When it's shown that there are significant historical problems with something like the perpetual virginity of Mary, her assumption, or praying to saints (e.g., the early absence of the belief, early sources contradicting it, sources being agnostic about it as late as the medieval era), a common response is to say that all apostolic churches accept the belief in question. Or we'll be told that some or all of the foremost leaders of the Reformation accepted it, that early Protestants in general did, or something else along those lines. We'll be told about how all of the apostolic churches practice prayer to the saints, how high of a Mariology the leaders of the Reformation had, and so on.
Several things need to be kept in mind when that sort of response comes up:
- Appealing to alleged support from later sources doesn't address the earlier ones.
- Protestants make significantly different claims about some of the issues involved, so they carry a significantly different burden of proof accordingly. You can't make higher claims than Protestants do about the alleged nature of your denomination, its history, its relationship with the church fathers and other relevant figures, and so on, then turn around and act as though you have the same burden of proof as Protestants or, even worse, a lower burden of proof. An Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic's disagreements with somebody like Athenagoras, Irenaeus, or Epiphanius aren't in the same category as a Protestant's disagreements with such people, much less is Orthodox or Catholic disagreement with such a figure in the same category as a Protestant's disagreements with somebody like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, or John Calvin. In addition to the fact that Protestants make significantly different claims about the nature of the church, the history of their beliefs, and so forth, it's absurd to act as if something like Martin Luther's view of the perpetual virginity of Mary or a popular belief about the subject among some modern groups has the same evidential value as the testimony of sources like Luke and Hegesippus.
- If somebody is going to claim that all of the apostolic churches agree about Mary's assumption, praying to saints, or whatever, he ought to provide more information. How is "apostolic churches" being defined? If you're just referring to churches that claim apostolic succession, that encompasses a wide diversity of groups (Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Moravians, etc.), including some Protestants (see here, for example). Do all of the churches in question affirm, say, Mary's assumption in some relevant way as a church? Or does their alleged support for the belief in question take on some other form? It would be good to get a definition of who these apostolic churches are and how they allegedly affirm the belief under consideration. If you're including Lutheran churches that have claimed apostolic succession, for example, are you saying that those Lutherans have affirmed Mary's assumption, praying to saints, etc. as a church (as opposed to an affirmation by some individuals within that church, that church's allowing its members to accept the belief, etc.)?
- The beliefs of Reformation leaders like Martin Luther and John Calvin are often misrepresented, such as how they viewed Mary. See here, for example. Be careful about accepting the claims that Catholics and other critics of Protestantism make about what was believed by the leaders of the Reformation or early Protestants in general. Not only is somebody like Luther or Calvin not equivalent for Protestants to what a Pope or church father is for a Catholic or Orthodox, but there's also a problem with people frequently misrepresenting what individuals like Luther and Calvin believed.
- To the extent that a belief became popular later in church history, can its later popularity be adequately explained on grounds other than the correctness of the belief? Do certain traits of human nature, cultural influences, or a common interest in adopting an increasingly high view of Mary, for example, sufficiently explain why two or more groups would eventually come to agree about a belief that doesn't show up earlier in the historical record? We know that Christians are influenced in that manner in a lot of other contexts (e.g., changing to more heliocentric interpretations of certain passages of scripture under the influence of scientific discoveries, being influenced by the clothing trends of the culture in which we live when making judgments about what does and doesn't qualify as immodest clothing).
- People often provide that sort of explanation for why later Protestants departed, or allegedly departed, from earlier Protestant beliefs (e.g., on the perpetual virginity of Mary, on birth control). Is there a substantive reason for dismissing such explanations for changes among non-Protestants?
Who said what church fathers wrote speak for the entire church at the time they wrote?
ReplyDeleteThat last point is very shrewd. I hadn't thought of that before, but it's an entirely legitimate point. Or for that matter, more broadly, the Reformation itself is, on a Catholic view, a departure from earlier views which they think is explained entirely by something other than truth! So why not the *addition* of prayers to Mary or the assumption of Mary? What they are going to *have to* say is that these things really were believed by the apostles and just don't happen to show up until later. Now, we have to be careful about making historical arguments from silence. But considering the importance of these ideas, the burden of proof is on them. While we can't say that necessarily the Apostle John didn't believe that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven just because he apparently left no record of it, we still can legitimately ask why only later records are sufficient to discharge their burden of proof when they suggest that we should believe this.
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