The Catholic feminine

Over at Called to Confusion, Tim Troutman did a 4-part series. It's basically a pretext for Marian dogma. I'll comment on part 3: 

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2019/08/the-catholic-feminine-part-iii-sex-and-virtue/

I agree with Troutman that there are stereotypical physical and psychological differences between men and women. That's to be celebrated. However, he indulges in some sweeping claims of dubious factuality. There's nothing wrong with generalizations, per se. That's unavoidable. The problem is not exceptions to generalizations. The problem is when the claims aren't even true in general. 

He makes very confident statements, but I don't know where he's getting his information. He's getting some of his information from Alice von Hildebrand's The Privilege of Being a Woman. Perhaps that's the uncredited source for most of his sweeping claims.

Touch and taste are the most material of the senses...The natural gaze of the woman tends towards the family, towards the earth. The gaze of the father, as a natural priest of the family, tends towards the heavens, towards God...In music, higher notes are more inclined to signify heavenly beauty, and the lower notes signify the mundane, the earthen. 

This reflects a classic dehumanized piety in Catholic theology, where true holiness is ethereal and otherworldly. Yet humans are creatures. Humans are earthy. We're not angels. 

And the power of sight most strongly corresponds with the power of reason. Thus, we often use the act of sight as a metaphor to describe the act of grasping a concept by reason.

The problem with that claim is that we often use the act of hearing as a metaphor to describe the act of grasping a concept by reason. 

Women are more oriented towards the touch which is more mundane...

Is that true? Are baby boys less responsive to caress than baby girls? Are young boys less responsive to hugs than girls? There are basically two kinds of touch: platonic and erotic. Men are quite sensitive to both. Because humans are nearly hairless, we have a huge expanse of bare skin. That makes us acutely sensitive to touch–even if it's covered by a thin shirt or blouse. In addition to the fact that we don't have a fur, our skin is probably more sensitive than wild animals, which have a higher pain threshold and pain tolerance. 

Women are more beautiful than men, and beauty per se is not mundane. Beauty itself is by no means superficial. As regards the possession of beauty, women have the greater share in dignity. In her book, The Privilege of Being a Woman, Alice von Hildebrand noted that otherwise in nature, it is the male in the species that is more beautiful (e.g. the peacock, the lion, etc.) This inversion of natural beauty is undoubtedly meaningful. Von Hildebrand suggests that it signifies that sexuality is something different, something higher for man than for animals.  She is correct.

Women are more beautiful than men from the viewpoint of normal men. But women have an eye for handsome men. 

Higher things, physical or abstract, always signify more noble things. Thus a king’s chair is always above the people, never in a pit. Moses ascends the mountain to meet God; Jesus ascends a mountain to pray and to appoint His Apostles. The heavens are above the earth, not below. 

So skyscrapers signify something more noble than lily ponds. A barren volcano signifies something more noble than a lush river valley. A bomber in flight signifies something more noble than an alpine meadow. 

In music, higher notes are more inclined to signify heavenly beauty, and the lower notes signify the mundane, the earthen. Modern music tends to be heavy with bass and drums – the lower, more primitive and mundane tones.  Most popular music is inherently ordered to draw man to earth – to incline man to look at himself – to draw him away from heaven. Sacred music is just the opposite; it tends to be played on instruments that excel in the upper ranges, and the voices tend towards higher notes (not exclusively of course). 

i) I wonder how many cellists share his intuition. What about all the great solo parts for alto and bass in the sacred music of Bach and Handel?

ii) His generalization is ironic in light of Catholic music, with the tradition of Gregorian chant sung in unison by monks. Male voices singing in the chest register. With a basically baritone range, along with some excursions into the tenor range. 

iii) It's true that there's something special about the soprano line in choral music. However, Troutman is glossing over complications. Consider the difference in timbre between boy sopranos and opera divas. Many opera divas have a sensual, womanly timbre. 

Women have a higher pitch in their voice than men. This again signifies a greater share in beauty.  The higher pitch in their voice not only signifies a greater inner beauty, but also a vocation — their voice is physically more adept to elevate than to bring down and their vocation mirrors this. Hence they are natural encouragers, nurturers, comforters. The physical characteristics of their voice are symbols signifying that women are ordained5 to lift up, to turn our attention to the heavens. How many male saints would without the briefest hesitance credit their mother or grandmother with pointing them towards God? I am no saint, but I owe what little saintliness I have to women in my life and above all to the blessed virgin Mary.  

That's literal nonsense. Pitch isn't actually higher or lower. Maybe that's a metaphor, or more likely, that's based on conventions of musical notion. But pitch is literally or actually about faster or slower frequencies. 

Women are less inclined to be attracted to merely external beauty than men. Again, in this respect, they have a greater share in human dignity by their nature. The gaze of man tends towards that which is most beautiful according to the mode of apprehension. 

I'd like to see more evidence for that claim. What about sunsets and flower gardens or wildflowers in meadows? What about the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe?

Where does figure skating belong in Troutman's classification scheme? What about women as poets, novelists, and short story writers?

My impression is that Troutman's comparisons don't begin from a study of men and women. Rather, he's shoehorning cherry-picked examples into a preconceived theological grid. Casting about for examples to illustrate the feminine side of Catholicism. There's a grain of truth to some of what he says, but he needs to be far more discriminating. 

Bulverism

One not uncommon example of the bulverism fallacy is the argument (either made implicitly or explicitly) by Protestants that the reason the Catholic Church teaches what she teaches about justification, in contrast to the Reformed conception of sola fide, is that we (humans) have this desire for self-justification, and that at some point in the past we (Catholics) distorted the Gospel in order to make Catholic teaching concerning the Gospel conform to that desire. Bulverism is a kind of ad hominem (see #18 here). What is needed instead, to avoid the bulverism fallacy, is some actual historical evidence showing that the Gospel was distorted (and not developed) from sola fide in the early Church, to what the Council of Trent taught, rather than the just-so story that begs the question by presupposing that the Catholic Church distorted the Gospel in this way, and that she did so in order to gratify a human desire for self-justification.

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/reformation-sunday-2011-how-would-protestants-know-when-to-return/?fbclid=IwAR2hn-Us1sDx4bZpnLDddyJG0YRKD51-5xQQw856mjtZJN-njY-Ter7xn4M#comment-215045

In 2011 I addressed here a very similar criticism raised by H. Wayne House in his article titled “Returning to Rome: Should Evangelicals Abandon the Reformation.” House was himself drawing from Ralph MacKenzie, who like Scot Mcknight, had proposed three reasons why Evangelicals become Catholic, none of which were love for truth above all else. Those three reasons were: Catholicism is older, Evangelicalism lacks tradition, the Catholic liturgy has an aesthetic appeal, and House added a fourth reason: there is a security in the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church.

Now in 2019, Protestants Chris Castaldo and Brad Littlejohn of The Davenant Institute have engaged in this same sort of bulverism. They have done so in three essays: “Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 1: Conversionitis,” “Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 2: The Psychology of Conversion,” and “Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 3: The Theology of Conversion.” In these three essays they claim that Protestants become Catholic because of a desire for authority, a desire for a sense of holiness, a desire to belong to something big and influential, a desire for certainty, a desire to be connected to history, and a desire for tangible grace. All these treat converts as operating within the paradigm of “ecclesial consumerism,” rather than loving the truth above all else, even if doing so requires sacrifice of many things they would otherwise desire.

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/reformation-sunday-2011-how-would-protestants-know-when-to-return/?fbclid=IwAR2hn-Us1sDx4bZpnLDddyJG0YRKD51-5xQQw856mjtZJN-njY-Ter7xn4M#comment-521945

1. To begin with, does Bryan distinguish between the abusive ad hominem and circumstantial ad hominem? Does he consider both of them fallacies? Does he think the circumstantial ad hominem is necessarily fallacious?

2. Bryan is half-right in this sense: it's fallacious to discredit a claim by drawing attention to what motivates the claim. 

3. That said, if an hominems are necessarily fallacious, then that invalidates the genre of Catholic conversion stories at one stroke. There's a cottage industry of Catholic conversion stories, viz. Surprised by Truth, 1-3. Recent examples include Robert George & R. J. Snell, eds., Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome (2018) & Brian Besong, ed. Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism (Ignatius Press 2019). 

The Called to Communion site is a repository of conversion testimonies. They host conversion testimonies. All or most-all of the contributors have posted their conversion testimony. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, conversion testimonies (as well as deconversion testimonies) are ad hominem. It's not just arguments for Catholicism and against evangelicalism, but an autobiographical narrative about their personal experience. They go into their personal motivations from converting from their original position (usually a variation on evangelicalism) to Catholicism. Bryan Cross did that himself in his contribution to Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism (Ignatius Press 2019). If ad hominem is bulverism, then the whole genre of Catholic conversion stories is bulverism.

This isn't primarily a Protestants characterization of what makes Catholic converts and reverts tick. This isn't a case of Protestant apologists imputing motives to Catholic converts and reverts. To the contrary, it's Catholic converts and reverts who showcase their personal motivations as justification for their switch to Catholicism. 

So Bryan is telling us, with a straight face, that it's warrantable for Catholics to say what motivated their conversion, but it's unwarranted for Protestant apologists who evaluate the motivations which Catholics themselves advance to legitimate their conversion? Where's any semblance of consistency in his overall position? 

"Funny internal feelings"

I recently saw an interview with David Anders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6u7YSnyNRk

In particular, I watched the first 13 minutes where he tries to refute sola scriptura. He's an evangelical convert to Catholicism, and a charter member of Called to Communion. He has a BA from Wheaton, MA from TEDS, and a doctorate in Reformation history from Iowa U. A few general observations:

1. He equivocates between Protestant tradition and Sacred Tradition. But when Protestants reject Sacred Tradition, that's consistent with Protestant epistemology. Sacred Tradition is a technical term in Catholic theology. It's not analogous to Protestant traditions. In Protestant theology, tradition is not intrinsically authoritative. 

2. He has the confused notion that sola scriptural is inconsistent with the role of inference in Protestant theology, as if only the "express" teaching of Scripture is authoritative. But that's a demonstrable straw man. 

3. He regurgitates the Catholic trope that sola scriptura is self-refuting. But as I pointed out recently, that depends on how sola scriptura is formulated. For instance:

i) Believe and obey divine revelation

ii) Don't elevate non-revelation to the status of divine revelation

iii) Disregard whatever is contrary to divine revelation

Scriptures teaches these propositions. That's sola Scriptura in a nutshell.

4. Apopos (3), sola scriptura is analogous to saying the Bible is our only infallible map. Would it make sense of a Catholic apologist to counter: "Where is the map on the map?" 

But a map is not about itself. It makes no sense to say the map is defective because you can't find the map on the map. That's not the function of a map. A map is not self-referential. The purpose of a map is not to locate the map on the map, but to locate your destination on the map, and a route to your destination. 

5. Where does his dismissive attitude towards "funny internal feelings" ("Holy Spirit vibrations", "God zaps them," "Holy Spirit Geiger counter") leave Catholic mystics like Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Francis de Sales, and Anne Catherine Emmerich? How did they know they were experiencing God in their mystical encounters? What did they have to go by apart from their "funny internal feelings"? So his objection discredits the religious epistemology of Catholic mysticism.

6. It's ironic that he never considers the illative sense, with its stress on the central role of intuition in human knowledge and Christian faith. Newman is the most influential Catholic thinker in modern times. 

7. Protestant theology doesn't have a monolithic epistemology. And there's more than one line of evidence for the inspiration of Scripture as well as the canon of Scripture. 

8. Many Christians simply find the Bible compelling on its own. And that's unavoidable. Most Christians don't have the aptitude or opportunity to formulate a strong philosophical or historical case for Scripture. So God must be able to cultivate faith by other means. 

9. Then there's the problem with his alternative. Even if we grant Catholic assumptions, they face an insuperable dilemma. To climb the ladder to the "infallible magisterium," you have to start at the first rung of the ladder. But how do Catholics inerrantly determine that there is One True Church, and how do they inerrantly determine that it corresponds to the Roman Catholic denomination? They can't begin with the top rung of the ladder (the infallible magisterium). To reach the top rung, they must begin with their fallible judgment. But in that event they never put their fallible judgment behind them. It's inescapable. 

10. Called to Communion resembles men sitting around a table in a burning church. Flames are licking the walls. Flames are licking the ceiling. Smoke is filling the sanctuary. Yet they sit with the backs to the fire, chatting with each other about the glorious architecture. The Catholic church is becoming engulfed in the conflagration of sodomy and modernism, yet they turn their backs to the raging fire that's consuming their adopted denomination, oblivious to the encroaching destruction all around them. The contrast between their hypothetical Catholicism and the pervasive reality is morbidly fascinating to the detached observer. 

Book Review: Infiltration by Taylor Marshall

https://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2019/06/book-review-infiltration-by-taylor.html

Infiltration

Taylor Marshall has a new book out. To say it's getting mixed reviews is an understatement. For instance:

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=773

https://dwightlongenecker.com/taylor-marshalls-infiltration/

Who is Taylor Marshall and why should anyone care? Well, among other things, he's a charter member of Called to Communion:

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/author/taylormarshall/

According to them, when evangelicals convert to Roman Catholicism, they entered into the "fullness of truth". But now I find myself in a terrible predicament. I'm hankering to rejoin Mother Church. Like a werewolf on a full moon, I have to be put in a steel cage to keep me from swimming the Tiber. I bought prayer beads and votive candles in preparation. But whose vision of Catholicism at Called to Communion represents the fullness of truth–Marshall Taylor or Bryan Cross? Does Bryan have half the fulness of truth while Marshall has the other half? Or does one have 75% of the fullness of truth while the other has 25% of the fullness of truth? And which one? 

Of course, Called to Communion always maintains a public facade of imperturbable solidarity. It could be the zombie apocalypse outside but Called to Communion would be playing The Sound of Music. 

Decorated sepulchers

This is interesting on several levels:

http://mindspirit.com/the-root-cause-of-the-catholic-sex-abuse-scandal-part-3-of-5/

i) Nowadays, most Catholic apologists parachute in from Evangelicalism. So they see Catholicism from the outside before they see it from the inside. And even after conversion, their experience is quite limited compared to cradle Catholics educated at Catholic institutions. So this presents an insider perspective you rarely get from Catholic apologists.

ii) It's a devastating exposé of the sodomite subculture in the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy, both from sociological studies as well as the author's anecdotal experience.

iii) It illustrates the duplicity of Michael Liccione. He used to be a regular contributor to Called to Communion. Although he wasn't formally affiliated, since the official members are converts from Calvinism, whereas he's a cradle Catholic, he used to write very long comments interacting with other commenters. Along with Bryan Cross, he provided most of the intellectual heft. Yet here he presents a side of Catholicism I never saw him detail when he was shilling for Catholicism. But to present only half the evidence, the more sales-worthy have, is devious. Like selling a house without informing prospective buyers that the house is infested with termites. 

iv) Finally, he says: 

Specifically, I was the victim who was blamed even as he was being recruited. Fear that such a sick game would continue is why, a few years after my reversion, I stopped exploring a priestly vocation and decided soon thereafter to marry. Apparently solid and reputable priests had given me good reason to believe that I would undergo a similar experience in seminary or novitiate. That was why it took me decades to realize that I had had no such vocation regardless. I wanted to blamegay priests rather than get real about myself...

It doesn't seem to occur to him that this is a dilemma confronting many straight, idealistic novitiates. They take vows that commit them to forego a normal family life, yet that's premature. After the youthful idealism rubs off and unforgiving experience kicks in, they belatedly realize that they never were cut out for that life. 

Confusion at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church

I’ve had a number of links open on my desktop for the last week or so, trying to write a story that’s going to be very significant, and yet, I’m not quite sure how to approach it, because it seems to be a story in flux. It’s occurring at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church (popes and cardinals), and it’s full of he-said-he-said intrigue that seem to be moving far more quickly than the Roman Catholic Church typically moves.

You may find this a bit surprising (!), but “Pope Francis” is causing some trouble. Of course the New York Times has positioned this as “a race against time”, with the suggestion that, if “Pope Francis” lives long enough, he can replace all of the “conservative” cardinals named by his predecessors with “liberal” cardinals. Of course, the man is 79 years old, and he seems destined to lose that race (by their reckoning). Literally. Can he “appoint enough like-minded cardinals to assure that his vision of the church will endure after he dies?” The ostensible news event to prompt this kind of ghoulish speculation is a “consistory of cardinals” that will be held today, in which another 17 cardinals will be named, from all over the world.

But the deeper intrigue meshes with some of the back story, the not-so-easy-to-follow rumblings that are going on in public, but somewhat behind the scenes. The NY Times subhead is, “Pope Francis Has Appointed About a Third of the Cardinals Eligible to Choose the Next Pope”. That may be true enough – after today he will have appointed 44 of the 121 who are eligible to vote (they become ineligible to vote after age 80).

Back in September,

Bryan finds the visible church

For years, Bryan Cross hunted for the elusive whereabouts of the visible church. He spent countless hours searching for clues. Pursued countless leads, which–alas!–turned out to be blind alleys. Often the trail went cold. Often he despaired of ever tracking down the location of the visible church. 

But at long last he got a solid lead. A PO Box for the visible church. 

He flew to Quad City International Airport, then rented a car, which he drove to the Duck Creek Plaza shopping mall in Bettendorf, Iowa. He had to double-check the address, since that seemed to be an odd location for the visible church. Once inside he consulted the directory, which led him to a UPS store. 

He scanned a wall of private mail boxes until he found one with the matching PO Box address. Apparently, the visible church was 3” x 5” and 14” deep. That was a bit of a letdown. 

The mailbox had a glass face with some ornate brass work. Peering through the glass he could dimly make out something inside. Perhaps it was directions to the visible church.

In desperation, he bribed the clerk to open the box for him. Inside was a postcard.

A few minutes later, Bryan was sitting in his rental car, staring at a postcard of Shell Beach. Bryan had finally found the visible church.

Jason Stellman’s New Postmodern Doctrine of God

Bryan Cross and his one-time mini-me
wannabe, Jason Stellman

Normally, I don’t read Jason Stellman. I predicted he would be a disaster back in 2008. Jason is a Westminster Seminary of California grad who first became enamored with the Called to Communion apologetic, then converted to Roman Catholicism, left his wife and children, and now he has a podcast entitled “Drunk Ex-Pastor”. In fact, I said then:

In truth, I don't see any of these folks as "settled" in Rome. Life is too unsettled, and Rome just simply has too many discrepancies for a genuinely tender conscience to come to grips with it. Maybe some of these converts will be happy being Roman Catholics for a while; many others have ended up merely visiting Rome as a weigh station on the road to something else, however.

Brandon Addison’s Complete Response to “Called to Communion” regarding “the Nonexistent Early Papacy”

Anyone who reads this site knows that Called to Communion is one the most difficult Roman apologetics sites to deal with because of the lengths they are willing to go to, in order to maintain their dogmatic sophistry.

In the following, stunningly amazing piece of work, Brandon Addison has done a tremendous service for the entire church, squarely addressing the “Called to Communion” argument in favor of an early papacy in Rome, having tracked down and assembled virtually every scholarly writing on the topic of “Bishops in the earliest church” and the “development” of the office of “bishop”, especially in the city of ancient Rome.

In the process, he thoroughly and patiently analyzes the arguments that Called to Communion makes, he finds their weaknesses, he proposes and argues counter-arguments. The result is that the Called to Communion response to his original piece is seen to be as almost totally devoid of merit.

Here is how the whole piece breaks down:

“Drunk ex-Pastor”: Did Called to Communion ruin Jason Stellman’s life?

Warning: Graphic Content

He tried to portray himself as hip and cool, but really, as recent history has shown, he was one of the weak ones. Bryan Cross and the Called-to-Communion gang put a big target on his head and set him in their sights. Of course …

… the folks at CTC treated him as one of their trophies. Like a returning war hero.

Thanks to the growing power and speed of the Internet, we can see the “crash-and-burn” in real-time.

Brandon Addison’s “Called to Communion” article available in .PDF

Brandon Addison’s “Called to Communion” article, “The Quest for the Historical Church: A Protestant Assessment”, is now available in .PDF format:

http://reformation500.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/brandon-addison-ctc-article-20140501.pdf

Reformation Protestantism: faithfulness in little things; and a patient and humble reading of the text

I made some miscellaneous comments to several different Roman Catholics in the thread following Brandon Addison’s article, “The Quest for the Historical Church: A Protestant Assessment”.

Brandon’s comments throughout are exceptional, and he’s even pushed some CTC writers into adopting the positions of writers like Raymond Brown and Francis Sullivan, whom they have decried in the past as liberals and CINOs. (John Thayer Jenson, below, says “the idea of some development in Church polity does not mean that Jesus didn’t foresee and intend the development. In particular, as you comment here, it does seem perfectly possible that the monarchical bishopric may have made little sense when the Apostles were alive – but that the Spirit-guided Church may have reacted to it by setting one presbyter/episkopos over the others in a city.” As it turns out, that is precisely what Brown and Sullivan say. I address this and other issues below.)

History vs. Roman Catholicism

Brandon Addison

Brandon Addison has published a 25,000 word guest article at the Called to Communion site, entitled (by the CTC folks) “The Quest for the Historical Church: A Protestant Assessment”.

Brandon is a 2012 MDiv graduate of WSCal. He’s seen friends of his, including Joshua Lim, be sucked in by the seemingly slick presentation of Roman Catholicism proffered by Called to Communion.

In the article, Brandon addresses head-on the Called to Communion claim that the Roman Catholic Church is “The Church that Christ Founded”, from a historical perspective, largely by analyzing head-on the notion of “apostolic succession” – showing that it was a later development that was not part of the thinking of the first-century church.

He begins by pointing out that what he has to say is not idiosyncratic, but rather is commonly held, even among Roman Catholics, that “the general consensus among Roman Catholic scholars is that the notion of an episcopate originating with Peter is virtually non-existent in the academic world”.

Jason Stellman Joins Called to Communion

What a surprise!

The Circle of Life

Bergoglio’s Gig: Devoutly Venerate This Painting.

Protectress of the Roman People

If peace breaks out in Syria, some Roman Catholics will believe it was because Pope Francis invoked this icon: the “Salus Populi Romani”, or the “Protectress of the Roman People”.

ROME, September 12, 2013 – With the passing of the days the extraordinary nature of the vigil presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square on the evening of Saturday, September 7 is becoming ever more perceptible.

First of all, the reason: a day of fasting and prayer to call for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and wherever there is war. With the participation not only of Catholics but of men of every religion and simply “of good will.” Not only in Rome but in many cities of the world.

Then the duration. One cannot recall a public vigil of prayer of four consecutive hours, from sunset to late into the night, in the constant presence of the pope.

Then the silence. Over the entire span of the vigil the recollection of the hundred thousand persons crowding St. Peter's Square and the surrounding areas was intense and emotional. In harmony with the accentuated austerity of the very presence of the pope.

Then, above all, the form that the prayer took on. It began with the rosary, the most evangelical and universal of the “popular” prayers, and with a meditation by Pope Francis. It proceeded with the adoration of the sacrament of the Eucharist. It continued with the office of readings - the nocturnal psalmody of the monks - with the reading of passages from Jeremiah, St. Leo the Great, and the Gospel of John. It concluded with the singing of the “Te Deum” and with Eucharistic benediction imparted by the pope.

Is “Called to Communion” cannibalizing “Catholic Answers”?

I got the following email yesterday:

Maybe the more sophisticated of the Catholic Answers readers have migrated to CTC in search of something that’s at least more well-reasoned (and doesn’t beg for money?)

Who knows, maybe Catholic Answers will go out of business?

Paradigms, Tradition, and the Lexicon, Part 4

The Precedence of Written Torah. Or, Jason Stellman’s “already-existing apostolic tradition”.

We should keep in mind what Jesus thought of “oral tradition”. Oscar Cullmann notes (“The Tradition”, in “The Early Church”, London, UK: SCM Press Ltd, ©1956) “Jesus rejected in a radical manner the paradosis of the Jews” (pg 60). Consider how Jesus put it:

So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

We have seen how this worked in John Wenham’s contribution in Norman Geisler, ed., “Inerrancy”, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, ©1980), when he says:

Our Lord used the Old Testament as the court of appeal in matters of controversy. Both with Pharisee and Sadducee, He did not call into question their appeal to Scripture; rather, He rebuked them for failure to study it profoundly enough. Even the seeming waste of time and effort by the Pharisees on detailed legal formulations based on their study of the Torah He commended rather than condemned. “You should have practiced the latter,” He said. Their mistake was not that they applied the law too rigorously, but that they left undone its more important matters (Matt. 23:23, pg 10).

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”

Markus Bockmuehl (“Jewish Law in Gentile Churches”: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, ©2003) takes this notion further and puts real flesh on the bones of Wenham’s outline, exploring “your tradition” and how it intersected with “the word of God” in first century Palestine:

The Mishnah [the authoritative compilation of the oral law, ~200AD] commends that a good interpreter should ‘make a fence’ for the Torah, i.e., interpret in keeping with tradition… Pharisaic halakhah, and later normative halakhah, was a way of giving increasingly definitive traditional shape to the practice of Judaism. Whether or not the pharisaic respect for oral tradition had already crystallized into a formal doctrine of oral law, Jesus’ legal disputes with the Pharisees represent a clash between different conceptions of halakhah, different ways of building that protective hermeneutical fence.

That Jesus, too, was engaged in the erection of an interpretive fence cannot be in doubt, even if his overall concern had a different focus. Several emphases of Jesus’ teaching demonstrate this quite clearly. First, and most strongly attested, is his opposition to halakhic arguments that restrict or suspend the plain meaning of the written Torah (emphasis added).

The key illustration here must be the dispute about handwashing in Mark 7:1–13 par. The argument concerns the authoritative place of Pharisaic tradition in a matter of purity not explicitly legislated in the Torah, viz. that of ritual handwashing to cleanse any acquired contamination before each meal. Jesus’ interlocutors appeal to a well-known Pharisaic principle of halakhah that is not based on the Torah (and is apparently not attested at Qumran): food is rendered unclean at second remove, by derived impurity of the hands ([non-Biblical references omitted]; nb impurity of ‘hands’ as distinct from the body). Biblical law, by contrast, recognizes only direct sources of impurity, which affect the body as a whole (e.g. Lev 11:31–35).

Jesus’ reply, as recorded somewhat differently in Mark and Matthew, consists of two parts. First, he insists on the distinction between the authority of the Torah, which he accepts, and that of the ascendant Pharisaic halakhah, which he rejects (Mark 7:8–9 with reference to Isaiah 29:13). This insistence on the halakhic primacy of Scripture over against Pharisaic tradition was also shared by the Sadducees and the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls).

It was Jesus “making a fence for the Torah” – giving precedence to the Written Torah.

The second part of the argument in Mark 7, equally rooted in a Palestinian Jewish Sitz im Leben well before AD 70, illustrates Jesus’ charge that the Pharisees in practice assign a higher authority to their tradition than to Scripture. He does so by drawing on the familiar halakhic topic of vows (cf. also Matt 5:33–37; 23:16–22), to which the Mishnah later devotes an entire tractate and which was also of interest to the Essenes.

Bockmuehl notes that Josephus “suggests that the Essenes refuse to take vows altogether. Although vows are envisaged … the document nevertheless criticizes the conditional hedging of vows in terms reminiscent of Matt 5:34–36; 23:16–22.”

Jesus again was “giving precedence to Written Torah” in a way that was not unusual in his time.

The halakhah of Jesus’ opponents apparently did not allow them to release a person from a vow to make and offering in the Temple, even in the case where the designated resources were needed to support one’ parents. There is clearly a conflict of commandments here, between the duty to keep one’s vows (Numbers 30:2; cf Deut 23:21, 23) and that of honouring one’s parents (Exodus 20:12; Deut 5:16). The tradition of Jesus’ opponents; perhaps holding all mitzvoth to be of equally binding force [non-Biblical references omitted], had led them to a legal rigorism that made the mitigation or suspension of a lesser commandment in favour of a more important one very difficult to achieve.”

(Bockmuehl discusses “The Weightier Things of the Torah” shortly).

What is more, Jesus’ view in Mark 7 relates easily to the range of mainstream Jewish positions, as is clear from a late first-century debate recorded in the Mishnah (and previously, in Philo). There, a position not dissimilar from that of Jesus is taken by the late first-century R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (who is elsewhere reported to have been sympathetic to an apocryphal Halakhan of Jesus [non-Biblical references omitted]; the explicit Scriptural commandment to honour one’s parents can take precedence over the secondary and merely traditional rules about the cancellation of vows.

For Jesus, therefore, the ‘fence’ around the Torah is itself rigorously scriptural; in case of conflict, the Decalogue’s commandment to honour one’s parents takes precedence over the laws about vows, which are in any case voluntary. Jesus refuses to subordinate one written commandment to the oral tradition pertaining to another (a distinction recognized in [rabbinic doctrine, non-Biblical references omitted].

In the first instance, then, Torah serves as its own interpretive fence.

Thus, Jesus, in giving his teaching, was relying on sola Scriptura, the precedence of Scripture norming tradition, and emphasizing “the weightier things of the Torah”.

As I’ve related: “By standards that Beale relates, there may be more than 4,000 “allusions” or “echoes” of the Old Testament found within the New. Given that there are 7956 verses in the New Testament, more than half the New Testament can be seen as bearing at least some form of “echo of” or “allusion to” some Old Testament concept or idea.”

Jesus, in his teaching, was echoing and reinforcing Torah above all.

Thus, when Jesus, and then a New Testament writer talks of “tradition” “handed down (παρέδοσαν) to him by “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”, the “content” of that “tradition” was “oozing with Old Testament words and concepts.”

In the question of “The Tradition and the Lexicon”, the two were, in the New Testament, one and the same.

Past Popes vs “Called to Communion”

Paul Bassett takes on the Called to Communion gang, showing how past popes contradicted the “Catholic Interpretive Paradigm” (CIP) that they are advocating.

Here is how their claim works:

“The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. By finding the Magisterium, he finds something that has the divine authority to bind the conscience.”

Paul summarizes the mechanics of that quote here:

The superiority of the Roman Catholic IP consists in the claims that:

1.) it can be located in history,
2.) it has divine authorization, and
3.) it is consistent “through history”

As it turns out, history has given us a laboratory in which to test those claims:

If we were to test this IP we would look for a laboratory that contained only those items needed by the IP but was free from any contaminants not needed by it. And fortunately for us, history provides just such a laboratory – the Papal States. The Papal States was a European country entirely under the control of the Roman church and its hierarchy. It existed for 700 years until 1870 and was at its peak during the 16th century. The Vatican exercised complete and total control over every aspect of life within those borders and therefore qualifies as the perfect laboratory to test the IP.

Therefore, “the Catholic IP” must have flourished there, right? Wrong, actually:

The boys at C2C want us to believe that the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is the only God-given instrument whereby Scriptures can be properly and authentically interpreted. And yet in a place and time where the Roman Catholic Church reigned supreme not only did they not exercise their alleged responsibility, but they used their temporal power to eliminate the Scripture to the greatest extent possible.

Read the whole piece here.

Bryan’s excellent adventure continues

Bryan Cross has been amply criticized in these pages for failing to disclose either the historical method or the factual basis for his claim that “the Roman Catholic Church” is “the Church that Christ Founded”.

Recently in a comment, he provided the first linkage I’ve seen that, in his mind, provides some kind of evidence that the Roman Catholic Church is what he always simply assumes it to be:

The motives of credibility indicate the location and identity of the Church Christ founded, and they are accessible to human reason.

Note the phrase “motives of credibility”. Here’s what that means, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

These testimonies are unanimous; they all point in one direction, they are of every age, they are clear and simple, and are within the grasp of the humblest intelligence. And, as the Vatican Council has said, "the Church herself, is, by her marvellous propagation, her wondrous sanctity, her inexhaustible fruitfulness in good works, her Catholic unity, and her enduring stability, a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefragable witness to her Divine commission" (Const. Dei Filius) . "The Apostles", says St. Augustine, "saw the Head and believed in the Body; we see the Body let us believe in the Head" [Sermo ccxliii, 8 (al. cxliii), de temp., P.L., V 1143]. Every believer will echo the words of Richard of St. Victor, "Lord, if we are in error, by Thine own self we have been deceived—for these things have been confirmed by such signs and wonders in our midst as could only have been done by Thee!" (de Trinitate, 1, cap. ii).

Here the concept is found in CCC 156:

What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived". So "that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit." Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability "are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all"; they are "motives of credibility" (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is "by no means a blind impulse of the mind".

But these things “indicate the location and identity of the Church Christ founded”.

Bryan’s excellent adventure continues.