steve said...
Ben,
1. Your prooftexting falsifies the Avignon papacy.
2. What is "actually found in Scripture" is a set of 1C Roman house-churches to which Paul refers, not a 21C denomination which calls itself the church of Rome. Paul wasn't writing to Benedict XVI.
3. Paul also has lots of swell things to say about the church of Colossae. So is that The One True Church®?
4. In historical context, "the world" is limited to parts of the Roman Empire. That's hardly "universal."
5. You quote a prediction that uses the word "soon," you say it has "yet to be fulfilled" (2000 years later), and you infer that this somehow falsifies all Protestant churches. Care to turn that into something resembling a logical argument?
steve said...
Ben m said...
"Now tell me, under whose feet will Satan be crushed? The Roman Church or some other?"
i) Your entire argument is vitiated by a systematic fallacy of equivocation. Paul isn't referring to the 21C Roman Catholic church. He is writing to, for, and about a set of 1C Christian fellowships in Rome.
ii) Paul's statement about crushing Satan isn't set in contrast to other Christians or other churches. He didn't frame that in exclusive language, as if this could only be true of the 1C congregations in Rome.
Indeed, do you think 1C Christians in general succumbed to Satan?
iii) The possessive pronoun ("your") in 16:20 has reference, not to the institutional church, but to the experience of some Roman Christians to whom Paul was writing. The prediction is a prediction of something which will happen to *them*. Those whom Paul singles out in Rom 16. Not something that's going to happen long after the original addressees are dead.
4:00 PM, DECEMBER 21, 2010
steve said...
Ben m said...
"No, because papacy or no papacy, Scripture still assigns pride of place to the Roman Church!"
No, you can't weasel out of your argument that easily. You have anchored your Scriptural appeal to the city of *Rome*–to the exclusion of other localities.
Therefore, you can't transfer that to the Avignon papacy.
Moreover, it's totally duplicitous for you to isolate "Roman pride of place" from the papacy. As a Roman Catholic, these are inseparable. They rise and fall together.
"Whether the Roman Church celebrates the Eucharist in house-churches or in St. Peter’s Basilica, underground in the catacombs, or in open-air fields, she is nevertheless always the one unified 'Church of Rome' to which the apostle wrote."
That's not something you can validly infer from Paul's statement. You can't begin to show that Paul thought the 21C church of Rome is united to some 1C Roman house-churches. You're not getting that from Paul's statement. So your appeal to Paul is patently bogus.
"Paul says that the faith of the Thessalonians was, like that of the Roman Church, known throughout the world. (1 Thess. 1:8). Yet where is the church of Thessalonica today? Where is its 'faith' which was so well known? Where is the church of Colossae, or for that matter, any of the other NT churches Scripture mentions? They are lost in history, along with their 'faith.'”
Which just goes to show that you can't extrapolate from NT statements about NT churches to subsequent developments. You've undercut your own argument.
"But who does not see that divine providence has willed that the Roman Church and her 'faith', which the apostle praised, should abide, as indeed it has?"
What I see is an organization that employed coercion and deceit to cut in front of other churches and thereby gain an unfair competitive advantage. That's cheating. I also see a shortsighted organization that keeps reinventing itself because, like any merely human organization, it can't anticipate the future.
4:20 PM, DECEMBER 21, 2010
steve said...
CathApol said...
"Simple, while we do not deny private judgment - it is not private judgment that we rely upon. Yes, we make judgments and decisions all the time - but these cannot be contrary to what the Church has already judged or decided."
That's far from simple, since it turns on your prior judgment regarding the Roman church as the One True Church.
"Here you're asking a different question. No Protestant believes their denomination is infallible. The problem is that many Protestant denominations are at odds with each other..."
And the Roman church is just one more denomination at odds with other denominations.
"...and often on very fundamental grounds like the matter of Baptism."
Whether for not baptism is "fundamental" begs the question.
"...most do baptize - some don't."
That would be the Salvation Army and...who else?
"Some insist that baptism must be by immersion, others say sprinkling or pouring is fine."
Explain how that is "fundamental."
8:35 AM, DECEMBER 22, 2010
steve said...
Ben m said...
“And never to any Protestant churches! ;)”
The fact that Paul isn’t referring to either the modern church of Rome or Protestant denominations does nothing to salvage your argument. It’s just a transparent decoy on your part.
“No, he is writing to the Church at Rome, which was Catholic, which has the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul, and which has been in continuous existence for 2000 years.”
i) Dubious historical claims.
ii) None of which you can prooftext from Rom 16. It’s a typical bait-n-switch tactic on the part of a slithery Catholic epologist.
