Running in place

Before Called to Confusion become such a dead zone, the two contributors with the most philosophical heft were Bryan Cross and Michael Liccione. Liccione was never formally a member of Called to Confusion, because–I guess–he's a revert rather than a convert. He has one argument which he recycles ad nauseam. I've been critiquing it for years. But recently on Facebook we got into a head-to-head debate. It was a useful opportunity to finally engage him directly. It looks like he dropped out of the debate. So here's an edited version of our exchange: 

On private judgment

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/08/liccione-on-private-judgment.html

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. 

Elevator out of order

In this post I'm going to revisit an argument for Catholicism by Bryan Cross and Michael Liccione:

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/05/the-tu-quoque/

This post will be deceptively long, because much of the raw length is due to verbatim quotes. 

Michael Liccione May 25th, 2010 1:51 am :

Bryan:

Before I go to bed, I just wanted to say that this is excellent. I will take up a few of your arguments at my own blog, where I plan a post on Newman’s doctrine of conscience. Of course, if the Reformed guys at places like Triablogue and Green Baggins takes note of your post, we will end up having some intricate epistemological debates. I say: bring it on!

Challenge accepted!

The Medieval Biblical Canon Revisited

Protestants are frequently treated to the unworthy accusation that their “interpretive paradigm” (“IP”) produces “merely human opinion” whereas the Roman Catholic “IP” actually provides [the mere possibility] of providing a hard, clean line between “mere human opinion” and “divine revelation”.

For example:

the Protestant has no way, other than fallible arguments, to secure his account of what belongs in the canon, which account, in the case of the OT, runs counter to what the older traditions of Catholicism and Orthodoxy eventually concluded. Therefore, he has no way, other than the use of fallible arguments, to show how the canon should be identified. And if he doesn’t have more than that, then he has no way of making certain that the way he identifies the norma normans for the other secondary authorities is correct.

[For Roman Catholics] there is a principled as opposed to an ad hoc way to distinguish the formal, proximate object of faith from fallible human opinions about how to identify it in the sources. And that is the way in which the Catholic can distinguish the assent of faith from that of opinion.

Well, the Medievals, it seems, were in the same boat as the post-Tridentine Protestants, because the “infallible Church” with the “unbroken succession” during those centuries really hadn’t ruled authoritatively what the “infallible canon” was to be. In fact, the claim was, they didn’t need one.

So the “Catholics” of that day had the same problems that the Protestants had. As Richard Muller relates:

Liccione Quixote

Erick wrote, in response to Paul Bassett:

The problem remains however that the universal church for 15 centuries did not understand the last word on any issue, doctrinal or disciplinary, to be in one’s individual interpretation of Scripture, or even a collective interpretation by a huge community in schism (Presbyterian, Baptist, etc). Obviously, reading the Scripture is very important to Catholics, and many Catholics are willing to go toe to toe with protestants in exegesis; however the solutions that are written down for the problems going on in the NT era are not always applicable since, as time goes on, there arises new problems which are not addressed by the NT.

The Papacy is not an ever-present over-lord on the whole Church, it is a referee there needed for sacerdotal unity. If you read the opening words of certain councils, there are pronouncements that the Bishop of Rome is the occupant of a chair wherein the rock of Church remains. And this went uncontested for a very long time.

But even if you were to show how this was contested, what group, besides your own community of theological thought, even agrees with your positive application of how to do Church and worship, despite their agreement with you on the negative towards the Papacy?

The problem with your comment, Erick, is that “the universal church” did not ever “understand” anything at all with one voice. There never was “a last word” from “the universal church” on anything – not even the Council of Chalcedon [which was “reinterpreted” by later councils].

The quest to find such a thing is a meaningless one. A Quixotic one. There is no “there” there.

To provide just one [fairly big] example: In the fifth century, the Alexandrians (Monophysites) as followers of Cyril, and the Antiochians (Nestorians) as followers of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, both, with their “successions of bishops”, both split with the Greeks and Romans [“the Orthdox”] over the issue of whether Mary was Theotokos or Christotokos. This was the heart and soul of the Nestorian heresy, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD.

But consider the Common Christological Declaration that JPII signed with the “Assyrian Church of the East” in 1994 – which you may have otherwise known as the “Nestorian” church. This declaration says The controversies of the past led to anathemas, bearing on persons and on formulas. The Lord's Spirit permits us to understand better today that the divisions brought about in this way were due in large part to misunderstandings.

This is a “misunderstanding” that directly relates to a “doctrinal” issue:

the Assyrian Church of the East is praying the Virgin Mary as "the Mother of Christ our God and Saviour". In the light of this same faith the Catholic tradition addresses the Virgin Mary as "the Mother of God" and also as "the Mother of Christ". We both recognize the legitimacy and rightness of these expressions of the same faith and we both respect the preference of each Church in her liturgical life and piety.

This is the Theotokos vs Christotokos issue that was the very reason for “the Council of Ephesus” (431 AD). It was Cyril’s condemnation of Nestorius for this very issue.

Note the following OLTV video in which the Orthodox bishop Timothy "Kallistos" Ware just comes right out and says "Nestorius was not guilty of the Nestorian heresy". You can see the video here:

http://www.oltv.tv/id553.html (Look at "Plenary 1", Clip 1, beginning approximately 2:20)…

…and read more about the dispute here:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f18/nestorius-council-ephesus-53817/

Your premise that “the universal church” did anything at all for 15 centuries is a false one. The “Nestorian” church never was not part of the universal church. Even though it had “bishops” in “succession”. The universal church had a mixed voice on this issue.

And it was mixed because of misunderstanding. Yes, doctrinal misunderstanding.

…the last word on any issue, doctrinal or disciplinary, to be in one’s individual interpretation of Scripture, or even a collective interpretation by a huge community in schism (Presbyterian, Baptist, etc)….

There never has been a “last word”. So the question “whose interpretation” really provides an answer that is far more convoluted than the answer you will receive at CTC. The very quest for alast word is a Quixotic one. Do you not see this?

Liccione’s “IP” which he finds “preferable” – because it offers a “a principled as opposed to an ad hoc way to distinguish the formal, proximate object of faith from fallible human opinions”, has no correspondence whatsoever with the actual course of church history. The universal church, not anywhere, ever, has identified [except by Roman fiat] this “formal, proximate object of faith” for which you are seeking. Even by his own standard of “papal ratifications of dogmatic canons issued by general councils meant to bind the whole Church”, you have, in the words of JPII, “a misunderstanding” which led to “anathemas” and schism.

This is an issue that is far older than Protestantism.

The Fictional Beginnings of Papal Infallibility, Part 1

It is no stretch at all to call this fictional. The concept of “papal infallibility”, the foundation of the Roman Catholic IP, the epistemological foundation of certitude for a narrow band of Roman Catholics, never existed for the first 1200 years of church history.

Michael Liccione wrote of “papal ratifications of dogmatic canons issued by general councils meant to bind the whole Church”. Of these he says:

Whether purely papal or conciliar, such definitions are exercises of the “extraordinary magisterium” of the Church, and thus require the assent of faith from all believers. All are set forth infallibly.

Of course, it’s not like “popes” had called these councils, or were leading these councils, or even present at these councils, or were even afterthoughts at these councils. In some cases, they didn’t even know about them until after-the-fact.

Of course, “Pope Sylvester” was not present at the First Ecumenical Council (Nicea 325AD). Only two priests from Rome were present (among the 300+ Eastern bishops at the council) and he is neither mentioned by, or even apparently though of at this council. At the Second Ecumenical Council, Constantinople (381AD), from which we have “the Nicene Creed” in its present form, “Pope Damasus” (366–384) didn’t even know it was occurring, and only received reports about the council later.

What was “the papacy” like at this time? This is from Hans Küng: “Infallibility, an Inquiry”:

[the murderer] Bishop Damasus was the first to claim the title of Sedes Apostolica (“Apostolic See”) exclusively for the Roman See; Bishop Siricius (contemporary of the far more important Ambrose, Bishop of Milan), was the first to call himself “pope,” began peremptorily to call his own statutes “apostolic,” adopted the official imperial style, and energetically extended his official powers on all sides; Bishop Innocent I wanted to have every important matter, after it had been been discussed at a synod, put before the Roman pontiff for a decision, and tried to establish liturgical centralization with the aid of historical fictions, and so on.

The historian Eamon Duffy writes of this “official imperial style”:

They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s. Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city – Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot of the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation on the site of the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths of Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399-401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32).

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule… (Duffy, 37:38).

It was Siricius (384-399), who was the successor of Damasus, who “self-consciously … began to model their actions and style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. … [Siricius responded to an inquiry from a neighboring bishop in Spain] in the form of a decretal, modeled directly on an imperial rescript, and like the rescripts, providing authoritative rulings which were designed to establish legal precedents on the issues concerned. Siricius commended the [inquiring] Bishop for consulting Rome ‘as to the head of your body’, and instructed to him to pass on ‘the salutary ordinances we have made’ to the bishops of all the surrounding provinces, for ‘no priest of the Lord is free to be ignorant of the statutes of the Apostolic See’” (Duffy 40)

Regarding the way that “historical fictions” worked their way into papal consolidation of their power, Roger Collins, Keeper of the Keys (New York, NY: Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), ©2009) writes:

In 416 Pope Innocent I (401–417) declared ‘in all of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Sicily and the isles that lie between them no churches have been established other than by those ordained bishop by the venerable Apostle Peter or his successors”…. (58)

This was totally historically inaccurate, although it wasn’t the only such incident giving sanction to historical inaccuracy.

The purpose of such “novelties”, according to Collins, was “always the” invention “maintenance of tradition” (59).

Later, Collins writes about the “Symmachan forgeries”:

This was the first occasion on which the Roman church had revisited its own history, in particular the third and fourth centuries, in search of precedents…. Some of the periods in question, such as the pontificates of Sylvester (314–355) and Liberius (352–366), were already being seen more through the prism of legend than that of history, and in the Middle Ages texts were often forged because their authors were convinced of the truth of what they contained. Their faked documents provided tangible evidence of what was already believed true.

The Symmachan forgeries reinterpreted some of the more embarrassing episodes in papal history, both real and imaginary. … How convincing these forged texts seemed in the early sixth century is unknown, but when rediscovered in later centuries, they were regarded as authentic records with unequivocal legal authority. … (Collins, 80–82).

This is how Rome does “interpretation”. The reliance of these bishops of Rome on fictions and forgeries to expand their realm is truly staggering. Collins says “It is no coincidence that the first systematic works of papal history appear at the very time the Roman church’s past was being reinvented for polemical purposes.” We have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

* * *

There was a representative of a pope present at the third Ecumenical council. History records a speech from “Philip the Roman Legate” at the Council of Ephesus (431 AD). It is important to note that this was at the third session – after all of the major issues had been decided, “after the conclusion of the whole matter”, after many of the important players had left. Philip stood up in front of an almost-empty room and said:

No one doubts, but rather it has been known to all generations, that the holy and most blessed Peter, chief and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith, the foundation stone of the Catholic church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, an that the power of binding and loosing sins was given to him, who up to this moment and always lives in his successors, and judges (D. 112).

For Roman Catholics, this counts as “papal ratification” of a council.

In reality, this speech of Philip’s was a novelty, a burp after a meal, a “don’t-forget-about-me” moment” which wasn’t on anybody’s mind at the time (except for those at Rome), and at Vatican I, we see here the real-life practice of what I’ve been calling “The Roman Catholic Hermeneutic”, returning “to the sources of divine revelation” – interesting how this afterthought of a speech turns into “a source of divine revelation” for the great and certain Roman Catholic IP, that fountain of all epistemological certainty.

This unimportant speech was cited at Vatican I (D. 1824), as precedent for and evidence of “the Perpetuity of the Primacy of Blessed Peter among the Roman Pontiffs.”

(The “D.” stands for Denzinger’s “Sources of Catholic Dogma”).

Straining at a gnat, while swallowing the camel of centuries’-worth of ‘distinctively Roman accretions’

Continuing with my very long discussion with Michael Liccione at Called to Communion:

Mike 286:

That remark is as good a place as any to start for the sake of explaining what’s wrong with your approach at the most fundamental, philosophical level.

There is nothing wrong with my approach at any level, much less “the most fundamental, philosophical level”. As I’ve explained repeatedly, the “fundamental, philosophical level” that you want to bring up has been necessitated by the fact that you need to explain away some things (very many things) and account for the addition of very many other things.

In your writings, you often quote one or more English translations of the Bible. Precisely as translations, they are interpretations of critical editions of the Bible in the original languages. Those critical editions, in turn, are interpretations of what’s written on the pages of the all the oldest codices that survive. And “what the Bible says,” to the extent we know it, is what’s written on those pages. So, what you quote is not “what the Bible says.” What you quote are interpretations of interpretations of what the Bible says.

You use the word “interpretations” very loosely. It’s true that there is some need for judgment, on some issues, but very, very infrequently is there a need to make an “interpretation” that changes anything at all that is significant.

Blue Men on Mars

I am addressing Michael Liccione, and in what follows, I’ll be responding to comment 231 here, but I’ll likely be ranging to other places to take into account some of the other things you’ve said, such as when you refer me to Sections IV and V in the main article which this comment follows.

I’m pleased to see you trying to address what I take to be the basic epistemological issue between Catholicism and Protestantism. In my opinion, understanding and addressing that issue accurately is the only way for the uncommitted inquirer to decide between them without begging the question.

I’ve been responding to these issues all along, although I’ve not been doing it in the same words that you are using. What you are doing is clouding the primary epistemological issue in a more formal-sounding language, which tends to give some “intellectual grounding” where there is none.

What you call “begging the question” here with remarkable ease, is in reality, taking the Apostles at their own words. As Paul says to the Roman Governor Festus, in his trial defense before King Agrippa (Acts 26:26), “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner.”

God expects his word to be obeyed

Over at Reformation21, Scott Oliphint is working through the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF). At Chapter 1.4, he writes:

iv. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

One of the first things that must be firmly embedded in our minds, both as Christians and consequently as biblical apologists, is the absolute self-attesting authority of Scripture. It is generally agreed that, if any section of the Westminster Confession of Faith was more carefully crafted than another, it was the section that deals with Holy Scripture. You can, no doubt, understand some of the reasons for that, particularly in the face of opposition from Roman Catholicism. The Confession is concerned, particularly in section four of chapter one, to show that it is in Scripture's authority that we see its divinity and inspiration represented.

Notice first of all, that the divines are interested here in the authority of Scripture. And the intent of the paragraph is to set out for us the ground or reason why the Scriptures are authoritative, and thus why they ought to be believed and obeyed. They set out, very clearly, that the authority of Scripture does not, in any way, rest on the Church or its councils. Rather, its authority rests on its author, God, and is to be received because it is His Word. This is sometimes called the autopiston of Scripture, translated as self-attesting, or self-authenticating. What does that mean?

It does not mean self-evident. Self-authentication is an objective attribute, whereas self-evident refers more specifically to the knowing agent. It therefore does not mean that revelation as self-authenticated compels agreement. That which is self-authenticating can be denied. It does mean that it needs no other authority as confirmation in order to be justified and absolutely authoritative in what it says. This does not mean that nothing else attends that authority; there are other evidences, which the next section makes clear. What it does mean is that nothing else whatsoever is needed, nor is there anything else that is able to supersede this ground, in order for Scripture to be deemed authoritative. This is, at least in part, what God means when he says, in Isaiah 55, that His Word, simply by going out, will accomplish what He desires. This is the case because of what God's Word is in itself. It always goes out with authority, because it carries His own authority with it.

That, in a nutshell, is how “God’s word” works. It works. As the author of Hebrews writes, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

It requires no “interpretive paradigm”.

Michael Liccione said in a comment:

(1) The Catholic IP [“interpretive paradigm”] is preferable to the Protestant IP because the former, unlike the latter, supplies a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinions.

I’m sure he’s outlined an argument for this somewhere. But what is it that makes it “preferable”? Preferable to himself, maybe, because he wants Rome’s views to come out on top, and this seems to me to be just a fancy way of stacking the deck.

Is this “IP” preferable to God? When has God ever outlined that this is preferable?

In speaking of God’s immutability, Bavinck writes, “God is as immutable in his knowing, willing, and decreeing, as he is in his being” (Vol 2 pg 154). Citing Augustine, he writes:

The essence of God by which he is what he is, possesses nothing changeable, neither in eternity, nor in truthfulness, nor in will (The Trinity, IV).

And citing Confessions:

For even as you totally are, so do you alone totally know, for you immutably are, and you know immutably, and you will immutably. Your essence knows and wills immutably, and your knowledge is and wills immutably, and your will is and knows immutably. (Confessions, XIII, 16)

He continues, “Neither creation, nor revelation, nor incarnation (affects, etc.) brought about any change in God. No new plan ever arose in God. In God there was always one single immutable will. He notes that this immutability as one of the incommunicable attributes of God is not questioned by the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutherans, nor Reformed theologians.

Furthermore, as Steve Hays has said elsewhere, “Christianity is a revealed religion… Only God knows his own mind. We lack direct access to the mind of God. Intentions are hidden. We don’t know God’s intentions unless he tells us. That’s not something we can intuit or infer from the natural order.”

In the “35,000 foot view” model, John Currid, in his Genesis commentary (Vol 1) is able to make the statement that “Genesis 3:15 is Messianic. And the identity of the said descendant is clear from genealogies such as Luke 3 … Genesis 3 is the prophecy that God will send a redeemer to crush the enemy. Jesus is the seed who is descended from Eve and went to do battle against Satan. The remainder of Scripture is an unfolding of the prophecy of Genesis 3:15. Redemption is promised in this one verse, and the Bible traces the development of that redemptive theme.

God is consistent in time. In his plan, in his will, in his method of revelation, God is unchanging. And when we perceive something different, such as the movement between the “old covenant” and the “new covenant”, we see, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, the old was merely “copies of the heavenly things”. Christ himself revealed “the heavenly things themselves” (Hebrews 9:23)

It is in that way that He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (Hebrews 1:3).

Where, then, in Revelation [“we don’t know God’s intentions unless he tells us”] does God posit, even in some “implicit, seed form” that having “a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinions” is “preferable”?

I’ve cited Beale’s work on Adam, but Beale continues to show that God’s command to Adam continued through to the Patriarchs, then to Moses, where it was written down. Same set of commands:

To Adam:

And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

To Noah:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. … And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

To Abraham:

“I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. … I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

He says the same to Isaac, and Jacob, and repeatedly to the nation of Israel:

And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands.

He traces this same phenomenon all through the OT. And even though history continued to occur, and prophets continued to speak, the “living voice”, so to speak, faded away, superseded by what was written, and what was written was authoritative.

God expects his command to be obeyed, without providing “a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinions”. He doesn’t use the precise wording every time, but his intention nevertheless is never said to be in question. (Even though “people interpret it wrongly”).

Where, in all of Old Testament history, does the immutable God provide the model for the “IP” which you say is preferable?

Michael Liccione finds ‘the Lutheran IP’ ‘utterly unsatisfactory’

I thought this was funny:

NathanRinne is a Lutheran writer, and Lutherans are quite fond of holding out to Reformed folks that there are things that God just consigns to mystery, and we are  best not to inquire about them. [Reformed theologians go with the things which “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture”, but that is a no-no for Lutherans, as I understand it].

So here we have a Lutheran, who is more than willing to have those “rough edges” at the border of the “formal proximate object of faith”, in a discussion with a Roman Catholic, who blows right beyond “good and necessary” deductions and resides squarely in the infallible certitude “of a principled, rather than an <i>ad hoc</i>” way of arriving at the boundaries of “the formal proximate object of faith”. A “principled” way of determining the content of “divine revelation” as opposed to what is merely “human opinion”.

I hope these two men continue the discussion.

‘Papal Infallibility’ is a cause for confusion

“Papal Infallibility” is not a point of unity even among conservative Roman Catholics.

Michael Liccione said:

What is at issue is whether any church is ever divinely protected from doctrinal error, not moral error, under certain conditions.

Elsewhere he described one component of this:

“In Catholic theology, it is not even a matter of dispute that the definition of 1870 [of “papal infallibility”] applies to Pius IX’s definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and indeed to every papal ratification of conciliar dogmatic decrees set forth to bind the whole Church, going back to the 4th century.

Other Roman Catholics say rather, “Yes, it is a matter of dispute”:

“How many times has the pope taught ex cathedra, or ‘from the chair’ of Peter? How many ex cathedra papal statements have there been, and what are they? . . . Different Roman Catholic apologists have asserted very divergent numbers of infallible papal statements. . . . It depends on which apologist you ask….

Of course, the “apologists you ask” aren’t the standard, but the fact that even self-described “conservative” Roman Catholics disagree is telling [never mind all those “Liberal” Catholics who may or may not be real Catholics].

You all have “the one true teaching”, which is infallibly correct, but even on this absolutely fundamental question, the question which you say shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Roman Catholics may absolutely and infallibly make the distinction between “divine revelation and human opinion”, on this most fundamental of foundations, there is confusion.

What good on earth is the “infallible Magisterium” if it can’t answer this fundamental question? What good is having the “basis for making a principled distinction between divine revelation and human opinion”, if even that “basis” doesn’t work out in real life?

A Challenge to Michael Liccione

Michael Liccione said in a comment to me:

it is incumbent on anyone debating said question to argue, on grounds independent of the particular biblical interpretations he adopts, that his IP [“interpretive paradigm”, or hermeneutic] has a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinion, so that by deploying it, he at least has an argument that his particular interpretations are reliable expressions of divine revelation, not just opinions. But if you deny that you or anybody else enjoys the gift of infallibility, and thus admit that you could be wrong, you have no way of making that argument.

In this comment, he further challenged:

For several years now, I’ve been waiting for you to engage the essentially philosophical issue I’ve posed for you. If and when you do, our discussions might move forward.

These “philosophical issues” are outlined this article, in sections IV and V. What follows is my direct response to his “philosophical issues”. Stay tuned.

Michael Liccione (372), you wrote this in another comment thread:

I'm saying: "The reason why you have no [basis for making a principled distinction between divine revelation and human opinion] is that you see [certain churchs' claim to be divinely commissioned through apostolic succession] as merely as one more opinion on an epistemic par with others."

I’ve added the [square brackets] there to set off the nature of your claim.

There are all kinds of things balled up here, and no doubt they are clarified in other places. I just haven’t had the opportunity to look at them all in one place. If some of my questions below get answered some place, I'll be happy to look in other places.

You have challenged me to respond to the philosophical questions you have, and so here I am.

The first thing to ask is the question, What is “divine revelation”? I’m going to assume for the sake of discussion that we believe in the same God, and so proving “who” God is shouldn’t be much of an issue. Although, we may disagree on “what God would do, or how he would do things in any given situation”.

In that way, we certainly differ even on what is “divine revelation”. In this respect, your citation of Dei Verbum should be analyzed.

Also, we need to look at the definition of the word “church”. We need to arrive at an adequate definition of “church”.

What is “a church”? What is “the church”?

What specifically was this “divine commission?” How do you know specifically what it was? When did it occur? If it was an “epistemologically superior” claim, how is it that certain individuals walked away from that claim without a full and complete understanding of it? After all, Christ is God. Did he just leave them with “hints” that they forgot to pass along? Or the promise that (John 16:13) that the Holy Spirit would come in and “fill in the gaps” later?


Then, Here is what we are dealing with when we say “epistemology”. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources?

How is it that the mere “claim to be divinely commissioned” entails “epistemological superiority”? What are the limits of that?


Mike, according to your account, the specific claim, by some churches “to be divinely commissioned through apostolic succession” is a claim that’s epistemologically superior to the claim that other churches make.

You say in this article,

“if said claims are true, then there is a principled as opposed to an ad hoc way to distinguish the formal, proximate object of faith from fallible human opinions about how to identify it in the sources. And that is the way in which the Catholic can distinguish the assent of faith from that of opinion.”

But so what? The claim itself does not bear the kind of entailment that is placed on it. Where is the entailment that “there is a principle as opposed to an ad hoc way” to “distinguish the formal, proximate object of faith from fallible human opinions”.

There is, in fact, no entailment that there be “a formal proximate object of faith”. There may well be instances in which “faith” and “human opinion” not only coincide, but coincide in a fairly co-extensive way.

As I asked, when you call the Liccione kids off the street, “get out of the traffic or your could get hurt”, there is no entailment that you define “the formal proximate object” of your entire family set of rules, in order to make that particular command authoritative.

And second, if you say, “come to your own Birthday Party”, there is similarly no entailment for a “formal proximate object” to make “the good news” of a Birthday Party any less clear in the child’s mind.

I say these things in defense of the “Protestant IP”. If God can speak to Adam, and if Eve can misunderstand, and God permits this [there is no entailment for a “formal, proximate object of faith”], then God can speak through a larger Scripture, and still, there is no entailment for a “formal proximate object of faith” in the church age, either.

Neither you nor your colleagues has done an adequate job of explaining this [and in fact, I think you go beyond what Roman Catholicism actually claims in this; your own claims do not fully coincide with official Roman Catholic claims].

Here, too, are areas where I think that neither you nor any of your colleagues here has done an adequate job of explaining things:

1. If the Roman Catholic Church makes some claim to “divine institution”, then, it assumes upon itself a burden of proof to show clearly and explicitly where this “divine institution” occurred, how it applies to (a) Rome and (b) the papacy, and again, it must do so explicitly, and show why anyone might be thus bound by it. Not to do so clearly and explicitly is grounds for rejection of the claim.

Note that this “burden of proof” is not fulfilled by showing, as you seem to do, that the Roman Catholic claim is neater, tidier, than “the Protestant IP”. That may make it seem more secure for those who are seeking epistemological security. But God does not seem to supply such security.

If He does, I don’t see it, and you need to show it to me.

2. This particular burden of proof, on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, means that Keith Mathison’s very long article examining (and rejecting) those claimswas a worthwhile exercise.

If the Roman Catholic explanations in support of this “divine institution” do not hold up to scrutiny [of the Scriptural kind or the historical kind, or in fact, of any kind of scrutiny that we can place upon it], then no amount of perceived confusion in the Protestant world can fix those claims to authority. And yet, the shape of the argument coming from this side is “Protestantism is in a disarray, therefore Roman Catholic claims are correct”.

What you seem to do in this article is to put the “epistemological claims” of Protestants and [some subset of Roman Catholics, but not the official Roman Catholic Church] on the table, side-by-side. Such a side-by-side comparison may constitute an apparent act of “fairness”. But this is no way to prove the validity of Roman Catholic claims.

3. The claim here is that the mere “claim to be divinely commissioned through apostolic succession” is somehow epistemologically superior to other claims.

But I’ve seen this “claim” in practice. And the “practice” is that, when there is an “apparent contradiction” in Roman claims, the “apparent contradiction” exists only in my mind; it does not exist in reality”. Thus, there is always an explanation [or an excuse] offered. The Roman Magisterium is always right in everything it says.

I refuse to engage in this kind of make-believe, in defense of an institution that has so clearly been corrupt in the history of its existence, at every level. Christ’s claim “you can tell a tree by its fruit” is a guarantee of a kind of epistemological “test” that can be made against a “tree”. It is no accident that Newman’s comparison (and Bryan’s comparison) involves a “tree” with “branches”.

We can understand the “Roman Catholic” tree by the “fruit” that it produces – as evidence of corruption.

This whole “interpretive paradigm” thing is not much more than a fancy, “grown-up” way of saying “I’m taking my marbles and going home”.

Michael Liccione, ‘Interpretive Paradigms’ (‘IPs’) and Real Life

In response to Michael Liccione 343 (and others indirectly), I ask:

Who wants their faith to be formed around a legend? I certainly don’t. But that is the legacy of hundreds of years-worth of papal “history”.

This certainly is a question to ask. There certainly is a desire to rest one’s faith on something certain, that’s not going to give way when push comes to shove. I’m sure this sort of thing is behind your desire to “distinguish between divine revelation and human theological opinion”.

My response is simply that God does not provide the kind of “infallible certainty” that you posit. Nor does he demand the need that you have “infallible certainty”. You may want such a thing – but “Divine revelation” itself neither posits it nor provides an answer for it. So it is sufficient to me to rest in God’s word.

In the blog post I mentioned above, I’m talking about “papal history” from the first four centuries of the church. I’ve termed this “the nonexistent early papacy”, although you may or may not claim with Newman that this “papacy” “remained a mere letter” for four centuries. That’s another way of saying “nobody could see it.”

Michael Liccione, Blatantly Dishonest

What follows is an exchange that shows Michael Liccione to be blatantly dishonest.

Before I published this, I privately offered him an opportunity to modify his statement. He declined.

This is an excellent example of how the bright lights at Called-to-Confusion do business:

@ Michael Liccione, in #278, you claimed that my use of Tertullian is “an argument from silence”, and you even falsely reported that it was a fallacy, withholding that the instance in which I used it met the conditions making the argument a valid one.

In 258, I gave this citation from R.P.C. Hanson, “Tradition in the Early Church” (pgs 258–259):

Tertullian can write a long treatise of sixty-three chapters On the Resurrection of the Dead, mentioning and discussing the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the raising of Lazarus, the translation without death of Enoch and of Elijah, the returning from the dead of Moses for the Transfiguration, and even the preservation from what was humanly speaking certain death of the three young men in the fiery furnace and of Jonah in the whale’s belly. He does not once even slightly mention, he does not once remotely and uncertainly hint at, the resurrection or corporeal assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Tertullian quite clearly, like all his contemporaries and predecessors, had never heard of this story.

Hanson prefaces this statement by saying “If the dogma of the corporeal assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary involves the belief in an historical fact (as well, of course, as the interpretation of fact), in some manner analogous to the dependence of the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ upon historical fact, then it can have no support whatever in the tradition of the Church of this period. If it is a fact, it is a fact wholly unknown to the writers of the second and third centuries.”

And I made the further statement, And yet, the “infallible Magisterium” of the 20th century knows enough about this event to include this non-event in the “formal proximate object of faith”. There is now no question [for Roman Catholics, this historical non-event was to be now] a true event. Even though, as my source says, “this idea first made its appearance in the fifth-century Coptic Christianity under marked Gnostic influence.”

You then, in #278 dismissed this as “the fallacy of argumentam ad silencium”, with a wave of your philosophy-teaching hand, but you failed to mention that arguments from silence are not always a logical fallacy, and that my citation of Hanson meets the conditions by which this is a valid argument.

According to Gilbert Garraghan (A Guide to Historical Method, 1946, p. 149), in order to be valid, the argument from silence must fulfill two conditions: the writer[s] whose silence is invoked would certainly have known about it; [and] knowing it, he would under the circumstances certainly have made mention of it. When these two conditions are fulfilled, the argument from silence proves its point with moral certainty.

As to the first condition, Tertullian was certainly one of the most prolific writers of the second and third centuries. We know very little about the early church that he did not know. Tertullian is an author whose works Bryan accepts (see his comment #14, for example).

And Tertullian certainly knows who Mary was, as the mother of Christ. Tertullian.org gives this summary of the ways that Tertullian mentioned Mary:

Tertullian is orthodox on the virgin birth. He does not maintain the later ideas of Mary ever-virgin, but believes that Christ had a normal birth, and that his brothers were his brothers, and not his cousins as later Fathers were to maintain. Helvidius later invoked this statement by Tertullian as an authority, but was denied by Jerome curtly in the words “As to Tertullian, I have nothing else to say except that he was not a man of the church”.

If Mary were held with any kind of esteem during the period when Tertullian lived and worked, he certainly would have known about it. And yet there is no mention of Mary in his works.

Second, Tertullian’s clear intention was to describe every instance [“sixty three chapters”!] instance “On the Resurrection of the Dead”, certainly provided a comprehensive overview in every other person who came close to a near-death experience and was revived, mentioning a large number of individuals, both from the Old Testament (Enoch, Elijah, Daniel and Jonah) and from recent memory (Jesus and Lazarus). That fulfills the first condition.

Thus, the so called argumentam ad silencium that I presented (via Hanson) was not a fallacy, but a valid argument. Under those conditions, we can certainly say that “the Assumption of Mary”, as it appeared in later Gnostic works, was certainly a non-event in history.

Hanson’s work is still a standard monograph on the topic of tradition in the early church. His argument did not get laughed out of town, but it met with all scholarly controls and I have seen this work quoted heartily by other respected authors.

You don’t mind to flash your credentials when it suits your purposes. You said in 293, “I teach logic and critical thinking; I know what a circular argument is and is not.”

But here you are, making the assertion (one of several) that the information I present is somehow fallacious, when it is not.

We have two choices here, that you were either ignorant of your own profession or blatantly dishonest. The first is to say, you really didn’t know how there can be a “valid” argument from silence. But for you, the “professor”, it seems unlikely that you were unaware of this option.

The second is more sinister: that you purposely withheld information for the purpose of giving people here the wrong impression about what I am saying.

This second alternative certainly seems more plausible. It is an illustration of a technique called “mental reservation”. I have written about it in a number of different places.

I’m asking you now if you’d like to make a public retraction. If not, I’m sure your readers would be interested in learning about this facet of how you go about in your profession of insulting some and fooling others in the defense of “Holy Mother Church”.

‘The Church’ in Roman Catholic Ecclesiology: is it the ‘Universal Sacrament of Salvation’? Or merely an idol?

The Roman Catholic Church, at Vatican II, called itself “the universal sacrament of salvation”. Here is how they put it:

In later usage the term sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium. In this sense, Christ himself is the mystery of salvation: “For there is no other mystery of God, except Christ.” The saving work of his holy and sanctifying humanity is the sacrament of salvation,… a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men.” The Church’s first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God….

This much is Rome’s paying lip-service to the concept that I’ll relate below. As such, it should be seen as external to the direct relationship of the believer to Christ.

But as I’ve written in the past, what Rome gives with one fork of its tongue, it takes away with the other.

Because men's communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race. In her, this unity is already begun, since she gathers men "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues”; at the same time, the Church is the "sign and instrument" of the full realization of the unity yet to come.

As sacrament, the Church is Christ's instrument. “She is taken up by him also as the instrument for the salvation of all,” “the universal sacrament of salvation,” by which Christ is “at once manifesting and actualizing the mystery of God's love for men.” The Church “is the visible plan of God’s love for humanity,” because God desires “that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit.”

With this second fork, Rome is making itself not merely an external sign, but “the instrument” alone which through flow “sacramental graces” “in their fullness” – without which men are “sort of on their own” – they can’t get the grace of the other sacraments.

But in reality, here, it sets itself up as an idol opposed to the direct mediation by Christ alone. In effect, it claims to be a mediator of the Mediator.

Michael Liccione (278) follows through with some of the logical result of this model:

1. You cite mathematics and the natural law as fields in which we don’t need “interpretive paradigms,” and you present those as analogues to theology. Now I don’t happen to agree that some fields of human knowledge require no IPs, but I’ll grant that assumption anyhow for argument’s sake. The real problem with your argument is that it assumes there is no relevant difference between what’s knowable by natural reason and what can be apprehended only by the supernatural gift of faith (emphasis added).

Interesting the way you oppose “the supernatural gift of faith” with “what’s knowable by natural reason and what can be appended”.

My point is that God has given man the capacity to be a direct receptor of that revelation. The notion that man will somehow miss what God is saying, either through general or special revelation, is not something that God has left to chance, although, your model assumes that God can only mediate his revelation through the Roman Catholic Church. That is false. Rather, Rome has set itself up as an idol, claiming to represent God, but really only getting in the way.

Bavinck notes, “The revelation that appeared in Christ as such is absolutely not opposed to nature but only to sin, which as an alien element has insinuated itself into the world. Revelation and creation are not opposed to each other, for creation itself is a revelation.”

Thus Adam in his world knows God not only by speaking personally with him, but by correlating that knowledge with what he perceives of God in the world around him (Romans 1). These two things are consonant, not separate. Bavinck continues:

Revelation was present before the fall. Even now, revelation is still present in all the works of God’s hand in nature and history; his external power and deity are perceived and understood from his creatures. And even supernatural revelation as such is so far from being in conflict with nature that every human in the core of his or her being is a supernaturalist and believes in a direct operative presence of God in the world (emphasis added; from Bavinck, “Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, pg 361).

This is what makes entirely superfluous your positing some sort of “authority” which can mediate “the formal proximate object of faith”.

In reality, “the formal proximate object of faith” is “Christ alone”. “The Church” in Roman Catholic doctrine is a substitute for Christ. As such, it is an idol.

This is my main objection to Roman Catholicism. You deflect the believer’s mind from God, and focus it on “the Church”. “The Church” as defined by Rome is not “the sacrament of salvation”. It is an idol that leads people to focus on things other than God in Christ.

That is what I’m saying all along. God has created human beings with a direct capacity not only to understand him, but to be in direct union with him. If we really believe that we are in “union with Christ”, then, this direct union with “the Mediator” makes every other relationship secondary. This includes the relationship with other Christians, including “the church” as Protestants describe it, and particularly “The Church”.

It works the other way around. Christ is in us; word, church, and sacrament function externally to “stir up the spirit that is within us”. This is why we don’t miss what God is saying to us.

You may have heard Bonhoeffer’s famous statement, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.

Here is how that works:

Thus it begins; the cross [for Christians] is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.

Communion with Christ is thus a form of isolation from the rest of the world – even from other Christians. Bonhoeffer continues with this concept:

We must face up to the truth that the call of Christ does set up a barrier between man and his natural life. But this barrier is no surly contempt for life, no legalistic piety, it is the life which is life indeed, the gospel, the person of Jesus Christ. By virtue of his incarnation [Christ] has come between man and his natural life. There can be no turning back, for Christ bars the way. By calling us he has cut us off from all immediacy with the things of the world. He wants to be the centre, through him alone all things shall come to pass. He stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Hebrews 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world. Since his coming, man has no immediate relationship of his own any more to anything, neither to God nor to the world; Christ wants to be the mediator. Of course, there are plenty of gods who offer men direct access, and the world and the world naturally uses every means in its power to retain its direct hold on men, but that is the very reason why it is so bitterly opposed to Christ, the Mediator.

The Roman Catholic Church says you can only come to Christ in a way that is mediated only through [or only in “fullness”] “the Church” and its sacraments. And this is why, as I’ve posted prominently at my site, “The Reformers’ forensic understanding of justification ... the idea of an immediate divine imputation [of righteousness] renders superfluous the entire Catholic system of the priestly mediation of grace by the Church.”

But Paul says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” And also, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

This is a one-to-one relationship. Your fear is, as you said in 281, “The problem with lacking such a distinction is precisely that we cannot distinguish between what God is saying to us and what we are saying to ourselves.”

But God himself does not leave this to chance. Your notion that we must accept some earthly authority “as divine” is a poor and idolatrous substitute for the one, unmediated (or “mediated by Christ alone”) divine authority.

Thus, as you build your argument:

We can know truths of mathematics and precepts of the natural law by natural reason, but we cannot know divine revelation by such means. In the very nature of the case, we can only accept and believe divine revelation by faith, which entails trusting some authority as divine…

You deny the very power of God. You remove God in Christ from the direct sight of the believer, and you place “the Church” as an alternative “divine authority”. A secondary “divine authority”.

Rome seeks to impose itself and its will between the believer and Christ. In that way, it is simply an idol.

God is not some kind of loon

In response to my comment here, Michael Liccione said:

What you’ve done is interpret some biblical texts and present that as evidence that the Bible supports your interpretive paradigm (IP) over against the Catholic. Now I could reply by offering my own, Catholic interpretation of the texts you select. But I can find no good reason to so. For when the very question at issue is which IP, the conservative-Protestant or the Catholic, supplies a principled way to distinguish divine revelation from human theological opinion, neither of us can answer the question just by offering our own favored interpretation of selected biblical texts. You have interpreted, and I would be interpreting, the texts already in terms of our own respective IPs, which begs the question and gets us nowhere. So it is incumbent on anyone debating said question to argue, on grounds independent of the particular biblical interpretations he adopts, that his IP has a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinion, so that by deploying it, he at least has an argument that his particular interpretations are reliable expressions of divine revelation, not just opinions. But if you deny that you or anybody else enjoys the gift of infallibility, and thus admit that you could be wrong, you have no way of making that argument.

For several years now, I’ve been waiting for you to engage the essentially philosophical issue I’ve posed for you. If and when you do, our discussions might move forward.

I responded:

Your appeal to “philosophical issues” is an evasion, and your concept of “interpretive paradigm” is a subterfuge.

Here’s why.

Consider the world of math. Math has rules, and you can, if you make up your mind that you are going to be as honest as possible in your understanding of math, it won’t take you long to understand that 2+2=4. With a bit more work, you’ll find out that 9x9=81, and with not too much more difficulty, you can go to a smart guy and understand that a2xb2=c2 and someone may even be able to figure out the square root of a number like 5,237.

This is because we are talking about numbers, and numbers have properties that are constant, and they can be learned.

Keep in mind that God is a God who created math, with its properties unique to math.

Knowing what I do about math, it is very hard for me to imagine an “interpretive paradigm” (IP) in the universe that is going to make 2+2=5 a true statement. If there is one, it is going to be something very twisted and counterintuitive.

Even such concepts as “relativity”, as complicated as they are, are merely extensions of the “paradigm” that causes 2+2=4 to be true.

That’s the problem with the Roman Catholic “IP”.

If you consider, too, that God has properties, he tells us what these properties are, [we know them because he reveals them], and that he honest with us and is not some kind of loon, then understanding God’s revelation to us is not too different from understanding math.

Further, since we live in the universe that God created, and that he created us, it is no stretch at all to consider that he has made us with “receptors” to what he is “transmitting”. Turretin said it with a bit more precision:

…it is even most absurd that the rational creature as rational should not be subject to him [God] in the genus of morals and not be governed by him suitably to his nature (i.e., by moral means) by the establishment of a law. Hence it follows either that man ought to have been created independent by God (which is absurd) or that he has a natural law impressed upon him, in accordance with which he may be ruled by him

God is not going to make creatures that can’t hear and understand him. That’s the point of my comment 233 above.

Let’s look at this. God reveals something to Adam; Adam does something, and there is a consequence. God says more. Then he talks to different people – Noah, Abraham, Jacob. There is more history. We know the words, and we know the history.

If your “interpretive paradigm” is to be as honest with those statements, and with the history, as you can possibly be (and knowing that our understanding of both the languages of those statements, and the history, especially moving closer to our time), you are not going to have a difficult time understanding the basics.

The fact that many people aren’t good at math doesn’t make math untrue.

Now Mike, you want an “interpretive paradigm” that runs extremely counterintuitive to not only the “relativity” that has been calculated out, but counterintuitive to the 2+2=4 and the 9x9=81 statements.

Look at the other side of this: What kind of “interpretive paradigm” does the “infallible magisterium” use to come up with the things it comes up with.

The deliberations over the Trinity and Christology required no “infallibility”. It required [and Athanasius and others are clear about this] an honest look at Scripture. Athanasius Contra Arianus contains Athanasius’s “proof” of the Trinity.

We know too the sources of some of the uniquely “catholic” items and the uniquely “Roman” doctrines that you say are “materially present” “in the original deposit of faith” [and one might add, “somehow”, “implicitly”].

We know, for example, that there is no historical record for the Assumption of Mary. There are no numbers of any kind that add up to “Assumption of Mary”. Assumption of Mary is a 2+2=5 statement. Consider:

Tertullian can write a long treatise of sixty-three chapters On the Resurrection of the Dead, mentioning and discussing the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the raising of Lazarus, the translation without death of Enoch and of Elijah, the returning from the dead of Moses for the Transfiguration, and even the preservation from what was humanly speaking certain death of the three young men in the fiery furnace and of Jonah in the whale’s belly. He does not once even slightly mention, he does not once remotely and uncertainly hint at, the resurrection or corporeal assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Tertullian quite clearly, like all his contemporaries and predecessors, had never heard of this story (R.P.C. Hanson, “Tradition in the Early Church”, SCM Press, ©1962, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers edition, pgs 258–259).

Tertullian was one of the most well-informed of the writers of the early (late 2nd, early 3rd century) church. If anyone had the slightest hint in his day that it had happened, he would have known about it.

And yet, the “infallible Magisterium” of the 20th century knows enough about this non-event to include it within the “formal proximate object of faith”. There is now [for Roman Catholics] no question, it was a true event. Even though, as Hanson says, “this idea first made its appearance in the fifth-century Coptic Christianity under marked Gnostic influence.”

What kind of magic dust gives the “infallible Magisterium” the “authority” to make a non-event into a dogma? What kind of magic dust makes “2+2=5” into a true statement?

This is one event, and one of the most egregious, but it is standard operating procedure for the Roman “teaching authority”.

Do we start with simple math and work our way up to calculus? Or do we commit our lives and eternal destinies to the “interpretive paradigm” that makes 2+2=5?

The First Adam, Sola Scriptura, and his Commission as King, Priest, and Protestant

I’m continuing to work with Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2011) in looking at the question, “what is the church?”

Here’s God’s creation of, and charge to the first Adam:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Beale notes that this breaks out into the following separate elements:

The commission of Gen 1:26–28 involves the following elements, especially, as summarized in 1:28: (1) “God blessed them”; (2) “Be fruitful and multiply”; (3) “fill the earth”; (4) “subdue” the “earth”; (5) “rule over … all the earth.”

Adam being made in the image of God “is what enables Adam to carry out the particular parts of the commission” (30).

God’s creation of Adam in his image as the crown of creation is probably to be seen as the content of the “blessing” at the beginning of verse 28. The “ruling” and “subduing” “over all the earth” expresses Adam’s kingship and is plausibly part of a functional definition of the divine image in which Adam was made. This functional aspect is likely the focus of what it means that Adam and Eve were created in God’s image.

After a brief discussion of how “image” and “function” were related in the ancient Near East (ANE), and noting that “Adam represents God’s sovereign presence and rule on earth”, Beale expands this to say “there is an additional ontological aspect of the “image” by which humanity was enabled to reflect the functional image”:

Adam was made in the volitional, rational, and moral image of God, so that, with regard to the latter, he was to reflect moral attributes such as righteousness, knowledge, holiness, justice, love, faithfulness, and integrity (for the first three attributes as part of the divine image, see Eph 4:24; Col 3:10), and above all he was to reflect God’s glory….

Adam’s commission to “cultivate” (with connotations of “serving”) and “guard” in Gen 2:15 as a priest-king is probably part of the commission given in Gen 1:26–28. Hence, Gen 2:15 continues the theme of subduing and filling the earth by humanity created in the divine image, which has been placed in the first temple [i.e., Eden. For Beale’s complete argument on this, see his work The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God].

Adam was to be God’s obedient servant in maintaining both the physical and spiritual warfare of the garden abode, which included dutifully keeping evil influences from invading the arboreal sanctuary. In fact, the physical and spiritual dimensions of Adam’s responsibilities in relation to the Genesis 1 commission are apparent from the recognition that Adam was like a primordial priest serving in a primeval temple. Adam was to be like Israel’s later priests, who both physically protected the temple and spiritually were to be experts in the recollection, interpretation, and application of God’s word in the Torah. Accordingly, essential to Adam and Eve’s raising of their children was spiritual instruction in God’s word that the parents themselves were to remember and pass on.

In this respect, it is apparent that knowing and being obedient to God’s word was crucial to carrying out the task of Gen 1:26–28 (and disobedience led to failure [cf. Gen 2:16–17 with Gen 3:1–7], pgs 32–33).

Roman Catholics are fond of asking, “where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?” The first instance of it is right here, at the beginning, establishing the principle from the start. Adam and Eve had a word from God (though no “infallible canon”), and they were simply expected to understand and obey.

One should note that, according to Michael Liccione, this is “the very essence of Protestantism. One assumes that the deposit of faith is knowable independently of ecclesial authority, and that one knows its content.” So we have the formal principle of the Reformation right here starting with God’s word to Adam. One might say that God himself was the first to articulate the principle.

With respect to Roman Catholic ecclesiology, this requirement to know what God’s word was saying, perspicuously, and in an unmediated way, was taken for granted. There is no provision for an “infallible interpreter” at this point.

Thus, knowing God’s will as expressed in his word of command (Gen 2:16–17) is part of the functional manner in which humanity was to reflect the divine image, which assumes that Adam was created with the rational and moral capacities to comprehend and carry out such a command. The first two humans were to think God’s thoughts after him. Thus, Adam and his wife’s “knowledge” of God also included remembering God’s word addressed to Adam in Gen 2:16–17, which Adam’s wife failed to recall in Gen 3:2–3. After God puts Adam into the garden in Gen 2:15 to serve him he gives Adam a positive command, a negative command, and a warning to remember: “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge [LXX: infinitive of γινώσκω] of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen 2:16–17).

When confronted by the satanic serpent, Adam’s wife responds by quoting Gen 2:16–17 but changes the wording in at least three major places (Gen 3:2–3). It is possible that the changes are incidental and are a mere paraphrase still retaining the same meaning as in 2:16–17. It is more likely, however, that she either failed to remember God’s word accurately or intentionally changed it for her own purposes. The telltale sign of this is that each change appears to have theological significance. First, she minimizes their privileges by saying merely, “We may eat,” whereas God had said, “You may eat freely”; second, she minimizes the judgment by saying “You will die,” whereas God said, “You will surely die”; third, she maximizes the prohibition by affirming, “You shall not … touch,” whereas God originally said only, “You shall not eat.” (33)

In effect, Eve has given us the very first instance of “the development of doctrine”, and the consequences of an improper “interpretation” are quite severe.

Roundtable with Michael Licona on the Resurrection of Jesus

http://michaeljkruger.com/roundtable-with-michael-licona-on-the-resurrection-of-jesus/

A Catholic conundrum

Traditionally, Catholic apologists have tried to prooftext Catholicism from Scripture, church fathers, church councils, &c. However, that’s a double-edged sword. For Protestant apologists can cite the same sources to disprove Catholicism.

The point is not that Rome can’t find any support for some of her dogmas in the church fathers or church councils. The problem is that while these sources lend support for Rome in some respects, they undermine Rome in other respects. What they give with one hand they take with another.

As a result, Catholic apologists have to fall back on the Magisterium to sift and sort authoritative traditions from unauthoritative traditions. However, that raises the question of how Catholic apologists establish the authority of the Magisterium in the first place. You can’t cite tradition to ratify the Magisterium if the Magisterium must winnow authentic tradition from the chaff. So the appeal is viciously circular.

More recently, Bryan Cross and Michael Liccione have taken a different tack. When Protestant apologists quote Catholic sources or patristic sources against them, they say that begs the question. For that assumes you can interpret the sources apart from the Magisterium. That’s a “solo-Scriptura” methodology.

So they deny that you can directly prooftext the issue one way or the other. Rather, your prooftexting is only as good as your interpretive paradigm.

However, that maneuver comes at a cost. It means Liccione and Cross can’t directly prooftext their position either. Moreover, their tactic relocates the problem. Instead of furnishing evidence for Catholicism, they must now furnish evidence for their interpretive paradigm.

And they need evidence that’s independent of Catholic or patristic sources, for their interpretation of the sources is only as good as their interpretive paradigm. They can’t derive their paradigm from the sources if their interpretation of the sources is paradigm-dependent. So how do they establish their interpretive paradigm in the first place? How does the process ever get started?