Orthodox Admits That His Historical Case For Eastern Orthodoxy Is "Madness"

Since some people might benefit from it, I've decided to post, in this separate thread, a recent reply I wrote to Orthodox. You can read the context of this post here. My reply to Orthodox addresses many issues related to sola scriptura, making historical judgments, the case for Eastern Orthodoxy, etc.

Orthodox writes:

"As far as I know you've never told us how these early sources allegedly define apostolic succession in different ways. I tried tracing back your supposed references and it led me nowhere."

I told you, and you left the thread:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

Most of what I discussed you didn't even attempt to interact with. What you did attempt to interact with you often misrepresented.

You write:

"We know as much now about who split from whom and why as they did back when it happened."

Why should we believe that? You've given us no reason to believe it. You just give us an assertion without any supporting argumentation. Do you know what was in the mind of each person involved in the divisions between East and West? No. Do you have all conceivable relevant information about the history of each issue they disagreed about? No. And since choosing to be Eastern Orthodox involves more than making judgments about the division between East and West that occurred several centuries into church history, you also have to make judgments about issues involving the earliest centuries. You've cited 1 Timothy in support of your view of the church, for example. How do you know that Paul wrote 1 Timothy? You've cited Ezekiel 11. How do you know that Ezekiel wrote that book, that it's canonical, that the passage you've cited means what you think it means, etc.? You have to make a long series of probability judgments in order to make a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Yet, you've criticized Protestants for relying on probability judgments. You're contradicting yourself.

You write:

"What I mean is that Church history for us is the history of an infallible church. Sure, that doesn't mean that the actors involved are themselves infallible, but it does mean they are witnesses to what an infallible organization was up to."

If you're using your own fallible judgment about fallible witnesses, then the fact that an infallible church allegedly is involved doesn't remove the fallibility from the process. Similarly, I rely on fallible judgments about fallible witnesses to infallible scripture. You've repeatedly criticized Protestants for doing so, yet you do it yourself.

You write:

"But we do consider them witnesses to the infallible organization."

Again, if you can arrive at a fallible probability judgment about the Eastern Orthodox rule of faith by means of the fallible testimony of fallible witnesses outside of that rule of faith, then why can't Protestants do the same with their rule of faith? You're being inconsistent.

And you've given us no reason to believe that men like Irenaeus and Epiphanius were witnesses to Eastern Orthodoxy. When I documented Epiphanius' opposition to the veneration of images, you said that he must have been following his personal judgment rather than "the mind of the church". If he chose to follow his personal judgment rather than the mind of the church, then on what basis do you supposedly know that he was Eastern Orthodox?

You write:

"Jospehus is a witness to an heretical and distinctly fallible group."

Here we have another example of the shallowness of your thinking on these issues. Earlier, you cited lexicons in support of your understanding of an ecumenical council. Where do you think the scholars who produce lexicons get their data? Often from non-Christian sources, like Josephus. And how do scholars know when to date particular events in church history, what dates to assign to particular documents, where particular documents were written, etc.? Partially from non-Christian sources, like Josephus. For example, much of what we know about first century Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem in particular comes from Josephus. By citing lexicons, which aren't just produced by Eastern Orthodox scholars, you're appealing to non-Eastern-Orthodox sources (non-Eastern-Orthodox scholars and non-Eastern-Orthodox sources they rely on). Much the same can be said of your appeals to archeology. You've appealed, for example, to the use of images among ancient non-Christian Jews. Yet, if we cite the ancient non-Christian Jew Josephus, you object. You're being inconsistent again.

You write:

"Which is fair enough, except that Josephus is not even a part of the people of God at this point."

He doesn't have to be. You've suggested that sources like Josephus may have changed the Old Testament canon, but the fact that he wasn't a Christian doesn't prove that he did. We've already given you some reasons why we doubt your assertion that the canon was changed. Such a change isn't mentioned in the earliest interactions between Christians and Jews, a desire to oppose Christianity would be more likely to result in the removal of a book like Isaiah than to result in the removal of a book like Tobit, etc. But whatever you think of such arguments, the issue at hand in this context is whether it's reasonable in principle to appeal to a source like Josephus. It is. If you can appeal to non-Christian sources by means of lexicons, archeology, etc., then so can we.

You write:

"You havn't answered anything about any book. You've got this bad habit of pretending you have answered things and linking back to some previous obfuscation."

I haven't answered "anything"? I cited the fact that books like Genesis and Isaiah were referred to as scripture by Jesus and the apostles. Where did you ever refute that fact? You didn't. I and Steve Hays repeatedly cited books and other sources, such as articles in the archives of this blog, concerning individual books of the Bible. For example, here are some of my previous discussions about the authorship of John's gospel:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/who-wrote-gospel-of-john.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/dagoods-multiplies-his-errors.html

Have you read such articles and the many others that exist in the archives of this blog? Have you refuted any of them? No, you haven't.

I've discussed some of the issues surrounding 2 Peter with you in a recent thread. I've also addressed other data relevant to making judgments about a canon. Your claim that I "haven't answered anything about any book" is ridiculous.

You write:

"And remember, your ecclesiology is not an all or nothing affair like ours. You've got to make an apologetic for every last book of your rule of faith."

As we've documented, Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other about what is Tradition and what isn't. Thus, using your own reasoning, you must "make an apologetic for every last Tradition". And since you rely on books like 1 Timothy in order to make your argument for Eastern Orthodoxy in the first place, then you must make an argument for such books when making your initial case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Have you done so? No, not in any of our discussions, even when we've asked you to.

You write:

"LOL, well this is a protestant blog. You set the agenda here, and I merely respond to what you're attacking."

No, you don't. When we ask you for a list of all Eastern Orthodox Traditions, you don't produce it. When we ask you to give us an argument for Eastern Orthodox Tradition, such as defending your use of documents like the gospel of Matthew and 1 Timothy, you don't do it.

You write:

"Early sources considered it apostolic? Yes, but they considered lots of things you reject as apostolic too."

You need to be more specific. I've gone into detail as to why I trust the authorship attributions in question. We have a lot of data from a wide variety of sources: internal evidence, manuscript evidence, the testimony of Christian sources, the testimony of non-Christian sources, information about how the relevant sources viewed pseudonymity, etc. While I've gone into detail on such matters, and we've written at length on such subjects in the archives of this blog, you keep giving us vague assertions about how "they considered lots of things you reject as apostolic". You aren't giving us any reason to agree with you. You're just making unsupported assertions.

You write:

"In point of fact, there is no witness at all to how Peter considered this document."

Even if Mark had published his gospel after Peter died, the document could still be approved by one or more of the other apostles. The issue is apostolic approval, not Petrine approval.

As I said before, all of these arguments you're raising against a historical case for the canon do nothing to refute sola scriptura and nothing to establish Eastern Orthodoxy. If we were persuaded to accept a shorter canon, we'd still have a canon, and we'd still have no reason to be Eastern Orthodox.

You write:

"All the Tradition is really saying is that the document is reputed to have been written by Mark, who was someone in contact with Peter."

No, that's not all that the sources were saying. As I explained earlier, the evidence suggests that apostolicity was the primary canonical criterion of the early Christians. That's why most Christians didn't consider documents like First Clement, the writings of Papias, and Polycarp's Letter To The Philippians to be scripture, even though such men were widely believed to have been disciples of the apostles. The gospel of Mark wouldn't have been accepted as scripture just because it was written by an associate of an apostle. In all likelihood, it was believed to have apostolic approval. Papias, who lived in the late first and early second centuries, had to consult an older church leader ("the Elder", probably the apostle John) in order to get confirmation of his information on the origins of Mark's gospel. Apparently, then, the document was circulating as early as the middle of the first century (when Papias wasn't alive or was too young to know much about it). It circulated for decades before the last apostle died. It's highly unlikely that it would have circulated for so long as an unapproved book, then have been accepted universally as an approved book (canonical) in the second century.

You write:

"On that basis there would be a number of apostolic fathers whose writings would be candidates for being scripture."

Apparently, you're too ignorant of the subject we're discussing to realize that you just made an argument for my position rather than yours. The fact that the writings of men like Clement of Rome and Papias were widely rejected from the canon, whereas a document like Mark's gospel was widely accepted, is evidence of my position. It's evidence that the issue under consideration in early Christianity wasn't just whether an associate of the apostles wrote a document. Rather, the issue was apostolic approval. Mark had it. Men like Papias didn't.

You write:

"For example, it is commonly rejected now that Matthew was written in Hebrew as was understood in the early church. It is also now commonly rejected that Matthew was the first Gospel written, now in favour of Mark."

There are scholars who accept such views or variations of them, such as the existence of a Hebrew Matthew that predated the Greek version from which our gospel is derived. There's nothing inherent in Protestantism that requires one to reject such concepts.

Furthermore, the people who reject something like the concept of a Hebrew Matthew do so on the basis of even earlier evidence: the text of Matthew itself. Thus, what they're arguing is that we have conflicting data from early sources. They make a decision to go with one early source over the other. It doesn't therefore follow that they're being inconsistent by accepting the testimony of early sources when those early sources don't conflict with other early sources. You haven't explained why doing so allegedly would be unreasonable. People who reject a Hebrew original of Matthew don't have comparable reasons to reject the apostolicity of Mark's gospel.

And it should be noted that when you give examples of widely attested traditions among the early sources, you can't cite Eastern Orthodox beliefs like the veneration of images and praying to the deceased. Rather, you have to cite concepts like the language of Matthew's gospel. Do all Eastern Orthodox agree about that language? Is that one of the Traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy? Have all Eastern Orthodox scholars accepted every popular belief of the early Christians? No, to the contrary, some of the popular beliefs of the early Christians contradict what Eastern Orthodoxy teaches, as I've repeatedly documented.

You write:

"If the protestants find these very early traditions about the scriptures so unreliable, how can they suddenly find certitude about much vaguer testimony about what Peter thought about Mark's work?"

You keep misrepresenting the issues under discussion. Maybe that's because you know that you would lose a dispute that represents the issues accurately.

We don't need to have "certitude", nor do I claim to have it. What I claim, in making my historical case for a canon, is probability. And you've done nothing to overturn my conclusion.

You write:

"It's hard to think of a book of the NT for which significant objections have not been raised."

First of all, the Bible consists of more than the New Testament. Do you think there's "significant" doubt that Jesus and the apostles considered books like Genesis and Isaiah scripture?

Secondly, what "significant" doubt is there about a document like 1 Corinthians? As Bart Ehrman, a liberal agnostic scholar who often writes against Christianity, has commented, "No one doubts, however, that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians." (Misquoting Jesus [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], p. 183) So, what are the allegedly "significant" reasons for doubting the Pauline authorship of 1 Corinthians? You can't claim that you were addressing some other issue, like the inerrancy of each book, since that isn't what we were discussing. We were discussing issues of canonicity, and since I've argued for apostolicity as the primary canonical criterion, then the issue on the table with regard to a document like 1 Corinthians would be who wrote it. So, what is the "significant" reason we have for doubting that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians?

And since your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy depends on passages like Ezekiel 11 and 1 Timothy 3, would you explain how you know that such documents were written by the people you think they were written by? If there are "significant" doubts about a document like 1 Timothy, and such "significant" doubts are supposed to be a problem for my historical case for a canon, then why aren't they a problem for your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy?

You write:

"I once met a Christian of otherwise apparently conservative disposition who seemed to have such a low opinion of Paul as to consider him not really an apostle, and that he had highjacked Jesus' message."

First of all, that isn't the issue we were discussing. We were discussing authorship issues. You've changed the subject to whether Paul was an apostle.

Secondly, if you aren't aware of the historical evidence for Paul's apostleship, then we have yet another example of your high level of ignorance. Paul repeatedly tells us in his own writings that he had good relations with the other apostles, some of the Pauline churches followed one or more other apostles at the same time that they followed Paul, early disciples of other apostles spoke highly of Paul (Clement of Rome and Polycarp, for example), Paul's writings were widely accepted by churches across the Christian world, etc. The evidence for Paul's apostleship is early, widespread, and explicit. The fact that you, an anonymous Eastern Orthodox layman, claim to have come across some other unnamed "conservative Christian" who doubted Paul's apostleship doesn't give us much reason to doubt Paul's status as an apostle. The fact that this unnamed person you refer to doubted Paul's apostleship doesn't give us reason to doubt it.

You write:

"You lack the necessary documentation, and an infallible link between Paul and the Twelve original apostles, because you rely on Paul's own testimony."

You've acknowledged that you rely on probabilities in order to make your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Yet, you keep using terms like "certitude" and "infallible" to refer to what Protestants supposedly need to have in making their historical case. If probabilities are enough for you, then why aren't they enough for us?

You write:

"If your criteria is what you can prove historically there's no telling where the madness can end."

You keep giving us a (false) historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. You cite passages like Ezekiel 11 and 1 Timothy 3. You cite patristic sources like Irenaeus and Tertullian. By your own standards, then, "there's no telling where the madness can end" with your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy.