Steve Hays and I have been involved in an e-mail discussion with another person about some arguments against sola scriptura and for an infallible church. The discussion has primarily been about the claim that one of the arguments for the Protestant New Testament canon could also be used to support church infallibility. Supposedly, just as the patristic support for the canon suggests the apostolicity of that canon, so also the patristic support for church infallibility suggests the apostolicity of that concept.
What's below is most of the text of two e-mails I wrote on these issues, one yesterday and the other today. I divided my responses into twenty sections. The first fourteen are from yesterday's e-mail, and the last six are from an e-mail written today, after I read an article by A.N.S. Lane that this person recommended.
1. Though you asked about external evidence and referred to what the church fathers believed about the church, we also have internal evidence and other forms of external evidence for the canon. Even if the canon and church infallibility had comparable external evidence from the fathers, or church infallibility had better evidence in that category, we would have to take the other categories of evidence into account as well.
2. If some fathers refer to a form of church infallibility or contradict sola scriptura in some other way, it doesn't follow that all such beliefs should be categorized together in the manner you've suggested. If church father A claims that church Y is infallible, whereas church father B claims that church Z is infallible, then there is no single church that those two fathers are pointing to as infallible. If five alternatives to sola scriptura are offered by the patristic Christians, but none of the five have support comparable to the support we see for the Protestant canon, then what does it prove to compare the support for five different alternatives combined to the support for our canon? As you said in your first letter, the testimony for an infallible church could be ambiguous, such as by not allowing us to discern which church is infallible.
3. My position is that we do see a variety of rules of faith among the patristic Christians. Sola scriptura is sometimes advocated, and it's sometimes contradicted. However, the alternatives to sola scriptura that are offered are different from and contradictory to one another.
4. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy aren't the only candidates for church infallibility in this context. Why couldn't the infallible church include some or all Catholic and Orthodox churches, but also include others, such as Protestant churches? Or, if it's to be argued that each church must have a succession of bishops going back to the apostles (a conclusion that must be argued, not just assumed), why not include Oriental Orthodox and Anglicans as well, for example, not just Catholicism and Orthodoxy? Why couldn't the infallible church be something other than Catholicism or Orthodoxy or something that goes beyond those two groups?
5. If we were to conclude that there's an infallible church, a third option (something other than Catholicism or Orthodoxy) would not only be possible, but would also be more likely. The earliest sources, like Irenaeus, don't define the church as Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. The doctrines the earliest sources describe as held by the apostolic churches are ones that are held by Protestants as well (monotheism, the virgin birth, the resurrection, etc.), and they argue for some doctrines that contradict what Catholicism and Orthodoxy believe. We know that the churches of Irenaeus' day disagreed on some issues (eschatology, the celebration of Easter, etc.). Irenaeus and other sources tell us so. Whatever rhetoric Irenaeus may use to the contrary at times, hyperbolically or carelessly or with a more limited context in mind perhaps, he didn't believe that every church agreed on every issue. If we were to look for an infallible church with the beliefs Irenaeus outlines when discussing the beliefs held in common by the churches (monotheism, the resurrection, etc.), we wouldn't limit ourselves to Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It's commonly assumed that Catholicism and Orthodoxy would be our only options if we were to conclude that there's an infallible church. Not only is that assumption not true, but it's also not true that Catholicism or Orthodoxy would even be the best option among others. If we're going to use people like Irenaeus as our standard, then we need to look for an infallible church that's much broader than merely Catholicism or Orthodoxy or the two combined.
6. I've read everything Irenaeus wrote, and I'm not familiar with any affirmation of church infallibility in his writings. Steve is correct in differentiating between infallibility and inerrancy, and other distinctions could be made. Irenaeus does refer to the current reliability of the apostolic churches. But he gives reasons for their reliability that could change with the passing of time. The historical proximity of the bishops of his day to the time of the apostles isn't applicable to the bishops of our day. The fact that the churches of Rome and Ephesus had been faithful to apostolic teaching until the time of Irenaeus doesn't prove that they would be faithful fifty, five hundred, or five thousand years later as well. Since Irenaeus cites the Roman church as the primary example of a reliable apostolic church in his day, would Eastern Orthodox maintain that the church of Rome should be our primary standard today? How often do you see Roman Catholics appealing to the churches of Ephesus and Smyrna in the manner Irenaeus does? How many Catholic and Orthodox bishops have met the moral and doctrinal requirements that Irenaeus says bishops must meet? When Irenaeus says that all apostolic teaching is known to every church and is available to the public, are we to conclude that concepts like praying to the deceased, the veneration of images, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the papacy were accepted by all of the churches and known to the public? Catholics and Orthodox can cite some agreements they have with Irenaeus' view of the church, but they also disagree with him on some points and would add qualifications to Irenaeus' comments that Irenaeus himself doesn't include.
7. You refer to Irenaeus' view of "the current church". How would you get from the reliability of the church of Irenaeus' day to the conclusion that the church will be infallible throughout church history?
8. Prior to Irenaeus' comments, Papias' search for apostolic tradition leads him to consulting eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Jesus and the apostles, without any reference to an infallible source of such information in the church. Justin Martyr and Trypho discuss some of the New Testament documents, and Justin discusses the church to some extent (what happens during baptism, the eucharist, etc.), but church infallibility has no role in his argumentation or that of his Jewish and Gentile opponents. Though they often criticize the New Testament documents as sources of Christian authority, I'm not familiar with any reference to church infallibility among the earliest enemies of Christianity. Men like Trypho and Celsus comment on the Biblical documents, but they say nothing of a Pope, infallible councils, or church infallibility in general. Hegesippus' comments on the corruption of the church (Eusebius, Church History, 3:32, 4:22) wouldn't lead one to conclude that he held a view of church infallibility like what's advocated by Catholics and Orthodox today. Even long after the time of Irenaeus, we find sources like Augustine making comments about church authority that are inconsistent with a Catholic or Orthodox view (On Baptism, Against The Donatists, 2:2-4). It's not as if all high views of church authority or all forms of belief in an infallible church are equivalent to a Catholic or Orthodox view on the subject. I see no reason to assume that the views of somebody like Irenaeus were equivalent to those of Catholics or Orthodox, I don't see any reason to think that his views would naturally develop into a Catholic view or an Orthodox view, and I see no reason to assume that men like Papias and Augustine agreed with Irenaeus' view. Some elements of Irenaeus' view were popular among patristic Christians, but I see no reason to conclude that his view of church reliability (which isn't the same as infallibility) was as widespread as acceptance of the Protestant canon.
9. We have many lines of evidence for the widespread acceptance of the books of the Protestant canon, such as Eusebius' comments about the degree of acceptance of the books among the churches. Where's the comparable evidence for the degree of acceptance of belief in an infallible church? In my experience, advocates of an infallible church tend to group together a variety of patristic affirmations about different subjects (church reliability, the evidential value of apostolic succession, etc.), act as if all such comments are equivalent to belief in the infallibility of a single church that we today can identify, and assign belief in that church's infallibility to the patristic Christians in general. In contrast to the dubious steps in that form of argumentation, we have many detailed accounts of the widespread acceptance of the 27 books that Protestants accept in their canon. When patristic sources refer to the gospel of Matthew or the second epistle of Peter, we have detailed knowledge of what they're referring to. When Eusebius, Jerome, or some other source comments on how widely accepted such a document is, we're being given a relatively specific assessment of the acceptance of a specific document. A reference to the church isn't as specific. Irenaeus, Cyprian, and John Chrysostom may all refer to the church, but have three different definitions in mind. However, if all three refer to the gospel of Matthew, we can be confident that they're referring to the same document and that we possess it today. Any argument for widespread belief in church infallibility would have to involve more than just vague references to "the church", "apostolic succession", the evidential value of agreeing with what Christians have historically believed, etc. In other words, in my experience, Protestants are citing highly specific and convincing evidence for a highly specific conclusion, whereas advocates of church infallibility are being much more vague in their argumentation and conclusions. The gap between the patristic data and a specific system of church infallibility like Catholicism or Orthodoxy is large. The patristic evidence is too vague to lead us to the specific systems of infallibility that are popularly advocated today.
10. We're not living in the context of somebody like Papias or Irenaeus, much as we aren't living in the context of the Old Testament patriarchs or a contemporary of Moses or Jeremiah. The churches at the time of Papias or at the time of Irenaeus had some advantages that we don't have today. The evidential value of consulting a bishop of Rome in the second century doesn't lead us to the conclusion that there's just as much evidential value, or any, in consulting a Pope today. I've said before that if I were in the position of somebody like Papias, I wouldn't adhere to sola scriptura. But we aren't in his position. We're in a much different position. If sola scriptura had been widely or universally rejected early on, it wouldn't follow that it couldn't be appropriate later, under different circumstances.
11. The ecumenical councils are the most popularly accepted examples of an exercise of alleged church infallibility. Yet, there have been many disagreements, and continue to be many, regarding which councils are ecumenical and which portions of the ecumenical councils are to be accepted. Councils like Nicaea and First Constantinople helped in sorting through some controversial issues, and those councils were eventually widely accepted, but they were also widely rejected for a while. While heretics and the many branches of what we call orthodoxy widely agreed about scripture, there was no comparable agreement about a system of church infallibility. The Arians would reject anti-Arian councils, and the anti-Arians would reject Arian councils, but neither side would reject the gospel of Matthew or Paul's epistle to the Romans when such a document was cited against that side's position. It seems that Christians, heretics, and those who didn't even profess to be Christians accepted the foundational role of scripture in Christianity while widespread disputes over church authority went on for centuries and continue to this day. A Celsus, an Arius, or an Athanasius will be more concerned with scripture than with any other authority when discussing Christianity. That doesn't rule out the existence of some other infallible authority, but it does say something about the level of evidence for one type of authority as compared to another.
12. Patristic scholars, as well as other scholars, often refer to inconsistencies between church fathers and within the writings of a single father. A given church father might have held multiple views of what the Christian rule of faith ought to be. Such inconsistency is understandable when we consider the sort of transitional phases of history an individual might live through. Somebody might live part of his life during the apostolic era and part of his life after that era ends. A Christian might see the Council of Nicaea widely rejected at one point in his life, then see it widely accepted later. Etc. People often change their mind on an issue over time, upon further reflection. Augustine, for example, repeatedly acknowledges his own inconsistencies on some issues. Not only should we not assume that there was one rule of faith held by every father, but we also shouldn't assume that each father held to only one rule of faith throughout his life.
13. We have precedent for trusting a canonical consensus: Jesus and the apostles' apparent acceptance of the Jewish consensus on the Old Testament canon. That precedent doesn't rule out extra-Biblical authorities in the New Testament era, but it does add weight to the New Testament canonical consensus, weight that doesn't exist for an alleged consensus on church infallibility.
14. We already have good reason to accept the Biblical documents. If we continue to have doubts about our rejection of church infallibility, we can continue to think about that issue while continuing to follow scripture at the same time. We shouldn't think of these things in an all-or-nothing manner. Life goes on. It's not as though we have to suspend our more confident conclusions because of some other conclusions we aren't so confident about. There's good reason why Protestants, Orthodox, Catholics, and others agree about the New Testament canon, yet continue to widely disagree about other issues of authority, like church infallibility.
15. The article by A.N.S. Lane that you referenced addresses some of the issues I've discussed, but doesn't address others. He doesn't demonstrate that the view of authority that he attributes to Irenaeus and Tertullian (and others) was as widely accepted as the Protestant New Testament canon. He doesn't discuss my point about the necessity of limiting Irenaeus' comments to only some teachings, not all teachings. (The churches of Irenaeus' day agreed about many things, but not everything.) He repeatedly, in the two notes you cited (notes 29 and 30), refers to Irenaeus' comments in Against Heresies 4:26:2, but he doesn't discuss Irenaeus' comments in the sections that follow (4:26:3-5), where he says that Christians are to separate from bishops who don't meet moral and doctrinal standards. He doesn't discuss the ambiguous nature of Irenaeus' view of the reliability of the church. If some bishops can depart from the apostolic faith and are to be avoided, then the location of the church led by the Spirit can change from time to time. Even if there's to always be a church led by the Spirit, one that's always correct on the core teachings Irenaeus mentions, the location of that church can keep changing, and it isn't assured of always being correct in all of its beliefs. As I said earlier, there's a large gap between the sort of data we find in a source like Irenaeus and the systems of infallibility that are commonly advocated today by groups like Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
16. I wasn't able to find one of the passages Lane cites in note 29. He cites Against Heresies 1:1:6. The editions of Against Heresies that I've consulted have only three sections in chapter 1 of book 1. There is no section 6. In other passages he cites, it's unclear to me just what portion of the citation he has in mind or just what he thinks it proves. For example, he may be referring to the phrase "the tradition from the apostles does thus exist in the Church, and is permanent among us" in Against Heresies 3:5:1, but it's unclear to me what "permanent among us" means. Does Irenaeus mean that there will always be people who will believe the doctrines he discusses? Does he mean that the apostolic tradition, considered in itself, will always be available? The sort of ambiguities I've discussed above remain. I don't fault A.N.S. Lane for outlining the history of Christian beliefs on issues of authority without addressing every detail that could be addressed and without agreeing with every source he cites or claiming to understand what every source meant in detail. But anybody who would cite a source like Lane's article to justify belief in some sort of infallible church, not just to address the history of Christian beliefs about authority, would have to go into much more detail than Lane does.
17. Lane says that he's discussing Irenaeus and Tertullian for "The first clear attitude to emerge on the relation between Scripture, tradition and the church" (p. 39). But earlier sources don't have to be as clear in order to have some relevance. The points I've made about sources like Papias, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, and Celsus have to be taken into account, even though such sources don't discuss these issues in the sort of depth we find in a source like Irenaeus or Tertullian.
18. Lane's assessment of Papias is misleading in some ways. Though I disagree with Richard Bauckham on some points regarding Papias, his recent assessment in Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006) is far more detailed, documented, and accurate than Lane's.
19. Lane frequently confirms my assessment of the variety of views of authority that existed among the fathers, as well as my comments about how a single source is sometimes inconsistent with himself. See, for example, pp. 39-42 and notes 29, 41, and 49.
20. Lane alludes to another point I've made in note 29, when he comments that "But it must be remembered that Tertullian became a Montanist" and makes reference to how "the fathers could sit very loose to tradition when it suited them". In other words, as I noted in my e-mail yesterday, commitment to scripture in the patristic era was more deeply rooted and consistent than commitment to various concepts of the church and extra-Biblical tradition, as is the case in our day.
Hello Jason,
ReplyDeleteA very interesting thread, and one that certainly needs some deep reflection…
While I ponder over the bulk of the post, could you elaborate a bit further on this:
>>Steve is correct in differentiating between infallibility and inerrancy…>>
Thanks much in advance.
Grace and peace,
David
[[If church father A claims that church Y is infallible, whereas church father B claims that church Z is infallible, then there is no single church that those two fathers are pointing to as infallible.]]
ReplyDeleteSo if church father A says the list of infallible scriptures is X,Y,Z and church father B says the list is W,X,Y then the proposition of infallible scripture is in jeopardy?
[[ If five alternatives to sola scriptura are offered by the patristic Christians, but none of the five have support comparable to the support we see for the Protestant canon, then what does it prove to compare the support for five different alternatives combined to the support for our canon?]]
I'm not sure what 5 alternatives you might point to, but if the protetant canon has support in the fathers, and 5 other things also have support, who's going to make the ruling that X% support is the cut off? you? The most consistent thing would be to accept them all, not to pick and choose.
[[My position is that we do see a variety of rules of faith among the patristic Christians. Sola scriptura is sometimes advocated, and it's sometimes contradicted.]]
I'd like to see the quote where a church father says that things extra-scriptural have zero authority.
[[Why couldn't the infallible church include some or all Catholic and Orthodox churches, but also include others, such as Protestant churches?]]
for a start, because that wouldn't work. when would such a group exhibit its infallibility? what authority could determine who was in and who was out? Suggesting completely nonsense theological propositions is hardly an argument. I might just as well ask why couldn't the infallible scriptures include Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz.
[[Even long after the time of Irenaeus, we find sources like Augustine making comments about church authority that are inconsistent with a Catholic or Orthodox view (On Baptism, Against The Donatists, 2:2-4)]]
In this passage Augustine advocates adhering to "the statutes of the universal Church". This helps you? Is this the same Augustine who compelled the Donatists to come into the catholic church?
[[ Hegesippus' comments on the corruption of the church (Eusebius, Church History, 3:32, 4:22) wouldn't lead one to conclude that he held a view of church infallibility like what's advocated by Catholics and Orthodox today. ]]
Nothing here about the church being corrupted. He says certain godless teachers "attempted" to teach falsehood. Interesting how he takes time to insert that "attempted".
[[We have many lines of evidence for the widespread acceptance of the books of the Protestant canon, such as Eusebius' comments about the degree of acceptance of the books among the churches. Where's the comparable evidence for the degree of acceptance of belief in an infallible church?]]
Why refer to the degree of acceptance in the church, unless it had authority? But I see the evidence the fathers considered the church to be infallible to be greater than that the acceptance of the protestant canon. you can start with Augustine's dealing with the Donatists already referred to. But you wish to quote Eusebius who said: "One epistle of Peter, that called the first, is acknowledged as genuine. 1 And this the ancient elders 2 used freely in their own writings as an undisputed work. 3 But we have learned that his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon;"? and.... "The Shepherd 23 is ascribed, it should be observed that this too has been disputed by some, and on their account cannot be placed among the acknowledged books; while by others it is considered quite indispensable, especially to those who need instruction in the elements of the faith. Hence, as we know, it has been publicly read in churches, and I have found that some of the most ancient writers used it."
so if we're tossing away doubtful sources of authority, maybe the protestant canon can be tossed too.
[[Any argument for widespread belief in church infallibility would have to involve more than just vague references to "the church", "apostolic succession"]]
This is back-to-front thinking. If the church believed in its infallibility, then it is your job to figure out what they meant. To claim the entire early church believed in something, but to dismiss it because you find it vague or you're not happy with the clarity, even though the early church never noticed its beliefs to be vague or lacking clarity, indicates a problem with you rather than the church. If you'd like to prove that any church father believed in a different kind of infallible church than the visible, identifiable church in succession from the apostles which is certainly taught by many or most of them, then the onus is on you.
[[I've said before that if I were in the position of somebody like Papias, I wouldn't adhere to sola scriptura. But we aren't in his position. We're in a much different position.]]
This is an amazing concession. If you'd lived at this time you wouldn't have taught sola scriptura. In that case it would be a fair bet that your successors wouldn't have. Nor would their successors, ad infinitum. No wonder the church wasn't sola scriptura, you've admitted it was inevitable.
We are in a different position? Sounds very subjective to me. Maybe you want to put a cut off in the mid 2nd C. someone else will choose the 3rd. Another the 5th. Another the 10th.
[[While heretics and the many branches of what we call orthodoxy widely agreed about scripture, there was no comparable agreement about a system of church infallibility.]]
You can go back to your Augustine passage to see that it was widely accepted that when the church was in agreement, it was authoritative. That the church wasn't always able to clearly agree straight away, doesn't prove there was no agreed system. It just means you don't like the system.
[[A Celsus, an Arius, or an Athanasius will be more concerned with scripture than with any other authority when discussing Christianity.]]
People would cite whatever things were already agreed upon. If you and your opponent agreed upon John as authoritative, then it makes sense to cite John. If they didn't agree on something, then there was no use citing it.
[[That precedent doesn't rule out extra-Biblical authorities in the New Testament era, but it does add weight to the New Testament canonical consensus, weight that doesn't exist for an alleged consensus on church infallibility.]]
But everyone knows the pre-protestant church agreed there was church infallibility, which is why it held to the 7 ecumenical councils as irrevokable.
Or it your point that this consensus is not scripture? Jesus seems to have been happy to use tradition also. "So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."
(Matthew 7:12) ""What you do not like should be done to you, do not to your fellow; this is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary." Rabbi Hillel (40 B.C. – 10 A.D.)
[[If some bishops can depart from the apostolic faith and are to be avoided, then the location of the church led by the Spirit can change from time to time.]]
The extent of the church can expand and contract, but I don't see him saying anywhere it can suddenly jump from one place to another.
Hello again Jason,
ReplyDeleteStill reading through your provocative post, and would like to reflect a bit on the following you wrote:
>> The historical proximity of the bishops of his day to the time of the apostles isn't applicable to the bishops of our day. The fact that the churches of Rome and Ephesus had been faithful to apostolic teaching until the time of Irenaeus doesn't prove that they would be faithful fifty, five hundred, or five thousand years later as well.>>
The above seems contrary to many modern day polemicists who have bodly stated the the Church Fathers were really “Church Babies”; that exegetes armed with the powerful new Bible softwares and the internet are in a better position than those were in close “proximity of the bishops of his day to the time of the apostles.”
Any further thoughs on this?
Grace and peace,
David
David Waltz said:
ReplyDelete"While I ponder over the bulk of the post, could you elaborate a bit further on this: >>Steve is correct in differentiating between infallibility and inerrancy…>>"
Some of my comments are unclear without the surrounding context of the e-mail discussion. In addition to the distinction between infallibility and inerrancy, I noted that other distinctions could be made. And the terms "infallible" and "inerrant" are used in different ways in different contexts. I wouldn't just distinguish between what one church father might say as compared to the comments of another father. I would also distinguish between how different concepts can be in mind at different times within the writings of a single father. A reference to the reliability of a church or bishop, for example, isn't necessarily meant to be a reference to infallibility. A church or other entity that's correct in its teachings can be considered inerrant in that sense without an accompanying belief that error isn't possible in the future. A church that's doctrinally correct today could be doctrinally incorrect fifty years from now. Or a church that's expected to always be correct on some issues could err on other issues. Many people, including Protestants, believe that a church has always existed since the time of the apostles and will always exist until Christ's return. Since particular characteristics are required for an entity to qualify as that church, the church that always exists would have to always have those characteristics. For example, somebody could argue that beliefs such as monotheism, the Messiahship of Jesus, and the resurrection are essential Christian doctrines, that such doctrines must be present in order for the church to be present, and that therefore there always is a church that holds such beliefs. We could argue that such a view involves an infallible church, but I don't think that's what most people have in mind in disputes over church infallibility.
You write:
"The above seems contrary to many modern day polemicists who have bodly stated the the Church Fathers were really 'Church Babies'; that exegetes armed with the powerful new Bible softwares and the internet are in a better position than those were in close 'proximity of the bishops of his day to the time of the apostles.' Any further thoughs on this?"
Whether one person is in a better position than another varies from case to case. A modern scholar who studies ancient Egypt may be in a better position to understand some passages of the Old Testament than a fifth-century Christian bishop, for example. A scholar today knows Hebrew and knows of a recent archeological discovery, for example, whereas a Christian of the second century didn't know Hebrew and didn't have access to the information conveyed by that archeological discovery. A second-century Christian may have had access to some letters of Polycarp that are no longer extant. That would be an advantage. On the other hand, that same Christian may not have known about some other patristic documents that we have today. And one ancient Christian can be more knowledgeable than another, just as people today have different levels of knowledge. Case-by-case judgments have to be made, and the advantages of somebody like Luke or Polycarp can't be transferred to somebody like Hermas or Augustine. Different sources of antiquity had different experiences, different levels of knowledge, etc.
Seraphim said:
ReplyDelete"So if church father A says the list of infallible scriptures is X,Y,Z and church father B says the list is W,X,Y then the proposition of infallible scripture is in jeopardy?"
As I explained in the first section of my first e-mail, I'm addressing one line of evidence for the canon and a comparable line of evidence offered for church infallibility. One line of evidence could fail without the entire argument being "in jeopardy".
But, yes, two church fathers can each refer to a canon of scripture without having the same canon in mind. And just as you probably wouldn't accept a Protestant argument for the canon that ignores such distinctions, I don't accept arguments for church infallibility or extra-Biblical tradition that ignore such distinctions.
You write:
"I'm not sure what 5 alternatives you might point to"
I was using the number five as an example. I wasn't arguing for that number.
But if you read the article by A.N.S. Lane that I linked, you'll see some examples of the wide variety of views of the church and tradition that existed in the patristic era and later centuries.
You write:
"if the protetant canon has support in the fathers, and 5 other things also have support, who's going to make the ruling that X% support is the cut off? you? The most consistent thing would be to accept them all, not to pick and choose."
Why? If a canon is supported by, say, 75% of the sources, whereas a particular view of the church is supported by, say, 20%, why should we think that the two are comparable?
If you don't want us to "pick and choose", then are you saying that we should accept every view of scripture, tradition, and the church that we find in the fathers? When two views contradict each other, we accept both?
And, yes, I do make judgments about a cut-off point. That's the nature of making historical judgments. Historians do it, and the rest of us do it when reaching conclusions about history. How do you decide that there is a church to begin with, which historical individuals qualify as church fathers, which documents attributed to them are authentic, what those documents say, etc.? You make a lot of judgments about cut-off points.
You write:
"I'd like to see the quote where a church father says that things extra-scriptural have zero authority."
I'd like to see the quote where I say that things extra-scriptural have zero authority. Parents have authority. Church leaders have authority. Governments have authority. It doesn't follow that they're infallible or that they all have the same level of authority.
You write:
"or a start, because that wouldn't work. when would such a group exhibit its infallibility? what authority could determine who was in and who was out?"
You're assuming, without argument, that the church in question must "work" a particular way. There are many ways that a church could "exhibit its infallibility" without operating as Catholics or Orthodox claim the church operates. See my comments above in response to David Waltz and the relevant sections of the article by A.N.S. Lane. There have been many theories of church infallibility over the centuries, and others could be formulated if we wanted to speculate about how an infallible church could operate.
I'll address the remainder of your comments later, when I have more time.
Hello again Jason,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your charitable and cogent responses. I have one more question: what are your thoughts concerning the following from Lane’s essay:
“By the end of seventeenth century many others saw that it was not possible on the basis of Scripture alone to build up a detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent.” (Page 45.)
Grace and peace,
David
P.S. I have posted a new THREAD that may be of interest to you.
"Why? If a canon is supported by, say, 75% of the sources, whereas a particular view of the church is supported by, say, 20%, why should we think that the two are comparable?"
ReplyDeleteIt is also worth noting, as Jason pointed out at the beginning of the post, that the testimony of each church father is weighed as to its reliability. Also, internal evidence must be taken into account as well.
To take manuscript readings of certain parts of the Bible for an example, the normal logic is to give more weight to earlier manuscripts. However, it is sometimes the case that later manuscripts can give more weight to a certain reading because it is a more logical reading or because it comes from a certain manuscript family or location that is generally given more weight in other texts.
Seraphim writes:
ReplyDelete"In this passage Augustine advocates adhering to 'the statutes of the universal Church'. This helps you?"
Whether my citation of Augustine "helps me" depends on the context in which I cited him. I cited Augustine in opposition to a Catholic or Orthodox view of the church. I didn't cite him as somebody who agrees with my view. And in the passage I cited, he says much more than that we should "adhere to the statutes of the universal Church". He approvingly cites Cyprian's anti-papal ecclesiology, he refers to scripture's superior status to all of the writings of later bishops, and he refers to how ecumenical councils sometimes correct one another.
You write:
"Nothing here about the church being corrupted. He says certain godless teachers 'attempted' to teach falsehood. Interesting how he takes time to insert that 'attempted'."
No, that's not all that Hegesippus said, and you're misrepresenting even the one portion of his comments that you're describing. Here's what Eusebius tells us about Hegesippus' comments:
"In addition to these things the same man, while recounting the events of that period, records that the Church up to that time had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin, since, if there were any that attempted to corrupt the sound norm of the preaching of salvation, they lay until then concealed in obscure darkness. But when the sacred college of apostles had suffered death in various forms, and the generation of those that had been deemed worthy to hear the inspired wisdom with their own ears had passed away, then the league of godless error took its rise as a result of the folly of heretical teachers, who, because none of the apostles was still living, attempted henceforth, with a bold face, to proclaim, in opposition to the preaching of the truth, the 'knowledge which is falsely so-called.'...Therefore, they called the Church a virgin, for it was not yet corrupted by vain discourses. But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it....From them [heretics] came false Christs, false prophets, false apostles, who divided the unity of the Church by corrupt doctrines uttered against God and against his Christ." (Church History, 3:32, 4:22)
Not only is your reading of the first passage I cited dubious in itself, but it's also contradicted by the second passage I cited. Eusebius tells us that Hegesippus thought that false teachers did corrupt the church and divide it. He says that the church was a pure virgin because such false teachers had remained "in obscure darkness". He then refers to the "rise" of such men after the time of the apostles. A "rise" doesn't suggest that these men remained in "obscure darkness". But, regardless of how we read that first passage, the second passage I cited states that the church was corrupted.
You write:
"Why refer to the degree of acceptance in the church, unless it had authority?"
Because Christian testimony has evidential value even if the church isn't infallible. When there's widespread agreement among eighteenth-century Americans that George Washington wrote a particular document, that widespread testimony has some evidential significance without any accompanying belief in the infallibility of eighteenth-century Americans or some organization they belonged to.
You write:
"But I see the evidence the fathers considered the church to be infallible to be greater than that the acceptance of the protestant canon. you can start with Augustine's dealing with the Donatists already referred to."
If you want us to agree with you, you'll have to cite a lot more evidence than the beliefs of Augustine. And if you're going to expect me to argue for "the Protestant canon", then you ought to argue for your concept of an infallible church in particular, not just any belief in an infallible church. Did Augustine believe in your concept of an infallible church? No.
You write:
"But you wish to quote Eusebius who said"
You then go on to cite Eusebius' comments about 2 Peter and The Shepherd Of Hermas. But Eusebius' position on 2 Peter doesn't represent the majority, and the fact that some churches used The Shepherd Of Hermas doesn't suggest that it was accepted as scripture by most or all Christians.
You write:
"If the church believed in its infallibility, then it is your job to figure out what they meant."
I said that advocates of church infallibility need to be more specific than just making vague references to "the church", "apostolic succession", etc. Your response is to tell me that it's "my job" to be more specific. I have been more specific. That's why I've been discussing how various sources defined the church, and I cited A.N.S. Lane's article on the subject, for example. I've been more specific than you have, and you're an advocate of church infallibility. Maybe I've been more specific than you because the specifics don't support your position.
You write:
"If you'd like to prove that any church father believed in a different kind of infallible church than the visible, identifiable church in succession from the apostles which is certainly taught by many or most of them, then the onus is on you."
You make unsupported assertions, you allow yourself the option of arguing for either "many" (half or a minority) or "most", you claim that the type of church you describe is to be assumed unless shown to be false, and that church you describe is too vague to be identified with your concept of the church. That's not a convincing argument. But it does tell us something about the weakness of your position and how vague and gratuitous you know you have to be when asked to defend your position.
You write:
"This is an amazing concession. If you'd lived at this time you wouldn't have taught sola scriptura."
Why is my comment "amazing"? Should I find it amazing that you don't follow the same rule of faith as Adam and Eve, Isaiah, the disciples during Jesus' earthly ministry, etc.? I cited the example of Papias. Do you agree with the premillennial oral traditions of Papias? Do you attain apostolic tradition in the manner in which he did, such as by having discussions with eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Jesus and the apostles? You can claim a vague agreement with Papias, such as by saying that you agree with him in following "oral tradition", but Protestants could likewise refer to a vague agreement with Papias in following "the word of God", for example. Neither Protestants nor Eastern Orthodox follow the approach of Papias in detail. We can only claim vague agreement.
You write:
"In that case it would be a fair bet that your successors wouldn't have. Nor would their successors, ad infinitum. No wonder the church wasn't sola scriptura, you've admitted it was inevitable."
I don't know of a single historian who agrees with your reasoning. The fact that a man's son is a good witness to the events of his father's life doesn't suggest that a descendant five or fifty generations further down the line is equally credible on the subject. Would you ask a modern Jew what Abraham spoke and did outside of what's recorded in scripture? If a historian is writing about Irenaeus, does he go to the bishops living in France today to find out what Irenaeus looked like, what his voice sounded like, etc.? Information is lost with the passing of time. It doesn't make sense to assume that every generation would be in a position comparable to that of Papias.
You write:
"We are in a different position? Sounds very subjective to me. Maybe you want to put a cut off in the mid 2nd C. someone else will choose the 3rd. Another the 5th. Another the 10th."
As I said before, what you're objecting to are characteristics of historical analysis. If you object to cut-off points, distinguishing between a second-century witness and a tenth-century witness, making "very subjective" judgments that other people can challenge, etc., then you're objecting to historical argumentation in general. How, then, do you make a historical case for Christianity? For Eastern Orthodoxy? For the existence of the church fathers, the reliability of their writings, the meaning of their writings, etc.? If an atheist in Israel asked you for evidence that Jesus existed, what would you think if he told you that he objects to using cut-off points to distinguish between first-century witnesses to Jesus' existence and his own belief that Jesus didn't exist?
You write:
"You can go back to your Augustine passage to see that it was widely accepted that when the church was in agreement, it was authoritative. That the church wasn't always able to clearly agree straight away, doesn't prove there was no agreed system. It just means you don't like the system."
I've explained why your use of Augustine is erroneous, and you've given us no reason to conclude that there was an "agreed system", much less that the system was your system (Eastern Orthodoxy). I've cited a large amount of evidence that there wasn't just one system, and you've ignored most of that evidence and misrepresented other portions of it.
You write:
"People would cite whatever things were already agreed upon. If you and your opponent agreed upon John as authoritative, then it makes sense to cite John. If they didn't agree on something, then there was no use citing it."
One of the groups I cited was non-Christians, such as Celsus. He didn't "agree upon" any Christian rule of faith. Your explanation fails to address such sources. Similarly, when somebody like Justin Martyr is describing the Christian faith to Jewish and Gentile non-Christians, his audience doesn't have to agree with church infallibility in order for Justin to discuss it. They didn't agree with the Biblical documents, but he discusses them and their authority for Christians. Or when somebody like Tertullian is willing to so significantly change his views of the church and tradition over time, yet his view of scripture is more consistent, how do your comments above address that contrast? A desire to accommodate people who rejected the church and tradition doesn't explain all of the evidence I cited. Scripture had that sort of primacy even when such a desire to accommodate wasn't present.
You write:
"Jesus seems to have been happy to use tradition also. 'So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.' (Matthew 7:12) ''What you do not like should be done to you, do not to your fellow; this is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary.' Rabbi Hillel (40 B.C. – 10 A.D.)"
You haven't shown that Hillel was Jesus' source, much less that such an agreement with a Jewish rabbi would be equivalent to a belief in church infallibility as your system (Eastern Orthodoxy) defines it. You can agree with a source without considering that source infallible. How does your citation of Hillel create a parallel to my citation of a Jewish canonical consensus accepted by Jesus and the apostles? It doesn't.
You write:
"The extent of the church can expand and contract, but I don't see him saying anywhere it can suddenly jump from one place to another."
What does "suddenly jump from one place to another" mean? And why would Irenaeus need to "say it anywhere"? My position is that Irenaeus' view of the church is clear on some issues and unclear on others, and I deny that his view can be equated with Catholicism or Orthodoxy. What's the relevance of your comment that you "don't see him saying anywhere it can suddenly jump from one place to another"?
David Waltz said:
ReplyDelete"I have one more question: what are your thoughts concerning the following from Lane’s essay: 'By the end of seventeenth century many others saw that it was not possible on the basis of Scripture alone to build up a detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent.' (Page 45.)"
I don't know how he's defining some of his terms, such as what "detail" he has in mind and what constitutes a "commanding" of general assent. In the context of our day, such as our political freedoms, what sort of "detailed orthodoxy" and "commanded general assent" do we see even in Roman Catholic nations? You don't begin with a standard of doctrinal detail that you want to command general assent, then look for a rule of faith that meets that standard. You go with the rule of faith God has given us, even if it doesn't produce the sort of "detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent" we'd like.
"This is an amazing concession. If you'd lived at this time you wouldn't have taught sola scriptura."
ReplyDeleteIf Seraphim had been born in China in the 4C B.C., he'd have been a pagan.
[[Why? If a canon is supported by, say, 75% of the sources, whereas a particular view of the church is supported by, say, 20%, why should we think that the two are comparable?
ReplyDeleteIf you don't want us to "pick and choose", then are you saying that we should accept every view of scripture, tradition, and the church that we find in the fathers? When two views contradict each other, we accept both?]]
I'm saying you have no basis for knowing what to accept and reject. You have no divinely mandated cut off point, and you don't know whether to try and resolve an apparent contradiction (like you would if it is in scripture), or reject one or the other or both.
[[And, yes, I do make judgments about a cut-off point. That's the nature of making historical judgments. Historians do it]]
Have you made an arbitrary, extra-scriptural decision that some kind of majority or >50% rules with the canon? If so, do you also have a cut off year for the early church which you are considering their opinion? Historians are not making theological decisions. A majority for the canon doesn't prove a theological proposition about the canon. You said there was a precedent in the Jews looking to consensus, but you don't bother to look to the Jews of Moses' time, you're happy with the Jews of the 1st century, even though apparently Jesus was a bit unhappy with those Jews. Can you reject the later Church's view on some objective basis? You are apparently happy to refer to the consensus argument.
[[How do you decide that there is a church to begin with, which historical individuals qualify as church fathers, which documents attributed to them are authentic, what those documents say, etc.? You make a lot of judgments about cut-off points.]]
I'm guided by the church about those things, because those are theological questions, not questions that are solved by pure historical investigation
[[I'd like to see the quote where I say that things extra-scriptural have zero authority. Parents have authority. Church leaders have authority. Governments have authority. It doesn't follow that they're infallible or that they all have the same level of authority.]]
if they have authority, then you obey them. You don't follow them, so you don't recognise their authority. you can't have it both ways. You don't find church fathers saying they recognise tradition as apostolic but they aren't going to obey it. if you want to prove they have authority, then follow the belief of the early church that there is one holy catholic and apostolic church that is in visible communion, find that church, and obey it.
[[There are many ways that a church could "exhibit its infallibility" without operating as Catholics or Orthodox claim the church operates.]]
give me a hypothetical example. if the church included roman catholic, orhtodox and protestant, how might one demonstrate that (without including Mormons and JWs), and what theological conclusions one might draw. It's not a valid fall back to say that somebody has a theory if you can't or won't defend it as a viable option.
Seraphim said:
ReplyDelete"I'm saying you have no basis for knowing what to accept and reject. You have no divinely mandated cut off point, and you don't know whether to try and resolve an apparent contradiction (like you would if it is in scripture), or reject one or the other or both."
Why would we need a "divinely mandated cut off point"? To use my earlier example, would you need a "divinely mandated cut off point" to tell you that a first-century source for Jesus' existence has more evidential weight than a twenty-first century source who denies His existence? What "divinely mandated cut off points" do you have for your conclusions about church history or history in general? You can't appeal to the church, since not everything you believe about history, or church history in particular, is taught infallibly or even fallibly by the church, and any historical case you would make for the church or any historical teaching of the church you would rely on would involve reaching historical conclusions apart from the church.
You write:
"Have you made an arbitrary, extra-scriptural decision that some kind of majority or >50% rules with the canon? If so, do you also have a cut off year for the early church which you are considering their opinion?"
As I explained to you earlier, I've been addressing one line of evidence for the canon among others. That one line of evidence doesn't have to "rule" by itself. And I've explained why the widespread acceptance of the Protestant canon is significant. I'm not being "arbitrary". Your request for a "cut off year", which you've never given us for your own historical conclusions, doesn't have much significance, since we can make judgments about the sources case-by-case without first having a cut-off date in mind. Dates are general guidelines that would be taken into account along with other factors.
You write:
"You said there was a precedent in the Jews looking to consensus, but you don't bother to look to the Jews of Moses' time, you're happy with the Jews of the 1st century, even though apparently Jesus was a bit unhappy with those Jews."
I referred to a canonical consensus accepted by Jesus and the apostles. They weren't living on earth, and the apostles didn't even exist yet, at the time of Moses. And the fact that Jesus was "a bit unhappy with those Jews" on some issues doesn't prove that He wouldn't have agreed with their canon. He agreed with them on monotheism, the historicity of Moses, and many other issues.
You write:
"Can you reject the later Church's view on some objective basis?"
What view?
You write:
"I'm guided by the church about those things, because those are theological questions, not questions that are solved by pure historical investigation"
The historical existence and authority of the church and the meaning of the church's teachings can't be determined by an appeal to church guidance. You have to determine that there is a historical church, that it has the authority to guide you, and how to interpret its guidance, for example, before you can be led by the church.
And suggesting that you don't rely on "pure historical investigation" isn't enough. If you combine church guidance with historical investigation, you're still relying on historical investigation to some extent. Mixing that historical investigation with some appeals to the church doesn't eliminate your use of historical investigation. Thus, your objections to my use of historical investigation apply to you as well.
And if historical investigation is as unreliable as you've been suggesting, you can't limit that critique to "theological questions". You'll have to apply your (unreasonable) objections across the board. Apply those objections to American history, your family's history, etc.
You write:
"if they have authority, then you obey them. You don't follow them, so you don't recognise their authority. you can't have it both ways."
So, if a Muslim parent tells a child to be a Muslim, then the child must obey? He can't obey his parents on issues like when to go to bed and what to eat, yet disobey them when their authority is set against the authority of God? The child must either obey everything his parents tell him or not submit to them at all? A Christian living in the Roman empire couldn't pay taxes, yet refuse to honor the gods of the state when the state required it? Those Christians should have either submitted to the government in everything or not submitted at all?
Why is it unreasonable to conclude that some authorities are higher than others, and that a higher authority overrules a lower authority if the two come into conflict?
You write:
"You don't find church fathers saying they recognise tradition as apostolic but they aren't going to obey it."
You don't find me saying that either.
You write:
"if you want to prove they have authority, then follow the belief of the early church that there is one holy catholic and apostolic church that is in visible communion, find that church, and obey it."
That's another vague assertion that allows you to read your assumptions into terminology that different sources have defined in significantly different ways. As I've documented in the past, if there was a church like the one you're suggesting in the earliest centuries, it wasn't Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Do you obey that church's rejection of the veneration of images? Do you obey its rejection of prayers to the deceased? Etc. Or do you wait until some later century, when your beliefs became more popular, then start listening to the church at that point?
You write:
"give me a hypothetical example. if the church included roman catholic, orhtodox and protestant, how might one demonstrate that (without including Mormons and JWs), and what theological conclusions one might draw. It's not a valid fall back to say that somebody has a theory if you can't or won't defend it as a viable option."
I've already given some examples. There are groups other than Catholicism and Orthodoxy that claim apostolic succession and hold the beliefs Irenaeus describes as the doctrines of the church. Why should a group like the Oriental Orthodox or Anglicans be excluded from a church similar to what Irenaeus describes? Or, as I said before, somebody could argue that every individual or congregation who affirms essential beliefs, such as the Messiahship of Jesus and the resurrection, is part of the church and that this church is infallible when it reaches unanimity or consensus on an issue. There are a lot of possibilities. The fact that you need somebody to discuss a hypothetical example for you is bad enough. When we have to repeat the examples after explaining them earlier, that's even worse. The idea that Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are the only options available is ridiculous.
[[the testimony of each church father is weighed as to its reliability.]]
ReplyDeletegive an example of a church father that testifies to your canon, and then tell us why that church father should be a reliable witness to what the apostles wrote and whether those books are God breathed, and then explain why he is very unreliable in his non-protestant theology.
Let's see if your manuscript analogy has any rationale comparable to manuscript scholarship.
[[I cited Augustine in opposition to a Catholic or Orthodox view of the church.]]
ReplyDeleteo...k....
[[I didn't cite him as somebody who agrees with my view. And in the passage I cited, he says much more than that we should "adhere to the statutes of the universal Church". He approvingly cites Cyprian's anti-papal ecclesiology]]
ok with me...
[[he refers to scripture's superior status to all of the writings of later bishops]]
...no problems here...
[[and he refers to how ecumenical councils sometimes correct one another.]]
no he doesn't. he says councils correct one another, but Augustine always comes back to the ruling of the universal church as the final authority. Thats his whole point in this passage! "how much more readily and constantly should we prefer, either to the authority of a single bishop, or to the Council of a single province, the rule that has been established by the statutes of the universal Church?"
It's when the universal church speaks that Augustine feels bound. One finds this in all his writings.
[[Eusebius tells us that Hegesippus thought that false teachers did corrupt the church and divide it. ]]
The onus is on you to establish that these comments constitute a view of the church incompatible with Orthodoxy. For example, why couldn't I say "Therefore, they called the Church a virgin, for it was not yet corrupted by vain papal delusions of grandeur. But Popes, began to corrupt it....From them came false Christs, false prophets, false apostles, who divided the unity of the Church by corrupt doctrines uttered against God and against his Christ until finally a formal schism came in 1054."
If I can say the same words and it is completely compatible with an Orthodox view of the church, then you have failed to make a point.
[[Because Christian testimony has evidential value even if the church isn't infallible. When there's widespread agreement among eighteenth-century Americans that George Washington wrote a particular document, that widespread testimony has some evidential significance without any accompanying belief in the infallibility of eighteenth-century Americans or some organization they belonged to.]]
of course, Washington lived in the 18th century, but you can't cite any 1st century fathers for your canon. Nor any 2nd. Or 3rd, or 4th or 5th. Actually was there any church father who had the exact 66 book canon that protestants have? I can't find any, maybe you can tell me who the earliest witness is.
But let's say a number of them are pretty close. Okay, so are you going to accept other doctrines that have similar support? are you going to accept chrismation with support from Tertullian all the the way through the fathers to the present day?
And just because you're having trouble pinning down the early church's doctrine on the church, does that mean you have free reign to have any doctrine? Or can't you identify at least a range of belief? I put to you protestantism does not sit anywhere within such a range.
[["If you want us to agree with you, you'll have to cite a lot more evidence than the beliefs of Augustine.]]
It might help if you told us at what date you accept that the current Orthodox teaching existed, then we could work back.
I would argue for example that the church of Nicaea was clearly not protestant. Firstly the church saw the need to meet universally and in council. (Protestants have never attempted such a thing, and don't even talk about it). Secondly, they drew up non-doctrinal canons for the good order of the church that go beyond scripture (e.g. procedures for appointing bishops) even though the attending churches had no organizational hierarchial link. Thirdly, they agreed that excommunications should be generally effective across jurisdictional lines. Fourthly, they agreed that patriarchs should have jurisdiction over wide geographic areas. There was no possibility that anyone could go start their own church or denomination and not be subject to the presiding bishops and patriarchates. Sixthly, a priest could not leave their church and join some other church without permission from the presiding bishop where they came from. In other words, the church universal recognized each other's authority.
All of this is exactly the same as modern Orthodoxy, and completely opposed to modern denominational protestantism. Now you can quibble about this issue or that, but you are not sitting within the ecclesiology of the Church circa Nicaea. Do you admit this much?
"But Eusebius' position on 2 Peter doesn't represent the majority"
So does majority simply rule? Is it pretty much that simple? But you won't let the majority rule in the rulings of the council of Nicea since you don't follow those canons. How does that work? Didnt you say that traditions do have some authority?
[[you allow yourself the option of arguing for either "many" (half or a minority) or "most",]]
I would probably claim all, but I'm giving you room to define your own position.
[[But it does tell us something about the weakness of your position and how vague and gratuitous you know you have to be when asked to defend your position.]]
It's a scholastic western idea that we must define everything to have truth. It's very informative in itself to observe what the Church is not, according to the early church.
Unless you get the smoking gun of church fathers saying "the church is infallible", you don't want to know. But you won't accept the inevitable consequences of the church necessarily being "one" as the creed says, and understood by the Fathers, such as I've elaborated on above.
you want to argue that the concept of the one church is not clear enough, but you ignore that maybe its as clear as it is meant to be, no more no less. That doesn't mean it is infinitely malleable. It's not malleable enough to incorporate protestant ecclesiology.
[[Should I find it amazing that you don't follow the same rule of faith as Adam and Eve, Isaiah, the disciples during Jesus' earthly ministry, etc.?]]
We agree there has been further first class revelation from God that has occured between Adam and now. But what revelation has there been since Papias?
[[Do you agree with the premillennial oral traditions of Papias?]]
I think Eusebius said that Papias ignorantly took the Apocalypse too literally. Of course the problem could be you and Eusebius taking Papias too literally.
But again, you want to make the infallibility of the church into an idol of your own mind. The infallibility of the church is not to make Papias infallible, but it the Church as the one ark of salvation. The body of people together on that journey. The way you want to make infallibility work is a western focused platonic idea that makes God an idol of your own making. The Church is the Church because God chose her and set her apart to be so. That's the primary aspect of its infallibility. Its doctrinal infallibility is a side effect of its relationship with Christ. Your wife is your wife because she's your wife. Knowing the truth about your wife is a side-effect of the relationship. One that you perhaps as a fallible individual can sometimes get wrong, but you'll be led by her over time to get it right. Those not married to her will not be so led.
[[The fact that a man's son is a good witness to the events of his father's life doesn't suggest that a descendant five or fifty generations further down the line is equally credible on the subject. ]]
The situation is not comparable because the question is theological, not historical. Does an "historian" prove that Isaiah received an inspiration from God? No, that's a theological assessment. An "historian" in Isaiah's day could object that Moses met God on Mt Sinai, and everyone saw the miracles. The 5 books of the Law are therefore historical, and Isaiah was a mere pretender.
The infallibility of the church is a theological proposition. One that you rely on every time you pick up a bible. You might not want to call it church infallibility, you might want to call it God achieving what he wants with his word. But the Church is the vehicle for that, it is Christ's body. If that body hasn't been guided infallibly, then you can't trust your list of books.
[[Would you ask a modern Jew what Abraham spoke and did outside of what's recorded in scripture?]]
If I did ask a Jew about sources of authority he would probably respond that the Jews are G-d's holy chosen people, and this is the central fact around which his theological world revolves. That's why the scriptures are the holy book, and not the writings of the Buddah. The scriptures were entrusted to a specific people, and they know what the scriptures are, because they are God's visible holy people.
[[If you object to cut-off points, distinguishing between a second-century witness and a tenth-century witness, making "very subjective" judgments that other people can challenge, etc., then you're objecting to historical argumentation in general.]]
Historical argumentation might get you INTO the church, but it is no sound foundation for RUNNING a church for the reason already given, that it is subjective. Whether God wants to reveal to you the historical truth of Christ and his church is between you and God. But for running a church its no good everybody spending all their time arguing about historical nuances. God wants a relationship with his church, not an academic academy trying to pin down the right doctrines, with no closure in sight.
[[I've explained why your use of Augustine is erroneous]]
No you haven't, you confused councils with ecumenical councils and haven't responded to Augustine's reference to the authority of the statutes of the universal church.
[[One of the groups I cited was non-Christians, such as Celsus.]]
Celsus would hardly be in a position to comprehend the type of infallibility the Church believes in. You don't understand it, and you have infinitely more resources than he would be likely to have. You don't usually hear Orthodox people going around talking about the infallibility of the church either, because to a large degree it is trying to force Eastern theology into a Western vocabulary.
[[You haven't shown that Hillel was Jesus' source]]
I didn't say Hillel was Jesus' source. The point is that Jesus' teaching is in some cases almost identical with extra-biblical Jewish teaching.
So what do you think? That uninspired men had the same wisdom of Jesus by coincidence? Or do you think that God inspired teachings beyond scripture, that were cited by Hillel? Coincidence doesn't cut it for me.
[[How does your citation of Hillel create a parallel to my citation of a Jewish canonical consensus accepted by Jesus and the apostles? It doesn't.]]
It shows that Jesus carries on with an pre-existing extra-biblical set of teachings. "We have a precedent", was the expression you used to use a canonical consensus. Well we have a precedent to perpetuate extra-biblical teachings. Presumably a precedent is a good argument because you cited it, so when I show a precedent, it should be a good argument too.
[[What does "suddenly jump from one place to another" mean? ]]
You said the "location of the church can change". If that means congregations can be added and taken away I agree. But if you mean that the church as we know it can cease to be, but then it pops up somewhere else with no continuity I disagree. You quoted Irenaeus as an argument because he said bishops can depart the faith. That argues for the former, not the latter. Protestantism allows the latter. It allows any Tom, Dick or Harry to start their own church where and when they like, which as we've seen is condemned by Nicea. So at least admit your ecclesiology is foreign to all the fathers who attended there.
[[I deny that his view can be equated with Catholicism or Orthodoxy.]]
Actually Irenaeus can be equated with Orthodoxy, you just question the rationality of doing so. Irenaeus claimed that it is necessary for churches to look to the apostolic sees (from memory he gives Rome and Ephesus as examples) as a benchmark for orthodoxy. Your argument is that it is not rational to do so 20 centuries later. That's your argument, but it doesn't mean our argument isn't the same one. You just think it hasn't aged well.
SERAPHIM SAID:
ReplyDelete"Or do you think that God inspired teachings beyond scripture, that were cited by Hillel? Coincidence doesn't cut it for me."
i) Of course, there was a famous conflict between Hellel and Shamai, so Seraphim's blanket appeal to Jewish tradition doesn't cut it for me.
ii) The Golden Rule has its basis in OT ethics (Lev 19:18,34; Exod 23:4-5). The formulation of Hillel is merely a paraphrastic summary of OT teaching.
Seraphim writes:
ReplyDelete"ok with me"
I haven't denied that Augustine's contradictions of a Roman Catholic view of authority are "ok with you" as an Eastern Orthodox. But I was addressing more than Eastern Orthodoxy.
You write:
"he says councils correct one another, but Augustine always comes back to the ruling of the universal church as the final authority. Thats his whole point in this passage! 'how much more readily and constantly should we prefer, either to the authority of a single bishop, or to the Council of a single province, the rule that has been established by the statutes of the universal Church?'"
Augustine doesn't just say that "councils correct one another". He specifies ecumenical councils. He writes:
"all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid" (On Baptism, Against The Donatists, 2:3)
Augustine believed in a hierarchy of authorities, a concept that you objected to earlier in this thread. (I don't expect you to be consistent on that issue.) Yes, ecumenical councils are high up in that hierarchy, to the point where Augustine comments that we "must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils", but he goes on to specify that even such councils can err. People make similar comments about the authority of parents, a local church leader, or government leaders, for example. They speak as if we must obey those authorities under all circumstances, but we know, from their comments elsewhere, that the authority in question is fallible and subordinate to a higher authority. To cite Augustine's general principle of the authority of ecumenical councils, without also taking into account the qualifications he includes, is misleading.
You write:
"The onus is on you to establish that these comments constitute a view of the church incompatible with Orthodoxy."
There are a few problems with your response:
1. You're changing the subject. My original comment involving Hegesippus was about whether his "comments on the corruption of the church would lead one to conclude that he held a view of church infallibility like what's advocated by Catholics and Orthodox today." To ask me to "establish that these comments constitute a view of the church incompatible with Orthodoxy" is to change the subject.
2. You're changing your argument. You initially denied that Hegesippus refers to a corruption of the church. You even claimed that it was significant that he referred to an "attempt" to corrupt it instead. But now that I've demonstrated that Hegesippus does refer to a corruption of the church, you're arguing that it's a corruption that's consistent with Eastern Orthodoxy.
3. You can add some qualifications to Hegesippus' comments in order to reconcile them with an Eastern Orthodox view, but those qualifications aren't stated or suggested by Hegesippus or his context.
4. You go on to cite the example of the rise of the papacy and the division between East and West in the eleventh century. Are you saying, then, that you reject the popular Catholic and Orthodox argument for church unity prior to that time? You agree with Hegesippus that there was already such corruption and disunity when he wrote in the second century?
You write:
"of course, Washington lived in the 18th century, but you can't cite any 1st century fathers for your canon."
You're changing the subject again. I was addressing the issue of whether an appeal to historical sources involves a belief in their infallibility or the infallibility of an organization they were associated with. I wasn't trying to make a parallel between the earliness of the Washington sources and the earliness of the canon sources.
You write:
"Nor any 2nd. Or 3rd, or 4th or 5th. Actually was there any church father who had the exact 66 book canon that protestants have?"
I was addressing the New Testament canon, not the entire canon. That's why my original post refers to "the 27 books that Protestants accept in their canon". The Old Testament canon is derived from a Jewish consensus, for reasons I've addressed briefly here and that we've discussed in more depth in other threads. You can consult the archives if you're interested.
Readers should note that Seraphim has repeatedly written responses in this thread without even understanding what's being discussed. How credible are his (often unsupported and dubious) assertions about church history when he so often and so egregiously misrepresents the comments of his own contemporaries? Why trust the unsupported assertions he makes about earlier generations of church history?
You write:
"Okay, so are you going to accept other doctrines that have similar support? are you going to accept chrismation with support from Tertullian all the the way through the fathers to the present day?"
It might be a good idea for you to go back and reread my original post at this point. You seem to be misunderstanding a lot of what's been said. If something other than the canon has "similar support", then more than "support from Tertullian all the the way through the fathers to the present day" is involved. I've been addressing one line of evidence for the canon among others. Other factors have to be taken into account. Your vague reference to "chrismation", without any supporting evidence and without any distinctions as to the level of "support" that exists for it "to the present day", isn't comparable.
You write:
"And just because you're having trouble pinning down the early church's doctrine on the church, does that mean you have free reign to have any doctrine?"
That's not what I said or implied. And it's not as if you've been able to document a view of "the early church" where I've failed. Rather, I've documented that there was a wide variety of views, including ones that contradict each other and contradict your position, and your response has been to assert, without much supporting argumentation, that I need to do more research and that Eastern Orthodoxy is true anyway.
You write:
"I would argue for example that the church of Nicaea was clearly not protestant."
I haven't argued that it was Protestant. It's not as though Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism are the only options available. And it's not as though everything believed at the time of Nicaea had to have been believed in every earlier generation.
You write:
"Firstly the church saw the need to meet universally and in council."
How does the fact that a council was held prove that it was "universal" at the time and that there was a perceived "need" for it in a relevant sense? Nicaea was widely rejected early on. And a perceived need to hold an ecumenical council wouldn't single out Eastern Orthodoxy.
You write:
"All of this is exactly the same as modern Orthodoxy, and completely opposed to modern denominational protestantism. Now you can quibble about this issue or that, but you are not sitting within the ecclesiology of the Church circa Nicaea. Do you admit this much?"
What's "exactly the same as modern Orthodoxy" is your selective reading of a fourth-century council, and that council doesn't even address many of the issues involved in judging whether Christianity in general or in its entirety was Eastern Orthodox at the time.
You write:
"So does majority simply rule? Is it pretty much that simple?"
I've addressed that issue already. Again, I'm discussing one line of evidence for the canon as compared to an allegedly comparable line of evidence for an infallible church. Since this particular line of evidence involves popular opinion, I'm discussing popular opinion. It doesn't therefore follow that an evaluation of the canon in general is as "simple" as you've suggested I'm saying it is.
You write:
"I would probably claim all, but I'm giving you room to define your own position."
Claiming that all church fathers taught a view of the church isn't the same as demonstrating it. You keep making assertions that go far beyond any argumentation you provide. Remember, you were making a comment on what the church fathers taught, not just what they believed. Where's your evidence that all of the church fathers taught this view of the church? And where's the evidence that the church was Eastern Orthodox? If all were in agreement, then how do you explain the wide variety of views documented by A.N.S. Lane and addressed in some of the sources I've cited?
You write:
"you want to argue that the concept of the one church is not clear enough, but you ignore that maybe its as clear as it is meant to be, no more no less. That doesn't mean it is infinitely malleable. It's not malleable enough to incorporate protestant ecclesiology."
I wasn't addressing "the concept of the one church". And I wasn't arguing for something "infinitely malleable". Your assertion about whether Protestant ecclesiology can be included needs to be supported, not just asserted. We've addressed ecclesiology in many previous threads. You can consult the archives if you're interested. There was no one view of ecclesiology held by all of the patristic sources, and the fact that a patristic source argues for a particular ecclesiology doesn't prove that he considers it as significant as you're assuming. Men like Stephen and Cyprian could argue over the definition of the church and level strong accusations against one another, yet be viewed by others as two Christians who had significant differences on ecclesiology, but still belonged to a larger church that transcended their individual ecclesiologies. Just as somebody like Irenaeus doesn't describe a Protestant church, he also doesn't describe an Eastern Orthodox church. I don't make claims about the fathers and church history comparable to your claims, so my disagreements with the fathers aren't as significant as yours.
You write:
"We agree there has been further first class revelation from God that has occured between Adam and now. But what revelation has there been since Papias?"
Whether there's been further revelation isn't the only relevant issue, for reasons I've already explained.
You write:
"I think Eusebius said that Papias ignorantly took the Apocalypse too literally. Of course the problem could be you and Eusebius taking Papias too literally."
Eusebius' opinion that Papias was wrong doesn't change the fact that Papias held the view in question. And what evidence do we have that Papias has been misunderstood? You're making a suggestion without giving us any reason to agree with it. Eusebius and others who say that Papias was a premillennialist had access to his writings. You don't. And the most natural reading of his fragments that we possess is that he was a premillennialist, which is one of the reasons why there's such widespread scholarly agreement on the subject of Papias' eschatology. I've discussed Papias' eschatology and the widespread early acceptance of premillennialism elsewhere.
You write:
"The way you want to make infallibility work is a western focused platonic idea that makes God an idol of your own making. The Church is the Church because God chose her and set her apart to be so. That's the primary aspect of its infallibility. Its doctrinal infallibility is a side effect of its relationship with Christ. Your wife is your wife because she's your wife. Knowing the truth about your wife is a side-effect of the relationship. One that you perhaps as a fallible individual can sometimes get wrong, but you'll be led by her over time to get it right. Those not married to her will not be so led."
Saying that an idea is Western doesn't refute it. I've asked you to historically demonstrate your historical claims about a historical church. Your suggestion that I would know the church if I were married to it isn't the sort of objective argument that discussions like this one in forums like this one are meant to address. For a group to claim such deep historical roots and such prominence in early church history, then retreat into such unverifiable appeals to the subjective when challenged, doesn't inspire confidence.
You write:
"The situation is not comparable because the question is theological, not historical."
The two can be and often are related and go together. You've made historical claims. The fact that theology also is involved in some manner doesn't make historical investigation irrelevant.
You write:
"The infallibility of the church is a theological proposition. One that you rely on every time you pick up a bible. You might not want to call it church infallibility, you might want to call it God achieving what he wants with his word. But the Church is the vehicle for that, it is Christ's body. If that body hasn't been guided infallibly, then you can't trust your list of books."
The Pharisees and other ancient Jewish sources were involved in identifying and preserving the Old Testament scriptures. Do we conclude that they must have been infallible? Much of our information about the New Testament scriptures and much of what's been done to preserve them and clarify their meaning, for example, has come from non-Christian or non-Eastern-Orthodox sources (archeology, non-Christian attestation to the existence and authorship of the books, Bible publishers, etc.). Do we conclude that such sources are infallible? Why would our trust require their infallibility?
Even if we were to conclude that the church was led to a correct canon by God, how does your definition of church infallibility follow? We don't believe in an infallible Jewish church comparable to Eastern Orthodoxy just because we believe that God led the Jewish people to a correct canon. As I've said above in response to David Waltz, we could define church infallibility in such a manner that Protestants would agree with it. But I don't think most people have such definitions in mind when they argue over this issue in contexts like this thread.
You write:
"If I did ask a Jew about sources of authority he would probably respond that the Jews are G-d's holy chosen people, and this is the central fact around which his theological world revolves. That's why the scriptures are the holy book, and not the writings of the Buddah. The scriptures were entrusted to a specific people, and they know what the scriptures are, because they are God's visible holy people."
Which doesn't address the issue I asked you about.
You write:
"Historical argumentation might get you INTO the church, but it is no sound foundation for RUNNING a church for the reason already given, that it is subjective. Whether God wants to reveal to you the historical truth of Christ and his church is between you and God. But for running a church its no good everybody spending all their time arguing about historical nuances. God wants a relationship with his church, not an academic academy trying to pin down the right doctrines, with no closure in sight."
Those are qualifications you didn't mention or even suggest earlier. You keep changing your arguments in a manner that nobody could reasonably be expected to anticipate. And you aren't giving us much reason to agree with your assertions.
I wouldn't say that the major historical disagreements about the church and tradition, as outlined by me and by A.N.S. Lane, for example, are minor "nuances". If distinguishing between a second-century source and a tenth-century source is the sort of "nuance" we shouldn't argue about, then you're going to have to avoid a lot of historical discussions, not just minor ones. If God doesn't want us disputing such issues, then why are you arguing with us about such issues here, why do Eastern Orthodox keep arguing with Roman Catholics on such matters, etc.?
You write:
"Celsus would hardly be in a position to comprehend the type of infallibility the Church believes in."
Yet, we're supposed to believe that you were able to comprehend it in order to believe in it. Is that another appeal to a subjectively perceived leading of God? If so, see my comments above regarding your retreat into the subjective. Earlier, you objected to historical investigation as "very subjective". But now you criticize us for trying to be too objective, and you refer to a subjective confirmation of Eastern Orthodoxy, much like what Mormonism offers.
You write:
"You don't usually hear Orthodox people going around talking about the infallibility of the church either"
I hear it a lot. And somebody like Celsus wouldn't need to hear it much to be aware of it. The fact that you're arguing for the concept in a forum like this one is yet another illustration of the Eastern Orthodox interest in communicating the concept of infallibility and arguing for it. Why, then, would the historical sources I cited not be aware of it?
You write:
"The point is that Jesus' teaching is in some cases almost identical with extra-biblical Jewish teaching."
So are some of my beliefs. So what? People can agree for a large variety of reasons, not just because of Divine guidance. And if somebody like Hillel was led by God to a particular conclusion, how is such a leading relevant in this context? Jesus and the apostles referred to God's leading of Christians in general, and people often speak of God's leading them to marry a person, to take a particular job, to avoid an accident while driving their car, etc. Such leadings aren't part of a publicly verifiable rule of faith. If such leadings suggest the insufficiency of scripture, then they also suggest the insufficiency of the Eastern Orthodox rule of faith. Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't claim that every type of leading of God is part of its rule of faith.
You write:
"But if you mean that the church as we know it can cease to be, but then it pops up somewhere else with no continuity I disagree. You quoted Irenaeus as an argument because he said bishops can depart the faith. That argues for the former, not the latter. Protestantism allows the latter. It allows any Tom, Dick or Harry to start their own church where and when they like, which as we've seen is condemned by Nicea. So at least admit your ecclesiology is foreign to all the fathers who attended there."
I didn't say or suggest anything about the church "ceasing to exist" and having "no continuity" in Irenaeus. And what "Protestantism allows" isn't the only relevant issue, since an Anglican who argues that the church always existed isn't responsible for a member of a non-denominational church who argues that the church ceased to exist for a while. Even that non-denominational church member probably isn't going to claim that "any Tom, Dick or Harry can start their own church where and when they like". Nicaea isn't equivalent to Irenaeus, and your appeal to that council has some problems I've discussed above. You keep changing the subject, changing your arguments in the middle of the discussion, and mixing issues together without making the appropriate distinctions.
You wrote:
"Actually Irenaeus can be equated with Orthodoxy, you just question the rationality of doing so. Irenaeus claimed that it is necessary for churches to look to the apostolic sees (from memory he gives Rome and Ephesus as examples) as a benchmark for orthodoxy. Your argument is that it is not rational to do so 20 centuries later. That's your argument, but it doesn't mean our argument isn't the same one. You just think it hasn't aged well."
Your comments don't lead us to the conclusion that Irenaeus' church was Eastern Orthodox, and you're ignoring most of what I said about that issue earlier.
Seraphim said, "give an example of a church father that testifies to your canon, and then tell us why that church father should be a reliable witness to what the apostles wrote and whether those books are God breathed, and then explain why he is very unreliable in his non-protestant theology."
ReplyDeleteOne of the points of Jason's posts was that the church fathers contradict each other as to the canon. So, if anything, that should be an argument against 'Holy Tradition'.
Secondly, it is very possible that that a church could pass down testimony to the apostolic nature of the book without them passing down some 'official interpretation' of the book. Many churches simply received the epistles of the apostles as letters to be circulated amongst other churches without an apostle present. From 1 Corinthians, it is apparent that the church there knew that it was from Paul but misunderstood his words (5:9-11). If this could happen to the first generation, who knows what could happen with later ones.
Thirdly, the church fathers disagree amongst themselves as to doctrine especially as you go from east to west in regards to soteriology. The East eventually accepted Theosis while the West eventually accepted merit theology.
Lastly, much of what differentiates Protestants from Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox developed over a period of time usually long after the apostolic era.
"Let's see if your manuscript analogy has any rationale comparable to manuscript scholarship."
Pick up any standard OT commentary. I have several on my shelf that would accept the MT over the Dead Sea Scrolls simply because the MT makes better sense in context.
'By the end of seventeenth century many others saw that it was not possible on the basis of Scripture alone to build up a detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent.'
ReplyDeleteI might add that this would, if you're going to try to use this to argue against Sola Scriptura, only be relevant if the truth of a rule of faith is indexed to it's utility - and if that's so, then, as Jason has pointed out, your rule of faith is equally as problematic.
In addition, to some extent, in the 17th century, the belief that of a rule of faith should "command general assent" was itself indexed to the need for an orderly, functional state government. Dissent, in that time, was considered subversive to the state, due to the way the church and state were tied together. The history of Britain in that era is a wonderful example of this sort of thinking - particularly as one gets into the minuatae that the Clarendon Code tried to regulate.
[[Why would we need a "divinely mandated cut off point"? To use my earlier example, would you need a "divinely mandated cut off point" to tell you that a first-century source for Jesus' existence has more evidential weight than a twenty-first century source who denies His existence?]]
ReplyDeletebecause 21st century sources are not rules of faith in the church and 1st C ones are not necessarily either. you can't equate evidences for whether Christianity is true and whether you should subscribe to it, with rules of faith for what happens in the church. They are completely different kinds of epistemological issues with completely different pre-suppositions, problems and requirements.
if we are two philosphers arguing on a street corner, we can say things like Luke seems to be 63% accurate as an historian and it doesn't matter. If we are in the church that doesn't tend to work very well with me saying one thing and you saying another without a mechanism for resolving what the church is to teach on this matter.
[[What "divinely mandated cut off points" do you have for your conclusions about church history or history in general? ]]
Again, you cant compare what I had to decide before getting in the church with what I decide after I'm in the church. If you say "I don't believe in the church" before joining, then be on your way. But if you join the Church and then say "the canons of Nicea are not binding on me" because of XYZ, then you're going to cause disorder in the church. Or if you say "everyone in the church is wrong about point "FGHIJ", that's ok for philosphers on the street corner, but not when the church cares for unity and order. so the principles required for church order are not the same principles that can work outside the church. That's why the historical investigations are not a divine ordinance for the order of the church.
"And the fact that Jesus was "a bit unhappy with those Jews" on some issues doesn't prove that He wouldn't have agreed with their canon. He agreed with them on monotheism, the historicity of Moses, and many other issues."
Then even if you think Jesus is not completely happy with the Orthodox church, that's no reason to reject our canon, right?
[[You have to determine that there is a historical church, that it has the authority to guide you, and how to interpret its guidance, for example, before you can be led by the church.]]
Your original question was more expansive than that. But even on this issue you are effectively guided by the historical church because you listen to the fathers, and apparently this works for you even though none of the fathers who comment on the canon knew the apostles, or even knew people who knew the apostles. You've discounted the possibility the true church was some long-died out group unrelated to the fathers. So you believe on some level there was an historical church and it existed for many hundreds of years up to a time where its canon is discernable.
[[Mixing that historical investigation with some appeals to the church doesn't eliminate your use of historical investigation. Thus, your objections to my use of historical investigation apply to you as well.]]
My historical investigation is subservient to the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church, just like your exegesis is subservient to the Bible. It's a tool to find what the church believes, like exegesis is a tool to find what the word means.
This is not the same role for those outside the church, like exegesis is not the same role as a non-Christian. Exegesis for a non-Christian is focused on what or whether the text should be believed. Exegesis in the church takes that as a given.
[[And if historical investigation is as unreliable as you've been suggesting, you can't limit that critique to "theological questions". You'll have to apply your (unreasonable) objections across the board. Apply those objections to American history, your family's history, etc.]]
We can disagree on American history and it has little more significance than an academic dispute. But the church is God's family called to be in unity. That doesn't work inside the church.
[[So, if a Muslim parent tells a child to be a Muslim, then the child must obey? He can't obey his parents on issues like when to go to bed and what to eat, yet disobey them when their authority is set against the authority of God?]]
When Nicaea gives canons for appointment of bishops, or procedures for transferring clergy between jurisdictions, is that in the category of rules that are against God, or is in the category of parents telling their children when to go to bed? If the latter, why don't you obey them? How can you claim traditions have authority, but you ignore them? When the children even disobey the parents in the matters of going to bed, then we can see I was right that you've given it no authority at all.
[[As I've documented in the past, if there was a church like the one you're suggesting in the earliest centuries, it wasn't Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.]]
I find your list highly exagerrated at best, or speculative at worst. But you're makign an assumption about what the essence of the church is. If there was pre-millenial belief in the early church it doesn't mean it is "not eastern orthodoxy", because that's not the formative defintion of the church in Orthodoxy. As important as doctines are, the one holy catholic and apostolic church is primarily God's people, just like Israel was still God's people no matter all the millenia of machinations. The idea that the church must be one as Christ said transcends issues like premillenialism.
[[Do you obey that church's rejection of the veneration of images? Do you obey its rejection of prayers to the deceased? Etc. Or do you wait until some later century, when your beliefs became more popular, then start listening to the church at that point?]]
The church never rejected those things even if you can come up with some quotes of some people who did. One would follow the tradition and the church as best as one can grasp it given one's circumstances and resources.
[[Why should a group like the Oriental Orthodox or Anglicans be excluded from a church similar to what Irenaeus describes? ]]
Again, you won't tell us how, if we include the Anglicans, we could either (a) not include say.. the baptists and from there, everybody else who wants in, or (b) how a pan-Orthodox-Anglican church would be able to express its infallibility, given that Anglicanism holds doctrines contrary to historic Orthodoxy. If Anglicanism asserts a proposition contrary to a previously agreed tenet of Orthodoxy, then how could we think it part of an infallible church that includes both?
Again, proposing alternate theologies that don't work is really not an argument.
[[Or, as I said before, somebody could argue that every individual or congregation who affirms essential beliefs, such as the Messiahship of Jesus and the resurrection, is part of the church and that this church is infallible when it reaches unanimity or consensus on an issue.]]
All the church agreed on Nicaea. Protestants don't follow the canons of Nicaea, so protestants are not in the church. But then you say maybe everyone who affirms the Messiah is in the church. See, its contradictory.
[[He specifies ecumenical councils. He writes:]]
ReplyDeleteSo your theory is that because we believe ecumenical councils are infallible, and Augustine refers to councils "formed for the whole Christian world" can correct earlier ones, then Augustine's church is not our church?
Firstly, I hardly think that investigation of the fine points of ecumenical councils goes to the heart of what Orthodoxy teaches the Church to be.
Secondly, Orthodoxy knows full well that there have been quite a few councils "formed for the whole Christian world" which turned out to be wrong. From Arian times through to the confusions surrounding the 879 council of Constantinople, many times councils have been called for the whole Christian world and got it wrong. We know that. And if we know that, and Orthodoxy knows that, then you've hardly established Augustine in a different line of thinking.
[[Augustine believed in a hierarchy of authorities, a concept that you objected to earlier in this thread. ]]
No, what I object to is you claim the existence of lower authorities, but you NEVER follow them, even when uncontradicted by a higher authority.
[[To ask me to "establish that these comments constitute a view of the church incompatible with Orthodoxy" is to change the subject.]]
What? You claimed his views are different to Orthodoxy, but you didn't prove it, as I showed.
[[You're changing your argument. You initially denied that Hegesippus refers to a corruption of the church. ]]
"Corruption of the Church" is a very vague notion. If you're going to make a big deal of this you would have to show precisely what that means to him, and then prove that exactly that concept can't be tolerated by Orthodoxy.
[[You can add some qualifications to Hegesippus' comments in order to reconcile them with an Eastern Orthodox view, but those qualifications aren't stated or suggested by Hegesippus or his context.]]
I didn't add any qualifications. I showed they can be understood as-is.
[[Are you saying, then, that you reject the popular Catholic and Orthodox argument for church unity prior to that time? You agree with Hegesippus that there was already such corruption and disunity when he wrote in the second century?]]
Only a fool would suggest that disunity suddenly appears like a bolt of lighting. Any Orthodox source refers to the process and long years that led up to and followed 1054.
[[I was addressing the New Testament canon, not the entire canon.]]
I'm actually really curious now. Who is the first person to subscribe to a 66 book canon as used by protestants? If you know, I'd like to hear.
[[I wasn't trying to make a parallel between the earliness of the Washington sources and the earliness of the canon sources.]]
_I'm_ drawing the parallel, thankyou very much.
[[I was addressing the New Testament canon, not the entire canon. That's why my original post refers to "the 27 books that Protestants accept in their canon".]]
Much as you might like, you can't split up the issues like you want to. Like I said, this works for the philosophers on the streetcorner, but not in the church.
If such and such a church father can't be trusted to accurately pass on the OT canon - a list that was supposedly, according to protestant theory, a fixed canon for hundreds of years even before Christ and supposedly known and enumerated already, then how could they be trusted to know the Christian canon - a list that had not been enumerated, had yet to be authenticated, for which no single source could attest to, and which relies on the subjective issues of inspiration? If you can't pass on the OT list accurately, how could be trusted to get the latter correct?
You can't really fall back to the infallible church on this, you've got to make a rationalists reference to history.
[[It might be a good idea for you to go back and reread my original post at this point. You seem to be misunderstanding a lot of what's been said. If something other than the canon has "similar support", then more than "support from Tertullian all the the way through the fathers to the present day" is involved.]]
Yes, like what? Like the place of unwritten traditions in the whole spectrum of authority? We've touched on that with Jesus repeating similar material to previous Rabbis. We could talk about all the references to unwritten tradition in the fathers, but I'm sure you know that already. If you could find contradictory references to Christmation, we could discuss that, but I don't think you're going to find that so your specific issues in your blog article are not objection here. The earliness of Tertullian and support from other early fathers like Cyril seem to rebut any argument you made about earliness or widespread acceptance. We don't see any disagreements about it, so no problems there. I'm going through your list, and I'm not seeing why you don't accept christmation.
[[I've documented that there was a wide variety of views, including ones that contradict each other and contradict your position]]
No, you've claimed they contradict, but then I showed they didn't. Then I asked you essentially why straining at gnats gives you the right to kill the camel.
[[I haven't argued that it was Protestant. It's not as though Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism are the only options available. And it's not as though everything believed at the time of Nicaea had to have been believed in every earlier generation.]]
Again, was the church of Nicaea the historic church or not? If you want to draw a line before Nicea then how many church fathers do you have left to cite about the canon? If you want to include Nicea as the historic church, then how many options have you got besides Catholic and Orthodox? Not many.
[[How does the fact that a council was held prove that it was "universal" at the time and that there was a perceived "need" for it in a relevant sense?]]
Well history records bishops from the everywhere attended, apart from Britain. (Don't tell me you're going to say the true church was squirelled away in Britain).
[[Nicaea was widely rejected early on. And a perceived need to hold an ecumenical council wouldn't single out Eastern Orthodoxy.]]
It would narrow it down to the Big 2 though.
[[What's "exactly the same as modern Orthodoxy" is your selective reading of a fourth-century council, and that council doesn't even address many of the issues involved in judging whether Christianity in general or in its entirety was Eastern Orthodox at the time.]]
I'm bringing up one rather largish issue, which is the doctrine of bishops from the entire empire circa 325 AD. We can't discuss 500 issues at once, you asked for something, I'm giving it to you.
Now there may be other issues, but the theology of 300 bishops circa 300AD is accepted by Orthodoxy, and rejected by you. That's a good starting point for saying whether they were Eastern Orthodox, and for saying you are not in the theological spectrum of the historical church circa 300 AD.
[[Where's your evidence that all of the church fathers taught this view of the church? ]]
I would think it would be a lot easier for you to prove one guy with a protestant view than for me to discuss 1000 church fathers.
[[And where's the evidence that the church was Eastern Orthodox?]]
You don't seem to be responding very well to exhibit #1 which is the theology of 300 bishops circa 300AD. Nor have you offered a credible alternative.
[[If all were in agreement, then how do you explain the wide variety of views documented by A.N.S. Lane and addressed in some of the sources I've cited?]]
Why should I care about a bunch of scholastic naval gazing like this article? This is an attempt to make an obscure and unthought of distinction between points of view, and then claim irreconcilable views. Supplementary vs coincidence views is all theological naval gazing foreign to the early church. It would be like saying the trinity isn't credible because of differences of opinion regarding the economic vs immanent trinity. The point is, we can draw a circle around the beliefs of the early church. I think we can draw it a lot tighter than you think, but even where you want to draw it, its not protestant in ecclesiology.
[[Your assertion about whether Protestant ecclesiology can be included needs to be supported, not just asserted.]]
I already gave examples from Nicea that don't work in protestantism, and will await a meaningful response.
[[Just as somebody like Irenaeus doesn't describe a Protestant church, he also doesn't describe an Eastern Orthodox church. ]]
That's a claim I haven't seen you back up. The statement about bishops who leave the faith really didn't help you at all.
[[Whether there's been further revelation isn't the only relevant issue, for reasons I've already explained.]]
You should admit that the Adam analogy doesn't work. Will you concede a point when it is lost?
[[And what evidence do we have that Papias has been misunderstood?]]
What evidence do you have he was correctly understood? Discussions on the Apocolypse are ripe for misunderstandings. You assume that if someone repeats the images of the Apocolype they themselves don't see them as images.
[[For a group to claim such deep historical roots and such prominence in early church history, then retreat into such unverifiable appeals to the subjective when challenged, doesn't inspire confidence.]]
Do you think claiming to be Jewish is to "retreat into such unverifiable appeals to the subjective"?
