not water baptism, though I know that Roman Catholics are ‘sprinklers’, so there you have it.
Mr. White says things like “the sacramental system” to try to denigrate the words used by Catholics to describe these things that we believe God instituted as the ordinary way of giving us grace. If it is a system God instituted, then I’m all for it.
That’s DR. White pal!
I don’t think he is trying to denigrate Catholicism, as he for the most part has his opponents respect, with some exceptions to be sure.
Thanks, and I look forward to your other answers-
God bless you and yours!
Garret
Hi Garret,
Why in the world, would God entrust into the hands of fallible men, Tradition passed down with out ‘touchstoning’ it in writing in the same way it was clearly done in the Pentateuch? God is the God of the Pentateuch, and He blessed Paul to be so eloquent and thorough.
As we see from the vast spread of Christian groups’ interpretations of the Bible, having God’s revelation written down does not of itself preserve his truth from error due to wrong interpretation. God can preserve his truth via fallible men in written and/or unwritten form; in either case it takes God taking action to guide His Church into all truth and protecting her from error.
From the Pentateuch’s descriptions, can you reproduce exactly how to do the various liturgical offerings and sacrifices? How do we reconcile the two differing creation accounts in the first chapters of Genesis? I am making the point that the Pentateuch is “thorough” to the degree that God made it thorough.
Similarly, if Paul was so thorough, why do we not have one account in the New Testament of how, exactly, to “do the Christian worship”? We hear vague references to reading the word and breaking the bread, but we don’t have an ordered account that would actually allow us to know how the Apostles’ worshiped. And as a result, a hundred different Protestant Communities do worship a hundred different ways. The churches of Christ Community claim that they went “back to the beginning”, to the 1st century, and have recreated the worship as the Apostles did it. Your Reformed Baptist church no doubt does things quite differently than they.
St. Paul was as thorough as God decided that his writings would be, but they offer only a tiny glimpse into the history of the early Church and into the Apostles’ lives; further, they are not exhaustive doctrinally. They are “clear enough” and “thorough enough” within the living Tradition of the Church Christ established, but taken outside and isolated by themselves as they were not intended to be, problems emerge.
Why would the salvific tradition (is there salvation outside of the sacraments?) appear in primitive forms, (slight hints really) in the early Church Fathers writings? And only centuries later, start to be written down? This does not sound like the God of the Bible and His technique- it sounds like man, and the claims that man would make to authenticate his own authority. Why when it comes to theological truth were Peter and Paul and James et al such failures in getting the theological truths across?
Why write things down when “everyone knows them”? That is what’s so funny. We don’t have in the Bible an account of their worship. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter, just do anything because God doesn’t care? No, because there was not need to commit to writing that which all the Christians did every Sunday! Everyone participated and knew the liturgy and how it went and who presided and why they had authority. We have of course non-canonical writings that talk more about the early Christian worship, but these are not inspired by God, so they do not have the same weight, and most Protestants would not every consider reading them.
We see from the Church Fathers and other Christian writings the evidence of Tradition. How much you want to see and don’t want to see is dependent on your own bias. Much that was written in the early centuries of the Church didn’t survive because not many writings survived at all during that time in history, given the state of written recordings at that time.
Sts. Peter and James and Paul were anything but failures in transmitting the truth; neither were the other Apostles even though we have ZERO recorded writings from them, let alone ones accounted as inspired Scripture. St. Thomas went to India and evangelized there, winning converts for Christ in those ancient civilizations that had long known only darkness. By God’s grace his work bore fruit. China was very nearly converted entirely early on as well, but sadly its mass conversion was thwarted. We have varying degrees of certainty as to where the different Apostles went, but we know that God spread the Gospel through them and many people entered the Church from all over the known world.
St. Peter left us only a few inspired letters (and the Gospel via St Mark if you accept that,) but is that all that he did? Of course not! He taught and preached and baptized and healed and ultimately gave his life for Christ as a martyr, requesting to be crucified upside-down since he did not feel worthy of being crucified as Jesus was.
These men did what Christ commanded them to do, and the primary work they were given was not to write a bunch of books down, though God did inspire them to write some things, but rather to preach the Kingdom and evangelize the world for Jesus. Read 3 John (all 15 verses or however many there are) and tell me that it sounds like it was meant to be the sum total of what St. John taught to the churches in his area? The last verses read: ” “I have much to write to you, but I do not wish to write with pen and ink. Instead, I hope to see you soon, when we can talk face to face.”
Authority comes from God. God gives authority to man. Which men? The Apostles, who led Christ’s Church. What happened to that authority? They passed it to their disciples, who now had it and led the Church with it. They passed it on as well, and so on. There is no circle. The Gospel was preached that Christ had given them; eventually orderly accounts were written down under the inspiration of the Spirit, all within the Church, who then over the next few centuries discerned which of these were God-breathed and which, while useful, were not. By the authority that Christ gave his Church, transmitted in a direct line from Him to the Apostles and to their successors, the inspired books were infallibly selected, such that all God’s children can know the exact books he inspired and not wrongly think something was inspired and true which was not. We know these things by believing the testimony of those who have come before us in the Faith, all the way back to the Apostles themselves. Tradition, both written and unwritten, confirms these truths.
