Extra ecclesiam illfay inway ethay ankblay

Back in May I posted a review of an essay by Shawn McElhinney (hereafter SH). He replied in June, but with the rider that he might want to revise it at a future date. He reposted his reply towards the end of July. In the meantime I’ve been preoccupied with a book review as well as extended debates over scripturalism, civic duty, and the grammatico-historical method.

Now that I’ve had a chance to come up for air, however briefly, I’ll polish off some unfinished business. To avoid overtaxing the patience of the reader, I’ll only quote and comment on what I think is especially germane.

***QUOTE***

Notice the fallacy involved in this kind of argumentation my friends: it is the assumption that any text can be properly understood apart from its sitz im leben.

http://rerumnovarum-comments.blogspot.com/2005_06_19_rerumnovarum-comments_archive.html#111946494253044718

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I have an even better example: notice the of a fallacy involved in merely using a catch-phrase like “sitz-im-leben” over and over again as a substitute for actually reconstructing the sitz-im-leben.

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The reason there are references in these situations to someone below the magisterium is because the magisterium operates under certain presuppositions and those who are so quick to assert that there are "errors" are uniformly unfamiliar with them.

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Notice the fallacy of using a buzzword like “presupposition” over and over again as a substitute for actually documenting the presence of a certain presupposition in the document at hand.

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No, my intention was to point out that a truth can be stated using language that is not necessarily the best way to assert it. Times and circumstances often dictate the approach taken in explaining something and the reunion of the Churches at Florence involved some pretty strong and (what would appear to be) uncompromising language. For those who do not read what was written with an understanding of the times, circumstances, and assumptions of the time period, there is bound to be misunderstandings of the inner dynamics involved -particularly when one fails to understand general norms of theological interpretation as this person cannot help but do.

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In other words, the Florentine Fathers didn’t say what they mean or mean what they said. They didn’t choose the best words to express their intentions.

They use uncompromising language, but don’t be so silly as to take them at their word. “Uncompromising” is actually synonymous with “compromising.” Didn’t you know that?

This is how a Catholic epologist like SM harmonizes Catholic teaching. Relativize away the offending expressions.

If, by SM’s own admission, the Florentine Fathers use strong, uncompromising language—remember, this is his characterization, not mine--then, at the very least, that creates a prima facie presumption that the Florentine Fathers were using strong, uncompromising language because they wanted to stake out a strong, uncompromising position. So the onus is on SM, and not on me, to overcome that presumption.

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What is infallible is the definition itself, not necessarily the exposition involved to arrive at the definition. It is solemn dogma that outside the church there is no salvation.

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But compare this with what he says further down the line:

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There is also the fact that after years of study, I am very near concluding with certainty that the magisterium cannot even err in an ordinary capacity -to say nothing of an extraordinary one.

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So what becomes of his disjunction between infallible definitions and fallible expositions?

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The problem is, when one does not understand the context in which that expression was understood from time immemorial, they are not understanding the dogma properly. The expression was always understood in a Christocentric sense not an Ecclesiocentric one. Those who do not take this into account are inexorably going to have serious misunderstandings on the issue as a result.

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Not according to Paul Knitter. Knitter has documented a zigzag oscillation between inclusivism and exclusivism, along with a shift, over time, from exclusive ecclesiocentrism to inclusive ecclesiocentrism to Christocentrism to theocentrism in Catholic historical theology. I’ve already posted some of his material:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/05/solus-christus.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/05/from-nulla-salus-to-tota-salus.html

Does Knitter, who’s a theology prof. at Xavier U, having received a Licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, simply not know the history of the expression? To the contrary, he’s made this an area of specialization.

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Furthermore, there is the entire subject of infallibility which is frankly too advanced for those who do not understand more basic principles of ecclesiology. Infallibility is not the criterion for the truth or irreformability of a given teaching. It is more an exercise for theologians since infallibility is more broadly based than most people would casually presume.

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So the identification of an infallible utterance is the provenance of fallible theologians. Remember that the next time a Catholic apologist brags about his rule of faith.

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Again, this is an exercise for theologians primarily. There are certain principles of interpretation which are followed but to discuss that kind of "theological calculus" with those who do not know basic "theological algebra" will not get us anywhere.

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In other words, what counts is not what the magisterium says theology, but what the theologian says about the magisterium, for the theologians is the gatekeeper of the magisterium. He tells you what it all really means.

So, for SM, it is not the magisterium, but its submagisterial handlers and spin-doctors who have the final say. You can’t directly appeal to the wording of a magisterial text. No, you must go through the commentators. If so, then it does come down to a Rahner or Knitter or Grillmeier.

That’s how SM does apologetics, Catholic-style. But other papal polemicists do just the opposite. They tell me that what a mere theologian says can be discounted: he’s only voicing his private opinion; all that really matters is the magisterium.

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For those who accept the authority of the Church's magisterium, you find [the mind of the church] there.

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But this only pushes the question back a step. Where do you find the magisterium? SM has just barricaded the entrance and posted a theologian at the check-point. So which theologian speaks for the magisterium?

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We can see shades of a kind of sola scriptura principle being misapplied here in the idea that Florence must be interpreted solely by what they say and nothing more...as if words themselves can be understood in a vacuum apart from (i) the particular circumstances that occasioned their drafting, (ii) the presuppositions that were behind said words, (iii) the time which they were written with, and (iv) the accompanying conventions of the age. Failing to take these matters into account is to engage in the logical fallacy of anachronism.

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i) This merely betrays his ignorance of sola Scriptura. Both in principle and practice, sola Scriptura does not mean that you interpret Scripture in a vacuum. Evidently, SM has never read any of the standard Protestant commentaries on various books of the Bible.

By “presupposition,” I assume he’s alluding to the escape clause of invincible ignorance. But as we’ve seen, Knitter, for one, denies that presupposition. And Knitter is better credential than SM to speak to this issue.

ii) Again, the life-setting is, indeed, germane, but as I’ve said before, MS commits the sense/reference fallacy.

The problem with SM is that he’s wrong on text and context alike. He disregards the actual wording of the text, and he misinterprets the text in light of semantic fallacies and specious presuppositions.

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---Is there any reasonable premise from which we can assume that every ecumenical council says everything perfectly or in language that always retains the exact same meaning in every time and place when many aspects that impact said words undergo changes (sometimes rapidly so) over time???

Ecumenical councils are believed to be protected from error by the Holy Spirit but that does not mean that their pronouncements are always said in the best possible way.

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Now his harmonistic device is to impute deficiencies to the original wording. Remember that the next time a Catholic apologist brags about his rule of faith.

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Once again, the person I am interacting with ignores a key presupposition that informs Catholic thinking on these matters: the principle of formal and material error. As the Catholic tradition has always distinguished between formal and material error, the reader then needs to ask if in the context of this pronouncement (i.e the reunion of an individual Church with the Roman Church) the circumstances point to a condemnation of those materially in error or formally so. But to do this is to turn over another presuppositional stone which the person I am interacting with does not acknowledge: the subject of freewill.

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A complete non-sequitur. The question at issue is not whether magisterial teaching is consistent with my theological presuppositions, but whether it is self-consistent with its own presuppositions.

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The interpretation that this person offers can only be arrived at by (i) not interpreting Florence in the context of the entirety of Catholic tradition -including certain key presuppositions that are imperative for right understanding and (ii) imposing without warrant one's own interpretation onto the words or concepts in question rather than seeking to find out what the magisterium -in light of the entirety of the Catholic tradition- means by such expressions.

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Observe how he’s abandoned the sitz-im-leben. Recall that he was very insistent on that point. But it should be needless to say that the sitz-im-leben of a document does not include the entirety of a theological tradition—both before and after the document. He is stretching this out of all recognizable proportion.

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Simple, the exposition was directed at a particular church and not the universal church. The core doctrine of the pronouncement ("no salvation outside the church") was already defined so reiteration of it in this decree would also be infallible in its essential import. But that does not necessarily mean that any additional expository statements on the matter in said decree would be infallible -the inability of many people to properly understand them notwithstanding of course. Infallibility applies to the universal church not necessarily to particular churches. And because this decree was to a particular church, its injunctions apply to that particular church and not to all churches indiscriminately.

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i) Except that we’ve seen him play both sides of the fence. Sometimes he distinguishes between the ordinary and extraordinary magisterium, but elsewhere denies that this is even relevant.

ii) Although he’s inconsistent, there’s a reason for his inconsistency. He’s following a two-pronged stratagem:

a) The first prong is to deny that Florence means what it says and says what it means. He tries to blunt the force of Florence by appeal to hidden presuppositions and the life-setting.

b) But, failing that, he has a fallback position: it doesn’t matter, for even if Florence did mean what it said and said what it meant, its wording may be defective.

So you see that his appeal to (a) is duplicitous since, when push comes to shove, he can always jettison (a) for (b).

iii) Yet again, he’s committing the sense/reference fallacy. Take the book of Romans. Romans was addressed to a particular church.

But the theology of Romans is hardly limited to the house-churches of 1C Rome. Romans is about much more than its immediate audience.

Even though Romans was addressed to a local church at a particular time and place, Romans is normative for the universal church.

***QUOTE***

Now we get more questions. Hopefully the reader can see why it is always easier to ask questions than to answer them. And by asking for "the criteria" when this person has evinced no familiarity with what we have covered so far, hopefully the reader will excuse me for not spilling more type on this subject.

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Is MS really that simple-minded? There is more than one possible reason to pose a question. One purpose is to find out how your opponent comprehends his own belief-system.

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It settles the issue for those who understand the passages correctly. This person seems to forget that ecumenical councils always involve Council Fathers and also theologians (sometimes they are one and the same) and that these people utilize general principles in formulating the statements made and do so in line with the realities of the time. But even in doing this, there are a lot of presuppositions within the broader tradition that are assumed a priori by said theologians and Council Fathers which inform the manifested intention of a given statement viz. how it is properly understood.

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Yes, and how do you identify these presuppositions?

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Again, they do not understand the sitz im leben. The Copts were living in an area which was dominated by Muslims and which had a very large (and influential) Jewish population. The Muslims were capable to influencing them militarily to apostasize and the Alexandrian Jews were capable of influencing them to apostasize through their high degree of intelligence and erudition. The Fathers still present at Florence{7} wanted to place the strongest possible stamp on the reunion decree by reminding them that those who apostasized into either Islam or Judaism could not be saved nor could schismatics. (In doing this, the council placed very stringent disciplines on the Coptic and Armenian churches.) With regards to the subject of schismatics, it helps to remember that the Copts were recognized as formal schismatics prior to the attempted reunion.

The long and short of it is that none of those statements were intended to apply to every Muslim, every Jew, or every schismatic irrespective of particular circumstances.{8} Notice again what happens when the person in question focuses only on the words themselves and not on the various other factors which set the proper presuppositional base in place to properly interpret the words. This is another functional application of the person's overriding sola scriptura approach to the Catholic magisterium's statements.

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This is one of the very few times that MS descends from the safety of his empty abstractions to actually reconstruct a bit of the sitz-im-leben.

Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t square with the actual wording of the text: “It [Florence] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life.”

i) The statement has several categories, but no category for apostates—except for heretics and schismatics in contradiction to pagans and Muslims and Jews. So MS is trying to interpose a distinction that is simply not in the text and, what is more, for which there is no conceptual space in the text.

ii) His gloss might make some sense on its own terms, even if not in terms of the text, if this were a group contemplating a break with Rome in order to make peace with Islam or Judaism. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” But that’s precisely the opposite of the sitz-im-leben.

These are groups which are already in a state of schism; are already hell-bound if left to their own devices—but making overtures to Rome rather than to the Jews or the Muslims.

If schismatics are already hell-bound, they have nothing to lose by committing apostasy.

And, in any event, they are not contemplating apostasy, but reunion with Rome. That’s the sitz-im-leben.

Finally, SM chooses, once more, to ignore the syntax. The logic of appealing to aggravating or extenuating circumstances would that that those who know the most are most culpable while those who know the least are least culpable.

Yet the phrasing is just the opposite: it is taken for granted that those who know the least—the pagans are lost. Jews know more than pagans, but they are also lost. Heretics and schismatics know more than Jews, but they are also lost. Not only those who know the least, but those who know the most, cannot be saved outside the church.

So both in terms of text and context, his reinterpretation falls to the ground.

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This is speculation. The text according to the KJV tells us that [t]here was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian [band], [A] devout [man], and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always. [Acts x,1-2]

Who is really placing an interpretation onto the Cornelius situation to attempt to "salvage their [theology]" I wonder??? ;-) One could fear God adequately without being one of the Gentile God-fearers this person refers to. Peter certainly had a broader view on this than they do:

The principle behind the Church's understanding of such things as "invincible ignorance" is what St. Paul notes in Romans ii about those who though they have not the law being justified if they do what the law prescribed.

That is the essence of Catholic teaching on no salvation outside the church in a nutshell...and Florence must be interpreted in that sense to be properly understood.{10}

Again, with those involved in a reunion synod who know what is expected of them there is no excuse. The same is not the case with those who do not have this understanding. It is not an issue of them being excused for [not] know[ing] better" but instead it is properly understood in light of what St. Paul noted in Romans ii.

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This is a common problem when dealing with Roman Catholics. Catholicism favors historical theology over exegetical theology. As a result, many Catholics like SM simply don’t’ know their way around the Bible. They don’t even read Catholic commentators. An Evangelical like me is more likely to read a Catholic commentator than a Catholic like SM.

In Biblical usage, “God-fearer” doesn’t mean “one who fears God” in some generic sense. Rather, it’s a specialized term. Here’s what Fitzmyer has to say, who has penned the standard Catholic commentary on Acts:

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As semi-technical phrases, both seem to have been employed to denote “Godfearers,” non-Jews sympathetic to Judaism, those who did not submit to circumcision or observe the Torah in its entirety, but who did agree with the ethical monotheism of the Jews and attended their synagogue services (449-50).

***END-QUOTE***

As to Romans, on which Fitzmyer has, again, penned the standard Catholic commentary, You can read what he has to say regarding “Paul’s argument about the inexcusable situation of pagan humanity” (272); how “those who sin apart from the Mosaic law will also perish apart from the Mosaic law” (308); the way in which “Paul seeks to explain how it will be that Gentiles who do not have the Mosaic law will yet be judged as if they had some sort of law” (312); as well as how those Gentiles who keep the law (=conscience) will simply be judged, not saved, on the same basis as the Jews (320).

Catholic dogma on invincible ignorance may well derive from a traditional reading of Rom 2, but the traditional reading is exegetically unsustainable.

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The Second Vatican Council explained it in the following words.

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Vatican II does not supply the sitz-im-leben for Florence. The 15C is not the 20C. SM’s calendar is seriously out of date.

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The Catholic Church does not give any definites in this area. Instead, she recognizes that grace is not confined to the visible church only. As a Reformed Protestant, this person should be pleased with such an admission. But they seem to want it both ways: to have the Catholic Church declare that non-Catholic Christians without a corporate connection to the visible church can benefit from God's grace but non-Christians without a corporate connection to the visible church cannot.

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Do we want to have it both ways? I don’t know of anyone in the Reformed blogosphere to whom this applies.

The Protestants who care about this sort of thing are the liberal weenies who burst into tears whenever they hear the Tridentine anathemas read aloud and cry themselves to sleep unless and until Mother Church comes upstairs to tuck them into bed and give them a good night kiss.

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And as Catholics believe that the ministerial priesthood{13} is essential for the application of the fruits of the Passion and death of Christ to all people, it is not possible for the ministerial priesthood to become superfluous on this side of the eschaton.

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If it is possible to be saved apart from the valid administration of the sacraments, then the priesthood is, indeed, superfluous.

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My point in the above statements is that there has been development on these matters since the time of Florence. That is to be expected. Likewise, these matters were better understood at the time of Florence than they were in the late first millennium. St. Augustine understood them better than St. Cyprian did. And so on and so forth.

This is spoken by someone who (quite evidently) does not understand the principle of doctrinal development. This is hardly surprising because it is another subject which requires a bit of study to grasp the principles involved. In order to understand why what appears to be contradictory between Florence and Vatican II is actually not contradictory at all requires that not only the period prior to Florence be looked at but also the period between Florence and Vatican II. And contingent upon this approach is also the recognition that things understood or expressed in a partial or more nebulous fashion in earlier times can later on be understood or expressed in a fuller and more precise fashion.

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What I understand is that I have a logical mind, while SM does not. Sure, you can have you principle of development. Or you can have your sitz-im-leben. What you cannot have is both—unless, that is, you choose to be self-contradictory.

And if a Catholic chooses to be self-contradictory, that’s fine with me since it spares me the effort of his disproving his belief-system--for he has beaten me to the punch.

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I remind the readers that people do the exact same thing with Bible texts: assert that there are "errors and contradictions" in the text. Again, talk is cheap and anyone can do it. This person would probably not be so critical of those who sought to demonstrate that there were not contradictions and errors in the biblical text.

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A flawed comparison on two grounds:

i) If I had the same reasons for believing in the magisterium as I do the Bible, then I’d extend it the same line of credit. But I don’t.

ii) Evangelicals field objections to the inerrancy of Scripture, not by concocting a makeshift theory of development, but by sticking to the sitz-im-leben and interpreting the text consistent with the narrative viewpoint.