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Thursday, August 08, 2019

Who missed the memo?

I'll comment on some statements today by revert to Catholicism Luis Dizon:

@LuisDizon
However, I read enough of the Reformers' writings to know that Protestantism was birthed in polemics and acerbic reactions against Rome. To the extent that you emphasize your confessional standards, you partake of those polemics (including the whole Pope-as-Antichrist bit). . .

I know you're embarrassed when the more populist members of your own tradition make absurd claims about Church History, and condemning all of Christendom pre-Reformation. However, as a former Reformed apologist who argued against Catholics, I understand why they do it. . . .

Basically, as a Protestant, you have to justify the existence of your confessions. You have to justify your founders' anti-Catholic polemics. Most of all, you have to justify why you're not part of the Catholic Church. These populists are attempting that justification . . .

In other words, you have to claim that the Church as a whole apostatized to justify your very existence. You have to claim a hermeneutic of discontinuity, rupture and reconstruction in your reading of church history. The alternative is to admit that the Reformation was a mistake.

Ultimately, Protestantism exists because of "reconstructionism" (the idea that the Church was ruined and needed to be rebuilt).

And yet somehow everyone from Iberia to Mesopotamia missed the memo for 1500 years. Imagine being Copt and keeping the faith for thousands of years in the face of Muslim oppression, only for some new sect tell you you're not Xian bc of some new idea you never heard of before.

1. Why should modern-day Protestants be embarrassed to own up to the fact that "Protestantism was birthed in polemics and acerbic reactions against Rome"? Given the state of Catholicism at the time, that was justified.

2. If you're a strict subscriptionist, then you must profess every jot and tittle of your confessional standards, including the pope as the Antichrist. However, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition. For instance, a Protestant can take the position that as Rome has mutated, the objections to Rome change. Many of the original objections may remain intact. But Catholicism is a moving target. Indeed, that's one of the problems with Catholicism. It's quite possible, even necessary, for modern-day Protestants to have some objections to modern-day Catholicism that our 16-17C forebears didn't have, because Catholicism is so fluid and unstable. It's not a case of just refighting all the same old battles, although some of those continue up to our own time.

3. Yes, Protestants have a burden of proof. We must justify our confessions, we must justify not belonging to the Roman Catholic sect. But we don't shoulder a unilateral burden of proof. Both sides have a burden of proof to justify their respective positions. The onus lies on Luis just as much as us. 

4. Actually, we don't have to have a theory about church history. We can just compare biblical teaching to Roman Catholicism, to see how little they have in common, and conclude that something went terribly wrong with Roman Catholicism. That doesn't require us to postulate that "the whole church apostatized". For one thing, we don't think the church apostatized. Roman Catholicism never was "the Church". From our standpoint, "the church" never apostatized.

5. In addition, it isn't necessary to have an alternative interpretation of church history to know that something went wrong. For instance, Newtonian physics was consistent with all the observational data at the time it was formulated. But as instrumentation improved, discrepancies emerged between Newtonian predictions and the observational data. At that juncture it become evident that something was off with Newtonian physics. You could know that just by comparing the theory to the observational data. You didn't have to have the theory of Relativity to explain why it went awry to know it needed to be replaced. 

Likewise, it's not incumbent on Protestants to explain how the discrepancy between biblical revelation and Roman Catholicism came about to recognize irreconcilable discrepancies. It's not incumbent on us to propose a reading of church history to account for that development. The historical explanation is separate from what it's designed to explain. 

6. Furthermore, there have always been divisions. Which side was right in the dispute between Cyprian and the pope? Who missed the memo? Which side was right in the dispute between Novatian, Donatus, and Rome? Who missed the memo? What about Tertullian? Did he miss the memo, too? Or consider the traditional post-schism view of Eastern Orthodoxy by Catholic representatives:


Including the axiom that submission to the pope is necessary for salvation. Hence, the Eastern Orthodox are damned. I guess they missed the memo:


If Luis is going to cast the issue in terms of apostasy, then there have been many "apostasies" in the course of church history, starting with the ancient church. Pick a side. Which side was apostate? Luis operates with a traditional Catholic hermeneutic of discontinuity. He has his own list of "apostate" movements. A hermeneutic of discontinuity runs through the length and breadth of Catholic history. There was no 1500 year-old memo. That's a historical fantasy. 

7. His appeal to the Copts is counterproductive to his aims. According to traditional Catholicism, the Copts are heretics. 

8. The ironic thing about his Catholicism is how conflicted it is. On the one hand, he's very hardline. It's very retrograde. Like he's trapped in the wrong century. A throwback to Counter-Reformation apologists. On the other hand, he's cool with Pope Francis. He's a team-player. He's not a RadTrad. So he suffers from split-personalty Catholicism. 

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