The Difficulty Of Finding The Easy Solution

For those who are interested, here, below, is the reply I posted to Ben earlier today on Al Kimel's blog.

Ben,

Steve has already said much of what needs to be said in his latest response to you:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/03/pontificating-on-pontifications.html

You've made some hypothetical and non-hypothetical arguments. I want to comment on both.

With regard to your hypothetical approach, I would repeat what I said earlier. You're addressing one subject (how people would arrive at doctrinal conclusions) while neglecting others. God wouldn't decide what to do only on the basis of which rule of faith would be easiest to follow under our normal reasoning processes. Other factors would be involved. If an infallible church would be easier for people to follow under some circumstances, God could still choose to not use an infallible church because of other objectives He has in view.

And, as I said earlier, neither Roman Catholicism nor Eastern Orthodoxy is the best hypothetical system. When I gave examples of hypothetical systems that would be better, you objected on the basis that those hypothetical systems can't be shown to exist. But then you're no longer limiting yourself to the hypothetical. There isn't any way you can arrive at Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy by the sort of hypothetical reasoning you've put forward. You have to look out the window, as Steve put it at the beginning of this discussion.

That brings us to the other portion of your argument, the attempt to show that an infallible church does exist. You refer to 1 Timothy 3:15, but the church (probably the local church in the context of 1 Timothy) can have a responsibility to uphold the truth without being infallible. Similarly, the nation of Israel, individual Christians, and other entities are referred to as having various roles without any assumption that they'll carry out that role infallibly. You quote Thomas Aquinas citing John 16:13, but see my earlier comments on that passage in my responses to MuleChewingBriars. The fact that passages like 1 Timothy 3:15 and John 16:13 are being cited suggests that the advocates of an infallible church don't have much to work with. Such passages of scripture don't lead us to the conclusion that there's an infallible church, much less that Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy in particular fulfills the role.

And I would ask, again, why you limit the possibilities to those two groups. You seem to be assuming some requirements that you aren't explaining to us or demonstrating. Are you assuming that an infallible church must have publicly claimed infallibility, must take the form of a denomination, or must have a large group of followers who claim infallibility for that entity, for example? If so, how do you know that an infallible church must have these characteristics? And when do they have to go into effect? For example, if we can't identify any Roman Catholics in the earliest centuries of church history claiming Roman Catholic infallibility, as distinguished from other systems of alleged infallibility, should we conclude that no infallible Roman Catholic Church existed at the time? If it's sufficient for Biblical passages like John 16 and 1 Timothy 3 to allegedly refer to an infallible church, with the Roman Catholic denomination claiming to fulfill that role later on in church history, then why couldn't the same occur with some other entity? Why couldn't the infallible church be all Christians as a collective entity, even if those Christians don't collectively assert their infallibility in the same manner in which Roman Catholicism has asserted infallibility in recent church councils, for example? You still aren't giving us any reason to limit the candidates for an infallible church to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. You seem to be making that limitation based on assumptions that you aren't explaining or justifying.

You refer again to how following sola scriptura is "exceedingly difficult" under some circumstances. You use Trinitarianism and masturbation as examples. But, again, how do you know what beliefs we do and don't have to hold? How do you know that we must arrive at conclusions X, Y, and Z with a particular degree of ease, thus concluding that sola scriptura is unacceptable because it doesn't bring us to those conclusions with the correct degree of ease? If a person can follow all of your arguments for the existence of God, the Messiahship of Jesus, His deity, His resurrection, the authority of the apostles, etc. in order to arrive at your infallible church, then why are we to think that it would be too difficult for him to arrive at acceptable conclusions on the Trinity or masturbation without an infallible church? Your system not only requires going through a series of arguments in order to arrive at an infallible church, but also requires going through further arguments to determine when the church is speaking infallibly, what its teachings mean, how they relate to each other, how they apply in particular circumstances, etc. Roman Catholics have widely disagreed with each other for centuries about such matters. If something like Trinitarianism is too difficult for people, then why wouldn't your system of church infallibility be too difficult?

You said:

"Jason’s objection that the bible doesn’t plainly state that an infallible church exists is undercut by the view that a formal statement to this effect doesn’t need to be present in the bible in order for it to be the case that we could have reason to believe that an infallible church exists, and that the non-existence of an infallible church can only be ‘plainly’ demonstrated from the bible if there were a formal statement within the bible declaring positively the non-existence of such an entity."

I haven't argued that church infallibility must be taught "plainly". To the contrary, I've said that a logical implication is sufficient. I have said that church infallibility isn't explicit in scripture, but you apparently are misinterpreting my intention in making that comment. I'm not suggesting that church infallibility has to be explicit. Rather, I'm saying that something we can agree about is that the concept isn't explicit, and I'm saying that the non-explicit nature of it is problematic for your claim that God would give us a system of authority that's easy to follow. You keep putting a lot of emphasis on the alleged ease of following an infallible church, as contrasted with the alleged difficulty of following sola scriptura, yet identifying that infallible church isn't particularly easy. I realize that you can argue that the degree of difficulty in finding an infallible church isn't as significant as the degree of difficulty in following sola scriptura. However, the more difficult it is to identify and follow your infallible church, the weaker your appeal to ease becomes.

Regarding the Nicene fathers and their concept of the church, you would have to examine each source individually. Somebody can think that traditional Christian beliefs are correct, and that people must therefore agree with those traditional beliefs, without thereby claiming church infallibility, much less Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox infallibility specifically. By the time we get to the Nicene fathers, we're into the fourth century. We have no reason to conclude that whatever fourth century church fathers commonly believed must be correct, nor have you shown any logical connection between the beliefs of those fathers and the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox system of infallibility. Papias refers to one concept of church tradition, which is different from Origen's concept. Origen's concept is different from that of Athanasius, and Athanasius' concept is different from Augustine's. Etc. Even after we begin seeing ecumenical councils in the fourth century, there are widespread disagreements about what those councils meant, which portions of them to accept and which to reject, why we should accept them as authoritative, etc. You can find some overlap in what various sources believe, but nothing that leads us to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy and nothing that even demonstrates the existence of any infallible church.

You make a number of references to "intuitions", such as in the following comments about the perpetual virginity of Mary:

"The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church uphold the fundamental intution that Christ would not have wanted His mother to ever surrender her virginity; and this because of the fundamental purpose that her virginity had been designed to serve."

In addition to the fact that you're not giving us any reason to agree with your alleged intuition, what are we to make of the many Christians of earlier centuries who disagreed with you on this subject? Even non-Protestant scholars, like John Meier, will acknowledge that the New Testament evidence is against the perpetual virginity of Mary. The earliest patristic sources to make comments relevant to the subject (Hegesippus, Tertullian, etc.) seem to have rejected the concept of Mary's having been a perpetual virgin. Basil of Caesarea, though himself an advocate of the doctrine, refers to many orthodox Christians in his day who rejected it. Were the New Testament authors and these other early Christians not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox? Why didn't they share this intuition you're referring to?

I would again suggest that people ask themselves why it is that advocates of church infallibility have to rely on such vague and speculative argumentation. The lack of evidence for their position is even more significant in light of the fact that these people so often make the ease of following an infallible church one of their primary arguments. Justifying the claims for church infallibility is far from easy. I have yet to see anybody do it, and if it's ever accomplished, the argument that does it won't be something that's been easy for Christians to access throughout church history.