Bryan Cross:
“[#650] Easily, by using the Creed as a handy guide that can be tossed aside (or modified at will) if and to the degree that one finds it to be in disagreement with one’s interpretation of Scripture. Many people hear the Creed and assume it is authoritative, but don’t stop to think about the basis for its authority. Protestants who treat the Creed as authoritative have not realized that given sola scriptura, there is no basis (in their theological system) for the Creed’s authority. They are free to disagree with it or modify it or make up their own, because given the denial of apostolic succession, the Nicene Council has no more authority than the individual reading the Bible at his kitchen table.”
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/11/solo-scriptura-sola-scriptura-and-the-question-of-interpretive-authority/#comment-5845
“We’re up to 650+ comments. I suggest that you take a break from commenting, step back and spend some time reflecting carefully on the article and all the comments. What I wrote in #650 sums up the flaw we have argued in our article is intrinsic to sola scriptura.”
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/11/solo-scriptura-sola-scriptura-and-the-question-of-interpretive-authority/#comment-5855
So that sums on the intrinsic flaw in sola Scriptura. Very well then.
It’s pretty hilarious that a convert to Catholicism would presume to invoke the authority of the Nicene creed as a cudgel to bonk Protestants over the head.
After all, one of the primary objections which Eastern Orthodox have to the filioque is how the church of Rome treated the Nicene creed as a handy guide to be “modified at will” when it intruded the filioque clause into the text after the fact.
So after 600+ comments on his thread, Bryan’s parting shot against the Protestant rule of faith is to deploy an argument which ricochets right back on his own rule of faith. Nice going, Bryan!
Well, to be fair, the pope does have the authority to change a creed or a council at will. Look also, for example, at Canon #28 from the council of Chalcedon.
ReplyDeleteIt's all the rest of us, who aren't popes, who don't have that authority.
One of the foremost modern scholars on infant baptism wrote:
ReplyDelete"The only ecumenical creed to mention baptism is the Nicene (none mentions the eucharist) in the phrase 'one baptism for the remission of sins'. I have argued elsewhere that this cannot have originally embraced babies, because in the circles from which this creed emerged, to be approved at the Council of Constantinople in 381 (if we accept the testimony of the Fathers at the Council of Chalcedon seventy years later, as most scholars do), it was believed that newborn babies had no sins." (David Wright, What Has Infant Baptism Done To Baptism? [England: Paternoster Press, 2005], p. 93)
David Wright: "...(if we accept the testimony of the Fathers at the Council of Chalcedon seventy years later, as most scholars do), it was believed that newborn babies had no sins."
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. When did the doctrine of Original Sin start to include newborns?
Interesting indeed - can we a get a direct citation from the Chalcedonians on this subject?
ReplyDeleteViisaus, you might be misreading what David Wright said. He cited Chalcedon with regard to the adoption of the creed at First Constantinople, not with regard to what he goes on to say after his parenthetical comment.
ReplyDeleteConcerning his argument about infants and sin, Wright cited an article he published in Studia Patristica in 1989. I haven't read the article. But I suspect he argues from evidence such as the following:
- The Council of Nicaea was mostly a council of Eastern bishops, and the earliest versions of the Nicene Creed we have access to come to us primarily from Eastern sources.
- The status of infants was generally viewed differently in the East than in the West. Wright cites the example of John Chrysostom, who comments that "we baptize even infants, although they have no sins" (What Has Infant Baptism Done To Baptism? [England: Paternoster Press, 2005], p. 94).