Process of elimination

Ben, over at Pontifications, has written an intelligent and invective-free surrejoinder to my rejoinder.

http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1482#comment-41957

It’s a pleasure to deal with such a nice opponent. It gives me a rare opportunity to be nicer than I would with an obnoxious opponent.

“In the NT there is evidence that God used that sort of apparatus to guide the nascent church.”

I don’t deny that you have an ecclesiastical apparatus in the NT. But it’s a far cry from Catholic or Orthodox ecclesiology.

“Perry seems to support this from what he says about councils in the book of Acts.”

Yes, and I already responded to that point when Perry first introduced it. So the ball is back in your court—and his.

“What I was saying was that Jason’s way of framing the issue ignores the distinction that Perry has repeatedly made, and that if this distinction is granted, then the conclusion would have to follow that an affirmation of a true concept (even if we may believe ourselves to be privy to an earlier affirmation of it which we take to be ‘unrevisable’), does not count as a specimen of divine teaching. Once again I am here drawing on Perry’s teaching.”

Far from ignoring Perry’s distinction, Jason and I have repeatedly criticized his distinction. So the ball is back in your court—and his.

“This begs the question against the Catholic position, since the Catholic position contends that the institution of the Catholic Church is an ‘actual dealing’ of God, and that this particular ‘dealing’ of God is described in Scripture.

Didn’t Christ tell St Peter that He would found His Church upon him?”

i) Each side has its respective burden of proof to discharge.

ii) Even if, for the sake of argument, we were to stipulate to the Catholic exegesis and appropriation of Mt 16:18-19, that would undercut the Catholic claim in another direction, for appeal to a prooftext like Mt 16 would then assume that the claims of the Catholic church depend on Biblical authorization for their theological warrant.

a)If that is so, then the authority of Scripture is prior to the authority of the Church.

b)In addition, the interpretation of Scripture would be prior to the church; otherwise, an appeal to a prooftext whose interpretation had to be authorized by the church would be viciously circular.

iii) I’ve addressed the particulars of the Catholic appeal to Mt 16 elsewhere.

***QUOTE***

5. From Peter to papacy—a bridge too far:

Mt 16:18 is the primary Petrine text. But a direct appeal to Mt 16:18 greatly obscures the number of steps that have to be interpolated in order to get us from Peter to the papacy. Let’s jot down just a few of these intervening steps:
a) The promise of Mt 16:18 has reference to "Peter."
b) The promise of Mt 16:18 has "exclusive" reference to Peter.
c) The promise of Mt 16:18 has reference to a Petrine "office."
d) This office is "perpetual"
e) Peter resided in "Rome"
f) Peter was the "bishop" of Rome
g) Peter was the "first" bishop of Rome
h) There was only "one" bishop at a time
i) Peter was not a bishop "anywhere else."
j) Peter "ordained" a successor
k) This ceremony "transferred" his official prerogatives to a successor.
l) The succession has remained "unbroken" up to the present day.

Lets go back and review each of these twelve separate steps:

(a) V18 may not even refer to Peter. "We can see that 'Petros' is not the "petra' on which Jesus will build his church…In accord with 7:24, which Matthew quotes here, the 'petra' consists of Jesus' teaching, i.e., the law of Christ. 'This rock' no longer poses the problem that 'this' is ill suits an address to Peter in which he is the rock. For that meaning the text would have read more naturally 'on you.' Instead, the demonstrative echoes 7:24; i.e., 'this rock' echoes 'these my words.' Only Matthew put the demonstrative with Jesus words, which the rock stood for in the following parable (7:24-27). His reusing it in 16:18 points away from Peter to those same words as the foundation of the church…Matthew's Jesus will build only on the firm bedrock of his law (cf. 5:19-20; 28:19), not on the loose stone Peter. Also, we no longer need to explain away the association of the church's foundation with Christ rather than Peter in Mt 21:42," R. Gundry, Matthew (Eerdmans 1994), 334.
(b) Is falsified by the power-sharing arrangement in Mt 18:17-18 & Jn 20:23.
(c) The conception of a Petrine office is borrowed from Roman bureaucratic categories (officium) and read back into this verse. The original promise is indexed to the person of Peter. There is no textual assertion or implication whatsoever to the effect that the promise is separable from the person of Peter.
(d) In 16:18, perpetuity is attributed to the Church, and not to a church office.
(e) There is some evidence that Peter paid a visit to Rome (cf. 1 Pet 5:13). There is some evidence that Peter also paid a visit to Corinth (cf. 1 Cor 1:12; 9:5).
(f) This commits a category mistake. An Apostle is not a bishop. Apostleship is a vocation, not an office, analogous to the prophetic calling. Or, if you prefer, it’s an extraordinary rather than ordinary office.
(g) The original Church of Rome was probably organized by Messianic Jews like Priscilla and Aquilla (cf. Acts 18:2; Rom 16:3). It wasn’t founded by Peter. Rather, it consisted of a number of house-churches (e.g. Rom 16; Hebrews) of Jewish or Gentile membership—or mixed company.
(h) NT polity was plural rather than monarchal. The Catholic claim is predicated on a strategic shift from a plurality of bishops (pastors/elders) presiding over a single (local) church—which was the NT model—to a single bishop presiding over a plurality of churches. And even after you go from (i) oligarchic to (ii) monarchal prelacy, you must then continue from monarchal prelacy to (iii) Roman primacy, from Roman primacy to (iv) papal primacy, and from papal primacy to (v) papal infallibility. So step (h) really breaks down into separate steps—none of which enjoys the slightest exegetical support.
(j) Peter also presided over the Diocese of Pontus-Bithynia (1 Pet 1:1). And according to tradition, Antioch was also a Petrine See (Apostolic Constitutions 7:46.).
(j)-(k) This suffers from at least three objections:
i) These assumptions are devoid of exegetical support. There is no internal warrant for the proposition that Peter ordained any successors.
ii) Even if he had, there is no exegetical evidence that the imposition of hands is identical with Holy Orders.
iii) Even if we went along with that identification, Popes are elected to papal office, they are not ordained to papal office. There is no separate or special sacrament of papal orders as over against priestly orders. If Peter ordained a candidate, that would just make him a pastor (or priest, if you prefer), not a Pope.
(l) This cannot be verified. What is more, events like the Great Schism falsify it in practice, if not in principle.

These are not petty objections. In order to get from Peter to the modern papacy you have to establish every exegetical and historical link in the chain. To my knowledge, I haven’t said anything here that a contemporary Catholic scholar or theologian would necessarily deny. They would simply fallback on a Newmanesque principle of dogmatic development to justify their position. But other issues aside, this admits that there is no straight-line deduction from Mt 16:18 to the papacy. What we have is, at best, a chain of possible inferences. It only takes one broken link anywhere up or down the line to destroy the argument. Moreover, only the very first link has any apparent hook in Mt 16:18. Except for (v), all the rest depend on tradition and dogma. Their traditional support is thin and equivocal while the dogmatic appeal is self-serving.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2004/05/back-to-babylon-1.html

***END-QUOTE***

“Divine revelation is ‘irreformable’ itself on the Protestant’s own premises.”

Granted.

“This being the case, it need not strike the Protestant as inherently unreasonable that there can be cases of the elucidation of such revelation, wherein the relevant elucidatory statements also partake of this property.”

i) This is not a question of what is reasonable. Many things are reasonable that are never true. There is more than one possible way that God could guide his people. Which option he has chosen to exercise cannot be inferred a priori.

So the pertinent question is what method God has revealed to us as his modus operandi.

ii) Elucidatory statements would only partake of this property of you subscribe to an open canon of continuous revelation. I deny that inspiration extends beyond the Apostolic age.

“Furthermore, if being a Christian would involve one in believing doctrines, then it is certainly necessary that there should be put in place a mechanism for infallibly generating the doctrines that are to be believed in.”

This is a classic case of assuming what you need to prove.

i) To begin with, if we are going to resort to a priori reasons, then there are various “mechanisms” God could put in place to guide his people.

a) He could directly inspire every Christian the same way he inspired the prophets and apostles.

b) He could control the flow of information in such a that we only believe what is true, and never believe what is false, because the only evidence we’re ever exposed to is one-sided evidence for a true proposition.

c) He could grant us an innate knowledge of Christian dogma.

As Jason has pointed out, your a priori argument, if taken to its logical extreme, goes well beyond either Orthodoxy or Catholicism.

ii) In addition, the object of saving faith are certain revealed propositions. It is certainly adequate to believe these propositions in their original form, although it is also adequate to believe these propositions as they are paraphrased in the secondary literature.

OT Jews believed the “raw data” of Moses and the Psalmists and prophets. NT Christians believed the “raw data” of the Apostles. The primary data is sufficient for saving faith.

Of course, as Jason pointed out, we interpret whatever we read, whether in the primary or secondary sources. We draw inferences from whatever we read, whether in the primary or secondary sources.

From a Reformed standpoint (speaking as a Calvinist), this is how it actually works. God has chosen those who will be saved. God regenerates the elect. One effect of regeneration is to make the regenerate receptive to the gospel. God exposes the elect to saving knowledge. This can take the form of preaching, Bible reading, an evangelical creed or liturgy, &c. Because the regenerate are predisposed to believe the gospel when exposed to the gospel, faith follows automatically.

“Why should we not? I don’t see the doctrine of the Trinity (replete with all its nuances), anywhere in the scriptures, even if I should nonetheless be persuaded that this doctrine does not fail to be in conformity with the conceptual content of Scripture?”

Several problems with this reply:

i) If you don’t see the doctrine of the Trinity in the Scripture, then how did the church fathers and church councils derive the doctrine of the Trinity? Did they not see it in Scripture as well?

ii) This disclaimer is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because a Catholic is oriented to historical theology rather than exegetical theology, he hasn’t worked out a theological method for finding doctrine in Scripture since the end-result is delivered to him in prepackaged form by his church. He isn’t used to reverse engineering the final product by tracing it back to the primary sources. He has no hermeneutical strategy in place for finding doctrine in Scripture.

iii) For a Protestant, systematic theology is rather like a puzzle or model airplane. All the parts or pieces are there. But the puzzle or model airplane is not preassembled. You have to piece it together yourself.

This is something of an overstatement, for we also see how Bible writers interpret other Bible writers. In addition, there are books and blocks of Scripture devoted to a particular theological theme or set of interrelated doctrines.

iv) What “nuances” does Ben have in mind? Revelatory nuances? Or extra-revelatory nuances? From a Protestant perspective, extra-revelatory nuances (excepting for necessary implications) are not an article of faith.

v) The Trinity is a theological construct. By contrast, the form/matter framework is being used as a theological criterion or interpretive grid. That’s quite different.

That would be a case of imposing an alien criterion or extrinsic interpretive grid on the data. You end up with a screening device which has no revelatory warrant, but, instead, filters the content of revelation, coloring and allowing through only what its fine-mesh filter allows to go through.

This was the danger of Gnosticism. The Gnostics didn’t openly deny Biblical revelation. Instead, they had a hermeneutical scheme which treated Biblical categories as code language for Gnostic concepts.

“This distinction is valid in view of the fact that the knowledge of a system’s axioms does not necessarily yield the knowledge of the system’s various theorems (for a knower below a certain level of intellectual sophistication) and that is why a person can know the axioms of Euclidean geometry without knowing the various theorems that can be derived from them.”

This is far too abstract and generic to have any internal relation to the subject-matter at hand. Our methodology needs to be adapted to the specifics of the subject-matter.

“It doesn’t vary on Protestant premises in the relevant sense.

If I only lay claim to accepting that the Scriptures are ‘irreformable’, then why would the burden of proof not be on me to establish that I am reasonable in holding that a given doctrinal construct does not fail to reproduce (or at least does not fail to cohere with) the conceptual content of scripture?

What does a person’s ‘natural aptitude’ have to do with his obligation to carry such a burden of proof, when that obligation is generated by the fact that he has made a claim of a certain sort?”

i) To begin with, my distinction wasn’t predicated on the Protestant rule of faith, per se. Does Ben think that an ignorant Andean n peasant has the same intellectual duty to discharge as Karl Rahner or Joseph Ratzinger or Joseph Fitzmyer?

I’m making the banal point that our level of intellectual understanding will vary with our intellectual aptitude. We expect more of a theologian or Bible scholar than we do of the average layman.

ii) Ben is also operating with an internalist model of justification. It isn’t enough that I believe the right thing: I must be able to show you how I know that I believe the right thing.

I, for one, don’t regard this internalist constraint as a general condition for the justification of our beliefs.

What I would say, rather, is that (a) our beliefs must be capable of such justification, and that (b) someone must have met that condition.

Saving faith consists in objective, first-order beliefs, rather than subjective, second-order beliefs (a belief about the believer’s belief).

Now for a long quote from Ben:

***QUOTE***

Rather, my position is as follows:

1) Every utterance of scripture has a propositional content that is in principle accessible by us directly.

2) Every such utterance, when it is set forth in terms of its propositional content, is in principle open to being adapted as an axiom of a doctrinal construction.

3) Nevertheless the meaning of any such construction isn’t explicitly given in any such axiom, even if it is the case that, to an intelligence of the requisite order of sophistication, it will be apparent that a given set of such axioms would entail the truth of a given doctrinal construction.

4) The meaning of any such construction can be accessed by a person directly, in the same way that he can access the propositional content of a scriptural utterance.

5) Christians are required to believe in a set of doctrinal constructions.

6) ‘Sola scriptura’ entails belief in 1) and 2) and if 3) - 5) are to be taken as given, then the persons holding ‘sola scriptura’ will have to accept (if they are not to be judged as irrational) the burden of proof in demonstrating that the doctrinal constructions they believe in, follow logically from the relevant set of axioms (even when it will have been given that these persons will have accessed correctly the propositional content of scripture, so that the axioms in question do indeed embody the propositional content of the relevant scriptural utterances).

7) ‘Sola ecclesia’ entails belief in 1) – 5) and further entails the belief that the infallible church in question will always set forth doctrinal constructions that are true and are thus incapable of being falsified.

8) If I have warrant for believing in ‘sola ecclesia’, then I would be able reasonably to affirm that the doctrinal constructions produced by the infallible church are true, without my being required to accept the burden of proof specified in 6).

9) Since the object of a person’s belief as a Christian is the meaning of doctrinal constructions [as has been contended in 5], and since it is exceedingly difficult for most people to bear the burden of proof specified in 6) (even if all of the people in question were to be in possession of the knowledge of all of the relevant axioms), it would follow therefore (given that an infallible church cannot but commend to us for our belief true doctrinal constructions as contends, and that there should be an intention on the part of God that as many people as possible should become Christians on a reasonable basis) that it would be more probable than not that God would provide us with a warrant for believing in ‘sola ecclesia’ than that he should instead provide us only with a warrant for believing in ‘sola scriptura’. It must be reiterated here that what has been presupposed in this regard is an intention on the part of God that as many persons as possible should be induced to become Christians and that they should be induced to do so on a reasonable basis. It is true that this presupposition can be undercut by the Calvinist view that there is no such intention on the part of God (in the sense that on the Calvinist view it would be meaningless to speak of there being anyone whom God would have regenerated if it were to have been possible for God to regenerate him) , but then my point could still be made if this presupposition were to be replaced by this one, namely: ‘that there should be an intention on the part of God that most of the persons who comprise the set of elect persons should become Christians on a reasonable basis, where it is given the said set of elect persons comprises of a majority of people who cannot bear the burden of proof specified in 6) ’. It must also be noted that accessing the meaning of a doctrinal construction [which as 3) contends can be done by a person directly and immediately] is not the same as understanding how it is that the said construction logically derives from its constituent axioms, which is why it is the case that discharging the aforesaid burden of proof would involve not just doing the former but also doing the latter.

10) It is therefore probable that an infallible church exists given what has been said to be probable in 9) (which is that it is probable that there is warrant for believing in the existence of an infallible church).


***END-QUOTE***

The vulnerable items in this list are 5-7 & 9.

#5.

i) This goes to the old question of how much you need to believe in order to be saved. The way Ben puts it, you’d almost need to be a systematic theologian in order to be saved.

ii) This I deny. I deny, as a general proposition, that in order to be saved, you must not only believe in all of the revealed propositions of Scripture, but also believe in all the logical relations generated by and between the revealed propositions of Scripture. Even Karl Rahner or Thomas Aquinas wasn’t that smart.

iii) I’d add that most Evangelical traditions do subscribe to an educated clergy. God has given teachers to the church. Theology is not a zero-sum game where every born-again Christian has to begin from scratch.

#6.

i) This reiterates his internalism, which I’ve already argued against.

ii) I’d add that it’s very hard to square an internalist model of justification with the Catholic principle of implicit faith.

#7. No, 1-5, even if we assent to 1-5, do not “entail’ an infallible church, for there are other hypothetical mechanisms which could yield the very same result.

#9.Once again I reject the very idea of an a priori probabilistic argument for the Catholic rule of faith.

I don’t object to a priori arguments in philosophical theology. And I don’t object to probabilistic arguments in exegetical or historical theology.

But we do not infer the truth of how probably God guides his people from an a priori argument. Apriorism is relevant when dealing with universal truths of reason. It is not relevant when dealing with the contingencies and particularities of the historical process. You cannot probabilify historical knowledge in some axiomatic fashion.

There are many bare possibilities open to God, each with its own branching tree of coruscating consequences. You can only know what God will do by what God has done, by a record of his modus operandi, and/or his promises, in which he articulates a standing policy for the future.

“What it assumes rather is an obligation on the part of the relevant persons to resolve SOME of these moral dilemmas in one way or another.”

True, although the extent of our obligation is contingent on the extent to which God has obligated us to resolve a moral dilemma one way or another.

“(Because of the incidence of a specific a set of circumstances, such as would, for instance, be given by the situation of a young man who has been encouraged by his peers to engage in the sin of masturbation).”

