Many Seeds And Many Trees (Part 1)

In his recent articles responding to me, Dave Armstrong makes many appeals to doctrinal development. He's often vague about it. Who would deny that a seed naturally grows into a tree or that an infant naturally grows into an adult? What's more significant, and more controversial, is whether particular trees come from particular seeds. The fact that an infant grows into an adult doesn't tell us which infant grows into which adult. Though an adult could be six feet and two inches tall, the fact that adults grow from infants wouldn't lead us to the conclusion that the adult would have that particular height. A knowledgeable Catholic would agree that specific conclusions about doctrinal development require specific argumentation, not just vague comparisons to the growth of an acorn or an infant. Dave sometimes gets into some specifics, but is he specific enough?

What we should be looking for here is probability, not just a possibility. It would be possible to take James 5:16 as a seed that develops into the tree of private confession to a priest, and it would be possible to take Revelation 11:19 as an infant who grows into the adult of the bodily assumption of Mary. It would also be possible to take James 5:16 as a seed that develops into the tree of public confession to a deacon, and it would also be possible to take Revelation 4:1-2 as an infant who grows into the adult of the bodily assumption of John. None of those passages imply such conclusions. None of those texts render such doctrinal developments probable. And an appeal to a church authority to render such interpretations probable would require that the church authority in question be shown to be probable itself. Yet, when we get to foundational issues of authority like the papacy, we often see another appeal to doctrinal development. Either the foundation has to be laid for Catholicism without an appeal to development or some sort of foundational development has to be shown to be probable, not just possible.

In our recent exchange concerning Papias, Dave told me that Papias' acquisition of information from associates of the apostles and his acceptance of oral reports about miracles and premillennialism, for example, were seed forms of the oak tree of Catholicism's apostolic succession and oral tradition. He didn't get into the necessary specifics of why we should conclude that Papias' beliefs would grow into those of Catholicism as an acorn grows into an oak. He asserted such development, but didn't demonstrate it.

As I explained in one of my responses to Dave, Papias' beliefs could develop in other ways as well. Why couldn't they develop within a transdenominational church, one that wouldn't be limited to any one modern denominational affiliation? Or why not Eastern Orthodoxy? (Remember, Dave began this discussion in response to David Waltz's departure from Catholicism, and Dave has claimed that Catholicism is the oak that grew from the acorn of early Christianity. Arguing that Evangelicalism is wrong wouldn't be enough to demonstrate that David Waltz shouldn't have left Catholicism, and it wouldn't be enough to demonstrate Dave's claims about Catholicism.) Or why couldn't the appropriate rule of faith develop into sola scriptura? As I pointed out to Dave, a period of access to reliable oral information could develop into a period in which such reliable oral transmission is no longer ongoing. Adam and Eve had access to communication from God outside of scripture. They had no Bible. And Adam and Eve's descendants could have orally passed down information about what God had said to Adam and Eve. But all that's extant to us today is God's communication to them recorded in scripture. Sola scriptura. And we don't look for ongoing oral traditions about Tertullian's beliefs when addressing what he believed, for example. Transitioning from the oral to the written is a form of development that's commonly accepted in many contexts in human life.

In my 2008 article Dave was originally responding to, I had asked, "When Irenaeus says that all apostolic teaching is known to every church and is available to the public, are we to conclude that concepts like praying to the deceased, the veneration of images, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the papacy were accepted by all of the churches and known to the public?" And Dave responded:

Yes; in primitive form. The latter two doctrines have much explicit scriptural data in favor of them (that I have written about at length in several papers and more than one book). The former two, less so, but a fairly solid case can be made by speculating upon the doctrine of the communion of saints and the consciousness of our earthly activities of saints in heaven: seen particularly in Hebrews 12:1 and Revelation 6:10, and angels and dead saints having our "prayers" in heaven and presenting them to God: Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4, thus implying that we can ask for their prayers; and the implications of the incarnation for the holiness of images representing holy persons, whom we are to imitate, as we do Paul (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17; 4:9; 2 Thess 3:9), and honor (Rom 13:7; 1 Pet 2:17).

In other words, all of this was already in Scripture, so it is apostolic doctrine, and only remained to be developed. All of this appeared fairly quickly, in the practice and beliefs of early Christians, and developed rapidly in the patristic period.

Dave tells us that he's written about those subjects elsewhere. So have I. See here, for example. A couple of years ago, I wrote a response to Dave on the subject of prayers to the dead. As I've documented, the evidence we have from the earliest sources is against doctrines like the ones Dave is addressing above, not neutral about those doctrines, much less supportive of them.

And if the alleged fact that such doctrines were "already in Scripture" proves that the doctrines "were accepted by all of the churches and known to the public", then it follows that Evangelicals also accept those doctrines. Does the Evangelical acceptance of passages like Hebrews 12:1 and Revelation 5:8 prove that Evangelicals accept the practice of praying to the dead, for example?

None of the passages Dave has cited imply the doctrines he's addressing. On prayers to the dead, Dave claims that Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4 "imply that we can ask for their prayers", but nothing in either passage suggests that the beings in those passages are objects of prayer. Similarly, the angels of Revelation 16:1 carry the bowls of wrath without being recipients of that wrath. The passages Dave is citing are addressing what goes "before God" (Revelation 8:4), what God receives. He's the recipient. The book of Revelation draws heavily from the Old Testament, and the concepts in these passages Dave is citing are repetitions of Old Testament themes regarding the worship of God. Psalm 141:2, for example, refers to prayers to God as incense. To interpret passages like Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4 as references to prayers to lesser beings, whether deceased humans or others, is perverse. And it's not what we find in the earliest patristic interpretations of the passages. See here for a further discussion of the problematic nature of Dave's use of these passages in Revelation (and others).

Some of the ante-Nicene fathers wrote entire treatises on the subject of prayer. Not only do they not mention or support praying to the deceased in those treatises, but they sometimes even contradict the concept. With some of these doctrines, like prayers to the dead, Dave is suggesting that the early Christians accepted beliefs they actually opposed, and he's doing so on the basis of his later interpretation of passages of scripture. But the early Christians can accept those passages of scripture without accepting Dave's interpretation of those passages. Why, then, should we think that they accepted the doctrines in question?