Sincerely,
Devin
Hi Devin,
Okay, first we are way off track here on what I was seeking to get accomplished. Its not all about me though (:! We are talking past each other largely. You trust that you have an apostolic succession that is valid, and have not addressed that for me. You don’t need to, I understand, but I would like your answer.
As we see from the vast spread of Christian groups’ interpretations of the Bible, having God’s revelation written down does not of itself preserve his truth from error due to wrong interpretation.
Once again for the bazillionth time- the documents are inerrant, the people are not- you can’t demonstrate complete sufficiency and inerrancy of the Scriptures based on the behavior of the readers, neither can you demonstrate that they are insufficient to the task of sole authority in matters of faith by themselves via behavior- but we have been there already. The Apostles themselves had to work through issues of faith, so you can’t say that the emergence of theological differences disproves sufficiency of authority, lest you say that the Apostles were not authoritative.
Similarly, if Paul was so thorough, why do we not have one account in the New Testament of how, exactly, to “do the Christian worship”?
That’s what I wonder- and that is why I would tell you that you cannot with confidence state that you know for sure that your religious actions towards God in a sacramental theology are what the Apostles taught. It is not there- so you can’t say it is Apostolic. Instead, what we have is a very clear exposition on what it takes to actually be saved, and what that looks like. The vital info is all there, and it is not a sacramental theology.
<i.Why write things down when “everyone knows them”? That is what’s so funny. We don’t have in the Bible an account of their worship. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter, just do anything because God doesn’t care? No, because there was not need to commit to writing that which all the Christians did every Sunday! Everyone participated and knew the liturgy and how it went and who presided and why they had authority.
So am I to take that as an explicit admission that you don’t have this information in writing, and that you trust by faith as a fallible person that the sacramental theology that you practice is what was taught by the Apostles?
We can go in circle on this a million times- because I say as the Scriptures say that they are God breathed- and are up to the task of being the authority in correcting, rebuking, etc 2 Tim 3:16-17! BUT! BUT, they didn’t write down the critical knowledge of the sacraments and what they accomplish! How long could that possibly take to write down at least 6 or 7 sentences on each sacrament, and detailed instructions on the efficacy and necessity of each one? Probably 45 mins. at most. Yet Paul, if he knew the Sacraments at all would have surely taken the time to write them out, especially in Romans, where he was writing to a church body he never met, and wanted to assure that they had the same faith as he. The fact that he did not do so, and yet the RCC says they are fundamental to your justification, its unspeakably troubling- or it should be! I would call that the 30-45 mins that would have changed Church history- I mean come on Paul, now REALLY tell us how we are saved and stay away from language that seems to evade our own contribution to salvation via sacraments whatsoever! The reason I don’t think he did so is because he did not know of such a theology and would have proclaimed it anathema- I say that as a reader of Paul, not just as a Protestant.
In your last three paragraphs, I agree will all except- “We know these things by believing the testimony of those who have come before us in the Faith, all the way back to the Apostles themselves. Tradition, both written and unwritten, confirms these truths.” I don’t think popes have anything important to say at all, and largely in history have bungled things horribly. it does not by anymeans go back all the way to the Apostles except by the Holy Spirit, and I would argue that many of the men in your list did not have that, not even close.
Thanks Devin, and God bless.
Garret
Hi Garret,
I have just a few moments, but this may be my last comment in this series. Feel free to have the last word.
Last thing first. You are table-pounding a bit with your assertion that the New Testament doesn’t mention the sacraments. I believe and the Church has taught for millennia that it does mention them and I listed some of the verses back in comment #24. Believe and be baptized and you shall be saved–well, baptism is what Catholics call “a sacrament”, and so claiming that “the Bible doesn’t say the sacraments are needed for salvation” is dubious at best. Peter also says: “and baptism…which saves you now”–what can he mean? That baptism doesn’t save you? How much clearer can it be?
There are almost no passages in the Bible written catechism-style with point by point teachings for each doctrine in an orderly way. It was not the way God inspired them; His Church could later create a catechism, which it did.
I suggest you read Luther on the sacraments, especially baptism. Try to reconcile his beliefs on baptism with your own. Why should I believe you over the great Martin Luther on this sacrament?
As far as apostolic succession, the Orthodox claim it, too. Do you deny that they have apostolic succession as well? They will be disappointed to know that they, too, have been under an illusion for so many millennia. I also believe that they have apostolic succession, in spite of them being a schism from the Catholic Church. Can they prove it? Yes they can: feel free to ask them!
I said earlier I could give you the list of 265 popes from St. Peter to (the totally awesome) Benedict XVI, but you would not accept it because you believe that the existence in places and times of unholy men as bishops broke the succession. In that case, no one has apostolic succession, and I am going to make myself a bishop (or elder if you like) of First Truthfulness Original Awesomeness Church. If you don’t like my teaching, I will point you to the passages about obeying the elders of the Church.
