Perry Robinson has been posting a lot of long comments over at Green Baggins. Since it’s a high volume blog by a confessional Calvinist, he presumably thinks this is a forum which will give higher visibility to his own position.
I’ll comment on his major arguments. There’s a tremendous amount of redundancy in this thread. So I won’t respond to every repetitious comments. But will preserve some redundancy to illustrate the degree to which Perry repeats the same question-begging claims.
Scripture passages are not non-theory laden facts that one can just happen upon and interpret so as to build up a model incrementally. The question is then how do we figure out which lens is the correct one since we cannot appeal to theory or model neutral facts to discriminate? Facts underdetermine or fail to select for a model or lens. To put the matter another way, no exegetical methodology is Christologically neutral. From the get go a given exegetical method selects for a specific Christology, So how do we find out which Christology is the correct one is there is no Christology neutral exegetical methodology that we can use?
Three problems:
i) He poses this question without bothering to answer his own question. He leaves the question hanging out there to flap in the wind.
ii) He says your exegetical method selects for a specific Christology, but he doesn’t offer any supporting evidence to validate that claim. Bible scholars representing very different theological persuasions employ the grammatico-historical method. So what is the specific Christology which they all share in common? What specific Christology does the grammatico-historical method select for, exactly?
iii) He also fails to explain why the interpretation of every verse should be filtered through Christology–much less Eastern Orthodox Christology.
Calvin’s citation of and at times rejection of the fathers on his own judgment is indicative of the problem and point at issue, Calvin has set himself up as a father and their judge.
So what? Either the church fathers stand in judgment of us, or we stand in judgment of them.
If the judgment of councils is subordinate to scripture how does one make ones own judgment subordinate to scripture when it is ones own power of judgment that is doing the judging about what scripture in fact means?
We see variants on this theme throughout Perry’s remarks. It fails to distinguish between the source of judgment and the standard of judgment.
If I use a dictionary to define words, the dictionary is my standard. Still, I’m the one who has to understand what it says and apply what it says.
We all make value judgments in the sense that what we believe comes down to what seems to be correct to you and me as individuals. You cannot eliminate that indexical element from the way we process and appropriate information.
Perry himself has run through a series of conversions, based on which one seemed to be right to him at the time. At present, he judges the Orthodox church to be the true church. So is he subordinating his judgment to the Orthodox Church? Or is he really subordinating the Orthodox church to his judgment? He’ll introduce some distinctions which I’ll address as the occasion presents itself.
As for solo scriptura, how is it not the case at the end of the day? If no church judgments are infallible, then no church judgments can’t be revised by an individual. Doctrine is a reconstruction, a purely human product, and so a provisional approximation. Therefore no judgment of the church can bind the conscience as God can. Only the judgment of the individual can be normative for that individual and no one else.
Several problems:
i) Perry states this as if it were an unacceptable consequence. But he needs to explain why that consequence is unacceptable.
Otherwise, Perry is like a Holocaust-denier who refuses to believe the Holocaust ever happened because that would just be too terrible to contemplate.
But in a fallen world, we’re used to dire consequences, so to merely posit a dire consequence if sola Scriptura were true, even if the postulate were true, does nothing to disprove sola Scriptura.
ii) It’s fallacious to say that if X is fallible, then X is provisional. If X is fallible, then X could either be true or false. But only if X is false is X revisable. If X is true, then X is not revisable.
What is fallible can still be true. Something can be true without necessarily being true. While fallibility creates the possibility of error, it doesn’t create the actuality of error, or even the probability of error.
So Perry has to do a lot better than raise the abstract possibility of error. That is not a rational basis to doubt what we believe. It’s not as if Perry applies that skepticism to his value-judgments regarding the various religious options.
Plenty of texts of the synodal horos speak of the councils as “spirit inspired” “indefectible” and “infallible.”
Of course, Mormons make comparable claims for their “church.”
The issue isn’t so much about the inability to understand a text correctly, but rather to teach it normatively. It is one thing to have the correct interpretation amongst a group of debators. It is quite another thing to be able to give an interpretation that is normative that brings a halt to the debate as say in Acts 15. Was the authority of the council in Acts 15 merely that of being inerrant? I don’t think so and I don’t think you do either.
This is another one of his favorite tropes. He states this as if it were self-evident. Who needs a supporting argument?
Why does he detach truth from normativity? If something is true, then don’t we have an obligation to believe it and act accordingly? Does he think truth is not a norm?
What about Acts 15? Why is it insufficient to say that Peter, Paul, and James were right while the Judaizers were wrong? If, in fact, God doesn’t require you to be circumcised or have a kosher diet to be a Christian, then why is that truth insufficient to resolve the dispute?
Scripture also indicates that the spirit is given to ministers through the laying on of hands to teach, correct and reuke.
Ironically, this is a case of what Perry calls spooftexting. He alludes to a prooftext for his position. But that’s all he does. Just a perfunctory allusion to Scripture. No exegesis to support his interpretation or application. Let’s address a few issues:
i) I believe he’s alluding to 1 Tim 4:14 & 2 Tim 1:6. Remember, though, that Perry rejects the grammatico-historical method. So what’s his alternative? Does he employ the allegorical method?
But in that case, what do the “hands” stand for? Perhaps ordination is conferred, not by the imposition of hands, but by the ordinand hopping up and down on a pogo stick while he recites the “The Hunting of the Snark”?
Or maybe the Pauline passages are an allegory for Presbyterian ordination. Or Arian ordination. With allegorical exegesis, all things are possible.
ii) And if he takes the verses literally, then there are a number of problems with assuming they refer to ordination, much less transferring the charism of church office from one minister to his successor:
a) As many commentators point out, 2 Tim 1:6 probably refers to a different event than 1 Tim 4:14.
b) In 1 Tim 4:14, we have the conjunction of prophecy with the imposition of hands. The logical way in which these cofactors are related is if one or more Christian prophets flagged Timothy as a spiritually gifted individual who was qualify to exercise Christian service in this capacity (whatever that may be). In that event, the imposition of hands doesn’t convey the charism. Rather, it’s because Timothy already has the charism that he undergoes this public ceremony.
c) This interpretation is reinforced by a parallel passage in Acts 13:2-3 where, once again, we have the conjunction of prophecy with the imposition of hands in the context of Christian service. Yet both Barnabas and Paul were already involved in Christian service. Indeed, it’s because they were spiritual gifted and seasoned individuals that they are singled out for this mission. And, needless to say, Paul was even an apostle at the time.
And they were “sent” in the sense of being sent away (from the church of Antioch to the mission field) rather than ordained.
d) The prophetic factor also distinctions this ceremony from ordination, since it’s not as if Orthodox ordinands must be identified by Christian prophets as suitable candidates for Christian ministery.
e) There is also no reason to think that Timothy was a pastor or church officer. Rather, Paul uses him as an itinerate trouble-shooter to deal with problem churches, among other things.
You make much hay about findings of fact that ring contrary to official statements, and perhaps rightly so, but what if the shoe is on the other foot? I routinely find not only Protestant exegetical arguments for the Filioque either non-existent and self admittedly bad. Yet the tradition enshrines the doctrine at a confessional level, practically mouthing the words as Mother Rome pulls the strings, and everyone springs automatically to defend it prior to any investigation of the facts. They are a priori set to defend it. So if dikiao doesn’t mean to vindicate in a transformative sense for Rome and that is a problem I’d posit that Protestants have the same kind of problem with Sola Scriptura and the Filioque.
i) But Perry’s accusation is two-faced. If, on the one hand, the Reformed rubberstamp tradition, then he accuses them of playing false to sola Scriptura. If, on the other hand, someone like me doesn’t rubberstamp tradition, then I don’t count. The very fact that I don’t follow suit means that I don’t speak for the Reformed.
ii) In addition, this does nothing to disprove sola Scriptura. At most, it would mean that Calvinists are sometimes inconsistent in practice. Yet Perry admits the Orthodox are sometimes inconsistent, too. But Perry doesn’t conclude that the Orthodox rule of faith is false.
It would also help to get clear on what “development” means exactly. Usually theories of development depend on a form of idealism, where the earlier source contains in nascent form and is made explicit later.
Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, one potential reason for doctrinal development is the fact that new questions or challenges arise which earlier generations didn’t have to contemplate. For example, bioethics is raising possibilities which didn’t exist a century ago. That, in turn, forces Evangelical Christians to ask questions of Scripture were hadn’t been asked before.
The Reformation may have been an attempt to reassess the theology of the church in light of scripture, but there is no non-theory laden exegetical method to be had to do this in a theory neutral way. To wax Van Tillian, Scriptural passages aren’t some theologically neutral facts by which one can incrementally build a case.
Perry keeps raising this abstract objection, but he never develops the objection in a specific direction. To merely say the grammatico-historical method is not a “neutral” method, even if that were true, is hardly a sufficient objection to the method in question. To say it’s “theory-laden” doesn’t mean it’s mistaken. Assuming it’s theory-laden, it would only be mistaken if its theoretical orientation were mistaken. Where’s the argument?
After all, Perry’s alternative is no less theory-laden. So should we dismiss his alternative out of hand because it’s equally “theory-laden”?
Turretin seems mistaken for the simple fact that the church isn’t merely an announcer but is apostolic, is sent and hence duly authorized. So the first question is, not what do you teach, but who sent you?
i) Unfortunately, that’s more of an assertion than an argument. Perry needs to explain why and in what sense a minister must be “sent.” There’s a sense in which prophets and apostles are “sent.” They have an immediate calling from God. But by the same token, they are not ordained to church office. Their extraordinary vocation is, itself, a divine commission.
ii) By the same token, Perry has to do better than simply quote some verses which use the word “send.” That commits the word=concept fallacy. It’s a semantic fallacy for Perry to equate the use of the word to “send” with the Orthodox doctrine of ordination.
Perhaps, though, Perry has some other argument. The problem, though, is that this is all we are getting from him. Perry has a habit of using catchphrases as a substitute for argument.
Perspecuity is not the issue. Judgment is. Make the bible is perspicuous as you like and it won’t matter for two reasons. First, what matters is the perspicuity of the mind of the person reading it and second the normativity of their judgment.
i) The problem with the first objection is that it’s hardly limited to sola Scriptura. If the mind of the reader is not perspicuous, then this will impede his understanding of any text, whether Scripture or the church fathers or the ecumenical councils or the liturgy, &c.
ii) The problem with the second objection is that Perry is merely asserting this to be “what matters.”
If Rome puts he church above the Scriptures because it says that the church has the right to give normative interpretations, do Protestants put the individual above the Scriptures since they assert that only the individual can be bound by his own judgments of what scripture means?
There’s nothing sacrosanct about individual judgment, per se. Some judgments are warranted and some judgments are unwarranted. This isn’t carte blanche for individual judgment regardless of how an individual arrives at his position.
If we don’t let the church’s teaching flavor the historical-grammatical method, doesn’t this assume that the methodology is non-theory laden and carries with it no metaphysical or Christological implications? The fifth council condemns something very much like it on that basis. So I doubt that it functions as a neutral method to start with.
Notice that Perry never gets beyond the abstract objection. “X is theory-laden!” So what?
And what about the grammatico-historical method? This method doesn’t predict for what a Bible writer will teach. It’s quite wide-open. The concern of the grammatico-historical method is to discover or recover what the Bible writer meant to say. You don’t know in advance what the correct answer will be. The method isn’t skewed to yield a particular result. The only methodological bias is to remain faithful to the authorial bias of the Bible writer.
I don’t think the church is a merely human thing because of what I believe about Christology. You and I do not share the same Christology which is why we do not share the same view of the church.
What does Perry think he achieves with statements like this? I can understand why he’d make statements like that on his own blog, where he has a sympathetic audience. But why post comments on a Reformed blog unless he’s trying to win converts to his cause? If so, he needs to engage in persuasion. To simply make statements about how Orthodoxy is different and better than Calvinism or Evangelicalism is hardly convincing.
I don’t take theology to be a “field of knowledge” in terms of a science. That is a point upon which Catholics and Protestants are alike and quite different from the Orthodox. I don’t take the church’s teaching to have or be capable of development as posited by either Catholics or Protestants so I reject the idea of it having the kind of provisional standing of given hypothesis that is capable of one judgment and then another through time.
Among other things, this assumes that “development” is equivalent to a provisional hypothesis which is modified over time. But in some cases, what he dubs “development” involves the discussion of an issue for which there is no preexisting answer. And if Orthodoxy is unable to address modern controversies, then, to that extent, Orthodoxy is irrelevant to life in the modern world.
As I noted, the Reformers did not wholesale accept the Christology and Triadology of Nicea and Chalcedon. As ably documented by say Muller, they modified it and rejected key parts of it. And yes, as Orthodox, sure I think the Orthodox got it right and kept it so. IN the 880 council, it was agreed by both sides and then 120 years later the Franks take over the papacy and scrap it. They broke communion by innovation. The funny thing is that the Protestants accept the very doctrine which justified papal prerogatives since Gregory 7ths insertion of the Filioque was grounded in the doctrine itself. That is, if the person of the Spirit is produced jointly by the Father and the Son as from one principle and the pope is the vicar of Christ, then the Spirit proceeds economically into the church from the Pope. This is why the papacy and the filioque stand or fall together, which is ironic that Protestants still retain it, even though it isn’t supportable by any serious exegesis of Scripure. Why Trent? Why not 2nd Nicea? Or how about even better Reformed monoenergism in light of 3rd Constantinople’s Dyoenergism? Or Nicea’s teaching that the Father alone is autotheos against Calvin’s innovation that all the persons are autotheos?
