Honor your whore of Babylon

Tim Enloe has been running a series on the papacy:

http://pontiffixations.blogspot.com/2007/07/honor-your-fathersthat-your-days-may-be.html

http://pontiffixations.blogspot.com/2007/08/answering-critic-of-part-i-of-honor.html

http://pontiffixations.blogspot.com/2007/07/honor-your-fathersthat-your-days-may-be_26.html

Let’s examine his major arguments, such as they are:

“One of the biggest problems with contemporary Protestant rhetoric about the papacy is that it refuses to acknowledge the historical and familial connections we, though Protestants, have with the papacy.”

i) Notice that he doesn’t quote anyone to back up this claim. Who in particular is he talking about?

Indeed, this is par for the course with Enloe. In the past he has even admitted that he doesn’t bother to read his critics. So, despite his assumption of the third-person plural, he’s just talking to himself.

The rhetorical function of the third-person plural in a setting like this is to achieve through verbal coercion what you can’t achieve through reasoned argument. You rhetorically extort the agreement of the reader by acting as if he shares your opinion.

ii) Another rhetorical ploy is to bundle two (or more) claims into one, as if the reader must assent to both claims at once. But historical and familial connections are not interchangeable concepts.

What contemporary Protestants of note deny “historical” connections between the papacy and the Protestant Reformation? Why doesn’t he name names?

“We do not seem to understand a very important implication of the fact that the Reformation was a product of Western Christendom.”

i) Once again, what Protestant author of note, however critical of the papacy, denies the fact that the Reformation was, in large measure, a product of Western Christendom?

If this is something “we” don’t seem to understand, then why doesn’t he quote his sources for this assertion? Enloe is merely talking to himself, like Renfield in solitary confinement.

ii) Incidentally, was the Reformation wholly or solely the product of Western Christendom? Wasn’t the Reformation in part the product of the Renaissance? And wasn’t the Renaissance, in part, the product of Byzantine refugees who fled to the West after the fall of Constantinople, and brought their knowledge of the primary sources along with them?

“That implication is this: because the Reformation was a product of Western Christendom, Western Christendom before the Reformation was quite literally ‘bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh’ Our fathers in the Faith stretch back for 1,500 years prior to the Reformation, and they are not merely located in isolated and marginal and persecuted sects.”

“Quite literally bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh”? That would literally be a genealogical claim. I’d like to see Enloe show me the family tree that traces my bloodline back to my “fathers in the Faith” 2000 years ago.

“This should not be a controversial statement. “

True. A demonstrably false statement should not be controversial. For no one should believe it.

“Think of it this way: just as our biological fathers are our fathers even if they fail to meet our standards of Truth and Godliness, so too are our spiritual fathers our fathers even if they fail to meet our standards of Truth and Godliness. If ancestry, family relationship, and, correspondingly, family obligation, are not dependent upon intellectual or moral criteria in biology, how much less can they be dependent upon such in spirituality?”

Unfortunately for Enloe, this analogy breaks down at the critical point of comparison. Of course my biological father remains my father regardless of his failure to meet my non-biological standards inasmuch non-biological standards are not what makes him my biological father. Biological paternity is constituted by biological factors, not non-biological factors.

But if you switch to spiritual paternity, then the only link would be the spirituality of the mentor and the spirituality of the apprentice. If a spiritual father fails to be spiritual, then in what sense is he a "spiritual" father? What makes him a spiritual father is a certain level of spirituality.

By contrast, a biological father who fails to meet spiritual standards is still a father to me since there is a biological bond between me irrespective of his spirituality or the spiritual kinship we share in common.

This is all so obvious that it should be unnecessary to spell out.

“The kings of Judah were still the kings of Judah--still the sons of David--even when they were abominable idolators.”

Once again, he bundles several ideas into one:

i) To be a son of David, in this sense, is a biological bond.

ii) But that is not a sufficient condition of kingship. To begin with, David had more than one son. And this gave rise to vicious succession battles.

iii) Moreover, you didn’t have to be a son of David to be a king of David. A usurper could seize the throne.

iv) Furthermore, under the Mosaic law, kings were constitutional monarchs, not absolute monarchs. An apostate king could be dethroned. For example, Jehoiada foments revolution against the reigning monarch (2 Chron 22-23).

“The Israelites who fell in the wilderness on the way to Canaan were still called ‘our fathers’ by the Apostle.”

This appeal either proves too much or too little. For the “fathers” in view are not a select group of authority-figures, but, with a few exceptions, the entirely of the Exodus-generation. So where’s the parallel with the papacy?

“What is more, Christ's own lineage contains murderers, adulterers, idolators, and even prostitutes. Family relationship is not a function of purity.”

Once again, he’s equivocating as he oscillates between figurative paternity (1 Cor 10:1) and legal rather than literal paternity (Mt 1:1-17).

“Just because you politically disagree profoundly with your father, and might even become estranged from him for a long time, does not mean he is not really your father. Why then would he not be your father if you disagreed with him doctrinally?”
Once more, is Enloe really that dense? What makes him “really” your father is genetic. So, of course, political or theological disagreements don’t dissolve a biological bond.

But apart from a legal or biological bond, there can be no spiritual paternity absent the requite spirituality since that is all the two parties would otherwise have in common.

“If we take Scripture as providing principles in this matter, we must understand that ‘honoring’ our fathers is not tied to our estimation of our fathers' purity. Scripture does not say ‘Honor your father unless he is a bad man.’ Scripture does not say ‘Honor your father unless you think he anathematizes the Gospel.’ Scripture does not say ‘Honor your father unless he wrongly proclaims himself infallible’."

i) Notice how he rips the fifth commandment out of context. The commandment says, “honor your father,” not your “fathers.” It uses the singular rather than the plural because it’s talking about actual rather than metaphorical paternity. And that is also why it references motherhood as well as fatherhood.

ii) That’s the primary referent. Up to a point, it could be extended to analogous authority-figures, but one would need to argue for the analogy, and not merely assume it.

iii) Submission to human authority is not unconditional in Scripture. Human authority is derivative of divine authority, and answerable to divine authority.

“Scripture does not authorize us to go on the spiritual equivalent of racist quests to track a ‘pure’ bloodline throughout history in order to justify contending that ‘No, none of those scoundrels in Rome ever had any connection to me’."

To the contrary, if Enloe is going to contend that the popes are “literally bone of our bone,” and give that as the reason why we should honor them as our fathers in the faith, then establishing the purity of one’s pedigree is, indeed, required by his own argument.

“First, I reject Mr. Henzel's consistent dichotomization of flesh and spirit, which I think is key to his critique. It is popular in Evangelical circles, obsessed as they are with dichotomies, to read the New Testament's utterances about flesh and spirit as if they are presenting a dichotomized world--that is, a world starkly divided between two contrary poles, neither having much to do with the other.”

Now he’s being silly. Many men can play a paternal role to me in a legal or metaphorical sense, but only one man can play a paternal role to me in a literal sense. This has nothing to do with Gnostic dualism or disdain for matter. It’s a natural fact.

“In Mr. Henzel's critique this theme comes out first in his attempt to determine who was and was not a ‘true Christian’ in the Middle Ages.”

Does Enloe think the Abigenses were true Christians?

“A second large point, which is a subset of my critique of Mr. Henzel's flesh / spirit dualism, is this: I entirely reject Mr. Henzel's polemical tirades about ‘the Gospel,’ specifically about those who supposedly ‘reject it’ and therefore supposedly prove that they are not related to us.”

i) Doesn’t Enloe belong to a consortium of confessional churches? They don’t all share the same confession, but they do stipulate that you must subscribe to one of several classic Protestant confessions to be a member.

ii) Does Enloe have no doctrinal criteria for Christian identity? Is John Spong a Christian? What about Kenneth Copeland? Or Gordon B. Hinckley?

“This objection, flowing from the dichotomous worldview just discussed, betrays the unbalanced subjectivity of commonplace Evangelical theology. Christianity for this way of thinking is essentially a subjective thing, defined by internal (spiritual) conditions that are held to be almost completely antithetical to external (bodily) conditions.”

Yes, Christian identity is defined by such psychological states as regeneration, sanctification, faith, and repentance—just like the Bible says.

“Rituals, liturgies, historical progressions, institutions are all secondary to ‘true faith’."

And the problem with that is why, exactly? This “dichotomy” goes all the way back to the OT. Despite the institutional and ritualistic dimension of the Mosaic covenant, which was quite prominent, the externals were never a substitute for true faith.

“In the first place, holding that ‘the true Gospel’ is equivalent to 16th century polemical theology against ‘papists’ is an astoundingly subjective judgment.”

This is a rhetorical decoy. What we say, rather, is that the 16C Protestant interpretation of Scripture is far truer to the true Gospel than the 16C Catholic interpretation of Scripture.

“Some popes have left us valuable commentaries upon books of the Bible and valuable manuals of principles for spiritual living (Gregory I). Others have played key roles in the development of Western legal thought (Gelasius I, Gregory VII, Boniface VIII), or international politics (Innocent III), or ways to constructively relate to other Christians (John Paul II), and so forth.”

What responsible Protestant denies that some popes were better than others, or that some popes did some good things?

i) But that’s beside the point. For Rome doesn’t allow us to cherry pick the good popes from the bad popes. For Rome, the papacy is a take it-or-leave-it affair. You accept the bad with the good. You either accept the magisterial authority of the papacy in toto or you reject it in toto.

ii) Moreover, our spiritual forefathers are hardly limited to a few good popes. If his argument has any logical force at all, then it’s logical scope is far broader than the papacy. It would include a variety of Eastern Christians as well as Western Christians. Lower clergy as well as higher clergy. Layman as well as clergymen.

iii) There is also a difference between valuing what a man does for the intrinsic value of what he does, and acceding to his official pretensions. Suppose a Tibetan scientist discovers the cure for cancer. Suppose he also imagines himself to be the 15th reincarnation of the bodhisattva. Do I have to honor his spiritual fantasies to appreciate his contribution to medical science?

“We see them as being guilty, almost from their beginnings, of willfully substituting ‘traditions of men’ for ‘sound doctrine,’ and for knowingly subverting the way the Bible says the Church ought to be run.”

It doesn’t matter what their intentions were. As Blake said of Milton, you can be of the Devil’s party without knowing it. In that respect, even Bultmann was well-meaning. In his self-delusion he really thought he was doing the Christian faith a big favor by demythologizing the Bible to make it more palatable to modern man.

“We heap railing scorn upon them for (sometimes) being fornicators, adulterers, murderers, simonists, warmongers, idolators--and, well, the list goes on and on, seemingly limited only by the amount of time and energy a polemicist has to dig for dirt.”

You know, this didn’t begin with Protestant polemical theology. He needs to brush up on Erasmus.

Incidentally, if he’s going to keep using the word “idolater,” it would behoove him to learn how it’s spelled.

“Popes have done much good through the centuries, and we must, unless we are base cretins incapable of recognizing even common human dignity, let alone proper respect for family members, honor them for those goods.”

That’s a liberal Protestant compromise which Rome rejects.

“For one thing, we could try putting aside our vehement polemical books, full of slurs and slogans and slanders against "papists" and "Romanists" and try to focus on good things about various popes, such as the ones listed above.”

In what sense are these “slurs” and “slanders”? We may speak of a Catholic as a Romanist because he identifies with the church of Rome.

And how can Enloe, with a straight face, claim the pope as his spiritual father while disowning the label of “papist”?