This is a generally skillful presentation:
A few quibbles:
i) The contemporary Catholic church doesn't affirm the inerrancy of Scripture. It gave up on that at Vatican II. The council was about to reaffirm the traditional Catholic position on biblical inerrancy when Franz Cardinal König, a well-known progressive, gave a speech convincing enough bishops that the Bible contained errors, that the Council declined to reaffirm the traditional position.
And this is borne out by the way Scripture is handled nowadays among Catholic Bible scholars. The hierarchy has no problem with Catholic theologians and Bible scholars who deny the inerrancy of Scripture. So this is not common ground between Catholics and evangelicals.
ii) Although he only says so in passing, he seems to think that the alternative to a living teaching office is the indwelling of th Holy Spirit. If we need a makeweight to interpret Scripture, that's it.
But that appeal doesn't work since Spirit-filled Christians disagree on how to interpret Scripture. I've detailed what I regard as the alternative to the Roman Magisterium.
iii) Although his discussion of Mt 16 is quite good in many respects, it would benefit from the added insight of scholars like Michael Heiser:
Well, the way it is sppsd to work is that "the believer cannot believe in the Bible nor find in it the object of his faith until he has previously made an act of faith in the intermediary authorities..." (Catholic Encyclopedia>Tradition and Living Magisterium)
ReplyDelete"People cannot discover the contents of revelation by their unaided powers of reason and observation. They have to be told by people who have received in from on high." - Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, "Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, p. 72;
Therefore, since one needs faith in Catholicism and instruction by it in order to know what writings are of God, then (to avoid circular reasoning),,
"when we appeal to the Scriptures for proof of the Church's infallible authority we appeal to them merely as reliable historical sources, and abstract altogether from their inspiration" - Catholic Encyclopedia > Infallibility)
By which appeal the candidate for conversion is sppsd to be able to ascertain that the RCC or the EOC is of God, even though it is impossible for said candidate to know that which God-inspired writings are of God.
However, when and if the candidate finds that distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed* (which is Scripture, especially Acts thru Revelation. which best shows the NT church understood the OT and gospels), then the argument is made that "we gave you the Scriptures," and thus you need to submit to US.
*http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/deformation_of_new_testament_church.html#Table
But Jim Bakker?
ReplyDelete