The Pure Church of Imagination Land
Posted on 03 January 2012
Every person who teaches or believes an opinion on matters of Christian faith and morals not in conformity with Church teaching, (technically know as a heretic) claims to be returning to an original Church uncorrupted by Church teachings.
I know of no exceptions, that is, I know of no prophet who claims to be teaching a new doctrine that improves upon the past and is disconnected with it. Even Mohammad, who repudiates nearly all other Christian teachings, claims the books of the Bible were once valid, and are now corrupt, and that his recital is a return to the purer and older faith.
Since the Old Testament and the New alike are replete with warnings against false prophets, lying spirits, false teachers, and since Our Lord himself warns against the leaven of the Pharisees and the substitution of the customs of men for the commandments of the Lord, these claims cannot be dismissed without careful consideration.
One would think the first thing to be considered would be the Patristic Writings. All a man concerned with the return to the uncorrupted beliefs of the Early Church need do is quote the writings of the Early Church, and note what the Fathers anathematized, and show that the modern Catholic or Orthodox Church supports what was once anathematized, and anathematizes what she once supported.
In my admittedly limited experience, I have yet to see this done.
I have not come across heretics quoting passages from the Early Fathers to show that their position was once the orthodox belief of the Church, and only later was ignored or suppressed.
I have, in contrast, seen anathematized writings quoted to show that the opinions expressed therein were once current (though the claim that they were official is never made) and I have also seen apocryphal writings dismissed as witnesses that the opinions expressed therein were ever current, because the writing was thought unworthy of inclusion in the canon.
But far more often, the authority of the Early Fathers is ignored: as if history consisted of time from the Creation to the writings of the later Prophets, as covered in the Old Testament, then a small gap, then the Advent of Christ and the events in the Acts of the Apostles as covered in the New, and then a long gap where nothing was written and nothing was said worthy noticing, until the rise of the founder of the breakaway Church, whose words are studied with care.
The lack of interest in the Early Church writings, and the scarcity of them, gives the imagination scope for inventing rather than investigating an imaginary Early Church, which, by no coincidence, resembles the heresiarch’s fancy rather than historical fact.
The earlier the date of this imaginary pure Church, the fewer writings and records need to be explained or explained away.
The earlier this imaginary pure Church is pushed, the less and less I find such an argument convincing, because the greater and greater is the claim of insight being made by the heresiarch: he claims to know the minds of men long dead better than their immediate students knew them. In some cases, they claim to know the message of Christ better than those who learned that message at His feet.
The older the date on the claim, the less believable it is. I am more willing to believe an argument that the Church of AD 1400 went astray than that the Church of AD 400 or AD 40, because the earlier the date, the more outrageous the claim, because the greater and more immediate the corruption.
In a game of Russian Telephone, the boy who hears the message first is, statistically speaking, less likely to be suffering from accumulated errors than the tenth or twentieth boy in line. In the case of the heresiarch, a boy not in the game, who does not even know the names of the boys who were third in line from the source, claims to have an uncorrupted version of the message straight from the source.
It is less unbelievable to say the followers of a student of a disciple of an apostle of Christ mistook or corrupted the teaching of Christ than to say that the disciples of the apostles mistook or corrupted it; still less the apostles; still less Christ Himself.
Ironically, these makes the claim of Mohammad or Joseph Smith more feasible than the claim of Luther or Calvin or Sun Myung Moon, since a prophet claims authority directly from God, whereas a mere theologian claims to have deduced the original and uncorrupted teaching of the Church using no other source than official Church teachings, and the reflections of natural reason. Prophets are supposed to be able to confirm their authority with signs and wonders. By that standard, Mary Baker Eddy (whose church to this day makes weekly, if not daily, reports of miracles, which they claim to be confirmed by multiple witnesses or doctor’s testamonies) is a more believable prophet than Mohammad, who healed no sick, opened no blind eyes, and raised no dead. Of course, by that standard, the healings of Lourdes, which continue to this day, and to this day have no scientific explanation, confirm with signs following the prophetic authority of the original Church.
There is also a general problem with the theory of the corrupted Church: If the one, true, catholic, and apostolic Church Christ founded is corrupt and heretical, then Christ is forsworn of his word to send a comforter to guide his disciples in to all wisdom, or, to be precise, that the Church disobeyed this spirit.
This problem is not fatal to the claim of the heretic, because, honestly, it may be so. Men disobey God. Indeed, the common reading of the Book of the Apocalypse warns of an abomination within the nave of the temple itself: this is often read to refer to the Church herself becoming Apostate, deceived by the false prophets and the Beast spoken of darkly by the Apocalyptic riddles and figures.
But then again, if we are talking about any point before Doomsday, the charge of an Apostate Church is difficult to square with scripture.
If the Church of Christ lasted less than 300 years, so that Constantine corrupted it even before the Bible was finalized and before the Nicene Creed written, than God is foolish limited in his powers.
If the Church lasted less than 30 years, so that with the assumption of Saint John, the last Christian departed the world never to be seen again until the Sixteenth or Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century, than God is more foolish.
If the Church failed during Pentecost, so that none of those baptized of the Apostles of Jesus were true Christians, God is a most enormous fool, because His Church, prophesied never to have the gates of Hell prevail against it, did not prevail a space of 50 days.
AND, by the same logic that says God Himself cannot keep His Church uncorrupted past the ascension of Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit or the assumption of John. We have no reason not to assume that the newer and shinier prophet, whoever he might be, Mohammad, or Joseph Smith. or Mary Baker Eddy, or Rev. Sun Myung Moon did not found a newer and shinier church with any more staying power than the first.
Anyone who says that the Catholic Church was corrupted within three centuries or one, or in one generation, or one decade, or fifty days after Jesus ascended, by what right can that one next claim that the revived church resisted corruption for a season, a decade, or a century or three, or however old it is now?
By the fruits of the spirit, perhaps?
Does the allegedly revived Church have the same unchanging and unyielding teachings about matters of faith and morals as it had since the moment of revival, such as believing as strongly in the perpetual virginity of Mary as did Martin Luther, or being as opposed to contraception and abortion as all Christian denominations before 1934 were? Are the Anglicans as enthused and devout to the Thirty Nine Articles as they were in the days of Elizabeth or Henry VIII? Are they are opposed to divorce and remarriage as Christ?
Of course, by this standard, the Catholics may no fare too well. While our official doctrines are clear on this point, the unofficial way we live our lives too often gives a lie to such doctrines.
If all who claim to be Christians lived as Christians should live, why, then, neither the scoffing of apostates nor the question of heretics seeking the true light of faith we are not providing them would be answered, and completely.
This is as true for Orthodox and Catholic as for Protestant: if the fire of divine love was in the denomination where we find ourselves now, we would have the motivation to depart and seek God’s reflected countenance elsewhere would be confined to honest theological differences, not to that restless sense that ones’ shepherds are leading us astray. The most august Archbishop should be as filled with the zeal and holy spirit no less than the most charismatic snake-handling enthusiast.
John was assumed?
John the Apostle (not John the prophet who was beheaded) is by tradition and the writings of some of the very early church fathers taught to be assumed. The LDS also hold a very similar view by way of revelation.
Because of this passage in John 21:
“20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” 22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” 23 So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”
Some early theologians speculated as to whether or not John had indeed died, or if instead he had been assumed into heaven bodily like Mary (and Enoch, who walked with God). There’s room to speculate either way, but I think the consensus is as said above: Jesus did not say that he would not die.
Dante specificially had St. John refute in The Divine Comedy.
“note what the Fathers anathematized, and show that the modern Catholic or Orthodox Church supports what was once anathematized, and anathematizes what she once supported.”
Possibly Irenaeus’ comments on how the heretics baptized by way of sprinkling counts. Or Quanta Cura and Vatican II. Or the laity owning and reading the Bible. Or the churches position on the Jews. Or the excommunication of multiple past popes for teaching and excommunicating contrary to the what the new orthodox teaching is. It is like trying to hit a moving target; anything that is found where this appears to be the case is subsequently given an explanation of how either what is clearly defined as being anathema within the document in questions wasn’t really as either the document in question wasn’t really ever the official church position (even if given in council with the support of the pope and supposed to apply to all Catholics) or for some reason what is said in the document isn’t what is meant by the document. I have to assume that there are many more such cases where if I were to read it I would see things anathematized that are now supported or the opposite but that if I were to ask a Catholic about it they would see it differently.
“In some cases, they claim to know the message of Christ better than those who learned that message at His feet.”
On this subject, I find it very odd that Irenaeus and others claim that the bishop of Rome has always led the church after the death of the Apostles when he also says that John was around during the reign of Emperor Trajan which was well after the death of many of his list of bishops of Rome. Why wasn’t John the one leading the church? Irenaeus had met Polycarp who was likely one of the church leaders that the Revelation of John mentions, so not those that learned the message at his feet but those that learned at the feet of those that learned at feet of those that learned at the feet of Christ.
Also on this subject, if we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and other early documents then there are many teachings by those that either purport to be Apostles, or be taught by the Apostles, or have the authority from the Apostles that are not held by the church and are condemned by the church. This is not to say that they are what they claim to be, but such things do exist. The church was the one that decided was was transcribed and preserved and actively sought to destroy some documents that others held to be scripture. It makes sense that only what lends some support or doesn’t contradict the official view would be preserved. One document, for instance, claiming to have the authority from James (who they held to be the head of the church) excommunicates Paul as he taught the people to give up the practices found in the law of Moses.
“But then again, if we are talking about any point before Doomsday, the charge of an Apostate Church is difficult to square with scripture.”
The LDS at least use a lot more scripture to back this up, such as the teachings of Jesus, the writings of Paul, Peter, and the other Apostles. Obviously, there is some disagreement in our interpretation and yours as to whether a general church apostasy is implied in those writings or something else. Just as there is a disagreement as to what the Rock is that Jesus was referring to as being Peter (the Catholics) or the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ (LDS).
The Revelation of John covers the whole of history on this earth and especially everything from the moment he received it to the end of the world. Thus the LDS hold that the Angel Moroni is the angel in Revelation 14:7: “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people”
“If the Church of Christ lasted less than 300 years, so that Constantine corrupted it even before the Bible was finalized and before the Nicene Creed written, than God is foolish limited in his powers.”
If the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ was only offered to that small portion of humanity that was Jewish and/or that lived in a time and a place where the gospel could be preached then God is foolish limited in his powers. Paul says that the apostate Jews that did not accept Christ were yet in the olive tree of the faith as were the Christians that had been grafted in. Jacob in the Book of Mormon clearly has those wild branches still being part of the olive tree of the faith but being corrupted so that pruning is necessary for pure fruit to be produced. God gives to all people that portion of His word that He deems necessary for them and that they are willing to receive. Likewise, although one can not be saved except through baptism by water and by the spirit there is no restriction that this must happen while we are alive, making all those that have believed in Christ without the necessary priesthood on the earth while they lived equally saved as with those that have believed and lived when the priesthood was on the earth and those that believe when they are taught while dead.
God continues to call Apostles and Prophets in our day. It is not that Joseph Smith was the only prophet or only Apostle to be called such that once he was dead revelation ceased but Jesus called another set of Apostles that had the authority to restore their numbers through revelation when reduced due to death or the personal apostasy of one of their members and to lead the church. There is an unbroken chain of Apostles from the restoration and there continues to be revelation in our day just as in Joseph Smiths day.
“believing as strongly in the perpetual virginity of Mary”
Confused on this: Doesn’t the Bible say that Joseph and Mary had other children and isn’t St. James, as in the Epistle of James, Jesus’ half brother (through Mary and Joseph)?
The LDS position isn’t quite what John Wright is talking about because for the most part we don’t claim to have “rediscovered” the ancient truth by re-reading the original documents (in this case, the texts that make up the Bible). Our claim is more that we are recapitulating the ancient truth, with prophets, a people, an exodus, etc., like those of old. We’ll use patristics in apologetics, like you’re doing here, but that’s not really the source.
IMHO, Jesus himself at times seems to follow the model John lays out of defending the ‘original’ truth against ‘modern’ (pharasiacal) interpolation. The only major heretical figure I can think of who consciously proclaimed to be superseding the old stuff with a new, better version was Joachim of Fiore. Although he claimed that what he was doing was intended all along, but he didn’t claim that he was returning to the original scheme of things.
“Or the laity owning and reading the Bible…”
Do you know any Catholics in real life? Have you ever actually spoken to one?
Yes and yes, referring to old documents as opposed to the current view (as expressed in Dei Verbum). This is an example where I can find documents where something was condemned previously and is now accepted.
Please quote me the authoritative finding of a council or synod, ecumenical or regional, or magisterial teaching, bull, circular, or proclamation of any Pope, Patriarch, Metropolitan, or Archbishop of the Catholic, Orthodox (Greek, Russian, Armenian,etc.) Nestorian, Malabar, Coptic or Syriac Church which holds it is unlawful or impious for the laity to own or read the Bible. Give it to me by chapter and verse, so I can look it up myself, please.
I am not talking about the Church banning unauthorized translations or mistranslations into the vernacular.
If you cannot provide authority to back your statement, please retract it.
Okay, how about this:
“14. Lay people are not permitted to possess the books of the Old and New Testament, only the Psalter, Breviary, or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, and these books not in the vernacular language.” Synod of Toulouse 1229
In the spirit of friendly discourse, I’m not certain if you are simply unfamiliar with this synod or are being purposefully provocative but you are on the brink of engaging in anti-Catholic propaganda. You are taking a line completely out of the context of local events, appear to be drawing an unsupported general ‘rule’ for a premise that you would like to advance, and don’t seem to have attempted even a cursory understanding of the Roman Catholic church’s teachings on the ownership of Scripture — which as far as I am aware is to this day unwavering.
This is all coming from an Orthodox Christian that believes that the Roman Catholic church is heterodox.
You would be on much more secure ground if your point was simply that the Roman Catholic church claims ownership of Scripture and the ability to decide who is allowed to read Scripture and when they are allowed to do so. This they have claimed and continue to so claim — at least to the best of my knowledge.
“In the spirit of friendly discourse, I’m not certain if you are simply unfamiliar with this synod or are being purposefully provocative but you are on the brink of engaging in anti-Catholic propaganda. ”
???- Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopedia both have that this Synod is a legitimate regional synod, Catholic Answers at Catholic.com actually has answers where this is cited, not questions by someone trying to be provocative but answers. This synod further has citations in one of the Latern Councils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod – lists it as a synod
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01267e.htm – likewise
Mr. Hutchins
I apologize. After reading your response to Mr. Wright and your flurry of responses to Mary I came, uncharitably, to the conclusion that I had been duped and that you were arguing in bad faith. I should not have allowed my personal feelings to cloud my response to you.
This argument began with Mr. Wright asking, “Note what the Fathers anathematized, and show that the modern Catholic or Orthodox Church supports what was once anathematized, and anathematizes what she once supported.”
Those under anathema are considered to be completely separated from the Church until such time as they repent, whereas the lesser punishment of excommunication a person remains a member of the Church even though his participation in its mystical life, particularly communion, is restricted until repentance. Anathema then is the most serious punishment that the Church can bestow.
As an example, as an Orthodox Christian if I were to participate in a Roman Catholic Mass (Mass is typically called the Divine Liturgy in Orthodoxy) I would be excommunicated by the Church as the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are not in communion. One of the barriers to communion is that any Christian who denies the supremacy of the Pope has been anathemized by the Pope and Orthodox Christians deny said supremacy. This is an area where I and many other Orthodox Christians don’t understand some of Rome’s ecumencial gestures. How can we be anathemized and yet be permitted to partake in Mass in a Roman Catholic Church?
At any rate, what Mr. Wright is asking for is of a fairly high standard because just as I mentioned, event though the Roman Catholic Church has been of an ecumenical frame of mind for some time now, they still have not relented and removed the anathema. Even, however, were the anathema to be removed you would need to understand why it was removed. If it was because the Roman Catholic Church no longer believed such a ‘heresy’ an existential threat to the Roman Catholic Church’s existence that is quite different than if it was because the Roman Catholic Church rejected the doctrine of Papal supremact.
This is the point where you brought in “the laity owning and reading the Bible”. I hope that you will forgive my lumping the LDS into the Reformation/Holiness movements but for the moment such a simplification will help make my point more intelligible. The Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church have a fundamentally different understanding of the Bible than do the Reformation/Holiness traditions. You have probably heard people say that the Bible is their “favorite book” or if they were stranded on an island with only one book available to them it would be the Bible. This is fundamentally a Reformation/Holiness conceit that is alien to Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic thought. The Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church regard the Bible as a teaching instrument to be read in the context of Holy Tradition — a Tradition outside which the Bible makes little sense. Holy Tradition is the deposit of faith that Jesus Christ entrusted to mankind and is protected by the Church.
This means that, like a car, the Bible may be misused or peverted. The Church regards the Bible as belonging to the Church and the Roman Catholic Church (and possibly the Orthodox Church, I have never looked into it) has reserved the right to limit the availability of Scipture to laity. Historically this was usually limited to certain regions for limited periods of time due to rampant heresy. Both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches maintain, and have always maintained, that it is spiritually risky behavior to read the Bible outside of Holy Tradition for the same reason that it is inadvisable to take a car out onto the open road with no understanding of traffic laws or how to properly drive the car. The risk of disaster is high.
The synod that you referenced was a synod that was specifically (if memory serves) combatting the Cathar heresy and should be read in that context. It was not a proclomation that all laity for all time were forbidden to own or read the Bible at risk of anathema. Instead it was a proclomation that laity in this region were forbidden to own the Bible or read (most of it) outside of Church specifically because it was trying to stamp out a heresy. Now you and I may or may not disagree with this measure but it is a right that the Roman Catholic Church claims up to this day. It does not and has not maintained that the laity may never own or read the Bible however which was your claim.
If Mr. Wright were to write that the Western legal tradition predominantly descends from canon law I would not be totally surprised — I am certain that regardless of its origin that the two are tightly intertwined. The Roman Catholic Church is very legalistic in its outlook. To a large degree this is quite prevalent in the Reformation traditions that grew out of the Roman Catholic Church as well — though the Holiness movements seem to be a blind outreach to the more mystical tradition of the Orthodox Church. The LDS, for example, clearly have some of the same legalistic views as the Roman Catholic Church which is why you should be distinctly aware that you are not going to ‘trip up’ someone intimately familiar with Roman Catholic tradition through legalistic maneuverings. The Roman Catholics base a considerable amount of their theology on logic and legal thought and have been doing so for a very very long time. Thus your cry of, “It’s like trying to hit a moving target.” It’s not like trying to hit a moving target. It is like trying to attack a fortress built over the course of 2,000 years with weapons that the very same defenders developed a 1,000 years ago and which you took a weekend course on how to use.
Better however than trying to hit a target or assault a fortress would be questions asking, “Why do you believe that? What are the foundations of your belief?” It comes across as having less of a missionary zeal especially when most people here are trying to explain complicated subjects using a shared vocabulary that often has wildly different definitons depending on who is using it. For example, I just assume that anathema means the same thing to an Orthodox Christian as it does to a Roman Catholic, and I am not even certain if the the LDS have a distinction between excommuncation (which I think they have) and anathema.
The Roman Catholic position, if I understand it, is that Orthodox priests are validly ordained, even if in schism with the Church, your sacraments all valid, including Eucharist. At least, I was told that my obligation to go to Mass can be satisfied by taking Eucharist with an Orthodox communion.
Mr. Wright
My understanding (and I should really discuss this with my priest at some point) is that the Roman Catholic Church views the Orthodox Communion to be in schism (non-communion) but not heterodox. This makes a level of sense in that the Orthodox Communion in its beliefs is the same as it was 2,000 years ago. However, and I can look it up if you’d like, Christians who deny the supremacy of the Pope have been placed under an anathema which, as you might imagine, Orthodox Christians look askance at. Since the Orthodox Communion is not heterodox the Catholic Church has no issue with our Holy Mysteries (Sacraments) or our Divine Liturgy (Mass) and Roman Catholics may attend Orthodox Divine Liturgies (Masses) and vice versa.
The Orthodox Church views the Roman Catholic Church to be both schismatic and heterodox–heterodox because of the accretion of dogma since the 7th Ecumenical Council and which the root and most notable of is the dogma of Papal Supremacy. Because of this, and because of the aforementioned anathema, Orthodox Christians who participate in a Roman Catholic Mass (I BELIEVE we may attend, just not take Holy Communion) unless they have dispensation from their priest (who probably needed to talk to their bishop) are excommunicated. Anyone not part of the Orthodox Communion (including Orthodox Catechumens) may not receive Holy Communion during Divine Liturgy though they may come up for a blessing from the priest. Undoubtedly exceptions are made in consultation with the church’s bishop.
I believe that is correct. Our rules allow us to take communion with you, but your rules do not allow you to take communion with us. My understanding is that the Roman Catholic Church views the Orthodox to be in schism but not heterodox.
If you’re thinking of the anathemas of the First Vatican Council against deniers of its bulls, then I believe those anathemas apply only to Catholics; they would not normally apply to schismatics or other people outside of what Catholics consider to be the regular ecclesiastical and canonical structures of the Church. Certainly, no Pope has ever tried to apply them to non-Catholics to the best of my knowledge. Besides that, I’m aware of no circumstances in which the Orthodox churches have been anathemized by Rome, and relations between Constantinope and Rome were in general very cordial for quite a long time after the schism, with very little recrimination on either side. The modern approach of the Popes towards the Eastern Churches is less of a radical change than it is a return to an older policy after a few centuries of failed efforts in other directions (i.e. Uniatism).
And the idea that “Papal Supremacy” played the most significant role in the original schism is not quite right; the largest single issue, without a doubt, was always the Filioque, with a debate about papal prerogatives being either a very distant second or a close third (after Purgatory). It was in much more recent times that Papal Supremacy (with capitals!) became THE de facto sticking point between the Catholic church and the Orthodox, and this due to a great number of factors.
I would also be very cautious (and I hope you don’t mind me saying this) in making blanket statements about Orthodox belief. In my studies of your churches, I have found a very wide array of acceptable opinion on almost every issue of belief debated between our two Churches. I am quite sure you will find Orthodox who believe in an almost exact facsimile of the Catholic purgatory, just as you will find many Orthodox who believe essentially in a doctrine of papal supremacy, and just as you will find Orthodox (a large majority in some circles) who believe the Filioque to be perfectly orthodox and acceptable. And all of these positions, based upon the traditions and doctrinal strictures of your Churches, seem to be well within the bounds of doctrinal orthodoxy. Internet polemics in this regard tend to lead to a lot of unfortunate hardening and sharpening of arguments, and I’d hate to see that happen here.
Anyway, a blessed and happy Ephiphany to you. ὁ χριστος συν σοι! ειρενη και κοινονια ταις εκκλησιαις πασι του θεου.
You are free to reach whatever conclusions that you find most compelling after reviewing the evidence. My argument would be that Filioque (which under the principle of economy was at first tolerated but the Popes pressed the issue) and Purgatory are symptoms of Papal Supremacy. In other words these are dogmatic teachings that the Bishop of Rome felt empowered not only to make but to enforce upon all other bishops at pain of excommunication or anathema. By the bye, if you prefer that I use ultramontanism rather than the more conventional Papal Supremacy I am more than happy to oblige. I find your use of scare quotes and the comment “with capitals!” more than a little offensive.
We now come to the “more detail later” part of my post. When you write things like “a large majority in some circles” I have no idea what you mean. Do you mean that some Orthodox Christians find the Filioque (with a capital!) to be acceptable if thought of in a certain way, or that the Filioque would (at least early on) be allowed under the principle of economy? Absolutely. In fact, I rarely bring up the Filioque unless I am making a point about ultramontanism or talking about the Great Schism or perhaps my name saint. If anything the Roman Catholic Church has been moving towards a more acceptable (for Orthodox Christians) use of the Filioque for some time now.
In any event the Filioque and Purgatory (with a capital!) are regarded as symptoms of an underlying problem. It is not that you (if you were an Orthodox Christian) may doctrinally not profess a belief in Purgatory. Rather it is that you may not declare it doctrine (at least without an Ecumenical Council) and declare those who do not teach it or teach against it heretics. The Eastern Orthodox Communion does not teach the doctrine of Purgatory and it is completely acceptable to deny it exists as a state or a place — which if memory serves will result in your being placed under an anathema in the Roman Catholic Church.
I allow that rather than write, for example, that the Church does not accept the existence of Purgatory (which is in no way a controversial statement) it might have been more accurate to instead write, “The Orthodox Church has no doctrinal position on the existence of Purgatory and so does not provide and has not provided Indulgences.”
Just as you might find members of the Roman Catholic Church who some citation or series of citations variously reject ultramontantism (my late grandfather), believe that homosexuals should be allowed to be married by a priest (a pharmacist that I once worked with), reject Vatican II (a former boss), believe the current Pope invalid (only have come across this on the internet), and practice astrology (my late uncle) you can find no end of opinions in members of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
A substantial difference between Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism is that, for the most part, Orthodox Christianity has limited doctrine to areas concerning Jesus Christ and does not feel the need to legislate through dogma every aspect of the faith. This does not mean that Tradition and the general concensus do not have any hold on what is taught. For example, Father Seraphim Rose was a proponent of Aerial Toll-Houses, a teaching which caused him no little controversy. This does not mean that he was wrong, and certainly not that he was heretical, but simply that this teaching is outside the mainstream of Orthodox thought. Whatever your position on the matter, it is clearly not a dogmatic teaching of Orthodox Christianity and it is more popularly embraced than Purgatory.
If you know Orthodox Christians that embrace ultramontantism then I suggest you know Orthodox Christians who are on the path to becoming Roman Catholics or remain members of an Orthodox Church for reasons other than their belief that it is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. A member of my church balances a membership in a Masonic Lodge with being an Orthodox Christian–that does not mean that it is a practice accepted by the Church even though there is no doctrinal statement forbidding it.
Any posts that I make, are at the end of the day, my interpretation (informed or uninformed as it might be) of Orthodox Christian teachings and unless there is a point that I attribute more to my own possibly non-mainstream belief (such as my personal affinity for the Most Reverend Metropolitan Kallistos’s ecumenical statement which to some Orthodox Christians is borderline heresy) I tend not to embelish with a lot of caveats and leave that for requests that I provide greater detail.
I am uncear on what threat of hardening or sharpening of arguments that you might be referrring to later in your post. I am fairly certain that I am one of the most ecumenically minded posters on this blog. If someone seeks greater clarity on one of my posts I strive to provide greater depth–such as I did in regards to the Orthodox Church’s stance on Purgatory. I also go well out of my way to be polite as I assure you such is not my predisposition. I do admit that if pressed I will speak the unvarnished truth as I see it and that I greatly prefer people to avoid bad faith or snide arguments.
A blessed and happy Theophany to you as well.
Photios
This is the beginning of my above post. During my cut-and-paste I inadverdently failed to cut and therefore paste my entire response!
This is a complicated statement and I am not certain in what manner you mean it. Clearly if I thought that I was under a valid anathema then I would not be able to take Holy Communion. As I will get to in more detail later, for reasons of ecumenical-spirit, timeliness, convention, brevity, and a hoped-for-clarity I have not intended for my posts to be read as exhaustive dissertations and certainly not as dogmatic. This may or may not have been poorly considered on my part.
When I speak of the “Orthodox Church” you must first understand that I do so in a loose and conventional sense. There is no “Orthodox Church” in the sense that there is commonly understood to be a Roman Catholic Church. Rather there is an Orthodox Catholic Communion of churches which claims to be the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church begun at the day of Pentecost. This of course implies that the Roman Catholic Church (as well as all of the other Christian churches) is not The Church, that there are not “two lungs” of the Church, and the Church is in no way “divided”. I don’t find this sentiment to be particularly helpful when having general discussions with people, especially as I share the Most Reverend Metropolitan Kallistos’s sentiment that “We can say where the Church is; we cannot say where she is not.”
As such, while we strongly desire for Rome to reenter into communion with the churches of the Orthodox Catholic Communion we are unable to do so for a variety of reasons. One being the Pope’s anathema that I have mentioned. It is impossible to be in communion with a church when to do so requires that you accept dogma that you hold to be heretical (and this is not the only dogmatic difference mentioned that has an anathema attached) or be under an anathema.
I believe there is some confusion of terms here – either on your part or on mine.
My understanding is that ‘anathema’ was the name of a canonical penalty. (Which has since been subsumed into excommunication, of which it was a more solemn form.) As such it could be applied only to members of the Catholic Church. There is no question of it being applied to anyone else. Even for Catholics, it would be imposed only after an ecclesiastical trial. (Save in the case of ‘latae sententiae’ penalties, which still only apply to Catholics, in my understanding.)
Now, the anathemas of the councils *do* demarcate what is considered heterodox, pretty much by definition. So I admit that I too am surprised that the Orthodox are considered ‘merely’ schismatic. (Of course in no way by this do I mean to denigrate you, any more than your statement that you consider the Catholic Church to be heterodox denigrates me.)
Mr. Cranston
Thank you for your kind reply. We are all probably to one degree or another confused. I will provide a Wikipedia article quote on the grounds that it is a neutral source and that it is correct at least in its understanding of the Orthodox Christian use of the term.
From the Orthodox Wiki (a Orthodox Christian source)
From New Advent (a Roman Catholic souce)
A wikipedia article claims that anathema and excommunication mean the same thing for Roman Catholics since Vatican II but the section is marked as disputed so I don’t know if that is correct.
Mr. Cranston
Also, please note. No rational Orthodox Christian believes that Roman Catholic Inquisitors are going to storm an Orthodox church crying, “You all have been excommunicated this Mass is OVER!”
Rather if you believe that there is only _one_ Church and to be in communion means that both of you (Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic) are part of the self-same Church…well you can’t have one bishop excommunicating the other bishops and/or their flock. That’s what excommunication means: you aren’t in communion.
Now if you are of some ecumenical bent where there is not One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and the Church’s teaching are one of many paths to salvation then I suppose it doesn’t matter and you just might be a Baha’i. It still seems that it would be bad form to excommunicate your current members for something that is okay to believe if they had been in the church next door though.
Ah, if you mean that a local synod fighting the Albigensian heresy forbade the ownership of bad and misleading translations of the Bible into the vernacular (spread by heretics with the express purpose of misleading simple Catholics) without the permission of the Church authority, yes, agreed.
But you make a much more outrageous claim than that. You claimed it was a magisterial teaching of the Church that laity should not own or read the Bible, and that this was later overturned.
The reason why I became a Catholic rather than an Orthodox or Protestant, nearly the sole reason, was that every single slander and slur against them, when I looked into it, turned out to be false.
Here, after exactly one minute of Google research into the question, is the actual magisterial teaching:
Council of Trent: Rules on Prohibited Books, approved by Pope Pius IV, 1564: “Since it is clear from experience that if the Sacred Books are permitted everywhere and without discrimination in the vernacular, there will by reason of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good, the matter is in this respect left to the judgment of the bishop or inquisitor, who may with the advice of the pastor or confessor permit the reading of the Sacred Books translated into the vernacular by Catholic authors to those who they know will derive from such reading no harm but rather an increase of faith and piety, which permission they must have in writing. Those, however, who presume to read or possess them without such permission may not receive absolution from their sins till they have handed them over to the ordinary. Bookdealers who sell or in any other way supply Bibles written in the vernacular to anyone who has not this permission, shall lose the price of the books, which is to be applied by the bishop to pious purposes, and in keeping with the nature of the crime they shall be subject to other penalties which are left to the judgment of the same bishop. Regulars who have not the permission of their superiors may not read or purchase them.”
This is about as sinister as a copyright law, or a law against libel, particularly where mistranslations of the text created civil, political and religious tumults and wars. It would have been negligent of the Church not to prevent the abuse of Holy Scripture. The horrific penalty imposed is that you cannot go to confession.
Are you still seriously of the opinion that the Church officially forbade lay the ownership and reading of a book that was read publicly every day of the year, a Church that established monastery scriptoria for copying it, and Universities for studying it? Monks and scholars are laity.
If not, for Please retract your comment.
“Ah, if you mean that a local synod fighting the Albigensian heresy forbade the ownership of bad and misleading translations of the Bible into the vernacular (spread by heretics with the express purpose of misleading simple Catholics) without the permission of the Church authority, yes, agreed. ”
From the way I am reading the canon, that isn’t what it says, it says that the laity are not able to own any scripture, except the ones listed and those ones listed not in the vernacular.
I appear to have been confused on the precise meaning of certain things such that I appear to have said one thing and meant something different, for which I am sorry.
However, even in your response you have admitted almost everything that I was meaning to say which is something that confuses me greatly. Without the express written permission of the pastor or confessor the laity could not read nor own authorized translations of the Bible. I don’t know how a ban on laity owning or reading the Bible could be made more explicit.
Apparently, this ban is not up to the standard of what it appears your understanding of what I was claiming was, in which case I retract that part of the claim as I appear to have claimed something that I don’t really understand.
“The reason why I became a Catholic rather than an Orthodox or Protestant, nearly the sole reason, was that every single slander and slur against them, when I looked into it, turned out to be false.”
Almost thou persuadest me to become a Catholic! I’ve noticed that the many accusations against the Catholic Church that I have heard are based on “this one Catholic I talked to” or “my bad experience in this one Catholic church I went to” and not at all on a proper understanding of what Catholic doctrine and history actually says. I shall have to investigate these matters more thoroughly at some point.
John Hutchins: I believe one problem you’re having is simply not understanding the time period. At the time of the Council of Trent, very few people could get the texts mentioned — there were few available, few people could read (although many more than in previous centuries), and the books available were VERY expensive. On top of that, t he Council was trying to solve two problems 1) unauthorized copies of the the Bible in the vernacular had caused MANY problems, and 2) reading authorized ones in a weird way had caused many more. This was an attempt to get people back on track, and not the medieval equivalent of China’s censoring Google so that people don’t discover how the rest of the world works. Once the Bible became widely available, Catholics owned them and read them. Now there was, until recently, a list of “difficult” books that people were not supposed to read unless their bishop gave them permission. That went by the wayside not because it was essentially a bad idea (people often get the wrong ideas out of books, even perfectly clear books, because they misunderstand them) but because we now have a very educated society that does not expect anyone to tell them what they can and cannot read. You’re looking at a social problem, and an attempt to deal with it that you don’t like and that doesn’t gibe with our modern way of looking at things, as if it were a doctrinal issue. The Church never said it was in principle wrong to read the Bible.
As a cradle Catholic I’ve always known that the Church banned possession and reading of the Bible by laity for centuries. It is not difficult to figure why when we see what the heretics do with the Bible, which is entirely ours and not theirs to interpret, for the interpretation must be aligned on the Tradition and Magisterium who alone is granted special grace to that effect. These provisions in official documents are educational and disciplinary, so they are not infallible teachings pertaining to dogma and morals, as I tried to explain on this blog a couple of months ago.
Besides, daily Mass goers know perfectly well that we read the entire Bible except a few passages of minor importance at Mass every three years. The readings and prayers are carefully chosen to echo and explain one another and to give thought even to those who cannot remember a word of what they hear in a homily. When I was little it was not forbidden any more to have a Bible and read it, but learning the outlines of Bible history, the catechism and the meaning of liturgy was much more useful. For a few years I followed the Catholic Charismatic movement and read the Bible a lot, then I studied theology only to be confirmed time and again that without the sacraments and prayer Bible reading and, most of all, interpreting it against the legitimate authority of the Church, is sterile and dangerous… and the results are utterly boring.
It’s also been my understanding that laity even having the possibility of reading the Scripture on their own is somewhat of a novelty. Literacy rates have certainly not always been high, and the cost of publication via quill and parchment meant access was harder to come by. Certainly the ancient Hebrews did not keep a copy of Torah on their bedstand, so they would have to rely on the teachers for access to the Word – and would have the teachers’ guidance for understanding the word as well. The concept that the laity can and should understand Scripture without reference to their elders and betters is DEFINITELY a novelty, and not a thoroughly pleasant one.
“As a cradle Catholic I’ve always known that the Church banned possession and reading of the Bible by laity for centuries”
As a lawyer, I want to see and read the law myself. Please give me the cite, chapter and paragraph. What is the exact wording of the law?
It is not law, it is more like regulation, or rather, ordinary government of the Church. Such provisions are not to be found in the Canon Law Code nor in any infallible pronouncement. The warnings and provisions on the subject in a few encyclicals or councils are disciplinary in nature, they are not dogmatic questions except when it comes to precise heretic Bible interpretations.
The bans and warnings were meant to prevent heresy and blasphemy from spreading and, considering the present Babel Tower of heresy, they were justified. Really Catholic reading of the Bible is done in the liturgy – whether or not there is a homily – and is more than sufficient to sustain the faith of all Catholics who know their Catechism (besides, there is a lot of Bible commenting in the Catechism). I for one did not read the Bible before I was thirty years old, and when I did it was already familiar to me. I learned many things of interest for theologians and apologists in studying the Bible and theology but I daresay those things are unnecessary for the great majority of Catholics.
“The bans and warnings were meant to prevent heresy and blasphemy from spreading… ”
You and I are in agreement. As I said, as a lawyer, I want to look at the wording.
Our friendly neighborhood Mormon used as an example of the Catholic magisterium holding as orthodox in one age a point considered heterodox in another, that Catholic laity were forbidden “to own or read the Bible”, and now they are not forbidden.
But the wording he provided said nothing more than that a rule in Toulouse in the Thirteenth Century was enacted to prevent the spread of vernacular copies used by the Albigensians, not translated correctly, or containing apocrypha.
The wording I provided said nothing about the ownership of Latin Bibles. It said only that one needs a license from the local authority to possess a vernacular copy. In other words, laity owning Bibles are enjoined, on pain of loss of communion, not to own or pass bogus copies of the Holy Book. This is as if someone were to argue that Americans were forbidden to own or drive motor cars on the grounds that the 50 states have motor vehicle departments and issue licenses there for.
Attempts to prevent the Bible from being mis-translated and edited and abused, particularly since minor nuances of interpretation lead to heresy, schism, civil war and intergenerational war, particularly in an era without copyright law, hardly count as a ban on the laity owning or reading the Bible, or studying it in University, or reading it from the lectern.
I just googled a few references and I think you are entirely right that no ban was ever applied to the accepted versions of the Bible, Latin or vernacular. The provisions to the contrary seem to have applied only to dubious translations, which is perfectly logical and justified. Moreover, the texts recommending to Catholics to read the Bible have actually been much more numerous than the warnings. I’m sorry to say our Mormon friend did exactly the same thing he did for the alleged antisemitism of the Church: misread, misunderstood, out of context sources and exceptions taken to be the rule (discussion on your post “Dechristianization”). He should try to humble himself and retract.
For my part I thank you and I will try to be more accurate and specific.
I too once believed the Protestant party line that the Church forbade ownership of the Bible — my wife still believes it, and I cannot convince her otherwise. As far as I know, everyone is taught this in school, and it is an accepted historical fact in English and German speaking countries, except it happens not to be so. Similar to how (1) Mary is a pagan goddess we worship (2) the Dark Ages were a time of backward superstition (3) England gets her laws and love of liberty from German Pirates not Roman civilization (4) Dec 25th was chosen because of a pagan holiday (I heard a respected theologian repeating that chestnut) not because this is nine months after March 25th, Lady’s Day — there are a lot of facts people know that just ain’t so.
I am positive that the Albigensians would vehemently disagree with you, were there any that had been left alive after the massacres, crusades, inquisition, burning of their sacred texts (including Bibles), and so forth. As would innumerable others that were forced to choose between their life or their faith by the Catholic Church, and chose to be true to their faith. They were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they held, martyrs in very deed.
Under what you claim to “hardly count as a ban” my Bible would be taken from me. I would be forced to either renounce my beliefs or face torture. My faith would be persecuted by an intergenerational war until it was extinct or it was shown by force of arms to be impossible to become extinct. Instead of being given freely the milk and honey of the Gospel without price, I would be forced to renounce the faith I know to be true if I wanted to know what was in that portion of the Word of God that is to be found in the Bible. If I was not willing to renounce my faith then I would face torture until death, which I would do gladly as did some of my ancestors that died in order that the common people might be able to read the Bible.
Clearly, I have been deeply mistaken and there was never any sort of ban on owning or reading the Bible by the Catholic Church. Clearly, the Catholic Church has let everyman everywhere search the scriptures and find Jesus Christ of whom the scriptures testify. Clearly, the Catholic Church always followed the teachings of Jesus and loved their enemies (with an ardent love like unto a flame in most cases) and fought them with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, as they preached the gospel of peace. Clearly, they were a royal priesthood and a holy nation that did good works and only in this did the heretics come to glorify God. Clearly, anyone that says otherwise should be turned over to the inquisitors and burned at the stake if they persist in their prideful ways of not interpreting the bountiful goodness and mercy of the Catholic Church in the same ways as the Catholic Church does.
The Albigensians did not die for the Word of God, but for the Word of the Gnostics, which defined the world itself as evil, the Church as Satanic, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as merely the Demiurge who led mankind astray.
As for the rest of your rant, I suggest that you meditate awhile on 1 Corinthians 13, and the Christian virtue of charity. Or do the LDS translations of the Bible not include that chapter?
Actually, if it followed the Cathar model, you would find the Church arguing with you for three generations, sending preachers and the like. You would start losing adherents (and since you thought sex was dirty, not replacing them readily) until one day some you assassinate the Papal legate. Then tempers would flair.
Now the reaction by the Pope and the King of France was maybe an over-reaction; but they did not have the sort of civil administration we enjoy today. It was a brutal war, best understood as an effort by the King of France to bring the Languedoc under Frankish control. History is always local and particular – details always matter – and does not respond well to broad Theories or stereotypes. Medieval knights, for example, habitually exaggerated the sizes of their armies and the number of casualties they inflicted. And the most famous quote, supposed at the Siege of Beziers, was fabricated sixty years later by a German monk who had never been anywhere near the Languedoc.
Thomas Madden has a discussion of this in A New Concise History of the Crusades.
Tom Simon, I am Mormon, I believe the Book of Mormon is also the Word of God. My faiths conception of God and Jesus is also very different from the Catholic conception. Much propaganda about what I believe has been spread around and continues to be spread around. I would hope that the information I have just provided is sufficient for you to reconsider your response to me.
I am sorry if my response came across as condemning the whole Catholic Church, I could have worked more on wording it better to have that not be the case. Neither most Catholics at that time nor Catholics today are in anyway responsible for what some in power within the Catholic Church have done in the past.
The OFloinn, From what I have read their may have been hot heads on both sides that helped push the other towards violence or desired violence. It appears there may have been military campaigns by against the Cathars before the murder of the Catholic Legate, but I am sure you know much better then I do. The Cathars were just the relevant example, there are others that met with violence much quicker.
You do realize you are defending people who regarded having children as bad and fornication as better than marriage because it was secret and furitive — at least you were ashamed of the essentially evil act?
They also regarded their religion as absolving them from oaths — in a feudal society.
How long would a cult last in Utah if it taught that its adherents didn’t have to fulfill any contracts they had signed?
Mary, the Cathars are not around to defend themselves. Perhaps they were as bad as you say, perhaps not, perhaps the Waldensians really are/were witches.
Here is a link that makes accusations against my faith that make the things you are accusing the Cathars look like the pinnacle of virtue in comparison:
http://saintsalive.com/resourcelibrary/mormonism/satanic-rituals-within-mormonism
How may I know that some part or most of what the Cathars are accused of are not of a similar nature? There are no Cathars around to say that everything claimed of them is as bogus as what is claimed of the LDS on that site.
Neither are the Catholics who condemned the Cathars. You haven’t let that cramp your style.
Sylvie: I just want to add that many, many Catholics think this is true just as you did. It is kind of a Catholic urban myth, as well as a Protestant one. I’ve been told by older Catholics that their parents thought this, or their grandparents thought this — although I have never met or read anyone (in an old published diary, etc.) who believed this him- or herself. Seems to me that this is just one of those things that’s thrown around but has no basis in fact, it’s just a vague idea of what people THINK life used to be like. Knowing much about how things actually were in the past, even the recent past, is pretty rare.
Thanks, Gail.
I do think in some regions – particularly here in Quebec – it was more than a urban myth before Vatican II. There was never any ban, of course, as I just discovered, but there was a definite mistrust to referring directly to the Bible for fear that people would understand it wrongly. We were told that without proper preparation we were at risk of heresy like the Protestants are. Apology was to be left to learned specialists. So I went to study theology and, seeing how it was necessary to be a good theologian, I got some self-education in philosophy.
The perpetual virginity of Mary is mentioned several times in the Early Church writings (The Protoevangelium of James, Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Didymus the Blind, Ambrose of Milan, Pope Siricius I, Augustine, Leporius, Cyril of Alexandria) , and as soon as the opposing position, that Mary had other children by Joseph, was current circa AD 200 -400, it was condemned as being alien to Christian teaching, and dubbed Antidicomarianitism.
One of the most common criticisms aimed at the perpetual virginity of Mary is the argument based on Luke 8 and John 7 that Jesus had brothers. However in Mt 13:55 (cf. Mk 6:3) we see that the brothers referenced in Lk 8 and Jn 7 are “James and Joseph and Simon and Judas”. But, scripture tells us that at least two of them are actually Jesus’ cousins: Jn 19:25 says that “Mary, the wife of Clopas” is the Blessed Mother’s sister; “Mary, the wife of Clopas” is the “other Mary” who went to the sepulcher with Mary Magdalene. This “other Mary” is also the mother of James and Joseph (Mt 27:56,61; 28:1; Mk 15:47). So, this would make James and Joseph the cousins of Jesus, even tho Mt 13:55 and Mk 6:3 say that they are Jesus’ “brothers.” Since Simon and Judas are listed together with James and Joseph without any distinction made between them, it is likely that Simon and Judas had the same type of relation. Of course, if this Simon and Judas are the apostles Simon and Judas, then we know for a fact they were not Jesus’ brothers.
But, be that as it may, if it were ever the universal teaching of the Early Church that Mary was not perpetually a virgin, this doctrine was forgotten by the time Origen penned his Commentary on Matthew in A.D. 248.
if we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and other early documents then there are many teachings by those that either purport to be Apostles, etc.
1. None of the Dead Sea Scrolls are from the Christian era.
2. Various books purporting to be from James, Mary Magdalen, et al. date from the second century, a little late for such claims. There has always been fanfic.
3. The gospel of Thomas can make a bare claim to early composition; but there is little in it that is not elsewhere; and its spirit is definitely wink-wink-nudge-nudge inner circle secretizing.
A good test for those Westerners obsessed with the Whore of Babylon/Hidden Church thingie is to take a sideways glance at the Eastern Orthodox Church. Unless they are the Whore of Constantinople or something.
A second test is to compare with the Coptic Churches (now called Oriental Orthodox). Although they are considered heretical, not schismatic by the Orthodox, the disagreement may have been over Greek grammar. The same may be said of the Assyrian and Armenian churches, which broke away even earlier.
In any case, a “least common denominator” (which we may puckishly call the “least common denomination”) of the Four Traditional Churches may prove instructive. Unless all four are Whores of Babylon.
The heretic is in a peculiar situation. He must not only contend that the Orthodox Church is wrongwrongwrong; but must also contend that all previous heresies have also been wrong. Given the wide range of prior heresies, this can be a tricky bit of pedal dexterity. Orthodoxy need only remain standing; heterodoxy has to dance like Fred Astaire.
Sorry, yeah, you are right it is actually the Nag Hammadi not Dead Sea the site that I read the document on had it under Dead Sea even though the two things are very different (and far away in time and on the map).
Jesus Christ when He appeared with the Father to Joseph Smith “said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”" (Joseph Smith History 1:19 in the Pearl of Great Price) As all four traditional churches accept at least the Nicene creed then according to the words of the Savior as reported by a latter-day prophet then they are all corrupt.
I don’t really think that any of the traditional churches are the whore of Babylon. There are really only two churches according to LDS Scripture, the one that is of Christ and the one that is of the devil. Since both Zion and Babylon are used symbolically to be the city of God and the city of the devil (or the world) then the whore of Babylon and the church of the devil would be any that are preaching or doing things for worldly reasons such as to gain wealth, or power, or prestige, and so forth. This would seem to mean that in almost all churches there would be those that are of the church of the devil and those that are of the church of the Lamb of God.
Of course, there may have been at some point been some organization that for worldly reasons corrupted the church that was left by the Apostles. Even if all non-restoration churches were in some way descended from that organization there is no reason to think that they are and continue to be that organization.
I am woefully behind on Dead Sea scholarship, but it was my (limited) understanding that these are OT texts not NT texts. I do recall that someone thought they found a NT fragment but had thought this to be universally derided by other scholars.
You also tend to make some very vague generalized arguments such as Irenaeus “claim that the Bishop of Rome has always led the Church” or “Quanta Cura” being contrary to Vatican II without any supporting quotes or links. This makes it terribly difficult to follow your train of thought. It would be better if you provided a specific example as well as what you think your example does.
For instance, you will note that Mr. Wright’s challenge was not that no Roman Catholic teaching has ever changed. Instead it was provide an example of something that was officially deemed anathema by the Roman Catholic church and subsequently officially embraced or vice versa.
“On this subject, I find it very odd that Irenaeus and others claim that the bishop of Rome has always led the church after the death of the Apostles when he also says that John was around during the reign of Emperor Trajan which was well after the death of many of his list of bishops of Rome. Why wasn’t John the one leading the church?”
Because Peter was the leader of the apostles, and the successor to his office held the position of leadership. The same way they cast lots to elect a successor to Judas, instead of leaving his position as one of the Twelve vacant.
This is the second time I have heard a Mormon cite the Dead Sea Scrolls as an example of heretical Christian teaching. It does not exactly give me a lot faith in Mormon exegesis.
There is not a single non-LDS Patristic scholar who would say anything other than that the claim that the Church Fathers taught anything remotely resembling Mormonism is complete bosh. Heck, you will not find even a single Christian heretic of these times who taught anything remotely resembling Mormonism. Pretty much all of the heretical writings we have are from the Gnostics, a charming sect that, despite a few random similarities, were not very much like the modern LDS church. The Church Fathers happily mentioned and condemned many, many other heresies whose texts have been lost to the pages of time (most of the time merely due to poor preservation and small numbers, since before Constantine the Church did not persecute heretical communities), and not a single one of them comes anywhere close to Mormonism. Do you really want to claim the Ebionites, who denied the Virgin Birth, considered Christ a human prophet, and practiced the Jewish law? Or perhaps the Sabellians? The Apollonians? The early Christians possessed a hatred of heretical and schismatic Christians that went far beyond even the opprobrium borne towards them in later times, an outcome of the Church’s status as a repressed minority; heretics were considered traitors, deceivers, and counterfeits, even their deaths for Christ accursed and unavailing, and accusations were frequently leveled against them of turning in and testifying against orthodoxy Christians. If there really were Mormons running around, we would expect to have, at the least, denunciations of them written across the Church fathers. It is not as if they were afraid to mention and condemn the other heretical sects, or that these others did not make sometimes very persuasive arguments from Scripture or tradition. Arguments from silence are never completely conclusive, but here, the silence is so deafening as to come as close as possible to approximating it.
As for changes in Church doctrine, these are often trumpeted but rarely proven. The Catholic Church has very simple standards for what is changeable and what is not, and so do the Orthodox churches; just showing that Pope Pius X had different ideas about religious freedom than the Second Vatican Council does not suffice, nor does showing that Tertullian had different ideas about the Trinity than Athanasius. If you really can conclusively prove that the fifth ecumenical council contradicted the first, or that the ex cathedra statement on the Immaculate conception contradicts the ex cathedra statement on the Assumption, I will gladly take off my hat to you. But I very much doubt you can.
As for the question re: apocryphal texts of purported Apostolic authorship, these texts are all of far too late authorship and far too inconsistent in style and composition to be considered genuine, and most of them rather obviously and clumsily the product one of one or more heretical community, usually Gnostic or Ebionite. The beliefs expressed in them, when they are not fairly mundane embellishments of the canonical writings, are usually not at all amenable to LDS belief.
I do not claim to be a scholar of ancient languages nor have I read all of the pre-nicene fathers nor have I read all of the things that claim to be gospels. I mentioned it as it is something that I have read, I should have checked the source of the document better. There are lots of sites that mention it as being Dead Sea Scroll, apparently there is some book somewhere that claims it was. The translation was on a .edu site so might have been good. Certainly it was more trustworthy then the site I linked in from which has a good collection of links to lots of documents (although not all of them are trustworthy documents and some of the links are dead) but has the stated goal of proving a connection between the religions and UFO’s (and takes itself seriously). Generally, I prefer to use the Christian Classics Ethereal Library which seems to have pretty good translations and documentation of what is being translated.
I am not aware of anyone claiming that the early church was “mormon”, that would be impossible on so many levels. For one the Book of Mormon hadn’t been compiled yet by Mormon and Moroni and the old world still had no idea that there was another continent. For another the Word of Wisdom that we follow is something unique to this era so they wouldn’t have followed it. Nor is it necessary that the early saints had exactly the same understanding of all of the doctrines that the LDS have. The idea is that pretty much all Christian sects started out as being part of the true Church and that they broke away fairly quickly making changes according to old customs, beliefs, practices, philosophy, or new inventions. This means that there are connections with LDS belief in probably all of the heresies and clear movements within the documented history of the churches away from something more similar to LDS belief.
There are lots of things in the gnostic texts that certainly have in their wording or in the subject matter or otherwise have very strong connections with the LDS temple. There are also certainly lots of things that are as you say “not at all amenable to LDS belief.”.
Not that the LDS church is founded on documents proving this connection, the Book of Mormon was translated by the power of God and anyone is able to read and pray about it to know if it is true. The church was founded by Jesus Christ calling new prophets and Apostles, therefore if that is accepted then the connection with the church at the time of the old Apostles exists.
Obviously, Mormons would not say that the early Christians were like them in every respect, but they still (to the best of my knowledge) believe that the early Christians and the Apostles all held at least the chief doctrines of the LDS Church, such as the plurality of gods, divinisation, the Mormon understanding of Jesus’ sonship, the physicality of God, etc. To the extent these claims are made, I find them to be completely wanting. There is virtually no trace of these doctrines within the early Church, or within the early heretics. That you can cherry-pick a few aspects of one type of heresy, take them out of context, and analogize them to Mormonism proves very little; I can do the same with practically every pre-Christian religion under the sun, and rather more convincingly. Making the limited claims of Catholicism about these religions (that they are all shaped by natural revelation) is not at all the same thing as making the claim that they all believed in the Trinity a century ago, which is what the Mormon church seems to be essentially saying regarding early Christianity.
What all these diverse heresies had in common is what they had in common with Catholicism; it is in what they had differently that you will find analogies to specifically Mormon doctrines.
Nevertheless, your point that the veracity of Mormonism does not as much stand or fall with the early Church, but rather with its very recent founding, is well-taken. The ancient past is of course always difficult to discern murky, and one can claim lots of things about it that are almost impossible to disprove. The real battle over Mormonism exists within the pages of the Scriptures and within the history and doctrines of the modern LDS church.
I find the subject of heresy interesting since Christianity could be claimed to be a Jewish heresy. That doesn’t make it wrong, of course.
“Just as there is a disagreement as to what the Rock is that Jesus was referring to as being Peter (the Catholics) or the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ (LDS).”
“You are rock and on this rock I will build my church” has always seemed pretty clear to me (particularly given the need in the Gospel of John to note that Peter is important too, in a particular way, though he is not the “disciple whom Jesus loved). What makes the LDS reading more likely?
“The church was the one that decided was was transcribed and preserved and actively sought to destroy some documents that others held to be scripture. ”
I have heard others say this, but it’s always left vague. What documents and when? Early on in Church History I find it hard to believe given the lack of reach/dominance the Church had. Certainly later heresies (Cathars, etc.) were suppressed, but they afaik didn’t have separate (Biblical) scriptures which were destroyed.
“Confused on this: Doesn’t the Bible say that Joseph and Mary had other children and isn’t St. James, as in the Epistle of James, Jesus’ half brother (through Mary and Joseph)?”
The Bible never says outright that J&M had other children, though there are possible indicators and possible contradictors. For example, James also seems to have a different mother also named Mary. There’s a good roundup of the varying positions here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_the_Just#Relationship_to_Jesus
The main problem is that “brother” is much more ambiguous in Aramaic than in English. (I know other languages like this, such as Tagalog.) A secondary problem is that the Bible says little about Jesus’ home life.
The LDS reading of the meaning is “you are (little) rock on this (big) rock I will build my church”.
The conversation this happens in is:
“But whom say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
And I say unto thee, that thou are Peter (petros=small rock), and upon this rock (petra=bedrock) I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (then proceeds to promise Peter the sealing power of the priesthood).
Jesus was making a often repeated reference in the scripture to himself and the revelation of himself by means of the priesthood. If you look at 1 Peter 2:3-10 and see what Peter (the little rock) has to say about stones, bedrock, and the building of the church then you should be able to see that Peter is not referring to himself as the chief corner stone, or living stone, but to Christ and that we are all stones built up by the holy priesthood to him that has called us out of darkness into light (which is Christ in case you don’t catch that reference from Isaiah from when Jesus was in the synagogue). In there you should notice that Peter is referencing Isaiah 28:16 which is referring to the Lord Jesus Christ as the rock as is done elsewhere both in Isaiah and through out the Old Testament.
I hope that explains it well enough, I can go into more detail and provide a lot more references upon request.
The distinction you are making between “Petros” and “petra” does not exist in Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus actually spoke — as witness the New Testament use of “Cephas” which is the transliterated rather translated form.
As for why they used different forms — because “Petra” is of course a girl’s name. They masculinized it to refer to a boy.
Last I checked everyone still was working under the assumption that the new testament was primarily written in Greek. I am quite sure that Aramaic has a distinction between a rock and bedrock so if you have the Hebrew or Aramaic version of Matthew then we can see which one of is right fairly easily. Without that I will take the odd position of assuming that the translators of Aramaic or Hebrew into Greek got this one right.
Except that Kephas (or Cephas) is used pretty freely and doesn’t hold your distinction. (“Petra” does not mean “bedrock.” It just means “rock.”)
One wonders why do you think they got it right. You, after all, are the one who maintains that the Christians all apostatized, and pretty quickly too.
Again, if you have the original then please share it with the rest of the world.
It is a very big distinction from being a word play to referring to Peter being the Rock of Israel, the only sure foundation on which men can build. Knowing that there was no word play involved would undermine a portion of the understanding on the subject, I believe that my understanding is correct, therefore I believe that there was a word play involved.
What, making a pun on his name isn’t wordplay?
“Your name is rock, and I’m gonna build stuff on you like… a rock! Ha!”
Except I imagine it was funnier the way He said it.
“Petra” generally is used to mean a large rock or bedrock, particularly in the Bible. There I agree with John.
http://concordances.org/greek/strongs_4073.htm
You’ll see that it’s used for things like geographical features or the rock over Jesus’ tomb.
Aramaic does indeed make a distinction between ‘a rock’ and ‘bedrock’. However, that distinction is not, and never has been, made in Greek by the use of the words petra and petros. It is therefore utterly irrelevant.
The LDS interpretation is somewhat similar to that of Orthodox Christians. Orthodox Christianity interprets Matthew 16:18 to mean that the Church is built upon the faith of Peter’s confession — the faithful confession of Christ.
Thank you for the explanation. I had not heard of this interpretation before.
I still find this a very unlikely interpretation of the line. What’s being ignored in the petros/petra distinction (which difference seems to result rather from the wordplay) is that it is “taute te petra,” that is, “this rock” or – and this is how “taute” was almost always translated when I was learning Greek – “this same/very rock.” Taute is where we get the word tautology. “taute te” is an even more intensive phrasing iirc. It’s a terrible choice of words if you want to talk about some other rock right after talking about one rock.
I also don’t understand where the definition of “petros” as a small rock comes from (it’s a very rare word in Greek as far as I can tell, but I don’t have my complete dictionary with me, only somewhat outdated online resources). In the Bible itself, it is used only for the name Peter and nothing else:
http://concordances.org/greek/strongs_4074.htm
When the Bible wants to say stone or small rock it uses “lithos” in every instance:
http://concordances.org/greek/strongs_3037.htm
That by itself suggests to me that “petros” was made masculine from “petra” for the wordplay and has no meaning (in the Bible) independent of “petra.”
Nor do I find it convincing that Peter later calls Christ the rock (indeed, “lithos” in every case – when he says “petra” it is only as a “rock of offense” at 1 Peter 2:8). There can easily be multiple symbolic rocks, even different meanings for symbolic rock (see the perennial difficulty over serpents), but – or therefore – the line can be interpreted more easily and convincingly without reference to those other places. Of course, I also wouldn’t be surprised if some Catholic theology connected Peter and Christ as cornerstones, as Peter is clearly the post-resurrection leader of the Apostles (Acts 2:14&ff, f.e.), and as Peter too was a rock the builders rejected in that he was in his weakness the unlikeliest early Church leader.
Looking at the line in context, the entire focus is on Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[e] loosed in heaven.” I don’t see how it makes sense in context that Christ suddenly inserts himself (or his revelation), because it means that suddenly “you are Peter” has nothing to do with the rest of sentence.
I can certainly understand not believing in the eternal office of the Papacy based on these words; what I can’t see is that this is not an obvious pun in which both “rocks” refer to Peter.
On this subject, I find it very odd that Irenaeus and others claim that the bishop of Rome has always led the church after the death of the Apostles when he also says that John was around during the reign of Emperor Trajan which was well after the death of many of his list of bishops of Rome. Why wasn’t John the one leading the church?
Because he wasn’t the Pope. The Pope led the Church even before John the Apostle’s death.
We do not merely claim it. We have letters from Clement to the Corinithians telling them what do within John’s lifespan. And they did it. Papal authority is apostolic in nature.
You will certainly find nothing telling you that John led the Church.
What is your understanding of what a general epistle (or epistle general) is? Obviously, it has to be different then what I am thinking.
It is quite possible that Clement was a regional authority without having been the leader of the entire church.
Well, it’s also possible that you are a little green man from outer space having fun at our expense.
“Regional” authority is called being the bishop. As in Bishop of Rome and Bishop of Corinth. There is also the Pope. Inserting a different authority between them is something quite unsupported by the evidence.
And the position of Timothy was what? Also, there are the seventy mentioned that Jesus sent out, what is there position according to the Catholics?
It would be very strange indeed that Rome would be the regional authority over Corinth, a city not within Italy or the surrounding regions. Ephesus, the abode of the Apostle John and his successors, is rather closer to Corinth than Rome, and a lot easier to access.
But even setting aside these matters, the tone and content of the letter are still extraordinary. Clement claims to speak with the authority of God, and commands the Corinthians to cease their sedition and return to the rule of their priests. It bears an uncanny resemblance in form and tone to the later bulls of the Popes, and was apparently received with a great deal of reverence, being read in the liturgies at Corinth for at least a hundred years. At the very least the letter stands as an indication of Rome’s status as a Church able to hand down authoritatively Apostolic tradition, and the reverence with which it was viewed by the early church.
Certainly, none of this proves the doctrines of the Papacy singlehandedly; but it is certainly a notable happening, and very much in accord with Catholic doctrines and expectations.
Except that we also have an unbroken chain back to the Apostles. That’s what the Apostolic Succession means. And in Acts we see how it was done, with the replacement of Judas.
I am aware of the claim of the Catholics (both Orthodox, Roman, Oriental, and others) that they have an unbroken chain. Do all the different Catholics have this unbroken chain? If so, why the divisions and differences between them all? If not, whose claim to being unbroken should I believe and why?
First off, this is just silly: “I am aware of the claim of the Catholics (both Orthodox, Roman, Oriental, and others)” There are the Orthodox, and then there are the Catholics. Two different groups, the first of which has several groups.
Both the Catholics and the Orthodox have Apostolic Succession, because of the successive consecration of their bishops.
So is Christ divided?
My, that’s a leap on your part.
I fear that my communication with Mr. Hutchins may be coming to an end. I was under the belief that he was sincerely interested in a dialogue where each side would have a better understanding of the others theologic position. Instead I am beginning to believe that he is instead attempting some sort of missionary effort — albeit so poorly that he is actually feeding antipathy towards the LDS.
That said, though it is not common in normal discourse, the Orthodox Church considers itself the Orthodox Catholic Church. Of course I imagine that Mr. Hutchins is attempting to be offensive in the same way that I would if I started asking if Christ is divided because there is more than one church claiming to be the authentic “Mormon” church.
Mr. Hutchins appears to have read somewhat extensively in early Church history and obscure Roman Catholic theology but rapidly appears completely confused by something as fundamental as Apostolic succession or what revelation means. I took these to be genuine gaps of knowledge created by a haphazard self-education but now I am forced to consider them as gambits of deliberate misinterpretation.
I can read something like the Catechism of the Catholic Church and not get any hint of the way you talk about revelation. The terms are the same but the meanings appear to be often quite different. As Lotdw so accurately points out I read a passage and get one meaning, he reads a passage and gets something completely different.
The writings of those of the very early church holds quite a bit of interest to me.
I have also read the encyclicals of the Catholic Church that have been translated into English and most of the text of the various church councils. This was because I had an understanding of what Catholics believed found out they believe something completely different (to the point of denying they ever had the previous belief) and therefore was attempting to understand what changed, why, how, and how the Catholics understand that change.
As for Apostolic Succession, I really do not understand how there can be multiple groups that claim to have it and have every group say that the others have it too. I know how I interpret the term, but as the claim is that Bishops have Apostolic Succession then my interpretation of the term goes flying out the window and is useless in helping me understand what is actually being said.
My responses to Mary are often not as charitable as they should be.
I believe all of the Apostolic Churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, Coptic, Armenian) mutually recognize the Apostolic succession of the others. Many of them consider the others to be schismatic or heretical, but they still recognize the obvious fact that they are directly descended from the Apostles in terms of office: they pretty much all recognize, for instance, the Pope of Rome to be the legitimate successor of St. Peter. The only Church that claims for itself Apostolic succession and is not necessarily recognized as such is the Anglican Church, but this is not because anyone doubts that the first Anglican bishops were not descended from the Apostles, but because the Catholic church among others considers the Anglican rite of ordination to the office of priest and bishop to be defective, and thus incapable of continuing the succession after the break with Rome.
Apostolic succession as a doctrine goes at least to the late first century AD, when Clement makes use of the idea in his letter to the Corinthians, as does Ignatius of Antioch in his. By that time, almost every city with a Christian population possessed a singular bishop or episkopos who claimed to hold the Apostolic office in succession from the Apostles themselves. The main patriarchal sees likewise claimed to hold power over the same cities which Apostles once administered to; these kept lists of all the holders of the office of bishop in that city going back to an Apostle (at Rome, Peter; at Alexandria, Mark; at Antioch, Peter). These lists of bishops were made use of by various ecclesiastical writers, such as Irenaeus, Eusebius, and others, and are in general well-attested to. Apostolic succession was one of the most important doctrines of the early Church, and is futher attested to throughout the entire Patristic period all the way to the present.
The LDS position isn’t quite what John Wright is talking about because for the most part we don’t claim to have “rediscovered” the ancient truth by re-reading the original documents (in this case, the texts that make up the Bible). Our claim is more that we are recapitulating the ancient truth, with prophets, a people, an exodus, etc., like those of old. We’ll use patristics in apologetics, like you’re doing here, but that’s not really the source.
IMHO, Jesus himself at times seems to follow the model John lays out of defending the ‘original’ truth against ‘modern’ (pharasiacal) interpolation. The only major heretical figure I can think of who consciously proclaimed to be superseding the old stuff with a new, better version was Joachim of Fiore. Although he claimed that what he was doing was intended all along, but he didn’t claim that he was returning to the original scheme of things.
This was supposed to be a reply to John Hutchins.
“we don’t claim to have “rediscovered” the ancient truth by re-reading the original documents”
This does seem to be exactly what happened, though, from what I’ve gleaned from my discussions with John Hutchins. For example, I learned that the Mormon idea of “baptisms for the dead” has a Biblical foundation, but no Christians before ever did anything like the Mormons do. Or take what John just told me about Mormon interpretation of Matthew 16:13-20 – I know of no Biblical exegete (Christian or otherwise) which does not connect Peter’s name to the use of rock immediately afterward, though obviously non-Catholics disagree on what sort of authority was being given.
The more I learn about Mormonism from my discussions here, the more it seems to be a large-scale reinterpretation of the Bible which leads to very different doctrines and practices than any extant Christian denomination has. Protestant denominations or the Orthodox do not seem nearly as drastic (in many places, not drastic at all and quite understandable, imo, like the notion that Joseph & Mary had more children after Jesus) a change from the usual interpretation of the Bible.
There are modern day revelations that talk about baptism for the dead and everything else. Yes, almost everything is also found in the Bible, we do after all believe that it is the same gospel, but the bible might have one verse on a subject when we have multiple pages of revelation containing additional scripture. There are also lots of additional things in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants that are not really found in the Bible at all, not that they contradict the Bible but they add to our understanding of it or as you say make drastic changes in how it is seen from the usual (or traditional) interpretation of the Bible.
That’s a huge difference from what MrMandias said, though: “Our claim is more that we are recapitulating the ancient truth, with prophets, a people, an exodus, etc., like those of old.” If it’s a recapitulation,* why is it so different? Would you disagree with him there? Or did I misunderstand him/you?
* The New Testament, for example, seems to be more or other than a recapitulation, and more in the spirit of additional revelation. However, the two examples I mentioned from Mormonism also seem distinct from the NT as compared to the OT – while the NT/Jesus fulfills prophecies from the OT or even outright changes/outmodes the OT, Mormonism seems to take what means one thing in the NT and say that it doesn’t mean that but something else. Whereas Christianity generally either says, “Yes, the suffering servant/Moses parting the Red Sea/Genesis episode still means what you thought, but it also means this,” or it says, “Moses said that you could divorce your wives, but I say you can’t.” It doesn’t say, “Well, I know it looks like it says Moses said not to divorce your wives, but it actually says something else” which is what the Peter/rock change (according to additional Mormon scripture) seems like to me. Why allow people to misunderstand (and live by) something for 1900 years before flipping its meaning with additional scripture, yet also claim to be “recapitulating” that same scripture?
(And to be completely honest, the biggest fly in my ointment is that the identification of “rock” as “God’s revelation” still makes no sense to me as exegesis, even with the online Mormon resources I found which purport to explain it according to later revelation. I have no idea whether they were the best resources, though.)
“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.”
Tut, tut. Won’t happen. And we know it won’t happen because God is not a liar. They shall grow together until harvest. The foolish virgins will fail just as the bridegroom is arriving. And the angels will sort out the good from the evil like the good from the bad fish in the net — only when they have all been drawn up.
You mistake a simple statement, A is B, for a universal statement, All A is B without exception.
Some heretics wise up. Some atheists convert. Some blind men see. Let us make it easy rather than difficult for them, shall we? I am taken aback that you would think this point worth gainsaying.
I should point out that in ordinary English, ‘A is B’ is the ordinary form of a definitive statement. If A is B by definition, it follows tautologically that all A is B for actual occurrences of A.
In terms of practical rhetoric, it is incumbent upon each one of us not to use ‘A is B’ unless we also mean to imply that all A is B. The implication is, if not inescapable or invariable, inherent in the construction. If you are trying to make a logical argument, you have a serious duty to refrain from saying things that are easily susceptible of misconstruction.
That is the meaning of A is B in formal language, not in ordinary language. In ordinary language, A is B means that A is characteristically, routinely, or “as a general rule” B. It is a statement that admits of exceptions, although typically it is understood that exceptions will require explanation and that if there are too many exceptions or too many reasons for exceptions, then the statement is falsified. Of course “too many” is a fuzzy concept, as are almost all concepts in normal language.
Actually, the claim I was responding to is that ‘A is B’ does NOT mean ‘all A is B’ in formal language. Nor did I say that ‘A is B’ necessarily means ‘all A is B’ in ordinary language. Please read what I wrote again. I said that ‘A is B’ is the form that definitive statements usually take in ordinary English. I did not say that all statements of the form ‘A is B’ are definitive statements.
To put the matter in formal language (sigh): I said that P is generally Q, where P is ‘the set of statements in colloquial English intended to give definitions of terms’ and Q is ‘statements of the form “A is B” ’. You are trying to refute me by saying that not all Q is P, which is entirely irrelevant. This is, in fact, an elementary propositional fallacy.
My point is that a statement in colloquial English of the form ‘A is B’ is liable to be interpreted as a definitional statement equivalent to ‘all A is B’, unless the person making the statement makes it explicit that it should not be so interpreted. It therefore is incumbent upon the speaker or writer, if he is making a logical argument, not to use statements of that form, lest it confuse the issue by ambiguity.
All clear now?
First of all, if I misunderstood the quantifier that you intended in your previous post, I submit that the fault is yours for unclear writing and that you would have been better served to correct your error with humility than with snottiness. Second, you are still wrong. The phrase is commonly used just as I described and your admonitions not to use it that way are without merit. There are occasions where it is useful to qualify ones statements more carefully, but if you do it all the time your writing is stilted and boring.
Third, I regret to say that I have failed to grasp your patient exercise in formal logic because I don’t know the formal meaning of “P is generally Q”. Formally, you can say “all P are Q” or “some P are Q” or “there is a P that is Q” (which is different from “some P are Q” in that “some P are Q” does not imply that any P exists). You can use modal logic to say that “all P are necessarily Q” or “there is a P that is necessarily Q” or “necessarily there is a P that is Q” or even “necessarily there is a P that is necessarily Q”. But I don’t know of any formal logic that lets you say that P is generally Q. There are various multi-valued logics which have constructions that could arguably be used to interpret “P is generally Q”. In any logic with a bottom value, for example, you could say that “P is generally Q” if and only if P is Q or P is _|_ but that doesn’t really match the intended meaning. You could use fuzzy logic to define the phrase in a way that has more fidelity to the original idea but the interpretation would be purely extensional while the phrase “P is generally Q” surely has an intensional meaning (as opposed to an intentional meaning which is something quite different). I suppose you could approach the intensional intention of the phrase using something like the model-theoretic definition of entailment by defining that “P is generally Q” is true if and only if in the majority of models M, M(P) is a subset of M(Q). Of course such definitions are only interesting when there are an infinite number of models, which leaves you having to come up with an interpretation of the majority of an infinite set –not necessarily an impossible task, given suitable constraints on the topology of the sets. Still, that sounds like a lot of work to define something as inherently informal as “P is generally Q” and would probably end up being a lot less useful than the informal meaning.
And fourth, I’m lots better at using scary math-type-stuff to be condescending than you are.
If you imagine that I pointed out your error solely in order to be snotty or condescending, I advise you to stop projecting your own worst impulses onto other people.
As for the term ‘generally’, I employed it formally and advisedly. It has a specific technical meaning, which I expected you to be familiar with. That you are not speaks to your ignorance and not to mine. But to help you with your ignorance, I offer an example: ‘Dogs are generally quadrupeds.’ That is, dogs as a genus are quadrupeds: it is their nature to be four-legged. The existence of three-legged dogs is not denied, as it would be by the foolish and insupportable claim ‘All dogs are quadrupeds’, but it is attributable to accident and not to the nature of dogs as such.
Since you clearly are, by your own confession, attempting to be snotty to me, I shall now discontinue this discourse. I suggest you learn some manners and some humility. Your ignorance is obvious to everyone here but yourself, and your rudeness has not even that excuse, for it is not only obvious to you, you profess to pique yourself on it.
Well, if you did not intend to be a condescending prig, then it seems that I can offer you some good advice on your presentation. First, don’t add “(sigh)” at the end of phrases as in
I have no idea what non-snotty effect you intended to convey here, but I assure you that most readers will take this as a condescending implication that you are struggling to maintain patience with someone of a lesser intellect. Second, avoid instructing another that
after explaining that they misconstrued your intention. Obviously, if I misconstrued your intention then I was not making the fallacy that you suggest. Third avoid ending your posts with gratuitous pokes such as
Because they add nothing to the presentation other than an impression of a snotty undergraduate who thinks he is lecturing his inferiors. And finally, if you want to explain something to someone without coming across as a condescending prig, don’t preface it with a comment like
which people are going to read –fairly or not– as if you are priggishly calling them ignorant.
And here is another bit of free advice which is well-meant though I fully expect you to ignore it. You don’t know what “formally” means. You should get acquainted with the term by doing some reading in formal topics such as logic before you go around using it to try to beat people into submission.
[quote]I know of no prophet who claims to be teaching a new doctrine that improves upon the past and is disconnected with it.[/quote]
Well, of course not. Any such prophet would be consciously founding a new religion, wouldn’t he? Not a new Christian sect. (Though your point about Mohammed is very interesting.)
Take Baha’i, for example. From what little I know of them, they regard Jesus as but one of many semi-divine beings sent by God. But it seems to be almost an afterthought; they don’t seem to be in any real interaction with Christian belief at all. They’ve never been a Christian heresy, they just name-drop. (I’ve always thought of Islam in the same way, but you’ve given me food for thought. I know St. John of Damascus thought of Islam as a heresy…)
Mohammedanism is a heresy, a form of exaggerated Arianism and (maybe) Ebionitism, with elements later to be seen in the Puritans, that is, a doctrine of decentralized worship, ministers without priests, severe asceticism, and so on.
The Creation story, the Flood story, the story of Cain and Abel is the same. The Virgin Birth of Isa (Jesus) is the same. Compare this to the creation or flood stories of the Babylonians or Greeks: the Helenic and Mesopotamian myths form a different body, hence are a different religion.
Mohammad took the Catholic-Orthodox religion, and either was directed by Almighty God, or by his own vain imaginings (take your pick) eliminated what he saw as corruptions of the original unitarian purity. He does not say the Bible is myth, or devil worship, he says the Bible is corrupted by the malice or negligence of corrupt scribes.
At least we can hope those are the two possibilities. The original “Satanic Verses” were presented by Mohammed as revelations from God, and later condemned as in fact from Satan by Mohammed himself.
Hm…
May I ask, if God protects the Church from corruption, why does he not protect governments from corruption?
I clearly recall you making statements that the world’s governments are corrupted directly by Satan, or at least Hell based forces. IIRC it is stated in the Bible. Well, why? If the Church cannot be corrupted, but governments can, would theocracy not be the instant solution to most problems? Yet you have also in the past pointed out that the Church tends not to do as well when it is official as it does under freedom of religion. Would religion based business not also be a logical next step, as businesses are also sources of great power that Hell would wish to subvert? And I am seriously working off my understanding of this paradigm.
Forgive me for being a 19 year old raised in what is probably a less enlightened age than your own was.
Now, ignoring the obvious problems of there being evil and a Devil at all, why this specific restriction on the Devil’s power? Why have it here, but not on fundamental let also exalted positions, such as romance and the family? Many families and love affairs clearly show infernal influence. It seems curious that there is one, and only one, hole in such a being’s power, especially as it is a hole shaped like the Church, and not religion or God more generally, as infinite heresies show.
Is this simply a mystery, is there something I’ve missed in official literature or the Bible, or is there an obvious answer I am missing?
God has promised that His church will not teach error, not that it is incorruptible.
On the contrary, you can be sure it was divinely founded because it has lasted two thousand years in spite of the Catholics’ very best efforts.
WyldCard4:
I could wish on some days that God had promised to keep the Church free of corruption. It would be so much more convenient to be all wheat and no tares.
But God in His mercy has given us all time and space to screw up, and thus also to repent.
In fact, Catholics only claim God has promised to keep the Church from teaching error in essential matters of faith and morals. In other words, we think following the teachings of the Church won’t lead you to Hell; we don’t think that any particular people – Pope, bishops, or otherwise – is guaranteed to be noble and good. (“The floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops,” as St. John Chrysostom put it.) The Devil can’t wipe out the Gospel, can’t bury it completely under lies, but he can certainly tempt and corrupt individuals of any ecclesiastical office.
In any case, government and business simply aren’t the hierarchy’s job. They belong the proper sphere and calling of the laity. When it comes to politics, the Church and can and does tell us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful; but it has almost nothing to say about what means are *effective*, and that is where 99% of all political questions begin.
Note I am unsure how to properly quote things here, so I will use parentheses to quote. I have found this to be a useful system. I would switch to the normal method if I knew how with this software.
I am asking the questions of someone raised as a Unitarian Universalist with Catholic friends who did not realize for many years the Church opposed abortion, or in other words, as a child who has learned many odd facts and tidbits and big words, so if I end up asking a question that a child of six should rightfully know about the workings of the Church, do not be surprised.
First, let me explain my reasoning through a metaphor. Assume I am trapped in an abandoned house and find a hole. If I found a irregular hole in the wall I might put it to chance or another person or animal breaking out. If it was a perfectly symmetrical circle or square I would assume it was the work of a powerful entity using strong materials. If I found it in a precise and specific geometric shape such as a cross or five pointed star, I would be confused. I would assign it to such a power, but I would assume there is a peculiar and very good reason for the hole to take such a particular shape, especially as it is not one precisely conductive to a human leaving.
That being said…
(I could wish on some days that God had promised to keep the Church free of corruption. It would be so much more convenient to be all wheat and no tares.
But God in His mercy has given us all time and space to screw up, and thus also to repent.)
No disagreement, objection, or question there. That is how I understand the Christian viewpoint to be, besides strange outliers of the diverse faith.
(In fact, Catholics only claim God has promised to keep the Church from teaching error in essential matters of faith and morals. In other words, we think following the teachings of the Church won’t lead you to Hell;)
Hm, not to beat a horse that was killed long before CS Lewis was born, but what of indulgences and other improper forms of forgiveness for sin? Is the Church position on these that they were valid and worked, but were given by corrupt people, or that they did not work, and people went to Hell because they believed that the Church had forgiven their sins? Or has some aspect of modern media and culture confused my understanding of such practices?
(we don’t think that any particular people – Pope, bishops, or otherwise – is guaranteed to be noble and good. (“The floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops,” as St. John Chrysostom put it.) The Devil can’t wipe out the Gospel, can’t bury it completely under lies, but he can certainly tempt and corrupt individuals of any ecclesiastical office.)
Where does the Devil’s power begin and end, and what of the powers of simple human error? An intelligent person will see that there are different translations of the Bible with different words and meanings. Would these not count as “corrupted?” Are such corruptions only possible for Bibles outside of the control of the Church? Are Church Bibles only subject to human error or malfeasance, but not Satanic attack, and what would an unknowing agent of Satan count as? What of a person simply misreading a passage? The same questions for copying the Bible naturally apply to a person reading it, making a copy inside her head.
Perhaps I am thinking of Satanic power in the wrong way. I am operating under the assumption that this is a being that can subconsciously influence a human mind without an admitted and conscious realization, and that has as a goal to weaken the humanity spiritually, with his primary enemy being the Church. If any of this is incorrect my confusion may be explained.
(In any case, government and business simply aren’t the hierarchy’s job. They belong the proper sphere and calling of the laity.)
And how do monks and nuns who have a trade such as teaching, wine making, or dog breeding fall into this? Likely not an important question, but one that follows from the statement.
(When it comes to politics, the Church and can and does tell us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful; but it has almost nothing to say about what means are *effective*, and that is where 99% of all political questions begin.)
That is fair enough. As the Church does not extend metaphysical protection as an organization, then it becomes fairly clear why my strategy would fail. It is the information it carries, not the authority it possesses, that is immune to the Devil. Therefor to extend the sphere of the church would do nothing at all for the Church, business, or governments. Very well, I consider the original question resolved.
I’m not sure how to quote here either. I’ll use square brackets.
[or in other words, as a child who has learned many odd facts and tidbits and big words, so if I end up asking a question that a child of six should rightfully know]
No problem! I once *was* that child. I didn’t grow up Catholic, but came to the Church at the age of 26.
[Hm, not to beat a horse that was killed long before CS Lewis was born, but what of indulgences and other improper forms of forgiveness for sin? Is the Church position on these that they were valid and worked, but were given by corrupt people, or that they did not work, and people went to Hell because they believed that the Church had forgiven their sins? Or has some aspect of modern media and culture confused my understanding of such practices?]
The last. Indulgences (which are still in use) don’t forgive sins at all. Briefly, sin has two sorts of effect on us: Eternal and temporal. The former, namely separation from God, is far the more serious, and it is what forgiveness heals. The latter is nothing to sneeze at, though: Sin also damages us, puts down roots in us, makes us prone to more and more sin.
Indulgences are aimed at this second consequence of sin, the temporal. Forgiveness of the sins in question is necessary before an indulgence can even get to work.
Things weren’t quite that articulated at the time of the Reformation, I grant. The whole dust-up prodded us to understand the matter better ourselves.
[Where does the Devil’s power begin and end, and what of the powers of simple human error?]
Simple human error has almost no conceivable limits, I’m afraid!
We don’t think all sin and all problems stem from the Devil. We’re plenty capable of screwing up on our own without any help! Traditionally, the three sources of sin are given as “the world, the flesh, and the Devil”. (‘World’ here meaning the pressure of society, and ‘flesh’ meaning the part of us not yet turned over to God.)
As for your questions about the Bible, translations can certainly have errors. Individual people reading the Bible can *definitely* err, no matter how learned and holy. Infallibility isn’t promised to any particular person, but to the Church as a whole. (The Pope’s gift of infallibility is very, very limited and used on behalf of the Church.)
Basically, our faith is that God isn’t going to let us get things so wrong that souls are at risk. If you follow the teachings of the Church, you will be safe. Since the Bible is a very important part of God’s Revelation, I don’t think we could ever lose it; but that doesn’t mean any particular copy or translation would be free of spelling mistakes and so on.
[I am operating under the assumption that this is a being that can subconsciously influence a human mind without an admitted and conscious realization, and that has as a goal to weaken the humanity spiritually, with his primary enemy being the Church. If any of this is incorrect my confusion may be explained.]
Sounds about right. However, do note that the Devil is infinitely less powerful than God, and can’t act to do nearly as much evil as he’d like. If God lays it down that there are things he can’t accomplish (like destroy the Catholic Church) then they won’t get accomplished.
[And how do monks and nuns who have a trade such as teaching, wine making, or dog breeding fall into this? Likely not an important question, but one that follows from the statement.]
Well, for one, monks (usually) and nuns (always) aren’t part of the hierarchy. But regardless, when they engage in such trades, they do so with no special advantages. Their own talents and skills are put to work, the way anyone else would do. Doubtless they’d pray about their work, but I’d expect any Catholic layman to do the same!
[It is the information it carries, not the authority it possesses, that is immune to the Devil.]
Well… I wouldn’t go that far. But the authority the Church possesses is definitely not a this-worldly authority. A theocracy, in a word, certainly would not be guaranteed to get everything right, and might well end up in a horrible mess. Worldly power and ecclesiastical power rarely mix well.
The Church’s authority is that of light over darkness, of Christ over sin and death. Even when horribly obscured by the sins of hierarchy and laity, the holiness of the Church can be seen – and we’ve never lacked for saints, either. Just as Jesus gave the Apostles power over unclean spirits, so too the successors of the Apostles have authority to rebuke the forces of evil. Just as the Apostles were empowered to lead the flock, as servants and not lording it over them, so too the bishops have a rightful authority over their people – not an unlimited authority in the face of abuse, no, but to guide and to provide wise order, and to teach.
I regard the Church’s authority as a tremendous blessing, and pray I always submit to it gladly.
I am going to try to type this out for you without it disappearing since the code, properly written is not meant to be seen. If I do this wrong I have left you a very stupid looking reply!
then the quoted text here
Or, neater, remove dashes and that is the code below
quoted text here
Are you kidding me? Apparently even if you put purposeful mistakes in there it will still pick out the code!
Here, I’ll leave the opening chevrons or angle brackets out and replace them with a 5. If this doesn’t work I’ll try to look stupid somewhere else for the rest of the night!
5blockquote> the quoted text here 5/blockquote>
Just take out the 5′s and replace with <, and that's all there is.
Now to see what I've written this time!
I have nothing to contribute to this discussion besides HTML…
The preceding quote was entered thusly:
<blockquote>This is a test.</blockquote>
The preceding explanation of the prior quote was entered thusly:
<blockquote>This is a test.</blockquote>
Type < to get < and > for >. Also type & to get &, and so on….
I cross my fingers as I click “Submit”…
Cool, thanks! I was wondering after I posted the first one – how the hell did they put it up at the website I learned it on?! Didn’t have time to find out.
applauds
Regarding the ‘Church Bibles’, I would say that the original writings are inspired but any particular translation is not necessarily inspired.
Thus, the NT was first written in Greek and that is inspired and inerrant but translations such as King James are not inerrant.
Mr. Card
Please allow for me to provide an Orthodox Christian response.
Indulgences are tied to the Roman Catholic idea of Purgatory which is a place of temporal punishment in preparation for Heaven. Indulgences lessen the time that a pentinent would spend in Purgatory. As the Orthodox Church does not accept the existence of Purgatory, we of course do not possess the concept of indulgences.
As to where the Devil’s power begins and ends Saint John of Damascus writes “All wickedness, then, and all impure passions are the work of their (demons) mind. But while the liberty to attack man has been granted to them, they have not the strength to over-master any one: for we have it in our power to receive or not to receive the attack.”
The Church does not teach that the Bible is inerrant. What it teaches is that the deposit of faith provided to the Church by Jesus Christ will not be corrupted such that the Church teaches doctrine that would lead man away from God. The overarching message/teaching of Jesus Christ is supposed to be preserved and protected by the Church which is why the Orthodox Communion of Churches are so adamant about resisting change–often even innocuous change out of concern that the shifting pebble will create a landslide of ‘reform’.
The Church doesn’t extend metaphysical protection to anyone except insofar as it teaches spiritual truth and encourages you to strive to live that truth.
To add to the Shadow’s excellent post, an indulgence is “the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven.” Basically, it is “time” out of Purgatory (another much misunderstood idea) – the idea being that one could do an act on Earth, such as saying a prayer, fighting in a Crusade or making a charitable donation in order to satisfy the claims of justice for sins.
The Church considers (and considered even in the past) indulgences improper if they were sold (as opposed to a charitable donation) or if they were claimed to forgive sins. Unfortunately, these rules were often disobeyed in the Later Middle Ages, and so you have Luther’s anger and Chaucer’s Pardoner. Because of the abuses, indulgences for donations were eliminated in 1567 as part of the Catholic Reformation/Counter-Reformation. However, indulgences granted for prayers, for example, remain even today.
I don’t think the remission of temporal punishment *only* has reference to Purgatory (which I do agree is a hugely misunderstood subject, even by many Catholics). I think of them simply as the concentrated effect of penance, which does us good here and now.
Photios, I think it likely that what you deny thinking you are denying Purgatory is something I – to say nothing of the Catechism – would also deny. I could, of course, be wrong.
Suffice to say that Catholics aren’t committed to believing in a place of fire, or any specific duration of time, or anything of that sort. We are committed only to believe that (at least some of, though at a guess I’d say most of) the blessed dead are in need of some kind of purification before receiving the Beatific Vision. Our prayers can thus help them.
I don’t see how it’s possible to believe in praying for the dead (as I know you do) without having SOME sort of concept of Purgatory. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t some Eastern accounts speak of ‘waystations’ on the way to full theosis? That would be an acceptable view of Purgatory in the Catholic Church, as I understand it.
Mr Cranston
We might agree but I believe that your sentence has too many or too few words so I am sort of guessing at what you meant.
My understanding is that there is no Roman Catholic dogma of what Hell actually is but that many Roman Catholics are of the opinion that it is separation from God. Within the Eastern Orthodox Communion there is also no dogma of what Hell actually is though many Orthodox Christians are of the opinion that it is the reaction of some to the presence of God. Some find God’s presence to be Paradise while others find it to be Hell. This has always put me in mind of the late Christopher Hitchens who once said (if I have my attribution correct) that he would find the Christian Heaven to be Hell and hoped that death would be oblivion.
I don’t know if the dead are in need of some kind of purification or not and I’m not entirely sure what you mean by purification.
I should be more clear. The Orthodox Communion does not reject the concept of purgatory but certainly does not embrace it. Instead Orthodox Christians tend to think of being “asleep in the Lord” as a mystery and leave it at that. There are those Orthodox Christians that reject any concept of Purgatory outright, others that believe what Roman Catholics might call Purgatory is simply a (I assume unpleasent) state that some go through when they are first in the presence of God, and others subscribe to “Aerial Toll-Gates” (Father Seraphim Rose suscribed to this theory) or other theory. The Church remains silent on the issue.
Am I the only one who is tickled that The Shadow is addressed as ‘Mr Cranston’? (Because we all know that he is really Kent Allerd, World War One flying ace.)
I am glad that someone caught my bit of humor! I thought that Cranston would be more widely recognized than Allard.
Of course. Only the most Inner of the Inner Circle know about Kent Allerd. To the rest of the world, he is Lamont Cranston. I assume he goes to the same wealthy playboy club as Bruce Wayne, Britt Reed, and Rodrigo de Bavar.
Heh. Only if you accept the pulps, which are quite different from the radio show! The pulp Shadow has no Way Cool mind powers, for one. Personally, I prefer the radio version.
But in any case, it’s moot. My handle comes from an RPG character of mine, a modern superhero who took his inspiration from the radio Shadow. (Yes, he has Way Cool mind powers.) The logs of the campaign are online, in the remote event that anyone is interested.
Anyway, his secret identity was Alex Brighton, so there you are.
The way one theologian explained it to me was this:
1. No one on earth is perfect.
2. All those in heaven must be perfect.
3. Therefore all who go from earth to heaven must be perfected in some way.
The most basic idea of purgatory is that term for the process of perfection (hence the name – purging oneself of one’s venial sins etc.) As far as I know after that point the Catholic Church is pretty agnostic as to what purgatory is like (whether a place, time, state, etc.). The biggest misunderstanding is that it is some halfway point between heaven and hell, when it has nothing to do with hell – it is a stage on the way to heaven. But the reason it exists in Catholic theology is because of the strict logic above.
Nor is it necessarily unpleasant (though the usual metaphor of a “purifying fire” doesn’t help that misunderstanding). While there are examples of illustrations and sermons where Purgatory was talked up as a place of hellish punishments – perhaps to get bigger donations for indulgences, it’s true – there are other descriptions which aren’t that way at all. Take, for example, Dante’s Purgatorio, in which the souls in purgatory happily go about their purification despite it seeming painful.
Purgatory is necessarily bad only in the sense that it is not heaven, and the souls there want to be in heaven as “soon” as possible (using temporal signifiers for supernatural “places” is always iffy).
The television show “Supernatural” has taught me that Purgatory is where monsters such as vampires and rougarous go when they die.
You describe Purgatory in almost Orthodox Christian terms. As I’ve indicated earlier, the Orthodox Church’s dogma is more focused on Jesus Christ than anything else and in-part (if not in-whole) this is because what does it matter if there is a Purgatory or Aerial Toll-Houses or whatnot? What is important is does man receive the correct prescription for his salvation. For Orthodox Christians salvation means Theosis–becoming fully human and thus becoming like God. I suppose you could say becoming perfect though my limited understanding is that this process might continue even after death so I might say becoming more and more perfect with true perfection (God) being an unobtainable goal.
Many Orthodox Christians believe that those who have been transformed by Theosis will find the presence of God to be heavenly while those who have not been so transformed will find the presence of God to be hellish and this is what is meant by Heaven and Hell. Most Orthodox Christians believe/understand those who find themselves in Heaven or Hell to be in a permanent state but there are some (including some saints) who believe that some/all can or will eventually undergo Theosis and find their way to Paradise. This is, to say the least, a controversial belief. I say all of this, because this is how some Orthodox Christians understand the Roman Catholic idea of Purgatory. A state of continued Theosis after death where man moves from a state of finding God’s presence to be hellish to a state of finding God’s presence to be heavenly.
Certainly the importance of purgatory pales in comparison to salvation itself, but that is no reason to ignore anything else we can know of God or of the Last Things. As Chesterton said, “Theology is merely that part of religion that requires brains.”
I don’t think I said anything of the sort.
Theologoumenon is alive and well in the Orthodox Church.
I just realized that I should probably explain myself further. If something is declared dogma it doesn’t just mean that it is true. It means that your salvation is in dire jeopardy if you don’t believe it.
That the dead can suffer after their deaths and yet be saved is quite clear:
“If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, the work of each will come to light, for the Day will disclose it. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire [itself] will test the quality of each one’s work. If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. But if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire.”
true, it’s not just Purgatory. Temporal punishments can also appear in this life. Nathan told David that his sin was forgiven, but the baby Bathsheba had borne would die, and the sword would never depart from his house. And God pardoned the Israelites at Moses’s request, but declared they would not enter the Promised Land.
Yes, sorry, that’s absolutely correct. Generally the largest indulgences in the Middle Ages were in relation to Purgatory, though – examples abound, such as those given to Crusaders, or noblemen who would endow monasteries to pray for them after death perpetually. I focused on those and gave the impression that indulgences were solely for Purgatory. I hope I led no one astray.
Dear Mr. Wright:
I come late to this interesting discussion. And, as a Catholic, I was not at all convinced by Mr. Hutchins arguments. But Mormonism (which I don’t consider even heretically Christian) does not interest me, so I’m putting it aside.
Rather, I’m content to bring to your attention a few works of Church history which I thought very interesting and hope may be of use to you. Especially since you are a relatively new convert.
ANTIOCH & ROME: NEW TESTAMENT CENTERS OF CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY, By Raymond E. Brown and John A. Meier
STUDIES ON THE EARLY PAPACY, by John Chapman, OSB
BISHOP GORE AND THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS, John Chapman, OSB
TRADITION AND TRADITIONS: AN HISTORICAL AND A THEOLOGICAL ESSAY, by. Yves M.J. Congar, OP
THE CHURCH IN CRISIS: A HISTORY OF THE GENERAL COUNCILS, 325-1870, Philip J. Hughes
And if I rummage more thoroughly among my books, I’m sure I could find more to add to this list, but I don’t want to impose too much on your patience!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
“I know of no prophet who claims to be teaching a new doctrine that improves upon the past and is disconnected with it”
I think all of them do (other than Protestantism). Every one of the other Christian-derived religions has new scriptures that came centuries or more after Christ that offer new and unheard-of revelations.
“All a man concerned with the return to the uncorrupted beliefs of the Early Church need do is quote the writings of the Early Church”
To Protestants, the “Early Church” is the first-century Church during the lives of the apostles and the writings that they consider reliable from this period are called the “New Testament”. Where we disagree is in your assumption that there was a single organization known as the Church in this period. To Protestants, the Church is simply the aggregate body of all believers; it is not an organization and there is no special “approved” set of doctrines that could be checked. Every individual church had its own peculiarities. Again, there simply is no authoritative source other than the New Testament.
“and then a long gap where nothing was written and nothing was said worthy noticing, until the rise of the founder of the breakaway Church, whose words are studied with care”
If there are earlier writers who don’t propound serious theological errors then I’m sure that they would be read with respect if not deference, but the errors of the Catholics are considered very serious by modern Protestants. Taking religious advice from a man who prays to Mary seems as dubious to a Protestant as taking religious advice from a man who prays to Zeus would seem to you. You can’t really appreciate the Protestant view without appreciating how appalled they are at Catholic practices. When they accuse Catholics of idolatry and worship of false gods (aka “saints”) –that is not just mean-spirited rhetoric; it is a description of their honest position on the matter. And it is not a capricious position but one that is soundly supported by scripture and history.
“The older the date on the claim, the less believable it is. I am more willing to believe an argument that the Church of AD 1400 went astray than that the Church of AD 400 or AD 40″
Again Protestants don’t accept the idea of a single organization called “the Church” so there is no single point of failure to map this to. That is, there is no single time when the Church went astray. The Church has always contended with false doctrines and there have always been false brethren among the true. We know this from the Epistles and from the teachings of Christ who predicted exactly that. You agree with this presumably, but where we differ is that to Protestants the solution to this problem is to test every teacher and prophet in the light of Scripture as Jesus instructed, while you believe that there is a special authority, an organization that does not need to be tested because it is the God-ordained Church. (Actually, I’m not really sure what you think about that because you must be aware that there have been some extraordinarily evil things done by the Catholic Church, so you must agree that the Catholic Church and the Pope cannot be trusted without reservation, right?)
“In a game of Russian Telephone, the boy who hears the message first is, statistically speaking, less likely to be suffering from accumulated errors”
That doesn’t really apply –or only very weakly– when the communication is written rather than oral. By that consideration, the oral traditions of the Catholic Church are much more questionable than the written scriptures.
“It is less unbelievable to say the followers of a student of a disciple of an apostle of Christ mistook or corrupted the teaching of Christ than to say that the disciples of the apostles mistook or corrupted it; still less the apostles; still less Christ Himself.”
Only Christ is without error. We know for a fact that the Apostles erred. Peter denied Christ three times. Even in later years, Paul writes of having to correct Peter for hypocrisy. And we know that direct students of the Apostles erred because lots of the Epistles were written to correct them. this idea of some Golden Age of Church Perfection is just not something that Protestants believe, and frankly it’s not at all credible.
“a mere theologian claims to have deduced the original and uncorrupted teaching of the Church using no other source than official Church teachings, and the reflections of natural reason”
And many prayers and supplications for the Holy Spirit to give guidance and wisdom. Protestant theologians and teachers are, for the most part, very humbly aware of the solemn task that they have taken on. They do not have the confidence of a Pope or a Priest that he has been granted a special dispensation to speak for God. They are just regular, error-prone men who have to rely on the grace of God to do anything good because good comes only from God. Really, ask a Protestant preacher some time how he can be so sure he’s right and I bet you will be surprised at the humility of the answer. The idea that Protestants rely purely on natural reason is a distortion that, I speculate, comes from conflating the Reformation with the Enlightenment.
“If the one, true, catholic, and apostolic Church Christ founded is corrupt and heretical, then Christ is forsworn of his word to send a comforter to guide his disciples in to all wisdom, or, to be precise, that the Church disobeyed this spirit.”
I’m not sure how the Church disobeying the Spirit amounts to Christ being foresworn. He often predicted that such things would happen and that’s probably why he never created a single hierarchy of leadership for the Church. Instead he created 12 leaders, each to found dozens of churches, each church to send out missionaries to found dozens more. And as the Enemy corrupted one church, other uncorrupted churches would spring up to replace them and carry on the Good Work. To Protestants, the Catholic Church is just one of the Enemy’s biggest successes –a mustard seed that grew out of all proportion and the birds of the air (which represented Satan in Jesus’s parables) nested in its branches. The Protestants are not without historical justification when they call the Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon –the whore (a people unfaithful to God) who was drunk with the blood of the saints (a Christian, anyone who partakes of the Holy Spirit). The Catholic Church murdered many Christians during her time of dominance –a difficulty that it seems is much more pressing for you than your hermeneutic difficulties are for Protestants.
“by what right can that one next claim that the revived church resisted corruption for a season, a decade, or a century or three, or however old it is now?”
They don’t. There is, in this corrupt age, no single Church, pure and uncorrupted. The wheat will continue to grow with the tares until the final harvest. At most a Protestant would say “I believe that this church, today, is within the will of God because I have tested it and it is true to Scripture.” That’s why many Protestant churches have what they call a “statement of faith”. It is not, as some outsiders believe, intended to teach doctrine, rather it is their test answers, to be handed out to anyone who wants to grade how well they conform to Scripture.
It’s kinda funny how Jesus always talks about a singular church in the bible, then, and promised the gates of hell would never overcome it. And when he said he wanted the Church to be one like he and the Father were one, obviously he meant that he and the Father were two squabbling, mutually recriminating fiefdoms who both happened to believe in Sola Scriptura. Praise God!
And it’s rather odd that you’re taking Jesus’ avowed parable of the Kingdom of God (the mustard seed) and trying to apply it to what you consider to be a false, apostate organization.
But, really, the problem is much greater than you’re letting on; it’s not just like there was one, perfectly-unified institution, the Catholic Church, in the midst of a bunch of other Churches that all had different doctrines.
In the early church, there was one church in every city, ruled by one bishop, and these bishops were in communication with each other as much as possible so as to maintain unity in doctrinal matters, though often not all that much in communication. Nevertheless, all of these various churches, most of which continue in direct succession to this day, all agreed and agree absolutely on the things which Protestants hate, and which Catholics, Orthodox, and the other apostolic churches have in common. All pray(ed) to Mary and the saints, all believe(d) in the Real Presence, all believe(d) in Apostolic Succession, etc, etc. These beliefs have independent attestation from a wide variety of sources; they’re not fringe beliefs, they’re the common denominator of the early church.
As I’ve said the early Christians possessed a hatred of disunity and of schism that went beyond even later ages. Heretical groups who broke off from the authority of the bishop were considered accursed, evil, traitorous, and damned, even if they died for Christ. Some of the Church Fathers indeed considered the act of schism, breaking off from authorized church authority, to be worse than heresy. The idea that the individual, acting under the personal inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was the ultimate judge of sacred things was anathema to them; Irenaeus condemns it; Clement condemns it; every Church Father condemns it. And they condemned it because, already in their day, those who followed their own judgment in sacred matters were part of a stunning array of different heresies, from Gnostics to Ebionites, none of whom were particularly close in belief or practice to Protestantism. The only things these heresies have in common with modern Protestantism are (1): a dislike of ecclesiastical authority, and (2): massive disagreement among themselves. Besides this, I would be very interested in you finding anything remotely resembling Protestantism in, say, any of the various Gnostic sects, Ebionitism, Montanism, or the like.
Like with Mormonism, of course, it’s almost impossible to prove a negative; but, again, the silence is deafening. If they were really all running away from Protestantism, then where is Protestantism? The Bible? Well, they certainly didn’t think so, and neither did anyone else, even the heretics, at those times.
“It’s kinda funny how Jesus always talks about a singular church in the bible, then, and promised the gates of hell would never overcome it.”
I don’t think this point is really all that difficult to grasp. The Church that is referred to in the New Testament is one, it is the totality of all believers. This is not a mysterious or difficult concept, nor it is difficult to read the scriptures that way.
As to the rest of your claims about the early Christians, first, the historical evidence is not nearly as robust and complete as you say, and second, the members of these churches all came from an idolatrous, polytheistic society, so the common existence of errors similar to their old religion is not particularly remarkable. And third, this supposedly universal belief is not even hinted at in the New Testament. It doesn’t appear until all of the Apostles are dead.
Finally, Protestants don’t claim to be going back to any of the early heresies, they are going back to the original Church, that of the New Testament –where there were no idols, no prayer to anyone but God, no priests, no Pope, no prayer beads … All of this appeared after the Apostles were gone and no longer present to correct the errors.
The second sentence does not follow from the first. Paul enjoins the Thessalonians “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.” and instruct Timothy “And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well.” to ensure that it is passed on.
Purporting to psychanalyze someone’s errors should be deferred until you establish that they are, indeed, errors.
I do not know if any Catholic has ever turned this slander on its head against the Protestants, and argued that Protestantism is a Teutonic imposition of pagan ideas, such as the misogyny against Mary and a barbarian mistrust of priests, the hatred of civilized niceties such as stained glass and candles, or legal formalities that civilized men love, all springing from the pagan cultures of England and Germany where Luther and King Henry VIII hale from.
After all, pagan stories show that the Queen of Heaven, Hera or Fricka, were shrewish and jealous wives, not respectful of their husbands, so therefore the Germanic hatred of womenhood must be the unadmitted, secret cause of all Protestant objection to the veneration of Mary, n’est-ce-pas?
I am not saying it would be a valid argument, or even a sober one, but it might show any man deceived by this crass propaganda how absurd it is to say that Early Churchmen willing to face torture rather than throw a pinch of incense to the Emperor were AT THE SAME TIME trying to smuggle in a little bit of the Isis cult or the Mithras mystery religion into the bowels of the Church.
The crass historical illiteracy of calling Justin Martyr or Constantine a pagan or semi-pagan would be not less than the crass historical illiteracy of saying that Luther worshiped Wotan.
There are indeed numerous scholars who noted that Protestantism’s focus on God’s absolute power, which partially underpins ideas like sola fides, seems to derive from the Germanic pagan belief in wyrd (fate or fortune, kind of), which according to the theory Christian missionaries never successfully extirpated from the Germanic lands (including Britain). You can see the difficulty with reconciling wyrd with the Christian tradition in texts like Alfred the Great’s translation of The Consolations of Philosophy and in the Heliand (the Saxon Savior, an early Anglo Saxon NT translation). This is why Romance countries like France, Italy and Spain remained Catholic.
I don’t know whether it has ever been turned into an accusation against Protestantism, since it’s historicist and that tends to destroy any claims of anyone to metaphysical truth.
To single out just one of the many errors in your last statement, priests are indeed referred to in the New Testament. The Catholic and Orthodox (and Anglican) title of priest is etymologically identical with the New Testament term presbyteros, and the modern ordained priest is simply a formalized version of the N.T. presbyter — viz., an elder of the Church appointed to assist the local episcopos or bishop.
It is true, but unfortunate, that the same English word priest is also used to refer to the Levite functionaries of the Jewish Temple, and yet again to the enactors of pagan rituals. In both these cases the word is a translation of the Greek hiereus. When the N.T. says (I paraphrase for brevity) that Christ is our sole and sufficient high priest, the Greek has hiereus. When the N.T. (in English) refers to elders or presbyters, it is referring precisely to the persons called priests by the Church throughout subsequent history.
Each of your other claims about what did not exist in the early Church is in fact false, but I have not the time to go into them all. However, they have all been ably refuted in these comments by persons more expert than I.
Mr. Rampage
Why do Protestants consider the New Testament reliable and authoritative? This is a question I often wondered about as an atheist and have carried with me into Orthodox Christianity. For Orthodox Christians it is because the Bible is part-and-parcel of Holy Tradition. In fact it is partly because of the New Testament canon’s explication of Holy Tradition that we have the New Testament canon that we do today.
Also, as the Apostles typically quote the LXX (Septuagint) when referencing OT Scripture, why is there the Protestant preference for the KJV?
This is an empirical claim that can be tested. All evidence I’ve ever seen is against you here.
The testimony of the early Christians disagrees. This is not how *they* saw the Church.
Now, you’re right that not every area was exactly the same. To this day the Church doesn’t require complete uniformity; only unity.
I’m curious; you say the New Testament is the only set of early Christian documents you regard as reliable. On what basis? Considering that the canon of the Bible was worked out by councils of Catholic bishops acting in union with the Pope, why do you regard it as trustworthy? Or if their work was trustworthy, why don’t you trust their Old Testament canon?
And granted that other early Christian documents aren’t inspired, but why shouldn’t they count as historical evidence of what they believed and did? Do you claim that anything they said back then that doesn’t accord with your view is really from some heretical sect that doesn’t count as ‘early Christian’?
I will add that I fully sympathize with Protestants who are appalled by Catholic practices regarding the saints. I once shared that reaction myself. I can only say that it wasn’t what I thought it was; that I was misunderstanding what was going on. Catholics (and Orthodox) simply do not worship anyone but God – if I thought for a moment it was otherwise, I would never have become Catholic.
(Oh, and robertjwizard, thanks! I didn’t realize it was just html tags.)
“This period” refers to the New Testament. What was thought in later years is not particularly relevant (although you are overstating the evidence on that).
The testimony of the New Testament is what matters, and in the New Testament there is no global authority over all the various churches.
Actually, I’m describing what Protestants in general believe (or more accurately, what modern conservative American Protestants tend to believe), not necessarily what I believe. The modern cannon is accepted because it seems to have been approached in the right way with the right criteria, and there are no good grounds to reject it. There are good grounds to reject the Apocrypha.
They do count as historical evidence. However, historical evidence of what the early Greek and Roman Christians did and believed is not evidence of what Christians should do and believe. In fact, the Catholic assumption that it has some authority is simply puzzling to Protestants. Those early Christians were as human and fallible as we are. We all know that serious doctrinal errors can occur and spread widely over a period of months. Yet we are supposed to value the opinions of these particular Christians especially highly because they lived only a few decades after the Apostles? It simply does not make sense. Especially when their obvious doctrinal errors are the very ones you would expect from people unwilling to give up the forms and functions of their previous Greek and Roman religions.
Oh, come now. It’s not like the early Christians were somehow hideously innocent and unaware of the danger of pagan corruption of the Apostolic Tradition; this is why they all clung so fiercely and explicitly to Apostolic Tradition, as held and maintained by the various bishops and the great Apostolic churches and handed down with the blood of the martyrs from generation to generation. In the early Church, every attempt to alter the faith handed down from the Apostles, even in the very tiniest point and iota, was met with open and incredible hostility and hatred; heck, there was even a minor meltdown when Rome loosened the general requirements for penance after grave sins (see: Tertullian). You quite simply have no idea of what a traditional society is, and how it functions; you can’t simply make vast changes in doctrine and practice over a short time and then somehow convince everybody that it was what their parents did and what they’ve been doing all their lives. If you make the slightest change in the traditional works, structure, liturgy, and teachings, then you will immediately have your community baying for your blood, and usually an immediate break-off faction maintaining the old ways and accusing you all of being heretics and damned sinners.
The example of the modern Russian church and the so-called ‘Old Believers’ should be a good lesson in this regard. In a similar way, when Luther began inventing and disposing of doctrines willy-nilly, the only way he could claim that the Apostles believed as he did was to invent a Babylonian Captivity of the Church, declare the Pope the Antichrist, and propose a complete cut-off in transmission of Apostolic doctrine–he certainly couldn’t claim that everyone a half-century ago believed as he did until there was a sudden, inexplicable, and complete meltdown due to evil pagan influence.
And the points on which these Christians and modern Catholics and Orthodox differ from modern Protestants are not the unquestioned points of behavior that they absorbed by osmosis from the surrounding culture; these are the points that they strongly held, fought and died for, and identified unanimously with the very wellspring of Apostolic teaching, as handed down from generation to generation in every single Apostolic church and every church throughout the vast Roman Empire and beyond (including Indian Christians, the Church of the East, etc).
They held to those beliefs as the very ones handed down from the Apostles, just as they held to the various writings they possessed handed down from the Apostles, attesting in every generation to their authenticity. If they were somehow wrong about all their beliefs and doctrines, then how can you be sure they were right about the Scriptures? Maybe 2nd Peter really was written by some anonymous dude with poor hygiene sitting in a hut somewhere and then immediately acclaimed by those stupid, pagan-loving early Christians you’re completely confident within a few decades of the Apostles’ death (and even before: see 1 Clement) all simultaneously rejected the true faith and started embracing the exact same bizarre doctrines and acclaiming them as of Apostolic origin. There’s really not much difference between the two opinions.
As for your claims about Scripture, they are of course false; if you read Scripture in its original, Jewish context, you will find almost everything you abhor written large all over it, from honor given to saints to church offices with authority to sacrifices to the Real Presence to priests (presbuteroi) and the whole kit-and-kaboodle (though not, of course, prayer beads–those are a more modern invention). Jesus set out to found a new Kingdom of God, with twelve Apostles as its rulers, united in all things, to proclaim his Gospel to the nations. He did not found a sewing circle, or a social club, or even a bunch of tiny, independent power structures all locked in combat with each other and agreed on a few matters.
All that being said, I pray you have a lovely and joyous Ephiphany. God bless, and good night!
“This period” refers to the New Testament. What was thought in later years is not particularly relevant (although you are overstating the evidence on that).
The New Testament is not a period. It is a collection of documents selected from the first-century Christian texts by Church councils in the fourth century. If the Church was already corrupt in the fourth century, how can you possibly trust it to have chosen the documents that correctly expressed the teaching of Christ?
Either you admit the authority of the Church councils of the fourth century, in which case you have to concede that all the practices you condemn occurred in the true and authoritative Churchl or you reject the canonicity of the New Testament, which was proclaimed precisely by that authority. For at all earlier dates, there were sects that rejected some books that were eventually deemed canonical, and other sects that gave Scriptural status to books that were eventually rejected from the canon. By whose authority do you decide that all those sects were wrong?
Sorry, I forgot to reply to the second part of your post.
This is really astonishing! You are the first person I have ever met, from any church, who regards the growth of the Kingdom in the parables as a *bad* thing. Am I to take it that the ‘thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold’ yield of the seed in the parable of the Sower is also bad? How about the leaven that leavened three measures of flour? Or the seed that grows of itself in Mark 3?
I submit to you that this interpretation is unsupportable in comparison with the other parables, and even within its own context. Why would anyone plant a seed in a field hoping it wouldn’t grow? Why would corruption be symbolized by “full growth” in the first place? As for the ‘birds of the air’, the phrase is not uncommon in Jesus’ speech, by no means always with a negative connotation. If you are referring to the parable of the Sower, I question whether it is legitimate to lift an image from one parable and apply it to another; they are self-contained.
How does your idea that the Apostles were intended from the start to plant multiple communities with no mutual connection square with the obvious symbolism of the Twelve Patriarchs? Jesus is founding a new People of God, a new Kingdom of Israel – yet you would have it be a bunch of little villages with no greater structure and no common law? (And no, the law couldn’t be Scripture – the New Testament wasn’t written yet!)
And where is this exaltation of individual judgment found either in Scripture or among the early Christians? St. Peter solemnly warns us against private interpretations, urging us to accept what is handed down. St. Paul tells us the Church is “the pillar and foundation of the truth”. The early Christians urge us to be of one mind with the local bishop.
Finally, you mention the sins of Catholics against other Christians. I do not deny that much evil was done, and I deplore it. But whose hands do you think are clean? If I am to be held to account for the sins of Catholics in the past, should not the same standard apply to you? Will you claim that Protestants with temporal power have never stained their hands with the blood of other Christians?
We could start comparing numbers at this point, but why? What do you think the sins of the past prove? That the Catholic faith is false? Yet I think we both agree that the sins of Christians, of whatever church and however grave, do not make Christian faith a false hope; it proves only that some Christians have not been transformed by faith in Christ, and we were warned of this very thing.
Judge the Catholic faith on its own merits, not on the misdeeds of Catholics. And regardless of who did what to whom in the past, I hope it need occasion no discourtesy between us today.
I should clarify that I don’t know if this is the usual Protestant interpretation but it is one what I have heard. In that interpretation, mustard seeds are supposed to grow into small shrubs, not into huge trees. The growth of this mustard seed was unnatural. Size isn’t always good, and there is nothing in the parable that talks about the tree bearing fruit, only about the birds in its branches (who were presumably eating the new seeds just as the birds in another parable ate the seeds.
The yield of the sower is good (as I recall) and leaven usually represents sin (going back to the Passover) that if it is put into the dough at all spread throughout the batch, but I don’t know which specific parable you are referring to here.
I didn’t say “no mutual connection”, I said no single head.
The law was written in their hearts and Christ was their Head and the Holy Spirit was their High Priest. With such great gifts from God, what possible use could they have with earthly laws and earthly heads and earthly priests? The correct answer is: “well, apparently even those great gifts were not enough…”, but still, the Christian era was a new dispensation, a new way of God interacting with man. God does as he wills, but there is surely no logical reason to assume that he just had to follow the same monarchical path that had served the Jews so poorly.
What exaltation of individual judgment? Protestants pray in groups, worship in groups, study in groups and make important decisions in groups. They urge each other very strongly to maintain community with other believers, to respect the decisions of the elders, and to always be humble. It’s hard to see any exaltation of individual judgment there.
You will have to be more specific about those references if you want an answer.
No. You, as a Catholic claim that your church is a single organization, the single true Body of Christ throughout history, uniquely speaking with God-given authority, headed by men who were Apostles of Christ. That leaves you with the burden to explain why we should still accept it as the Body of Christ in the face of so much evidence that it was just another greedy, sometimes evil human institution headed by pretty regular, sometimes evil men.
By contrast, a Protestant doesn’t have to explain the actions of any particular Protestants because he always has two ready defenses not available to Catholics. First, he can deny that some particular sect was even Christian. Just because some particular sect calls themselves Protestant, that does not mean that if that sect is proven false that all Protestant sects are proven false. Second, the sect may have been Christian, but Protestants do not claim as part of their doctrine that any particular sect is the special Body of Christ nor any particular leader the unique and God-appointed head of the Church. The failures of individuals and individual sects is built into their theology and is not something that has to be explained.
How does that square with common Catholic arguments against Protestantism (such as the one John made in the article above) about how if the Catholic Church was SOOOO wrong that it needed reformation, that this shows some failure by God? If God’s appointed Pope tortured and/or killed hundreds of good, God-fearing people for financial gain (I’m thinking specifically of the Templars, here), doesn’t that also show that God goofed big time? I’m not being ironic here: I actually do agree with that argument. If God set up a Holy Church on earth with one specific God-chosen leader who he trusted to guide the people, and that one leader started slaughtering others, … well, what was God thinking?
I share your hope. And I further hope that you will attribute any apparent discourtesies in what I write to my failure to express myself rather than deliberate insult.
I certainly hope you don’t know it. Otherwise you’re saying that the Kingdom of God is sin.
Well, of course. How else to justify schism? But first you have to explain why the rot set in so swiftly but was able to be lifted centuries later — in spite of Jesus’s promises.
The rot was never lifted. In case you haven’t noticed, there are still a number of people out there praying to creatures rather than the Creator, praying with meaningless repetition like the heathen pray, and asking mere men to forgive sins when only God can forgive sins.
The Catholic view of the Church as a monolithic organization seems to make it very difficult to make them understand that Protestants do not even view our disagreement about a battle for supremacy the way that Catholics do. Protestants don’t believe in supremacy in the Church and don’t want supremacy. Protestants are battling for non-supremacy.
In the Protestant view, what the Reformation primarily did was free people (eventually) from the political power of a certain corrupt Christian sect that had enforced its own pagan-inspired dogmas on Europe for centuries. They don’t see themselves as “taking over” Christendom or the Church. They see themselves as being freed from an oppressor so that they could then follow God’s commands as spelled out in the Bible –something that they were persecuted for doing under the Catholics.
As to Jesus’s promises, you will have to be more specific because I don’t know what promises of Jesus you think were thwarted.
Which of God’s commands, as spelled out in the Bible, were people persecuted for following?
Here are a few:
The people were forced to obey and tithe to an organization that did 6, 8, 9, and 10 openly and unashamedly in the name of God which violated 3.
Then there are the various instructions of Paul on how to chose church leadership, the clear teaching that only God can forgive sins, the instructions of Jesus to act with love and gentleness and humility, which is inconsistent with Catholic intolerance and violence.
Are you giving these examples because the people back then held them up as reasons they were discomfited by the Church, or are they your own reasons? As in, have you read Luther talking about how he and his buddies were fed up with being part of a church that kept on with all that murderin’, or some such? I haven’t exactly read many of the Reformer’s writings, so I wouldn’t know.
As for “Catholic intolerance and violence…” I feel obliged to remind you that in the Religion Wars, nobody’s hands were clean. On the intolerance front, the greatest intolerance I have ever encountered was at a Calvinist Baptist church I attended for a few years. Frequently jabs like “It is Christ that saves us, not prayers from a book” oozed forth from the pulpit; but it was one of the member testimonies that really impressed me. The guy started by talking about his origins; one parent was a Catholic and the other, Anglican. Then he read from 2 Corinthians where it says, “Do not become unequally yoked with unbelievers” … well, here was two unbelievers getting yoked! Hyuk hyuk. Because Catholics are all unbelievers, right? And Anglicans… kinda look like Catholics, right?
I don’t know why you think “intolerance and violence” are distinctive traits of Catholicism. I do know why there are Catholics who have been good reason to think that intolerance is distinctive of Protestants.
My sister’s Protestant maid of honor abandoned their wedding only a week or two before, for the exact reason that it was a mixed marriage (Catholic/Protestant) and so the Bible (“unequally yoked”) said it was wrong.
I suppose we could have made a theological argument that they were both believers or that the passage doesn’t reference marriage, but mostly we just thought it was an incredibly shitty thing to do to someone right before her wedding. He finished the process of converting a few weeks later, too.
Neither. They are just examples of how people were persecuted for following God’s commands. Oh, and those people weren’t “discomfited” by the Catholic Church; they were “persecuted”. As in tortured to force them to recant (slow burning of the feet until they became charred stumps was one technique), bound with heavy chains and thrown into horrible dungeons where they could not stand up or get out of their own filth (and sometimes charged rent and board for the horrible, inadequate food), and murdered, (often by slow burning of the entire body. Some people would remain conscious until the damage reached their genitals). If the Catholics had just criticized people publicly or excluded them from church functions, that would be properly referred to as “discomfited”.
Yes, and the Allies committed sins during the WWII, also. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Allies, like the Protestants, were waging war to defend themselves from a cruel, totalitarian aggressor, while the Axis, like the Catholics were the cruel, totalitarian aggressors. I don’t mean to overstate this or imply that I hold modern Catholics responsible for those acts –I certainly don’t. But when you try to defend such crimes, or blame the victim in order to detract blame from the attacker, I take some exception to that.
How did they fail to tolerate Catholics? Did they refuse to do business with Catholics? Did they try to force Catholics out of their town? Did they torture Catholics, force them to live in their own filth, and murder them? Oh, you mean that they criticized Catholicism! See, that’s not “intolerance”, that’s “criticism”. In fact, this would be a good opportunity to correctly use that word “discomfited” that you improperly used above.
OK, I probably shouldn’t be so snarky, but you really aren’t being honest here. You are downplaying the horrendous evils committed by the Catholic Church, while mislabeling the mere expression of Protestant beliefs to make that look evil.
I obviously did not say that. Yet the intolerance and violence of Catholic history is especially relevant to this discussion 1. to emphasize why the Reformation had to happen, and 2. because according to John’s own Catholic arguments, falseness on the part of the Catholic Church implies that God made some major mistake in setting it up. And since we all (presumably) agree that God doesn’t make mistakes, by stressing just how false the Catholic Church was, I intend to bring into question one of John’s premises –that God ever set up a single organization as Church. Since Protestants reject that premise, this argument is completely harmless against Protestantism.
Actually, that was not the procedure. There are manuals still extant detailing when and under what circumstances torture was permitted. They even include warnings that confessions under torture were unreliable unless corroborated, and caution against using it except as a last resort.
Historians have noted that there are three things to examine: the history, the myth of the history, and the history of the myth. In a literate society, it seems that three hundred years is the floating horizon of historical consciousness. Beyond that horizon, real people in complex situations become mythic figures and archetypal caricatures performing stereotyped acts of cultural foundation. In pre-literate societies, the horizon may be much closer to the present, with historical events in grandfather’s time becoming mythic events in grandson’s time. Vansina even cites an example of a horizon only one generation long!
Historians, however, have access to whatever documents have survived the “shipwrecks of time,” and these very often portray a more fleshed-out past and even reveal actors like the King of France or the King of Castile strong-arming non-royal actors, like bishops. There are instances in Early Modern Spain, for example, in which royal prisoners deliberately committed blasphemy in order to get transferred to inquisitorial prisons, where they were better treated. (And the Spanish Inquisition was the first body in Europe to speak out against the witch mania of the Early Modern Age.)
Don’t forget that in Roman Law, the use of torture was required in specific cases; so it was the norm and became the norm in Europe as Roman Law was “rediscovered.” Ecclesiastical courts resisted this move for a long time; but when the Kaiser asserted Imperial authority to try heretics — by which the State always really means “politically opponents” — the Church stepped in and claimed jurisdiction. Heretics had been fleeing to the bishops to escape the imperial (sometimes royal) courts or (in some cases) mobs of fellow citizens. When you read the actual procedures, you realize that these were not the Secret Police of a Modern Secular State. (It was nice that you could never be convicted of a capital crime from circumstantial evidence alone; but the downside was that since a) “caught red-handed” and b) “witnessed by two independent witnesses of good character” was seldom satisfied, imperial, royal, and ecclesiastical courts alike had to rely on c) “voluntary confession.” Torture was used to elicit c). A confession under torture had to be affirmed voluntarily afterward and the rules said that torture could not be used a second time.
You can find good discussions of this in Edward Peters’ Inquisition and Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition.
Could the law and the courts be abused? Of course. We had two judges here in Pennsylvania, recently convicted, who had been getting kickbacks for each youth they sent to a private correction center. Consequently, the judges rationally maximized their cash flow by finding all the kids guilty, some for trivial offenses. But this abuse does not invalidate juvenile law or the democratic court system, let alone declare the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania a cruel, totalitarian aggressor.
That’s what the Southerners said about the North! They just wanted to pursue their own way of life and felt the cruel, totalitarian North would not let them.
It is always a mistake to project onto the past the categories of modern thought, like “totalitarian.” The Church taught that there were separate “cities,” the City of God and the City of Man, that were separate. In doing so, she seeded the idea of the independent, self-governing corporation. (Toby Huff’s The Rise of Early Modern Science has a good discussion of this.) These corporation multiplied to include Free Cities, companies of actors, medical societies, universities, and so on. It was the State that always had a totalizing impulse. Kings wanted to be Monarchs. By the dawn of the Modern Ages, Tudors, Bourbons, and their ilk had broken the Church — through the Concordances (France, Spain), nationalization (England, Scandinavia), or sponsor-a-heretic (the Germanies) — and all aspects of life began to come under State control. By Shakespeare’s time, you could not have a company of actors without a license from the government and a sponsor at court.
+ + +
It had to happen because the secular rulers needed to break the Church. All previous reformers, like Robert d’Arbrissel or Francesco d’Assisi, had managed to muck out the stables without tearing down the castle.
Doesn’t follow. The Church is staffed by human beings, just like everything else. Now, if the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (Protestants never seem to mention the Orthodox) had shifted doctrines around to facilitate their beliefs, then… Well, then they would be Protestants, wouldn’t they? For example, if Methodists disapprove of slavery and you want to own slaves without feeling guilty, why, you break away and form a Southern Methodist sect. Easy as pie, because there’s no calibration department to tell you otherwise. But the Orthodox and others were never false to their doctrines, even when some of their personnel were less than exemplary.
Seriously? I refer to horrendous persecutions, and you want to quibble about whether my (non-existent) description of legal procedures are accurate? Then you want to defend the torturers on the grounds that if a victim survived, most likely permanently crippled, he could recant (at which time, I believe they had two more shots at him before they had to give up the torture technique)?
No, seriously?
I swear. Arguing that the torture wasn’t so bad because there were legal procedures surrounding it is almost more offensive than blaming the victim.
Everything I described came from historic accounts of what was actually done to the Knights Templar in France and England under the direct orders of the Pope after the King of France suborned false testimony against them. These were true and faithful warriors of Christ –most of them old and retired after a lifetime of hard, bloody service in foreign lands. Many of these were formerly wealthy men who, after joining the order, lived their entire lives in voluntary poverty. Two of those who confessed under torture came back, sick and crippled to recant their confessions. Keep in mind, they were out of danger at that point. They had confessed and been absolved. They could have kept their mouths shut and died peacefully in their beds. Instead, they came back and stood up for the honor of their order, and were burned slowly to death for it. It was one of them who managed to stay conscious and screaming until the flames reached his genitals.
So I ask again … Seriously?
Though I suspect that this gentle attempt at inquiry is going to go rapidly pear-shaped, what are your sources for this narrative? I ask because as a history major (who admittedly was not focused on Medieval history) your account seems to my somewhat fuzzy recollection to be conflating Philip the Fair with Pope… Clement?
Philip was a very powerful king who rode rough-shod over several Popes—”arresting” Pope Boniface in an attempt to have him deposed and “moving” the Papacy to Avignon to better control the Popes. I am working off memory and by no means am claiming that the Roman Catholic Church was without blemish in the incidents leading to the dissolution of the Knights Templar but I recall that the Pope tried to stop the wild abuses of Philip and outside of France there was nothing even remotely like the madness that Philip was enacting. In point of fact, I believe that most Templars outside of France were found blameless.
Uh… I’m pretty sure he brings up procedure because he was talking about the general stance of the Catholic Church. Considering you’ve been speaking in very broad groups (so broad, in fact, that you switch without warning from the Protestant Reformation – which we were originally discussing, right? – to the Knights Templar) it is possible he thought you were talking about the Church’s behavior in general. In which case it is entirely sensible to talk about the established procedures, and not as sensible to focus on the rare occasions that human fallibility causes grotesque errors in procedure.
But perhaps he was mistaken. Are you, instead, wishing to talk about the worst things that Catholics have done? If so, realize that this will not help you challenge the authority of the Catholic Church. To return to the analogy that came up earlier, you cannot declare the Pennsylvania court system invalid just by invoking all those kids that got packed away. Show that the courts have long held laws that supported injustice, and you may have a case. Yell about how this focusing on procedure ignores the plight of those poor kids, and the most you can sensibly accomplish is to stir up rightful outrage against the particular judges who ignored the just procedures they were supposed to uphold.
That is not what Mr. Flynn is arguing. He is saying that torture was part and parcel of the secular codes of law of that period; that the secular arm frequently tried cases of heresy, blasphemy, and other dissents from the Church; that when national churches, or national branches of the Catholic Church, adopted torture and like methods, they generally did it because they were compelled to by the secular authorities — usually because the secular authorities had strongarmed the Church into allowing them to choose the local bishops. In all of which cases, it is the secular authority that is to blame for the tortures; and in the generality of cases, you will find that the papacy itself, and those voices within the Church (often from the monastic orders) that had the opportunity and the courage to speak out, opposed the spread of torture.
Do you still want to insist on blaming the Church for the deeds of kings and emperors?
Do you think the Jewish church and its priests did not do so? Was its church therefore not chosen by God, and were the Jewish people not to sacrifice or pay into the temple coffers?
I also think you’ve bought into a lot of anti-Catholic myths, as indicated by some parts of your list. For example, the Catholic position is exactly that “only God can forgive sins.” The Catholic sacrament of confession never denied that position. Have you read any Catholic sources on what the Church believes, or only Protestant ones?
When the temple leadership became corrupt, God sent prophets to speak for him instead, and it was then the duty of the people to follow the word of the prophets rather than of the official temple leaders. The same thing applies when God’s anointed kings became corrupt. God has always demanded that his people do what is right, even when doing so was against the official powers that God had set up.
Of course, that argument is for Catholics, because Protestants don’t believe that God ever set up the Catholic Church. God set up the Temple through the laws of Moses, giving great detail on how it was to be managed and led. He proved Moses’s authority with many signs and wonders. Nothing similar applies to the Catholic Church.
Catholics believe that they have to go to special men called priests and confess their sins and that forgiveness is at least partially up to the individual judgment and decision of the priest. The existence of a theoretical, theological extra step in there where it is really God who is doing the forgiving under the covers is little more than a rhetorical detail since the practical effect of this setup is a priesthood of men with a special power to forgive sins.
Take it up with Jesus. It wasn’t us who said,
You are crazy amounts of hostile, dude. I’m with you that a lot of Catholics here are minimizing Church abuses, but you still should take it down a notch. And accusing people of misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Protestantism doesn’t help if you respond by misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Catholicism.
Sure, and Catholics have to do the same thing – see St. Catherine or St. Francis (there’s a reason why it’s more often those arguing with the popes or bishops are sanctified rather than the popes or bishops). At the same time, the Jews didn’t get to abandon entirely the temple or the system of kingship. Indeed, the New Testament is fairly clear that rulers’ authority is to be obeyed (Romans 13). Regardless, from both your and my side, the abuses of the Catholic Church have nothing to do with its authority (as you say, it’s whether it was set up by God in the NT period or not). Thus the subject is irrelevant to the argument, so why keep talking about it?
In what way is forgiveness up to the individual judgment and decision of the priest? Do you have any idea what goes on in the confessional? The priest has a script to follow! It’s a ritual, as with Mass. They don’t get to say, “Well, I don’t think you’re forgiven, so looks like you’re hellbound.” It’s no more “under the covers” than a Protestant baptizing someone – does that mean you actually think you’re conferring the grace and not God?
Also, this is only considered the ordinary form of reconciliation; there are extraordinary forms as well that don’t rely on anyone with special powers. But even the early Christians had confession as something other than just talking to God on their own – it was public, and the shift to private confession happened for reasons you can pretty easily research and see it had nothing to do with giving people magic powers. Psychologically, I much prefer it to solo confession – I think it’d be very easy to give myself excuses or forgo its regular practice. But that’s a personal preference.
Still, as Mary said, how do you get around Christ Himself having the apostles out to forgive sins? You can say the Catholic Church wasn’t set up in the Bible – but then why does it look like its institutions and sacraments are closer to those in the Bible than the sola scriptura churches’?
“Saul of Tarsus believes he must go to a special man called Ananias and seek a miraculous cure for blindness and that this miracle is at least partially up to the individual judgment and decision of Ananias. The existence of a theoretical, theological extra step in there where it is really God who is doing the curing under the covers is little more than a rhetorical detail since the practical effect of this setup is to establish a man Ananias with a special power to cure blindness.”
As I have said before, once reason why I became Catholic in the first place is because the argument against Catholicism is so weak, consisting without any exception known to me of assertions that the Catholics believe things that Catholics do not actually believe.
Suppose I say, for example, “Group X believes Idea Y” to a member of Group X, a member in good standing who in fact does not believe Idea Y (and is under no obligation either in logic or as a member of Group X to believe Idea Y) and, as far as he knows, no one in his Group X has ever believed, and, as far as he knows, authoritative statements by the formal and recognized leadership of Group X repudiates Idea Y — in this example does any sane man expect my argument will convince any member of Group X?
I do not think it is possible for this argument to be taken seriously. The Catholics say, with intolerable clarity both during the sacrament of confession and in talking and teaching about it, that God forgives sins and no one and nothing else.
Any power the priest exercises in his role as a servant, with such authority, and no more, that the authorizing authority granted him to carry out the authority’s orders.
From this, Docrampage concludes that Catholics regard God as a theology excrescence unrelated to the process. I am reminded of Libertarians arguing that tax-gatherers are robbers, on the grounds that taking money in the amount and way and time and from whom as authorized by the lawful sovereign is the same as taking money in the amount and way and time and from whom the fancy of the private individual might suggest.
The most favorable interpretation of this “Special Man Called Priests” argument is that it is circular: he is saying that since the confessor is a private individual not authorized to hear confession or grant absolution, therefore Catholics should believe the confessor is a private individual not authorized to hear confession or grant absolution.
The least favorable interpretation of this “Special Man Called Priests” argument is that Doc Rampage has gone on a rampage, and has lost the desire to even make an appearance of a coherent argument.
It is absurd that God might wish to set aside certain things for Himself as sacral, such as certain days of the week, or a certain tribe out of all the tribes of men, or a certain priesthood out of all the professions of men, or a certain set of Twelve to govern and lead his other servants?
I think the burden of proof is on those who assume this was not His wish. Nothing in the scriptures, nor in tradition, nor in reason suggests otherwise.
Hear, hear. When I had converted, and was deciding which denomination to follow, and how to sift among the competing claims for my Christian loyalty, I discovered that every single thing I had been taught and told about the Roman Catholic Church was not only false, it was outrageously false. That was one of the main factors that decided me. Everything I heard a Catholic say about Protestant teaching is indeed what Protestants say Protestants believe and teach; NOTHING I head a Protestant cay about Catholic teaching is what Catholics say Catholics believe and teach.
The sheer magnitude of the lies appalled me — and one does not shoot blanks if one has real ammo.
Pretty much. I was even told over the summer that the “bishop’s hats” in Catholicism were from the fish god Dagon. Some of that stuff is HILARIOUS.
I will say that I have believed some anti-Mormon propaganda, though, according to John Hutchins. The truth has generally not been much better than the propaganda, though.
Oh, goody. We be off the hook.
1. Catholics, Orthodox, Monophysites, and Nestorians do not make idols. That they make statues, stained glass, icons, mosaics, and such is only an expression of the artists’ devotions. None of the traditional churches teaches that these statues are gods or should be worshiped. It has been so long since idols of that sort were around that moderns may totally misunderstand the matter. Anyhow it was settled at an ecumenical council. One way to ensure that a personal misunderstanding of the text is not propagated is that you get hundreds of persons to debate and discuss and vote on the matter.
6. Do not murder.
8. Do not steal.
10.Do not covet.
I wonder if any of that includes coveting, then stealing, monasteries, church buildings, and the like. Or the murders committed against her? “Against the Murdering, Thieving Hordes of Peasants” also comes to mind, since one bunch of Protestants could not abide another bunch of Protestants. Can one cite when and where the Church actually taught that 6-8-10 were OK? Or are we talking about the sins of individuals, the chaff that we were told would grow up with the wheat until the day of harvest? Forsooth, humans are a complicated lot and even the ‘Wars of Religion’ we are told to call the Huguenot War and the Thirty Years War might more profitably be thought of as the War of the French Succession and the Hapsburg-Bourbon War. Our real idols in the Modern Ages have been the Nation-State, and here was its first appearance.
9. Do not testify falsely against your neighbor.
Such as by saying that Catholics, Orthodox, Monophysites, and Nestorians worship idols?
3. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God
The command is that we not call God as a witness in court, since he is unlikely to answer the subpoena and cannot usually be cross-examined. (The Jews were a very practical people.) That is what swearing an oath — As God is my witness! I swear to God! — is all about and why it is in vain. But “misuse”? Depends on what you mean by it.
(#) but when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do
So we shouldn’t pray the Our Father more than once?
And Christ was not being Christian when “he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.” (Matthew 26:44 and also at Mark 14:39)
But why not quote the entire passage and use a more accurate translation?
Greek word translated as “vain repetitions” is battalogeo, or babbling. The pagans thought of prayer as magical incantations that would compel the god in some manner, and that the more they repeated the incantation, the more likely that the baal would respond. Compare
This should make clear what is meant by “babbling” — or even by the Stuart Era translation “vain repetitions.” It’s vain if there is “no one listening.” Catholics believe that God is listening and answering (even if the answer be not the one we look for). Hence, prayer is not “in vain.”
And of course it is right after the admonition about not making a big show of yourself and not cavorting and babbling and using prayer as an effort to perform magic on God himself that Matthew tells us that Jesus taught his disciples to repeat the Our Father, something which Catholics, Orthodox and other Traditional Christians do to this day.
“Can one cite when and where the Church actually taught that 6-8-10 were OK?”
I’m pretty sure he’s referring to all the people the Church tortured and executed and confiscated their stuff or whatever. It was different when the Protestants did it because they were defending themselves from a cruel, totalitarian aggressor. Although there were those times when a Protestant got the throne and became the cruel totalitarian aggressor, but hey.
Other than that, I can’t comment, having done little investigation into the matter of the alleged atrocities committed by the Catholic Church.
Which of course are not teachings and so irrelevant.
It is a claim frequently made by Protestants that the rot was lifted by Luther, or Calvin, or Zwingli, or whichever Reformer one chooses to follow as an authority. This necessarily entails that every single Christian from the earliest days of the Church until the sixteenth century was a false Christian, and every body of believers, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Nestorian or whatever else you like, was a false church.
I myself was raised Protestant, and investigated these matters in some depth; and the more I learned, the more I was convinced that this account of ecclesiastical history was not only implausible but utterly impossible; and not only false but a malicious lie. That is one of the principal reasons why I am a Protestant no longer.
That’s an inference that most Protestants would not agree to, so it cannot count as an argument against their doctrine. Frankly, I’m surprised to see a Catholic make that inference, too. Having some false beliefs does not make a Christian a false Christian. To be a false Christian, you have to have certain particular false beliefs, such as, for example believing that your good works are what earn your way into heaven.
That’s an inference that most Protestants would not agree to, so it cannot count as an argument against their doctrine.
On the contrary, it was a claim explicitly made by both Luther and Calvin: that they were purifying the Church of false doctrines, when in fact the doctrines they were attacking had been preached by the Church from (at the very least) the time of the first ecumenical councils.
Frankly, I’m surprised to see a Catholic make that inference, too.
I am not making that inference. I am pointing out that it is a false inference, and that the entire Protestant movement was based upon it.
Having some false beliefs does not make a Christian a false Christian. To be a false Christian, you have to have certain particular false beliefs, such as, for example believing that your good works are what earn your way into heaven.
It is interesting that you fasten upon that particular false belief. Many Protestants believe that this is a teaching of the Catholic Church. They are utterly wrong. It has always been the teaching of the Church, following St. Paul, that we are justified by faith. But it is also the teaching of the Church, in the words of St. James, that ‘faith without works is dead’. If you do no good works, of what value is your merely verbal claim to be a person of faith? But this was too much for Martin Luther, who at one point strove to have the Epistle of James excluded from his bowdlerized canon. ‘An epistle of straw,’ he called it.
Martin Luther… at one point strove to have the Epistle of James excluded from his bowdlerized canon. ‘An epistle of straw,’ he called it.
Which blows his claim of finding his faith in the Bible out of the water. He was redefining the Bible to accommodate what he believed.
And succeeded therein to the extent that Protestants in general identify only 39 books in the Old Testament, as opposed to the 46 of the Septuagint and the conciliar canons. It might as well be a Marcionite talking: ‘Sola scriptura, and at that, only the scriptura that I personally happen to approve of.’
Technically we are saved neither by our faith nor our works but by God’s grace.
To a certain extent this like pointing out the original source of the apple tree’s nature is its DNA, not its leaves or its apples. But you can judge a tree by its fruit. And the Bible freely does so, because the transforming power of grace is inseperable from its fruits. Therefore the Bible refers to God: “God, who will repay everyone according to his works: eternal life to those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works, but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness.” and “him who judges impartially according to each one’s works”
Because we can all affirm that we are not saved through hair-splitting.
“Because we can all affirm that we are not saved through hair-splitting.”
I dunno, I’ve definitely encountered Protestants (typically Calvinists) who seem to think Sola Fide means that one is saved ONLY through faith in Christ… and you also have to believe that salvation is only through faith in Christ. Sort of a “Sola Sola Fide” – only those who believe in Sola Fide will be saved.
I suspect they would affirm that we are not saved through hair-splitting even when acting in denial of it.
I notice that you don’t say anything about when the rot set in. . . .
Then you have the small problem that Christ did not write the Bible. Either the Holy Ghost is capable of protecting fallible men from error, or you can not trust the Bible.
That’s a red herring. Of course it wasn’t. Paul rebuked Christians for such immorality as was not found among the pagans. But since the claim is not that the Church will do no wrong but that she will teach no error, it is a red herring.
If Mohammedanism is a heresy then Mohammed was a Christian at some point and the standard Islamic story is false.
Interestingly, Mohammad is in the circle of heretics in Dante’s inferno and the medievals believed that he was a disgruntled bishop that revolted when he failed to be elected Pope!.
Perhaps we should really believe in the medieval story rather than the Koranic story?
“If Mohammedanism is a heresy then Mohammed was a Christian at some point…”
I am not sure this is necessarily the case. By that logic, a Jew would call Saint Paul a heretic, since Saul of Tarsus was Jew, but would not call Saint Justin-martyr a heretic, since he was previously a Greek?
My understanding was that the charge of heresy rests against the lineage of the ideas involved, not the history of the man involved?
Perhaps we should distinguish here between heresies and heretics?
I can’t speak for the Jews, but it does seem to me that (for example) Martin Luther was a heretic, but the vast majority of today’s Lutherans are not. They adhere in the Catholic view to material heresy, but they are not formal heretics. Formal heresy requires holding the Catholic faith and then defecting from it obstinately after repeated correction, as I understand it.
I’m not aware that Mohammed was ever Christian, so it seems unlikely he was a formal heretic. That his teachings are incompatible with Christian faith (and thus material heresy in the Christian view) would I think be undisputed by all sides.
Agreed. I am not claiming Mohammad broke from the Catholic-Orthodox communion. I am claiming he is either what he says he is, a prophet from God Almighty, or he is a plagiarist of civilized ideas, which he simplified to the point of butchery, heaping blasphemy upon Christ and creating the greatest and more enduring enemy of Christendom.
So you place no credence whatsoever on the medieval legend that he was actually a bishop and actually senior enough to be in race to be a Pope.
I do not see any logical relation between what I said and what you deduced from it. I said Mohammad is either a true prophet or a heretical plagiarist. You asked if this means I believe Mohammad was not a bishop. I don’t see why a bishop cannot be a heretical plagiarist as easily as a layman or as an heathen.
This is quite true. Arius was a bishop and a heretic, though to do him justice, I do not recall ever reading that he was accused of plagiarism.
However, the differences between Christianity and Islam are so profound that if Muhammad was ever a Christian, let alone a bishop, I do not think you could call him a heretic. He would have been an outright apostate.
I know you didn’t ask me, but I hope you’ll pardon me for weighing in with my view of the matter:
Given that Muhammad was certainly an Arab, it is impossible that he should have been in the running for the papacy even if he was a bishop. He might have been a Nestorian, in which case he would not even have been in communion with the five Chalcedonian patriarchates (of which Rome was one, and by tradition the senior). If not a Nestorian, he would have been subject to either the Patriarchate of Antioch or (just possibly) that of Jerusalem — both of which were under the temporal authority of the Byzantine Empire, which was not in the habit of despatching clerics into the remote West to take up the see of Rome.
Since I cannot place credence in that part of the legend, and in the absence of positive evidence for the other parts, I have to conclude that the whole story was simply made up.
If Luther was a heretic, then all who agree with his heresies are heretics also, by definition. ‘Heretic’ is not defined by the intentions of the adherent, but by the falsity of the doctrine.
Whether the canonical punishment which Luther incurred (and evaded by the support of the German princes) should fall upon latter-day Lutherans is, of course, a separate question. The culpability of heresy is diminished by ignorance and entirely removed by invincible ignorance. From the Catholic point of view, one who has been taught from childhood that Luther’s heresies are true, and has never been exposed to the true doctrines that he repudiated, is innocent of the sin of heresy, though he is formally and materially heretical. The correct canonical procedure with such a one, I believe, is to preach the Gospel at him until he recognizes and abjures the errors. Alas, given the rate of church attendance in most of the predominantly Lutheran countries, I suspect this would be considered a worse torture than anything the Spanish Inquisition was ever accused of.
I don’t think that heresy actually requires you to believe the original religion and then fall away.
Excuse me, but where exactly did Irenaeus say that the Bishop of Rome had always led the church? In Adv. Haer. IV, xxvi. 2, he used the church at Rome as a good example of how the traditions had come down through the bishops from the apostles themselves. But establishing the apostolic succession is a very different matter from making the Bishop of Rome the eternal leader of all the churches. He also cites Polycarp as a bishop in direct succession from St John.
So, an atheist walks into this room, sees you all, thanks God there be no guns about, and departs.
Hey! I just united you all! [sounds of running footsteps...]
Hey, at least stick around long enough to fist-bump Past John Wright, if he’s not too busy assessing the relative merits of various arguments on the nature of Santa Claus. ^_^
I wasn’t talking about leaving Mr. Wright’s blog, I like it here.
There is no mystery on Santa Clause. He lives in the North Pole, his best friend is Jesus who lives in South Park; and every once in a while they sing in a club together, or tear it up in the middle east.
You guys are making me nostelgic for my Objectivist debate forum days. Arr! The anger, the parry and thrust, pinning down your opponent, whipping out all the books, fact checking until 5am, and delivering the fatal blow by morning’s light. Mmm, it is like a tonic. You have to admit there is nothing quite as intoxicating as your own self-satisfaction as your foe falls in a smoking heap to the ground.
I still remember falling into the bed, exhausted, a smile on my face as I fell asleep imagining the panic on my rival’s face as the corner I painted him into dawned on him.
You are a man after my own heart. I also liked it when I was proved wrong, and had to update my ideas: painful, but it was growing pains.
Oh, I know that. You would have been great to watch on an Objectivist battlefield.
I burned out on it. Unfortunately, I was also crass enough I never entered an argument I wasn’t absolutely sure was mine from the start. I wasn’t interested in learning, I was in for the kill. Then it was merely a matter of crafting the argument, getting them to utter a premise to skewer them with, wrap em up in inconsistencies, a little reductio here, get him to violate an axiom. Blah, blah, blah, unfortunately I wasn’t using a philosophy to live by, I was merely hitting moving targets with great buckshot. So I stopped. Although in a bit of regression I used some baiting manuevers here last year on that really angry guy from Arizona, but I saw the cast of his shadow from a mile away. At the end the poor guy was trying to hold up 7 different threads (stop me, I’m bragging) of argumentation and he didn’t know one of the subjects (Objectivism) – just keep adding weight on the weak point…
One thing about arguing with some Objectivists is they can be like the knight in The Holy Grail.
I suppose it takes a while for the sting of the cut to wear off…
Since I have your attention (maybe!), I have an unrelated question. I was rewatching Firefly this week (damn you to hell Fox for cancelling it) and I love the shepard character by Ron Glass. They only hinted at the background of the character. He seems to know a lot about what a shepard has no business knowing and other things. There is one point where some villains are stepping over him after knocking him out, one of the guys says something about the shepard, the other replies, “That’s no shepard.”
They never got to complete his story, and he got no part in the film except to die. Have you ever thought of basing a character off of him, or using a similar idea? What a great character hook. A man of God, with a past… or questionable identity. I’ve thought about it, but I write so slow you could get a whole series out before I did a sketch.
“Unfortunately, I was also crass enough I never entered an argument I wasn’t absolutely sure was mine from the start. ”
Er… you and I are more alike than my earlier words might lead one to believe. I did this too.
“I was rewatching Firefly this week (damn you to hell Fox for canceling it) and I love the shepherd character by Ron Glass. They only hinted at the background of the character … They never got to complete his story, and he got no part in the film except to die.”
The offstage death-scene of Book was one of my two reasons for not rewatching that movie a zillion times. The other was the chump death of Wash.
To answer your question, sort of. In the book I am working on now, SOMEWHITHER, the main character is the son of a Deacon. The Deacon Svargotyr is some sort of ninja-spy-assassin-ghoulslayer exorcist-with-an-Uzi and a switchblade in his crucifix who is missing from home for odd periods of time on what he calls ‘missionary work’ to which he is taken in a black, unmarked helicopter.
I suppose you could see a parallel to Book (whom I took to be an ‘Operative’ like the nameless character in the movie) but to be honest my inspiration came from much more cheesy movie: I was impressed by the ‘Vatican MI-6′ consistory that appeared at the beginning of the VAN HELSING, starring Kate Beckinsale and Hugh Jackman.
I am such a big fan of FIREFLY that I wrote an essay about it: http://www.sff.net/people/john-c-wright/Contrib_Finding_Serenity.htm
I didn’t even know that book existed. Gotta have that!
Re: Somewither. Sounds great. Is this the series where you will get to the – paraphrasing from memory here – The Lightning Swords of the Nosferatu of Kyoto? I know you have a couple people waiting for that one.
I had not thought of putting Samurai Vampires in this series. My vampires are Byzantine, created by the Philosopher stone gone bad, and called Kallikantzaro. But maybe I can put a scene in the islands of pre-Meiji Japan.
This indeed is exactly why CS Lewis was so careful to speak in public of ‘mere’ Christianity, and to concentrate on what united rather than divided us. Indeed, one of the main scandals of the Church in the modern day, and practically the sole source of the Enlightenment desire to privatize all Church matters, and the main insult flung in the face of the Church, is the disunity of the body of Christ.