Turning to Catholicism-4

This is the fourth installment in my review of Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism. Here's I comment on some statements by Ed Feser in his chapter: 

If you are going to insist that Jesus was God in the flesh, that is going to have implications for what you say about his mother–such as whether she, functioning as essentially the tabernacle of God–could have been stained by sin (46).

i) Just in passing, shouldn't Feser say that Jesus is God in the flesh rather than was God in the flesh? Why the past tense?

ii) More to the point, even assuming that during her pregnancy, Mary was the tabernacle of God, why can't she be stained by sin? Does he think that if the vessel is stained, it will stain the contents of the vessel–figuratively speaking? Was Jesus stained by sin through contact with sinners during his earthly existence? 

Would it not be more accurate to say that Jesus is immune to sin? If anything, sinners don't defile Jesus; rather, Jesus purifies sinners. Some diseases are transmitted by touch. But Jesus has the healing touch. Rather than the sinner's touch infecting Jesus, his touch cures the sinner. 

A divine revelation is of no effect unless one can know both what counts as part of the revelation, and whether one has properly understood it. I came to see that the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura makes such knowledge impossible. A book cannot interpret itself, and it cannot even tell you what counts as part of the book. For even if there were some passage in it that said, "Here is a list of the materials that should be counted as part of this book," that would only raise the further question of how we can know that that passage should really be counted as part of the book. Obviously, to answer that question, we could not appeal to the book itself without begging the question (49).

i) I take it that he's alluding to the question of how to establish the canon. I've responded to that objection on multiple occasions. Since it's not a new objection, and I have nothing new to say in response, I'll let that pass.

ii) But consider the bolded statement. That falls under the purview of textual criticism. If our best MSS contain a passage, there's a presumption that the passage is original to the text–unless there's some positive evidence that it's a scribal interpolation. That's not a question to be answered a priori, but based on principles of textual criticism. This is a problem when philosophers act as though evidentiary questions can be settled through abstract, armchair postulates. 

iii) Apropos (ii), how do we know that the statements attributed to Feser in chap. 1 were penned by him rather than a ghostwriter? But the burden of proof is on the skeptic in that regard. Is it really begging the question to say we think Feser wrote it because that's what the book says? In theory, the book might be a hoax, but is the onus on the reader to prove otherwise? 

iv) It's simplistic to say a book cannot interpret itself. Since a book is an inanimate object, there's a sense in which it can't interpret itself. But that's very one-sided. Unless he's a deceiver, an author is writing to be understood. The trail is strewn with clues to guide the reader. Sometimes a book includes editorial asides that speak directly to the reader. Likewise, some parts of a book may provide clues to interpret other parts of a book. That's a standard interpretive procedure. 

…the institution cannot function unless there is some chief executive with authority to break any deadlock…Without such an institutional authority, whether to accept something as part of divine revelation, and how to interpret revelation, ultimately seem arbitrary, subjective, and fideistic… (49-50).

But had Catholicism really preserved the teaching of the early Church whole and undefiled? My study of the development of doctrine convinced me that it had (51).

What a hoot! You gotta wonder if this was written before or after Feser went ape over Pope Francis reversing Catholic tradition on the death penalty. For instance:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/08/pope-francis-and-capital-punishment

https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/15/the-popes-remarks-on-capital-punishment-need-to-be-clarified/

Feser was gung-ho for a "chief executive with authority to break any deadlock"–right up to the moment when his position on capital punishment collided with Pope Francis. Now that Francis has rewritten the Catechism, Feser's entire argument lies in shambles. He could try to salvage his argument by claiming that the Catechism is just a fallible document. But the whole point of the Catechism is to do the sorting for the laity so that they don't have to decide for themselves which traditions are authoritative in contrast to reformable teaching. In defiance of the pope, Feser takes it upon himself to sift tradition to his own satisfaction.