Eric Svendsen's Doctoral Thesis On Mary Available Online

A correspondent on Facebook recently informed me that Eric Svendsen's doctoral thesis, about Mary in the New Testament and Roman Catholicism, can be viewed online. I've had a paper copy of an earlier version for around 20 years, and I never even thought to search for it online. But it's available here for anybody who wants it. To see the thesis itself, click on the file under "View/Open" on the left side of the screen.

“Dogma Appreciation 101”

This is just a personal note, but I’ve found Mike Taylor from NTRMin. I would heartily commend his blog to anyone who wants to try to understand what Roman Catholicism is all about. I have some fairly specific recollections of Mike from my NTRMin days – most specifically, the phrase describing the “Roman Catholic Hermeneutic” as “Dogma Appreciation 101”. Mike was a Roman Catholic seminarian and a Deacon before leaving. But in the process, he received the kind of education that priests received, and he’s in as unique a place as anyone to comment on it.

Unity And The Number Of Denominations

Roman Catholics, as well as other critics of Evangelicalism, often object to the existence of so many denominations, supposedly 30000 or some other high number. We're told that sola scriptura, too low an ecclesiology, or whatever other factor is responsible for such disunity and therefore needs to be avoided. An emailer recently asked me if I knew where he could find Eric Svendsen's material on this subject.

Dr. Svendsen on John the Baptist

From an email, which I post with his permission:

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I think your conclusion is reasonable. John warns the Sadducees (which party included most of the priests) to repent, and he denied their claim to be children of Abraham based solely on their lineage or position (Matt 3:7-9; a principle both Jesus and Paul later affirm). I think that in itself militates against the RC view that spiritual authority is something that resides in an institution, no matter how corrupt it becomes.

I would go further and posit that as much as Jesus condemned the excesses of the Pharisees, he held much more in common with them than he did with the Sadducees, particularly in the area of the extent of the canon, the belief in angels, spirits, and a resurrection. Unfortunately for the RC position, the Pharisees were a relatively recent “protest” group (dated circa 200 B.C.) that at first aligned themselves with the priestly class during the Maccabean revolt (mid first cent B.C.), and later broke away from that same alliance due to corruption on the part of the priests. If the priests (Sadducees) were the standard bearer that Jesus countenanced, then why does he affirm the Pharisees’ authority and right to “sit on the seat of Moses” in matt 23:2-3? Now, to be sure, this is not the authority that RCs typically ascribe to this verse; rather, he is affirming the Pharisees’ right to judge disputes in a theocracy, in the same way that “Moses sat to judge the people from morning till evening” and then appointed other judges to do the same thing (Ex 18:13 ff). Nevertheless, this is devastating to the RC’s argument for monolithic authority; for sometimes Jesus countenances the authority of the Pharisees (Matt 23:2-3), while other times he countenances the authority of the Sadducees (Matt 8:4, “go show yourself to the priest”). So he simultaneously recognizes two authorities that could not have been more dissimilar. Yet, in both cases, he warns his disciples against the “teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt 16:6-12). The only way to make sense of this is to conclude that Jesus ascribed a sort of political legitimacy to both groups while denying the spiritual authority of both.