This is a good example of Perry’s duplicity. On the one hand, he faults Calvinists for (in his view) rubberstamping certain traditions of the Latin theology. On the other hand, he also faults Calvinism for its independence in respect to tradition.
Perry faults Calvinism because it is too tradition-bound. According to him, it uncritically transmits certain traditions which it inherited from Latin theology. On the other hand, Perry also faults Calvinism because it’s too “provisional.” In principle, everything is open to revision.
Of course, there is an underlying pattern to Perry’s attack. If Calvinism breaks with Eastern traditions, that’s bad. That’s heretical. But if Calvinism adheres to Western traditions, that’s bad. That’s heretical.
If Jerusalem can be infallible, then the issue is not a principled one. Protestants must endorse then some kind of cessationist view with respect to apostolic ministry, authority, etc. But then who sends ministers if the apostolic commisisoning has expired?
But Perry is, himself, a cessationist. Just a different sort of cessationist. So is his cessionism principled or ad hoc?
Part of the problem on judging the matter from my perspective is that you are presuming a place of an ecclesiastical judge. I am not sure how such a position is justified. Part of the problem is the assumption that councils of the church are not divinely guided and are merely human entities. This means that we are starting with different ecclesiologies and in fact, different Christologies. This argument is really misplaced.
Well, since Perry is an Orthodox layman, posting comments at a Reformed blog, what did he expect? Once again, what does he think it will accomplish to fault a Calvinist on a Calvinist blog for thinking like a Calvinist? It’s not as if Perry is giving the Calvinist any reason to think otherwise.
Why would you take the decisions of Acts 15 council as infallible simply on the judgment of the church centuries later that Acts was inspired? The fact that it was widely accepted doesn’t imply that it was inspired or that most people thought that it was.
Well, that’s a loaded question. Why assume our only reason or primary reason for believing the Book of Acts is the judgment of the church? There are many lines of internal and external evidence for Acts.
And no real work is done by appealing to self authentication since one can be duped into thinking that something is self authenticating when its not.
i) True, but that cuts both ways. That undercuts everything Perry believes as well. It seems to Perry that the Orthodox church is the true church, but maybe he’s self-deluded. And if he were self-deluded, he’d be the last person to know it. So why does Perry resort to this Kamikaze tactic? Even if crashing his fighter-jet into the battleship succeeds in sinking the enemy ship, he goes up in smoke along with the ship. So how does that advance the case for Orthodoxy?
ii) Moreover, can he really be so dismissive of self-authentication? Eastern Orthodoxy appeals to the mystical experience of the saints. Would he say that no real work is done by appealing to mystical experience since the mystic can be duped into thinking that something is veridical when it’s really delusive?
iii) Likewise, on Perry’s dismissive view, why would Jews have any reason to believe a prophet like Amos? On the one hand, he wasn’t commissioned by the religious establishment. On the other hand, he performed no miracles. Issued no predictions which his audience could confirm. Unless there’s something self-authenticating about his words, why would Perry believe them? Surely he won’t appeal to a church council. It’s not as if the words of Amos had to wait for a church council to validate his mission and message. At that point, the original audience to whom his words were directed would be dust and ashes.
So the formal canon is a product of centuries later theological reflection. Do you think the formal canon is revisable and subject to human judgment too?
There are different ways of answering that question:
i) The Orthodox canon is subject to human judgment. Perry swears by the Orthodox canon because it appears to him to be the canon of the one true church. But that’s only as good as his own perception of the truth.
ii) The Protestant canon is revisable if the Protestant canon is incorrect. If the Protestant canon is correct then there’s no reason to revise it.
If you want to say the Protestant canon is hypothetically revisable, then you can also say Orthodox theology is hypothetically revisable. It’s child’s play to dream up hypothetical defeaters for every position under the sun.
So given the thread topic, in light of the Reformed lenses, how can the doctrine of the Filioque be justified by Scripture alone and what if it turns out that its not? What goes, the doctrine or the lens? And this again gets us back to the question of how we can know which lens is correct, given the fact that scripture is not some bare self interpreting fact, but is interpreted through a lens? The lens cannot be derived from Scripture without the lens in the first place since there is no non-theory laden exegetical methodology to be had. Or to put it in Van Tillian terms, there are no neutral facts.
i) Let’s not get carried away with a metaphor. The “lens” is just a metaphor. Perry himself has gone through a number of religious conversions. Depending on which religious tradition he espoused at the time, he was reading the Bible through that particular lens. Yet it’s not as if he had a permanent contact lens which made it impossible to read the Bible any other way.
ii) By the same token, it’s simplistic to say our lens is either a Scriptural lens or an extrascriptural lens. Yes, readers bring a lens to Scripture. But readers have also been known to change their mind after reading Scripture. It’s not as if their lens was all-controlling. Perry knows that to be the case.
Likewise, there are many monographs on apostolic exegesis. Here a scholar studies the hermeneutical techniques of a Bible writer. In the case of a liberal scholar, he may not even agree with the hermeneutical techniques of the Bible writer. He is able to distinguish his lens from the lens of the Bible writer. You can use a provisional lens to learn more about the lens of Scripture. And at that point you can exchange your provisional lens for the lens of Scripture.
iii) What lens did Perry use to convert from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy? If he can only view Orthodoxy through an Orthodox lens, then how can he tell if Orthodoxy corrects his vision or distorts his vision?
Second, the issue is not whether one can come to a correct interpretation on their own, but whether one can come to a normative one on their own and whether only the individual can be normatively bound by their own judgment or whether they can be bound by the church’s judgment.
He says that’s the issue, but that’s just another one of his assertions which he likes to repeat ad nauseum without bothering to defend his assertion. And it’s not as if his claim is self-evident.
If one interpretation is correct, while another interpretation is incorrect, don’t we have a moral obligation to believe the correct interpretation and disbelieve the incorrect interpretation?
Likewise, what is correct for one is correct for all. If that is the correct interpretation, then everyone is obligated to believe it because it is true.
Can one’ individual conscience trump that of the church? And if so, why? What is it about my own conscience and judgment that the church supposedly lacks? And why suppose that the church is somehow a collection of equally normative (perhaps not equally good) judges? Why do Protestants get to simply assume this kind of egalitarianism about normativity here?
i) When Perry opposes the individual to the “church,” what does the “church” stand for, exactly? Take Athanasius in his famous stand against the Arian bishops. In that celebrated contest, which party represents the individual, and which party represents the “church.” Is Athanasius the voice of the church? If so, how does that distinguish Athanasius from Calvin or Luther?
ii) Likewise, why does Perry assume the right of private judgment is “egalitarian”? Some individuals are more qualified to teach than others. That’s why Calvinism has an educated clergy. Perry’s objection might have some traction in reference to the certain traditions which disdain formal preparation, but that’s hardly relevant to Calvinism.
iii) Perry, himself, is just an Orthodox layman, lecturing the rest of us on “normative judgments.” Who is he to be so dogmatic? And if he can be dogmatic, why not you and me?
On your reading no doctrine is stable. All doctrines, including the canon are revisable, provisional and capable of being over turned formally speaking. All doctrines are human reconstruction projects That looks a lot like humanism and not very much like early Christianity. What seems preferable is teaching that isn’t human, that is divine and hence binds the conscience whether I agree with it or not, for that is how God teaches.
i) All this amounts to is the claim that if sola Scriptura is true, then it has potentially bad consequences; therefore, sola Scriptura is false.
What kind of argument is that? Does Perry apply that same objection to his belief in libertarian freewill? If human beings are free, some of them may become heretics, molesters, murderers, &c. Since heresy is bad, we can avoid that unacceptable consequence by denying that human beings are free.
ii) There is also a failure to discuss how God works in and through the human mind. The church fathers taught what they did because it seemed to be true to them. Perry believes the consensus patrum because it seems to be true to him. You can’t eliminate the indexical factor in this process. Ecumenical councils are the product of what the participants perceive to be true.
But if Perry thinks that God is working through that process, then God can also work through the Protestant Reformers. You can’t avoid the human construct. The question is what, if anything, lies behind the human construct. Does the Protestant canon represent God’s will for the faithful? That’s the question.
iii) As to what early Christianity looked like, it doesn’t look like any one thing in particular–from what I can tell.
None of that though touches the question, if the Reformed interpret Scripture through a lens, and it is not possible to interpret Scripture apart from a lens, how does one find out that the lens one has is correct? It can’t be by reference to Scripture anymore than an atheist can check the veridicality of his experience by more experience or that there are causes in the world by giving more examples of events.
Of course, that question isn’t limited to what lens we use in reference to Scripture. What about the lens we use in reference to church history? There’s a Catholic lens. Eastern Orthodox lens. Oriental Orthodox lens. Anabaptist lens. Reformed lens. Anglican lens. And so on and so forth. Perry needs to explain what makes his lens the right one.
Well its complicated but let me give you a sketch. Our view of infallibility is different because we endorse a different view of God and Christology than either Rome or Protestantism. Infallibility is an energy or divine activity. It isn’t limited to the clergy as the church has designated specific writings of some laymen as representing infallibly the teaching of the church, such as Maxims the Confessor.
Stop and think about this for a moment. Perry makes hay about the Reformed clergy. About the fact that Calvin was a layman.
Yet Maximus the Confessor was a layman. So what qualifies him to be a teacher–much less an infallible teacher? Who “sent” him?
I am not sure what it means to say that the bible is its own lens. Do you mean that the reader doesn’t interpret it from a presuppositional frame of reference? Or that the text can trump the presuppositional interpretative grid of the reader? If the latter, then doesn’t that mean that the bible is a self interprting fact? I am not sure how that squares with Van Til’s apologetic since no sensory data is self interpreting.
That’s a false dichotomy. On the one hand, the world is a lens through which we view the Bible. On the other hand, the Bible is a lens through which we view the world. They work in tandem.
As for how the bible is written I think depends on how one views inspiration. Since I reject the Reformed view of the relation of the Spirit to the humanity of Christ, I also reject the Reformed view of inspiration from which it is derived.
Inspiration is Christological or theanthropic which is why methods like the grammatical-historical methods are inadequate and lead to heterodox Christology-see Theodore of Mopsuestia for example-http://thirdmill.org/newfiles/jul_grisham/CH.Grisham.theodore.mopsuestia.pdf
That begs the question of how he derives his Christological lens. Is Perry’s Christology scriptural or unscriptural? If he uses Scriptural Christology as a lens to read Scripture, then how does he derive his Christology in the first place? Unless he already has the Christological lens, how does he discover the Christology of Scripture? With or without the lens?
Or does he derive his Christology from extrascriptural sources? But in that event, his Christology is underdetermined by revelation. It’s just a “human reconstruction project.”
I don’t think one could get Paul’s allegorical interpretaiton in Gal 4 by just reading the OT text. to think that a natural methodology can just read off the meaning of a divine text like any other assumes that either the divine and human aren’t essentially different or a kind of naturalism.
i) Well, that raises an interesting conundrum for Perry. How does he know that Paul is interpreting Gen 16 allegorically? Is Perry using the allegorical method to interpret Paul? But if Perry is using the allegorical method, what would an allegorical interpretation of an allegorical interpretation look like? How could one allegorical interpretation identify another interpretation as allegorical?
Even if Paul is construing the OT text allegorically, the only way to ascertain that fact is by using the grammatico-historical method. So Perry’s appeal is self-refuting.
ii) I also hope that Perry doesn’t base his classification on Paul’s use of the Greek word for “allegory.” That would commit the word=concept fallacy.
iii) And, of course, Perry doesn’t actually exegete his prooftext. Instead, he contents himself with spooftexting. A perfunctory allusion to a text which allegedly proves his point, absent the necessary exegesis. So what about this passage?
a) To begin with, the “allegorical” portion is sandwiched in-between a historical exposition of the patriarchal narrative. So Paul is alert to, and faithful to, the historical context.
b) Paul also prefaces his remarks with the disclaimer in 4:24a. So this section doesn’t represent an “interpretation” of Gen 16. Rather, it’s an argument from analogy. And possibly typology.
c) Let’s also recall the identity of Paul’s opponents in Galatians. In this brief section of Galatians, he may be using rabbinical methods to beat the Judaizers at their own game. A tu quoque argument.
For more detail on the correct exegesis of this passage, Gordon Fee has a helpful discussion in his commentary on Galatians, pp179-82. Moisés Silva also has a helpful discussion in the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, pp807-09.
But, for two reasons you’re never going to get serious exegesis from Perry. For one thing, you can’t invest all that time in historical theology and still have time left over for exegetical theology. Something has to give. For another thing, Perry wouldn’t deign to consult evangelical Bible scholars since he has already concluded that they have nothing to teach him. They’re using the wrong lens.
And the quesiton isn’t whether the bible is clear or not, the question is how does one arrive at a normative interpretation. This point you seemed to ignore when I posed it above.
So he says. For me, the question is how does one arrive at the correct interpretation.
I do think that the Reformed confessions are in fact wrong in key areas, which is just to say that I am Orthodox and not Reformed. But even on Reformed principles, the Reformed confessions are not infallible and are always open to revision. Its certainly possible that the Reformers were in fact in error at any given point.
Here we see his lazy fallback on abstract possibilities. Well, many things are abstractly possible. It’s abstractly possible that Perry’s knowledge of historical theology consists of false memories implanted by aliens from outer space. There is no Orthodox church. There is no church history. “Realty” is the alien laboratory.
My point was that the perspicuity of the text is not really germane. What is germane is the perspicuity of the mind who is making a judgment about the text and the normativity of the judgment made by the individual. Why should Calvin’s judgment be any more binding on my conscience than the pope’s?
If Calvin is right and the pope is wrong, then who got it right ought to be binding on Perry’s conscience.
I let the Reformers be what they were, fallible men and not some once for all illumined individuals who gave some unrevisable interpretation. Doctrine on Reformed principles is a reconstruction process and given sin and error, it is not implausible to think that the confessions are in fact in error. It’s entailed by the Nominalistic humanism of Reformation.
Once again, that’s a perfectly worthless comment to post over at a Reformed blog–since a Calvinist would also let the church fathers and “saints” and councils be what they were, fallible men and not some once for all illumined individuals who gave some unrevisable interpretation. A human “reconstruction process.”
Why does Perry even bother to make these tendentious, self-serving comments? He might as well be a Mormon missionary.
And I don’t have to show that the Reformed confessions are in fact in error, for given the lens of Reformed confessions as a presuppositional grid by which the bible is interpreted, that would be impossible from within the system. The grid will come up with alternative interpretations for any scriptural exegesis I would proffer. Bare facts don’t overturn or discriminate between models. Any system is capable of admitting contrary evidence, it just depends on how much one wishes to give up or how one wishes to re-interpret the data in light of the system a la Quine and Van Til.
i) Is Perry a relativist? Does he reduce religious conviction to a raffle? What you happen to believe in the fortuitous result of which ticket you happen to pluck from the rotating basket?
ii) He also resorts to these empty-headed abstractions about “bare facts” over against your interpretive grid. But the Bible is not a bare fact, like a smooth, solid obelisk.
It consists of propositions. And it’s not as if you need hack the access codes to break into a secure system.
To take one example, some Muslims convert to Christianity by reading the Bible. Their preliminary grid consists of true beliefs as well as false beliefs. But they bring some real world knowledge to their encounter. That’s a port of entry. Once inside, the Bible can begin correct their false beliefs.
This is despite the fact that Muslims bring a very prejudicial “lens” to their reading of Scripture. But in spite of that, God, in his overruling providence, uses the Bible to convert some Muslims.
Let’s not get carried away with catchy metaphors like a “lens” or “grid.” Up to a point, these are useful illustrations. But like any metaphor, becomes misleading when taken too far. A well-chosen metaphor can illuminate an issue, but if you misuse it, it can also blind you to the truth.
Even if all the interpretations of the text by the Reformed confessions were correct in fact, it wouldn’t give us a reason to think that the lens was the right one, anymore than the fact that modern science proposes in fact working models confirms that the models are right and work for the reasons that the scientific models proffer. Something can work, but not for the reasons you think it does.
That's all hypothetical.
So we need a reason for thinking that the lens gets us to the right interpretation even if the interpretations were to be assumed correct, so we are right back to the question of how we are to know that the Reformed confessions are the right lens?
Which cuts both ways. How does he know that Orthodoxy is the right lens?
If the exegetical method isn’t theory neutral, then it will select a priori and interpret data according to a specific theological model. It still seems to me that you are positing an incrementalist apporach to building up a theological model. I am not sure how that is possible if exegetical methodologies aren’t theory neutral.
Perry constantly takes refuge in these airy-fairy abstractions. But the grammatico-historical method is employed by scholars and commentators of very different persuasions. Arminians and Calvinists. Catholics and Anglicans. Pentecostals and Anabaptists.
Perry suffers from self-reinforcing ignorance. On the one hand, he can only makes these breezy statements in studied ignorance of the way in which Bible scholars actually proceed. On the other hand, he never puts himself in a position to be corrected since he assumes his a priori is true, so it would be a waste of time to crack the books.
How would he know if, in fact, the grammatico-historical method will select a priori and interpret the data according to a specific theological model? Only if he studies the exegetical literature. But he would only study the exegetical literature if he considers that a worthwhile expenditure of time. Yet his a priori assures him that it’s futile.
If I thought doctrine was a human re-construction, I might agree to a scriptural competition. Of course, the question is, who is the judge of such a competition? You or me? Who is the judge that applies the rule or standard?
But that’s misleading. Either you’re the judge, or you appoint the judge, or you let someone else appoint the judge. But each alternative involves a personal value-judgment on your part. When Perry defaults to the Orthodox church, he is rendering a value-judgment regarding the judicial qualifications of the Orthodox judge. He submits his judgment to a handpicked judge. Perry packs the court with his own appointees, then goes through the motions of submission to their judgment.
If a false attribution of authorship is sufficient to discount a work as authentic, then by your own argument, Hebrews should be removed from the canon.
That’s misleading. There’s a difference between anonymity and pseudonymity.
I understand that clarity and truth are not co-extensive. Things can be clear and yet people not see them for whatever reason. For example it seems fairly clear that sola fide is an artifact of late medieval scholasticism, specifically Okhamism wedded to Augustinian pre-emption.
This is another one of Perry’s intellectual shortcuts. Don’t bother to study the exegetical literature. Just pull a label from the history of ideas and act as if that’s the only source or primary source for the belief in question.
Not only is this indolent, but it’s inaccurate. For example, the reason someone currently believes something may have nothing to do with his original reasons. He may have come to believe something for one reason. That, in turn, caused him to study the issue in greater depth. And the result can be twofold. Upon further reflection, he may question his original reason. Yet, in the course of his studies he’s discovered additional and better reasons for what he now believes. These may take the place of his original reason. And I daresay that process happens fairly often.
I am sure that Andrew thinks its clear and he probably has epistemic justification for thinking so. That doesn’t mean its true or that he has in fact met the conditions on knowledge. I recognize that people like Bryan are quite intelligent. i have sat in graduate seminars with Bryan and I can say from experience that I don’t take arguing with him lightly. Andyet Ithink he is wrong, just like I think you are wrong. I recognize that Bryan thinks he has good reasons for thinking what he does. That doesn’t make him dishonest, just human and limited, like you or me.
Needless to say, a statement like that applies, mutatis mutandi, to Perry’s own self-confidence.
When I say that one has placed oneself as a judge of the church I had an idea in mind and a distinction between that and another concept. So let me try to clarify. It seems to me it is on kind of thing to try and find out the truth about something and to in fact come to know it. That everyone does. It also seems true that in doing so, one doesn’t have to be infallible to know things, at least in general. So to know that Jesus is messiah or that this or that is the society he founded or that this or that is the right interpretation doesn’t require infallibility. That is one kind of judgmental positional.
Another kind of position is that of making judgments that are normative beyond those of simply knowing. So take for example the council in Acts 15. Were they doing the first or the second? In part there’s was a fact finding mission, but on top of that they were doing something more. Their decision first settled a matter definitively. Second, it promulgated something as divine teaching, which made it obligatory on others regardless whether those so obligated met the conditions on knowledge or not. Here the normativity is beyond that of just getting the right answer.
How does that go beyond getting the right answer? Isn’t the right answer “definitive”? And if it’s the right answer, then isn’t there a general obligation to believe it?
A math text may be inerrant but not infallible and can’t bind one’s conscience to assent to it unless the person knows that the answers that it gives are correct. Such is not the case with God. I am obligated to believe God even if I don’t know what God says is true or not.
This is a little different than what he’s been saying all along. So, to that extent, it advances his argument. Kicks the ball down the road a pace.
But is this a good argument? What does it mean for Perry to say we’re obligated to believe God even if we don’t know what he says is true or false? Here are two interpretations:
i) I don’t know if God said it
ii) Even if I know God said it, I don’t know that it’s true
I don’t see how either interpretation makes sense from a Christian standpoint. If, on the one hand, he doesn’t know that God said it, then how is the statement normative? How is he duty-bound to believe it?
If, on the other hand, he doesn’t think a statement is true just because God said it, then why is he obligated to believe a dubious statement?
Perhaps what Perry means is that if God says it, then he is obligated to believe it even though he has no independent corroboration. He believes it on divine authority.
But even that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Except for self-presenting states, where the subject of knowledge is the immediate source of his own source of information, all our other justified true beliefs are mediated by sources external to ourselves.
So even Perry did have independent confirmation, his source of information would be just as indirect as the word of God. He’d still be dependent on a source.
So, assuming the word of God is infallibly true, why would something God said not count as an object of knowledge?
Put another way, yes, he’s taking it on authority. But what makes God an authority? It’s more than brute force. You can take his word for it because his word is true.
Knowledge by acquaintance is not the only mode of knowledge. Knowledge by description also counts as knowledge.
When I make judgments as to which is the true church and such I am only trying to meet the conditions on knowledge and not to meet the conditions on making theologically normative statements. So there is a two tier model here of judgment.
But one problem with his two-tiered model is that he treats normative judgment as more authoritative even though it is founded on inferior epistemic grounds. When he merely makes judgments about the true church, that satisfies the conditions of knowledge. He knows it to be true.
But when the church makes judgments, that falls short of knowledge. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s true. Yet he’s obliged to believe it.
For that matter, if it’s not an object of knowledge, then how can he regard it as unrevisable?
I am familiar with Reformation history and the preceding Scholastic period. I used to be Reformed. In any case to speak of “two branches” borders at best on question begging. I am not convinced that some priests and a mess of laymen challenging the church constitute a “branch.” And the reason why is that the Father sends the Son and the Son sends the Apostles and so forth. Sending precedes the message. Sending doesn’t come from the people, but from the apostolic ministry. You may not agree, but when I read the Bible, that is the way it seems to me and I can only report on the way things seem to me.
But that’s equivocal. Does God “send” the ordinand in the same sense that God “sent” the prophets and apostles? That analogy, if there is an analogy, undermines Perry’s position since prophets and apostles were not ordained by man. They received a direct calling from God. Direct inspiration.
And what does it mean to say “when I read the Bible, that is the way it seems to me and I can only report on the way things seem to me.” Does he mean that he can’t even present an argument for his interpretation? He can only report his psychological states? What if a Calvinist said, “You may not agree, but when I read the Bible, that is the way it seems to me and I can only report on the way things seem to me”?
Granted, there are different levels of divine guidance so we would need to flesh out the respective reasons for thinking it was this or that level. One of my reasons for thinking that the divine guidance is greater than what you take to be the case is that the canon is not revisable, which seems so on Protestant principles.
Well, if the Orthodox canon is unrevisable, then perhaps Perry can tell us where to find the Orthodox canon. Where’s the official, infallible, normative, definitive statement on the Orthodox canon? From my reading, the Orthodox Church is fuzzy on the outer boundaries of the canon.
Another we can tease out by a thought experiment. Suppose that there is some possible world that God could have created and most of the history up till the time of Christ is relevantly similar or identical. But then after the establishment of the church, things go terribly wrong. So much so that at a given point and for a significant period of time due to massive persecution and gross pervasive heterodoxy there is only one true Christian left with the gospel. So is it possible, putting questions of perseverance aside for the moment, for that person to have a false gospel? If not, why not?
Suppose there’s a possible world in the church fathers are possessed by the devil. But their state of possession is indetectable to the faithful. So it’s possible that every Orthodox believer is hopelessly deluded. If not, why not?
Here I am not being speculative but giving a thought experiment to pump your biblically informed inuitions.
Here I am not being speculative but giving a thought-experiment to pump your Orthodox intuitions.
And taking decisions of councils as infallible doesn’t amount to the claim that they are materially inspired. The councils make a sufficiently clear distinction between the biblical writings and infallible decrees.
Such as?
You’d think that after 500 years of using the same text there’d be theological convergence on baptism, the eucharist and church gov’t.
Why would we think that? After the formative period there is generally a period of consolidation in which the views of the founder are standardized. Creeds. Catechisms. Systematic theology. Polemical theology. The distinctives are deepened. Taken to a logical extreme. Inculcated. And defended.
Over time, different sides are likely to dig into their positions. Fortify their positions. That becomes a locus of social life and social identity. Just look at how insular Eastern Orthodoxy became over the centuries.
For the first option, this would mean that our methodologies for exegeting scripture would seem to be theory neutral with respect to Jesus, indicating that there are some facts that have meaning apart form Jesus. That seems problematic.
To the contrary, the grammatico-historical method is faithful to Jesus by honoring the intent of the Gospel writers who record his words and deeds, as well honoring the intent of Jesus.
If the writers of the confessions were very much in tune with what God has made clear in the Scriptures, why in some cases would political power be needed to remove those who disagreed?
That’s a highly ironic statement on the lips of an Orthodox churchman. Just look at all the power politics in Orthodox church history.
It wasn’t just that Rome edited the Creed unilaterally, but that Rome changed the doctrine of the Trinity. You’d think of all the things to protest, changing the doctrine of the Trinity in a major way would be something Protestants would be up in arms about, but they aren’t. They simply lap up Roman arguments with little or no serious exegesis. Why is that?
i) But when it comes to Calvin on the autotheistic identity of each Trinitarian person, Perry faults Calvin for breaking with Rome. Likewise, when a Reformed theologian like Grudem says it’s time to strike the “descensus ad inferos” from the creed, you don’t find the Orthodox applauding his fidelity to sola Scriptura.
ii) Moreover, even if Calvinists were sometimes guilty of lapping up Catholic arguments with little or no serious exegesis, is the preferable to lap up Orthodox arguments with little or no serious exegesis?
So the filioque is theological speculation? If so, why do the Reformed profess and require their ministers to profess and teach “theological speculation” at the level of dogma? You’d think that after five hundred years of biblical exegesis that they’d figure this out. But they ignore it and just keep on teaching it. Why? Because its their tradition, unbiblical as it is.
So Perry’s argument amounts to this: Calvinists are too tradition-bound. Therefore, they should leave Calvinism for an even more tradition-bound alternative!
You seem to think that the Catholic or in my case Orthodox position is incapable of falsification based on our own premises. No matter what facts you throw at us we either will not accept them as facts or interpret them differently according to our presuppositions. This I think betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on your part since you think that there are neutral facts one can appeal to ascertained by neutral methodologies and build up one’s theology from there in an incrementalist fashion. The facts will discriminate between models showing which one is true and which is false.
This is a mistake. There are no neutral facts out there to be interpreted, linguistic or otherwise. And there are no theological models built up from disparate verses via an exegetical method that doesn’t presuppose the view it arrives it. This is why even the Reformed view is incapable of falsification in this way. Consequently the problem you pose for Catholics or Orthodox like myself, is actually a problem for your position. Unless of course you think Kuyper, Van Til and Bahnsen are wrong.
i) First of all, it’s demonstrably false to say a Reformed Bible scholar uses an exegetical method which presupposes the view it arrives at. The grammatico-historical method is not a Reformed distinctive. Why does Perry keep making statements like this? Is he willfully ignorant?
ii) Perry’s framework is less Van Tilian than Kuhnian. He treats different theological traditions as incommensurable paradigms. One paradigm can’t prove or disprove the other. There’s no intersubjectival standard of comparison.
But Van Til hardly regarded Calvinism as unverifiable, or rival positions as unfalsifiable.
iii) Furthermore, I have yet to see how that tactic is an argument for preferring Orthodoxy to Calvinism. At best, it’s a defensive weapon which disarms him of any offensive weaponry.
White claims the Bible teaches something and he isn’t held to account because I supposedly don’t deserve an answer? Do only fellow Calvinists deserve an answer?
White has to define his own terms. What he meant by his usage. I can’t do that for him.
Moreover, I’ve answered Perry. And I plan to write a follow-up. However, it’s disingenuous for Perry to attack us on several different fronts, then complain that we don’t respond all at once.
History, linguistic scholarship, et al aren’t theory neutral an so won’t give us the reasons independent of the system to tell us if the lens we are using is correct, even if the conclusions are. No more so than history and more scientific study will tell us if something works for the reasons we think it does. False models can work quite well, que Newton’s physics.
He keeps repeating himself as if that does him any good. But even if this overstatement were true, it immunizes the Orthodox belief-system by simultaneously immunizing the Reformed belief-system, as well as every other belief-system. Is this what Perry’s position amounts to? Is he just a turtle who can withdraw into his shell? While that may be a way to play it safe, it wins you no converts.
As for Hays’ question, all authoritative interpretations, and here I am supposing those made by God are correct, but not all correct ones are authoritative. The former can bind my conscience in a way the latter doesn’t. As I pointed out above, the difference is normative. Is it the Reformed contention that truth and authority are identical?
At the divine level, veracity and authority are identical. At the human level, they are often and unfortunately at odds. In a fallen world, tyrants try, with varying degrees of success, to subjugate us to their authoritarian falsehoods.
While truth is intrinsically authoritative, authority is not intrinsically truthful. Authority can be a brute force that tramples on the truth and idolizes falsehood.
Or that there is no difference between a situation where in I hear a truth uttered by God and one found in a Math text? Am I obligated to believe both with the same degree of normativity? That seems awfully reductionistic and naturalistic.
The reply depends on how we qualify the statement. As Perry himself said: “A math text may be inerrant but not infallible and can’t bind one’s conscience to assent to it unless the person knows that the answers that it gives are correct.”
We are obliged to believe the answers in a math text if we know they are true. As long as the “conditions of knowledge” have been met, then we’re obligated to believe the answers. Under those circumstances, there are no degrees of obligation.
Where degrees of “normativity” come into play is where the answers are not objects of knowledge. That introduces probabilities. At least on paper, probabilities introduce degrees of obligation which correspond to degrees of certainty.
At the same time, it’s psychologically artificial to think that we can precisely calibrate our degree of belief to the corresponding odds. We lack that degree of voluntary control over our beliefs. But we can also avoid the extremes of blind faith and petulant skepticism.
We also have to distinguish between reflective and prereflective knowledge. It’s possible to know something at a tacit level, and be obliged to believe it, even if you can’t prove it (assuming, however, that it’s a genuine object of tacit knowledge).
What are we to do when 100% of the archaeological community says the Bible is wrong and such and so civilization didn’t exist? Are we to appeal to some mysterious sense of inspiration and an infallible authority that says “nu uh, because we say so.?”
What is Perry to do when 100% of the archeological community says the Council of Chalcedon never happened? Will he appeal to some mysterious sense of inspiration and an infallible authority that says “nu uh, because we say so.?”
If we aren’t neutral, then what lens do we bring to scripture? And won’t we interpet the scriptural data according to that lens or does scripture constitute a brute fact?
Notice that Perry has about two or three arguments which he constantly paraphrases and reiterates ad nauseum. There’s nothing in reserve. What would he do without his 3x5 flash cards?
To say that they were acting “as the church” presupposes that one can have a church without ministers who are commissioned or sent by God, either mediately or immediately. That strikes me as question begging.
If that’s question-begging, then why is it not equally question-begging for Perry to stipulate that ministers must be commissioned or sent by God in his specialized sense of the term, for which he offers no argument?
I am sure that Protestants will wish to affirm some kind of cessation of the apostolic ministry in that respect. But for my part given the biblical material on the Spirit’s work through the laying on of hands in ordination of bishops, presbyters and deacons there is a good basis to start thinking that the Spirits working councils didn’t cease.
i) That’s another example of Perry’s spooftexting. He needs to exegete his prooftext, not merely allude to a verse here or a verse there which allegedly supports his position.
ii) Moreover, even if we accepted his interpretation, all he’s done is to create elbowroom for the bare possibility that ecumenical councils are inspired. But that extrapolation also requires a supporting argument.
For example, Perry thinks that ecumenical councils are inspired. Yet he doesn’t think that every Orthodox priest or bishop is automatically inspired. So how can he reason from the case of Timothy’s “ordination” to the inspiration of church councils? For that matter, he doesn’t even think every church council is inspired.
iii) Couldn’t Tertullian use Perry’s inference to justify Montanism? Yet Perry regards Montanism as a heresy.
Perry takes way too many intellectual shortcuts.
You ask, how we would know if they were infallible and I would answer that depends on what the conditions for infallibility are supposed to be. To start thinking about this, what are the conditions on infallibility in general, then for the Scriptures, and then what makes a synod legitimate or “ecumenical?”
That ducks the question of why we’d even expect some synods to be infallible.
So yes, you do think that God left it up to fallible men to see that it came together correctly. This was the principled basis why the Protestants corrected the canon in removing books at the Reformation. It matters not that since the Reformation, Protestants haven’t in fact altered the canon. They did so at the Reformation, and could do so again in principle. At best you could claim that the canon is fixed on a pragmatic basis, but not on a principled one.
That’s hardly the best we can claim. Protestant scholars offer principled arguments for the canonicity of this book or that book, as well as principled arguments for the apocryphal status of other books. There’s a range of evidence, based on different lines of internal and external evidence.
And the fact that no Protestant denomination hasn’t done so has more to do with tradition than with it being immutable.
Noticed that having criticized Protestant denominations for allegedly upholding the Protestant canon on pragmatic grounds, Perry resorts to a pragmatic attack. He assails their motives. But that’s not a principled attack. At best, it’s a comment on group psychology. And it’s not as if you don’t have groupthink in excelsis in the Orthodox church.
People just accept books that are given to them at their conversion and then get attached to them.
Which people? Laymen? That may be true in many cases. But evangelical commentators generally discuss the canonicity of the book they exegete. They review the pros and cons. The Orthodox laity just accept the books which are given to them as well.
But if you spread the books on the table and asked them to decide, I doubt if books like Ruth would make it.
Well, that’s a very revealing objection. Ruth is one of the books of the OT. It was written by, to, and for OT Jews. The date is probably preexilic.
Is Perry seriously telling us that it would take a church council to establish the canonicity of Ruth? And where would that leave the original audience, which lived and died centuries before the Christian era? OT Jews never knew if Ruth was the word of God?
This illustrates the anachronistic and ahistorical outlook of an Orthodoxy churchman.
If you are all part of Christ’s church then why isn’t there full communion?
i) First of all, many evangelical denominations do observe full communion.
ii) Beyond that, this is just a case of Perry trying to show that Protestant practice is sometimes inconsistent. How does that disprove sola Scriptura? For the Orthodox can also be inconsistent in practice. Does that disprove the Orthodox rule of faith?
To say that we can try on lenses, well that presupposes that we can interpret facts apart from epistemological assumptions. That’s fine if you wish to reject a presuppositional outlook, but I am not sure that you wish to do so. To say that you can see if they make sense of the data or not, assumes that the data have meaning apart from a model in the first place. How would you know that such is the case? Can you compare the meaning a fact has apart from a worldview and then what meaning a fact has when placed in that worldview? I don’t think this is possible.
Didn’t Perry try on different lenses throughout his checkered religious career? He went from one theological tradition to another and another before he landed in Orthodoxy. Was he using the very same lens the whole time?
Again, I would point you to McGuckin’s work, Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy, which corrects a number of mistakes from Loofs and Grillmeier, which is why his work has superseded theirs. This is confirmed in the work of a good number of other scholars on the subject as well.
Pelikan’s work depends on the older scholarship of Grillmeier and Loofs. (Pelikan’s work is a survey in any case and is nearly 30 years old.) This has been largely overturned as exemplified in MCGuckin’s work and the last 10 plus years of ensuing scholarship which has now become the dominant position among patristic scholars.
So Orthodox church history is provisional and revisable. There is no definitive interpretation of the historical record. It’s up for grabs depending on the latest historical monograph, which may overturn the prior consensus.
I agree that God instills reasoning faculties and such, but how does it follow that they interpret the data apart from some worldview? This sounds like evidentialism to me. Perhaps you are an evidentialist and that is part of where our disagreement lies, but I don’t take reason and the ability to communicate to be anymore indicative of the existence of theory neutral facts than when an atheist or Mormons claims as much.
Perry constantly retails a caricature of Van Tilian antithesis.
i) According to Van Til, believers and unbelievers share total common ground at the metaphysical level. That’s because unbelievers live in God’s world, and rely on their God-given faculties.
ii) At the epistemic level, Van Til distinguishes between theory and practice. In principle, unbelievers are totally opposed to Christianity. In practice, they are inconsistent. They can’t avoid some reliance on the Christian worldview.
iii) And, of course, the antithesis is most extreme between believers and unbelievers. The differences between Wesley and Whitefield are hardly comparable to the differences between Hume and Whitfield–to take one example.
I am not sure how self reflective gets us to interpreting texts apart from a worldview? And won’t that worldview have theological content? And I simply deny that many points of exegesis are not philosophically loaded. The entire methodology is philosophically loaded and relative to some worldview.
Perry is tacitly admitting that his own worldview is unscriptural. He doesn’t think you can get your worldview from a text. Therefore, you’d have to bring an extrascriptural worldview to Scripture. So his “lens” or worldview is not derived from Scripture.
However, the so-called hermeneutical circle is something of a fallacy. The Bible is referential. It refers to real world situations. And we bring our real world experience to the interpretation of Scripture.
Therefore, Perry is setting up a false dilemma when he forces us to choose between a worldview which is entirely intrinsic to Scripture and a worldview which is entirely extrinsic to Scripture. For the worldview of Scripture describes the world which the reader inhabits. And the world we inhabit is not a world apart from the world which Scripture describes. It’s the same world.
Hence, it’s quite possible to bring your preconceptions to Scripture, some of which are true, and some of which are false, and have your preconceptions undergo correction at the foot of Scripture. For the true preconceptions may be sufficient to kick-start the interpretive process. In a fallen world, the corrective is never complete–but it’s sufficient for God to accomplish his purpose.
I agree that God has the ability to communicate, but sensory facts like those gotten from reading a text along with conceptual content are interpreted according to a worldview. There are no worldview neutral facts to appeal to in interpretation. Our understanding is a function of our worldview. Following Van Til, the epistemic reason why the unbeliever doesn’t think that say the facts given for the resurrection imply the resurrection is because he presupposes a naturalistic worldview whereby he interprets those facts and the Christian interprets the facts according to his worldview.
But fellow Christians presumably have more in common with each other than they do with unbelievers.
Secondly, no one is claiming that for communication to be possible that one has to be infallible. The question is about the normativity of that communication and if it can be accessed from some worldviewless or perspectiveless position.
The access point is not, in the first instance, our worldview, but our world. The real world we all inhabit. As well as our God-given faculties. Our worldview is inescapably implicated in our world. There are varying degrees of discontinuity, but there are degrees of continuity as well. That’s how even unbelievers can function in the world.
You asked Bryan if a given statement of his about the church was falsifiable. Well that presupposes a kind of falsificationism, which I know I reject and I suppose Bryan does as well. I’d also wager that most Van Tillians reject it as well. In order for a proposition to be true it doesn’t require that it be capable of falsification. Is God infallible? Is that capable of falsification? No.
That’s a deadly concession for Perry to make. He keeps attacking Protestant theology because it’s supposedly provisional and revisable. But it’s only revisable in the counterfactual sense that if it’s wrong, it’s revisable. So Perry has to go beyond bare hypotheticals to even make a dent in Protestant theology, or Calvinism in particular. He has to show that Calvinism is actually wrong, not possibly wrong. Unless Calvinism is actually wrong, it’s unrevisable.
Secondly, following Quine and Van Til, it is impossible to isolate a given proposition from all others in a given conceptual scheme, rendering falsification impossible. This is why Popper’s falsificationism died over thirty years ago.
Again, though, that cuts both ways. Perry tries to attack Calvinism in toto by attacking what he takes to be chinks in Calvinism, like the Filioque, or divine simplicity. But even if such an attack hit the mark, the web of belief is flexible. You can’t bring down the entire web by snipping one or two threads. The web has inner and outer radials. Not every thread supports the web. And even if you snip a supporting thread, the web has a redundant support structure. Therefore, Perry’s model backfires, since he can’t bring down Calvinism by staging a few guerilla strikes.
If this was the case, why have a system of judges in the OT to interpret and apply the Law? Second, the same goes for the council in Acts 15.
i) OT judges were not infallible. And the Sanhedrin was not infallible. Remember the kangaroo court which convicted Jesus?
ii) The OT had judges because the OT had a law code for a nation-state. So you needed judges to hear cases. Sentence offenders. That doesn’t mean OT judges were infallible.
iii) When Jesus spoke to the crowds, who does Perry think were the official interpreters at the time he spoke? The Pharisees? The Sadducees? Wasn’t the religious establishment was opposed to the mission and message of Jesus?
I do not think that you have ministers commissioned by God. Some of the Reformers were laymen all their lives, like Calvin.
The basic qualifications for pastoral ministry are laid out in 1 Tim 3:1-7 and Tit 1:5-9. Succession is not a prerequisite.
Second those that were ordained renounced their Catholic ordination vows.
So what?
Third, among the Presbyterians, they prohibited ordination by the laying on of hands for over a century just to weed out the idea of any spiritual life or power giving through ordination. Any presbyterial tactual succession they could have possibly had was lost. They were ordained by mere voting, quite contrary to the biblical model I might add.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the imposition of hands is a prerequisite for valid ordination, that would only invalidate the ordination of those who failed to meet that condition.
So there’s a suppressed premise in Perry’s argument. He must believe that in order to be validly ordained, you have to occupy a place within a continuous series of ordinations. Where is the supporting argument?
Fourth, none of the Reformers works were attended to by miracle and prophecy to authenticate an extraordinary commissioning by God as is the case in the Bible with Moses or anyone else directly commissioned.
How many Orthodox clergymen enjoy miraculous or prophetic attestation?
So given that they lacked both mediate/ordinary and immediate/extraordinary sending, I can’t see what constitutes them as legitimate ministers commissioned by God in the Scriptures.
How does he define “sending”? What are his prooftexts?
All I tried to appeal to was the biblical material about commissioning and sending. On that basis alone, it seems the Reformers failed to be legitimate ministers however right they may have been about protesting abuses…I was also suggesting that one look at the biblical material on what constitutes ordination to pump our thinking on the matter in this discussion.
It’s not enough to “suggest” that one look at the biblical material. Perry needs to specify what biblical materials he thinks are germane, and then exegete them.
Even if one could refute the Eunomians, Rome etc. with Scripture alone, won’t that be our judgment? Any argument is only as good as its premises. So why would our judgment as to a successful refutation be normative? It can’t be merely because it is logically valid since one can always reject various premises, which the Arians did and I assume Rome will too in a number of cases. Normativity out runs inerrancy. Jesus taught more than the right ideas, he taught with normativity.
Does this mean we can safety discount Perry’s arguments for Orthodoxy, as well as his arguments against Calvinism? Even if we thought his arguments were successful, our private judgment would fall short of normativity. Notice how often Perry takes a chainsaw to his own perch.
The Church did not decide the material canon, but that everyone grants. But everyone also grants that the church decided the formal canon too.
Did the Orthodox church decide the formal canon? What is the formal canon of the Orthodox church? Exactly what set of books comprises the formal canon of the Orthodox church? Where can we find the official list?
And if you think your church is fallible, there is no reason to think that the Protestants could have or can in the future make a mistake either by including books that don’t belong or by excluding those that do. Why think that the church’s recognition and specifically Protestants recognition is without the possibility of error? If rome can be wrong for 1000 plus years, why not the Reformers for 500?
And if you think Perry is fallible, there is no reason to think that Perry may not be mistaken about his faith in the Orthodox church.
It is one thing for the bible to be infallible of itself materially speaking, it is quite another thing to think that my recognition of any given book relative to inspiration of that book is infallible. Do you think the church’s recognition of the books was infallible? Don’t you think the church got it wrong and included some books that weren’t inspired?
Is Perry’s recognition of the Orthodox church as the true church fallible or infallible?
And your requirement of unanimity on the papal perogatives isn’t exactly fair. The early Church hardly presents a unanimous affirmation of the deity of Christ.
Which illustrates the limitations of tradition.
It may be that Jezebel ursurped the authority of the king, but Protestants seem to fall under the rubric of the rebellion of Korah, where they appointed their own ministers out of the succession. (Num 16)
The Levitical priesthood was successive because it was dynastic. That’s hardly analogous to NT ministry.
You ask the reader to judge, but what does Jesus say to do with those who won’t listen to the judgment of the church?
Well, it’s not quite that simple.
i) Perry is committing the word=concept fallacy. It’s not enough to seize on a NT verse which uses the word “church,” then transfer that word to Orthodox ecclesiology.
ii) There are rival claimants to the title of the true church.
iii) Rev 2-3 warns about dying churches. And a number of churches to which the NT epistles were addressed were in a state of moral or doctrinal disarray.
As for the canon, if the Jews were fallible, isn’t it possible that they made a mistake?
But what about the Jewish canon? Is Perry telling us that Jews didn’t know where to find the word of God? That it took a church council to settle the OT canon? And where does that leave OT Jews and Intertestamental Jews who lived and died long before the Orthodox church came on the scene?
Furthermore, not all Jews at the time of Christ agreed on the canon. The Sadducees for example did not recognize anything after the Law of Moses.
This is one of those oft-repeated clichés, but is it true? According to F. F. Bruce, “The idea that the Sadducees (like the Samaritans) acknowledge the Pentateuch only as holy scripture is based on a misunderstanding: when Josephus, for example, says that the Sadducees ‘admit no observance at all apart from the law,’ he means not the Pentateuch to the exclusion of the Prophets and the Writings but the written law (of the Pentateuch) to the exclusion of the oral law (the Pharisaic interpretation and application of the written law, which like the written law itself, was held in theory to have been received and handed down by Moses),” The Canon of Scripture, 40-41. Cf. R. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 86-91; 103-04.
This also exposes a basic deficiency in Perry’s theological orientation. Because his field of research is centered on church history, he has to neglect the literature related to Biblical scholarship.
Plenty of fathers were using the apocrypha or parts of it as scripture long before the council of Rome in 382. And even at that time, everything from Hebrews to Revelation was still in doubt in large sections in the church.
Which means we have to sift the evidence. Perry has to do the same thing.
Furthermore, not all scholars agree that the NT doesn’t cite the apocrypha. And even if it didn’t, are we to exclude Ruth now since the NT doesn’t cite it either? The criteria of NT citation is clearly inadequate-its is neither a necessary condition nor a sufficient condition.
That’s simpleminded. On the one hand, it depends on how a book is cited, as well as its preexisting reputation. On the other hand, the NT doesn’t have to cite everything to be an inspired witness to the books it does cite (depending on how the books are cited). So Perry is creating a false dilemma.
As for the ChalcedonianChristology, I’d suggest that this isn’t the case with the Reformed. Just pick up Muller’s Christ and the Decree, which is sufficiently clear that the Reformed (happily I might ad) dissent from Chalcedon. And Muller is no Orthodox toady. Just notice Calvin’s remarks in the Inst, bk 2, chap 14, sec 5,
In which case Perry can’t attack Calvinism for being too tradition-bound.
So the deacons in Acts 6 weren’t laboring in the ministry of the apostles but some newly founded ministry? And Timothy and Titus, were they continuing in the Apostle’s ministry or some other?
Of course, that’s fatally equivocal. Even Perry allows for discontinuities as well as continuities between the ministry of Paul and the ministry of his deputies.
And that was exactly the point. If it were a matter of mere understanding why the judges in the OT…
Someone has to enforce the law.
And the system of councils in the NT?
We have a “system of councils” in the NT? Where do we have that? Is Acts 15 a “system of councils”? Does Perry have something additional in mind?
When Luther for example was making his protest, there was no Protestant ecclesiastical structure to appeal to. It was his judgment that trumped that of Catholic teaching authority. Subsequent, all Protestant bodies were formed around the representational and collective judgment of individuals. This is why protestant ministers are on their own principles laymen elevated y other laymen to a functional status.
The Orthodox church was also formed around the representational and collective judgment of individuals. The Orthodox church is not a democracy. Some individuals are more equal than others.
Consequently, no one’s conscience on Protestant principles is absolutely obligated or bound by any doctrinal formulation because all such formulations are a human reconstruction and fallible. They are therefore by their very nature unable to absolutely bind the conscience since qua formulation they are the doctrines of men.
That’s because our conscience is bound by the word of God. But to the degree that a doctrinal formulation accurately captures the sense of Scripture, then that formulation is binding on the conscience of the believer.
Divine statements are normative not merely because God is without error. The Scriptures are not merely without error, it is impossible for them to be in error, indicating that the root question here is one of normativity and not merely arriving at the correct understanding.
How does that follow? The key category is truth. Scripture is inerrant because Scripture is infallible. Infallible because Scripture is inspired. In order to secure and insure an inerrant text, it’s necessary that the text also be infallible. The greater is needed to accomplish the lesser. But the goal of all this is truth. True statements. Truth is normative.
On the protestant position, it seems to me, that divine teaching should be able to bind my conscience, to obligate me to believe it even if I fail to meet the conditions on knowledge regarding it.
If divine teaching is not an object of knowledge, then why is it obligatory to believe it? Perry seems to be using authority as a makeweight in the absence of truth or knowledge. That’s quite fideistic.
But this isn’t true in principle of any Protestant theological formulation since they are all fallible and revisable and hence no Protestant theological formulae could rise to the level of divine teaching.
We have divine teaching in the Scriptures.
And it seems even if we appeal to general revelation here that this still leaves the point untouched, namely that all exegetical models will presuppose and select for theological content.
He never gets beyond that bare assertion. He never demonstrates his claim.
My point is this. If exegetical methods are not neutral and if the proper exegetical method is necessary for arriving at the correct understanding of major scriptural doctrines, then it will be impossible to derive these doctrines without having the correct exegetical method, and hence theology in place first.
So does Perry derive his theology in toto from extrabiblical sources? Talk about a “human reconstruction project”!
Its true that any document will be required to be exegetes, just as any appeal to facts will require a presupposed worldview and the case of both, the former cannot be justified without the latter. But all that requires is a transcendental type of argument to select for the necessary preconditions for a proper interpretation of the text, not that such a view implies an infinite regress of sorts. So here I think you draw the wrong conclusion.
And where does he present his transcendental argument for Orthodox hermeneutics?
Regarding the mapping analogy, you ask if an incrementalist approach won’t work, how are we to compare models with say the text to discriminate between models. At least that is what I think you are asking. I think I indicated that that kind of comparison is not possible in a theory neutral way. We’d first need to find a way to acquire the right model to get to the right interpretation and only in that context would a comparison be possible. It is analogous to the way we have to find the right worldview to interpret the facts regarding the death of Jesus and only then will we come to the conclusion that Christ rose from the grave. On atheistic presuppositions such a conclusion will never be drawn.
Notice that he never gets beyond the programmatic statement. When is he going to answer his own question? Redeem all these IOUs?
Perry is like a compulsive gambler who keeps promising his bookie that he’ll pay him back after he wins big in the next game. At this rate he’s overdue for a Chicago overcoat.
You ask what kind of reasoning process one would have to go through to reach my position. Here is a sketch. This in part will entail finding serious internal inconsistencies and also digging out what the necessary and perhaps in some cases, the sufficient preconditions are for certain theological dotrines. For example, I don’t think one can consistently adhere to Chalcedonian Christology and Calvinistic Predestination or Sola Scriptura and absolute divine simplicity or the FIlioque. It is only because the system adheres to both ends that I can generate an internal critique.
But if he’s going to adopt the Quine-Duhem thesis (see above), then Reformed theology can always “save the theory” through auxiliary hypotheses.
Likewise, if divine teaching can obligate me beyond the conditions on knowledge, then if there is divine teaching, then in principle no Protestant teaching can rise to the level of divine teaching since no Protestant formulae meets the necessary or sufficient preconditions to do so. They are in principle ruled out on a transcendental basis.
i) To begin with, his stated position up till now is not that divine teaching can obligate us above and beyond the conditions of knowledge, but below the conditions of knowledge.
ii) Moreover, he’s failed to demonstrate that truth falls short of normativity. Truth is a norm. Therefore, truth is normative.
iii) Likewise, he’s failed to demonstrate that God requires extrabiblical formulae to warrant this degree of assent.
Since I already noted that Apostolic Succession includes right teaching and that tactual succession as a part of it is a necessary condition for both of the former, it should be clear that a mere line of succession isn’t a sufficient condition for a body to be Christian. But it is a necessary condition. If Protestantism lacks a necessary condition to be a church then that precludes it from being a viable option all by itself, papacy or no papacy.
Of course, to say that apostolic succession includes right teaching is just a hypothetical claim.
Certain matters are beyond revision. Debates in fact get settled. It is not like we are going to have another Unitarian crises along the lines of Arianism. But the Reformed did. Why? Because on their own principles their theology is revisable.
The apostasy in question has nothing to do with revisable theology. Rather, some nominal Calvinists lost their faith. Became rationalists. The liberals of their day. That can happen in any tradition. For example, how many contemporary Greek citizens are devout churchgoers?
Its quite true that some bishops have been bad. The Orthodox surely have our share of them. That said, I fail to see how it implies that succession is not a necessary condition. Judas was morally horrible, yet he was an apostle and worked miracles nonetheless with the others.
Is there any direct evidence that Judas performed miracles? It’s also a bit anachronistic to dub him an apostle. He was one of the Twelve. But an “apostle” is a post-Pentecostal role.
When I speak of the biblical model, I mean things like ordination by the laying on of hands, that a real spiritual gift was given through such action, etc.
What he’s pleased to call the “biblical model” consists of vague allusions to prooftexts which he makes no effort to exegete in context.
A monarchial episcopate entails rather that the bishop alone is the source of ordination and the gift received, just as the Father alone is the source of the other persons of the Trinity. Mon-arche=one source.
Both highly debatable assumptions.
I don’t know of any biblical data or any case in church history that indicates where presbyters and deacons could ordain by themselves.
That depends on what ordination is supposed to signify. In the Pastoral Epistles, the imposition of hands (which isn’t equivalent to ordination, in any case) is not what qualifies the candidate for ministry. Rather, the minister must meet certain preliminary qualifications. The imposition of hands is just a public witness.
To think that presbyters can ordain in my mind confuses Trinitarian theology since it posits the Son as the hypostatic source as well as conflating the Persons of the Father and the Son.
Notice the question-begging assumptions which underlie this objection. He begins with a subordinationist Triadology. And he then treats that as the template for Christian ministry.
So Perry’s case for the Orthodox alternative involves many different steps, which require supporting arguments every step of the way. All we’re getting from him are tendentious assertions followed by conspicuous gaps where all the supporting arguments needs to be.
Given that the Presbyterians forbade ordination by the laying on of hands for a century, I can’t see how they either preserved the form of biblical ordination or any succession even if it came through the presyterate.
We can debate whether or not the Presbyterian practice was defective at that juncture in church history. But even if the imposition of hands is a prerequisite for valid ordination, what makes “succession” another requirement?
We would only know that God was working to select for these books if we already knew which books he selected and which model of providence was right, which is question begging.
As a general maxim, that’s false. Indeed, providence is easier to recognize in retrospect.
Second, obviously God didn’t select for all the books Protestants take to be inspired since not all of the Jewish leadership took them to be inspired and in some cases included more.
Another assertion in search of an argument.
Likewise on the same principle the church took many books to be inspired that Protestants reject. If providence was guiding the church, then God guided it to accept works Protestants reject.
A misleading way to state the argument from providence. It would be more accurate to say we judge matters on the best available evidence–which God has put at our disposal. What evidence has God, in his providence, chosen to preserve for the benefit of posterity? That’s a better way to broach the question.
And let’s also not forget that Scripture, as the word of God, also contains internal indicia of divine inspiration.
If it is sufficient to get the correct understanding, why posit an infallible text instead of an inerrant one?
It takes a greater cause (inspiration) to yield a lesser effect (inerrancy). It’s like the redundancy of nature. A fruit tree produces many seeds, of which just a few take root. But if it produced just a few seeds, then none would survive.
And in the last century Presbyterian scholars for example argued and tried to have 3rd John removed from the canon given its strong implicit support for episcopacy. (Diotrephes is lower than an apostle but superior to presbyters).
Does Perry think they made a good case? Had the better of the argument? If so, why doesn’t he agree with them? If not, then this confirms the essential soundness of Protestant theological method.
And secondly, they did so at the Reformation by removing the apocrypha. And thirdly, it wouldn’t mater if they did so or not, if the canon is in principle revisable, then it is revisable even if it has not yet been revised.
Well, that’s quite equivocal. To say the Catholic (or Orthodox canon) is revisable per Protestant criteria hardly means the Protestant canon is equally revisable per Protestant criteria. Perry is resorting to a bait-and-switch tactic. A Catholic (or Orthodox) canon will be based on Catholic (or Orthodox) criteria. In the nature of the case, that’s potentially revisable per Protestant criteria.
Perry might as well say that if we removed the Mormon apocrypha from the canon, that would make the canon revisable. But you obviously need to distinguish between Mormon criteria and Protestant criteria.
And even though the inspiration of Scripture is done with, since not all apostles wrote inspired scripture it in no way follows that if the former is terminated that everything of the latter is, anymore than the cessation of OT prophets with John the Baptist implied the cessation of inspired Scripture.
Well, there is, in fact, a debate over cessationism in the evangelical church. And it’s not as if the cessationists simply fall back on tradition. They argue for their position. Cf. O. P. Robertson, The Final Word; N. Weeks, The Sufficiency of Scripture.
Perry may think these debates introduce an unstable element into theology, but, of course, there were raging debates in 1C Judaism over various issues as well. We can’t predict or proscribe what God is willing to allow.
Luke and Mark were dependent on the Apostles as their source of truth.
That’s an overstatement. Since Jerusalem was Mark’s hometown, he may well have had many sources of information, including his own observations. Likewise, Luke probably had a wide range of informants. No doubt both of them got some of their information from the apostles. But there’s no reason to assume they were limited to that conduit. There were many living eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Christ at the time they wrote.
You concede the point on the issue being one of right understanding, namely it isn’t. The matter required in the OT and the NT a judge. Notice that in Acts 15 they appeal to Scripture but it took a judgment to resolve the matter.
That’s deceptive on several counts:
i) OT judges were not infallible.
ii) Naturally right understanding is insufficient in law enforcement. It’s not as though criminals would be law-abiding citizens if only they knew they were breaking the law! Criminals knowingly break the law. They must be punished. The law is coercive.
iii) Likewise, church disciplines goes beyond right understanding since the offender may be defiant. But that doesn’t mean we need more truth. That doesn’t mean the truth is not a norm. The offender is still obligated to “do the truth” (in John’s striking phrase).
iv) The council of Jerusalem took place during the era of public revelation. You can’t automatically extrapolate from that situation to our own.
v) Moreover, all the parties did not exhibit right understanding of the issue before the council was convened. Certainly the Judaizers misunderstood the issues.
On the contrary, the matter of religion is not of trust but of truth, since one can have misplaced trust. And If I can’t trust church fathers, councils and such, so much the more reason not to trust you or the Reformers.
Once again, that’s quite deceptive. Perry himself is very selective in whom he puts his faith in. Very selective about tradition. Has no truck with schismatics and heretics. Shuns everyone his adopted church classifies as schismatic and heretics. In his way, he’s just as discriminating as the Reformers.
And to private judgment, this is not historically speaking the idea of each person judging the truth of the matter. It picks out a normative judgment on the conscience. On Protestant principles no ultimate normative judgment by the church can bind the conscience.
For which we can be eternally grateful as we review the tawdry history of Roman Catholicism–to take one example. Likewise, consider the “normative judgment” which the Sanhedrin rendered in the trial of Christ.
The only thing that can do so is the conscience of the individual. This is why on Protestant principles every judgment of a Protestant church is capable of being overthrown by the individual…
i) Orthodoxy merely substitutes an individualistic oligarchy for an individualistic democracy. In Orthodoxy, some individuals are more equal than others. Their individual judgment can bind the conscience of other individuals. Consider what Perry said about Maximus the Confessor.
ii) Freedom of conscience is not a norm in Protestant theology. Scripture is the norm. For better or worse, freedom of conscience leaves us answerable to the word of God. We must be free of ecclesiastical tyranny, not because our freedom is an end it itself, but to keep us accountable to God.
So we have judgment at the level of meeting the conditions on knowledge, which everyone does. Then we have a judgment that entails a greater degree of normativity. Protestants ground that in the individual, Orthodox, Catholics and some Anglicans ground it in the church.
There is no norm above and beyond God’s truth. The conscience is not a norm. But the mind of the individual is the medium by which we process and assess truth-claims and rival claims. That is unavoidable. That is how God designed us. And that is under God’s pervasive providence.
This is why if Orthodox, Anglicans and Catholics do the first, they aren’t engaging in private judgment since they aren’t proposing something as ultimately normative on themselves and others.
That’s an exercise in self-deception.
You remarks about OT covenant authorities being corrupt. When that was the case, when all those through ordinary commissioning, that by God via other men through sucession, how were extraordinary ministers brought about? By divine direct commissioning attested to by miracle and/or prophecy. This seems to exclude the Reformers.
To say that “ordinary commissioning” requires succession assumes what Perry needs to prove.
Second, Christ, Peter, John, Paul etc did miracles, wrote inspired Scripture and gave prophecy to confirm their message as did the prophets and Moses before them.
That’s misleading. Not all Bible writers performed miracles–or if they did, we have no record of their doing so. Moreover, prophecies are only confirmatory after the fact. Is Perry claiming that all NT prophecies have been fulfilled?
The sadduccess clearlydid not accept anything beyond the Law of moses as canonical, hence there was no unanimity on the canon. And besides, why reject the fallible tradition of believing Christians for the fallible tradition of unbelieving Jews?
This seems to be another case where Perry suffers from self-reinforcing ignorance. He hasn’t kept up with evangelical scholarship.
As Peter notes, we become partakers of the divine nature, the problem is that you accept unscriptural doctrines like absolute divine simplicity that equat energy with essence so it is not possible to believe the scriptural teaching since to participate in the divine nature would be to become God by essence. The problem is your Platonism, not Orthodox teaching.
Of course, 2 Pet 1:4 needs to be exegeted in context before Perry is entitled to claim that as a prooftext of his position.
I don’t use private judgment to choose a church. The concept of private judgment is not just any judgment that an individual makes. It is the idea that the conscience of an individual alone can bind the conscience on theological questions and propose normative doctrinal formulae. Consequently, no church council can trump bind the conscience of the individual without their assent. Consequently, I don’t engage in private judgment as to what constitutes church doctrine since I am not making judgments for the church. I agree that the church can bind my conscience even if I dissent from it, contrary to Luther for example. Making judgments as to which church is the true society founded by Christ isn’t private judgment, since it only seeks to meet the conditions on knowledge, and not to meet the conditions on producing normative judgments binding on others.
This is special pleading. Perry’s face-saving redefinition of “private judgment” to exempt himself from the charge. But at the time he’s deciding which church is the true church, or even assuming there’s just one true church to choose from, he’s not making that choice on the authority of the church in question. For his identification of the true church is a conclusion, and not a presupposition, of his spiritual quest. He can’t very well use the true church as a standard to pick out the true church before he’s identified which contender represents the true church. For only the true church can furnish a true standard.
Moreover, you implicitly concede my point, namely that Luther and the Reformers placed their own judgment as to what constituted the doctrine of the church above everyone elses by employing a tu quo que argument.
No, not above “everyone else’s.” They simply refused to concede that a pope’s judgment was inherently superior to theirs. This doesn’t mean they regarded their judgment as inherently superior to everyone else’s, or inherently superior to anyone else’s. To say your judgment isn’t inherently superior to mine doesn’t mean your judgment is inherently inferior to mine.
The only form of biblical commissioning open to the Reformers then is ordinary commissioning through a succession, but they either never had it, as in the case of Calvin, or they rejected it as was the case with Luther, Zwingli, etc.
Perry hasn’t begun to show that apostolic succession is a necessary condition of valid ministry. That’s just another orphaned assertion.
Its true that the Orthodox think that the Apostles and Fathers of the Church enjoy and participate to a greater degree in the divine energies and hence are deified, (not all Fathers are ordained btw)…
In other words, the Orthodox version of individualism. Oligarchic individualism, where some individuals are more equal than others. So Perry doesn’t avoid individualism. He’s just selective about which individuals he puts on a pedestal.
Even if the Sadducees were a minority, they were a minority of Jews and that is sufficient to show that not all Jews agreed on the canon.
Bruce and Beckwith say otherwise. Where is Perry’s counterargument?
Second, the Essenes and the Zealots weren’t all of one mind either.
Highlighting the doctrinal diversity in 2nd temple Judaism is hardly helpful to Perry’s case. It means there was no institution in Judaism which could exercise “normative authority.” If that arrangement was good enough for the OT covenant community, for so many centuries, then why assume that God had to introduce such an institution for Christians? Was it impossible for OT Jews or Intertestamental Jews to be faithful to God?
Furthermore, not all of the Pharisees agreed on the canon either so that isn’t any help here.
Such as?
Huh...all that and still not one signle verse of Scripture offered for the Protestant Confessional doctrine of the Filioque.
ReplyDeleteI only asked for one verse.
I've addressed that issue on multiple occasions.
ReplyDeleteReally? You've given a verse or verses that teach the Filioque?
ReplyDeleteWhere? What verses? And what exegesis?
I must have missed it.
Perry,
ReplyDeleteTry not to be a hypocrite. You are using certain traditions like the filioque and divine simplicity as wedge issues to disprove Calvinism.
However, in your recent comments over at Green Baggins, you endorse the Duhem–Quine thesis in application to theology.
In that case, you can’t disprove Calvinism by pinging Calvinism on these residual traditions. The web of belief is resilient. Nothing short of a holistic attack could bring down the web of belief.
I already made that point in my post. It does you no credit when you raise objections I respond to, only for you to repeat the same objection as if no counterargument was offered.
What is Perry to do when 100% of the New Testament community says that the 'presbyter' and the 'overseer' was the same office and that Ignatius of Antioch was the origin of their distinction? Will he appeal to some mysterious sense of inspiration and an infallible authority that says “nu uh, because we say so.?”
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteEven if everything you claimed were true, how does that qualify as a scriptural verse and exegesis for the Confessional Protestant belief in the Filioque?
That is,again, no scripture given for the doctrine.
This is so if I am a hypocrite or not. My suppose hypocrisy is irrelevant to grounding your doctrines in Scripture.
Again, if you claim to have given scriptural grounding for the doctrine, please provide the url, or just ONE passage of scripture at the least. Just one.
And how did you come to the idea that the doctrine of the Trinity as espoused on the Reformed Confessions is a "residual tradition?"
Acolyte4236 said...
ReplyDelete“Even if everything you claimed were true, how does that qualify as a scriptural verse and exegesis for the Confessional Protestant belief in the Filioque?”
i) I don’t need to defend it. Calvinism doesn’t rise or fall on the filioque. That controversy is central to Orthodoxy and the Catholic/Orthodox dispute in a way that’s not the case for Calvinism.
The filioque is not a Reformed distinctive. It’s not even a Reformed essential. Suppose we dropped the filioque tomorrow and went back to Greek edition of the Creed.
What would change? If we drop the filioque, does that entail a rejection of TULIP? Or sola scriptura? Or sola fide? Or covenant theology? No, no, no, and no.
ii) Likewise, this is more that hypothetical. Calvinists, as a body, have been known to change their minds some issues. To take a few examples:
a) Presbyterians used to follow the Westminster Directory of Worship. Nowadays, that’s very much the minority position in Calvinism.
b) After the Revolutionary War, Presbyterians modified the Westminster Confession on church/state relations. They also deleted the article equating the pope with the Antichrist.
c) The OPC and PCA don’t enforce the Westminster Standards on the timespan of creation (“in the space of six days”).
However, none of these changes has caused them to drop TULIP, or sola scriptura, or sola fide, or covenant theology, &c.
“This is so if I am a hypocrite or not. My suppose hypocrisy is irrelevant to grounding your doctrines in Scripture.”
It’s hardly irrelevant to you case against Calvinism. When you endorse the Duhem-Quine hypothesis, but then proceed to attack Calvinism in a way that disregards that thesis, that cripples you attack on Calvinism.
“And how did you come to the idea that the doctrine of the Trinity as espoused on the Reformed Confessions is a ‘residual tradition?’”
The filioque is a carryover from Latin theology. And it’s tangential to Reformed theology.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteAgain, even if all you said were true or uncontroversail or to the point, how does that amount to a giving of scripture for a doctrine that the Reformed churches require their ministers to profess and teach?
And I am not clear on why you aren't required to defend on the principle of Sola Scriptura all of the doctrines the Reformed churches teach? Or is it that some doctrines they teach aren't Scriptural?
And if so, why do you and other Protestants not protest against this non-scriptural doctrine in your own ranks while you protest against Rome or the Orthodox on the same principle of Sola Scriptura?
Again, just one passage of Scripture.
Just one.
Acolyte4236 said...
ReplyDelete"And if so, why do you and other Protestants not protest against this non-scriptural doctrine in your own ranks while you protest against Rome or the Orthodox on the same principle of Sola Scriptura?"
Because I have priorities. My priorities aren't the same as your priorities. As I said before, the filioque dispute is central to Orthodox identity in a way that's hardly the case for Calvinism.
You yourself are highly selective about what you choose to blog on. I don't see you going after Hitchens. Or Dawkins. Or Ehrman. And so on and so forth.
I don't see you blogging on abortion or euthanasia or counterterrorism. And so on and so forth.
ACOLYTE4236 SAID:
ReplyDelete"Again, even if all you said were true or uncontroversail or to the point, how does that amount to a giving of scripture for a doctrine that the Reformed churches require their ministers to profess and teach?"
What makes you think Reformed ministers are required to profess the filioque? Do you think ordination in the PCA or OPC (to take two prominent examples) requires strict subscription? To my knowledge, that's not the case.
Rather, the ordinand is expected to state any points at which he differs from the Westminster standards. It's then up to the presbytery to determine if his deviation falls within acceptable parameters. That can also be appealed to the GA.
What's your personal experience with Reformed ordination boards, anyway? How many examinations did you ever sit in on?
Likewise, what makes you think Reformed ministers are required to teach the filioque? Do they have to preach a biannual sermon defending the filioque? Can you point me to some official policy to that effect?
Perry -- The phrase "and the son" appears in the Belgic confession (1561), supported by John 15:26 and also Gal 4:6 -- so maybe that's your "just one" -- And Jesus is doing the sending. aBut it does not appear at all in the other "forms of unity" nor in Westminster. It just appears simply that as an issue to defend it was just very low priority.
ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteThe text you appeal to is an economic procession, not an ontological procession.
Of course, the texts that the Orthodox appeal to in order to defend the idea that the Son derives His Being from the Father are also eisegeted. They refer to Jesus' Messianic investiture.
Another reason to dismiss the 'Unanimous consent of the church fathers.'
That sentence should say:
ReplyDelete"They refer to Jesus' Messianic investiture, not His eternal procession from the Father."
S&S -- Thanks for those distinctions. It is striking to me how little the Reformed Confessions have to say about it. Perry was trying to lead me to believe that the Reformers and Reformed Orthodox were all marching in lockstep over this issue.
ReplyDeleteJohn - But it does not appear at all in the other "forms of unity" nor in Westminster.
ReplyDeleteVytautas - Westminster Chapter II Section III has the Filioque.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteBut those priorities don't include protesting non-biblical doctrines in your own churches, just protesting those in other people's churches?
Granted I don't blog about Ehrman and Co., but plenty of other people do already. I have a niche and I like my niche very much.
Your niche in part is defending Calvinism and that entails it seems, or at least you keep telling me, defending it on exegetical grounds, which you often chide me for supposedly not doing for Orthodoxy. Why aren’t you defending this doctrine professed by Reformed churches to this day exegetically?
So again, just one verse for the doctrine professed in practically all of the Reformed Confessions.
Just one.
Is it your position that Reformed ministers aren’t required to profess and teach it? What evidence would you have to make you think it isn’t required? Is it a usual custom for Presbyteryies to opt out of portions of Trinitarian doctrine or permit their ministers to do so?
So if the ordinand is expected to state any points at which he differs from the WS, is it then implicit that those sections he doesn’t object to he agrees with and is hence bound to? Do you know of any presbyterys that don’t enforce on the Filioque?
Even if it is not enforced, how does that justify on scriptural grounds its continued presence in the Confessions and its teaching by representative theologians, past and present?
I think you might be surprised where I have sat.
What makes me think they are required to teach it is that its in the confessions, its taught at the seminaries, its in all the major systematic works by representative theologians, I know of no examples where dissent on it is permitted.
Why don’t we try an experiment. Why don’t you go to your elders and presbytery representatives and ask them what would happen if one denied it, either as an ordinand, layman, teaching elder or ruling elder or deacon. Whatcha think they are going to say?
John Bugay,
ReplyDeleteGranted that those are the two primary texts put forward. Why do you think that Steve didn’t just cite them?
Second, can you show briefly how they teach the doctrine of the Filioque exegetically? And sure they speak of the Son sending the Spirit, but is that the doctrine of the Filioque or no?
Third how do we get from low priority to the idea that it doesn’t require scriptural justification? I am not clear how those two ideas are supposed to connect.
And it is in the WCF here
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anonymous/westminster3.i.ii.html
See sec. 3.
It is also in the Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 10.
I grant that the Reformed don’t have a lot to say about it, but I am not clear how we get from the fact that they aren’t loquacious about it to the idea that it doesn’t require scriptural justification.
ACOLYTE4236 SAID:
ReplyDelete“But those priorities don't include protesting non-biblical doctrines in your own churches, just protesting those in other people's churches?”
i) I prioritize the gravity of the error.
ii) I also have a stated position on the filioque. I’ve already offered my 2¢ on the issue.
“Your niche in part is defending Calvinism and that entails it seems, or at least you keep telling me, defending it on exegetical grounds, which you often chide me for supposedly not doing for Orthodoxy. Why aren’t you defending this doctrine professed by Reformed churches to this day exegetically?”
Since the filioque is not a Reformed distinctive or Reformed essential, the status of the filioque is irrelevant to defending Calvinism proper.
“What evidence would you have to make you think it isn’t required?”
Let’s take a parallel case: beginning with Warfield, a number of prominent Reformed theologians have rejected the eternal generation of the Son. And they’ve never been brought up on charges, much less defrocked. Yet eternal generation and double procession rise and fall together.
“Even if it is not enforced, how does that justify on scriptural grounds its continued presence in the Confessions and its teaching by representative theologians, past and present?”
There’s nothing unscriptural about the phrase. We can find equivalent language in John.
The question is whether we construe the phrase in ontological terms, according to the traditional Catholic interpretation–or construe the phrase in economic terms, according to Johannine usage.
So there’s no pressing reason to drop that article from the Creed.
“What makes me think they are required to teach it is that its in the confessions, its taught at the seminaries, its in all the major systematic works by representative theologians, I know of no examples where dissent on it is permitted.”
i) I seriously doubt the filioque receives the same obsessive attention at the average Reformed seminary that it does at, say, St. Vladimir’s.
ii) Both John Frame (The Doctrine of God) and Robert Reymond (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith) gloss the filioque in economic terms.
iii) There’s been a linguistic and chronological shift in the orientation of Reformed theology. Older theologians took Latin theology as their major point of reference. But modern theologians tend to take exegetical theology and contemporary theologians as a major point of reference. And that’s inevitable. We naturally in dialogue with our contemporaries. We’re not in the same historical situation as Calvin or Turretin.
Perry -- I can't speak for Steve, but "as for teaching the Filioque exegetically," I'm not willing to concede that the writers of the Belgic or the WCF didn't know what they were doing. Here again are the two verses given as "Scriptural Proofs" with the WCF:
ReplyDeleteJOHN 15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me.
GAL 4:6 And Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
Couple of things
1. Define "proceed" -- what is the Greek word?
2. How is "proceeds from" in any sense "the Spirit of his son" That is, the little preposition "of"?
3. Even if there is some miniscule difference of being "proceding from" and being "of", why is this worth having fought wars over? Aren't the Reformed, generally correct in their understanding that this is a minor thing?
Again, I am willing to grant you that Rome does heinous, arrogant things, and unilaterally changing the words of a creed is both heinous and arrogant. But in the end, it rightfully occupies a low place in people's minds.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteSteve.
It seems rather too convenient that you get to decide which confessional doctrines in core areas of theology you need to defend and which you don’t. First the howling of Sola Scriptura, then its, except here and here and here…
It doesn’t follow that if Calvinism doesn’t turn on the Filioque that as a Confessional doctrine it doesn’t require Scriptural justification. Last I heard, Sola Scriptura isn’t, Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice relative to those doctrines upon which a system may ultimately depend.
Second, simply asserting that Calvinism doesn’t turn on the Filioque doesn’t show that it doesn’t. I think some other core areas of Calvinism turn on principles employed in and necessary to and entailed by the Filioque. Without it, they won’t go through, so I find your assertion controversial and not beyond question. Just because you or other Reformed theologians haven’t figured that out yet or don’t see it may say something about their epistemic and logical acuity than the truth of the matter. Reports of what is not seen are not reports necessarily of what is not, in fact, present.
It is irrelevant that it isn’t a Reformed distinctive. It is a Reformed doctrine and all Reformed doctrines are grounded in Scriptural exegesis or so you keep telling me, except for this one here and that one there and then that one over there…This line seems to indicate that whatever isn’t a Reformed distinctive isn’t obligated or doesn’t require exegetical justification. Is this true with the general necessity of baptism, the Trinity or other doctrines held in common with the Latins? Reformed works of systematic or biblical theology would read rather funny if this were the case.
Going back to the original Creed wouldn’t of itself imply a rejection of the Filioque. Eastern Rite Catholics have the original Creed, yet they still profess the doctrine. As you said, the Reformed tradition isn’t reducible to the Confessions.
I agree that Calvinists have changed their minds in the past, and this indicates the provisional nature of their theology as a humanly constructed enterprise. That said, are you suggesting that I should judge whether Calvinists are consistent with Sola Scriptura on what they might or might not change their minds about in some future as opposed to what they profess now and for the last 500 years? This seems like a promissory note for a bill not yet paid. The check is in the mail?
And the rejection of the eternal generation of the Son has a history in Reformed thought deriving from the Son as autotheos and the Filioque does not have such a history. Hence this is a weak comparison.
Steve, (cont.)
ReplyDeleteWhy would it follow that if I endorse that paradigms are incommensurable and that there is no neutral ground for a comparison that I deny that there is any common ground? In imputing to me an uncorrected understanding of the Quine-Duhem hypothesis you impute to me a concept I do not hold or advocate or ever have and so launch criticisms against a straw man. In short, Donald Davidson was wrong.
So again, my supposed hypocrisy is irrelevant to the lack of Scriptural justification for your confessional doctrines.
If the Filioque is a carry over from Latin theology, then the Reformation Confessions advocate and put forward doctrines from Scripture and tradition. Got it.
I see, so Papally inserted alterations to the Creed that alter the doctrine of the Trinity aren’t that high on your list in terms of the gravity of error? I agree you’ve given your 2 cents, but none of it was a scriptural justification for it. Not one single verse of Scripture. Not one.
Again its irrelevant that it is not a Reformed distinctive. And I am not sure what grounds your judgment that it is not a Reformed essential. And I’d think a bit more about the Covenant of Grace and the Filioque before I’d start claiming that it is irrelevant to Calvinism proper.
Your example with Warfield would be germane if you had widespread examples for the Filioque (or simplicity for that matter) but so far, I’ve seen none. The comparison only holds if there are cases relative to the Filioque where such permission has been evidenced. Where are such cases?
To say that there is nothing unscriptural about the phrase is not really fair when such a phrase has a history of meaning something in particular. It refers to the hypostatic procession, and not to economical activity. And so no, you don’t find such language in John.
And the question isn’t ontological vs. economical, but hypostatic vs. economical at the very lest with a possible third category as well.
And if it’s a question of whether we take the “ontological” Catholic sense or the Johanine economical usage, which usage do the Reformed confessions historically endorse? Which is justified from Scripture alone? This is more hand waving, Steve. You are implicitly admitting here that the concept as expressed in the Confessions is non-Scriptural and even counter to the teaching of Scripture. If the one is Catholic and the other “Johanine” then its obvious that the sense given to it for the last 500 years and defended by Reformed theologians isn’t “Johanine” and hence non-scriptural. It goes beyond what Scripture teaches.
You write that there is no pressing reason to drop the article from the Creed. Except the fact that it is inconsistent with Sola Scriptura. Not to put too fine a point on it, pull the log from your own eye first.
I am so glad you brought up Frame and Reymond! Why don’t you cite the relevant passages from them so we can discuss them?
Whether the faculty at St. Vlad’s obsess about the Filioque and the staff at Westminster don’t, seems to me to be a question of judgment and personal dispositions, not whether such a doctrine is scriptural. Why play down the principle of Sola Scriptura when it is clear that there is no Scriptural justification for doctrines that your tradition professes? Why not just admit that here is one case in a core area of theology that isn’t justified by Scripture alone? Semper Reformada and all that, eh?
I am glad you concede that older Reformed theologians took Latin theology as their point of reference, not what was exegetically derivable. If contemporary theologians take their point of reference from exegesis, then all the more pressing need to excise a non-exegetically grounded doctrine from the Confessions. But strangely that hasn’t happened.
John,
ReplyDeleteI am familiar with the Scriptural proof texts that the WCF put forward.
John 15 says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Where does it say he proceeds from the Father and the Son?
Gal 4 simply calls the Spirit, the Spirit of the Son. How does that prove the Filioque?
Why do I need to define the term? Its your doctrine, not mine. Second, the term is available in any Greek text of the NT. Read the Bible for yourself.
Next, why not tell me what the doctrine of the Filioque is and then tell me how you think Gal 4 teaches it. Otherwise noting the word “of” in Gal 4 won’t indicate whether the passage teaches the doctrine or not.
Even if there is some miniscule difference between homoousia and homoiousia, why excommunicate people over one single letter?
Is an alteration of the doctrine of the Trinity a minor thing?
And obviously I don’t think the Reformed are correct. But that is not the issue. The issue is, is it taught by Scripture alone or not?
Again, notice Steve has not given the Scriptural citations you have. Why is that?
Perry, I just don't care to do all the research on a thing like this. And if you're seeking to make converts to Orthodoxy, or even to persuade people that you're right about all of this, it would seem as if you should be more forthcoming than you are. As it is, you persuade me that I've got better things to do.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the "i" in homoousia vs. homoiousia, the two words represent more than just a single letter.
Steve has made his case very well.
John,
ReplyDeleteWhy demand that others meet the condition of Sola Scriptura when you don't do so for your own doctrines?
again, it is a double standard.
So you don't care to defend doctrines that the Reformed Confessions advocate from Scripture alone? Got it.
And surely there is a conceptual difference between homoousia and homoiousia. So why do you assume that a change in the Trinity like the Filioque is also small and insigificant. Just because you don't see that it makes any difference, doesn't imply that it doesn't make a difference.
Again, I am simply noting your refusal to defend your own doctrines from Scripture alone.
I don't bear the burden to defend or explain doctrines the Reformers put forward on the basis of Scripture Alone. Since you advocate that principle and their position, its your burden of proof.
You'd just rather not be bothered to defend your doctrines from Scripture alone.
Perry -- Reymond has a fairly long and explanatory chapter on all of this.
ReplyDeleteBasically, he does cite a lot of exegesis, the result of which is that "if this verse (John 15:26) does not furnish the basis of an argument, there is no other which can be advanced to establish the view either of the Eastern or Western Church." He then goes on to list all of the exegetes who concur with this.
The bottom line for me is that it's not worth getting worked up about. You may feel great reverence for those eastern theologians who wanted to start out from the beginning and "get the theology of God precisely correct" -- but apart from Scripture (the boundaries of which Reymond is very careful not to cross), you are into the realm of speculation, and as I've graphically said in the past, we can't lift up God's robe and see what's under there. We do just have to wait. And if one side or the other got it wrong, I'm sure that it's highly forgivable.
Steve is right. We've got more important things to attend to in our world.
"Steve is right. We've got more important things to attend to in our world."
ReplyDeleteWell...., Steve did spend a lot of time attending to this thorough fisking of Perry.
I assume he thought it was an important enough (and perhaps pleasurable as well) task and use of his time.
Yeah, overall, Perry got a good whuppin. He's gotta find one little thing on which to stick his chest out.
ReplyDeleteIt took me three days to read the whole thread.
Perry, may I offer an observation? The details of Trinitarian dogma is not a Reformed major. We believe in the Trinity, but we do not as a rule read the Cappadocian Fathers on the begetting, and we do not study the spiration.
ReplyDeleteI am very interested in the subject, so I have read a little, and have followed your arguments, even learned a bit about divine simplicity.
However, for the debate you are looking for you will need to find a creedal Trinitarian specialist, someone like Steven Wedgeworth of the Federal Vision.
On another point, people have indeed given you scriptural support for the filioque, so it will not do to keep asking for it when it has already been provided. Personally I don't believe they stand up to examination, but they are the standard proof texts.
You need to make an exegetical, grammatical-historical case for why they are misapplied, instead of paraphrasing your sources, and making theoretical and hypothetical arguments. This is not the philosophy department. I would be most interested in hearing a proper exegetical case.
Curate,
ReplyDeleteIt matters not if the “details” of Trinitarian dogma is not a Reformed Major. It is a Reformed doctrine and Reformed doctrines are supposed to be justified by an appeal to scripture. Indicating how important it is or isn’t may be an excuse for its non-scritpural justification, but it isn’t a justification for its profession and presence in the protestant confessions.
Second, if it isn’t important, one wonders why it is in there in the first place.
Third, you don’t read the Cappadocians on the “details” butit does seem you read Rome on them.
I don’t find Steve Wedgeworth to be any more substantially informed person on the subject and he isn’t interested in justifying it from Scripture alone or discussing it with me anyhow. He deletes my comments on his blog.
Simply giving proof texts is not giving scriptural support. It is noting where one thinks the scriptural support is to be located. To do the former is to in fact at least attempt a demonstration, but I can’t see where any serious attempt has been made. I can find plenty of such things in the Reformers and Reformed scholastics, up through the to today, but so far all my Reformed interlocutors can’t or won’t justify their view of the Trinity by an appeal to Scripture alone.
If you do not believe that the texts do not stand up to examination, then why do you not protest your church accepting Roman doctrines that go beyond at the very least the teaching of Scripture? This is the doctrine of the Trinity, not what kind of cookie you have at coffee hour. But somehow, eh, its no big deal when its in Reformed churches. But when Rome does it or the Orthodox are accused of doing it, it’s the end of the world and the worst insults are sent out at nearly light speed.
I don’t need to make an exegetical case for why they are misapplied. Its not my doctrine. Its not my confession. I don’t bear the burden of proof for doctrines I do not assert. The Reformed bear the burden of proof on their own principles for doctrines they profess and maintain. Are you implying that Catholics do not bear a burden to justify their doctrines?
Besides, you, Steve and others have already admitted that an exegetical case can’t be made to justify them.
And plenty of the detailed arguments for the last 1,200 years can be found in the sources. Ad fontes.
Perry, will you please briefly provide me with your scriptural case for the eternal begetting? I am genuinely curious to know what your argument is.
ReplyDeleteIf not, please give me a link to a site that expresses the EO argument.
BTW I did not ask you to prove the filioque, but to tell me why you reject the biblical texts that are quoted for it.
IOW what is the proper understanding of the procession texts according to you?
ReplyDeleteWhat I've learned from reading all this is:
ReplyDelete1) The Trinity is not that important a doctrine to Calvinists.
2) Calvinists can't defend their Filioque doctrine of the Trinity from Scripture.
3) The Calvinists' Filioque doctrine states that the Father and the Son together are the cause of the Person of the Holy Spirit, yet Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father."
4) When asked for just one Scripture in support of the Filioque, Calvinists couldn't provide it.
5) Yet Calvinists are the first to cry "Sola Scriptura"
6) Calvinists got their doctrine of the Trinity from Roman Catholic tradition.
7) Calvinists thus rely on both Scripture and tradition - and Roman Catholic tradition at that.
Gee, why didn't you Calvinist guys tell me all this before I wasted so many years in Calvinism?
I really thought you guys believed just the Bible alone like me, and that you were against tradition - and especially Roman Catholic tradition. I guess you didn't.
No wonder I always had the feeling that Calvinist churches were dead churches and that you were all hypocrites.
Are there some Methodists or Arminians out there who can help the Reformed out here? I know they have the Filioque too. Maybe some Anglicans? Lutherans? Assembly of God?
All I want to see is a Scriptural justification for the Filioque.
Since they all hold it in common with the Reformed, and since all seem to hold that Protestants are united in the essentials, this must be one of those essential things all Protestants are united on.
So please, someone, help the Calvinist guys out here.
It looks like they are stumped.
When I was 18 years old, a New Age guy came and gave a speech, saying all this stuff about the "Christ consciousness" in all mankind. I stood up and told him, What about where Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father but by Me"?
See, I had the funny idea that who Jesus is, and who the Father and Holy Spirit were, was somehow very important.
I guess I was wrong - if you listen to what the Calvinists say about the Trinity not being a very important doctrine.