That's basically what you're claiming. That the entire history of the OT and NT people may not have anything but an unverifable and subjective link tying together 6000 plus years of history.
[[The Pharisees and other ancient Jewish sources were involved in identifying and preserving the Old Testament scriptures. Do we conclude that they must have been infallible?]]
Well, the "Pharasees and other sources" must have been collectively authoritative, if you want to cite them about the canon of scripture. Do you believe the Jews were infallible about knowing what is scripture? Or might they have got it all wrong?
[[Why would our trust require their infallibility?]]
If you're going to have a fallible list of infallible scriptures, then you are going to be functionally treating the list as infallible, even if you don't claim it to be. I'm more interested in what you do functionally, than the scholastic naval gazing distinctions you bring up in debate.
[[Even if we were to conclude that the church was led to a correct canon by God, how does your definition of church infallibility follow?]]
As soon as you say "the church", you admit of one visible church. Because you can't know if the church was led to a correct canon unless it is one (as opposed to the canons of other churches) and visible (so you can see what that canon is). And if there's one visible church, which we can look to as having been led into the truth, then it must be trusted in opposition to other churches.
Now if you want to say there is one holy catholic and apostolic church, but its only right about this one issue, then you would still be compelled to join it, but you won't be able to, because it won't let you and your protestant ideas in. In other words, you've suggested yet another scenario that doesn't work, and they are not good arguments.
[[I wouldn't say that the major historical disagreements about the church and tradition, as outlined by me and by A.N.S. Lane, for example, are minor "nuances". If distinguishing between a second-century source and a tenth-century source is the sort of "nuance" we shouldn't argue about, ]]
You surely don't expect me to consider the 15th century reformed ideas listed by Lane as serious contender for being the "early church" do you? I discounted that immediately.
[[If God doesn't want us disputing such issues, then why are you arguing with us about such issues here, why do Eastern Orthodox keep arguing with Roman Catholics on such matters, etc.?]]
You are not in the church. Arguing w/ you has no effect on chuch unity.
[[Earlier, you objected to historical investigation as "very subjective". But now you criticize us for trying to be too objective, and you refer to a subjective confirmation of Eastern Orthodoxy, much like what Mormonism offers.]]
There's a difference between the internal and external life of the church. To give an analogy, you can be certain a particular verse is scripture, without knowing what it means, and could say that the verse is difficult, and knowing how to understand it is subjective.
Presumably Christians will usually move from firstly knowing what scripture is, before later, knowing what it means. Knowing the church is infallible, doesn't mean you can instantly grasp what that means. As I've tried to convey, the word "infallible" is a rather heavy handed word to use to describe eastern theology to begin with.
[[The fact that you're arguing for the concept in a forum like this one is yet another illustration of the Eastern Orthodox interest in communicating the concept of infallibility and arguing for it.]]
I'm accepting your western terminology, and trying to discuss it in that framework.
If you think Orthodox talk about it a lot, I'd like to hear what century you think we started talking about it a lot. Then we could discuss whether what they were saying prior to that century differs from now. What I think you'll find is the application of western terminology.
[[Why, then, would the historical sources I cited not be aware of it?]]
Well, you brought up Augustine, and we saw that he believed universal councils to be authoritative. Even though we're quibbling about the details, there would be no point in following universal councils if they weren't part of an infallible church. They would be worth little, just like we find protestants treating them now. We would find Augustine following them when he felt like it, and making no differentiation between the councils of the One church, and the councils of schismatic groups, accepting each as their exegetes were talented. Quibbling over how an infallible church works does not refute that Augustine believed in one infallible church.
[[So what? People can agree for a large variety of reasons, not just because of Divine guidance.]]
So next time you cite some 1st century Jews about the canon, I can say "so what, people can agree with you for a large variety of reasons, not just divine guidance?
You see, you're special pleading. When you see Jesus agreeing with existing people about the canon, it is precedence. When they agree about traditions, then you say it is coincidence.
[[Such leadings aren't part of a publicly verifiable rule of faith.]]
Define publically verifiable. You can't prove that what Rabbis were teaching from the tradition is more or less verifiable than what they were teaching about the canon.
[[an Anglican who argues that the church always existed isn't responsible for a member of a non-denominational church who argues that the church ceased to exist for a while.]]
An Anglican who argued that would be closer to the sphere of belief of Nicea than other protestants. Since you don't appear to be an Anglican, I don't see why you can appeal to them. Again, if I draw the circle of early church belief, you seem to think that if you can point to one protestant who maybe, possibly is in that circle, it gives you free reign to be outside that circle. I don't understand how that works. Showing that the circle is not a pin-prick of uniformity, does not give you the right to be anywhere on the number line whatsoever.
Remember, you did say that tradition was authoritative.
You write:
ReplyDelete"21st century sources are not rules of faith in the church and 1st C ones are not necessarily either....you can't equate evidences for whether Christianity is true and whether you should subscribe to it, with rules of faith for what happens in the church. They are completely different kinds of epistemological issues with completely different pre-suppositions, problems and requirements. if we are two philosphers arguing on a street corner, we can say things like Luke seems to be 63% accurate as an historian and it doesn't matter. If we are in the church that doesn't tend to work very well with me saying one thing and you saying another without a mechanism for resolving what the church is to teach on this matter."
Those are assertions, not arguments. The conclusion that "Christianity is true" is important, and it's theological. If the probabilities of historical investigation are sufficient for such an important theological conclusion, then why should we conclude that they're insufficient for other important theological conclusions?
I was discussing historical evidence, such as evidence for a rule of faith. It doesn't therefore follow that I consider the historical evidence to be a rule of faith itself. You're, once again, confusing categories.
And historical argumentation doesn't become unresolvable just because two people disagree about which historical conclusion is correct. The evidence is itself a "mechanism for resolving". If the atheist I referred to earlier, who denies Jesus' existence, disagrees with your historical conclusion that Jesus did exist, you don't need an infallible institution accepted by the atheist and you to settle the dispute. Even when such an infallible arbiter is accepted by both sides of a dispute, that arbiter's existence and actions are historical conclusions that have to be historically perceived and interpreted by the individual. Not only does such a process once again involve us in historical investigation and probabilities, but it also has the potential for further disputes. We see examples of that potential in arguments among Roman Catholics about which papal decrees are infallible and what those decrees mean, disagreements among Eastern Orthodox about the Old Testament canon, etc.
You write:
"If you say 'I don't believe in the church' before joining, then be on your way. But if you join the Church and then say 'the canons of Nicea are not binding on me' because of XYZ, then you're going to cause disorder in the church."
I don't believe in the church as you define it. I'm an Evangelical. How do you argue for a historical church and its historical teachings without historical argumentation? The Council of Nicaea was a historical event. Issues such as its historicity and the meaning of its teachings involve historical investigation and probabilities. Not only do non-Eastern-Orthodox people like me disagree with your historical conclusions about the church, but Eastern Orthodox also disagree among themselves about how to interpret the church fathers, what is church tradition and what isn't, etc.
You write:
"Then even if you think Jesus is not completely happy with the Orthodox church, that's no reason to reject our canon, right?"
That's not the reason I've given for rejecting your canon.
You write:
"But even on this issue you are effectively guided by the historical church because you listen to the fathers"
You keep posting responses that don't interact with what your opponent has said, but instead change the subject. The "historical church" I'm agreeing with in this instance isn't your church, I've explained why I agree with this historical church on this issue without having to agree with it on every other issue, and I've cited the precedent of agreeing with the Jewish people of Jesus' day on some issues without agreeing with them about everything. You aren't refuting anything I said, but instead you're just saying that I'm "guided by the historical church", as if that one issue, isolated from the surrounding context and apparently involving having your definition of "the historical church" substituted for mine, is a sufficient response. Since my argument was more nuanced than your description of it above, and since I deny that the historical church in question is Eastern Orthodox, what's the relevance of your response?
You write:
"My historical investigation is subservient to the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church, just like your exegesis is subservient to the Bible. It's a tool to find what the church believes, like exegesis is a tool to find what the word means."
What is "the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church"? If you're referring to something historical, then historical investigation is involved. If you're referring to the sort of subjective experience I discussed earlier, then see my earlier comments about your retreat into the subjective.
Again, I'm not Eastern Orthodox. It makes no sense to fault me for asking for historical evidence for your historical claims about a historical church. If it's acceptable to want historical evidence before entering the church, and the church is Eastern Orthodoxy, then why is it unacceptable for me to ask for historical evidence leading me to Eastern Orthodoxy?
And if historical investigation is "a tool to find what the church believes", then my earlier critique of your position stands. You're relying on historical investigation not only to believe in your concept of the church to begin with, but also to operate within that church. Thus, your objections to historical "cut-off points" and such apply to you as well, not just to me. Rephrasing your position doesn't change the implications of your position. You relied on historical investigation to justify your belief in Eastern Orthodoxy, and you continue to rely on historical investigation to judge matters within that church.
You write:
"We can disagree on American history and it has little more significance than an academic dispute. But the church is God's family called to be in unity. That doesn't work inside the church."
I wouldn't say that disagreements over the meaning of the Constitution, for example, have "little more significance than an academic dispute".
But you've already acknowledged that you rely on historical investigation as "a tool to find what the church believes". And people often disagree about what the church has and hasn't believed. Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other about theological issues. If you're going to claim that they agree with each other where they need to, despite disagreements on other matters, then you need to justify that conclusion rather than just asserting it.
Not only is the church called to be in unity, but so are other groups, such as families and individuals within the church (Psalm 133:1, Philippians 4:2-3). It doesn't therefore follow that these groups will always have unity. The call to unity isn't equivalent to an assurance that unity will always exist.
And the fact that historical investigation is sometimes a matter of controversy doesn't prove that historical investigation can't be a means to attaining or preserving unity. You've appealed to "the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church", but people can disobey or misinterpret the leading of the Spirit, just as they can disobey what they discover through historical investigation or misinterpret it.
You write:
"When Nicaea gives canons for appointment of bishops, or procedures for transferring clergy between jurisdictions, is that in the category of rules that are against God, or is in the category of parents telling their children when to go to bed? If the latter, why don't you obey them? How can you claim traditions have authority, but you ignore them? When the children even disobey the parents in the matters of going to bed, then we can see I was right that you've given it no authority at all."
You're changing the subject again. I was addressing whether there's a hierarchy of authorities. You've changed the subject to how I would apply the concept of a hierarchy of authorities to Nicaea.
I used parents as an example of subordinate authority among other examples (such as governments). Different subordinate authorities have different roles. A parent isn't equivalent to a government or a church or some other subordinate authority in every way. A pastor doesn't tell a child when to go to bed or determine what tax rate the child's parents will pay. Even within the sphere in which a subordinate authority is to operate, there can be an abuse of authority. A husband can abuse a wife, for example. There are a lot of controversies and questions people rarely address on matters such as the proper role of a parent, a husband, or a government. People believe in the authority of entities such as parents and governments, but they don't know the answer to every conceivable question that could be asked about those authorities. Similarly, not every Christian is going to be equally knowledgeable of every issue related to church authority. Whether a church is acting within its proper role, whether its actions are abusive, or what a church's actions are intended to accomplish in a given context, for example, can be unclear or misunderstood. Even if I had no position on your question about Nicaea, or I took a position you consider incorrect, it wouldn't follow that I "ignore" the church or think it has "no authority at all".
As Timothy Ware notes, Eastern Orthodox sometimes disagree with each other about matters of church authority or consider a matter of ecclesiology unresolved:
"What, then, is the criterion for determining whether a council is ecumenical? This is a more difficult question to answer than might at first appear, and though it has been much discussed by Orthodox during the past hundred years, it cannot be said that the solutions suggested are entirely satisfactory. All Orthodox know which are the seven councils that their Church accepts as ecumenical, but precisely what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear. There are, so it must be admitted, certain points in the Orthodox theology of councils which remain obscure and which call for further thinking on the part of theologians." (The Orthodox Church [New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1997], p. 252)
When people refer to Nicaea, what do they usually have in mind? Its canons related to church government? No. Nicaea is known primarily for its teaching of the deity of Christ. And even on that issue, two people who cite Nicaea may disagree on some other issues related to Jesus' deity, despite their shared affirmation of His status as God. The later popularity of Nicaea's affirmation of Jesus' deity can't be applied to something like a Nicene canon on church government. If you're going to argue that such a canon on church government represents a command of the universal church, then you're going to have to cite some line of evidence other than the later popularity of some other portion of Nicaea. Even Nicaea's teachings on Christology were widely rejected for a while. Among those who accepted Nicaea over the centuries, that acceptance was often limited to some portions of the council, not its entirety. To this day, there are disagreements about which portions of the ecumenical councils are binding. Are you saying that you consider every portion of every ecumenical council binding on all Christians throughout church history? Do you and your denomination follow every canon of Nicaea and every other ecumenical council? No, you don't. If the council itself didn't expect all of its portions to be binding on all Christians at all times, or the later church accepted some portions of the council without accepting all of them, then why are we supposed to believe that acceptance of every portion of the council is something the church is commanding? For an Evangelical, like me, the church isn't Eastern Orthodoxy, so you can't tell me, without further argumentation, that I should accept whichever portions of the councils Eastern Orthodoxy is telling me I should accept.
Among the canons of Nicaea, we find the following:
"Such as have been excommunicated by certain bishops shall not be restored by others, unless the excommunication was the result of pusillanimity, or strife, or some other similar cause. And that this may be duly attended to, there shall be in each year two synods in every province--one before Lent, the other toward autumn." (canon 5)
"Since custom and ancient tradition have prevailed that the Bishop of Aelia [Jerusalem] should be honored, let him (saving the due dignity to the Metropolis [Caesarea Maritima]) have the next place of honor." (canon 7)
"As many as fell without necessity, even if therefore undeserving of indulgence, yet some indulgence shall be shown them and they shall be prostrators for twelve years." (canon 11)
"Concerning catechumens who have lapsed, the Holy and Great Synod has decreed that after they have passed three years as mere hearers, they shall pray with the Catechumens." (canon 14)
"Paulianists must be rebaptized" (canon 19)
"On the Lord's Day and at Pentecost all must pray standing and not kneeling." (canon 20)
Do you believe that all of these affirmations of the Nicene canons are binding on all Christians of all times? Do you believe that the church as a whole after Nicaea always followed all of these standards?
The historian Philip Schaff wrote:
"Oftentimes the popular will decided before the provincial bishops and the clergy assembled and the regular election could be held. Ambrose of Milan and Nectarius of Constantinople were appointed to the bishopric even before they were baptized; the former by the people, the latter by the emperor Theodosius; though in palpable violation of the eightieth apostolic canon and the second Nicene....Constantinople, which was not founded till five years later, is wholly unnoticed in the Nicene council, and Jerusalem is mentioned only under the name of Aelia....the Eastern church entered into a conflict with the Western, which continues to this day. The papal delegates protested against the twenty-eighth canon of the Chalcedonian council, on the spot, in the sixteenth and last session of the council; but in vain, though their protest was admitted to record. They appealed to the sixth canon of the Nicene council, according to the enlarged Latin version, which, in the later addition, 'Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum,' seems to assign the Roman bishop a position above all the patriarchs, and drops Constantinople from notice; whereupon the canon was read to them in its original form from the Greek Acts, without that addition, together with the first three canons of the second ecumenical council with their express acknowledgment of the patriarch of Constantinople in the second rank....After the council [of Chalcedon], the Roman bishop, Leo, himself protested in three letters of the 22d May, 452; the first of which was addressed to the emperor Marcian, the second to the empress Pulcheria, the third to Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople. He expressed his satisfaction with the doctrinal results of the council, but declared the elevation of the bishop of Constantinople to the patriarchal dignity to be a work of pride and ambition—the humble, modest pope!—to be an attack upon the rights of other Eastern metropolitans—the invader of the same rights in Gaul!—especially upon the rights of the Roman see guaranteed by the council of Nice—on the authority of a Roman interpolation—and to be destructive of the peace of the church—which the popes have always sacredly kept! He would hear nothing of political considerations as the source of the authority of his chair, but pointed rather to Divine institution and the primacy of Peter. Leo speaks here with great reverence of the first ecumenical council, under the false impression that that council in its sixth canon acknowledged the primacy of Rome; but with singular indifference of the second ecumenical council, on account of its third canon, which was confirmed at Chalcedon....The authority of these [early ecumenical] councils in the decision of all points of controversy was supreme and final. Their doctrinal decisions were early invested with infallibility; the promises of the Lord respecting the indestructibleness of his church, his own perpetual presence with the ministry, and the guidance of the Spirit of truth, being applied in the full sense to those councils, as representing the whole church....Not so with the rules of discipline prescribed in the canones. These were never considered universally binding, like the symbols of faith; since matters of organization and usage, pertaining rather to the external form of the church, are more or less subject to the vicissitude of time. The fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, which prohibited and declared invalid the transfer of the clergy from one place to another, Gregory Nazianzen, fifty-seven years later (382), reckons among statutes long dead. Gregory himself repeatedly changed his location, and Chrysostom was called from Antioch to Constantinople. Leo I. spoke with strong disrespect of the third canon of the second ecumenical council, for assigning to the bishop of Constantinople the first rank after the bishop of Rome; and for the same reason he protested against the twenty-eighth canon of the fourth ecumenical council. Indeed the Roman church has made no point of adopting all the disciplinary laws enacted by those synods." (sections 49, 56, and 65 here)
Many more examples could be cited. Ecumenical councils have often been widely disputed, and those who accept them often do so only in part. Somebody may accept a doctrinal portion of a council, but not another portion about church discipline, for example.
When deciding what the church is commanding, we have to define the church and discern what's being commanded. Citing a portion of a council that you agree with doesn't prove that the portion of the council in question represents something that my definition of the church has commanded me to do.
You write:
"As important as doctines are, the one holy catholic and apostolic church is primarily God's people, just like Israel was still God's people no matter all the millenia of machinations. The idea that the church must be one as Christ said transcends issues like premillenialism."
Eastern Orthodox don't just make claims about "the idea that the church must be one". They also make claims about other issues. They make claims about the history of doctrine and about church infallibility, for example. The posts I've linked you to, earlier in this thread, argue against such claims that have been made by Eastern Orthodox, like you. If "God's people" during an era of church history didn't believe in the veneration of images, prayers to the deceased, and other concepts associated with Eastern Orthodoxy, why should we think they were Eastern Orthodox? And if "God's people" are wrong on such issues at times, why are we to believe that they were right about ecumenical councils or on other issues where you agree with them?
You write:
"The church never rejected those things even if you can come up with some quotes of some people who did."
Why are we supposed to believe that? I've argued for my position that concepts like the veneration of images and prayers to the deceased were widely rejected early on. I've linked you to some of the relevant material in this blog's archives. Where's your interaction with that sort of evidence?
You write:
"One would follow the tradition and the church as best as one can grasp it given one's circumstances and resources."
Which involves fallible judgments about historical probabilities. You've told us that relying on such judgments is unacceptable, since it doesn't maintain unity within the church. You keep contradicting yourself.
You write:
"Again, you won't tell us how, if we include the Anglicans, we could either (a) not include say.. the baptists and from there, everybody else who wants in, or (b) how a pan-Orthodox-Anglican church would be able to express its infallibility, given that Anglicanism holds doctrines contrary to historic Orthodoxy. If Anglicanism asserts a proposition contrary to a previously agreed tenet of Orthodoxy, then how could we think it part of an infallible church that includes both?"
You don't seem to be giving your responses much thought before posting them. In the comments you're responding to, I referred to "a church similar to what Irenaeus describes". If you think that Irenaeus is so vague as to allow "everybody else who wants in", then you have poor reading comprehension or some other problem that's preventing you from having much of an understanding of what Irenaeus wrote. Irenaeus' concept of the church is vague on some points, but not so vague as to allow "everybody else who wants in". And the contradictions between Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism could be seen as comparable to the disagreements among the churches of Irenaeus' day. Though the churches disagree on some issues, they could be seen as infallible on other issues or as having the potential for exercising infallibility in the future. Both of your objections above have been addressed by my previous comments in this thread. And now I've addressed both issues again. You still haven't justified the idea that Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are the only plausible candidates for church infallibility.
You write:
"Again, proposing alternate theologies that don't work is really not an argument."
You keep making that assertion without explaining how we're supposed to know what "works". It seems that you just assume that an infallible church should have particular attributes, attributes that others dispute and for which you've given us no argument, then claim that any proposed infallible church that doesn't meet your standard of what "works" is unacceptable. Why should we accept your standard?
You write:
"All the church agreed on Nicaea. Protestants don't follow the canons of Nicaea, so protestants are not in the church. But then you say maybe everyone who affirms the Messiah is in the church. See, its contradictory."
I've already addressed your claims about Nicaea. But you're missing the point. Even if Protestants were excluded from a particular definition of an infallible church, it wouldn't follow that the infallible church was Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. I was giving examples of concepts of church infallibility that aren't Catholic or Orthodox. To reply by arguing that one of the examples I gave excludes Protestants doesn't disprove my point that the example isn't Catholic or Orthodox either.
You write:
"Firstly, I hardly think that investigation of the fine points of ecumenical councils goes to the heart of what Orthodoxy teaches the Church to be."
I've been addressing church infallibility. The view that ecumenical councils are fallible isn't an irrelevant or minor "fine point".
You write:
"Secondly, Orthodoxy knows full well that there have been quite a few councils 'formed for the whole Christian world' which turned out to be wrong."
Augustine doesn't just refer to councils "formed for the whole Christian world", as if their intent was to be ecumenical, but they actually weren't. He goes on to refer, in the passage I've cited above, to "the plenary Councils", without the qualification you've quoted. He also says that Christians must submit to those councils, which isn't true of a council that was only intended to be ecumenical, but actually wasn't. Your reading of Augustine isn't suggested by the text or context, and it leads to conclusions that Augustine would be unlikely to have affirmed.
You write:
"No, what I object to is you claim the existence of lower authorities, but you NEVER follow them, even when uncontradicted by a higher authority."
I never obeyed my parents? I never obeyed church leaders, the government, etc.? How could you possibly know that? And without your knowing it, how likely is it on its face? It's not likely. How could I get this far in life, such as having a job and paying bills, if I never submit to authorities below the authority of scripture?
You write:
"What? You claimed his views are different to Orthodoxy, but you didn't prove it, as I showed."
You're still missing the point, even after having been corrected. Go back and read what I said about Hegesippus a third time (or more than a third time). There's a difference between saying that Hegesippus doesn't advocate an Eastern Orthodox view and saying that he contradicts an Eastern Orthodox view. Are you now saying that Hegesippus' comments do lead one to the conclusion that he held the Eastern Orthodox view of church infallibility? If so, then how? Hegesippus doesn't say much about the definition of the church he has in mind, and he refers to the corruption of that church without referring to its infallibility. Would you explain where Hegesippus supposedly leads us to conclude that he held an Eastern Orthodox view of church infallibility? You've now had multiple opportunities to interact with what I said about Hegesippus, and you keep missing the point.
You write:
"If you're going to make a big deal of this you would have to show precisely what that means to him, and then prove that exactly that concept can't be tolerated by Orthodoxy."
I've already corrected you on these points. I didn't cite Hegesippus for "a big deal". To the contrary, I acknowledged, before you even entered this discussion, that sources like Hegesippus don't address the issue to the extent that sources like Irenaeus do. I said that a source like Hegesippus still has some relevance, though. And, again, the issue isn't whether Hegesippus' view can be "tolerated by Orthodoxy". You keep missing the point. Your initial attempt to deny that Hegesippus even refers to a corruption of the church (a position you've since had to abandon) suggests that you initially agreed with me that such a reference to church corruption in Hegesippus would have some significance.
You write:
"I didn't add any qualifications."
When you compare Hegesippus' comments to what an Eastern Orthodox would argue about Roman Catholicism, you're assuming that there's still an uncorrupted, infallible, visible church that remains, despite the "formal schism" (your term) that occurred. You're assuming that Hegesippus meant to refer to some sort of secondary corruption that doesn't touch upon church infallibility and other relevant church attributes that you believe in. Hegesippus doesn't state or imply such qualifications. He might have seen the church as something like ancient Israel, which had no assurance of an infallible visible organization that would continually exist throughout Old Testament history.
You write:
"Only a fool would suggest that disunity suddenly appears like a bolt of lighting. Any Orthodox source refers to the process and long years that led up to and followed 1054."
We had an Eastern Orthodox poster here last year who did argue that there was only one denomination in the first millennium of church history. See here.
I didn't just ask you about "disunity". I asked you about disunity along the lines of what occurred in the eleventh century in the schism between East and West (the parallel you cited when discussing Hegesippus). If you think there was such disunity by the time Hegesippus wrote in the second century, then you're contradicting not only that Eastern Orthodox poster I've cited above, but also many other Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics I've come across over the years. I'm not saying that you're obligated to agree with them on this issue. But I do think it's significant that different high church advocates hold such widely differing views of church history and church unity.
You write:
"Who is the first person to subscribe to a 66 book canon as used by protestants? If you know, I'd like to hear."
I haven't studied the issue much. As I said, my argument in this thread is about the New Testament canon, not the entire canon. But Jerome is the earliest source I know of who agrees with the entirety of the traditional 66-book Protestant canon. He's a fourth-century source, but that's the general timeframe in which the full canonical lists begin to appear. Do you know the first person to advocate your full canon? Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other to this day about the canon, but whatever your canon is, do you know who first advocated it? I doubt that the source is as early or earlier than Jerome. My earliest source probably predates yours. Some Eastern Orthodox agree with the Protestant canon, but my impression from your comments so far is that you don't.
You write:
"_I'm_ drawing the parallel, thankyou very much."
In other words, you're changing the subject. I cited the George Washington example to address infallibility, not earliness. For you to point out that I don't have sources as early for my canon as there are for the authorship of one hypothetical document attributed to Washington is to change the subject in order to make a point of little significance, one that I haven't disputed. If you want a better parallel, compare the earliness of sources for one Biblical document to the earliness of sources for one Washington document. 1 Corinthians, for example, is attributed to Paul by the first-century source Clement of Rome. It took longer for a widespread consensus to arise in the extant sources regarding the canon of all apostolic documents, and I suspect it took longer than the end of the eighteenth century for such a consensus to arise in extant sources regarding the canon of all of the writings of Washington. And, of course, we have better historical evidence in general for eighteenth-century Americans than for ancient Christianity, so we wouldn't expect the two to be comparable in this context.
You write:
"Much as you might like, you can't split up the issues like you want to."
Yes, I can, and I explained how. Your assertion that I can't do it, because doing it supposedly doesn't maintain church unity, is an assertion without a supporting argument.
You write:
"If such and such a church father can't be trusted to accurately pass on the OT canon - a list that was supposedly, according to protestant theory, a fixed canon for hundreds of years even before Christ and supposedly known and enumerated already, then how could they be trusted to know the Christian canon - a list that had not been enumerated, had yet to be authenticated, for which no single source could attest to, and which relies on the subjective issues of inspiration? If you can't pass on the OT list accurately, how could be trusted to get the latter correct?"
Again, I'm addressing one line of evidence for the canon. The testimony of church fathers isn't all that's taken into account.
And people have different levels of knowledge about different subjects. The idea that every source must be equally credible on every subject is simplistic.
If a Jewish canonical consensus conflicts with a patristic source's canon, then a choice has to be made between the two. But if there is no such conflict with the New Testament, then no such choice has to be made. We don't have Jesus and the apostles seeming to accept a New Testament canonical consensus that was later contradicted by the church fathers.
And even as far as the Old Testament conflict is concerned, not all of the fathers contradicted that Jewish consensus or intended to do so. If somebody like Athanasius wrongly includes Baruch with Jeremiah, for example, and the evidence suggests that the two don't belong together, we can agree with his attempt to follow a Jewish rendering of the canon without thinking he was entirely correct in carrying out that attempt.
Patristic views of the Old Testament are far more varied than patristic views of the New Testament. We don't have reasons for rejecting the patristic view of the New Testament comparable to the reasons we have for disagreeing with many of them on the Old Testament. The Old Testament was entrusted to the Jews, and a Jewish canonical consensus wouldn't be only or primarily reflected in the church fathers. We don't expect the fathers to be as relevant to the Old Testament as they are to the New Testament.
And Protestants and others who argue for the 39-book Old Testament canon don't need to hold that there was "a fixed canon for hundreds of years even before Christ". Nor do they have to maintain that the issue of an Old Testament canon was taught by every apostle or apostolic source or was given much emphasis by those who did teach it. Even where a canon was listed by an apostle or apostolic source, the issue of whether that canon was closed may not have been addressed much or at all. No matter what position one takes on the Old Testament canon, the wide variety of patristic views has to be explained, as well as the larger amount of agreement among Jewish sources. Again, we've addressed the Old Testament canon many times in the past, including in response to Eastern Orthodoxy. You can consult the archives if you want.
Your argument that "If you can't pass on the OT list accurately, how could be trusted to get the latter correct" can be applied to other issues as well. Since the fathers disagreed so widely on the Old Testament, why trust them on church infallibility or even the basic outlines of Jesus' life, what the apostles taught, etc.? The reason why historians across the spectrum (atheist, Christian, liberal, moderate, conservative, etc.) trust so much of what the patristic sources report, despite the wide variety of patristic disagreements on some issues, like the Old Testament canon, is because judging when to trust or not trust historical sources isn't as simple as you're suggesting. The credibility of widespread patristic agreement on the New Testament doesn't depend on the credibility of widespread patristic disagreement on the Old Testament. Sometimes sources who are generally credible err. Historians will generally trust a source like Josephus or Tacitus, despite the fact that they sometimes err.
You write:
"If you could find contradictory references to Christmation, we could discuss that, but I don't think you're going to find that so your specific issues in your blog article are not objection here. The earliness of Tertullian and support from other early fathers like Cyril seem to rebut any argument you made about earliness or widespread acceptance. We don't see any disagreements about it, so no problems there. I'm going through your list, and I'm not seeing why you don't accept christmation."
You still aren't citing verifiable sources. Vague references to Tertullian and Cyril aren't enough to establish your original argument. You included sources up to the present day. What chrismation do you have in mind? How widespread is it at the relevant times in history? You made reference to the present day, but if chrismation is rejected by Protestants (depending on what you mean by chrismation), then there are hundreds of millions of professing Christians who reject it today, a number larger than all of Eastern Orthodoxy combined. How important was chrismation to the sources in question? Are they likely to have been as careful about that subject as they were about the New Testament documents? If different sources defined chrismation in different ways, and it wasn't considered a sacrament earlier on in the manner it was considered a sacrament later, what do you make of such differences? Do we have hostile corroboration and internal evidence for chrismation comparable to what we have for the New Testament? Do we have precedent for trusting a consensus about chrismation comparable to the Old Testament precedent we have for trusting a consensus on the New Testament canon? You aren't giving us nearly enough information to conclude that the two beliefs are comparable.
I'm not making up objections to try to dismiss chrismation. The issues I've raised above are ones similar to what advocates of the New Testament canon have had to address. We've defended our view of the canon in depth. Our archives contain many hundreds of pages of relevant material. You can't just make some brief, vague references to chrismation, naming a couple of sources like Tertullian and Cyril without any references, and expect us to think that your view of chrismation is comparable to the New Testament canon.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that chrismation has evidence similar to the canon supporting it. Then those who have rejected chrismation should accept it. That doesn't get us to church infallibility, nor does it get us to Eastern Orthodoxy.
You write:
"No, you've claimed they contradict, but then I showed they didn't."
You addressed Hegesippus and Augustine, and you were wrong about both. You didn't address all of the sources I cited. The article by A.N.S. Lane, for example, discusses many sources you haven't even mentioned yet (Basil of Caesarea, Vincent of Lerins, etc.). Are you saying that you've demonstrated that Lane is wrong about the wide variety of views that have existed regarding the church and tradition? You haven't even come close to demonstrating such a thing.
You write:
"If you want to include Nicea as the historic church, then how many options have you got besides Catholic and Orthodox? Not many."
I've already addressed your claims about Nicaea. But readers should note that Seraphim has now retreated into the position that there "aren't many" options other than Catholicism and Orthodoxy. He may claim that he meant "none" when he said "not many", but why use a phrase like "not many" if you mean "none"? Seraphim, are you now acknowledging that more groups than Catholicism and Orthodoxy are "options"?
You write:
"Well history records bishops from the everywhere attended, apart from Britain."
You offer no documentation, and the fact that a bishop from a region is present doesn't prove that all bishops from that region are present or thought that some other bishop present represented their views. The number of bishops at Nicaea is a disupted issue, and, as Timothy Ware notes in my citation of him above, Eastern Orthodox are in disagreement with each other about just what makes a council ecumenical. Some councils Eastern Orthodoxy considers non-ecumenical were attended by more bishops than attended councils they accept as ecumenical.
Attendance at the council isn't the only relevant issue here. As Athanasius, Jerome, and others tell us, Nicaea was widely rejected for a while, despite its popularity at other times.
The Eastern Orthodox patristic scholar John McGuckin writes:
"The Nicene Creed, the canons, and a synodical letter are all that exist from the council itself, as no acts have survived, and we only have accounts of it from partisans. Athanasius (Ep. Afr. 2) says that 318 bishops were present (a symbol based on Genesis 14.14); modern scholars have revised this to probably between 220 and 250; all except 8 Western delegates were Easterners....Theologically the council proved highly controversial. Although all signed on the day, Constantine himself soon drew back from the homoousion policy he himself had proposed, and many of the bishops demonstrated throughout the remainder of the fourth century a great vacillation in regard to the Nicene doctrine. In many instances the Nicenes were a minority in the East, but were sustained by support from the West, and eventually carried the day at Council of Constantinople I in 381....Nicaea was retrospectively regarded as an 'Ecumenical Council'" (The Westminster Handbook To Patristic Theology [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004], p. 89)
Furthermore, you've cited Nicaea regarding matters other than Christology. I've documented, earlier in this post, that there was widespread rejection of such non-doctrinal portions of Nicaea. It's misleading to cite the fact that Nicaea was a popular council. Different parts of the council have been popular to different degrees and for different reasons.
You write:
"It would narrow it down to the Big 2 though."
There are groups other than Catholicism and Orthodoxy that hold a high view of one or more of the ecumenical councils. And even if there wasn't any such group in existence today, that fact wouldn't prevent us from concluding that the group that held such a view in the past wasn't Catholic or Orthodox. We don't just assume that whatever a group believed about ecumenical councils in the past must be the same as what it believes today. Earlier, you said that an absence or contradiction of an Eastern Orthodox belief, like the veneration of images, wouldn't prove that a group wasn't Eastern Orthodox. You said that we should look beyond such doctrines to define the church. Then how do you know that a belief in a "need" for an ecumenical council (which you still haven't documented) is a defining characteristic of the church of the time of Nicaea? If the patristic Christians sometimes widely agreed with Eastern Orthodoxy and sometimes widely disagreed with Eastern Orthodoxy, on what basis are we to believe that the agreements prove that they were Eastern Orthodox, whereas the disagreements don't prove that they weren't?
You write:
"I would think it would be a lot easier for you to prove one guy with a protestant view than for me to discuss 1000 church fathers."
I didn't make a claim about "one guy with a protestant view". You did make a claim about what all the church fathers allegedly taught. You keep making higher claims about your beliefs than I'm making about mine, yet you expect me to offer documentation on issues that weren't even discussed while you keep failing to document claims you've already made.
I do have some beliefs about the history of Protestant ecclesiology, but I haven't made claims about my views comparable to the claims you've made about yours. You made a claim about what all the fathers taught. Now document it.
You write:
"Why should I care about a bunch of scholastic naval gazing like this article? This is an attempt to make an obscure and unthought of distinction between points of view, and then claim irreconcilable views."
The distinctions weren't "unthought of". Lane refers to many historical sources who discussed such differences in definitions of the church and tradition. If one source claims that all apostolic teaching is contained in scripture and that all apostolic teaching is contained in extra-Biblical tradition at the same time, whereas another source claims that not all apostolic teaching is contained in scripture, that's a contradiction. And, as Lane notes, the content of the church and tradition proposed by different sources varied. I've cited the example of the dispute between Stephen and Cyprian. One held a papal view of ecclesiology. The other held an anti-papal view that Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and other opponents of Roman Catholicism continue to cite to this day. And the two men affirmed contradictory doctrines and contradictory acts of church discipline based on their differing ecclesiologies. If you want us to believe that there were no significant disagreements on ecclesiology or tradition, you'll have to do more than just make a vague reference to Lane's article as "a bunch of scholastic naval gazing".
You write:
"The point is, we can draw a circle around the beliefs of the early church. I think we can draw it a lot tighter than you think, but even where you want to draw it, its not protestant in ecclesiology."
What does it mean to "draw a circle around" some beliefs? Your vague reference to an ability to "draw a circle" isn't a sufficient response to the sort of detailed material I've presented. And, again, I haven't claimed that the patristic Christians were "protestant in ecclesiology". You keep making higher claims than I do, yet you want us to hold you to a lower standard of evidence.
You write:
"I already gave examples from Nicea that don't work in protestantism, and will await a meaningful response."
Nicaea isn't the only example of patristic ecclesiology. The patristic sources advocated a large variety of views of the church. Different Protestants have different ecclesiologies, so different Protestants will agree with a given patristic source to different degrees. But, again, Protestants don't make the same claims about church history, the nature of the church, etc. that you make as an Eastern Orthodox, so our disagreements with the fathers aren't as significant as yours.
You write:
"That's a claim I haven't seen you back up. The statement about bishops who leave the faith really didn't help you at all."
First of all, Irenaeus doesn't just refer to "bishops who leave the faith". He refers to doctrinal and moral standards. Are you saying that every Eastern Orthodox bishop whose alleged succession from the apostles you affirm and depend upon has met such qualifications?
And Irenaeus' comments about the requirements bishops must meet aren't the only relevant issue. I've also cited Eastern Orthodox disagreements with Irenaeus about the importance of the Roman church and other apostolic churches of his day. And Irenaeus advocates premillennialism and other doctrines you don't accept, even claiming at times that such a doctrine comes from apostolic tradition. I've already linked you to articles in which I discuss issues like these in more depth. Even if there weren't such inconsistencies with Eastern Orthodoxy in Irenaeus, we wouldn't have reason to conclude that Irenaeus' church was Eastern Orthodox. He wouldn't have to contradict Eastern Orthodoxy in order to not define his church as Eastern Orthodoxy. If you want us to believe that Irenaeus' church was Eastern Orthodox, then tell us why.
You write:
"You should admit that the Adam analogy doesn't work. Will you concede a point when it is lost?"
As if you've been conceding points that you've lost? I cited the Adam example because you hadn't yet specified why you were objecting to what I said about Papias. Since some high church advocates suggest that the rule of faith should be the same throughout history, even before public revelation had ceased, I cited the Adam example in case you had such a concept in mind. Many Roman Catholics, for example, will cite contradictions of sola scriptura before the apostles had died, or even before Jesus was crucified, as if sola scriptura should be in practice even during times of ongoing revelation. You later argued for a different position, but your initial comments were vague enough to warrant my mentioning of Adam and other such examples.
You write:
"What evidence do you have he was correctly understood?"
The evidence I cited in my last response to you, which you ignored. Go back to that post and reread what I said.
You write:
"You assume that if someone repeats the images of the Apocolype they themselves don't see them as images."
We only have fragments of Papias' writings. Those who possessed more of his writings say that he was a premillennialist. The fragments we have are consistent with that conclusion. And it's unlikely that Papias would comment on "images" in Revelation by discussing other "images" that weren't meant to be taken as references to a premillennial kingdom. Does a person normally interpret Revelation 20 in a non-premillennial way by discussing the millennial kingdom as if it's an actual future millennial kingdom on earth, to the point where other opponents of premillennialism would mistake him for a premillennialist? You're not giving us any reason to think that Papias was misunderstood. The possibility that all of these people who knew more about his eschatology than you do were wrong doesn't suggest that such a conclusion is the more likely one.
You write:
"Do you think claiming to be Jewish is to 'retreat into such unverifiable appeals to the subjective'? That's basically what you're claiming. That the entire history of the OT and NT people may not have anything but an unverifable and subjective link tying together 6000 plus years of history."
How is your view equivalent to "being Jewish"? And where have I said that all we have is "an unverifiable and subjective link"? You're not making sense. I've documented where you appealed to a subjective knowledge of the church. Where have I made a similar claim about "6000 plus years of history"? I haven't. At some points, you accuse me of being a "rationalist", trying to prove something that we can only know subjectively, etc. But now you accuse me of arguing for something "unverifable and subjective". I doubt that anybody understands your argument at this point, even you.
You write:
"Well, the 'Pharasees and other sources' must have been collectively authoritative, if you want to cite them about the canon of scripture."
I've already addressed that issue. Again, the fact that Jesus and the apostles agreed with a Jewish consensus on the canon doesn't suggest that they agreed with other Jewish beliefs. If the Jewish people were "authoritative" in some sense on that issue, what is that supposed to prove against my position?
You write:
"Now if you want to say there is one holy catholic and apostolic church, but its only right about this one issue, then you would still be compelled to join it, but you won't be able to, because it won't let you and your protestant ideas in."
The fact that we only have Divine assurance of a group's correctness on one issue wouldn't lead us to the conclusion that they're wrong on every other issue. And I am part of the visible church. The local congregation I attend isn't invisible. It has physical characteristics, the people who belong to it physically interact with the world, produce statements of faith, engage in visible Christian practices like baptism and the eucharist, etc.
There are multiple ways to define the term "church". In common usage, it can refer to a building, a local assembly, all local assemblies combined, a denomination, or a spiritual entity consisting of all believers, for example. I don't believe that there's been one infallible denomination that's existed throughout church history, always holding and teaching the same beliefs on every issue. But I do believe that there have always been Christians, that they've always had visible manifestations in the world (like the ones referred to above), and that their visible manifestations cross denominational boundaries. A second-century Christian in Greece, a fifteenth-century Roman Catholic Christian in Germany, and a twenty-first-century Baptist Christian in the United States don't agree on all issues of theology, but if they've agreed on a core set of beliefs that define them as Christians, then I would consider all of them to be part of the church in multiple senses (invisible and visible). (See my discussion above regarding how people viewed Stephen and Cyprian as members of one universal church, despite their differing ecclesiologies and their lack of fellowship with each other.) That sort of church is more difficult to trace historically than one infallible denomination (like the one I referred to above) would be, but there is no such infallible denomination. Difficult truth is better than easy error.
You write:
"You are not in the church. Arguing w/ you has no effect on chuch unity."
Then why do your fellow Eastern Orthodox often refer to Protestants as Christians? Are there Christians outside the church? And I didn't just mention Protestants. I also mentioned Roman Catholics. Since Eastern Orthodox often argue with Roman Catholics on the sort of issues you've said we shouldn't argue about, should we conclude that Roman Catholics aren't part of the church either? As my citation of Timothy Ware above illustrates, Eastern Orthodox often argue with each other on such historical issues as well. If you and other Eastern Orthodox argue about such historical issues with Protestants, with Roman Catholics, and with each other, then where's the context in which you supposedly refrain from such argumentation?
You write:
"There's a difference between the internal and external life of the church....Knowing the church is infallible, doesn't mean you can instantly grasp what that means. As I've tried to convey, the word 'infallible' is a rather heavy handed word to use to describe eastern theology to begin with."
Are you saying, then, that Eastern Orthodox shouldn't be asked to go into much detail about church infallibility? Instead, we should expect to only understand the details if we become Eastern Orthodox and receive a subjectively-perceived leading of the Spirit? Are you acknowledging that there is no objective argument for the details of the Eastern Orthodox system of infallibility? If not, then why don't you tell us more specifically where I'm supposedly being too objective? If I'm not being too objective about church infallibility, then where am I being too objective?
Also, would you say that those who have left Eastern Orthodoxy (to become Roman Catholic, Protestant, an atheist, or whatever) would know the details of Eastern Orthodox infallibility, since they once were part of the church? Or are only some Eastern Orthodox led by the Spirit? You're Eastern Orthodox. Why don't you give us the details of what the Spirit has revealed to you? I still don't see why becoming Eastern Orthodox should be necessary for getting more details on infallibility than what you've offered so far. You've been highly vague. Why so, if the Holy Spirit has led you to a more detailed understanding of church infallibility?
You write:
"Well, you brought up Augustine, and we saw that he believed universal councils to be authoritative. Even though we're quibbling about the details, there would be no point in following universal councils if they weren't part of an infallible church. They would be worth little, just like we find protestants treating them now."
Augustine said that ecumenical councils can correct one another. It's not an irrelevant or minor "quibling about the details" to note that his position contradicts yours.
And if there's "no point" in following fallible authorities, then why do you follow parents, governments, and other fallible authorities? Your local church leaders aren't infallible when they deliver a homily or counsel a member of their church on a moral or doctrinal issue. Is there "no point" to such activities, then?
You write:
"We would find Augustine following them when he felt like it, and making no differentiation between the councils of the One church, and the councils of schismatic groups, accepting each as their exegetes were talented."
Where have I said or suggested that conflicting councils would be equally credible? I haven't. You don't need an infallible arbiter to distinguish between the better of two arguments.
You write:
"Quibbling over how an infallible church works does not refute that Augustine believed in one infallible church."
Then we shouldn't distinguish between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, for example? After all, they both claim infallibility. It would be "quibbling" to distinguish between the two in an attempt to determine who, if either, is correct. All that matters is that there's an infallible church in existence, somewhere. Asking for further details, like the ones I've asked for, is "quibbling".
You write:
"So next time you cite some 1st century Jews about the canon, I can say 'so what, people can agree with you for a large variety of reasons, not just divine guidance? You see, you're special pleading. When you see Jesus agreeing with existing people about the canon, it is precedence. When they agree about traditions, then you say it is coincidence."
As Steve Hays noted, the agreement with tradition that you cited (Jesus' agreement with Hillel) is also an agreement with the Old Testament. (I'd add that it's also an agreement with other sources, including non-Jewish ones.) You have no way of showing that Jesus was endorsing some Jewish concept of extra-Biblical tradition comparable to an Eastern Orthodox concept. And inspired tradition from an individual like Hillel wouldn't be equivalent to an infallible Jewish church similar to Eastern Orthodoxy. Even if we were to conclude that there's a precedent for some sort of inspired tradition, I was addressing the concept of an infallible church. You keep confusing categories.
You write:
"Define publically verifiable."
A dream that a person has isn't experienced by other people, for example, and other people have no way of confirming the dream, so it isn't publicly verifiable without any further evidence being added to the equation. Or if an Eastern Orthodox claims to be led by the Spirit to a particular understanding of church infallibility, that claim isn't publicly verifiable, since other people aren't able to verify your claim that the Spirit led you.
In contrast, historical claims regarding what somebody like Augustine taught in a particular document are verifiable by means of historical investigation. The document is available to the public, we can examine how other sources used the language Augustine uses, etc.
You write:
"An Anglican who argued that would be closer to the sphere of belief of Nicea than other protestants. Since you don't appear to be an Anglican, I don't see why you can appeal to them."
You referred to Protestants in general. My church isn't the only church that exists in Protestantism. Therefore, other churches are relevant.
You write:
"Again, if I draw the circle of early church belief, you seem to think that if you can point to one protestant who maybe, possibly is in that circle, it gives you free reign to be outside that circle. I don't understand how that works."
You keep ignoring context and confusing categories. I don't accept your definition of "the circle of early church belief" and its implications. Whether I cite other Protestant groups, like Anglicans or a non-denominational church, depends on the context. If you make claims about Protestantism in general, then a wide variety of groups are relevant. If I'm addressing whether Catholicism and Orthodoxy would be our only options in a particular context, then the existence of a third option is relevant, even if that third option isn't my local church or my denomination. And when I say that there would be more than two options if we were to look for an infallible church, it doesn't therefore follow that I think we should conclude that there's an infallible church. Similarly, the fact that a belief about the church was popular from the fourth century onward, for example, doesn't mean that I have to agree with that belief in order to claim any type of continuity between my church and the Christians of that timeframe. I can believe that those Christians were wrong on that issue, but were Christians anyway. You can believe that there's one church whose members advocate conflicting ecclesiologies, as in my example involving Stephen and Cyprian.
You write:
"Remember, you did say that tradition was authoritative."
Not all tradition, and there are different types of authority. See my comments above on that subject. I also believe that parents, governments, local church leaders, and other entities have fallible authority.
[[If the probabilities of historical investigation are sufficient for such an important theological conclusion, then why should we conclude that they're insufficient for other important theological conclusions?]]
ReplyDeleteAs I said. If we differ about whether Christianity is true, you go your way and I go mine. No problem. But if we agree its true but can't agree on theology, then the church is divided, and instead of being God's people growing in holyness, it will a rabble and debate club, or worse a schism.
And I have no idea if such history is sufficient anyway. The Holy Spirit is involved too. If someone doesn't believe, that's between them and God. But if someone disputes theology, the whole church suffers.
[[It doesn't therefore follow that I consider the historical evidence to be a rule of faith itself. You're, once again, confusing categories.]]
What is a rule of faith? Its an ultimate authority in my understanding. But the ultimate authority for what you say is canon passes via an historical argument in the Church Fathers. At least for us the Fathers are part of the Tradition which is acknowledged to be part of the rule of faith.
But its worse than that, because you have an argument interspersed in between history and your canon. History doesn't provide you a bible, it provides you some data points which you have to assemble an argument. And that argument is therefore elevated above scripture, and becomes a rule of faith.
If I make historical decisions, firstly they are not rules of faith, because they are just my personal analysis. And anyway, the history is part of the Tradition, an acknowledge part of our rule of faith.
[[If the atheist I referred to earlier, who denies Jesus' existence, disagrees with your historical conclusion that Jesus did exist, you don't need an infallible institution accepted by the atheist and you to settle the dispute.]]
You're confusing my personal historical conclusions, with the rule of faith in the church. The infallibility of the institution is the consensus of the individuals, so naturally the conclusion of the individual is an indispensable part of the institution.
But the individual is not called to come to his conclusions _individualistically_. He has to take into account the wider opinion and understanding of the people of God, the history and the tradition of the church.
It's not me versus the institution, its me as part of the body, working as part of the body, not as a severed hand or head.
[[Even when such an infallible arbiter is accepted by both sides of a dispute, that arbiter's existence and actions are historical conclusions that have to be historically perceived and interpreted by the individual.]]
No, because the infallible arbiter is ultimately the Holy Spirit leading his church.
[[I don't believe in the church as you define it. I'm an Evangelical.]]
Right, so you belong to a movement which has no interest in, and no prospect of achieving church unity, even among those you count as brothers. This is the point. You belong to a defeated idea.
[[Eastern Orthodox also disagree among themselves about how to interpret the church fathers, what is church tradition and what isn't, etc.]]
Disagreements in the church are part of the process, both of the individual and the body to find truth. But Orthodox are on a journey to locate the consensus of where the Spirit is leading the church, which is why our theology gains clarity over time. Youre looking at the bark of a tree with a microscope and commenting on how rough it is, but then ignoring the uniformity of the forest.
[[That's not the reason I've given for rejecting your canon.]]
but you haven't explained why you don't use the "precedent" of Jesus to accept our canon. First you point to the precedent, but then you reject the conclusions of mapping the precedent to the current situation. Either the precedent argument works, or it doesn't.
[[The "historical church" I'm agreeing with in this instance isn't your church, I've explained why I agree with this historical church on this issue without having to agree with it on every other issue, and I've cited the precedent of agreeing with the Jewish people of Jesus' day on some issues without agreeing with them about everything]]
Maybe the problem is that you're being extremely vague. First you refer to "the" historic church, as if to admit there was just one. Then you refer to "this" historic church, as if there may be have been a dozen. And you refer to "the Jewish people", as if they were completely uniform. None of this points to a consistent position or vocabulary on what we're talking about.
You agree apparently with us about who the fathers of "the" historic church are, but you don't tell us why you accept our judgement, instead of looking to heretical figures or other cults. You've already decided that the opinions which we have preserved are the ones you will seek solace in. But we made those choices because we believe in one church. Had we not believed in that, we might have had different fathers saying different things with different canons preserving different writings. You're incredibly dependant on the worldview of the church that believed it was one, but you've excised its defining attribute.
[[since I deny that the historical church in question is Eastern Orthodox, what's the relevance of your response?]]
You haven't given us sufficient cause to give any credence to your claim it wasn't Orthodox, or at least you haven't refuted was has been discussed so far. The whole church gathered in Nicea and agreed on canons which Orthodoxy holds to. You don't hold to them, and your whole ecclesiology is incompatible with them. That makes Orthodoxy at least a candidate, and your church a non-starter.
So what's the point continuing witht he discussion of whether they were Eastern Orthodox, when clearly you don't care what they were? They weren't like you, and you don't care.
[[What is "the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church"? If you're referring to something historical, then historical investigation is involved. If you're referring to the sort of subjective experience I discussed earlier, then see my earlier comments about your retreat into the subjective.]]
The definition of "subjective" is to be reliant on an individual's perception. Since the experience of the Church is by definition not individual, it can hardly be subjective.
And again, the problem is not historical investigation, it is _individualistic_ investigation, that pridefully wants to ignore what the Spirit is doing in the Church, instead elevating their scholastic mind to be their God.
[[It makes no sense to fault me for asking for historical evidence for your historical claims about a historical church.]]
I don't recall faulting you for asking for evidence, what I faulted was an over-reliance on a method which is insufficient on many levels.
[[You're relying on historical investigation not only to believe in your concept of the church to begin with, but also to operate within that church. Thus, your objections to historical "cut-off points" and such apply to you as well, not just to me.]]
How so, since my whole point is that I have no cut-off point. My position is founded on my overall view of the church, not by arbitrarily saying that I don't trust the fathers or the church after such and such a date.
[[You relied on historical investigation to justify your belief in Eastern Orthodoxy, and you continue to rely on historical investigation to judge matters within that church.]]
Again, its not an individualistic judgment. If you look at the Fathers, a good portion of their argument about the canon was about what other people were doing. It's not _no_ private judgment, and its not _all_ private judgement. It's both in harmony, neither the group crushing the individual, nor the individual pridefully ignoring the group. Good order requires both in harmony, but protestants don't have it in balance.
[[I wouldn't say that disagreements over the meaning of the Constitution, for example, have "little more significance than an academic dispute".]]
I guess they become an issue when one considers the good of the group. Just like the church, but in the case a country. And the country has its own mechanisms for resolving such disputes, not just letting everyone have their own interpretation.
[[It doesn't therefore follow that these groups will always have unity. The call to unity isn't equivalent to an assurance that unity will always exist.]]
Right, but it is the highest calling to have this unity. When families don't have unity, they are dysfunctional. Protestantism makes that institutionalized. It has no prospects of resolving dysfunction.