And the way a young evangelical man would weigh whether masturbation is sinful or not is by the following:

1.Is there a specific proscription in Scripture against masturbation?

If “yes,” that’s as far as he may needs to go, although the Bible may sometimes give a specific reason for a particular prescription or proscription, and the reason may sometimes modify the force or duration of the injunction.

If “no,” then he must move to the next step:

2.Can the licit or illicit character of masturbation be inferred from general norm of Scripture or else from some analogous case law?

Same as above.

3.If “no,” then we’ve moved into the area of permissible conduct in which prudence is the primary consideration.

If the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture doesn’t’ address a moral dilemma, then it’s a false dilemma because there may be more than one licit course of action.

It is illicit to choose evil, but it is not illicit to choose between better and best, or between alternative goods.

“It also assumes that these persons would be harder put to resolve these dilemmas if it were only open to them to believing in ‘sola scriptura’, than if it were instead open to them to believing in ‘sola ecclesia’; and thus that it is more probable than not that God would have placed at their disposal the requisite warrant for believing in ‘sola ecclesia’.”

No, what is more probable is that if we lack revelatory guidance on an issue, then this is a point of personal liberty. There is more than one right alternative.

“After all, if I believe myself to have been immediately vouchsafed by God the knowledge the masturbation is sinful (and if I also find that I am not aware as to how this knowledge can be derived from the moral axioms of which I believe myself otherwise to have been made aware and further believe that knowledge of this kind is extremely important but yet that the statement that ‘masturbation is a sin’ isn’t present in scripture in a formal sense,), then my situation could well provide me with a reason for believing that God might have put in place a reliable mechanism for generating formal knowledge of this kind.”

i) Now you’re moving into the realm of natural law. Given that masturbation is a cultural universal, this is a pretty lousy candidate for a natural law prohibition.

ii) I don’t deny the role of conscience. I don’t deny that we enjoy certain innate or native moral intuitions.

BTW, what’s the rate of masturbation among young Catholic men compared with their male Evangelical counterparts?

“1) An infallible church would pronounce contraception to be a grave sin against Christ on the basis of the sort of understanding of sexuality that would enable it : a) to affirm the true end of the institution of human sexuality and b) to classify oral sex and masturbation as being also grave sins against Christ.”

With all due respect, one could turn this around. Any church which pronounces oral sex, masturbation, and contraception to be grave sins against Jesus Christ is probably a fallible institution which calls into question the whole idea of ecclesiastical infallibility.

I’m not being facetious here. The fact that you classify oral sex, masturbation, and contraception as grave sins is a reflex result of your Catholic conditioning rather than an argument for the infallibility of the Catholic church.

“3) An infallible church has to have existed from, at the very least, the time of the gathering in the Cenacle which took place on the occasion of the first Pentecost.”

From a Protestant point of view, this is an overstatement based on an equivocation of terms. The NT church included certain infallible teachers. But the church qua church was not infallible.

And once the Apostolic age is behind us, there are no infallible members of the church. They laid the foundation.

“4) An infallible church has to be seen to be an organisation styling itself as a church by the majority of persons who presently comprise the educated public (and this because, the expanse of time between the time of Christ and the present, is so large as to make it all but certain that such a church will have been able to make its claim to be a church known to the majority of persons who should presently comprise the educated public).”

If I understand what he’s saying,, the claim is mistaken.

The reason that Catholicism and Orthodoxy boast the greatest membership is because they date to a time when your religious affiliation was determined by the head-of-state. If a pagan king converted to Catholicism, that entailed the mass conversion of all his royal subjects to Catholicism; if he converted to Islam or Buddhism or Orthodoxy, you had the same mass conversion to the state religion.

Combine a national church with infant baptism, and church membership is virtually conterminous with citizenship.

So we’re tabulating church members by toting up entire nationalities. Obviously you can rack up a huge figure in short order when you are counting national populations.

This owes almost everything to social conditioning and the available options, or lack thereof. And it’s not coincidental that where the linkage between church and state weakens, the membership rolls for the national church decline precipitously.

“But I want you both to know that Perry has looked at the book of Acts and he has found evidence in that book for the existence of ecumenical councils and the like (this is evident from what he says to Jason in his various responses to him), and so, as far as Perry is concerned, the scriptural record supports Perry’s teaching on the nature of the Church.”

And I want you to know that Jason and I have both responded to Perry’s argument.

You need to acknowledge an opponent’s response to an argument. And you either need to show what was wrong with his response, or else withdraw the objection.