Do Scholars See Catholicism's Acorn In Early Church History?

In one of his recent responses to me, Dave Armstrong wrote:

"What we assume is what scholars of these issues tell us was the case. We can cite them a million times, but Protestants like Jason will ignore what they say, and the evidence they set forth."

Dave makes many appeals to scholarship in his series, and he repeatedly criticizes me for allegedly neglecting it. As I noted earlier, that criticism ignores a large amount of argumentation and documentation I've provided outside of the article Dave was responding to.

In my earlier response to Dave, I linked to a series of articles on this blog on the subject of Roman Catholicism, most of them written by me. In those articles, I cite many patristic scholars, historians, and other scholars with relevant credentials, including some of the same scholars Dave has cited. I cite them not only referring to the widespread absence of some of Catholicism's beliefs in early church history, but also referring to the widespread contradiction of much of what's taught by Catholicism.

I put together that collection of articles in 2008, the same year I wrote the article Dave recently responded to. Since then, I've read many other articles and books written by scholars who reach similar conclusions.

For example, I'm in the process of reading Joseph Kelly's The Ecumenical Councils Of The Catholic Church (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2009). Kelly is a Roman Catholic historian and a professor of religious studies at John Carroll University. He refers to other Catholic scholars who helped him in the process of researching and editing the book (p. xi). He contrasts the role of the Popes in ecumenical councils today with their involvement in the past (pp. 2, 5), noting, for example, that "The second ecumenical council, Constantinople I, was called in 381, met, decided the issues, and adjourned without informing the pope, Damasus I (366-384), that a council was being held." (p. 5) He contrasts Cardinal Newman's view of doctrinal development with popular belief about that subject in previous generations (p. 3). He refers to a more spiritual view of Jesus' eucharistic presence in early theologians, contrasting it with the views of later theologians who had "a more material understanding of the real presence" (p. 5). He refers to rejection of the papacy during the patristic era in North Africa (pp. 16, 31). In the later patristic centuries, Spanish and Gallic bishops "usually" accepted papal authority (p. 31). Even some bishops in Italy as late as the sixth century "went into schism and were not reconciled to Rome until the seventh century" (p. 54). He interprets canon 6 of Nicaea as a reference to Rome's regional authority in the West (pp. 23-24). Referring to the time of Nicaea, Kelly writes, "Then, as now with the Orthodox churches, the Eastern bishops did not acknowledge any Roman jurisdictional authority over their churches." (p. 24) He refers to the earliest Christians' opposition to the veneration of images (p. 61). Etc.

I don't agree with Kelly on every point. I would sometimes choose my words differently or add qualifications he doesn't include. But views like his are common in modern scholarship, even at Roman Catholic universities.

On some issues, what modern scholarship sees in early church history isn't an acorn that would later develop into the oak of modern Catholicism, but rather something like an apple or mustard seed. Sometimes Catholic beliefs aren't just widely absent in early church history, but even widely contradicted. Even when something like Mary's bodily assumption is absent without being contradicted, nothing in that period of its absence would naturally grow into a belief in her assumption as an acorn naturally grows into an oak. If we continue with the thought of Catholicism as an oak tree, modern scholarship doesn't see early church history as an acorn. And I don't think the evidence suggests it's an acorn either. For more about that scholarship and my own assessment of the evidence, see the collection of articles on Catholicism that I linked earlier.