[[You've appealed to "the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church", but people can disobey or misinterpret the leading of the Spirit, just as they can disobey what they discover through historical investigation or misinterpret it.]]
Which is why the Church herself needs her shared wisdom about what is or isn't the leading of the spirit, to avoid on one hand excessive credulity, and on the other excessive skepticism. Both things are rampant in protestantism because it lacks and way to judge them.
[[You're changing the subject again. I was addressing whether there's a hierarchy of authorities. You've changed the subject to how I would apply the concept of a hierarchy of authorities to Nicaea.]]
Clearly Orthodox understand hierarchies of authority.
But from your response it appears as if you want to argue that tradition has authority, but not the canons of Nicea.
Yet, Nicea was accepted by all the churches. You haven't claimed the canons were against some higher authority or some abuse of authority. If a council accepted by all the churches for millenia isn't the highest tradition, then what might be a tradition with authority? Your position is just contradictory or else meaningless as far as I see. I picked the tradition with the most widespread possible support, and you rejected it, yet claim tradition as an authority.
[[As Timothy Ware notes, Eastern Orthodox sometimes disagree with each other about matters of church authority]]
Mentioning Timothy Ware does not absolve your contradiction to on one hand claim tradition to have authority, and then to reject the most ecumenical of such authorities. You can't point to Orthodox disputes about difficult cases to absolve your confusion about the most straightforward of cases.
[[The later popularity of Nicaea's affirmation of Jesus' deity can't be applied to something like a Nicene canon on church government.]]
Why? The Nicean canons aren't designed to be "popular", they're designed to be authoritative rules for the order of the church. Since all churches agreed to these canons, they fit any measure of popularity which I am aware of.
[[If you're going to argue that such a canon on church government represents a command of the universal church, then you're going to have to cite some line of evidence other than the later popularity of some other portion of Nicaea.]]
What are you talking about? Ask Rome, ask Constantinople, ask Alexandria, ask Jerusalem. They all accept these canons.
[[Even Nicaea's teachings on Christology were widely rejected for a while.]]
So are you saying that Nicaea's Christological statements are not even tradition now? Is there anything remaining in your idea of tradition?
[[Among those who accepted Nicaea over the centuries, that acceptance was often limited to some portions of the council, not its entirety.]]
Like who?
[[To this day, there are disagreements about which portions of the ecumenical councils are binding. Are you saying that you consider every portion of every ecumenical council binding on all Christians throughout church history?]]
We're not discussing everything right now, we're discussing the canons of Nicaea. Your continual modus operandi seems to be that if you can somehow force a chink of doubt into one obscure corner, then everything is up for grabs. If there is maybe, possibly a slight variation in patristic ecclesiology, then ecclesiology is up for grabs. If there are questions about some councils, all councils must be up for grabs. If there isn't complete absolute uniformity in patristic theology, then we are free to go anywhere we like. If you applied this method to your own position, it would collapse equally as fast.
[[Do you and your denomination follow every canon of Nicaea and every other ecumenical council? No, you don't.]]
All the canons are still in force unless overridden by subsequent ecumenical councils, and if I wanted to knowingly go against one, I would have to get dispensation to do so.
[[Do you believe that all of these affirmations of the Nicene canons are binding on all Christians of all times? ]]
They are binding unless given dispensation by the bishop.
[[Do you believe that the church as a whole after Nicaea always followed all of these standards?]]
The laws as a whole bring good order to the church, whether or not every single rule is always followed. Your argument seems to be, the law against stealing cars hasn't always been followed, therefore you are free to disregard the rule.
[[snip a quote from Schnaff whose purpose is not entirely clear]]
[[The fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, which prohibited and declared invalid the transfer of the clergy from one place to another, Gregory Nazianzen, fifty-seven years later (382), reckons among statutes long dead. Gregory himself repeatedly changed his location, and Chrysostom was called from Antioch to Constantinople.]]
The understanding of the Church of Canon XV is that priests must be ordained to definite parishes, and not be some kind of wandering clergy turning up wherever they want
causing trouble wherever they want. It doesn't prohibit transferring from one parish to another. This understanding I think is backed up by various other synods and canons.
[[Somebody may accept a doctrinal portion of a council, but not another portion about church discipline, for example. ]]
The whole POINT of discipline, is you don't get do decide for yourself. That's called UNdisciplined. And I can assure you that if you get a copy of the Orthodox canons in force, it includes the canons of Nicea.
[[If "God's people" during an era of church history didn't believe in the veneration of images, prayers to the deceased, and other concepts associated with Eastern Orthodoxy, why should we think they were Eastern Orthodox?]]
Assuming that were true, which I may dispute, I could ask you back again what makes you think Anglicans and Baptists are in the same church since they disagree on many things? But your idea of the invisible church can include such disagreements, right? So the visible church can also include disagreements. That seems like an invalid response to me. A valid question you might ask is how you know the church is visible, but we're already discussing that issue.
[[And if "God's people" are wrong on such issues at times, why are we to believe that they were right about ecumenical councils or on other issues where you agree with them?]]
Since there's nothing in evidence that God's people as a collective whole actively rejected these things, that would be a hypothetical.
[[Do you obey that church's rejection of the veneration of images? ]]
A half dozen quotes about images does not constitute an ecumenical consensus. It is always the people against something which are noisier than those in favor. When we consider the dates at which we find positive proof of images, and when we consider the considerable silence between your quotes and then, it hardly seems likely that a consensus in one direction changed so quickly to one in the other direction in such a short period with so little opposition. This mysterious force that you presuppose can change the mind of the world wide church without kerfuffle, simultaneously and globally also seems to have afflicted the Jews at the same time and the same manner since they also were using images.
This is another case where historical presuppositions result in differing interpretation of the data. That won't give you unity.
Your theory this time seems to be that a positive but narrow earlier presentation trumps a later but ecumenical presentation. That ought to mean you go with the earliest canon list rather than the most widespread. However you don't do this. You allowed the consensus to develop before choosing your canon, but you inconsistently won't allow it elsewhere.
[[In the comments you're responding to, I referred to "a church similar to what Irenaeus describes"]]
Irenaeus describes a church which "possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world," (AH I.X) and "those who cleave asunder, and separate the unity of the Church, [shall] receive from God the same punishment as Jeroboam did." (AH IV.XXVI.2)
So the question remains unanswered how a pan-Orthodox-Catholic-Baptist-Anglican church is the church Irenaeus describes.
[[And the contradictions between Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism could be seen as comparable to the disagreements among the churches of Irenaeus' day.]]
Could be seen? You seem to think its valid to trot out every argument under the sun, even if you yourself do not subscribe to it. Why should I discuss options that you yourself would not defend? Are the contradictions comparable to the churches of Irenaeus' day? Are the issues of prayer to saints, veneration of images, and so forth just the minor disagreements of Irenaeus' church? If so, then you are condemned by Irenaeus' condemnation of those who "separate the unity of the church" for unjustified reasons, in separating yourself from unity for such a poor reason. This doesn't actually get you into Irenaeus' church unless you'll cope with icons and prayer to saints in yours.
So is your whole modus operandi here to divide and conquer? To tear down the church of Irenaeus and everyone following so you have freedom to build it in your own image?
[[Though the churches disagree on some issues, they could be seen as infallible on other issues or as having the potential for exercising infallibility in the future.]]
You still haven't begun to tell us how Anglicanism could be seen as infallible in conjunction with Orthodoxy, when Anglicanism rejects things that were already agreed in consensus before the Reformation. If something is clearly agreed, and that is infallible, then how can someone who rejects what is infallible be part of the infallible? Seriously, this proposition just does not compute.
[[It seems that you just assume that an infallible church should have particular attributes, attributes that others dispute ]]
I'm willing to listen to alternative propositions, but not if they are self-contradictory.
[[The view that ecumenical councils are fallible isn't an irrelevant or minor "fine point".]]
But what an ecumenical council IS, is a fine point.
[[He also says that Christians must submit to those councils, which isn't true of a council that was only intended to be ecumenical, but actually wasn't.]]
There's a lot of problems with you trying to be so dogmatic here. Firstly whether Augustine's idea of "correct" refers exclusively to errors, or whether it includes things like the Nicaen-Constantinopolitcan creed "correcting" the Nicaen creed. Secondly, he only says a plenary council corrects another when new facts come to light when previously they were hidden. If they were hidden you could hardly praise a Christian for defying a council for facts that were unknown.
We could propose the following categories of councils:
* Bad - not authoritative.
* Good, but flawed due to lack of full information. Authoritative until more information comes to light.
* Infallible.
Augustine is commenting on the "Good" category. One could categorise councils in many different ways. His categories are not in opposition to ours.
[[I never obeyed my parents? I never obeyed church leaders,]]
The lower authority under discussioin is tradition. You didn't merely claim the existance of lower authorities, but also claimed tradition was one of them. But when we look for a tradition you find authoritative, we can't find one.
[[There's a difference between saying that Hegesippus doesn't advocate an Eastern Orthodox view and saying that he contradicts an Eastern Orthodox view. Are you now saying that Hegesippus' comments do lead one to the conclusion that he held the Eastern Orthodox view of church infallibility?]]
The Patriarch of Constantinople might not lead you to an Orthodox view of infallibility, if he wasn't actually expounding that topic at the time. What is the point? To automatically assume contradiction when you see a crack to force it in? Do you apply the same principle to scripture?
[[Your initial attempt to deny that Hegesippus even refers to a corruption of the church (a position you've since had to abandon) suggests that you initially agreed with me that such a reference to church corruption in Hegesippus would have some significance.]]
That I attacked your interpretation on one front, doesn't mean I cede it on other fronts. Scholars talk about "textual corruption" of the scriptures. Would you therefore cede that the scriptures are "corrupt"? If I quoted a whole bunch of Evangelical scholars talking about textual corruption, would you therefore need to cede that the scriptures are corrupt? Could you deny the scriptures are corrupt on one hand, and yet deny that evangelical scholars talking about textual corruption aren't actually that relevant to the issue?
[[When you compare Hegesippus' comments to what an Eastern Orthodox would argue about Roman Catholicism, you're assuming that there's still an uncorrupted, infallible, visible church that remains, despite the "formal schism" (your term) that occurred.]]
You're equivocating around the terms. The church can be corrupted in one sense, and uncorrupt in other senses. It can be infallible, and yet contain corrupt elements.
[[You're assuming that Hegesippus meant to refer to some sort of secondary corruption that doesn't touch upon church infallibility and other relevant church attributes that you believe in.]]
And you assume that one scripture doesn't contradict another. Seems like a reasonable starting point to me, even if the specific evidence doesn't exist.
[[We had an Eastern Orthodox poster here last year who did argue that there was only one denomination in the first millennium of church history. See here.]]
What's that got to do with having a growing point of contention? I wouldn't accuse a Baptist denomination of not being one denomination just because of some simmering issues.
[[If you think there was such disunity by the time Hegesippus wrote in the second century, then you're contradicting not only that Eastern Orthodox poster I've cited above, but also many other Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics I've come across over the years.]]
How so? The disunity of the Arian period was extremely bad, and doctrinally even worse than the 1054 issues. But on that occasion the issues were resolved eventually. if you want to call that multiple denominations, I'm hardly going to spend lots of time arguing about definitions, but they still saw themselves as one church who needed to resolve the issue, and that is what they did.
[[But Jerome is the earliest source I know of who agrees with the entirety of the traditional 66-book Protestant canon.]]
Yes, probably Jerome. Yet his translation would not become popular for hundreds of years, and his opinions about the canon were rejected at the time. Not the most auspicious witness for the common belief of the time period.
[[Do you know the first person to advocate your full canon?]]
Not really, but then my rule of faith doesn't depend so heavily on my own abilities to be winding back the clock to undo what happened in intervening millenia. it would be like a Jew in Jesus' time questioning the current canon with arguments about what was going on in Moses' time.
[[In other words, you're changing the subject. I cited the George Washington example to address infallibility, not earliness.]]
I don't think its changing the subject to observe that on a pure historical basis, there might be good reason why people would know something in the same century that wouldn't apply later on. Washington was around 200 years ago, we've still got 200 more to make it comparable to Jerome. In 200 years time would you have particular reason for assuming that the common belief that he wrote a particular document to be any more accurate than the common belief that he was unanimously elected by the electoral college? Even though neither was documented (hypothetically) by people in the same century that he lived? To accept one and not the other would be inconsistency. To accept both without evidence contemporary with the events requires faith added to history.
[[And, of course, we have better historical evidence in general for eighteenth-century Americans than for ancient Christianity, so we wouldn't expect the two to be comparable in this context.]]
And they're not comparable. But your rule of faith requires you to approach them the same.
[[And people have different levels of knowledge about different subjects. The idea that every source must be equally credible on every subject is simplistic.]]
It's 400 AD before you can find someone who definitely attests your exact 39 book OT canon! This is not a scenario where on a pure historical basis you can tell that the chain of custody is inviolate. This is called assuming church infallibility.
[[But if there is no such conflict with the New Testament, then no such choice has to be made. ]]
But there are conflicts with the New testament, even into the 2nd millenium.
[[not all of the fathers contradicted that Jewish consensus or intended to do so.]]
Assuming you know their intention, and assuming there actually was a Jewish consensus, which doesn't seem to be the case, the fathers are one of the primary witnesses to the Jews. If the fathers thought they were following them, but you disagree with their list, then either there wasn't a consensus or they were extremely poor in transmitting such lists, neither of which give the pure historical method comfort.
[[If somebody like Athanasius wrongly includes Baruch with Jeremiah, for example, and the evidence suggests that the two don't belong together]]
Don't belong together? The Jews have a long history of including books together that "don't belong". That's why they had a 22 book canon.
[[Patristic views of the Old Testament are far more varied than patristic views of the New Testament.]]
More varied? From memory, Chrysostom's canon lacked 8 books, or 30%. There were 14 "apocryphal" books in the KJV, or 26%.
[[The Old Testament was entrusted to the Jews, and a Jewish canonical consensus wouldn't be only or primarily reflected in the church fathers.]]
Why? The Church inherited pre-existing scriptures, presumably with apostolic sanction AS WELL AS pre-existing Jewish sanction. again, if they couldn't pass on something all laid out neat and tidy from the beginning, why trust them to assemble a list from all over the empire? The church was a world wide witness to these things, with tangible continuity to the apostles. The Jews by contrast were less organised, less cohesive and in disarray after AD 70.
[[And Protestants and others who argue for the 39-book Old Testament canon don't need to hold that there was "a fixed canon for hundreds of years even before Christ".]]
Then how are you going to quote anybody as a good witness if the canon wasn't settled?
[[Nor do they have to maintain that the issue of an Old Testament canon was taught by every apostle or apostolic source or was given much emphasis by those who did teach it. . Even where a canon was listed by an apostle or apostolic source, the issue of whether that canon was closed may not have been addressed much or at all.]]
If the apostles weren't all assuming a closed and settled OT canon, then why are you trying to convince me that the Jews were entrusted with a settled OT canon? You are saying you know better than the apostles?
So maybe the various apostles had different books in their personal lists? That's ok with me, but it would lead to a superset of lists being authoritative. That would certainly fit the facts if they had differing canons.
[[Since the fathers disagreed so widely on the Old Testament, why trust them on church infallibility or even the basic outlines of Jesus' life, what the apostles taught, etc.?]]
The basic outline of Jesus life? Either you toss out the religion in its entirety, or... you accept the basics which lead inevitably to the consistency of accepting everything. Either Jesus sent his Holy Spirit leading the Church into all truth, or else there is no certain truth to be found.
[[Vague references to Tertullian and Cyril aren't enough to establish your original argument.]]
Sorry if I assumed you were familiar with these things...
Tertullian (De Bapt., vi) "After having come out of the laver, we are anointed thoroughly with a blessed oil according to the ancient rule .. . The oil runs bodily over us, but profits spiritually . . . . Next to this, the hand is laid upon us through the blessing, calling upon and inviting the Holy Spirit"
(De resurr, carnis, n, 8): "The flesh is washed that the soul may be made stainless. The flesh is anointed that the soul may be consecrated. The flesh is sealed that the soul may be fortified. The flesh is overshadowed by the imposition of hands that the soul may be illuminated by the Spirit. The flesh is fed by the Body and Blood of Christ that the soul may be fattened of God."
Adv. Marcion., i, n. 14): "But He [Christ], indeed even at the present time, neither rejected the water of the Creator with which He washes clean His own, nor the oil with which He anoints His own; . . . nor the bread with which He makes present His own very body, needing even in His own sacraments the beggarly elements of the Creator," Tertullian also tells how the devil, imitating the rites of Christian initiation, sprinkles some and signs them as his soldiers on the forehead". [Ed: chrismation is done by a cross on the forehead]
Cyprian: "Two sacraments preside over the perfect birth of a Christian, the one regenerating the man, which is baptism, the other communicating to him the Holy Spirit" (Epist. lxxii).
"Anointed also must he be who is baptized, in order that having received the chrism, that is the oil, he may be anointed of God" (Epist. lxx). "It was not fitting that [the Samaritans] should be baptized again, but only what was wanting, that was done by Peter and John; that prayer being made for them and hands imposed, the Holy Ghost should be invoked and poured forth upon them. Which also is now done among us; so that they who are baptized in the Church are presented to the bishops of the Church, and by our prayer and imposition of hands, they receive the Holy Ghost and are perfected with the seal of the Lord" (Epist. lxxiii).
Pope St. Cornelius complains that Novatus, after having been baptized on his sickbed, "did not receive the other things which ought to be partaken of according to the rule of the Church--to be sealed, that is, by the bishop and not having received this, how did he receive the Holy Ghost?" (Eusebius, H.E., vi, xliii).
St. Hilary speaks of "the sacraments of baptism and of the Spirit"; and he says that "the favor and gift of the Holy Spirit were, when the work of the Law ceased, to be given by the imposition of hands and prayer" (In Matt., c. iv, c. xiv).
St. Cyril of Jerusalem: "To you also after you had come up from the pool of the sacred streams, was given the chrism [unction], the emblem of that wherewith Christ was anointed; and this is the Holy Ghost. . . This holy ointment is no longer plain ointment nor so as to say common, after the invocation, but Christ's gift; and by the presence of His Godhead, it causes in us the Holy Ghost. This symbolically anoints thy forehead, and thy other senses; and the body indeed is anointed with visible ointment, but the soul is sanctified by the Holy and life-giving Spirit ... To you not in figure but in truth, because ye were in truth anointed by the Spirit" (Cat. Myst., iii)
St. Ephraem Syrus speaks of "the Sacraments of Chrism and Baptism" (Serm. xxvii); "oil also for a most sweet unguent, wherewith they who already have been initiated by baptism are sealed, and put on the armour of the Holy Spirit"
he writer of the "De Sacramentis" (Inter Op. Ambros., lib. III, c. ii, n. 8) says that after the baptismal immersion "the spiritual seal follows . . . when at the invocation of the bishop the Holy Ghost is infused".
The Council of Elvira decreed that those who had been baptized privately in case of necessity should afterwards be taken to the bishop "to be made perfect by the imposition of hands" (can. xxxviii, Labbe, I, 974).
the Council of Laodicea: "Those who have been converted from the heresies . . . are not to be received before they anathematize every heresy . . . and then after that, those who were called faithful among them, having learned the creeds of the faith, and having been anointed with the holy chrism, shall so communicate of the holy mystery" (can. vii). "Those who are enlightened must after baptism be anointed with the heavenly chrism, and be partakers of the kingdom of Christ" (can. xlviii, Labbe, I, col. 1497).
The Council of Constantinople (381): "We receive the Arians, and Macedonians . . . upon their giving in written statements and anathematizing every heresy . . . . Having first sealed them with the holy ointment upon the forehead, and eyes, and nostrils, and mouth, and ears, and sealing them we say, 'The seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost"' (can. vii, Labbe, II, col. 952).
" For when presbyters baptize, whether with or without the presence of the bishop, they may anoint the baptized with chrism, provided it be previously consecrated by a bishop, " - ( Pope Innocent I to Decentius)
Saint Leo in his fourth sermon on Christ's Nativity says to the faithful: "Having been regenerated by water and the Holy Ghost, you have received the chrism of salvation and the seal of eternal life" (chrisma salutis et signaculum vitae æternæ, -- P. L., LIV, col. 207).
Theodoret: "Bring to thy recollection the holy rite of initiation, in which they who are perfected after the renunciation of the tyrant and the acknowledgment of the King, receive as a kind of royal seal the chrism of the spiritual unction (sphragida tina basiliken . . . tou pneumatikou myron to chrisma) as made partakers in that typical ointment of the invisible grace of the Holy Spirit" (P.G., LXXXI, 60).
[[then there are hundreds of millions of professing Christians who reject it today]]
The point is what?
[[How important was chrismation to the sources in question?]]
Extremely important if you read these quotes.
[[Are they likely to have been as careful about that subject as they were about the New Testament documents?]]
More careful, I would imagine.
[[If different sources defined chrismation in different ways, and it wasn't considered a sacrament earlier on in the manner it was considered a sacrament later, what do you make of such differences?]]
Since Orthodoxy considers every physical activity to be a sacrament, that question is rather a non-sequitur. But since Cypran and Tertullian call it a sacrament, and church fathers don't come much earlier, your question is doubly moot.
[[Do we have hostile corroboration and internal evidence for chrismation comparable to what we have for the New Testament?]]
What hostile corroboration? Internal evidence? One might say that anointing with oil and laying on of hands has the internal evidence that it is very consistent with what we find in the NT apostolic practice.
[[Do we have precedent for trusting a consensus about chrismation comparable to the Old Testament precedent we have for trusting a consensus on the New Testament canon?]]
How many years did Abraham's decendents circumcise before it was codified in scripture?
[[Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that chrismation has evidence similar to the canon supporting it. Then those who have rejected chrismation should accept it. That doesn't get us to church infallibility, nor does it get us to Eastern Orthodoxy.]]
If extra-scriptural practices are authoritative, it implies an oral or extra-scriptural tradition. As far as I see, this implies a Church which is entrusted with passing it down. How many churches have passed it down? Just one that I know of. And when you add the data about Chrismation to the fathers' explanation of how tradition works, it certainly becomes clear.
[[You didn't address all of the sources I cited. The article by A.N.S. Lane, for example, discusses many sources you haven't even mentioned yet (Basil of Caesarea, Vincent of Lerins, etc.)]]
I might note that Lane contradicts you in saying that Irenaeus' view of apostolic succession and tradition is not purely historical. You want to make out as if it was.
Again, as I already said, arguing about supplementary vs coincidence views is to overlay categories onto the fathers that they themselves were not addressing. This is like trying to make scripture speak on issues it is not addresssing, which is a practice disdained by many protestants.
If Vincent mentions something about sufficiency, does he have in mind arguments about material sufficiency which would take place a millenium later? Are we really to believe Vincent rejected extra-scriptural practices like Chrismation that were universally practiced by the Catholic church he so eagerly defends? When Basil spoke of tradition having equal force, did he really have in mind debates about partum partum? These debates have never even been raised in the Orthodox church. This is a bit like arguing that Paul's conception of the trinity differs from John's conception of the trinity. Since neither address the topic of the trinity directly, that kind of discussion is highly speculative.
And again, if you could find some slight difference between Vincent and Basil to try and drive a wedge into, does that make everything up for grabs? They both believe in a kind of infallible church and you do not.
[[Seraphim, are you now acknowledging that more groups than Catholicism and Orthodoxy are "options"?]]
You apparently start from the position that everything is an option. I'm trying to narrow your focus, not expand my own.
[[the fact that a bishop from a region is present doesn't prove that all bishops from that region are present or thought that some other bishop present represented their views.]]
Are you working up to a Baptist "trail of blood" theory, where the true church is squirrelled away in some unchartered corner? But then why quote the prominent church fathers?
[[Eastern Orthodox are in disagreement with each other about just what makes a council ecumenical.]]
Nobody, Eastern Orthodox or otherwise, was in dispute that NICEA was ecumenical.
Again, you seem to think that if you find a gnat, you can kill the camel. But you won't acknowledge you have been travelling on the very same camel.
[[Some councils Eastern Orthodoxy considers non-ecumenical were attended by more bishops than attended councils they accept as ecumenical.]]
Then its lucky that number of bishops is not a criterion for us.
[[There are groups other than Catholicism and Orthodoxy that hold a high view of one or more of the ecumenical councils. ]]
And you apparently are not one of them. How is it that pointing to differences among people who agree on something, lets you off the hook from all responsibility? That kind of argument would absolve you from following scripture.
[[Then how do you know that a belief in a "need" for an ecumenical council is a defining characteristic of the church of the time of Nicaea?]]
The "need" for councils is documented by their existence from Acts to the present day, and everywhere in between. The universal acceptance of Nicea documents that it was a univerally accepted proposition. Again, if universally accepted propositions are not tradition, then what is? You claim traditions are authoritative, but reject them all.
[[If the patristic Christians sometimes widely agreed with Eastern Orthodoxy and sometimes widely disagreed with Eastern Orthodoxy, on what basis are we to believe that the agreements prove that they were Eastern Orthodox, whereas the disagreements don't prove that they weren't?]]
Firstly, because Eastern Orthodoxy agrees with the patristic christians when they very clearly speak with one voice, and that voice was clearly accepted by the church. This is most clearly exemplified in the ecumenical councils. Secondly, because of the precedence of the apostles. They established the church, and it remained the church even when they wrote them letters to correct them or rebuke them of error. Thus the existence of the church has precedence over doctrinal disputes. Thirdly, because there is such a thing as some doctrines being more important. The existance of one catholic church is more important and more significant in the fathers than the other issues you mention. Fourthly, because even if I accepted the protestant argument on the issues you mention, I find the overall flavor of Eastern Orthodoxy to be much more in keeping with the Fathers than any other group you might care to name.
[[I've cited the example of the dispute between Stephen and Cyprian.]]
You haven't explained what significance I should see in this dispute. Greek Orthodox can simultaneously consider the Patriarch of Constantinople to be the head of their church, and yet applaud Monks of Mt Athos who defy him. Orthodoxy doesn't have a problem holding such tensions.
[[One held a papal view of ecclesiology.]]
I hope you're not overlaying a 20th century view of the papacy onto Stephen. That would not help your case in debates with Catholics, now would it?
[[What does it mean to "draw a circle around" some beliefs? Your vague reference to an ability to "draw a circle" isn't a sufficient response to the sort of detailed material I've presented.]]
You don't know what that means? It means that what you believe is outside the pale of orthodoxy. That orthodoxy might not be precisely defined to the nth degree, does not mean that you can claim to be within it.
[[And, again, I haven't claimed that the patristic Christians were "protestant in ecclesiology". ]]
But you claimed that tradition has authority. If all the patristic Christians had at least a common ground in their ecclesiology, which you reject, then you are contradicting yourself.
[[Are you saying that every Eastern Orthodox bishop whose alleged succession from the apostles you affirm and depend upon has met such qualifications?]]
Irenaeus says that it behooves us to learn the truth from those who (a) possess that succession of the Church which is from the apostles and (b) sound and blameless in conduct and speech.
I agree. You wouldn't advocate learning the truth from those without moral and doctrinal standards do you? Irenaeus sounds very biblical to me. Are you saying that because someone might be secretly immoral, that I should ignore moral standards? Are you saying that because I could be fooled about the second requirement I should ignore the first? What is your point?
[[I've also cited Eastern Orthodox disagreements with Irenaeus about the importance of the Roman church and other apostolic churches of his day.]]
I'm not sure disagreement you think you have. We hold in high regard the importance of the apostolic churches.
[[Does a person normally interpret Revelation 20 in a non-premillennial way by discussing the millennial kingdom as if it's an actual future millennial kingdom on earth, to the point where other opponents of premillennialism would mistake him for a premillennialist?]]
In the 20th century protestant church? Yes and no. You can find a-millenialists referring to "the millenial kingdom". But I don't want to overlay an anachronistic assumption onto the fathers. Ironically, you're making the same assumption about the fathers that you accuse pre-millenialists of making about the Apocolypse.
[[How is your view equivalent to "being Jewish"?]]
How is not equivilent? Both are visible peoples of God entered into by sacrament.
[[And where have I said that all we have is "an unverifiable and subjective link"?]]
You claim that my appeals to the historical and objective succession in the church is merely an "unverifiable appeal". You disavow knowledge of an objective succession in the church that makes the church's location objectively verifiable today. How is this not obviously like claiming there was never an objective Jewish people?
[[If the Jewish people were "authoritative" in some sense on that issue, what is that supposed to prove against my position?]]
It proves the canon is to be located with an objectively visible and particular and distinguishable people. If that's true, you have to prove why your group is it, as opposed to other groups who aren't on an objective basis.
[[but if they've agreed on a core set of beliefs that define them as Christians, then I would consider all of them to be part of the church in multiple senses]]
What is your list of core beliefs?
[[Then why do your fellow Eastern Orthodox often refer to Protestants as Christians? ]]
We often refer to protestant "churches" too, but I wouldn't draw too much theology from that.
[[Eastern Orthodox often argue with each other on such historical issues as well.]]
Significant arguments usually end up in resolution. In that case the argument is a means to an end, because we argue with the attitude of looking for the Orthodox consensus.
[[Instead, we should expect to only understand the details if we become Eastern Orthodox and receive a subjectively-perceived leading of the Spirit?]]
I didn't say that. What I said was that Orthodoxy is not understood with the heavy hand of western scholasticism.
[[Are you acknowledging that there is no objective argument for the details of the Eastern Orthodox system of infallibility?]]
I don't recall saying anything even close to that. Trying to pin down exactly how it works is where you are doomed to fail?
What if I asked you to pin down the criteria for canon? A cut off date in universal acceptance in the chuch? Doesn't work. Written by an apostle? Doesn't work. Any objective criteria you might like to come up with does not yield your 27 book canon. All that yields it is a consensus in the ongoing life of the church. That's it. That's your infallibility for you. Trying to slice and dice it like Lane does is as fruitless here as it is in determining the canon.
[[Where have I said or suggested that conflicting councils would be equally credible?]]
I didn't say equally credible. I said they would be as credible as their exegetes were talented. But that's not what we find in Augustine. Its the councils of the catholic church which are credible, not those with the supposedly best argument.
[[Then we shouldn't distinguish between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, for example]]
The time for quibbling would be when you've acknowledged there is an infallible church. Then we can quibble about which one Augustine believed in. But if you don't believe there is any infallible church, because you are so focused on the gnats on the camel, then you are quibbling.
[[As Steve Hays noted, the agreement with tradition that you cited (Jesus' agreement with Hillel) is also an agreement with the Old Testament.]]
Its a much more general agreement than the quote I gave. That's like saying that Jesus' quote of Isaiah or something is really only a rehash of Deuteronomy, so we can draw no conclusions about Isaiah.
[[And inspired tradition from an individual like Hillel wouldn't be equivalent to an infallible Jewish church similar to Eastern Orthodoxy.]]
You haven't shown why not.
[[Even if we were to conclude that there's a precedent for some sort of inspired tradition, I was addressing the concept of an infallible church. You keep confusing categories.]]
That's because Orthodox do not compartmentalize these things, because they do not readily yield to compartmentalization. If there are inspired traditions, the only way to find them is via the custodians of the divine traditions. That's really all there is to the infallible church anyway.
[[If you make claims about Protestantism in general, then a wide variety of groups are relevant. ]]
Am I supposed to refute hundreds of different protestant views? Are you spokesman for them all? This is going to take a long time. It would be a lot easier if you would support one view and stick with it. There's a lot that could be said about Anglicanism, but since you don't accept Anglicanism, what's the point? I asked you how you could resolve the differences between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy in your hypothetical pan-Anglo-Ortho church, but you had no answer.
[["Remember, you did say that tradition was authoritative."
Not all tradition]]
Then WHAT tradition? Tell us one of these authoritative traditions.
Seraphim keeps changing his arguments, and he often applies standards to his opponents that he doesn’t apply to himself. He doesn’t even attempt to provide supporting argumentation for the majority of his dubious assertions.
ReplyDeleteI doubt that anybody, including Seraphim, can make sense of all of his vague and seemingly contradictory assertions about when it’s acceptable to use historical argumentation and when it isn’t. In his latest post, he summarizes his position:
“If we differ about whether Christianity is true, you go your way and I go mine. No problem. But if we agree its true but can't agree on theology, then the church is divided, and instead of being God's people growing in holyness, it will a rabble and debate club, or worse a schism. And I have no idea if such history is sufficient anyway. The Holy Spirit is involved too. If someone doesn't believe, that's between them and God. But if someone disputes theology, the whole church suffers.”
But the conclusions one reaches on the way to becoming Eastern Orthodox are theological (Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, His founding of a church, etc.). If we can arrive at such theological conclusions through historical investigation prior to becoming Eastern Orthodox, why does it become unacceptable to use historical investigation to arrive at theological conclusions thereafter? Elsewhere, Seraphim acknowledges that Eastern Orthodox do disagree with each other over theology, and he’s referred to historical investigation as a means of discerning what the church has believed.
Either Seraphim’s positions keep changing from post to post or he’s a poor communicator, if not both. But what his latest comments seem to be suggesting is that if there’s a theological consensus among Eastern Orthodox, then that consensus is infallible and should be accepted as such rather than disputed with appeals to historical evidence.
But I’m not Eastern Orthodox. Seraphim’s earlier objections to my use of historical argumentation can’t be explained by the principle that Eastern Orthodox should accept any theological consensus achieved among them.
And even among Eastern Orthodox, any consensus of belief would be perceived by means of historical investigation. As my recent citation of Timothy Ware illustrates, Eastern Orthodox disagree with one another on some theological issues, and they appeal to historical argumentation to perceive what other Eastern Orthodox have believed and to argue for one position against another. To say that Eastern Orthodox would cease appealing to historical evidence if that evidence led them to conclude that there’s a consensus on an issue is an insufficient response. Nobody has denied that we should cease our attempt to reach an objective through historical argumentation when the objective of that argumentation has been achieved. But whether a consensus of Eastern Orthodoxy should be our objective is itself an issue in dispute in the context of this thread. And what Protestant would argue that once we arrive at an objective of historical argumentation, such as a canon of scripture, then we shouldn’t follow that canon, but instead should keep engaging in historical argumentation in an attempt to arrive at a canon? Just as Eastern Orthodox will follow what they perceive to be a theological consensus among them, Protestants will follow what they perceive to be the canon of scripture. But both groups rely on and engage in historical argumentation in the process of arriving at their objective and in reevaluating and defending their conclusion after they reach it.
Seraphim continues to make claims about unity, but he hasn’t interacted with the evidence I’ve cited that the apostolic standard for unity is different from his (Philippians 4:2-3, etc.). The fact that Eastern Orthodox agree on some issues and are classified as one group doesn’t prove that they have unity by apostolic standards. There are many disagreements, disputes, and organizational separations within the group of churches classified as Eastern Orthodoxy.
In his latest post, Seraphim makes the ridiculous claim that having unity is “the highest calling”. Will Eastern Orthodoxy abandon its disagreements with Roman Catholicism in order to have unity, then? Why not also abandon the belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the belief that He rose from the dead, etc. in order to have even more unity with even more people?
Seraphim also claims that Protestants aren’t even interested in unity, a claim he couldn’t know to be true and doesn’t even attempt to document. But when Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other, he tells us that “Orthodox are on a journey to locate the consensus of where the Spirit is leading the church”. Protestant disagreements are unacceptable, but the “journey” of Eastern Orthodox, which also involves many disagreements, is acceptable. Later in his post, he tells us:
“Greek Orthodox can simultaneously consider the Patriarch of Constantinople to be the head of their church, and yet applaud Monks of Mt Athos who defy him. Orthodoxy doesn't have a problem holding such tensions.”
He criticizes Protestant disagreements and claims that there never will be any resolution of such differences, yet he allows for “tensions” in Eastern Orthodoxy and tells us to wait as Eastern Orthodox “journey” toward more unity in the future.
Seraphim claims that “history is part of the Tradition”. But historical conclusions about church history involve manuscripts, archeology, the writings of non-Christians who commented on Christianity, the writings of church fathers who sometimes contradicted Eastern Orthodoxy, and other sources that can’t be classified as Eastern Orthodox. Why are we supposed to believe that history is part of Eastern Orthodox Tradition? The fact that Eastern Orthodox Tradition involves historical claims or is passed on historically, for example, doesn’t prove that historical evidence considered as a category is Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Seraphim keeps confusing categories.
Concerning the canons of ecumenical councils, he tells us that “All the canons are still in force unless overridden by subsequent ecumenical councils…They are binding unless given dispensation by the bishop.” He makes no attempt to argue for that standard. He makes no effort to document that the canons of Nicaea that I asked him about are no longer applicable because of some later ruling of an ecumenical council or because of a “dispensation by the bishop”. What sources like Gregory Nazianzen and Leo I said about the canons of ecumenical councils (as discussed in my last post) isn’t the same as what Seraphim is saying. They rejected canons of ecumenical councils, and they didn’t do so under the conditions Seraphim is asserting (without supporting argumentation).
He’s ignored most of the evidence I cited for widespread patristic rejection of Eastern Orthodox beliefs. But he did comment on one of the issues, the veneration of images. On that subject, he writes:
“A half dozen quotes about images does not constitute an ecumenical consensus. It is always the people against something which are noisier than those in favor. When we consider the dates at which we find positive proof of images, and when we consider the considerable silence between your quotes and then, it hardly seems likely that a consensus in one direction changed so quickly to one in the other direction in such a short period with so little opposition. This mysterious force that you presuppose can change the mind of the world wide church without kerfuffle, simultaneously and globally also seems to have afflicted the Jews at the same time and the same manner since they also were using images.”
Have I only cited “a half dozen quotes”? No. Does Seraphim offer any supporting argumentation for his claim that “It is always the people against something which are noisier than those in favor”? No. Does he address the sources who continued to oppose the veneration of images in later centuries, such as Eusebius of Caesarea and Epiphanius? No. And he doesn’t even understand the issue under dispute, since he confuses the use of images with their veneration. That’s reminiscent of his confusion of my comments on the New Testament canon with the entire canon, as if I was including the Old Testament. Why does Seraphim so often fail to even understand what issue is being discussed? What does that suggest about how careful he’s been in thinking about these issues and commenting on them?
Among many other misrepresentations of what I’ve said about the canon, Seraphim comments that “It's 400 AD before you can find someone who definitely attests your exact 39 book OT canon!” But I was addressing his question about a source for my entire canon, not just the Old Testament. Earlier Jewish sources are relevant to the Old Testament, but not the entirety of my canon. And a conclusion doesn’t have to be “definite” in order to be probable.
I had commented that the church fathers’ views of the Old Testament canon were more varied than their views of the New Testament canon. Seraphim responded:
“From memory, Chrysostom's canon lacked 8 books, or 30%. There were 14 ‘apocryphal’ books in the KJV, or 26%.”
Why should anybody trust Seraphim’s memory of such facts? And why is John Chrysostom being singled out? Why is his “lack” of books, whatever that means, being compared to the presence of books in a Bible translation more than a thousand years later? What does the King James Version of the Bible have to do with patristic beliefs? And how would inclusion of books in a Bible prove a belief in their canonicity? Bibles frequently contain material that their publishers or owners don’t consider scripture (introductions, maps, etc.). I own a Bible with Apocryphal books in it. That doesn’t tell you what my canon is. Why is it that Seraphim so often posts comments like these that make so little sense?
Seraphim often commits multiple errors within a single sentence, and it would require far more hours than I’m willing to spend to correct him on every point where he errs. Readers who are interested in more information on the topics Seraphim has brought up can consult the archives to see if we have any relevant information there. We’ve discussed the canon in many previous threads, for example, including lengthy discussions of the evidence for individual books. Regarding chrismation, another issue Seraphim has brought up, I’d recommend seeing the section on anointing in Everett Ferguson’s Encyclopedia Of Early Christianity (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999).
The readers should keep in mind where this thread started and where it’s gone. I was comparing one line of evidence for the Protestant New Testament canon to one line of evidence for an infallible church. I noted that there have been many differing and contradictory definitions of concepts like the church and extra-Biblical tradition. I noted that just as Protestants are expected to defend a specific 27-book canon, advocates of an infallible church should be expected to defend a specific infallible church. Seraphim’s response has been to bring up a lot of other issues, act as if this one line of evidence for the Protestant New Testament canon is the only argument for that canon, and appeal to a vague concept of an infallible church while objecting to requests for more specificity. We’re told that it’s “quibbling”, “scholastic naval gazing”, etc. to differentiate between different definitions of an infallible church.
What if we were to apply the same sort of reasoning to the canon? Documents like 2 Peter and Polycarp’s Letter To The Philippians refer to New Testament books as scripture. Thus, the earliest Christians, as reflected in such sources, had some sort of New Testament canon. Since we’re told that it’s “quibbling”, “scholastic naval gazing”, etc. to ask for more specificity about an infallible church, then surely it would be “quibbling”, “scholastic naval gazing”, etc. to ask for more specificity about the canon. As long as sources like Peter and Polycarp believed in a canon of some type, I can cite them without being more specific.
But, of course, critics of Protestantism don’t allow for that sort of vagueness. They want a defense of the specific 27-book New Testament canon. Shouldn’t we expect the same from advocates of an infallible church? Seraphim has had many opportunities to demonstrate that his specific Eastern Orthodox concept of an infallible church has had a level of acceptance sufficient to make it comparable to the consensus on the 27-book New Testament canon. He’s repeatedly failed to do so. He can’t do it, and he knows that he can’t do it.
Since Seraphim keeps misunderstanding or misrepresenting the topics that are being discussed, I’ll remind him, again, of one of the points I made at the beginning of this thread. A historical consensus on the existence of an infallible church wouldn’t allow us to follow a specific infallible church, just as a historical consensus on the existence of a New Testament canon wouldn’t allow us to follow a specific canon. But while the vast majority of professing Christians have agreed on a specific 27-book New Testament canon, there hasn’t been anything close to that level of agreement on a specific infallible church. Seraphim’s concept of an infallible church, Eastern Orthodoxy, is a minority position among professing Christians today, and he hasn’t shown that it had anything close to the support in antiquity that the 27-book canon had.
You continue to twist and outright misrepresent what I have said, and I shall demonstrate such. If you have integrity, you ought to admit to it.
ReplyDelete[[ If we can arrive at such theological conclusions through historical investigation prior to becoming Eastern Orthodox, why does it become unacceptable to use historical investigation to arrive at theological conclusions thereafter?]]
Misrepresentation #1. I never said it is unacceptable to use historical investigation to arrive at theological conclusions. What I said is that there is another authority IN the church that is higher than historical investigation. Just like you could do some archeology, but presumably would not come to conclusions contrary to the bible, even if a secular examination of the evidence might lead you there, there is a higher and further principle inside the church.
And I suspect you would be completely hypocritical when faced with a similar situation in your church. If your pastor came to the historical conclusion that David and Solomon were non-existent fictional characters based on historical investigation, would you let them stay? Would you let them preach unitarianism because of an honest investigation and conclusion that this is the historic teaching? I think not. Issues of church unity and rules of faith in the church trump individual historical investigation. The WCF trumps individual historical investigation in presbyterian churches. That doesn't mean you disavow historical investigation, and neither does it for me.
[[But I’m not Eastern Orthodox. Seraphim’s earlier objections to my use of historical argumentation can’t be explained by the principle that Eastern Orthodox should accept any theological consensus achieved among them.]]
If you wish to claim freedom to contradict scripture based on historical investigation, then we can see if you are hypocritical.
[[he hasn’t interacted with the evidence I’ve cited that the apostolic standard for unity is different from his (Philippians 4:2-3, etc.).]]
Since Philippians 4:2-3 says absolutely nothing about the "standard for unity" in the church, what is there to address?
[[The fact that Eastern Orthodox agree on some issues and are classified as one group doesn’t prove that they have unity by apostolic standards.]]
really? Then what alternative standard do you propose? There's no point throwing stones at our house, when your house is razed to the ground. I believe that all the [orthodox] Churches are sound in doctrine. You believe that other churches than your own are not sound in doctrine. I would join any Orthodox church without any doctrinal qualms. You would not consider joining any and every protestant church because of doctrinal problems. Yet you would still allow them to be churches regardless that they have no intention of repenting.
[[In his latest post, Seraphim makes the ridiculous claim that having unity is “the highest calling”. Will Eastern Orthodoxy abandon its disagreements with Roman Catholicism in order to have unity, then?]]
Misrepresentation #2. We already have unity. We don't need to add Rome to have unity. Unity is the calling within the church, not between everybody whatsoever.
[[Seraphim also claims that Protestants aren’t even interested in unity, a claim he couldn’t know to be true and doesn’t even attempt to document.]]
How many church councils were there in the last ten years between baptists, pentacostals, presbyterians and Lutherans to make a serious attempt to resolve their doctrinal differences? None.
[[But when Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other, he tells us that “Orthodox are on a journey to locate the consensus of where the Spirit is leading the church”.]]
But we are already one. We don't shun one church or another because of doctrine. That makes our disagreements minor, when yours are not. Pointing to a gnat on our camel when your camel is dead and rotting on the ground is not a sound argument.
[[The fact that Eastern Orthodox Tradition involves historical claims or is passed on historically, for example, doesn’t prove that historical evidence considered as a category is Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Seraphim keeps confusing categories.]]
You'd be straining at gnats to locate the differences for the purposes of this discussion. The writings of the fathers and the history of the church is part of the tradition. The history of the NASA space program is not part of the tradition, but neither is it relevant.
[[He makes no attempt to argue for that standard.]]
Misrepresentation #3. YOU are the one who claimed tradition is an authority. To prove a point I brought up a tradition which had universal acceptance. You rejected it. You made no attempt to explain to us why a universal tradition was not authoritative, and it if it wasn't authoritative, what possible tradition could then be authoritative. Anyone paying attention here can see how you've tried to distract attention away from your silence and inconsistency.
[[He makes no effort to document that the canons of Nicaea that I asked him about are no longer applicable because of some later ruling of an ecumenical council or because of a “dispensation by the bishop”.]]
Misrepresentation #4. I said they ARE still applicable, so I am hardly going to document that they are not applicable.
[[What sources like Gregory Nazianzen and Leo I said about the canons of ecumenical councils (as discussed in my last post) isn’t the same as what Seraphim is saying. They rejected canons of ecumenical councils]]
You provided no quote from Nazianzen. You provided Schnaff's analysis that Nazianzen felt that Canon was not being applied. But I explained to you that the Church does not understand the canon the way you do. You can look up the officially published canons by St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain to verify this, where he cross references it to other ancient canons and commentary. That Schnaff doesn't understand this, or even if perhaps Nazianzen didn't understand the canon, is neither here nor there.
[[Have I only cited “a half dozen quotes”? No. ]]
No? Since you didn't directly link to ANY articles with quotes I am forced to search back, and I found around that number give or take one or two. Have you documented a count of how many quotes you have? No.
[[Does Seraphim offer any supporting argumentation for his claim that “It is always the people against something which are noisier than those in favor”? No.]]
A lot of the church fathers is written against heretics. Take a look through the titles sometime.
[[Does he address the sources who continued to oppose the veneration of images in later centuries, such as Eusebius of Caesarea and Epiphanius? No.]]
Misrepresentation #5. I addressed it by saying that the quotes of some does not prove an ecumenical consensus. Since I never claimed absolute uniformity in the fathers, did you explain why I should care about Eusebius? No.
[[And he doesn’t even understand the issue under dispute, since he confuses the use of images with their veneration.]]
Since all I could find in my searching was quotes about images in general, rather than veneration, what choice did I have? Maybe if you want to make a big deal about what you wrote previously, you ought to link to the specific article directly. Now where are your links about veneration?
[[That’s reminiscent of his confusion of my comments on the New Testament canon with the entire canon, as if I was including the Old Testament.]]
Misrepresentation #6. Just because you made comments about the NT canon does not mean I cannot make a point about the whole canon, nor does it mean I am "confused".
[[Among many other misrepresentations of what I’ve said about the canon, Seraphim comments that “It's 400 AD before you can find someone who definitely attests your exact 39 book OT canon!” But I was addressing his question about a source for my entire canon, not just the Old Testament. ]]
Misrepresentation #7. Just because you said something about the whole canon, doesn't mean I can't say something about the OT canon. Do you really think you have the right to control the whole thread of argument? I think you'll find Jerome is the first witness to the exact 39 book OT canon. If you want to dispute this, be my guest.
[[Why should anybody trust Seraphim’s memory of such facts? ]]
Why should anyone trust your claim that the church fathers’ views of the Old Testament canon were more varied than their views of the New Testament canon???? Perhaps I should be enumerating instances of hypocrisy as well as misrepresentation.
According to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha
Chrysostom's canon had 22 books, so it lacked 19%. Only slightly less variation than the OT, and hardly enough for you to make a point.
[[What does the King James Version of the Bible have to do with patristic beliefs? ]]
Misrepresentation #8. I never said it had anything to do with it. The point is that the books so-called apocrypha in the KJV is what protestants usually considered disputed books with Rome. Actually I was being generous to you since I think it includes some books that Rome doesn't include either. What other standard am I supposed to use to evaluate your vague and unsubstantiated claim about variations in the OT canon? I could compare the Orthodox canon, but then I could add in other disputed NT contenders too. You made a vague and unsupportable statement and are now blaming me for the consequences.
[[And how would inclusion of books in a Bible prove a belief in their canonicity? ]]
Misrepresentation #9. I never said they did.
[[What if we were to apply the same sort of reasoning to the canon? Documents like 2 Peter and Polycarp’s Letter To The Philippians refer to New Testament books as scripture. Thus, the earliest Christians, as reflected in such sources, had some sort of New Testament canon.]]
Some sort of canon? How is it that the clarity with which the Fathers attest to One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church with infallibility is slain by quibbles about gnats, but your scriptures are unassailed even when we find you have to resort to calling it merely some sort of canon?
Not to mention you haven't actually responded to the my refutation of your attempt to drive a wedge between the fathers.
[[As long as sources like Peter and Polycarp believed in a canon of some type, I can cite them without being more specific.]]
Sure, and that makes you inconsistent.
[[They want a defense of the specific 27-book New Testament canon. Shouldn’t we expect the same from advocates of an infallible church?]]
Except we are content to allow both canon and church to clarify itself over time. You can't allow canon disputes to drag on into the 5th, 6th and 7th and 10th centuries, because there is no historical credibility of analysis that late. Yet you need to ride that camel anyway, because that's how it panned out. But you won't let other issues go the same way. That's called inconsistency.
[[Seraphim has had many opportunities to demonstrate that his specific Eastern Orthodox concept of an infallible church has had a level of acceptance sufficient to make it comparable to the consensus on the 27-book New Testament canon. He’s repeatedly failed to do so. He can’t do it, and he knows that he can’t do it.]]
You've already conceded the early church believed in infallibility. That line of attack has been lost to you already. Your attempt was to prove they believed in different forms of infallibility. Despite the hypocrisy (with your "some" kind of canon), and despite my actively refuting the details of this attempt, you carry on as if nothing happened. That's called being willfully ignorant. Oh, and claiming I know the opposite is Misrepresentation #10.
[[But while the vast majority of professing Christians have agreed on a specific 27-book New Testament canon, there hasn’t been anything close to that level of agreement on a specific infallible church.]]
Wrong again!! The acceptance of a 27 book New Testament canon is actually historically less than the agreement of one infallible church. The Syrians held to Chrysostom's canon in the Peshitta whilst agreeing there is one holy catholic and apostolic church.
Does the protestant revolt undo that agreement? Then I guess the Mormons have undone the agreement of a New Testament canon.
Seraphim said:
ReplyDelete“I never said it is unacceptable to use historical investigation to arrive at theological conclusions. What I said is that there is another authority IN the church that is higher than historical investigation.”
You keep changing your arguments, and much of what you write is vague or doesn’t make sense. Earlier in the thread, you made comments such as the following:
“I'm guided by the church about those things, because those are theological questions, not questions that are solved by pure historical investigation”
I had been asking you about issues like the existence of a church and the authenticating of documents attributed to church fathers. Such issues were the “those things” you were addressing. Your response, quoted above, doesn’t even make sense. How could you be “guided by the church” to reach the conclusion that there is a church? And where has your concept of the church, Eastern Orthodoxy, told you which documents attributed to the church fathers are authentic, what the correct text of those documents is, etc.? Those are issues that scholars sometimes disagree about, they’re issues that no ecumenical council has ruled upon, and they’re issues that most Eastern Orthodox aren’t familiar with. It’s not as if the average Eastern Orthodox layman in Russia, for example, is aware of textual and authorship questions related to a document attributed to Cyprian, for instance, and has reached a consensus view on the subject with his fellow Eastern Orthodox around the world. How does “the church” guide you on such issues?
One of your earliest comments in this thread was:
“if the protetant canon has support in the fathers, and 5 other things also have support, who's going to make the ruling that X% support is the cut off? you?”
You were objecting to cut-off points in general, as if making individual judgments on such an issue is unreliable. Yet, historical investigation involves such individual judgments about cut-off points. Before you become Eastern Orthodox, in the process of engaging in historical investigation, you have to decide which historical sources are credible, how one source’s credibility compares to another, etc., and cut-off points are involved in that process. You don’t assume that a twenty-first-century Israelite is just as relevant to the historical question of Jesus’ existence as a first-century Israelite. In the process of a historical investigation that leads you to Eastern Orthodoxy, you would make judgments about historical cut-off points. Yet, earlier in this thread you made comments like what I’ve quoted above, as if we can’t make reliable judgments about such cut-off points.
You also wrote:
“I'm saying you have no basis for knowing what to accept and reject. You have no divinely mandated cut off point”
But those engaging in the same sort of historical investigation prior to becoming Eastern Orthodox would also have to make judgments about what to accept and reject without “Divinely-mandated cut-off points”. You can’t have Eastern Orthodoxy telling you what historical sources to agree with and what to reject in the historical record if you aren’t yet Eastern Orthodox. If historical cut-off points have to be “Divinely-mandated”, then how did you engage in historical investigation prior to becoming Eastern Orthodox?
You also wrote, earlier in this thread:
“Historical argumentation might get you INTO the church, but it is no sound foundation for RUNNING a church for the reason already given, that it is subjective. Whether God wants to reveal to you the historical truth of Christ and his church is between you and God. But for running a church its no good everybody spending all their time arguing about historical nuances. God wants a relationship with his church, not an academic academy trying to pin down the right doctrines, with no closure in sight.”
You dismiss historical investigation as “subjective” and as “no sound foundation for running a church”.
You’ve frequently made comments like what I’ve quoted above, and you keep adding qualifiers that you didn’t even suggest earlier. You keep reinventing yourself, and you object if I don’t anticipate how you’ll change your argument in your next post or don’t anticipate some qualification you had in mind that you didn’t mention. You don’t seem to have thought about these issues in enough depth, and you’re a poor communicator.
You’re being inconsistent by applying a different standard to Protestants than you do to Eastern Orthodox. Just as you say that historical investigation can lead a person to the authority of the Eastern Orthodox church and to conclusions about the content of its rule of faith, Protestants would say that their historical investigation leads them to the authority of scripture and interpretations of scripture. If you’re going to distinguish between your means of arriving at your rule of faith and the rule of faith itself, you ought to do the same with Protestants. The fact that Protestants arrive at scripture by means of historical investigation, or oppose Eastern Orthodoxy by means of historical argumentation, doesn’t prove that historical investigation is their rule of faith. You’re applying some erroneous reasoning to Protestants that you don’t apply to Eastern Orthodox.
You write:
“If your pastor came to the historical conclusion that David and Solomon were non-existent fictional characters based on historical investigation, would you let them stay? Would you let them preach unitarianism because of an honest investigation and conclusion that this is the historic teaching? I think not. Issues of church unity and rules of faith in the church trump individual historical investigation.”
If your response to the question of whether I would do such a thing is that you “think not”, then why did you say, earlier in the thread, that my rule of faith is historical investigation? Earlier, you tried to distinguish between your view on this subject and mine. Now you’re claiming that I shouldn’t criticize you, since we hold the same view. Which is it?
And the examples you’ve cited above are irrelevant to what we’ve been discussing. The reason I would object to a pastor teaching things like what you’ve described above is that I think the evidence supports conclusions different from his. I don’t decide, apart from a consideration of the evidence (historical and other types of evidence), that particular conclusions must be reached on such issues. A Protestant who believes that the evidence supports the Bible, as I do, doesn’t have to cite a commitment to the Bible that isn’t concerned with evidence as his reason for disagreeing with those who contradict the Bible.
Earlier, you said that it’s acceptable for historical investigation to lead one to become Eastern Orthodox. If somebody follows the Eastern Orthodox rule of faith as a result of evidence, and another person later challenges his conclusions about that evidence, then he can’t reject that person’s challenge on the basis that it contradicts his rule of faith. His commitment to the rule of faith depends on the validity of the interpretation of the evidence that’s being challenged. Similarly, if an Eastern Orthodox concludes that the Orthodox rule of faith doesn’t require that an Orthodox believe in the sinlessness of Mary, but another Orthodox challenges that conclusion by offering historical evidence that the sinlessness of Mary is part of the faith, then the first person can’t reject the challenge of the second person on the basis that the challenge is contradicting the Eastern Orthodox faith. Whether the sinlessness of Mary actually is part of the faith is the issue under dispute.
If a Protestant rejects unitarianism because he thinks the Bible teaches Trinitarianism, he can do so as a result of evidence for the Bible and for Trinitarianism’s Biblical nature. He isn’t opposing unitarianism without any concern about the evidence relevant to the issue. Rather, he’s opposing it because of the evidence. And if historical evidence or some other type of evidence leads a person to a conclusion about the authority of the Bible and how to interpret the Bible, it doesn’t therefore follow that historical evidence is the person’s rule of faith. Just as you claim to use such evidence as a tool to identify and interpret the Eastern Orthodox rule of faith, a Protestant would claim to use the same tool to identify and interpret his rule of faith. Why, then, did you previously attempt to distinguish between the two, as if I was arguing that historical evidence should be the rule of faith, whereas you were just using historical evidence as a tool?
You write:
“Since Philippians 4:2-3 says absolutely nothing about the ‘standard for unity’ in the church, what is there to address?”
Paul is addressing the Philippian church in that letter, and he comments on a dispute between two women within that church. He calls them to live in unity, and he doesn’t suggest that they only have to follow this standard of unity when they’re outside the church. Similarly, Paul refers to disunity in the church of Corinth. Paul didn’t think it was sufficient for the Corinthians to belong to an apostolic church or to be organizationally united. He called for a higher standard of unity. And when professing Christians committed particular sins or advocated erroneous doctrines of a significant enough nature, Paul called for disunity, as we see in 1 Corinthians 5 and Galatians 1. Church unity involves more than what you can claim Eastern Orthodoxy possesses. Just as Protestantism falls short of Biblical unity, so does Eastern Orthodoxy. The fact that you’re united on some points doesn’t change the fact that you’re not united on others. The apostles called for a unity that involves more than the attributes you want to focus on.
You write:
“There's no point throwing stones at our house, when your house is razed to the ground.”
Who brought up the issue of unity? Who claimed that unity is “the highest calling”? Who offered an erroneous definition of unity and tried to resist having Biblical standards of unity, such as Philippians 4, applied to his ecclesiology? You did. If either of us began throwing stones, it was you, not me. I then responded to what you had said. I’m not making claims about unity comparable to yours. I didn’t start this discussion of unity. You did. And I’ve been more responsible in defining what unity we should look for and in evaluating what sort of unity the relevant groups have.
And what is “my house”? Protestantism is a movement, not a church. Similarly, Eastern Orthodox could be classified as part of the larger movement of Eastern Christianity or Christianity in general. Since such movements involve many disagreements, disputes, and organizational disunity, should we refer to such movements as “your house” and as being “razed to the ground”? The fact that I can be classified as a member of the movement of Protestantism doesn’t prove that the entire movement is a church and that I’m responsible for what every other member of that movement does. Everybody belongs to various groups or movements (the West, the nation of Japan, the state of New York, Hispanics, capitalists, theists, Christians, Hindus, etc.). We have different degrees of responsibility for the behavior of different members of different groups. A Caucasian American father is more responsible for the behavior of his son than he is for the behavior of other Caucasians and other Americans. And he’s not as responsible for the behavior of his nephew as he is for that of his son. How responsible am I for the misbehavior of a liberal Presbyterian? I belong to multiple groups as a Christian: the Christian church defined as a spiritual entity consisting of all believers, the Christian church defined as all local Christian churches collectively, a local Evangelical Free church, all Evangelical Free churches considered as a group, Western Christianity, Evangelicalism, Protestantism, etc. My relationships and responsibilities vary from one context to another.
Distinctions like these ought to be taken into account. You should specify what sort of unity you’re discussing, what groups you’re comparing, and why you’re comparing those groups. So far, you’ve been far too vague. What sort of unity advantage does Eastern Orthodoxy supposedly have? What type of unity? In comparison to what? Why that comparison instead of another?
You write:
“You would not consider joining any and every protestant church because of doctrinal problems.”
And you wouldn’t consider joining any and every Eastern church, for example, because of doctrinal problems. Not every Eastern church is Eastern Orthodox.
If you only classify a church as Eastern Orthodox if they meet your doctrinal standards, why should we be impressed that you’re in doctrinal agreement with other Eastern Orthodox? I only consider a church Christian if it holds particular beliefs, such as monotheism, the deity of Christ, and the resurrection. Thus, I agree on the essential issues with every church I consider Christian. I disagree with some of them on other matters, but you likewise disagree with other Eastern Orthodox on some doctrines you consider non-essential.
And what’s the relevance of my interest in joining “any and every Protestant church”? I wouldn’t need to be willing to join “any and every Protestant church” in order to have unity with other people and with other churches.
Earlier, you were vague, surely on purpose, in responding to what I asked you about the status of Protestants and Roman Catholics under your ecclesiology. Do you believe that all Protestants are non-Christians, spiritually dead, unsaved, or whatever term you want to apply? Or may a Protestant be a Christian? What about Roman Catholics? And Roman Catholic churches? Don’t just answer these questions for yourself. Also give us documentation of where Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole has answered these questions.
If you’re unwilling to join “any and every Protestant church” or every Roman Catholic church, yet you consider at least some Protestants or Catholics or some of their churches Christian, then you believe that you can have some unity with such groups while having some disunity with them at the same time.
Similarly, though you may agree with an Eastern Orthodox church in Russia about many doctrines, there are other doctrines that church’s leaders may hold that you don’t agree with, doctrines about which there’s been no consensus reached in Eastern Orthodoxy. In the archives of this blog, we’ve documented many examples of disagreements among Eastern Orthodox. There’s a lot of liberalism within Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, such as political liberalism (supporting legalized abortion, etc.) and theological liberalism (belief in evolution, rejection of the traditional authorship attributions of the Biblical books, rejection of Biblical inerrancy, etc.). If you’re willing to overlook some disagreements in order to claim unity on the basis of agreement on other issues, why should we think that your standard of unity is the correct one? Why should we think that the issues Eastern Orthodox agree about are the only areas where they need to agree?
You write:
“Yet you would still allow them to be churches regardless that they have no intention of repenting.”
If I consider a church Christian, then I think it’s correct on enough issues to be classified as Christian. If I’m unwilling to join that church under current circumstances, that’s because a better alternative is available. Why join a church I agree with on 90% of the issues in question if I can join another that I agree with 100%? It doesn’t therefore follow that I would never join the 90% church under any circumstances. For example, I disagree with infant baptism. But I don’t consider a church non-Christian just because it practices infant baptism. I would prefer to be part of a credobaptist church, but it doesn’t therefore follow that I’d never join a paedobaptist church under any circumstances or that I don’t have some level of unity with such churches while attending a credobaptist church.
You write:
“We already have unity.”
Not by apostolic standards.
You write:
“We don't need to add Rome to have unity.”
But adding Rome would involve more people in unity. Why not abandon your Eastern Orthodox beliefs and become Roman Catholic, then? Or why not give up Eastern Orthodox beliefs about the virgin birth and the resurrection, for example, in order to have unity with any atheists, agnostics, liberal theists, or other skeptics of such doctrines who attend Eastern Orthodox churches and consider themselves Eastern Orthodox? Because you think that unity isn’t the most important issue. You aren’t willing to abandon such beliefs in order to attain more unity.
You write:
“How many church councils were there in the last ten years between baptists, pentacostals, presbyterians and Lutherans to make a serious attempt to resolve their doctrinal differences? None.”
Why should we think that a church council in the timeframe of ten years is the standard by which we should judge such issues? Has Eastern Orthodoxy held any church councils in the last ten years to resolve its members’ disagreements about the canon of scripture, eschatology, Biblical inerrancy, creation and evolution, etc.? When the Christians of the patristic era disagreed about the veneration of images, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and other doctrines that Eastern Orthodoxy accepts today, did they hold councils at least every ten years in an attempt to settle the disputes? No. When Epiphanius wrote about his opposition to the veneration of images, he didn’t comment on the need to hold a council within ten years to settle the issue. When Basil of Caesarea commented that many Christians of his day rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary, though he himself believed in it, he didn’t go on to say that a council would be needed within ten years to settle the issue or that councils had been held on that issue every ten years prior to his time.
Church councils aren’t the only means of settling disputes. And both sides of a dispute have to make judgments about the willingness of the other side to reconsider its views, how important achieving unity on that issue is in comparison to other work that could be done, etc. If you don’t think somebody who disagrees with you is willing to reasonably consider your arguments at this point in time, for example, why hold a council with them? The fact that people don’t hold councils at least every ten years doesn’t prove that they have no interest in resolving disputes, much less does it prove that they have no interest in any type of unity. The conservative members of the groups you’ve referred to above (Baptists, Pentecostals, etc.) agree on many issues. They already have some unity, despite their lack of unity on other points.
You write:
“The writings of the fathers and the history of the church is part of the tradition.”
Where has Eastern Orthodoxy taught that? I want documentation, not just your say-so.
Epiphanius’ letter written in opposition to the veneration of images is part of “the writings of the fathers”. Melito of Sardis’ comments about his non-Eastern-Orthodox Old Testament canon are part of “the writings of the fathers”. Origen’s treatise on prayer, in which he contradicts the Eastern Orthodox view of prayer, is part of “the writings of the fathers”. The papal claims of Roman bishops, like Leo I, are part of “the writings of the fathers”. Etc. Why should we think that writings that sometimes contradict Eastern Orthodoxy are part of Eastern Orthodox Tradition? Is archeology, which gives us some of our information about church history, part of Eastern Orthodox Tradition? Is the manuscript record, including manuscripts from unknown or non-Eastern-Orthodox sources and manuscripts that contradict each other, part of Eastern Orthodox Tradition? You aren’t justifying your claim that church history is Eastern Orthodox Tradition. You’re just repeating the claim without any supporting argumentation.
You write:
“To prove a point I brought up a tradition which had universal acceptance.”
You aren’t paying attention to the context of what you’re responding to. You quoted my response to your explanation for why you don’t have to follow some of the canons of ecumenical councils. You said that “All the canons are still in force unless overridden by subsequent ecumenical councils…They are binding unless given dispensation by the bishop.” I replied by saying that you haven’t even attempted to argue for that standard. Now you’re replying by referring, without explanation, to “a tradition which had universal acceptance”. Whether your standard for rejecting canons of ecumenical councils is “a tradition which had universal acceptance” is under dispute. You can’t just assert that it’s a universal tradition without offering evidence to that end.
I suspect that you’re confusing categories again. You quoted something I said, but then forgot about the context, or had never paid much attention to the context in the first place, so you responded to my comment by addressing some other topic. Apparently, what you’re referring to as a universal tradition is something other than what I was commenting on.
Maybe you’re referring to a universal acceptance of Nicaea, for example. I don’t know. If so, then my earlier comments on that subject apply. As I’ve documented, Nicaea was widely rejected for a while, even its Christology. Athanasius went so far as to comment that the Arians were in possession of the churches, and Jerome referred to the whole world as Arian. As Philip Schaff noted in my earlier citation of him, men like Gregory Nazianzen would accept a portion of Nicaea while rejecting another portion as inapplicable. As I explained earlier, and you only interacted with a portion of what I said, Nicaea has been accepted to different degrees by different sources. I’ve asked you for documentation that the portions of the council you’ve cited, regarding church government, have been universally accepted and are applicable to me. You’ve failed to provide such documentation. Instead, you keep repeating your unargued assertion about universal acceptance. Earlier, you cited the number of bishops who attended Nicaea. After I told you that the number of bishops at the council is disputed, that the bishops who attended weren’t as representative of the world as you had suggested, and that some non-ecumenical councils had higher attendance numbers than ecumenical councils, you continued making your assertion about universal acceptance without any justification. You didn’t document your claim to begin with, and you failed to interact with multiple lines of evidence I cited against your claim.
Or are you referring to the alleged universal tradition of chrismation? If so, then you were addressing a subject that I wasn’t discussing in the context of what you quoted from my post. Why would you change the subject like that without any explanation of what you’re doing? If you had chrismation in mind, then did you consult the article I cited on the subject in my last post? Are you saying that your citation of several sources proves a universal tradition of chrismation, even though you told me that a citation of several sources against the veneration of images wouldn’t be enough? Are you claiming that all of the sources you cited, as well as all other Christians (universally), held the same view of chrismation and considered the practice mandatory? We know that the portions of Nicaea on church government that you cited earlier, as if they were universal commandments, were viewed by some ancient sources as temporary measures that weren’t meant to apply to everybody. The fact that a source believed in some sort of chrismation doesn’t prove that it’s the same form of chrismation that other sources refer to and was considered something all Christians must practice. Again, did you read the article I referenced in my last post?
You write:
“You made no attempt to explain to us why a universal tradition was not authoritative, and it if it wasn't authoritative, what possible tradition could then be authoritative.”
As I told you earlier, there are different types of tradition and different types of authority. Protestants follow a lot of extra-Biblical traditions, and those traditions don’t have to be universal in order to be acceptable. When a Protestant obeys his church regarding what time they’ll hold Sunday services, who will serve in church offices, how the church will celebrate Christian holidays, etc., those are traditions that are followed that don’t need to be universal in order for it to be acceptable to follow them. Or when a Protestant accepts patristic testimony on a subject, such as Peter’s presence in Rome, that patristic tradition doesn’t have to be universal in order to carry some authority as evidence on the subject of whether Peter went to Rome.
And whether a tradition is universal depends on what sources are being considered. As I told you earlier, you can’t just ignore the fact that hundreds of millions of professing Christians in Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, or some other group outside of Eastern Orthodoxy disagree with Eastern Orthodoxy on an issue. If you want to claim that something was universally accepted in the past, the fact that it isn’t universally accepted today would have to be taken into account if you’re making assertions about the authority of the Christian church. The church still exists. Just as a parent has authority, but can contradict himself, or a government can be inconsistent on an issue, so also something widely held by Christians in one generation can be less widely held or widely rejected in another generation. The veneration of images was widely rejected before it was widely accepted. The same is true of prayers to the dead, for example. Arianism was widely accepted for a while, despite having been widely rejected at other times.
Since I don’t believe that every consensus of Christian belief is sure to be correct, the fact that something was widely agreed upon in the past isn’t equivalent in my mind to something that the church is commanding me to do today. And as I told you before, if I were to conclude that a relevant authority (the local church or the universal church, for example) was commanding me to do something like chrismation, and the practice would be consistent with Divine revelation, I could obey that command without believing in an infallible church. Similarly, I obey parents, governments, and other fallible authorities without a belief in their infallibility. This thread is about church infallibility, not whether Protestants are neglecting some of the traditions of a fallible church. A lot of people neglect other fallible authorities (what parents tell children about how late they can stay up at night, government speed limits, etc.). That neglect might be intentional or unintentional (violation of a government law you weren’t aware of, for example). It doesn’t therefore follow that they don’t consider those fallible sources authoritative or don’t ever obey them. And their failure to obey such authorities at times is a different issue than whether those sources of authority are infallible.
You write:
“I said they [canons of Nicaea] ARE still applicable, so I am hardly going to document that they are not applicable.”
So, you obey what canon 20 of Nicaea said about prayer on Sundays, for example? You agree with canon 7 regarding rankings of honor within the church? And you disagree with people like Gregory Nazianzen, who said that canon 15 of Nicaea is a dead statute?
You write:
“But I explained to you that the Church does not understand the canon the way you do. You can look up the officially published canons by St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain to verify this, where he cross references it to other ancient canons and commentary.”
Are you saying that Nicodemus’ comments prove that the church today understands the canons as you do? If men like Gregory Nazianzen believed the canons to only be in effect for a particular period of time, then documenting that some ancient sources accepted the canons for a while wouldn’t prove that they’re to always be accepted. Would you explain why I’m supposed to accept Nicodemus’ testimony, but not that of other sources, like Gregory Nazianzen? Where has Eastern Orthodoxy endorsed Nicodemus’ view? You need to be more specific.
You write:
“That Schnaff doesn't understand this, or even if perhaps Nazianzen didn't understand the canon, is neither here nor there.”
Schaff doesn’t just state what Gregory Nazianzen and others believed. He provides documentation. And Gregory Nazianzen wasn’t the only source involved.
Furthermore, since you’ve made claims about universal agreement, then disagreement with your position by sources like Gregory Nazianzen is relevant.
You write:
“Since you didn't directly link to ANY articles with quotes I am forced to search back, and I found around that number give or take one or two.”
I didn’t just provide quotes. Quotes aren’t the only form of historical evidence. And since you thought it was sufficient to provide several quotes on the issue of chrismation, your claim that you want more than several quotes is dubious. You’ve had multiple opportunities to refute the case I made on the veneration of images, and you’ve failed to do so.
You write:
“A lot of the church fathers is written against heretics.”
How does that prove your conclusion? It doesn’t.
You write:
“Since I never claimed absolute uniformity in the fathers, did you explain why I should care about Eusebius?”
I cited Eusebius in response to your comment that I supposedly believe in “This mysterious force that you presuppose can change the mind of the world wide church without kerfuffle, simultaneously and globally”. Since men like Eusebius and Epiphanius were opposing the veneration of images after the ante-Nicene era, which I had discussed as the timeframe when the veneration of images was widely opposed, I was citing them against your claim that there was no “kerfuffle” and that a change occurred “simultaneously and globally”. Opposition to the veneration of images decreased after the ante-Nicene era, but the decrease was gradual, and the change wasn’t “simultaneous and global”.
You write:
“Since all I could find in my searching was quotes about images in general, rather than veneration, what choice did I have?”
Some sources oppose both the use of images and their veneration. Others oppose only their veneration. Both views contradict the Eastern Orthodox position, so both are relevant to an argument against Eastern Orthodoxy. It doesn’t therefore follow that I was addressing the use of images rather than their veneration. Your citation of the Jewish use of images is therefore irrelevant. You misunderstood the issue under discussion, so you cited evidence against my position that doesn’t actually contradict my position. In the article I originally referenced, I repeatedly refer to “the veneration of images”. There’s no good reason for you to have missed the issue I was discussing.
And, as the material I referenced earlier illustrates, non-Protestant scholars have agreed with my assessment that there was widespread opposition to the veneration of images early on. I’ve cited the Roman Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott and the Eastern Orthodox patristic scholar John McGuckin as examples. McGuckin, while referring to the existence of some early Christian artwork, writes:
"Christianity in the earliest period seems to have shared the aversion common in Judaism (though not an absolute aversion as is demonstrated by the highly decorated second-century synagogue at Dura Europos) to painted representations in religious contexts." (The Westminster Handbook To Patristic Theology [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004], p. 32)
Why does your fellow Eastern Orthodox, a scholar with better credentials within Eastern Orthodoxy than you have, disagree with you about the history of the beliefs of Eastern Orthodoxy?
You write:
“Just because you made comments about the NT canon does not mean I cannot make a point about the whole canon, nor does it mean I am ‘confused’.”
You were responding to an argument I made about a patristic consensus on the New Testament. Changing the subject to the entire canon didn’t make sense in that context. And when you initially responded to my claim that you had misunderstood the subject I was addressing, you didn’t offer the explanation above. You didn’t claim that you were aware of the subject all along. Rather, you said you were “really curious now”, and asked me about the earliest source to advocate my entire canon. That seems to be an unlikely response if I had misunderstood you.
You write:
“According to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha Chrysostom's canon had 22 books, so it lacked 19%. Only slightly less variation than the OT, and hardly enough for you to make a point.”
Again, how does Chrysostom represent the church fathers in general on this issue? A larger number of Old Testament books were disputed, regardless of the relative percentage compared to the rest of the Old or New Testament, and widespread disagreements on the Old Testament went on for centuries longer and continue to this day, long after there was widespread agreement on the 27-book New Testament canon. Since you’ve cited Wikipedia as your source above, here’s what a Wikipedia article on the New Testament canon tells us:
“Thus, from the fourth century, there existed unanimity in the West concerning the New Testament canon (as it is today), and by the fifth century the East, with a few exceptions, had come to accept the Book of Revelation and thus had come into harmony on the matter of the canon, at least for the New Testament.”
I don’t think much of Wikipedia, but that’s your source.
You write:
“The point is that the books so-called apocrypha in the KJV is what protestants usually considered disputed books with Rome.”
But patristic disagreements about the canon aren’t defined by Protestant disputes with Roman Catholicism. And even when people are discussing the latter, they don’t normally use old editions of the King James Bible to illustrate the canonical disagreements. You’re not making much sense.
You write:
“I could compare the Orthodox canon, but then I could add in other disputed NT contenders too.”
The issue is patristic disputes, not modern canons, such as the various ones in Eastern Orthodoxy. And why would you not include “other disputed NT contenders”? The issue under discussion is canonical disagreements, so why would some books included in canons not be included in this discussion? Sometimes some less popular books were included in the New Testament, like The Shepherd Of Hermas. But the same is true of the Old Testament (Tertullian’s inclusion of 1 Enoch, for example).
You write:
“You made a vague and unsupportable statement and are now blaming me for the consequences.”
No, I’m blaming you for the unreasonable arguments you wrote in response.
You write:
“Some sort of canon? How is it that the clarity with which the Fathers attest to One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church with infallibility is slain by quibbles about gnats, but your scriptures are unassailed even when we find you have to resort to calling it merely some sort of canon?”
You’re responding to an argument I rejected. My point was that just as pointing to some sort of canon isn’t enough, it’s also not enough to point to some sort of infallible church. If more specificity is going to be expected for the one, it should be expected for the other as well. If you missed the point I was making, then that’s your fault, not mine. If, on the other hand, you understood my point, yet responded by acting as if I had been agreeing with the argument I rejected, then you were criticizing me for taking a position I didn’t take. Either way, your response doesn’t make sense.
You write:
“Except we are content to allow both canon and church to clarify itself over time. You can't allow canon disputes to drag on into the 5th, 6th and 7th and 10th centuries, because there is no historical credibility of analysis that late. Yet you need to ride that camel anyway, because that's how it panned out. But you won't let other issues go the same way. That's called inconsistency.”
Again, I’ve been addressing one line of evidence for the canon. Other evidence is involved as well. This discussion began when I responded to an e-mailer who brought up a particular argument for the canon and a comparable one for an infallible church. I don’t “need” that argument for the canon. I was responding to somebody’s e-mail about one line of evidence.
And widespread agreement doesn’t require unanimity. The existence of some disputes in the tenth century, for example, wouldn’t prove that there wasn’t widespread agreement earlier.
How early the widespread acceptance would need to be depends on the context. A consensus in the eighth century, for example, would be too late to carry much weight in terms of the proximity of the sources to the writing of the New Testament documents. But it wouldn’t be too late to be a consensus brought about by the leading of the Holy Spirit. People can appeal to a consensus for more than one reason.
And the “clarification” in question in this context involves the widespread acceptance of something, whether a canon or an infallible church. How has the church clarified itself over time when your definition of the church, Eastern Orthodoxy, is rejected today by the vast majority of professing Christians?
You’ve claimed that the early church was Eastern Orthodox. If the identity of the church wasn’t clarified initially, then why are we supposed to believe that it was Eastern Orthodox?
You write:
“You've already conceded the early church believed in infallibility.”
No, I didn’t.
You write:
“The acceptance of a 27 book New Testament canon is actually historically less than the agreement of one infallible church.”
You keep repeating the same error. If the agreement about church infallibility, which you haven’t documented, is defined differently by different sources, then it isn’t comparable to the agreement on a 27-book canon.
For example, some of the Roman bishops of the patristic era believed in a papal ecclesiology, which you reject. Not only do you reject it, but your denomination, Eastern Orthodoxy, has made a major issue of its disagreement with the papacy for hundreds of years. If the disagreement isn’t significant, then why have Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism made so much of it? The fact that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox both believe in an infallible church doesn’t prove that they believe in the same infallible church. You differ on the papacy, several ecumenical councils, the validity of different portions of the ecumenical councils you agree on (canon 28 of Chalcedon, for example), which doctrines have been handed down by extra-Biblical tradition (Catholicism’s advocacy of the Immaculate Conception, for example), etc.
You’ve repeatedly grouped all advocates of an infallible church together, even if they’re advocating different infallible churches. Yet, when I described a parallel argument for the New Testament canon, in which all advocates of a New Testament canon are classified together without regard for whether they included the same books in their canon, you objected. When I proposed that parallel argument for the canon, I didn’t accept it. I rejected it. I was using it to illustrate the unreasonableness of your position. Yet, you do mean it when you place all advocates of an infallible church in one category. I expect a high level of specificity both with regard to the canon and with regard to an infallible church. You expect a high level of specificity for one, but not the other. I’m consistent. You’re inconsistent.
You write:
“Does the protestant revolt undo that agreement? Then I guess the Mormons have undone the agreement of a New Testament canon.”
Mormons are a small percentage of professing Christians, and their claim to orthodoxy is far less credible than that of the three commonly accepted branches of Christianity and related groups (some non-denominational churches, Oriental Orthodox, etc.). But even if we include Mormons as a source rejecting the 27-book canon, the 27-book New Testament is still accepted by a large majority, whereas Eastern Orthodoxy’s claim to be the infallible church is rejected by the large majority of professing Christians.