About God’s truth needing to be written down and your objection to my statement: You were claiming that God works by having men write down things (and not leaving them oral). I pointed out that the written Bible doesn’t guarantee true interpretation of it and that God can preserve his truth via either medium. I was not making a general statement about the sufficiency of the Scriptures.
That’s what I wonder- and that is why I would tell you that you cannot with confidence state that you know for sure that your religious actions towards God in a sacramental theology are what the Apostles taught. It is not there- so you can’t say it is Apostolic.
We do know how to worship God because it is preserved in the liturgy of the Church, confirmed by very early Christian writings (though not inspired still historical), and that worship includes the reading of God’s Word and also the Eucharist where, as the early Christians and Church Fathers attest, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. You may disagree but to say that there is no support for it is not true: From the Bible alone there is little support for anyone’s liturgy or worship.
So am I to take that as an explicit admission that you don’t have this information in writing, and that you trust by faith as a fallible person that the sacramental theology that you practice is what was taught by the Apostles?
Just because the liturgy isn’t spelled out clearly in the Bible does not mean it isn’t spoken of at all, nor does it say anything about the sacraments, which are explicitly recorded in the New Testament. We are not “saved by the liturgy”, but the Mass does include the Eucharist, which is Christ’s Real Presence, and Christ does indeed save us.
St. Paul didn’t have the false dichotomy of salvation that you have read back into him: “We are EITHER saved by grace through faith OR we are saved by baptism!” False dichotomy. Read the Anglican theologian Dr. Phillip Cary on Luther’s understanding of sola Fide with respect to baptism: Luther said that you put your faith in Christ who baptizes you! Grace, faith, hope, love, baptism, the Eucharist: None are in opposition to one another.
I don’t think popes have anything important to say at all, and largely in history have bungled things horribly.
This statement is, to put it bluntly, ignorant. I mean that in the best way. Pope Benedict alone has written several unimportant letters on trivial, un-Christian topics like “God is Love” and “Saved in Hope”. Popes throughout history have given their lives in defense of the Faith so that you could have it. If you are reading the early Christians, you should read St. Clement’s epistle, who I believe was pope around 99 – 102 AD. Popes have done and written great things for Christ. Until you have at least tried to read some tiny fraction of their writings, I would hold off on making sweeping generalizations about how worthless they are. Very few popes in history have been truly dissolute. Many have been heroic for God. Most have been faithful, though human, persons.
Christ bless you,
Devin
Hi Devin,
I am losing computer privileges for a couple weeks, so I will jump in here and there as I can in those coming weeks, it has been a pleasure.
“and baptism…which saves you now”–what can he mean? That baptism doesn’t save you? How much clearer can it be?
Yes, it can absolutely be interpreted there as symbolic, I won’t get into it right now.
In that case, no one has apostolic succession, and I am going to make myself a bishop (or elder if you like) of First Truthfulness Original Awesomeness Church. If you don’t like my teaching, I will point you to the passages about obeying the elders of the Church.
Okay, then we can compare your teachings to the Bible and see how you fit- you crazy schismatic you.
That’s all for now Devin,
God bless,
Garret
Devman,
You write that Catholicism is closer to synergism, but I think this is false. Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm and such all agree in a monergistic or condign grace and only co-operation after God has moved the will to faith and the other virtues. At the divine moving of the will there is no synergism for these figures. God still on the Catholic schema picks people to be saved and leaves others aside because he loves some more than others. Where Rome and Calvin differ is on the nature of nature and grace and how they relate and not on the fundamental idea that God predestines some completely absent forseen merits.
Perry, I’ll take your word for it as this is beyond my learning. I guess I was looking at it from the common-man’s notion of “do we cooperate with grace or not,” and Calvinists tell me that “we don’t” but I understand the Catholic Church to teach that “we do.”
Perhaps this kind of common language isn’t precise enough to get to Calvinist-Catholic differences, but do you have insight into whether it is correct or not?
Devman,
Catholics include and Protestants exclude co-operation in justification-both include it in sanctification and both exclude it in the initial motion of the will by God.
Aquinas writes,
“Now there is no distinction between what flows from free will, and what is of predestination; as there is no distinction between what flows from a secondary cause and from a first cause. For the providence of God produces effects through the operation of secondary causes, as was above shown (Question 22, Art. 3). Wherefore, that which flows from free-will is also of predestination.”
Thomas Aquinas, ST, Ia. Q. 23, a.5.
That kind of predestination is all over the Scholastics from Albert, Bonaventura, Scotus, Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, etc.
Take a gander at the Council of Trent for example on the lack of co-operation. Session 6, chapter 5. It is quite monergistic. Co-operation comes only after as an effect of the working or moving of divine grace.
“…yet is he not able by his own free will, without the grace of God to move himself unto justice in his sight.”
Between Rome and the Reformers as to the intitial motion of the will, there is no fundamental difference which is why there is no fundamental difference betweenthe two on the idea that God picks some people for salvation because he loves them more and leaves others aside.
Thanks Perry. What is the Orthodox position(s) on this?