Paul says nothing about the state of Roman church 2000 years later.
iii) And even if a denomination by that name had a continuous history, that wouldn’t make it the same institution. You might as well say Boston is the same city that Puritans founded in 1630. But, of course, that would be a massive equivocation, considering the drastic differences in population, religion, demographics, economics, &c.
Just for starters, no one living at the time Boston was founded is alive today. There’s been a complete turnover.
Likewise, you could say the Dallas Cowboys has been around since 1960 (or earlier), but the Dallas Cowboys in 2010 is a whole new team, new coach. The works.
Same thing with the church of Rome. No one Paul was writing to in Rom 16 is still here, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Likewise, there are major differences in doctrine and polity.
“Yes. These were the Catholic Christians of Rome…”
Another fatal equivocation. They aren’t “Catholic” Christians of Rome. Rather, they are simply Roman Christians.
“…the original ‘Roman Catholics’ if you will!”
Your argument is strung on a chain of equivocal links. You can’t act as if 1C Roman Christians are interchangeable with Medieval Catholics, Tridentine Catholics, or post-Vatican II Catholics.
“Paul’s words were addressed specifically to them.”
And other Pauline letters are also addressed specifically to their recipients.
“Paul did set his words in exclusive language as you yourself just noted! Did you not say that Paul was ’Writing to, for, and about’ the ROMAN CHRISTIANS? That’s sounds rather exclusive does it not?”
I see that you’re slow on the uptake. So I guess we have to spell it out for you. NT writers often quote or allude to OT passages. Different NT writers may quote or allude to the same OT passage in different NT books.
The fact that a Bible writer is addressing a specific audience doesn’t mean his Biblical citation can’t apply to other Christians.
The question is not whether OT passages often apply to Christians of all stripes. The question, rather, is whether statements in a letter written to the 1C church of Rome (or, to be more precise, a set of autonomous Roman congregations) can be automatically extended to a denomination (i.e. the Roman Catholic church) in the 21C.
Put another way, to say that various OT and NT passages apply to Christians generally doesn’t mean the same passages apply to apostate denominations like the current church of Rome.
“Surely you aren’t suggesting that the Roman Church had already crushed Satan in the 1st century?”
i) You suffer from a lack of reading comprehension. I didn’t apply it to the “Roman Church.” Rather, Paul is addressing Roman Christians in Rom 16. He applies the passage to their situation. Not to an abstract institution, but concrete, timebound individuals.
ii) And, yes, he’s telling them that this promise will come true in their lives. It doesn’t skip over the very audience to whom Paul addressed the promise.
You, by contrast, have upended the promise so as to bypass the promisees in Rom 16, transferring it to an institution, and, what is more, postponing its realization until long after the stated promisees were dead and buried. That isn’t exegesis.
“What, prey tell, was the so-called “reformation” about if not that Satan was quite ACTIVE in the Roman Church?”
You continue to play the same shellgame over the identity of the Roman church. Are you terminally obtuse? Is that you’re problem?
“Actually, it is the apostle who has done the anchoring to Rome, as we just saw.”
In which case it can’t be anchored in Avignon.
“Always the ‘papacy’ with you guys! ;) But I’m not isolating anything; my argument is basically that Rome holds (and continues to hold) a special place in Scripture, whereas Protestantism does not, has not, and cannot!”
i) Except that you use “Rome” as a cipher which you redefine at will.
ii) The Christian faith isn’t tied to a place. Jn 4:23-24.
iii) Roman Christians like Priscilla and Aquila lived in different places. It’s not as they left the promise behind if they had to move elsewhere.
“I can point to the early Church as witness to ‘subsequent developments.’”
Once again, the Catholic bait-n-switch. Pretend to ground your position in Scripture, but immediately switch to extrascriptural appeals. So you tacitly admit that your appeal to Rom 16 is bogus. In fact, you can’t get what you need from Rom 16.
“Rome abides, is praised by the Fathers…”
The church fathers aren’t St. Paul. They can’t speak for St. Paul.
“…termed the ‘Apostolic See’ (a distinction no Protestant Church can ever have)”
A distinction of no consequence.
“…and is appealed to by the early churches (east and west) for decisions on important matters.”
Of course, the church fathers make no claims for the Medieval church of Rome, or the Tridentine church of Rome, or the post-Vatican II church of Rome.
“You see only the bad, real or imagined, and then exaggerate it.”
And given your institutional mindset, of you were 1C Jew, you’d defend the decision of the Sanhedrin to execute Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment