How strong is the Christian argument against polygamy?

Polygamy has been getting some attention lately in response to a pastor's announcement that he's married a second wife. Ben Shapiro recently addressed the subject on one of his programs and had Matt Fradd on to discuss it with him. Both men made a Biblical case against polygamy, but far less of a case than they should have made. Their comments about the extrabiblical evidence likewise fell well short of what could have been offered. Matt was focused on church authority and didn't say much about the church fathers and other early extrabiblical sources, where there's early and widespread evidence against polygamy. The use of Roman Catholicism's authority claims is problematic, since those claims are false and end up leading Catholicism's defenders to making unverifiable appeals to doctrinal development, what ecclesiology they think would be fitting, and so forth.

Support for polygamy has been increasing substantially in recent years. More than one out of five Americans consider it morally acceptable now, which is about a tripling of its support over the past couple of decades. See Gallup's polling results on moral issues here. And here's an article on the subject published by Gallup in 2017. Support for polygamy has gone up a few more percentage points since then.

About twenty years ago, I wrote a post discussing the evidence against polygamy in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the early extrabiblical sources. I added some other posts over the years in the comments section of that thread, including some interactions with defenders of polygamy. Matthew Schultz posted an article here in 2011 that discusses how negatively polygamy is portrayed in the Bible. My initial thread on polygamy, linked above, discussed a lot of extrabiblical sources, but didn't include Minucius Felix. Here's a later post in which I cited his comments about the Christian rejection of polygamy.

Did the earliest information about Christianity circulate entirely in oral form?

A post I wrote last week about Josephus was partly about the likelihood that the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity communicated about the religion in writing. Elsewhere in Tom Schmidt's book that I cited, he discussed a line of evidence I've brought up before. "For the same reason during the 30s CE it is probable that Saul of Tarsus received letters from none other than a high priestly son of Ananus I instructing him to arrest followers of Jesus." (Josephus And Jesus [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2025], 185) In a footnote, Schmidt cites Acts 9:1-2 and 22:5. There are other examples of actual or potential references to Christianity in written sources that are no longer extant, among both non-Christians and Christians. See my post here that discusses the example in Acts mentioned above and others. See, also, my discussion here regarding how the genealogy of Jesus in the gospel of Luke likely came from the brothers of Jesus, most likely James, and probably in written form.

What Justin Martyr said about early Jewish responses to Christianity, which I discussed in my last post, probably involved written material as well, not just oral sources.

People often speak of the earliest history of Christianity as if it involved only oral communication about the religion or as if any written sources that existed at the time had little or no significance. But that doesn't make much sense in the abstract, it's inconsistent with the large amount of documents we have from Christians from the middle of the first century onward, and it's contradicted by the references we have to early written sources that are no longer extant (the likely presence of written documents other than the canonical gospels in the "many" sources of Luke 1:1-3; Acts 9:1-2, 15:23-29; etc.). The nature of life is such that communicating orally makes more sense in some contexts, and communicating in writing makes more sense in other contexts. Both would have been present from the start of Christianity, not just later on. And that start of Christianity includes Jesus' life before his public ministry.

Problems With Citing 2 Thessalonians 2:15 Against Sola Scriptura

When 2 Thessalonians 2:15 comes up in discussions related to the Christian rule of faith, we can begin by going several verses earlier and asking whether the oral teaching Paul refers to in 2 Thessalonians 2:6 has been preserved. It's a disputed passage that different people have interpreted in different ways.

Beyond the specifics of 2:6, 2 Thessalonians in general is in large part about eschatology. When we look at the early oral eschatological traditions, such as the ones found in Papias and Irenaeus, they're largely premillennial, even though the most prominent modern critics of sola scriptura reject premillennialism. Centuries after Papias, Jerome referred to "a very large multitude" of orthodox Christians who were premillennialists in his day (in Thomas Scheck, trans., St. Jerome: Commentary On Isaiah [Mahwah, New Jersey: The Newman Press, 2015], pp. 820-21, section 18:1 in the commentary). Augustine was a premillennialist early in his Christian life. Wasn't the church infallibly maintaining the oral eschatological traditions Paul had given the Thessalonians?

And, aside from the teachings in 2 Thessalonians and its surrounding context, such as eschatology, we could ask about oral information in general. The Thessalonians knew a lot about Paul: what he looked like, what his handwriting looked like (3:17), what sort of work he did when he was among them (3:8), etc. Biographers of Paul and many other people would like to have that information. So, why don't these critics of sola scriptura produce it? Or has so much oral information across so many contexts been lost over time, to the point where critics of sola scriptura have to admit that they've lost a large amount of oral information that was part of the original context of 2 Thessalonians?

These considerations don't prove sola scriptura, and an advocate of something other than sola scriptura could avoid an appeal to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 or supplement it with whatever else. But factors like what I've mentioned above make it evident that appealing to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 alone isn't enough to make a case against sola scriptura, and 2 Thessalonians as a whole poses some difficulties for the most common alternatives to sola scriptura.

Claims About What "All Of The Apostolic Churches" And "The Protestant Reformers" Believed

When it's shown that there are significant historical problems with something like the perpetual virginity of Mary, her assumption, or praying to saints (e.g., the early absence of the belief, early sources contradicting it, sources being agnostic about it as late as the medieval era), a common response is to say that all apostolic churches accept the belief in question. Or we'll be told that some or all of the foremost leaders of the Reformation accepted it, that early Protestants in general did, or something else along those lines. We'll be told about how all of the apostolic churches practice prayer to the saints, how high of a Mariology the leaders of the Reformation had, and so on.

Several things need to be kept in mind when that sort of response comes up:

What's the significance of the extrabiblical sources?

We need to keep in mind that the significance of extrabiblical sources varies, and can vary widely, from one context to another. On a subject like eternal security, which I've been addressing a lot in recent months, we're in a context in which the Biblical sources provide us with a large amount of information. It's not as though eternal security is some minor issue that never came up or only came up on rare occasions in the Biblical record. It's not something with as little significance as what year Isaiah died or how many times Paul visited a particular city. The potential to lose justification has existed since the time of Adam and Eve, instead of being something that only came up toward the end of the Biblical era or afterward. The Bible provides us with relevant information in dozens of documents from dozens of authors over more than a thousand years. A supposed lack of clarity in one Biblical source can be resolved by consulting another passage or group of passages elsewhere in that source or by consulting one or more other Biblical sources. The nature of eternal security is such that our dependence on extrabiblical sources is much less in that context than it is on other issues.

Something like a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources would give us reason to reconsider our view on the subject, but any conclusion we'd reach would still have to interact with the large amount of Biblical data we have on the topic. But there isn't a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources, as I've demonstrated in my posts on the subject. Since eternal security is addressed so much in scripture and is neither universally nor almost universally absent or contradicted in the extrabiblical sources, we have a situation in which the extrabiblical sources are less significant accordingly.

Whether the topic is eternal security or something else, we need to remember what's involved when people refer to something like "the Bible" or "scripture". There's a sense in which only one source is involved, but there's also a sense in which there isn't. We could similarly refer to the church fathers collectively as "the church fathers" or refer to medieval sources collectively as "medieval sources", for example. But the Bible, like those other collections of documents, consists of many sources who wrote in many contexts. Extrabiblical sources have some value in assisting us in interpreting the Biblical documents, and some people underestimate the value of those extrabiblical sources (because of ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, or whatever other reason), but there's also a danger of overestimating them. And the level of significance they have varies from one context to another.

What type of extrabiblical tradition?

Since so many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox evaluations of Protestantism involve criticizing sola scriptura without making much of a case for an alternative, we should consider what's at stake. Not only does rejecting sola scriptura not leave you with Catholicism and Orthodoxy as the only Christian options to choose from, but it doesn't even come close to doing so.

Let's say that somebody found Papias' extrabiblical traditions about premillennialism convincing and added those to scripture as his rule of faith. Would accepting such extrabiblical traditions give you Roman Catholicism? No. Would it give you Eastern Orthodoxy? No. Would it give you the rule of faith of any of the other groups outside of Protestantism that claim apostolic succession, for example? No. Rather, it would give you something different than sola scriptura, but vastly closer to Protestantism than to those alternatives.

We need to keep in mind that there's a large gap separating sola scriptura from something like the rule of faith of Roman Catholicism or that of Eastern Orthodoxy. You can reject the former (sola scriptura) while still being much closer to the former than the latter (the rule of faith of the groups mentioned). When people refer to the importance of sola scriptura, they often have alternatives like Catholicism and Orthodoxy in mind. It doesn't follow that there's so much at stake when alternatives to sola scriptura are considered more broadly. When a Catholic or Orthodox tries to cast doubt on sola scriptura in a way that would still leave you a long distance from those two alternatives to sola scriptura, that long distance is important to note. We should also note the shortness of the distance between sola scriptura and other alternatives. In my example involving Papias and premillennialism, much less is at stake than would be involved in something like a conversion to Catholicism or a conversion to Orthodoxy. Or think of how individuals like Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 1:10:1-2) and Tertullian (The Prescription Against Heretics, 13) defined the apostolic tradition of their day. It was vastly different than what Catholics and Orthodox are advocating in our day.

Often, it seems that those who suggest that there's a narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura have certain assumptions in mind that they haven't articulated or justified, assumptions their opponents don't accept. If the narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura depends on those assumptions, then framing the discussion around that narrower range of alternatives is only as good as those assumptions.

No, Extrabiblical Evidence Isn't Roman Catholic Or Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Reliance on extrabiblical evidence is often equated with dependence on the alleged traditions of a group like Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But it doesn't make sense to equate extrabiblical evidence with tradition as those groups define it in any relevant way.

For example, all of our Bibles are based on many manuscripts produced by unknown individuals. There's no reason to classify those manuscripts as part of the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or some equivalent in Orthodoxy. How we define the terminology used by the Bible, what we know about the surrounding historical context, and so forth are largely shaped by a variety of extrabiblical sources, including many archeological artifacts and documents that come from sources who didn't even claim to be Christian. Getting information from those sources isn't equivalent to depending on Catholic tradition, Orthodox tradition, etc. Even when we're assisted by one or more church fathers or what are commonly referred to as patristic documents, we aren't thereby relying on something like the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There's no reason to think the Didache, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, and other such sources were Catholic or Orthodox. Similarly, when a modern Catholic or Orthodox uses information found in Tacitus, an archeological artifact from an unknown Christian source, or a modern translation of a patristic document produced by a publisher outside his ecclesial affiliation, he isn't thereby violating his rule of faith, obligated to agree with the rule of faith of those sources, or any other such thing.

The Largeness, Complexity, And Difficulty Of Extrabiblical Tradition

It's often suggested that sola scriptura is too difficult to live out. How do you know which documents are canonical and which aren't? There are so many disagreements over Biblical interpretation. Many of our questions aren't answered, or aren't answered explicitly, by scripture. A lot of people throughout church history have been illiterate. How are they supposed to follow sola scriptura? And so on.

You can approach issues like those from a lot of angles, and we've responded to such objections many times (e.g., noting that Protestants aren't the only ones who have to make judgments about what's part of their rule of faith and what isn't, that Protestants aren't the only ones who disagree about how to interpret their rule of faith, that non-Protestant rules of faith also contain written sources that illiterate people wouldn't be able to read for themselves, that a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox layman relying on a local priest or bishop to tell him what to believe is relying on a source who's fallible by Catholic and Orthodox standards, that Catholic and Orthodox laymen are depending on translators and other fallible sources in the process of consulting their allegedly infallible authorities, etc.). One of the factors to take into account in these contexts is how large and complicated extrabiblical tradition is and how it's so often failed to bring about the sort of peace, unity, and easiness its advocates often suggest it will bring about. For example:

"The disagreements ran deep, and the disputes were often bitter and sometimes violent. From the beginning of the fourth century to the middle of the sixth century, more than 250 councils dealt with a wide range of topics." (Robert Wilken, The First Thousand Years [New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2012], 90)

And those councils often disagreed with each other.

We've provided many other examples along those lines, like here.

Are Gnostic and pagan documents part of Roman Catholic tradition?

In the mid 1990s, I met a man online named John Wallace who impressed upon me the value of hostile corroboration. He made good use of the corroboration of Christianity that we have from ancient non-Christian sources. I also read some material in Philip Schaff's church history that left an impression on me in that context. A series I wrote on the canon of scripture several years ago has a segment about hostile corroboration of the New Testament canon, and it concludes with a quote from the material in Schaff's church history I just referred to. Ever since I came across Wallace and Schaff's work, I've given a lot of attention to hostile corroboration as a line of evidence. You can find many traces of it in my work over the years.

I often think of that line of evidence when I see Catholics and Orthodox claim that Protestants are relying on Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox tradition when we accept our canon of scripture, interpret it in light of ancient sources, or some such thing. They act as though anything outside of scripture should be equated with Catholic or Orthodox tradition. I know that hostile corroboration has long been a large part of what shapes my views on matters like the canon of scripture and scripture interpretation. When Bible translators make judgments about how to render the Biblical text, Biblical commentators decide how to best interpret certain Biblical passages, and so forth, they rely partly on information they're getting from Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Trypho, Celsus, Porphyry, archeological artifacts, and other ancient non-Christian sources. And something like a New Testament manuscript or a catacomb inscription isn't always accompanied by an extensive statement of faith on the part of the individual(s) who produced the manuscript or inscription. Think of the absurdity of suggesting that everything from Josephus to Celsus to an ancient New Testament manuscript from a largely unknown source is equivalent to Roman Catholic Sacred Tradition.

But many Protestants are taken in by that sort of argumentation. And many Catholics and Orthodox think they're arguing well when they utilize such poor arguments. That's largely because we're such a secular, trivial culture that doesn't think and talk about issues like these nearly enough.

If a Catholic or Orthodox just wants to argue that part of what Protestants are relying on is Catholic or Orthodox tradition, then that qualifier should be added upfront rather than later in the discussion. And they should justify their claim about partial dependence on their tradition and explain why that partial dependence allegedly is problematic. A Protestant doesn't have to accept, and shouldn't accept, the assumption that all or even most of the church fathers or other early Christians were Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. And even if they had been Catholic or Orthodox, Catholics and Orthodox often depend on information they get from Protestant or other non-Catholic or non-Orthodox archeologists, historians, Bible translators, patristic scholars, etc. So what? All of us make our historical judgments, including judgments about matters like religion and morals, on the basis of testimony or other evidence from sources outside our church, denomination, or ecclesiastical movement. Again, so what?

Protestants Aren't The Only Ones With Solas

To add to what I said in my last post, it's important that Protestants keep in mind that we aren't the only ones with solas. We use the sola terminology more explicitly and more often than others, but we aren't the only ones who accept such concepts. Every rule of faith has parameters. It includes some things while excluding others. It doesn't have to be sola scriptura in order to be sola something. So, if a Catholic, Orthodox, or somebody else wants to complain that he doesn't understand how sola scriptura works in some context, you can ask him if he understands how his own sola works in that context. If he claims that Protestants are being inconsistent by doing X while affirming sola scriptura, ask him if he's being inconsistent by doing X while affirming his own sola. It's often adequate to say, "Scripture is to me what your rule of faith is to you."

It's remarkable how large of a percentage of objections to Protestantism consist of the sort of inconsistencies on the part of the objector that I've been addressing in these last two posts. Take away those inconsistencies, and you take away a large percentage of what many critics of Protestantism consider their best objections.

Ecclesiastical arbitration

The question of "arbitration," then, lies at the heart of the matter–its necessity, and also its nature–and the theologians of the magisterial Reformation found themselves having to defend their position on two fronts. On the one side, notable Roman Catholic scholars questioned "both the reliability of the received biblical text when compared to the Vulgate and also its perspicuity, arguing that without the church hierarchy's guidance the unbridled interpretation of these texts would only lead to heresy." The Church could provide this guidance not least because it possessed alongside Scripture (according  to the Council of Trent) oral traditions "concerning both faith and conduct, as either directly spoken by Christ or dictated by the Holy Spirit, which have been preserved in unbroken sequence in the Catholic church" I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 285.

What's striking about this historical description is how subsequent reversals in Catholic theology have rendered obsolete these planks of the Counter-Reformation polemic:

i) It's been a long time since Rome made the Vulgate the gold standard of comparison for the biblical text. Catholicism came around to our side on that issue. 

ii) While debates over perspicuity still rage in popular Catholic/Protestant apologetics, the Tridentine solution has been mothballed. The historical fiction of "oral traditions either directly spoken by Christ or dictated by the Holy Spirit, which have been preserved in unbroken sequence in the Catholic church" was abruptly replaced by Newman's theory of development. 

iii) It's true that in the wrong hands, sola scriptura can lead to heresy. However, it begs the question to make Catholicism the standard of orthodoxy. And sola scriptura can also correct the errors and heresies of Rome. So it cuts in several directions. 

On the other side, supporters of the Radical Reformation…argued strongly for a different arbiter, namely the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believing Christian…The Spirit-filled reader is the proper judge in the exegesis of Scripture. Ibid. 286. 

It's my impression that this has tricked down into the folk theology of many lay fundamentalists. It is used as an intellectual shortcut to sidestep scholarly exegesis. But a basic problem is that it fails to explain the diversity of interpretations. 

Tooting his own Horn

Catholic apologist Trent Horn has a running commentary on Mike Winger's critique of Catholic authority:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23hl_fkhiCQ&t=66s

Horn is one of the best younger-generation Catholic apologists, so he's a good foil. I'm going to selectively comment on Horn's responses. For several reasons I won't comment on everything Trent says. The arguments of Catholic apologists are repetitious. I've been over this ground many times before. I wrote a partial review of Horn's book (The Case for Catholicism). Winger sometimes frames issues in ways I don't. 

1. Like Catholic apologists and theologians generally, Horn commits the fallacy of casting the fundamental issue in terms of authority. But it just isn't possible, in principle or practice, always to begin with authority for what you believe, because the logic is regressive. Horn is a convert to Catholicism. Catholic authority wasn't and couldn't be the starting-point at that stage of the argument, because that is what needed to be established. Given Catholic authority, he can say this is my authority for what I believe, but that only pushes the question back step: by what authority does he believe in Catholic authority? If you always require some authority to justify what you believe, then the requirement extends backwards ad infinitum. It's self-refuting for Catholic apologists to insist that every interpretation of Scripture, or the case for the canon of Scripture, must be backed up by authority. That's a condition which the Catholic apologist will be unable to consistently meet. It's necessary that we be able to establish some positions independent of authority to make any progress at all. The warrant for these positions isn't authority but reason and evidence. Positions based on argument rather than authority. That can include an argument for authority, but you can't always fall back on authority and argue from authority, because what you take to be your authority is in itself a key issue in dispute. 

2. Apropos (1), he says the special divine guidance which Rome enjoys is negative rather than positive protection (53-54 min.). God doesn't inform the Magisterium to interpret the whole Bible but to shield it from disastrous misinterpretations. In his response to Winger, Horn frequently corrects what he takes to be Winger's misinterpretations or invalid inferences from Scripture. But by his own admission, Horn has no authority for his own interpretations. His alternative interpretations of Winger's prooftexts aren't superior because they are authoritative interpretations. Rather, Horn appeals to the wording of the text, and the context–as he understands it. In addition, he accuses Winger of inconsistency. So most of this debate falls outside the framework of authority. 

As such, it's confused for Horn to accuse Winger of making himself his own authority when he interprets the Bible. That accusation backfires. Protestants aren't guilty of doing the same thing they accuse Rome of doing. If you're going to act like every time a reader interprets the Bible, he is making himself an authority, then that will sabotage any attempt by the Catholic apologist to correct a perceived misinterpretation or make his own case for Catholicism. Interpretation is not inherently an exercise of authority, and authority isn't necessary to validate the interpretation.

3. Apropos (2), the demand for authority is bound up with the demand for certainty. But even if that's ideal, it's unobtainable by falling back on authority all the time, since that reflex just relocates the same demand: what makes you certain of your authority source?  So the whole strategy is self-stultifying. That doesn't mean certainty is necessarily unattainable, but not by acting like you must invariably start with authority. 

4. "historical pedigree in connection with apostles"

That's a Catholic criterion. It's understandable that a Catholic apologist will appeal to a Catholic criterion, but it begs the question when debating Protestants inasmuch as we operate with a different theological paradigm. We don't need to have historical pedigree in connection with the apostles. Historical pedigree is irrelevant. We just need to be faithful to apostolic teaching. 

In fairness, I'm not suggesting a Catholic apologist shoulders the sole burden of proof. It begs the question if a Protestant simply asserts his alternative paradigm when debating Catholics. Both sides have a burden of proof. It's incumbent on both sides to argue for their respective positions. 

4. "When did sola scriptura come into effect? Give me a date. The doctrine has never been in effect."

i) That's loaded question. A fallacious way to frame the issue because it runs afoul of the sorites paradox. It's unreasonable and unrealistic to demand dates for many historical developments. History is a continuum with transitional phases. 

Indeed, Horn's demand is self-destructive given the doctrine of development. Many of these doctrinal innovations evolved over time. They gradually went into effect. The process was incremental.

ii) Horn fails to appreciate the underlying principle of sola scriptura, which is the supremacy of divine revelation. Scripture is the mode or medium of divine revelation. During the era of public revelation, divine revelation had an oral as well as written mode, but that stage of redemptive history is behind us. 

In response to Winger, Horn raises stock objections to sola Scriptura which, among other places, I recently addressed:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/01/oral-and-memorial-tradition.html

5. 2 Thes 2:15

Horn accuse Winger of construing this passage too narrowly:

i) To begin with, if you're going to use this as a prooftext, then you ought to restrict yourself to what Paul actually says. Now, what he says here may be consistent with other things he doesn't say. But you can't use it to prooftext things he doesn't say. 

ii) It's possible to derive more general principle from what Paul says, but that will have to operate at the same level. If you sat under the feet of St. John, the same principle would apply. You can't expand what Paul says to a different principle. 

iii) Paul isn't appealing to apostolic tradition, in the customary sense of tradition. The concept of tradition connotes a chain of transmission with links in the chain. But that's not what Paul is describing. He's explicitly referring to direct oral teaching, from Paul to his immediate audience. There are no intervening links. Not what Paul taught a second person who passed it along to a third person who passed it along to a fourth person. That's not what Paul has in view. Rather, hold fast to what Paul taught you in person. Face-to-face transmission from an apostle to a Christian. The principle is restricted to Christians with firsthand knowledge of Paul's oral teaching. 

iv) That doesn't necessarily invalidate a chain of custody. Some historical traditions are reliable. But 2 Thes 2:15 isn't making that claim. 

6. Mt 18:15-18

Where does the Bible say that the church is just all the people who love Jesus? That is the church in one sense, but when you read through Scripture it is very clear that the church has an authoritative hierarchy composed of a three-tiered system of deacons, presbyters–from which we get the word priests–and bishops, the overseers, the episcopate. So when you look for example in Mt 18:15-18…then he says to the apostles whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Bring it to the church, not to your church, because it's not like oh okay well if that church disagrees with me and condemns me I'm going to join this other church over here. No, rather, when you look in the NT it's very clear that it talks about the church in Rome, the church in Antioch, the church in Jerusalem…It refers to the fact that there is one church and that church has to have authority, and you're going up the chain of authority–especially if you bring two or three with you, what does it mean to take it to the church? Do you just get every other Christian around and you're like a mob of thousands of people? No, you're going to something authoritative that has apostolic succession behind it in order to resolve the dispute. That's the highest level for you to do to (27-29 min).

1. It's a semantic fallacy to suggest that because the word priest derives from presbyter, therefore 1C church presbyters were priests in the sacerdotal sense. In Catholicism, it acquires a technical sense according to Catholic ecclesiology. But it's anachronistic to read that back into NT polity and usage. 

2. He assumes that "bishop" and "presbyter" are separate church offices, with the episcopate as the higher office. Which disregards the arguments of Bible scholars that NT usage is fluid and interchangeable. These are variant designations for the same church office. NT polity hadn't hardened into the more specialized usage and hierarchical structure of Roman Catholic eccesiology.

3. Horn acts as though Mt 18:15-18 envisions an appellate process like the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. But in context the setting is a local church, and a judgment of excommunication is rendered by the congregation, not higher clergy in particular. 

Papal silly putty

Having reversed church policy on the admission of adulterous Catholics to communion, Francis is now making moves to reverse church policy on capital punishment. This has been in the pipeline for some time now. Main difference is that he apparently intends to formalize the reversal.

For some background on the lead-up to current developments:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/04/catholicism-amp-capital-punishment

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/05/gods-justice-and-ours

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/10/antonin-scalia-and-his-critics-the-church-the-courts-and-the-death-penalty

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2016/09/had-an-interesting-conversation-with-robert-p-george.html

Catholic philosopher and convert to Catholicism Ed Feser, who has a big following on the Internet, published a defends of the traditional Catholic position on capital punishment just in time to have Pope Francis pull the rug right out from under him. One wonders if there's a breaking-point for some of these disgruntled, high-profile converts to Rome.

The controversy is useful for documenting how the magisterium is a blueprint for anarchy, as well as how Catholic "tradition" has become silly putty in the hands of the magisterium:

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/10/21/on-capital-punishment-even-the-popes-defenders-are-confused/

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/10/mcclamrock-on-by-man-shall-his-blood-be.html

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/10/30/catholic-theologians-must-set-an-example-of-intellectual-honesty-a-reply-to-prof-robert-fastiggi/

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/11/two-further-ideas-about-development-of.html

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/11/reply-to-brugger-and-tollefsen.html

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/11/reply-to-fastiggi.html

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/11/reply-to-griffiths-and-hart.html

That's just a sample. The magisterium is a blueprint for anarchy. 

Why the “oral tradition” of the Apostles had to be written down

I’m continuing to address the question of why the “oral tradition” mentioned by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 had to be written down. This is used as a Roman Catholic proof text for its own version of “Tradition”. But there is a huge difference between what Paul is saying and the “Tradition” that Roman Catholic doctrine talks about.

Here is that verse:

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter

In previous articles, I’ve gone to some length describing how Jewish “oral tradition” worked (with reference to the the different kinds of Jewish oral tradition were (Mishnah, the Halakah, midrash, the Gemara, etc.), what Jesus thought about Jewish “oral tradition”, and the fact that the various forms of Jewish “oral tradition” was actually written down at some point.

The notion is that in the earliest church, there was a parallel situation. For example, there was not simply “oral tradition”; this was comprised in part of “apostolic tradition” and, for the sake of simplicity, “non-apostolic traditions” or if you prefer, “ecclesiastical", or “church-originated” traditions.

Oscar Cullmann is very careful to articulate this difference In his work “The Tradition: The Exegetical, Historical and Theological Problem” in “The Early Church”, London: UK, SCM Publishing, 1958.

Against the Pious Cant of Appealing to Tradition

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/against-the-pious-cant-of-appealing-to-tradition-in-deciding-trinitarian-controversies/

Picking and choosing our piety

I'm going to comment on two critics of the church calendar, beginning with Carl Truman:

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/ash-wednesday.php

What perplexes me is the need for people from these other groups to observe Ash Wednesday and Lent. My commitment to Christian liberty means that I certainly would not regard it as sinful in itself for them to do so; but that same commitment also means that I object most strongly to anybody trying to argue that it should be a normative practice for Christians, to impose it on their congregations, or to claim that it confers benefits unavailable elsewhere. 

I agree with him that there's nothing normative about the church calendar. 

I also fear that it speaks of a certain carnality: The desire to do something which simply looks cool and which has a certain ostentatious spirituality about it. As an act of piety, it costs nothing yet implies a deep seriousness. In fact, far from revealing deep seriousness, in an evangelical context it simply exposes the superficiality, eclectic consumerism and underlying identity confusion of the movement.

In many cases, I'm sure that's true. 

The imposition of ashes is intended as a means of reminding us that we are dust and forms part of a liturgical moment when sins are 'shriven' or forgiven. In fact, a well-constructed worship service should do that anyway. Precisely the same thing can be conveyed by the reading of God's Word.

That's reductionistic. For instance, many miracles of Christ are enacted parables. In John's Gospel, for instance, miracles function as concrete illustrations of something Jesus said. A way to convey the same message twice in two different media: both by saying and by showing. 

Or take a cinematic adaptation of a novel. Trueman's objection is like saying the movie is superfluous: just read the novel. But because novels and movies are different media, even if both have the same plot, dialogue, characters, and setting, each has a distinctive benefit, if done executed

There's more to communication than propositions. There's nonverbal communication. The Mosaic cultus was a tableau of object lessons. 

An appropriately rich Reformed sacramentalism also renders Ash Wednesday irrelevant. Infant baptism emphasizes better than anything else outside of the preached Word the priority of God's grace and the helplessness of sinful humanity in the face of God.   

Which overlooks the fact that infants are oblivious to the theological significance of their baptism.  

It's that time of year again: the ancient tradition of Lent, kick-started by Ash Wednesday. It is also the time of year when us confessional types brace ourselves for the annual onslaught of a more recent tradition: that of evangelical pundits, with no affiliation to such branches of the church, writing articles extolling Lent's virtues to their own eclectic constituency. 

When Presbyterians and Baptists and free church evangelicals start attending Ash Wednesday services and observing Lent, one can only conclude that they have either been poorly instructed in the theology or the history of their own traditions, or that they have no theology and history. Or maybe they are simply exhibiting the attitude of the world around: They consume the bits and pieces which catch their attention in any tradition they find appealing, while eschewing the broader structure, demands and discipline which belonging to an historically rooted confessional community requires. 

American evangelicals are past masters at appropriating anything that catches their fancy in church history and claiming it as their own, from the ancient Fathers as the first emergents to the Old School men of Old Princeton as the precursors of the Young, Restless, and Reformed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer as modern American Evangelical. Yet if your own tradition lacks the historical, liturgical and theological depth for which you are looking, it may be time to join a church which can provide the same. 

Of course, that's part and parcel of Trueman's "Confessional Calvinist" schtick. What he fails to appreciate is that tradition is, itself, eclectic. Traditional theological packages are in some measure historical accidents. Take a Presbyterian package that includes Calvinism, covenant theology, infant baptism, amil/postmil eschatology, and presbyterian polity. Compare that to a Baptist package that includes Arminianism (plus eternal security), dispensationalism, credo baptism, premil eschatology, and congregational polity. But these are packages containing disparate elements. The elements comprising each package are logically independent of each other. You could disassemble each package, and recombine some elements from each into a third package. And the third package would be no more or less eclectic than the "traditional" packages. 

It isn't a choice between "picking and choosing" your piety or not picking and choosing your piety, but who does the picking and choosing. Trueman simply delegates the picking and choosing to his adopted theological ancestors. 

Now let's turn to Nick Batzig:

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2017/02/redemptive-history-union-with.php

As Roland Barnes notes: 

"The Liturgical Calendar can be spiritually stunting insofar as it asks believers to suspend their living in the light of the finished work of Christ as they march along from incarnation to resurrection and ascension throughout the calendar. The Reformed observance of the weekly sabbath and the regular practice of expository, Christocentric preaching emphasizes that we are now living in the full realization of the finished work of Christ. Each Lord's Day we celebrate the fact that 'He is Risen!' We live each Lord's Day in the light of the triumph of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus."2

To prove this point, I'll share a story. A number of years ago, I was rebuked by a strict proponent of the Liturgical Calendar for preaching a passage of Scripture on the birth narrative on the first Sunday of Advent. His response to hearing that I had done so was, "Not yet!"

That's a good example in which tradition becomes a straightjacket. 

Alongside this phenomenon lies the ever present willingness of many professedly Protestant churches to embrace, either in part or whole, the liturgical calendar for the structuring of their worship services. One can see the apparent appeal. After all, many have suggested that the Liturgical Calendar offers a recognition of the organic unity of Scripture centered on the redemptive-historical nature of Christ's saving work and participated in through the corporate worship of God's people. But is this actually the case? Does the Liturgical Calendar enhance or undermine the redemptive historical nature of Christ's saving work? 

Not surprisingly, many Anglicans--at one and the same time–acknowledge the lack of biblical support for a liturgical calendar while insisting upon a pragmatic adaptation of it. For instance, N.T. Wright suggests:

"There is nothing ultimately obligatory for a Christian about the keeping of holy days or seasons. Paul warns the Galatians against adopting the Jewish liturgical calendar (Gal. 4:10)...However, many churches have found that by following the liturgical year in the traditional way they have a solid framework within which to live the Gospels, the Scripture and the Christian life. The Bible offers itself to us as a great story, a sprawling and complex narrative, inviting us to come in and make it our own. The Gospels, the very heart of Scripture, likewise tell a story not merely to give us information about Jesus but in order to provide a narrative that we can inhabit, a story we must make our own. This is one way we can become the people God calls us to be."1

While adherents of the liturgical calendar frequently insist that it aids our experience of the redemptive historical nature of Christ's work, the opposite actually proves to be the case. When we subject ourselves to a temporal recapitulation of Jesus' life and labors--from incarnation to baptism to wilderness testing to death to resurrection to ascension and to Pentecost--we end up undermining the full, rich implications of the once-for-all nature of that saving work. We run the risk of bifurcating the work of Christ. 

Sorry, but I think that's silly. It's like saying you only need to read the Gospels once. After all, the earthly life of Christ is a thing of the past. That's over and done with. Never look back! Even more retrograde is reading the OT! 

If anything, I think it would be a good idea to expand the church calendar. Suppose we had a rotating, three-year church calendar based on the plots of Matthew, Luke, and John. Each week would track and highlight a significant incident in the life of Christ, in roughly chronological order. It's good for Christians to make the plot of each Gospel a part of their mental furniture. To have a mental outline of what Jesus said and did in each Gospel. By the same token, it might be good to include some highpoints of OT history. 

In doing so, we can also illegitimately make the Gospel something that we do rather than something done by Christ for us and received by faith alone. 

Maybe some high-church Christians are guilty of that, but I don't see that observing a church calendar in itself fosters that mentality. Rather, it's basically a pedagogical device to internalize the story of the Gospels. 

Let this be recorded

Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord (Ps 102:18).

This verse lays down a fundamental principle. As one scholar notes:

That God saved his people from exile needs to be written down to ensure that future generations will know of his saving acts and proclaim his name. 

Let…be written is to ensure its accuracy and permanence. This is for the benefit of the following generation. B. Waltke et al., The Psalms as Christian Lament (Eerdmans 2014), 232.

That's a sola Scriptura principle. To an ensure the accurate transmission God's words and deeds for the benefit of posterity, there needs to be a written record.

i) We remember events better than words. We remember the gist of what somebody said.

ii) Oral tradition is an inefficient means of mass communication. Word-of-mouth is provincial. Writing is a more efficient means of disseminating information in space and time.

iii) In oral tradition, moreover, you keep adding links to the chain of custody. Every time it's repeated (or paraphrased), that's one more step removed from the source.

As another scholar notes: 

Ezra-Nehemiah are a fulfillment of this declaration; they put into writing the story of the city's restoration. J. Goldingay, Psalms: 90-150 (Baker 2008), 157.

To verify prophetic fulfillment, it's useful to have a written record of the oracle in advance of the fact. That establishes the priority of the oracle, as well as the wording. And that's something which posterity can consult after the fact. 

Lay Catholic apologists are fond of quoting 2 Thes 2:15 to prooftext their appeal to oral tradition. But that's anachronistic. 

If I were a mid-1C Christian in a church which Paul planted, if I heard him preach, then I'd hold fast to what he taught me in person. That's very different from what Catholicism means by oral tradition. 

A Refresher on “Apostolic Succession”

Thomas Hobbes said “The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof”.

History has borne out this statement. The question of “authority” is at the heart of every discussion between Protestants and Roman Catholics since the time of the Reformation, and yet the Church of Rome (“Roman Catholicism”) bases all of its claims to authority upon “apostolic succession” … the notion that there was an unbroken succession of “successors” from the time of the Apostles till now.

Bryan Cross has said “The Church always had the concept of apostolic succession.”, but that is an equivocation of terms, and it is based upon another, older, different equivocation of terms.

For a long time, Roman Catholicism claimed a direct succession from Peter, through a line of popes. However, the study of history has turned that “direct succession” story into a puff of smoke. More recently, the doctrine suggests that “the Apostles were a ‘college’, and this ‘college’ had unnamed successors – but the real authority of the Apostles”. That, too, is bankrupt.

We actually have a speech from Paul, in his address to the elders in Acts 20, that describes what the earliest church understood “succession”. Does he say, as the CCC says, “the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time”?

There is not a hint of “continuous line of succession until the end of time” in Acts 20. Instead, what we have are admonitions to “pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock ...” This is an admonition that is set aside any time a Roman Catholic makes an appeal to suggest that Protestants are “Donatists”...

Paul continues “fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from your own selves [‘those of you “within”, who have positions of teaching’]” will arise men speaking twisted things.”

The “twisted things” are clearly shown over and over again among Roman Catholic doctrine and practice.

“The word of his grace” is able to “build you up” -- but this is not a guarantee of “a continuous line of succession until the end of time”. It is a warning to be diligent, for ministers to “work with their hands” ...

This shift of both concept and language from “pay careful attention to yourselves” to “continuous line of succession for all time” has its foundations in the Gnostic concept of “διαδοχἡ” (“succession”). That is not a biblical word, and Ratzinger equivocates by first equating the non-biblical “διαδοχἡ” with the biblical “παράδοσιν” (“paradosis” or “tradition”).

In truth, the concept of “διαδοχἡ” (“succession”) becomes swapped for “παράδοσεις” (“tradition”) in the Roman Catholic view – it is an unexplained and unexplainable (from extant sources) swap that merely duplicates the method that the Gnostics of the day were already using.

As Hans Von Campenhausen pointed out, “it is the Gnostic Ptolemaeus (who died prior to the time Irenaeus wrote) who provides the earliest evidence known to us of this new, theologically oriented usage. In the Letter to Flora he speaks explicitly of the secret and apostolic tradition (παράδοσεις) which supplements the canonical collection of Jesus’s words, and which by being handed on through a succession (διαδοχἡ) of teachers and instructors has now come to “us”, that is, to him or to his community. Here the concept of “tradition” is plainly used in a technical sense, as is shown particularly by the collocation with the corresponding concept of “succession”.

That is an illegitimate way to twist the language. The apostles gave no concept of “succession of persons” to the early church – especially not “a continuous line of succession until the end of time”.

But that illegitimate illusion is the focal point of the only explanation that Rome has for its own claims to authority today.

"Development of Doctrine" for the Roman Catholic: A blank check for a wax nose.

It seems to me that what Roman Catholicism has done over the years is to “synthesize” and to bring in unbiblical concepts, which it then understands to be “divine revelation”. That is why I’ve written recently about Aquinas being “the problem”.

Aquinas “synthesized” Aristotelian metaphysics, and in doing so, he did alter what was at the time “the Classical doctrine of God”, sacraments, etc. The challenge with understanding all of this is to understand (a) where the concepts came from, and (b) at what point did they become “doctrine” and hence, at what point, did Rome begin to consider them “divine revelation” -- or “tradition”, in other words.

In the Roman system, “tradition” is not the same as what the Eastern Orthodox mean by “tradition”. There is a whole elaborate set of explanations to say why these Roman accretions are “development” and how they continue to be part of “tradition” (or rather, “Tradition”, with a capital “T”), even though some of them are less than 50 years old.

Before Aquinas, the writing of someone like a pseudo-Dionysius existed, and some likely loosely held to them. Aquinas incorporated what we now clearly know to be a forgery into his “theology”, and his “theology” became ratified into dogma in large scale by the RCC.

Keep in mind, there is a difference between “doctrine” (or “dogma”) in Roman Catholicism and “theology”. Any “theology” can be (and is) easily dismissed by apologists, especially that which doesn’t suit their purpose du jour.

Dogmas then, for Rome, become “reformulated positively” -- essentially a blank check for a wax nose, all of which occurs under the rubric of “development”.

This is essentially why Rome, while having the claim to being “old”, really is the adopter of “every wind of doctrine” that has come down the pike. It keeps a couple of dusty old artifacts (such as “the papacy”), and all the rest is a whirlwind.

How Scripture and Tradition Became Conflated in the Middle Ages

The word “tradition” has been a wax nose throughout church history, used in various ways at various times, as described here: Four different kinds of “tradition”.

Today, Rome claims that “Scripture and Tradition” together form “one common source” of divine revelation, with “two distinct modes of transmission”. Its official teaching from the CCC states it this way: