Before I respond to some specific comments, I’ll make a general observation. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but some people habitually ignore the obvious.
God hasn’t seen fit to ensure that representatives of his church invariably teach the truth. Even if you inhabit the charmed cuckooland of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, those bodies, despite their affectations to sporadic infallibility in some official pronouncement or another, don’t claim to offer an infallible blueprint for everything the faithful are taught in church.
Take the millennium. To my knowledge, neither the Orthodox church nor the Catholic church has staked out an official position on the millennium (e.g. amil, premil, postmil). If a priest or bishop preaches a homily on some passage from the lectionary which implicates the millennium, then he will have to interpret the passage accordingly. And his interpretation will either be right or wrong. There is more than one available interpretation. And they can’t all be right.
Or take all the borderline cases in ethics. There is no infallible blueprint that gives the answer for every conceivable contingency. So if you go to your priest for advice, then there are times when he will give you bad advice. Just consider the different schools of casuistry in Roman Catholicism. And Orthodoxy would be confronted with the same issues.
So even if you’re Catholic or Orthodox, it’s still the case, on your own ecclesiology, that your priest or bishop teaches falsehood from time to time. They are not infallible. They make mistakes. They misinterpret Scripture–or tradition. Or, in many cases, there is not received answer to give you.
Error is part and parcel of living in a fallen world. But in every generation you have some perfectionists to presume to be more pious than God. They are scandalized by God’s administration of the world.
ACOLYTE4236 SAID:
“Do words have meaning?”
They have assigned meanings.
“Do they have a history?”
Yes. And by the same token, their meanings can evolve over time.
“And is there such a thing as original intent?”
See my post:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/12/where-is-meaning.html
“If it’s a term of art then the words pick out a certain meaning and so the words can’t be employed apart from that meaning in that text without ignorance.”
But ignorance is quite germane to what somebody mentally affirms when he recites a creed.
“Or a deliberate putting aside of the original intent.”
i) There’s nothing inherently wrong with setting aside original intent. While original intent is important to the historical meaning of a text, the original intent of an uninspired writer doesn’t obligate the reader. An uninspired writer doesn’t have that unilateral authority over the reader.
ii) If churches produce creeds, then churches can revise or redefine creeds.
This is not the Bible. The authority of a creed is, at best, derivative. It derives whatever authority it enjoys from its conformity to Scripture.
There is nothing sacrosanct about the original intent of a creed–not to mention of the ambiguities of original intent in reference to composite authorship.
Original intent is an important element in telling you what it meant at the time it was written. But how it functions in the life of the church centuries later may be different.
“Moreover, I don’t have to appeal to the Creed, I can appeal to plenty of Reformed Confessions.”
Fine. Of course, that’s shifting the discussion from the original point of reference (the Nicene Creed). I was discussing the public recitation of the filioque. In every church service I’ve ever attended in my far-flung experience, the Nicene creed is the vehicle by which the filioque is recited in public worship.
“Moreover, the ignorance of a reader isn’t relevant.”
It’s relevant to what the reader mentally affirms and thereby professes.
“Nor is whether a reader could reconstruct the doctrine from the words alone.”
It is in reference to the document I was discussing from the get go.
“So its reductionistic to take a documents’ usage of terms in the way its authors intended?”
For reasons I’ve given, that’s simplistic:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/12/where-is-meaning.html
And you’ve offered no counterargument. You merely huff and puff.
Actually, I’m little surprised that somebody with Perry’s level of education is so naïve about hermeneutics and philosophy of language.
“So the average church member is bound only by what he knows phrases stand for in Reformed Confessions?”
Properly speaking, Christians are obligated by Scripture alone. They are only bound by a creed insofar as that creed faithfully reproduces the teaching of Scripture.
“And is he unconsciously substituting one meaning for the other?”
What it means to him depends on his level of knowledge.
“And do you consciously substitute one for the other…”
I’ve already discussed my own practice. Why are you so chronically forgetful? Do you drink too much? Is that it? Do you suffer from blackouts? Does that account for your chronic inability to remember what I’ve said?
“Since you admit that the Reformed Confessions teach a doctrine not found in or derivable from Scripture alone?”
Which is not what I’ve said. That manages to combine a gross oversimplification of what I actually said along with your bait-and-switch.
“So are you suggesting that the intent of the framer of the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession fail to obligate the worshiper when they teach an eternal hypostatic generation?”
Framers don’t obligate readers. Only God has that prerogative.
“If your foremost obligation is to God, isn’t this all the more reason to protest false doctrines about God in your own church? And does your church expect you to abide by the teaching?”
My view of the church is not that proprietary or parochial.
“Did you object to it when you went through the procedures for membership?”
You’re making breeze assumptions without a foundation in fact.
“Are the Confessions a condition for ordination or membership?”
Not in terms of strict subscription. How can you say you used to be a Calvinist and not know these things? For how long were you a Calvinist? Two weeks?
“As for the rest, again, do you know or can you give any significant examples where the Reformed have permitted widespread difference on the Filioqueist construal of the Trinity?”
You have a forgetful habit of repeating questions I’ve already answered in the past. Why is that, Perry? Why do you have such a poor memory?
To take one example, compare Douglas Kelly’s position with Paul Helm’s.
“If you say that the Filioque isn’t justifiable in light of Sola Scriptura but you are able to dissent, then this just admits the internal inconsistency-the Reformed teach Sola Scriptura and doctrines which are not derivable from Scripture alone. So the point has been conceded.”
You’re trying to recast the issue. The fundamental issue isn’t lack of consistency with sola Scriptura, but lack of consistency with Scripture itself.
The issue is the degree to which any theological tradition is fully compliant with the teaching of Scripture, not the degree to which it’s fully compliant with the tenet of sola Scriptura.
For example, both Catholicism and Orthodoxy deny sola Scriptura, but their denial of that tenet, while culpable in its own right, hardly excuses their lack of conformity to Scripture itself.
It is wrong to be inconsistent with sola Scriptura, but it’s equally wrong to be consistent with a position which denies sola Scriptura. And it’s equally wrong to be inconsistent with Scripture itself.
A wrongful consistency is no better than a wrongful inconsistency. Indeed, it’s far worse. For a wrongful consistency is systematically false.
Even if the historic Reformed tradition shares an error in common with Catholicism and Orthodox on this particular issue (i.e. the Father as the fons deitas), they lack any of the compensatory benefits. In that case, it would be wrong on one of the same things they are wrong on without either of them being right on all the other things it got right.
“So if it functions like a contract, are people pen-ultimately bound by Confessions they profess adherence to when they teach the Filioque?”
There’s not much point answering a purely hypothetical question unless you think it corresponds to a typical, real life situation.
“And even if not, do you admit that the WCF and the LBC teach a doctrine concerning the very nature of God that is extra-biblical?”
I’d say that in this particular respect they default to an unscriptural paradigm which is common to both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
“The primary importance is if the Filioque doctrine as professed in the WCF and the LBC is derivable from Scripture alone or not.”
No, that’s not the issue of primary importance. Because you’re a man-pleaser who belongs to a theological tradition which deifies man-made traditions, you make internal consistency with one’s theological tradition the primary issue. But that’s symptomatic of your ecclesiolatrous orientation.
The primary issue is not whether a theological tradition is faithful to its own principles, but whether it’s faithful to the word of God.
Any theological tradition, regardless of its formal acceptance or rejection of sola scriptura is culpable in case one or more of its doctrines is inconsistent with Scripture. If a theological tradition rejects sola Scriptura, then that’s just one more strike against it. A theological tradition which is internally consistent with its repudiation of sola Scriptura is more culpable, not less so, than a theological tradition which rightly affirms sola Scriptura, but fails to consistently implement that rule of faith.
“Arian wording is scripturally justifiable too. Jesus is the “firstborn of creation” and the like. Does that imply it is acceptable? Obviously not.”
It’s unacceptable because it defines the phrase contrary to Pauline usage, and Pauline usage is normative since Pauline usage is inspired usage.
“Hence it fails to map the biblical teaching.”
True. And at that point the worshipper has both the right and the obligation to mentally affirm what the Bible teaches–regardless of creedal intent.
“Again, the target is the Reformed Confessions, so switching to the Nicene Creed is no help.”
I was alluding to the Nicene creed all along, so I didn’t suddenly switch to that frame of reference.
“The question is about what Reformed bodies teach, not whether the papally approved language inserted into the Nicene Creed is acceptable on its face. You’ve mistakenly substituted one question for the other.”
Actually, the real question concerns our obligation to cohere with the teaching of Scripture. That’s a question for Calvinists, and no less a question for Catholics or Orthodox.
“If the Reformed Confession is fallible and in error about the doctrine of God, don’t you think it should be reformed…”
Creeds should be updated, as necessary, to align or realign them with Scripture. That applies to fallible Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox creeds as well.
Or course, Catholic and Orthodox sources (e.g. Trent, Vatican II, 2nd Nicea, The Confession of Dositheus) may be so error-ridden that it’s better to start from scratch.
“Isn’t the question not what they currently think, but what the Confessions teach?”
To a great extent it’s a question of emphasis. The filioque is hardly central to Reformed identity. And that’s reflected in seminary education.
“The language is scriptural?”
Don’t play dumb. It’s an English translation of a Latin paraphrase of Johannine passages like Jn 14:26 & 15:26.
“And retaining the wording is tantamount to retention of the unscriptural doctrine…”
Not if the wording is a paraphrase of Scripture.
“So the answer to the question of whether the Reformed Confessions teach a doctrine which is justifiable from Scripture alone is person variable and context dependent? What amazing documents these must be!”
Are you trying to be dense? You posed a general question about whether the “wording is the issue or the meaning.”
That’s not a simple issue in hermeneutics and philosophy of language.
“You should agree that you should protest it.”
You keep using the word “protest” as if I should picket every church whose creedal standards codify some unscriptural position or another. But even if I had powers of bicolation, I’d be spread pretty thin.
“Perhaps not, but you are complicit by your silence aren’t you, concerning what your Confessions teaching, teaching false things about the nature of God?”
I didn’t know my stated positions on Triablogue amounted to silence. Was Triablogue converted to an invitation-only forum when I wasn’t looking? Did you crash the party? Should I summon the bouncers to have you removed?
Our site meter has 2,376,352 hits and counting the last time I checked. So my silence must be pretty penetrating despite the soundproofing.
“All the more reason then that it is relevant what the original intent of the authors of the WCF and the LBC…”
What is ultimately relevant is the divine intent committed to paper by the authors of Scripture.
We are obligated to affirm our belief in God by affirming God’s self-revelation. Affirming our faith in the framers is not our duty. At best, their role is purely instrumental. This is not a question of loyalty to the framers, but loyalty to God. That’s where are allegiance lies. The creed is not, “I believe in the framers” or “I believe in their original intent.”
The point is not to affirm or reaffirm their faith. The point, rather, is to affirm revealed theology.
“Do you mean to tell me that you couldn’t talk to your pastor and/or other church representatives to move them to remove it?”
At present I’m a Christian blogger. I blog on a wide range of issues. Readers can agree or disagree. What they do with it is between them and God. I’m not their priest.
“Has he done that for the Filioque? And if Waters or others have already argued publically against the Federal Vision do you refrain from arguing against it publically too?”
According to my records, I’ve been blogging on the filioque since 3/17/06.
“Sure not lying to God, just to fellow church members and church authorities.”
How?
“So since the WCF and the LBC are used in membership or ordination, then mutual understanding is necessary in the case of the Filioque?”
To my knowledge, someone doesn’t have to affirm the WCF to join the OPC or PCA. And, to my knowledge, strict subscription is not a requirement for ordination.
What is required is for the ordinand to state what disagreements, if any, he has with the WCF. It’s then up to the presbytery to determine if his deviation is permissible. And that, in turn, can be appealed to the general assembly. Or so I understand. I’m not a canon lawyer.
“How about adherence to a Confession faith? How do the corporate entities that subscribe to the WCF or the LBC for example use it? Oh to teach the Filioque.”
Why assume there’s a uniform answer to that question? This is an Orthodox obsession, not a Reformed obsession. It’s a defining feature of your own theological identity, as you define yourself in opposition to Roman Catholicism.
“Moreover, this would come as quite a surprise to major Reformed theologians-Turretin, Hodge, Warfield, Gill, Bavink, et al.”
I believe that Warfield rejected the eternal generation of the Son. And that would have logical implications for his position on hypostatic procession. Likewise, Warfield’s lead on eternal generation has been followed by some other Reformed theologians. Not to mention the filioque.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Where is meaning?
In a speech or text, what’s the carrier of meaning? Given Perry Robinson’s simpleminded grasp of meaning, we need to explicate the concept.
1.Authorial meaning
i) Intentional meaning
To some extent, meaning is embedded in the intent of the speaker or writer. Why did he intend to convey by his choice of words?
ii) Implicative meaning
A statement may carry implications which go beyond what the speaker consciously intended or considered. Indeed, an uninspired statement may carry implications which contradict the intentions of the speaker.
iii) In the case of an uninspired speech or text, I don’t think we should include implicative meaning in our definition of what it means.
2.Social meaning
i) A document may be the product of composite authorship. This raises the possibility that it means different things to different contributors. Even contradictory things. In that event, it has a social meaning rather than a singular meaning.
This can occur in creeds. For example, a document like Vatican II tries to finesse a compromise between rival factions in the Catholic church. As such, Vatican II may have conflicting senses which reflect conflicting intentions on the part of its competing contributors.
ii) In the case of an inspired speech or text, the intention of the instrumental speaker or writer instantiates the intention of the divine agent who inspired him.
2.Audiencial meaning
To some extent, meaning is also embedded the intent of the audience. This operates in at least three different ways:
i) An author normally expresses himself through a preexisting language. His choice of words (and syntax) is drawn from a pool of words which the linguistic community supplies.
Words have assigned meanings. Meanings formally or informally assigned by the linguistic community.
It’s possible for a writer to redefine a preexisting word, or coin a new word, but in general he accepts the conventional meaning of the words he uses.
ii) Authorial intention includes an intended audience. Unless he’s deceptive, an author writes to be understood. To that extent, what he means to say is bound up with what his words would or should mean to his audience. He writes with an expectation of what his word will be taken to mean, or should be taken to mean.
So authorial meaning is bound up with audiencial meaning. What he meant his words to mean to his target audience or implied reader.
iii) In addition, a text may be produced by and for a community. Take a law code. It serves a social function.
And the same community which produces the text also reserves the right to redefine its terms. If the sense of a word or phrase is culturally assigned, then it can be culturally reassigned.
Likewise, the same text can be deployed to serve a variety of different social functions. It exists by and for the community.
iv) On a related note, a speaker or writer may appropriate and adapt a statement by a previous speaker or writer to a new and different situation. For example, in Acts 17, Paul quotes two Greek philosophers. And Paul is putting them to a different use than they intended. He isn’t attempting to reproduce their viewpoint or make the same point they were trying to make.
v) In the case of inspiration, the inspired speech or text has autonomous authority. God gave it to and for the community of faith. In that situation, the community doesn’t have the authority to revise it or redefine it. For it is not, ultimately, a product of the community–although some individuals may be instrumental in its production (e.g. prophets).
vi) Apropos (v), in Protestant hermeneutics the relevant audiencial meaning is the intended audience. The historical audience to whom the scripture was originally directed. And that’s the reference point for subsequent Christian generations.
3.Contextual meaning
The context of a statement can affect the meaning of a statement. Suppose a church revises a creed. It may preserve some or most of the original wording, but it may also incorporate new wording which changes the meaning of the original statements in relation to the new wording. It creates a new context for an old statement, and thereby affects the meaning of the old statement.
4.Intertextual meaning
The meaning of a text by one author may be affected by its relation to the text of another author. For example, NT authors frequently interact with OT authors. How an OT text functions in the argument of Romans is not necessarily identical with how it functions in the argument of Isaiah. In that respect it takes on a new meaning in relation to Romans, not in the sense that Paul violates or replaces the original meaning, but only that it has a different role to play in Paul’s rhetorical strategy than it had in Isaiah’s rhetorical strategy.
5.Functional meaning
i) There can be a distinction between what a speaker understands and what he intends. Specifically, there’s a potential difference between what a speaker understands by his statement, and what he intends for his audience to understand by his statement.
For example, a father may tell his son to do something. The father may have an ulterior motive which he doesn’t disclose. He understands that his directive will benefit his son in ways his young son may not yet understand. In some cases, the son may be too young to understand. Or, in other cases, the son might resent the directive if he knew its ultimate purpose–even though it’s for his own good.
God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is a case in point.
In this respect, the meaning of the statement shades into the function of the statement. The purpose to which the speaker put it.
ii) This is also tied to authorial meaning inasmuch as speech or writing frequently has a performative as well as propositional aspect. Commands and warnings are both propositional and performative. They mean something. But they are also designed to motivate a certain type of behavior.
1.Authorial meaning
i) Intentional meaning
To some extent, meaning is embedded in the intent of the speaker or writer. Why did he intend to convey by his choice of words?
ii) Implicative meaning
A statement may carry implications which go beyond what the speaker consciously intended or considered. Indeed, an uninspired statement may carry implications which contradict the intentions of the speaker.
iii) In the case of an uninspired speech or text, I don’t think we should include implicative meaning in our definition of what it means.
2.Social meaning
i) A document may be the product of composite authorship. This raises the possibility that it means different things to different contributors. Even contradictory things. In that event, it has a social meaning rather than a singular meaning.
This can occur in creeds. For example, a document like Vatican II tries to finesse a compromise between rival factions in the Catholic church. As such, Vatican II may have conflicting senses which reflect conflicting intentions on the part of its competing contributors.
ii) In the case of an inspired speech or text, the intention of the instrumental speaker or writer instantiates the intention of the divine agent who inspired him.
2.Audiencial meaning
To some extent, meaning is also embedded the intent of the audience. This operates in at least three different ways:
i) An author normally expresses himself through a preexisting language. His choice of words (and syntax) is drawn from a pool of words which the linguistic community supplies.
Words have assigned meanings. Meanings formally or informally assigned by the linguistic community.
It’s possible for a writer to redefine a preexisting word, or coin a new word, but in general he accepts the conventional meaning of the words he uses.
ii) Authorial intention includes an intended audience. Unless he’s deceptive, an author writes to be understood. To that extent, what he means to say is bound up with what his words would or should mean to his audience. He writes with an expectation of what his word will be taken to mean, or should be taken to mean.
So authorial meaning is bound up with audiencial meaning. What he meant his words to mean to his target audience or implied reader.
iii) In addition, a text may be produced by and for a community. Take a law code. It serves a social function.
And the same community which produces the text also reserves the right to redefine its terms. If the sense of a word or phrase is culturally assigned, then it can be culturally reassigned.
Likewise, the same text can be deployed to serve a variety of different social functions. It exists by and for the community.
iv) On a related note, a speaker or writer may appropriate and adapt a statement by a previous speaker or writer to a new and different situation. For example, in Acts 17, Paul quotes two Greek philosophers. And Paul is putting them to a different use than they intended. He isn’t attempting to reproduce their viewpoint or make the same point they were trying to make.
v) In the case of inspiration, the inspired speech or text has autonomous authority. God gave it to and for the community of faith. In that situation, the community doesn’t have the authority to revise it or redefine it. For it is not, ultimately, a product of the community–although some individuals may be instrumental in its production (e.g. prophets).
vi) Apropos (v), in Protestant hermeneutics the relevant audiencial meaning is the intended audience. The historical audience to whom the scripture was originally directed. And that’s the reference point for subsequent Christian generations.
3.Contextual meaning
The context of a statement can affect the meaning of a statement. Suppose a church revises a creed. It may preserve some or most of the original wording, but it may also incorporate new wording which changes the meaning of the original statements in relation to the new wording. It creates a new context for an old statement, and thereby affects the meaning of the old statement.
4.Intertextual meaning
The meaning of a text by one author may be affected by its relation to the text of another author. For example, NT authors frequently interact with OT authors. How an OT text functions in the argument of Romans is not necessarily identical with how it functions in the argument of Isaiah. In that respect it takes on a new meaning in relation to Romans, not in the sense that Paul violates or replaces the original meaning, but only that it has a different role to play in Paul’s rhetorical strategy than it had in Isaiah’s rhetorical strategy.
5.Functional meaning
i) There can be a distinction between what a speaker understands and what he intends. Specifically, there’s a potential difference between what a speaker understands by his statement, and what he intends for his audience to understand by his statement.
For example, a father may tell his son to do something. The father may have an ulterior motive which he doesn’t disclose. He understands that his directive will benefit his son in ways his young son may not yet understand. In some cases, the son may be too young to understand. Or, in other cases, the son might resent the directive if he knew its ultimate purpose–even though it’s for his own good.
God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is a case in point.
In this respect, the meaning of the statement shades into the function of the statement. The purpose to which the speaker put it.
ii) This is also tied to authorial meaning inasmuch as speech or writing frequently has a performative as well as propositional aspect. Commands and warnings are both propositional and performative. They mean something. But they are also designed to motivate a certain type of behavior.
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son
The Eastern Orthodox are fixated on the heresy, as some view it, of double procession. That’s not because the Orthodox object to the principle of hypostatic procession. The difference, rather, is that the Eastern church traditionally affirms single procession whereas the Western church traditionally affirms double process. So both East and West operate with the same underlying principle or metaphysical model.
On the Eastern view, one person (the Father) is the source of two other persons (Son and Spirit).
On the Latin view, two persons (Father & Son) are the source of one other person (the Spirit).
There are further debates on whether the Father originates the nature or the person the Son and the Spirit.
In any case, both positions represent modifications of the same basic paradigm.
Eastern Orthodox theologians regard God the Father as the source of origin or mode of origin or even the cause of the Son and the Spirit.
Now, I myself don’t affirm double procession. But, by the same token, I don’t affirm single procession either.
Both positions share common flaws. Both get carried a way with metaphors. And both apply casual categories to the persons of the Godhead.
So the fact that I happen to agree with the Eastern Orthodox in my rejection of double procession doesn’t mean I agree with their alternative. To the contrary, I think both positions are equally mistaken. Both positions represent variants of the same flawed hermeneutic, underwritten by the same flawed metaphysics. Since I reject the underlying model, which both of them modify in different directions, I have no more use for the Orthodox theology than Latin theology at this juncture.
I think Calvin made a significant midcourse correction with his insight on the autotheistic character of the Trinitarian persons, and I agree with subsequent Reformed theologians like Warfield, Frame, and Helm who’ve been developing a more thoroughgoing formulation of Calvin’s corrective.
If that incurs the disapproval of Perry Robinson, then I guess I’ll have to devise a coping strategy to deal with my inconsolable grief.
On the Eastern view, one person (the Father) is the source of two other persons (Son and Spirit).
On the Latin view, two persons (Father & Son) are the source of one other person (the Spirit).
There are further debates on whether the Father originates the nature or the person the Son and the Spirit.
In any case, both positions represent modifications of the same basic paradigm.
Eastern Orthodox theologians regard God the Father as the source of origin or mode of origin or even the cause of the Son and the Spirit.
Now, I myself don’t affirm double procession. But, by the same token, I don’t affirm single procession either.
Both positions share common flaws. Both get carried a way with metaphors. And both apply casual categories to the persons of the Godhead.
So the fact that I happen to agree with the Eastern Orthodox in my rejection of double procession doesn’t mean I agree with their alternative. To the contrary, I think both positions are equally mistaken. Both positions represent variants of the same flawed hermeneutic, underwritten by the same flawed metaphysics. Since I reject the underlying model, which both of them modify in different directions, I have no more use for the Orthodox theology than Latin theology at this juncture.
I think Calvin made a significant midcourse correction with his insight on the autotheistic character of the Trinitarian persons, and I agree with subsequent Reformed theologians like Warfield, Frame, and Helm who’ve been developing a more thoroughgoing formulation of Calvin’s corrective.
If that incurs the disapproval of Perry Robinson, then I guess I’ll have to devise a coping strategy to deal with my inconsolable grief.
Monday, December 21, 2009
I believe
ACOLYTE4236 SAID:
“So you agree that John 15 doesn’t teach the Filioque, right?”
Agreed.
“You agree that the doctrine the creed teaches is not derived from John 15.”
i) Well, that’s more complicated. For one thing, the creed, like any writing, is just a set of words on a page. If there was no intelligent life in the universe, the creed wouldn’t mean a thing.
ii) On the face of it, the filioque wording says less than it means. It’s a term of art.
The filioque wording doesn’t teach the filioque doctrine. At best it’s a metonymy. If you didn’t know the history of doctrine which underlies that phraseology, you couldn’t reconstruct the doctrine from the wording alone.
So the text of the creed doesn’t teach the filioque doctrine. The doctrine is underdetermined by the text. The actual wording is neutral on the distinction between economic and hypostatic processing.
iii) Now, if we treat the creed as a vehicle to express the intent of the framer (or editor), then, in that ulterior sense, the creed teaches the filioque doctrine. But that’s rather reductionistic.
“Or are you claiming that John 15 teaches hypostatic generation?”
No, I’m not.
“So even though the clause teaches hypostatic origination and the Reformed confessions take it in that way, you are suggesting that one is not bound to it? So are you suggesting one can just substitute a meaning they prefer to the Reformation Confessions on the doctrine of the Trinity? So when as a church member professes and minister profess it in their confessions they aren’t agreeing to be bound by it?”
That series of questions overlooks a number of distinctions:
i) I doubt the average church member has much idea of what the filioque phrase historically stands for. As you know, the literature on this controversy is vast and multilingual. So I doubt he’s consciously substituting one meaning for another.
ii) The intent of the framer (or, in this case, anonymous redactor) doesn’t obligate the worshiper. To whom do you think we profess a creed? In public worship, God is the object. I’m affirming my faith in God and to God.
My first and foremost obligation is to God, not to the framer of the creed–or some anonymous redactor. The framer has no authority over me. My duty is to believe what God requires of me.
iii) If the creed were being used as a condition of church membership or ordination, then there would either need to be a mutually agreed upon meaning, or–barring that–any difference of opinion would have to be stated by the candidate for ordination or membership, leaving it to the discretion of the powers-that-be to decide if that falls within the acceptable parameters of dissent.
“And is the case of the Reformed Confessions teaching the Filioque like the one you suggest, where one is not bound by a previous usage? Is subscription to the Confessions like a contract?”
Depends on the setting. Depends on whether or not strict subscription to the creed is a condition of membership and/or ordination. In that case, it functions like a contract.
However, I don’t think strict subscription is generally a condition of ordination–much less church membership.
Presbyterianism (to take one example) has an appellate system, and it’s up to the session, presbytery, and ultimately the general assembly to determine how to interpret and enforce the doctrinal standards of that denomination. At least, that’s how I understand the process.
“And is the issue whether one is bound by that intent or whether the Confessions teach a doctrine which is not scripturally justifiable?”
i) The filioque wording is scripturally justifiable. Jn 15 uses filioque wording. So there’s nothing improper about creedal wording which reproduces or paraphrases scriptural wording.
ii) And since the filioque is meant to teach the same thing that Jn 15 teaches, there’s nothing wrong with affirming it in the Johannine sense.
“Doesn’t this concede that the doctrine intended by the Reformed confessions is not Scriptural?”
Traditionally speaking, that might be the case. Creeds are not infallible.
“I agree that the Creed and the Reformed Confessions are supposed to reflect Scriptural intent, but it seems you concede that they don’t as they have been taught and are *currently* professed.”
In terms of how the filioque is currently professed, I doubt there’s uniformity. You’d have to draw a rough-and-ready distinction between the clergy and the laity.
And even at the clerical level, a lot would depend on who their theology prof. happened to be. For example, Douglas Kelly emphasizes historical theology, and he defends the filioque. On the other hand, John Murray emphasized exegetical theology.
“If the Reformed Confessions that teach it and are a subservient norm, then why not protest and change it since you concede that it teaches an unscriptural doctrine about God?”
You asked that question before, and I’ve answered that question before. Indeed, I’ve given a detailed answer. Why should I repeat myself when you can’t be bothered to remember what I already told you?
“So if the non-scriptural doctrine is retained or not is of no consequence to you?”
Now you’re resorting to dissimulation. That didn’t take long.
Since, as I’ve said on several occasions now, the wording is scriptural, to retain the wording isn’t synonymous with retention of an unscriptural doctrine.
“And is the wording the issue or the meaning? If the latter then the discussion here of wording is not relevant, is it?”
There is no one issue since the answer is person-variable and context-dependent.
“So if it’s a nominal part, then remove it and protest Roman unscriptural doctrines in your Creed and Confessions.”
i) The wording itself is perfectly innocuous. So there’s nothing to protest.
ii) Moreover, no one is forcing me to profess something against my will. This isn’t like Archbishop Laud trying to impose the BCP on the Puritans–by force of law.
“Second, noting its source was irrelevant since this was already known and in fact a capitulation that it wasn’t derived from Scripture alone.”
The source is relevant to the individual who professes that article of the creed with the Scriptural source in mind. It’s quite relevant to his intent.
“So are you suggesting that there are other considerations upon which the doctrine can be justified other than Scripture alone?”
No.
“Then remove it at your local church.”
i) Not my responsibility. I’m not a church officer.
ii) In addition, whether or not a creed can be unilaterally revised depends on the polity the church.
“Why not argue publically that the doctrine can’t be justified by Scripture alone and should be removed?”
Grudem has already done that (in reference to the “Descensus ad Infernos”).
“So why do you recommend reinterpretation rather than a protest?”
“Reinterpret” what? The filioque or the “descensus ad infernos”?
i) Actually, Calvinists already reinterpret the latter.
ii) I myself don’t reinterpret the “descensus ad infernos.” I simply don’t recite it.
“You concede that the doctrine can’t be justified by Scripture alone so what you seem to be suggesting is that individuals privately reinterpret the Creed and cope with the situation rather than protest it as a non-scriptural doctrine about the Trinity.”
i) ”Coping” is a fairly hysterical way of putting it. This isn’t like recanting under torture.
ii) Strictly speaking, to say we “reinterpret” the creed assumes that the intention of the framer must be overridden, as if the wording has the interpretation built into it. But that’s not the case.
“This seems like you are advocating a kind of confessional equivocation and intentional duplicity.”
Once again, that oversimplifies the issue:
i) Intentions are inherently private. One worshiper can’t access to what another worshiper intends when both of them recite a creed. And a phrase like the filioque doesn’t specify their intent since the wording isn’t that specific to begin with. So it’s not as though the words affirm one thing while the mind affirms the contrary.
ii) Moreover, who is the audience? If one’s profession is directed at God, then it’s hardly duplicitous to mentally affirm economic procession. You have no intention of deceiving God, and you couldn’t do so even if you tried.
iii) If the creed were being used in a membership or ordination exam, then mutual understanding would be necessary.
“So people (ministers and lay) should profess adherence to the teaching that they know is not Scriptural, but privately reinterpret it? How is that not deceit?”
i) Professing a creed isn’t the same thing as professing the intention of the framer. The creed is simply a vehicle, which may be put to more than one use by more than one individual, or corporate entity. Both synchronically and diachronically, it can serve more than one purpose. Your conclusion is predicated on a false assumption.
ii) For one thing, creeds are normally the end-product of collaborate effort, with many different players, with varying agendas, while the final text is comes down to a majority (or plurality) vote. In addition, creeds can be revised (e.g. 1644; 1677; 1698 Baptist Confession).
Whether the document is the result of unitary authorship or composite authority complicates original intent. Oftentimes there is no simple or singular intent which underwrites the writing.
iii) Moreover, “privacy” doesn’t mean “concealment,” as if you mask your true intentions. It’s not as though I’m keeping my views of the filioque a secret. They’re available for the asking. Indeed, I’ve made them available for the asking.
iv) However, professing a creed in public worship isn’t like submitting to a one-on-one interrogation, where you’re grilled on your detailed understanding of, and agreement with, each provision.
“So again, do you agree that as contained in the Catholic Creed, as in the Reformed Confessions and as intended by said authors the doctrine is not exegetically derivable from Scripture alone?”
i) In my opinion, the filioque doctrine is not exegetically derivable from scripture alone (which is all that matters). However, the actual wording of the text doesn’t select for hypostatic procession. The wording is fairly generic.
ii) We also need to distinguish between the intent of the anonymous redactor who introduced the filioque into the creed, and subsequent refinements in the formulation by various theologians.
“So you agree that John 15 doesn’t teach the Filioque, right?”
Agreed.
“You agree that the doctrine the creed teaches is not derived from John 15.”
i) Well, that’s more complicated. For one thing, the creed, like any writing, is just a set of words on a page. If there was no intelligent life in the universe, the creed wouldn’t mean a thing.
ii) On the face of it, the filioque wording says less than it means. It’s a term of art.
The filioque wording doesn’t teach the filioque doctrine. At best it’s a metonymy. If you didn’t know the history of doctrine which underlies that phraseology, you couldn’t reconstruct the doctrine from the wording alone.
So the text of the creed doesn’t teach the filioque doctrine. The doctrine is underdetermined by the text. The actual wording is neutral on the distinction between economic and hypostatic processing.
iii) Now, if we treat the creed as a vehicle to express the intent of the framer (or editor), then, in that ulterior sense, the creed teaches the filioque doctrine. But that’s rather reductionistic.
“Or are you claiming that John 15 teaches hypostatic generation?”
No, I’m not.
“So even though the clause teaches hypostatic origination and the Reformed confessions take it in that way, you are suggesting that one is not bound to it? So are you suggesting one can just substitute a meaning they prefer to the Reformation Confessions on the doctrine of the Trinity? So when as a church member professes and minister profess it in their confessions they aren’t agreeing to be bound by it?”
That series of questions overlooks a number of distinctions:
i) I doubt the average church member has much idea of what the filioque phrase historically stands for. As you know, the literature on this controversy is vast and multilingual. So I doubt he’s consciously substituting one meaning for another.
ii) The intent of the framer (or, in this case, anonymous redactor) doesn’t obligate the worshiper. To whom do you think we profess a creed? In public worship, God is the object. I’m affirming my faith in God and to God.
My first and foremost obligation is to God, not to the framer of the creed–or some anonymous redactor. The framer has no authority over me. My duty is to believe what God requires of me.
iii) If the creed were being used as a condition of church membership or ordination, then there would either need to be a mutually agreed upon meaning, or–barring that–any difference of opinion would have to be stated by the candidate for ordination or membership, leaving it to the discretion of the powers-that-be to decide if that falls within the acceptable parameters of dissent.
“And is the case of the Reformed Confessions teaching the Filioque like the one you suggest, where one is not bound by a previous usage? Is subscription to the Confessions like a contract?”
Depends on the setting. Depends on whether or not strict subscription to the creed is a condition of membership and/or ordination. In that case, it functions like a contract.
However, I don’t think strict subscription is generally a condition of ordination–much less church membership.
Presbyterianism (to take one example) has an appellate system, and it’s up to the session, presbytery, and ultimately the general assembly to determine how to interpret and enforce the doctrinal standards of that denomination. At least, that’s how I understand the process.
“And is the issue whether one is bound by that intent or whether the Confessions teach a doctrine which is not scripturally justifiable?”
i) The filioque wording is scripturally justifiable. Jn 15 uses filioque wording. So there’s nothing improper about creedal wording which reproduces or paraphrases scriptural wording.
ii) And since the filioque is meant to teach the same thing that Jn 15 teaches, there’s nothing wrong with affirming it in the Johannine sense.
“Doesn’t this concede that the doctrine intended by the Reformed confessions is not Scriptural?”
Traditionally speaking, that might be the case. Creeds are not infallible.
“I agree that the Creed and the Reformed Confessions are supposed to reflect Scriptural intent, but it seems you concede that they don’t as they have been taught and are *currently* professed.”
In terms of how the filioque is currently professed, I doubt there’s uniformity. You’d have to draw a rough-and-ready distinction between the clergy and the laity.
And even at the clerical level, a lot would depend on who their theology prof. happened to be. For example, Douglas Kelly emphasizes historical theology, and he defends the filioque. On the other hand, John Murray emphasized exegetical theology.
“If the Reformed Confessions that teach it and are a subservient norm, then why not protest and change it since you concede that it teaches an unscriptural doctrine about God?”
You asked that question before, and I’ve answered that question before. Indeed, I’ve given a detailed answer. Why should I repeat myself when you can’t be bothered to remember what I already told you?
“So if the non-scriptural doctrine is retained or not is of no consequence to you?”
Now you’re resorting to dissimulation. That didn’t take long.
Since, as I’ve said on several occasions now, the wording is scriptural, to retain the wording isn’t synonymous with retention of an unscriptural doctrine.
“And is the wording the issue or the meaning? If the latter then the discussion here of wording is not relevant, is it?”
There is no one issue since the answer is person-variable and context-dependent.
“So if it’s a nominal part, then remove it and protest Roman unscriptural doctrines in your Creed and Confessions.”
i) The wording itself is perfectly innocuous. So there’s nothing to protest.
ii) Moreover, no one is forcing me to profess something against my will. This isn’t like Archbishop Laud trying to impose the BCP on the Puritans–by force of law.
“Second, noting its source was irrelevant since this was already known and in fact a capitulation that it wasn’t derived from Scripture alone.”
The source is relevant to the individual who professes that article of the creed with the Scriptural source in mind. It’s quite relevant to his intent.
“So are you suggesting that there are other considerations upon which the doctrine can be justified other than Scripture alone?”
No.
“Then remove it at your local church.”
i) Not my responsibility. I’m not a church officer.
ii) In addition, whether or not a creed can be unilaterally revised depends on the polity the church.
“Why not argue publically that the doctrine can’t be justified by Scripture alone and should be removed?”
Grudem has already done that (in reference to the “Descensus ad Infernos”).
“So why do you recommend reinterpretation rather than a protest?”
“Reinterpret” what? The filioque or the “descensus ad infernos”?
i) Actually, Calvinists already reinterpret the latter.
ii) I myself don’t reinterpret the “descensus ad infernos.” I simply don’t recite it.
“You concede that the doctrine can’t be justified by Scripture alone so what you seem to be suggesting is that individuals privately reinterpret the Creed and cope with the situation rather than protest it as a non-scriptural doctrine about the Trinity.”
i) ”Coping” is a fairly hysterical way of putting it. This isn’t like recanting under torture.
ii) Strictly speaking, to say we “reinterpret” the creed assumes that the intention of the framer must be overridden, as if the wording has the interpretation built into it. But that’s not the case.
“This seems like you are advocating a kind of confessional equivocation and intentional duplicity.”
Once again, that oversimplifies the issue:
i) Intentions are inherently private. One worshiper can’t access to what another worshiper intends when both of them recite a creed. And a phrase like the filioque doesn’t specify their intent since the wording isn’t that specific to begin with. So it’s not as though the words affirm one thing while the mind affirms the contrary.
ii) Moreover, who is the audience? If one’s profession is directed at God, then it’s hardly duplicitous to mentally affirm economic procession. You have no intention of deceiving God, and you couldn’t do so even if you tried.
iii) If the creed were being used in a membership or ordination exam, then mutual understanding would be necessary.
“So people (ministers and lay) should profess adherence to the teaching that they know is not Scriptural, but privately reinterpret it? How is that not deceit?”
i) Professing a creed isn’t the same thing as professing the intention of the framer. The creed is simply a vehicle, which may be put to more than one use by more than one individual, or corporate entity. Both synchronically and diachronically, it can serve more than one purpose. Your conclusion is predicated on a false assumption.
ii) For one thing, creeds are normally the end-product of collaborate effort, with many different players, with varying agendas, while the final text is comes down to a majority (or plurality) vote. In addition, creeds can be revised (e.g. 1644; 1677; 1698 Baptist Confession).
Whether the document is the result of unitary authorship or composite authority complicates original intent. Oftentimes there is no simple or singular intent which underwrites the writing.
iii) Moreover, “privacy” doesn’t mean “concealment,” as if you mask your true intentions. It’s not as though I’m keeping my views of the filioque a secret. They’re available for the asking. Indeed, I’ve made them available for the asking.
iv) However, professing a creed in public worship isn’t like submitting to a one-on-one interrogation, where you’re grilled on your detailed understanding of, and agreement with, each provision.
“So again, do you agree that as contained in the Catholic Creed, as in the Reformed Confessions and as intended by said authors the doctrine is not exegetically derivable from Scripture alone?”
i) In my opinion, the filioque doctrine is not exegetically derivable from scripture alone (which is all that matters). However, the actual wording of the text doesn’t select for hypostatic procession. The wording is fairly generic.
ii) We also need to distinguish between the intent of the anonymous redactor who introduced the filioque into the creed, and subsequent refinements in the formulation by various theologians.
Frozen leftovers
Perry Robinson Says:
“I’ve read what they have to say and will provide a response for you below. I have decided to stop interacting with Triablogue for a simple reason. I don’t take Steve Hays to be an honest interlocutor any longer.”
Actually, I’ve never mistook Perry for an honest interlocutor. He always trots out the same 3 or 4 objections to the Protestant rule of faith. Even though I’ve responded to his stale objections on multiple occasions, he simply repeats himself the next time around, without modification. Copy/paste objections.
Here is Perry’s apologetic methodology:
Freeze leftovers
Defrost/reheat leftovers
Freeze leftover leftovers
Defrost/reheat leftover leftovers
Repeat as necessary
“Steve will never admit when he’s in the wrong theologically even when he’s clearly pegged. Just go search for the post he did ‘Chicago Overcoat’ and look at the comments…Now if that isn’t the kind of gymnastics that will win the gold, I don’t know what will.”
When Perry can’t win the game on the field, he tries to win the game in the booth, with his tendentious characterization of how the argument allegedly went.
“There I gave him a test case for Sola Scriptura: The Filioque. Now Steve admits it can’t be justified by Scripture alone and yet he justifies it by an appeal to left over Catholic tradition or a half dozen of other excuses. If you read the exchange its obvious that Steve simply can’t bring himself to admit that his own confessions are inconsistent and teach false doctrine. All he had to say was something like, sure it is wrong and we should remove it. Its clear that he knows it can’t be justified by Sola Scriptura and yet he won’t protest it as an extra-biblical doctrine simply because its part of his own tradition. There’s no point to really dialoging with him any further.”
What a thoroughly incompetent summary of my stated position on the issue.
i) The Bible uses double processional language. The standard prooftext is Jn 15:26. Since the Bible itself uses that language, there’s nothing wrong with a creed which reproduces or paraphrases the same language.
ii) Beyond the linguistic question of Scriptural usage is the further question of what the language means, both in Scripture and in the creed. Does it have reference to eternal procession or economic procession? In John, it has reference to economic procession.
iii) What about the creed? To my knowledge, that was meant to denote the eternal procession of the Spirit.
iv) The next question is whether someone who recites the creed is bound by the original intent of whoever introduced that article into the creed.
I don’t see why. Why would the intention of the framer obligate the intention of the someone who reciting the creed? The creed is not a contract between two contracting parties, the force of which is contingent on mutual agreement. Whoever introduced that article into the creed doesn’t have the authority to make his intentions binding on a second party.
There’s no reason why someone who recites the filioque can’t mentally affirm the economic double procession of the Spirit rather than the eternal double procession of the Spirit. The former would be consistent with Scriptural usage and Scriptural intent alike. And, ultimately, that’s what the creed is supposed to reflect. The original intent of Scripture is authoritative in a way that uninspired creed are not and cannot be.
v) Whether we retain the filioque or remove the filioque is of no consequence to me. The mere wording of the filioque doesn’t teach false doctrine.
vi) I didn’t justify the filioque by appeal to Western tradition. How does Perry place such a totally inept construction on what I said? I merely pointed out that that’s how it became a nominal part of the Reformed tradition. Whether or not it can be justified is dependent on other considerations, which I discussed.
I don’t object to removing unscriptural articles from a creed, if there are any. I’ve cited the “Descensus ad Infernos” as a case in point.
vii) Perry also plays a double game. On the one hand, he accuses you of being a partisan traditionalist if you refuse to disown some aspect of your theological tradition. On the other hand, if you do disown some aspect of your theological tradition, then he discounts what you say on the grounds that, in that event, you’re not a real spokesman for the tradition in question. Perry has never been arguing in good faith. He’s just a demagogue.
“This is a question and not an argument. First the same solid evidence we have for the gospels being written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Ireneaus, Papias, etc.”
This assumes the only evidence we have for the traditional authorship of the Gospels is patristic testimony. An example of Perry’s self-reinforcing ignorance.
“Why is it that those aren’t ‘self serving legends’ too I wonder?”
Of course, that piggybacks on the ignorant claim he previously made.
“As for Constantinople, this was transferred from Ephesus.”
i) Of course, that’s in point blank contradiction to his original claim. He originally said the sees of the pentarchy were “founded directly by the apostles.”
By contrast, “transference” from Ephesus to Constantinople would be, at best, indirect rather than direct founding.
ii) So if he’s going to attenuate the principle from sees directly founded by the apostles to sees indirectly founded by the apostles, then restricting the principle of patriarchal ratification to these five sees is even more ad hoc.
Remember, it was already ad hoc when he appealed to sees directly founded by apostles, since the pentarchy hardly corresponds to those and only those sees–whether in Scripture or tradition.
iii) In addition, notice that he’s far more rhetorically confident in his statement to me than in his subsequent statement to another commenter. In responding to me, he makes the self-confident statement that “As for Constantinople, this was transferred from Ephesus.”
But when he replies to “John,” we get a far more tentative claim: “The apostolic lineage of Constantinople is obviously not from any direct founding. I can’t recall the sources at the moment but my understanding was that Ephesus was transferred to Constantinople. If so, we know that John and Paul play significant roles in founding the church there.”
iv) For that matter, what does it mean to “transfer” an apostolic foundation from one see to another? Do you remove the foundation from the church of Ephesus, transport it by oxcart to Constantinople, then slide it under the church of Constantinople?
v) If apostolic foundations are transferable, then why can’t other churches get in on the act? Perhaps the apostolic foundation was transferred from the church of Ephesus to First Baptist Church.
“Perhaps Steve doesn’t think that Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome and Ephesus weren’t founded by an Apostle. If so, then the NT is clearly wrong.”
i) Where does the NT say the church of Antioch was “directly founded by an apostle”? According to Acts 11, the church of Antioch wasn’t started by apostles. It was well under way when Paul finally arrived on the scene.
ii) And, of course, his remarks are an exercise in misdirection. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that 3 out of 5 or even 4 out of 5 were directly founded by apostles? That still falls short of the mark.
The whole point of a “pentarchy” is that it’s supposed to be a unit–a unit of five. It functions as a unit.
But if only 3 or 4 of the pentarchial churches were directly founded by apostles, then the pentarchy fails to meet the conditions of pentarchial membership which Perry stipulated at the outset (“directly founded by an apostle”). 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 does not a pentarchy make. A pentarchy can be no more or less than 5. And each of the 5 must meet the conditions of direct apostolic foundation that Perry himself insisted upon.
Remember, that’s the reason the pentarchy is special. That’s what sets it apart. Makes it more authoritative. So there’s no give on this issue. Not as Perry framed the terms of the debate.
“Perhaps Steve thinks we have no solid evidence for the Apostles founding any historical churches, but this seems to be the direction his line of reasoning would take him, which is absurd and borders on the kind of reasoning found in atheistical works like The Jesus Myth.”
Having lost the original argument on his own terms, Perry is reduced to diversionary tactics. The question at issue is not whether the apostles founded any historical churches. The question, rather, is whether Perry can make good on his own claims regarding the direct apostolic foundation of the pentarchial churches.
“As for Alexandria, this is founded by Mark, the disciple of Peter. Perhaps he doesn’t think Mark wrote that Gospel and didn’t get his material from Peter. I do. Perhaps he thinks the account of Mark going to Egypt entirely false or lacking historical value.”
i) Irrelevant. To make good on his pentarchial claims, Perry needs a perfect score: 5 out of 5. Nothing less will do. Even if Perry could make a good case for the church of Alexandria, that doesn’t salvage the case for Constantinople.
ii) And if, for the sake of argument, we say the church of Alexandria was founded by Mark, then to be founded by a disciple of an apostle would be indirect rather than direct apostolic founding. So by Perry’s own, backdoor admission, 2 of the 5 churches of the pentarchy fail to meet the condition of direct apostolic founding.
iii) Thus, Perry has given us a triarchy in lieu of a pentarchy. But if he attenuates the principle of patriarchal ratification to include sees indirectly founded by apostles, then the viable candidates certainly outnumber of the five sees of the pentarchy. Yet the reason to treat pentarchial ratification as uniquely authoritative was because the pentarchial sees were directly founded by apostles. Or so he said. Of course, Perry has a habit of going back on his word when he traps himself in a dilemma of his own making.
iv) Moreover, why did Perry appeal to the NT for Rome, Ephesus, Antioch, and Jerusalem, but switches to tradition for Alexandria?
“Again, this is a question and not an argument. I don’t deny other churches founded by Paul have apostolic succession, such as Thessaloniki and that they too have great weight. But following Ireneaus and others, the line of reasoning was that the apostolic deposit in those patriarchial churches was the most sure. Steve is free to reject Ireneaus and others in terms of historical data, but then it starts to look like special pleading.”
i) I’ll tell you what looks like special pleading: Perry tells us that pentarchial ratification is a necessary condition for a church council to be ecumenical. And the pentarchy has that authority by virtue of the fact that these particular sees were directly founded by apostles. When, however, I point out that other sees meet the same condition, in which case there’s nothing special about those five (even if all of them met that condition, which they don’t), then Perry’s appeal to pentarchial ratification falls apart.
ii) In addition, Perry doesn’t think the apostolic succession is “most sure” in all five cases. He clearly doesn’t regard Rome as a trustworthy conduit of the apostolic deposit.
“Let’s suppose that it is arbitrary. Does this imply that Steve would accept it if we widended it to sees like Thessaloniki? And Steve here simply makes an assertion that it is arbitrary. He provides no argument.”
Notice how miffed Perry gets when I answer him on his own grounds. But I’m simply holding him to the terms of his own argument.
Can Perry substitute different sees and shore up his core argument? If he can, let’s see his argument. If not, then his original argument doesn’t measure up to his own yardstick.
“And second, it doesn’t beg the question any more than appealing to the historical data of the NT is question begging when establishing the authority and inspiration of those texts.”
i) Of course, that’s not a counterargument. It doesn’t rebut the charge that his own appeal is question-begging. It’s just a tu quoque maneuver. But even if the tu quoque succeeded, that wouldn’t vindicate his own position. That could just as well demonstrate that both positions beg the question.
ii) And, yes, his position does beg the question. If the question at issue is authoritative criteria, by which you ratify a church council, and if you appeal to a church council (2nd Nicea) to authorize the authoritative criteria, then you’re reasoning in a vicious circle. 2nd Nicea would need to be authoritative to issue authoritative criteria (of ecumenicity). But unless you have independent criteria to establish the ecumenicity of 2nd Nicea, you can’t very well grant the authority of Nicea to authorize the criteria. So Perry’s argument generates a dilemma: he can’t get the criteria part from Nicea, but he can’t get Nicea apart from the criteria.
“2nd level induction comes to mind, but Steve for some reason thinks that kind of method is fine with the NT but it never occurs to him that the same kind of reasoning, which I have employed is available here.”
That’s too vague to merit a response.
“Once we’ve established things like Apostolic Succession by a historical and biblical route, then it isn’t question begging. I framed my point in terms of the context of Orthodox theology. If Steve doesn’t accept those presuppositions, that’s fine, but we already knew that we disagree over things like apostolic succession. So the real disagreement is factual, not logical, as I pointed out above.”
i) He’s rewriting the terms of the thread. Here is how he originally framed the issue:
“When I was first seriously considering becoming Orthodox, how the Orthodox understood church authority was an important area to map out. In discussing the matter with Catholics that I knew, they often objected that Orthodox ecclesiology falls prey to the same problems as Protestantism. There was no locus of authority in the offices of the church, but the source of normativity was ultimately to reside in the judgment of the people.”
So it wasn’t just a case of taking his Orthodox presuppositions for granted–since he wasn’t taking that for granted prior to his conversion to Orthodoxy. Rather, that’s one of the hurdles he had to overcome.
ii) And the question at issue is both logical and factual. What makes a church council ecumenical? According to Perry, a necessary condition is pentarchial ratification. And Perry grounds the special status of the pentarchy in the underlying claim that those 5 sees were directly founded by apostles. But if one or more fail to meet that condition–and even one is sufficient to scuttle his principle–then Perry’s argument is internally falsified. Likewise, if others sees, besides the pentarchy, meet that condition, then, once more, his argument is internally falsified.
“Once we’ve established things like Apostolic Succession by a historical and biblical route, then it isn’t question begging.”
Which he hasn’t begun to do.
“As for there being rival criteria, that by itself isn’t an argument. And I already noted that I reject receptionism and other Orthodox theologians who do and some of the reasons why.”
So Perry has no fallback position. He’s pinned his hopes on pentarchial ratification. If that principle falls through, he has nothing in reserve.
“I am not sure how mentioning the duration of time is pertinent, unless he thinks that divine gifts come with an expiration date.”
Well, he thinks the authority of Ephesus had an expiration date. That was “transferred” to Constantinople. Moreover, Perry seems think the passage of time can make a difference in other cases. In reponse to GS, he said, “In principle yes, but the situation now is different than in say the fourth century.” Furthermore, he clearly thinks the church of Rome lost her claim to apostolic succession long ago. So, yes, it does have a shelf-life.
“If Steve could for just a moment imagine how I am thinking of it, instead of how he wishes to argue, he would notice that this is within the context of apostolic succession. It isn’t too hard from there to see how it amounts to apostolic ratification since the episcopate is a continuance of the relevant portions of the apostolic ministry.”
Except that Perry thinks apostolic succession broke down in the case of Rome. rome didn’t preserve the deposit of faith. Same with the Oriental Orthodox.
So, even on his own grounds, he doesn’t think an apostolic foundation amounts to apostolic ratification centuries after the fact.
“As to whether I think that an institution can stray form it mandate in the case of purely humans ones, yes I think this can and does happen. But the church is a special case, even by Protestant lights. Perhaps not by Steve’s more baptistic Protestant lights, but that just shows how far outside the Protestant polis Steve is.”
Of course, that’s a bait-and-switch tactic. Perry isn’t appealing to “the church,” per se. Rather, he’s appealing to a few patriarchates. And he doesn’t think an apostolic see or patriarchate is indefectible. Take Rome.
“I didn’t aim to interact with Steve’s presuppositions about his Nestorianizing division between the earthly and the spiritual in ecclesiology.”
Whenever Perry senses that he’s losing the argument, he reaches for his dog-eared “Nestorian” trump card. Unfortunately, his trump card is a deuce of spades.
“As for institutions straying, would that be like practically all of the Protestant Confessions teaching non-biblical doctrines like the Filioque and yet failing to remove them or protestant against them when they know they are non-biblical? Physician, heal thyself.”
Straying institutions would also include the church of Rome, even though that was one of the pentarchial sees whose ratification is necessary to confer ecumenicity on a church council.
“Otherwise the falling away of this or that particular see or church isn’t a defeater for my view since my view doesn’t rest on the success of any one see. The fact that one could fall away though doesn’t count against my model.”
His model rests on a set of five specific sees–comprising the pentarchy. So where does that leave his argument? Where is the locus of authority if loci are unstable?
“Irenaeus gives us a rough and ready criteria for such cases when I have mentioned before and alluded to above.”
So he’s now appealing to one set of criteria to authorize another set of criteria. His original criterion (for ecumenicity) was pentarchial ratification. But now he’s invoking another set of criteria to ratify the pentarchy. Irenaean criteria are necessary to verify or falsify pentarchial criteria.
In that event, what authorizes the Irenaean criteria? Can Perry avoid a vicious regress or vicious circle?
“The distinction between metaphysical conditions and epistemological conditions is not a false dichotomy.”
i) I didn’t say the distinction was a false dichotomy. Rather, I said the distinction is useless unless and until Perry knows how to apply it.
What’s the point of the pentarchial ratification? Is the point to secretly make a council ecumenical? Or is that action also meant to lend public, official recognition to the council?
ii) Moreover, even on the order of being, pentarchial ratification can’t be a necessary condition if Perry’s criteria for membership in the pentarchy disenfranchises one or more of the five sees.
“Moreover, even if it were the case that I couldn’t fulfill the epistemic conditions finding out what the metaphysical conditions are isn’t useless…Perhaps there are moral values and we can’t know about them or perhaps its hard to know, but getting clear on what the conditions have to be for there to be such things is a good first step.”
i) The first step is useless unless he take it a step further–which Perry never does.
ii) Moreover, since Perry’s criterion is unstable, he can’t even take the first step. Perry’s very first step was a misstep.
“I am not clear on how exactly we get from Steve’s assertion of what I must do to a demonstration to what I must do. This is a bald assertion.”
I did more than assert. Rather, I pointed out the logical demands of his position. As I said: “Moreover, he needs to know that the council (2nd Nicea) which laid down these conditions is, itself, ecumenical. If he doesn’t know that, then he can’t invoke this council to authorize the conditions.”
Continuing with Perry:
“Second, this might be true if I thought that the normativity of those conditions had to be established by an ecumenical council. But I have already stated explicitly that I don’t think they do.”
After backpedaling from his original argument, where he appealed to 2nd Nicea.
“Hence Steve’s claim of vicious circularity falls flat. Imputing to me positions that I explicitly deny without demonstration is not a sign of a good dialog partner nor of good reading comprehension. It is a sign of prejudice.”
Perry staked out a position. After he couldn’t defend his original position, he retreated to a different position. He then tried to backdate his revised position as if that’s what he said all along.
BTW, I’ve never thought of Perry as a dialogue partner. He’s just a foil.
“We first need to get clear on what the conditions have to be met for a council to BE ecumenical or normative.”
He appealed to pentarchial ratification. That’s a bust. So even if that’s what we “first need to get clear on,” he got off to the wrong start, with no viable alternative.
“There are other conditions along this line that need to be discussed before we even get to epistemic concerns.”
A ratification process is epistemic as well as metaphysical. If the pentarchy ratifies a council, then that approval process is a public acknowledgement that this church council is an ecumenical council, ib distinction to other church councils which lack that sort of authority.
“There are other conditions along this line that need to be discussed before we even get to epistemic concerns.”
Perry is like a guilty child whose defense mechanism is to clam up lest he say anything incriminating. So Perry tries to comparmentalize the issues since he can’t take the next step.
“This kind of tu quo que is one Steve often uses so I am a bit shocked to find that he objects to it. At worst, Steve would be in the same position with the same problem. If the problem is a problem for me at worst, then it is a problem for him.”
Tu quoque won’t work for Perry since he set the bar higher for himself. Remember the point of his post? Catholics accuse the Orthodox of being in the same boat as the Protestants. Perry was trying to show why their accusation is mistaken.
However, a tu quoque response to me would simply concede the Catholic allegation. If Catholics accuse the Orthodox of being in the same boat as the benighted the Protestants, and Perry’s response to me is to say that Protestants are in the same boat he occupies, then that doesn’t refute the Catholic accusation. To the contrary, that corroborates the Catholic accusation.
“It is telling that he doesn’t show how exactly this isn’t a problem for Protestantism, which would be the appropriate refutation of the argument. Such a demonstration would show that only my position has the problem of circularity, not his, but he doesn’t do that. Why? Here I think I have shown that the objection therefore that he lodges against Orthodoxy is really a problem for his Protestantism. If this weren’t so, why didn’t Steve just show us how Protestantism escapes the problem?”
i) I don’t have to refute it on my own terms. If I can refute Perry on its own terms (as I’ve done), that’s more than sufficient.
ii) Moreover, I’ve defended the Protestant rule of faith on many occasions. I don’t need to repeat myself here. Perry welcomes a digression because he can’t defend his own position. He’d like me to buy him some time, to take the pressure off.
“This is true in so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go as far as Steve wishes to take it. If I specify the conditions for a council to be ecumenical and normative in a way that can bind the conscience, that all by itself is sufficient to show that it isn’t vulnerable to the same charge as Protestantism, especially in light of the fact that at worst on the epistemic front neither Catholics nor Protestants are in any better position.”
i) Perry is giving us an “iffy” IOU in lieu of cold hard cash. But he lacks the credit rating for me to accept his IOUs.
ii) And he needs to do more than merely specify a set of hypothetical conditions. He needs to show that his conditions are coherent and applicable. He also needs to avoid ad hoc caveats. And he needs to meet his own conditions.
“Let me repeat since he doesn’t seem to get the problem. If God lays down the conditions for knowing when God is speaking, how will having direct knowledge of rocks make this any less circular for a Protestant? Steve doesn’t tell us.”
i) Since Perry doesn’t seem to get the problem, let’s walk him through his own argument Perry first appealed to pentarchial ratification to field the Catholic objection about the locus of authority. When challenged, he then repaired to Irenaean criteria to verify (or falsify) pentarchial ratification.
So he’s falling back on nested criteria as if the only way to know something is through the application of suitable criteria. But that generates an infinite regress. Unless you can know something without having to apply nested criteria, then it’s turtles all the way down.
Perry is the one who framed the issue in terms of criteria. First pentarchial, then Irenaean.
ii) How does anyone know that God has spoken? How did Adam know that God was the speaker? Or Abraham? Or Isaiah? Or John the Revelator?
Did they start with nested criteria?
iii) Epistemic criteria can be very useful to verify or falsify a claim. But unless we enjoy some immediate (e.g. tacit, innate) knowledge, there is nothing to underwrite the criteria.
“Steve knows what he does by reference to and thru his worldview.”
i) That’s a serious overstatement. There’s a basic difference between reflective and prereflective knowledge. A 2-year-old enjoys a pretheoretical knowledge of many things. It’s not as though a 2-year-old can only know something to be the case by reference to and through his worldview.
ii) Moreover, if we knew whatever we do by exclusive reference to and through our worldview, then no unbeliever could ever come to a knowledge saving knowledge of God inasmuch as his godless worldview would the source or standard of whatever he knew or already believed.
To the contrary, Scripture ought to be the primary resource for forming, reforming, and informing our worldview. Of course, I realize that, from Perry’s perspective, the word of God is simply fish wrap for his sectarian traditions.
“How does Steve know that his worldview is true? By reference to his worldview in that no other worldview can fulfill the conditions that his worldview sets out to meet.”
Perry confuses knowledge with proof. Formal analysis can be a way of coming to know something, but it can also be a way of proving something you already know to be true prior to proving it.
A great scientist relies on physical intuition. Likewise, a mathematician may discern the answer long before he can prove it.
“So in that sense, there is no direct knowledge of things to have unless Steve wishes to start endorsing things like the myth of the ‘Given’.”
Irrelevant since Sellars was targeting radical empiricist theories of sensory perception–which is hardly the point at issue here.
“Of course, he is free to do so, but then Van Til, Bahnsen and the vast majority of Reformed Apologetics is hopelessly wrong.”
Even if sensory perception were the issue, Bahnsen, Van Til et al. don’t put forward any particular theory of sensory perception, so the objection is moot.
“I think it’s a pretty good argument that forces your opponent to abandon his apologetic strategy in order to make his objection to your view go through.”
Sorry to disappoint you, but that hasn’t caused me to abandon my strategy.
“My point was about normativity and not reliability.”
If he stated criteria are unreliable, then he can’t use them to access normativity.
“Second, reliability isn’t relevant to normative claims but peformative ones. What is normative isn’t constituted by reliability. Something normative isn’t so because more times than not it turns out to be obligatory and so it is obligatory because it turns out to be so more often than not. Steve here makes a category fallacy. Reliability is relevant to questions of performance, if something is operative or functional on most occasions and not whether I am obligated to do something on all relevant occasions since reliability allows for failure on all relevant occasions and normativity doesn’t.”
Did I say it was constitutive? No. So not the point.
Did I conflate reliability with obligation? No. So not the point.
Let’s remind Perry of his own argument. What constitutes an ecumenical council? Well, according to him, pentarchial ratification is a necessary condition.
But, in that event, pentarchial ratification also functions as an epistemic criterion to ascertain which councils are ecumenical. To the question, “Which councils are ecumenical?” Perry answers, “Those ratified by the pentarchy.” At least, he regards that as a partial answer.
But what if it turns out that pentarchial ratification is an unreliable criterion (for reasons I’ve given)? Then conciliar normativity isn’t available to Perry.
Did I introduce reliability because reliability is what makes something obligatory or normative? No.
But how would Perry be obligated by an ecumenical council if he were in no position to confirm the ecumenical status of the council in question? Is this a classified norm? What security rating to you need to find out which councils are ecumenical?
“I am obligated to perform certain acts even if I fail to do so on some occasions.”
Perry is so hopelessly confused. Was the question at issue whether or not something is obligatory or normative in case Perry is unreliable? No. Was the reliability (or not) of Perry’s performance the issue? No.
The issue isn’t whether Perry reliably applies the criteria, but whether he has reliable criteria to apply in the first place. Why is Perry unable to grasp that rudimentary distinction? There’s an elementary difference between applying reliable criteria unreliably, and applying unreliable criteria. Do we really need to explain that to Perry?
“Besides, normativity out paces reliability.”
And it also outpaces the subject of knowledge. Perry’s unknown, unknowable obligation.
“And reliability may not even be relevant to knowledge. This is why there was in part a shift from Reliabilism in epistemology to Virtue Epistemology.”
Of course, my objection wasn’t predicated on “Reliabilism” as a theory of knowledge. Rather, it was simply predicted on the reliability (or not) of Perry’s pentarchial criteria.
“It seems entirely wrong to me to attach reliability and it semantic riders of functionality and performance to prescriptive claims. X is moral or immoral and not on most relevant occasions but on all on pain of denying moral universalism.”
And how does Perry access prescriptive claims? Are the pronouncements of an ecumenical council prescriptive?
If so, how does Perry first determine which councils are ecumenical? By invoking the pentarchial criterion? But, for reasons given, that’s not a reliable criterion.
Perry keeps confusing the issue of knowing our duties with doing our duties. The question at issue is not whether we reliably perform our duties, but whether we have some reliable criterion to know where our duties lie. How long does one need to explain the obvious to Perry before the little light goes on in his noggin?
He’s the one who introduced pentarchial criteria into the discussion. So how is he duty-bound to submit to an ecumenical council if he can’t tell which councils are ecumenical and which are not?
Is pentarchial ratification a necessary condition? If so, what if that condition is unstable or incoherent?
“Moreover, reliability has to do with not criteria per se, but processes or procedures. So Steve needs to shift from criteria to processes, but that is not what I put forward. Perhaps then if we were to think of some of the criteria as procedures he’d have a point. But we’d need a demonstration of a case where all of the relevant procedures were followed but we got an obviously wrong outcome.”
It’s both. Pentarchial ratification is a process or procedure. But, according to Perry, it’s a normative process or procedure because the pentarchy enjoys special authority or jurisdiction when it comes to ratifying of an ecumenical council.
Perry isn’t appealing to just any old process or procedure. Rather, he’s appealing to the approval process of pentarchial ratification. Because the pentarchy is (or was) a locus of authority, it could authorize a church council. One locus of authority vouches for another locus of authority. The pentarchial locus of authority vouches for the authority of 2nd Nicea (or whatever).
“I don’t think Steve has done that and I don’t think he can find a non-question begging case.”
Actually, I’ve been using Perry’s example all along. The case of pentarchial ratification.
“To do so, Steve would need to set out all of the procedures and show that they were jointly insufficient, but I don’t think he knows what they are or where to find them.”
i) To begin with, I’m certainly not the one who needs to set out all the procedures which either make or demonstrate the ecumenicity of a church council ecumenical. I’m not the Orthodox apologist–Perry is.
ii) If pentarchial ratification is a necessary condition, and if this condition is fatally flawed (for reasons given), then multiplying additional conditions will not suffice to repair the pentarchial condition. You can’t have joint sufficiency if one or more of the necessary conditions feeding into joint sufficiency are fundamentally defective.
“Steve misunderstands what I wrote. Even if I were to grant that the issue fell under epistemology, it still wouldn’t be about reliability, but normativity. This isn’t hard to see if you read what I wrote with any degree of charity at all. At the least he should have asked for clarification rather than assume I am stupid enough to make an explicit contradiction in two lines.”
Having dealt himself a losing hand, Perry is having to make the best of a losing hand.
“This would be true I suppose for someone who either rejects its normativity or collapses ethical conditions into epistemic ones, but neither of those seem plausible routes either for a Christian or for someone with working knowledge of epistemology. It seems to me that a ‘plain reading’ of text indicates that the council settled the matter in a way that was binding on the consciences of all, present or not, dissenting or not (hence no right of private judgment). So it included things to be known but normativity out paces epistemology. I can know about the law without being a normative speaker of the law. The latter entails the former, but the former is clearly not the latter. If Acts 15 wasn’t about giving a normative answer then the sending out of Paul and Barnabas with letters authorizing them would be just plain stupid. Likewise so would the language of ‘we write’ v. 15 as well as joining their judgment with the Holy Spirit.”
Of course, that’s just a restatement of his tendentious, oft-stated, oft-refuted assumption that normativity is something over and above veracity. For him it’s somehow inadequate to say the council gave a true answer. For some odd reason, Perry doesn’t view truth as obligatory. How he gets that dichotomy out of a “plain reading” of Acts 15 he doesn’t bother to say.
“If this is so, then Steve’s claim of circularity needs to be accurately rendered. It wasn’t on the one hand he speaks of persons doing X and then of un-operative criteria doing something, the charge of circularity could only go through on that formulation if there I isomorphism between the two statements. There wasn’t. So again, Steve needs to reformulate it at best even if it were about epistemology. I didn’t think I should have to spell that out.”
I suppose I could leave a trail of breadcrumbs if Perry is so easily lost in the woods. I don’t think I should have to do that for someone at his point in the education process. But apparently I overestimated him.
“What was significant about 2nd Nicea is that it is a locus for this teaching that both accept.”
So is Perry now saying that acceptance by both East and West is inessential to his argument? But pentarchial ratification includes the Western church via the church of Rome. Does this mean Perry now treating pentarchial ratification as a purely ad hominem appeal which he only broached for the sake of argument when attempting to field Catholic objections?
But if pentarchial ratification is, in fact, expendable, then what constitutes an ecumenical council ecumenical, and how can its ecumenicity be discerned by the faithful?
“The idea is ratification by the episcopate which is why the question of its normativity rests on apostolic succession.”
Except that Perry is narrowing down the relevant unit or subset of the episcopate to the pentarchy in particular–which is arbitrary. That’s severely underdetermined by apostolic succession. And, of course, Perry had to fudge on what constitutes a “direct apostolic foundation.”
“Next to ask why would it artificially be limited to these five is poisoning the well as well as question begging, unless of course I said the limitation was artificial, which I didn’t. Steve needs to show that it is artificial and not simply assume it.”
It’s hardly question-begging when Perry was the one who made a “direct apostolic foundation” the differential factor.
Why does Perry find it so chronically hard to follow his own argument? Why is it necessary to take him by the hand and walk him through his own argument time and again?
“Notice how Steve has constructed a straw man. The original argument was not about how we know a council is ecumenical per se. Nor was the argument about the source of the normativity of those conditions for said councils.”
Sure it was. I’ve quoted him verbatim on those very contentions.
“Notice how Steve has created a straw man. I didn’t say that a council is ecumenical if it enjoys apostolic ratification via apostolic succession.”
Here is what Perry said:
“Now what I have not done is spell out in detail what conditions are necessary and sufficient for a council to be ecumenical and normative. That I am largely leaving for another post. But the answers to that question are not in the main that hard to discover and sort out…So an ecumenical council accepted by East and West teaches that what constitutes the ecumenical nature of the council is pentarchial ratification, rather than papal ratification,” followed by:
“The point of patriarchal ratification is that those sees have been founded directly by the apostles,” followed by:
“So the idea of apostolic ratification is part of the doctrine of apostolic succession in principle.”
Hence, his opening move was pentarchial ratification, which he treated as a special case of patriarchal ratification, which, in turn, he treated a special case of apostolic succession. That’s the constitutive factor.
“What I said was that the apostolic authority is in and comes through the episcopate which is then manifested when certain conditions are met. Those conditions include patriarchial ratification which is through pentarchial ratification.”
Follow the bouncing ball…as it circles back. Apostolic authority is mediate by the episcopate. That is subject to certain conditions, such as patriarchial ratification, which is mediated through pentarchial ratification.
But isn’t the pentarchy itself a subset of the episcopate? Seems like a rather incestuous accountability system, if you ask me. The episcopate polices itself through organs of the…episcopate!
“Nor does it seem to obviously fall into the Protestant doctrine of the right of private judgment, any more than the Acts 15 council did when the Apostles made a decision which was binding regardless of whether people dissented from it or not.”
Of all the clueless statements that Perry has made over the years–and the competition for that distinction is fierce–this statement may set a new standard of cluelessness. The Protestant right of private judgment never meant the private judgment of an individual trumps the judgment of Apostles (or other Bible writers). The point of private judgment is not to deny the binding authority of Scripture on the conscience of the individual, but to deny the binding authority of popes, bishops, and uninspired traditions on the conscience of the individual. How could Perry be so ignorant of what the doctrine means?
“Is the authority of the NT ‘self locating’ in the order of knowing?”
Why does Perry assume the negative?
“He tends to treat it as tactual succession, a mere physical lineage, but AS includes teaching among other things. If some claimant lost the right teaching, then the succession can be lost too.”
The problem with this rejoinder is that if right doctrine is the measure of apostolic succession, then apostolic succession can’t be the measure of right doctrine. In that event, tracing your lineage back to an apostolic see, even if that were successful, doesn’t guarantee, or even create a presumption of, salient continuity between the deposit of faith and later stages down the line.
Yet Perry’s appeal to the pentarchy was grounded in the claim that these five sees were directly founded by the apostles. If, however, that’s inadequate; if, instead, right teaching is the criterion, then how does Perry determine the ecumenicity of a church council? Does it turn on whether or not the council teaches true doctrine? But that won’t do.
i) For one thing, Perry doesn’t regard veracity as a sufficient condition of normativity. So even if a council taught truly, that wouldn’t make it ecumenical or normative in Perry’s eyes.
ii) Moreover, he could only assess the teaching of a council by reference to a source of right teaching which is independent of the council under review. But if he has access to extraconciliar right teaching, then conciliar teaching is, at best, superfluous.
“Consequently, not all claimants are equally plausible, which Steve assumes but never demonstrates.”
“Plausible” by what standard? Right teaching? That only pushes the question back a step. What’s his source and standard of right teaching? Not the episcopate, since he’d have to evaluate the teaching of the episcopate by…right teaching.
Apostolic authority? But isn’t that mediated by…the episcopate?
“But let’s suppose Steve is right, what follows? Does the truth of Protestantism follow?”
I don’t need to prove Protestantism to disprove Orthodoxy.
“If AS were true but insufficient it would sill falsify Protestantism.”
And if Protestantism were true but insufficient it would still falsify Orthodoxy.
What does Perry think he’s going to accomplish by tossing hypothetical defeaters into the ring–much less reversible defeaters, which we can easily toss back in his face?
“In the same way, Steve hasn’t shown that AS is false but only insufficient to select a particular tradition claiming it.”
i) The onus is not on me to prove apostolic succession. Rather, the onus lies on Perry to prove his own sectarian assumptions.
ii) Perry was the one who appealed to the selective power of pentarchial ratification. If that’s insufficient, then that’s a deficiency internal to his own position.
“But that is worthwhile all by itself. If AS is true, at best it only narrows down the choices by eliminating all of Protestantism a viable option.”
Iffy hypotheticals don’t narrow down the choices. Hypotheticals bake no bread.
“Perhaps there aren’t 33,000 Protestant denominations. Suppose its only say 3,000 or 300. Perhaps its limited to three traditions, the Lutherans, the Reformed and the Anabaptists. If I can eliminate all those three with AS, that seems like progress”
If you assume that only one institutional church is the one true church, then–like Perry–you to find some way to fix the lottery so that you have a decent chance at holding the ticket with the winning number.
But from an evangelical standpoint, there is more than one winning ticket. Many of the “33,000” denominations and independent churches instantiate the true church.
“Yes, within the context of Catholic/Orthodox theological discussion. Your objections are outside of that context, which required me to go beyond what these two traditions accept and give a sketch of the argument leading up to it.”
No, my objections were internal to the logic of Perry’s paradigm-case, as I’ve explicated in some detail.
“Nope.”
That’s an impressive counterargument.
“I don’t need Tertullian to be a church father to bear witness to Christian teaching…”
I’ll remember that when I quote Eusebius or Epiphanios on iconolatry.
“Steve also counts Tertullian as a heretic, so why would Steve’s use of Tertullian words against the Orthodox position in the past count for anything?”
If that’s an allusion to Tertullian’s Montanism, then I’d cut him some slack.. That betrayed a lapse of judgment on Tertullian's part. But I’d also make allowance for his early position in church history. He was a theological pioneer. Pioneers frequently make mistakes which subsequent theologians avoid. Those of us who come after them can learn from their experience. Unlike us, Tertullian didn’t have many before him to lean for guidance. He had to blaze his own trail. Given his historical circumstances, Tertullian was a champion of the faith. We should honor his memory and improve on his efforts.
By contrast, Perry can’t plead the same mitigating circumstances to excuse his own errors.
“I gave the reason why it was normative in terms of previous employment going back to Acts 15, Irenaeus, et al.”
Of course, he can’t very well cite Acts 15 to document apostolic succession.
“I’ve read what they have to say and will provide a response for you below. I have decided to stop interacting with Triablogue for a simple reason. I don’t take Steve Hays to be an honest interlocutor any longer.”
Actually, I’ve never mistook Perry for an honest interlocutor. He always trots out the same 3 or 4 objections to the Protestant rule of faith. Even though I’ve responded to his stale objections on multiple occasions, he simply repeats himself the next time around, without modification. Copy/paste objections.
Here is Perry’s apologetic methodology:
Freeze leftovers
Defrost/reheat leftovers
Freeze leftover leftovers
Defrost/reheat leftover leftovers
Repeat as necessary
“Steve will never admit when he’s in the wrong theologically even when he’s clearly pegged. Just go search for the post he did ‘Chicago Overcoat’ and look at the comments…Now if that isn’t the kind of gymnastics that will win the gold, I don’t know what will.”
When Perry can’t win the game on the field, he tries to win the game in the booth, with his tendentious characterization of how the argument allegedly went.
“There I gave him a test case for Sola Scriptura: The Filioque. Now Steve admits it can’t be justified by Scripture alone and yet he justifies it by an appeal to left over Catholic tradition or a half dozen of other excuses. If you read the exchange its obvious that Steve simply can’t bring himself to admit that his own confessions are inconsistent and teach false doctrine. All he had to say was something like, sure it is wrong and we should remove it. Its clear that he knows it can’t be justified by Sola Scriptura and yet he won’t protest it as an extra-biblical doctrine simply because its part of his own tradition. There’s no point to really dialoging with him any further.”
What a thoroughly incompetent summary of my stated position on the issue.
i) The Bible uses double processional language. The standard prooftext is Jn 15:26. Since the Bible itself uses that language, there’s nothing wrong with a creed which reproduces or paraphrases the same language.
ii) Beyond the linguistic question of Scriptural usage is the further question of what the language means, both in Scripture and in the creed. Does it have reference to eternal procession or economic procession? In John, it has reference to economic procession.
iii) What about the creed? To my knowledge, that was meant to denote the eternal procession of the Spirit.
iv) The next question is whether someone who recites the creed is bound by the original intent of whoever introduced that article into the creed.
I don’t see why. Why would the intention of the framer obligate the intention of the someone who reciting the creed? The creed is not a contract between two contracting parties, the force of which is contingent on mutual agreement. Whoever introduced that article into the creed doesn’t have the authority to make his intentions binding on a second party.
There’s no reason why someone who recites the filioque can’t mentally affirm the economic double procession of the Spirit rather than the eternal double procession of the Spirit. The former would be consistent with Scriptural usage and Scriptural intent alike. And, ultimately, that’s what the creed is supposed to reflect. The original intent of Scripture is authoritative in a way that uninspired creed are not and cannot be.
v) Whether we retain the filioque or remove the filioque is of no consequence to me. The mere wording of the filioque doesn’t teach false doctrine.
vi) I didn’t justify the filioque by appeal to Western tradition. How does Perry place such a totally inept construction on what I said? I merely pointed out that that’s how it became a nominal part of the Reformed tradition. Whether or not it can be justified is dependent on other considerations, which I discussed.
I don’t object to removing unscriptural articles from a creed, if there are any. I’ve cited the “Descensus ad Infernos” as a case in point.
vii) Perry also plays a double game. On the one hand, he accuses you of being a partisan traditionalist if you refuse to disown some aspect of your theological tradition. On the other hand, if you do disown some aspect of your theological tradition, then he discounts what you say on the grounds that, in that event, you’re not a real spokesman for the tradition in question. Perry has never been arguing in good faith. He’s just a demagogue.
“This is a question and not an argument. First the same solid evidence we have for the gospels being written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Ireneaus, Papias, etc.”
This assumes the only evidence we have for the traditional authorship of the Gospels is patristic testimony. An example of Perry’s self-reinforcing ignorance.
“Why is it that those aren’t ‘self serving legends’ too I wonder?”
Of course, that piggybacks on the ignorant claim he previously made.
“As for Constantinople, this was transferred from Ephesus.”
i) Of course, that’s in point blank contradiction to his original claim. He originally said the sees of the pentarchy were “founded directly by the apostles.”
By contrast, “transference” from Ephesus to Constantinople would be, at best, indirect rather than direct founding.
ii) So if he’s going to attenuate the principle from sees directly founded by the apostles to sees indirectly founded by the apostles, then restricting the principle of patriarchal ratification to these five sees is even more ad hoc.
Remember, it was already ad hoc when he appealed to sees directly founded by apostles, since the pentarchy hardly corresponds to those and only those sees–whether in Scripture or tradition.
iii) In addition, notice that he’s far more rhetorically confident in his statement to me than in his subsequent statement to another commenter. In responding to me, he makes the self-confident statement that “As for Constantinople, this was transferred from Ephesus.”
But when he replies to “John,” we get a far more tentative claim: “The apostolic lineage of Constantinople is obviously not from any direct founding. I can’t recall the sources at the moment but my understanding was that Ephesus was transferred to Constantinople. If so, we know that John and Paul play significant roles in founding the church there.”
iv) For that matter, what does it mean to “transfer” an apostolic foundation from one see to another? Do you remove the foundation from the church of Ephesus, transport it by oxcart to Constantinople, then slide it under the church of Constantinople?
v) If apostolic foundations are transferable, then why can’t other churches get in on the act? Perhaps the apostolic foundation was transferred from the church of Ephesus to First Baptist Church.
“Perhaps Steve doesn’t think that Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome and Ephesus weren’t founded by an Apostle. If so, then the NT is clearly wrong.”
i) Where does the NT say the church of Antioch was “directly founded by an apostle”? According to Acts 11, the church of Antioch wasn’t started by apostles. It was well under way when Paul finally arrived on the scene.
ii) And, of course, his remarks are an exercise in misdirection. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that 3 out of 5 or even 4 out of 5 were directly founded by apostles? That still falls short of the mark.
The whole point of a “pentarchy” is that it’s supposed to be a unit–a unit of five. It functions as a unit.
But if only 3 or 4 of the pentarchial churches were directly founded by apostles, then the pentarchy fails to meet the conditions of pentarchial membership which Perry stipulated at the outset (“directly founded by an apostle”). 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 does not a pentarchy make. A pentarchy can be no more or less than 5. And each of the 5 must meet the conditions of direct apostolic foundation that Perry himself insisted upon.
Remember, that’s the reason the pentarchy is special. That’s what sets it apart. Makes it more authoritative. So there’s no give on this issue. Not as Perry framed the terms of the debate.
“Perhaps Steve thinks we have no solid evidence for the Apostles founding any historical churches, but this seems to be the direction his line of reasoning would take him, which is absurd and borders on the kind of reasoning found in atheistical works like The Jesus Myth.”
Having lost the original argument on his own terms, Perry is reduced to diversionary tactics. The question at issue is not whether the apostles founded any historical churches. The question, rather, is whether Perry can make good on his own claims regarding the direct apostolic foundation of the pentarchial churches.
“As for Alexandria, this is founded by Mark, the disciple of Peter. Perhaps he doesn’t think Mark wrote that Gospel and didn’t get his material from Peter. I do. Perhaps he thinks the account of Mark going to Egypt entirely false or lacking historical value.”
i) Irrelevant. To make good on his pentarchial claims, Perry needs a perfect score: 5 out of 5. Nothing less will do. Even if Perry could make a good case for the church of Alexandria, that doesn’t salvage the case for Constantinople.
ii) And if, for the sake of argument, we say the church of Alexandria was founded by Mark, then to be founded by a disciple of an apostle would be indirect rather than direct apostolic founding. So by Perry’s own, backdoor admission, 2 of the 5 churches of the pentarchy fail to meet the condition of direct apostolic founding.
iii) Thus, Perry has given us a triarchy in lieu of a pentarchy. But if he attenuates the principle of patriarchal ratification to include sees indirectly founded by apostles, then the viable candidates certainly outnumber of the five sees of the pentarchy. Yet the reason to treat pentarchial ratification as uniquely authoritative was because the pentarchial sees were directly founded by apostles. Or so he said. Of course, Perry has a habit of going back on his word when he traps himself in a dilemma of his own making.
iv) Moreover, why did Perry appeal to the NT for Rome, Ephesus, Antioch, and Jerusalem, but switches to tradition for Alexandria?
“Again, this is a question and not an argument. I don’t deny other churches founded by Paul have apostolic succession, such as Thessaloniki and that they too have great weight. But following Ireneaus and others, the line of reasoning was that the apostolic deposit in those patriarchial churches was the most sure. Steve is free to reject Ireneaus and others in terms of historical data, but then it starts to look like special pleading.”
i) I’ll tell you what looks like special pleading: Perry tells us that pentarchial ratification is a necessary condition for a church council to be ecumenical. And the pentarchy has that authority by virtue of the fact that these particular sees were directly founded by apostles. When, however, I point out that other sees meet the same condition, in which case there’s nothing special about those five (even if all of them met that condition, which they don’t), then Perry’s appeal to pentarchial ratification falls apart.
ii) In addition, Perry doesn’t think the apostolic succession is “most sure” in all five cases. He clearly doesn’t regard Rome as a trustworthy conduit of the apostolic deposit.
“Let’s suppose that it is arbitrary. Does this imply that Steve would accept it if we widended it to sees like Thessaloniki? And Steve here simply makes an assertion that it is arbitrary. He provides no argument.”
Notice how miffed Perry gets when I answer him on his own grounds. But I’m simply holding him to the terms of his own argument.
Can Perry substitute different sees and shore up his core argument? If he can, let’s see his argument. If not, then his original argument doesn’t measure up to his own yardstick.
“And second, it doesn’t beg the question any more than appealing to the historical data of the NT is question begging when establishing the authority and inspiration of those texts.”
i) Of course, that’s not a counterargument. It doesn’t rebut the charge that his own appeal is question-begging. It’s just a tu quoque maneuver. But even if the tu quoque succeeded, that wouldn’t vindicate his own position. That could just as well demonstrate that both positions beg the question.
ii) And, yes, his position does beg the question. If the question at issue is authoritative criteria, by which you ratify a church council, and if you appeal to a church council (2nd Nicea) to authorize the authoritative criteria, then you’re reasoning in a vicious circle. 2nd Nicea would need to be authoritative to issue authoritative criteria (of ecumenicity). But unless you have independent criteria to establish the ecumenicity of 2nd Nicea, you can’t very well grant the authority of Nicea to authorize the criteria. So Perry’s argument generates a dilemma: he can’t get the criteria part from Nicea, but he can’t get Nicea apart from the criteria.
“2nd level induction comes to mind, but Steve for some reason thinks that kind of method is fine with the NT but it never occurs to him that the same kind of reasoning, which I have employed is available here.”
That’s too vague to merit a response.
“Once we’ve established things like Apostolic Succession by a historical and biblical route, then it isn’t question begging. I framed my point in terms of the context of Orthodox theology. If Steve doesn’t accept those presuppositions, that’s fine, but we already knew that we disagree over things like apostolic succession. So the real disagreement is factual, not logical, as I pointed out above.”
i) He’s rewriting the terms of the thread. Here is how he originally framed the issue:
“When I was first seriously considering becoming Orthodox, how the Orthodox understood church authority was an important area to map out. In discussing the matter with Catholics that I knew, they often objected that Orthodox ecclesiology falls prey to the same problems as Protestantism. There was no locus of authority in the offices of the church, but the source of normativity was ultimately to reside in the judgment of the people.”
So it wasn’t just a case of taking his Orthodox presuppositions for granted–since he wasn’t taking that for granted prior to his conversion to Orthodoxy. Rather, that’s one of the hurdles he had to overcome.
ii) And the question at issue is both logical and factual. What makes a church council ecumenical? According to Perry, a necessary condition is pentarchial ratification. And Perry grounds the special status of the pentarchy in the underlying claim that those 5 sees were directly founded by apostles. But if one or more fail to meet that condition–and even one is sufficient to scuttle his principle–then Perry’s argument is internally falsified. Likewise, if others sees, besides the pentarchy, meet that condition, then, once more, his argument is internally falsified.
“Once we’ve established things like Apostolic Succession by a historical and biblical route, then it isn’t question begging.”
Which he hasn’t begun to do.
“As for there being rival criteria, that by itself isn’t an argument. And I already noted that I reject receptionism and other Orthodox theologians who do and some of the reasons why.”
So Perry has no fallback position. He’s pinned his hopes on pentarchial ratification. If that principle falls through, he has nothing in reserve.
“I am not sure how mentioning the duration of time is pertinent, unless he thinks that divine gifts come with an expiration date.”
Well, he thinks the authority of Ephesus had an expiration date. That was “transferred” to Constantinople. Moreover, Perry seems think the passage of time can make a difference in other cases. In reponse to GS, he said, “In principle yes, but the situation now is different than in say the fourth century.” Furthermore, he clearly thinks the church of Rome lost her claim to apostolic succession long ago. So, yes, it does have a shelf-life.
“If Steve could for just a moment imagine how I am thinking of it, instead of how he wishes to argue, he would notice that this is within the context of apostolic succession. It isn’t too hard from there to see how it amounts to apostolic ratification since the episcopate is a continuance of the relevant portions of the apostolic ministry.”
Except that Perry thinks apostolic succession broke down in the case of Rome. rome didn’t preserve the deposit of faith. Same with the Oriental Orthodox.
So, even on his own grounds, he doesn’t think an apostolic foundation amounts to apostolic ratification centuries after the fact.
“As to whether I think that an institution can stray form it mandate in the case of purely humans ones, yes I think this can and does happen. But the church is a special case, even by Protestant lights. Perhaps not by Steve’s more baptistic Protestant lights, but that just shows how far outside the Protestant polis Steve is.”
Of course, that’s a bait-and-switch tactic. Perry isn’t appealing to “the church,” per se. Rather, he’s appealing to a few patriarchates. And he doesn’t think an apostolic see or patriarchate is indefectible. Take Rome.
“I didn’t aim to interact with Steve’s presuppositions about his Nestorianizing division between the earthly and the spiritual in ecclesiology.”
Whenever Perry senses that he’s losing the argument, he reaches for his dog-eared “Nestorian” trump card. Unfortunately, his trump card is a deuce of spades.
“As for institutions straying, would that be like practically all of the Protestant Confessions teaching non-biblical doctrines like the Filioque and yet failing to remove them or protestant against them when they know they are non-biblical? Physician, heal thyself.”
Straying institutions would also include the church of Rome, even though that was one of the pentarchial sees whose ratification is necessary to confer ecumenicity on a church council.
“Otherwise the falling away of this or that particular see or church isn’t a defeater for my view since my view doesn’t rest on the success of any one see. The fact that one could fall away though doesn’t count against my model.”
His model rests on a set of five specific sees–comprising the pentarchy. So where does that leave his argument? Where is the locus of authority if loci are unstable?
“Irenaeus gives us a rough and ready criteria for such cases when I have mentioned before and alluded to above.”
So he’s now appealing to one set of criteria to authorize another set of criteria. His original criterion (for ecumenicity) was pentarchial ratification. But now he’s invoking another set of criteria to ratify the pentarchy. Irenaean criteria are necessary to verify or falsify pentarchial criteria.
In that event, what authorizes the Irenaean criteria? Can Perry avoid a vicious regress or vicious circle?
“The distinction between metaphysical conditions and epistemological conditions is not a false dichotomy.”
i) I didn’t say the distinction was a false dichotomy. Rather, I said the distinction is useless unless and until Perry knows how to apply it.
What’s the point of the pentarchial ratification? Is the point to secretly make a council ecumenical? Or is that action also meant to lend public, official recognition to the council?
ii) Moreover, even on the order of being, pentarchial ratification can’t be a necessary condition if Perry’s criteria for membership in the pentarchy disenfranchises one or more of the five sees.
“Moreover, even if it were the case that I couldn’t fulfill the epistemic conditions finding out what the metaphysical conditions are isn’t useless…Perhaps there are moral values and we can’t know about them or perhaps its hard to know, but getting clear on what the conditions have to be for there to be such things is a good first step.”
i) The first step is useless unless he take it a step further–which Perry never does.
ii) Moreover, since Perry’s criterion is unstable, he can’t even take the first step. Perry’s very first step was a misstep.
“I am not clear on how exactly we get from Steve’s assertion of what I must do to a demonstration to what I must do. This is a bald assertion.”
I did more than assert. Rather, I pointed out the logical demands of his position. As I said: “Moreover, he needs to know that the council (2nd Nicea) which laid down these conditions is, itself, ecumenical. If he doesn’t know that, then he can’t invoke this council to authorize the conditions.”
Continuing with Perry:
“Second, this might be true if I thought that the normativity of those conditions had to be established by an ecumenical council. But I have already stated explicitly that I don’t think they do.”
After backpedaling from his original argument, where he appealed to 2nd Nicea.
“Hence Steve’s claim of vicious circularity falls flat. Imputing to me positions that I explicitly deny without demonstration is not a sign of a good dialog partner nor of good reading comprehension. It is a sign of prejudice.”
Perry staked out a position. After he couldn’t defend his original position, he retreated to a different position. He then tried to backdate his revised position as if that’s what he said all along.
BTW, I’ve never thought of Perry as a dialogue partner. He’s just a foil.
“We first need to get clear on what the conditions have to be met for a council to BE ecumenical or normative.”
He appealed to pentarchial ratification. That’s a bust. So even if that’s what we “first need to get clear on,” he got off to the wrong start, with no viable alternative.
“There are other conditions along this line that need to be discussed before we even get to epistemic concerns.”
A ratification process is epistemic as well as metaphysical. If the pentarchy ratifies a council, then that approval process is a public acknowledgement that this church council is an ecumenical council, ib distinction to other church councils which lack that sort of authority.
“There are other conditions along this line that need to be discussed before we even get to epistemic concerns.”
Perry is like a guilty child whose defense mechanism is to clam up lest he say anything incriminating. So Perry tries to comparmentalize the issues since he can’t take the next step.
“This kind of tu quo que is one Steve often uses so I am a bit shocked to find that he objects to it. At worst, Steve would be in the same position with the same problem. If the problem is a problem for me at worst, then it is a problem for him.”
Tu quoque won’t work for Perry since he set the bar higher for himself. Remember the point of his post? Catholics accuse the Orthodox of being in the same boat as the Protestants. Perry was trying to show why their accusation is mistaken.
However, a tu quoque response to me would simply concede the Catholic allegation. If Catholics accuse the Orthodox of being in the same boat as the benighted the Protestants, and Perry’s response to me is to say that Protestants are in the same boat he occupies, then that doesn’t refute the Catholic accusation. To the contrary, that corroborates the Catholic accusation.
“It is telling that he doesn’t show how exactly this isn’t a problem for Protestantism, which would be the appropriate refutation of the argument. Such a demonstration would show that only my position has the problem of circularity, not his, but he doesn’t do that. Why? Here I think I have shown that the objection therefore that he lodges against Orthodoxy is really a problem for his Protestantism. If this weren’t so, why didn’t Steve just show us how Protestantism escapes the problem?”
i) I don’t have to refute it on my own terms. If I can refute Perry on its own terms (as I’ve done), that’s more than sufficient.
ii) Moreover, I’ve defended the Protestant rule of faith on many occasions. I don’t need to repeat myself here. Perry welcomes a digression because he can’t defend his own position. He’d like me to buy him some time, to take the pressure off.
“This is true in so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go as far as Steve wishes to take it. If I specify the conditions for a council to be ecumenical and normative in a way that can bind the conscience, that all by itself is sufficient to show that it isn’t vulnerable to the same charge as Protestantism, especially in light of the fact that at worst on the epistemic front neither Catholics nor Protestants are in any better position.”
i) Perry is giving us an “iffy” IOU in lieu of cold hard cash. But he lacks the credit rating for me to accept his IOUs.
ii) And he needs to do more than merely specify a set of hypothetical conditions. He needs to show that his conditions are coherent and applicable. He also needs to avoid ad hoc caveats. And he needs to meet his own conditions.
“Let me repeat since he doesn’t seem to get the problem. If God lays down the conditions for knowing when God is speaking, how will having direct knowledge of rocks make this any less circular for a Protestant? Steve doesn’t tell us.”
i) Since Perry doesn’t seem to get the problem, let’s walk him through his own argument Perry first appealed to pentarchial ratification to field the Catholic objection about the locus of authority. When challenged, he then repaired to Irenaean criteria to verify (or falsify) pentarchial ratification.
So he’s falling back on nested criteria as if the only way to know something is through the application of suitable criteria. But that generates an infinite regress. Unless you can know something without having to apply nested criteria, then it’s turtles all the way down.
Perry is the one who framed the issue in terms of criteria. First pentarchial, then Irenaean.
ii) How does anyone know that God has spoken? How did Adam know that God was the speaker? Or Abraham? Or Isaiah? Or John the Revelator?
Did they start with nested criteria?
iii) Epistemic criteria can be very useful to verify or falsify a claim. But unless we enjoy some immediate (e.g. tacit, innate) knowledge, there is nothing to underwrite the criteria.
“Steve knows what he does by reference to and thru his worldview.”
i) That’s a serious overstatement. There’s a basic difference between reflective and prereflective knowledge. A 2-year-old enjoys a pretheoretical knowledge of many things. It’s not as though a 2-year-old can only know something to be the case by reference to and through his worldview.
ii) Moreover, if we knew whatever we do by exclusive reference to and through our worldview, then no unbeliever could ever come to a knowledge saving knowledge of God inasmuch as his godless worldview would the source or standard of whatever he knew or already believed.
To the contrary, Scripture ought to be the primary resource for forming, reforming, and informing our worldview. Of course, I realize that, from Perry’s perspective, the word of God is simply fish wrap for his sectarian traditions.
“How does Steve know that his worldview is true? By reference to his worldview in that no other worldview can fulfill the conditions that his worldview sets out to meet.”
Perry confuses knowledge with proof. Formal analysis can be a way of coming to know something, but it can also be a way of proving something you already know to be true prior to proving it.
A great scientist relies on physical intuition. Likewise, a mathematician may discern the answer long before he can prove it.
“So in that sense, there is no direct knowledge of things to have unless Steve wishes to start endorsing things like the myth of the ‘Given’.”
Irrelevant since Sellars was targeting radical empiricist theories of sensory perception–which is hardly the point at issue here.
“Of course, he is free to do so, but then Van Til, Bahnsen and the vast majority of Reformed Apologetics is hopelessly wrong.”
Even if sensory perception were the issue, Bahnsen, Van Til et al. don’t put forward any particular theory of sensory perception, so the objection is moot.
“I think it’s a pretty good argument that forces your opponent to abandon his apologetic strategy in order to make his objection to your view go through.”
Sorry to disappoint you, but that hasn’t caused me to abandon my strategy.
“My point was about normativity and not reliability.”
If he stated criteria are unreliable, then he can’t use them to access normativity.
“Second, reliability isn’t relevant to normative claims but peformative ones. What is normative isn’t constituted by reliability. Something normative isn’t so because more times than not it turns out to be obligatory and so it is obligatory because it turns out to be so more often than not. Steve here makes a category fallacy. Reliability is relevant to questions of performance, if something is operative or functional on most occasions and not whether I am obligated to do something on all relevant occasions since reliability allows for failure on all relevant occasions and normativity doesn’t.”
Did I say it was constitutive? No. So not the point.
Did I conflate reliability with obligation? No. So not the point.
Let’s remind Perry of his own argument. What constitutes an ecumenical council? Well, according to him, pentarchial ratification is a necessary condition.
But, in that event, pentarchial ratification also functions as an epistemic criterion to ascertain which councils are ecumenical. To the question, “Which councils are ecumenical?” Perry answers, “Those ratified by the pentarchy.” At least, he regards that as a partial answer.
But what if it turns out that pentarchial ratification is an unreliable criterion (for reasons I’ve given)? Then conciliar normativity isn’t available to Perry.
Did I introduce reliability because reliability is what makes something obligatory or normative? No.
But how would Perry be obligated by an ecumenical council if he were in no position to confirm the ecumenical status of the council in question? Is this a classified norm? What security rating to you need to find out which councils are ecumenical?
“I am obligated to perform certain acts even if I fail to do so on some occasions.”
Perry is so hopelessly confused. Was the question at issue whether or not something is obligatory or normative in case Perry is unreliable? No. Was the reliability (or not) of Perry’s performance the issue? No.
The issue isn’t whether Perry reliably applies the criteria, but whether he has reliable criteria to apply in the first place. Why is Perry unable to grasp that rudimentary distinction? There’s an elementary difference between applying reliable criteria unreliably, and applying unreliable criteria. Do we really need to explain that to Perry?
“Besides, normativity out paces reliability.”
And it also outpaces the subject of knowledge. Perry’s unknown, unknowable obligation.
“And reliability may not even be relevant to knowledge. This is why there was in part a shift from Reliabilism in epistemology to Virtue Epistemology.”
Of course, my objection wasn’t predicated on “Reliabilism” as a theory of knowledge. Rather, it was simply predicted on the reliability (or not) of Perry’s pentarchial criteria.
“It seems entirely wrong to me to attach reliability and it semantic riders of functionality and performance to prescriptive claims. X is moral or immoral and not on most relevant occasions but on all on pain of denying moral universalism.”
And how does Perry access prescriptive claims? Are the pronouncements of an ecumenical council prescriptive?
If so, how does Perry first determine which councils are ecumenical? By invoking the pentarchial criterion? But, for reasons given, that’s not a reliable criterion.
Perry keeps confusing the issue of knowing our duties with doing our duties. The question at issue is not whether we reliably perform our duties, but whether we have some reliable criterion to know where our duties lie. How long does one need to explain the obvious to Perry before the little light goes on in his noggin?
He’s the one who introduced pentarchial criteria into the discussion. So how is he duty-bound to submit to an ecumenical council if he can’t tell which councils are ecumenical and which are not?
Is pentarchial ratification a necessary condition? If so, what if that condition is unstable or incoherent?
“Moreover, reliability has to do with not criteria per se, but processes or procedures. So Steve needs to shift from criteria to processes, but that is not what I put forward. Perhaps then if we were to think of some of the criteria as procedures he’d have a point. But we’d need a demonstration of a case where all of the relevant procedures were followed but we got an obviously wrong outcome.”
It’s both. Pentarchial ratification is a process or procedure. But, according to Perry, it’s a normative process or procedure because the pentarchy enjoys special authority or jurisdiction when it comes to ratifying of an ecumenical council.
Perry isn’t appealing to just any old process or procedure. Rather, he’s appealing to the approval process of pentarchial ratification. Because the pentarchy is (or was) a locus of authority, it could authorize a church council. One locus of authority vouches for another locus of authority. The pentarchial locus of authority vouches for the authority of 2nd Nicea (or whatever).
“I don’t think Steve has done that and I don’t think he can find a non-question begging case.”
Actually, I’ve been using Perry’s example all along. The case of pentarchial ratification.
“To do so, Steve would need to set out all of the procedures and show that they were jointly insufficient, but I don’t think he knows what they are or where to find them.”
i) To begin with, I’m certainly not the one who needs to set out all the procedures which either make or demonstrate the ecumenicity of a church council ecumenical. I’m not the Orthodox apologist–Perry is.
ii) If pentarchial ratification is a necessary condition, and if this condition is fatally flawed (for reasons given), then multiplying additional conditions will not suffice to repair the pentarchial condition. You can’t have joint sufficiency if one or more of the necessary conditions feeding into joint sufficiency are fundamentally defective.
“Steve misunderstands what I wrote. Even if I were to grant that the issue fell under epistemology, it still wouldn’t be about reliability, but normativity. This isn’t hard to see if you read what I wrote with any degree of charity at all. At the least he should have asked for clarification rather than assume I am stupid enough to make an explicit contradiction in two lines.”
Having dealt himself a losing hand, Perry is having to make the best of a losing hand.
“This would be true I suppose for someone who either rejects its normativity or collapses ethical conditions into epistemic ones, but neither of those seem plausible routes either for a Christian or for someone with working knowledge of epistemology. It seems to me that a ‘plain reading’ of text indicates that the council settled the matter in a way that was binding on the consciences of all, present or not, dissenting or not (hence no right of private judgment). So it included things to be known but normativity out paces epistemology. I can know about the law without being a normative speaker of the law. The latter entails the former, but the former is clearly not the latter. If Acts 15 wasn’t about giving a normative answer then the sending out of Paul and Barnabas with letters authorizing them would be just plain stupid. Likewise so would the language of ‘we write’ v. 15 as well as joining their judgment with the Holy Spirit.”
Of course, that’s just a restatement of his tendentious, oft-stated, oft-refuted assumption that normativity is something over and above veracity. For him it’s somehow inadequate to say the council gave a true answer. For some odd reason, Perry doesn’t view truth as obligatory. How he gets that dichotomy out of a “plain reading” of Acts 15 he doesn’t bother to say.
“If this is so, then Steve’s claim of circularity needs to be accurately rendered. It wasn’t on the one hand he speaks of persons doing X and then of un-operative criteria doing something, the charge of circularity could only go through on that formulation if there I isomorphism between the two statements. There wasn’t. So again, Steve needs to reformulate it at best even if it were about epistemology. I didn’t think I should have to spell that out.”
I suppose I could leave a trail of breadcrumbs if Perry is so easily lost in the woods. I don’t think I should have to do that for someone at his point in the education process. But apparently I overestimated him.
“What was significant about 2nd Nicea is that it is a locus for this teaching that both accept.”
So is Perry now saying that acceptance by both East and West is inessential to his argument? But pentarchial ratification includes the Western church via the church of Rome. Does this mean Perry now treating pentarchial ratification as a purely ad hominem appeal which he only broached for the sake of argument when attempting to field Catholic objections?
But if pentarchial ratification is, in fact, expendable, then what constitutes an ecumenical council ecumenical, and how can its ecumenicity be discerned by the faithful?
“The idea is ratification by the episcopate which is why the question of its normativity rests on apostolic succession.”
Except that Perry is narrowing down the relevant unit or subset of the episcopate to the pentarchy in particular–which is arbitrary. That’s severely underdetermined by apostolic succession. And, of course, Perry had to fudge on what constitutes a “direct apostolic foundation.”
“Next to ask why would it artificially be limited to these five is poisoning the well as well as question begging, unless of course I said the limitation was artificial, which I didn’t. Steve needs to show that it is artificial and not simply assume it.”
It’s hardly question-begging when Perry was the one who made a “direct apostolic foundation” the differential factor.
Why does Perry find it so chronically hard to follow his own argument? Why is it necessary to take him by the hand and walk him through his own argument time and again?
“Notice how Steve has constructed a straw man. The original argument was not about how we know a council is ecumenical per se. Nor was the argument about the source of the normativity of those conditions for said councils.”
Sure it was. I’ve quoted him verbatim on those very contentions.
“Notice how Steve has created a straw man. I didn’t say that a council is ecumenical if it enjoys apostolic ratification via apostolic succession.”
Here is what Perry said:
“Now what I have not done is spell out in detail what conditions are necessary and sufficient for a council to be ecumenical and normative. That I am largely leaving for another post. But the answers to that question are not in the main that hard to discover and sort out…So an ecumenical council accepted by East and West teaches that what constitutes the ecumenical nature of the council is pentarchial ratification, rather than papal ratification,” followed by:
“The point of patriarchal ratification is that those sees have been founded directly by the apostles,” followed by:
“So the idea of apostolic ratification is part of the doctrine of apostolic succession in principle.”
Hence, his opening move was pentarchial ratification, which he treated as a special case of patriarchal ratification, which, in turn, he treated a special case of apostolic succession. That’s the constitutive factor.
“What I said was that the apostolic authority is in and comes through the episcopate which is then manifested when certain conditions are met. Those conditions include patriarchial ratification which is through pentarchial ratification.”
Follow the bouncing ball…as it circles back. Apostolic authority is mediate by the episcopate. That is subject to certain conditions, such as patriarchial ratification, which is mediated through pentarchial ratification.
But isn’t the pentarchy itself a subset of the episcopate? Seems like a rather incestuous accountability system, if you ask me. The episcopate polices itself through organs of the…episcopate!
“Nor does it seem to obviously fall into the Protestant doctrine of the right of private judgment, any more than the Acts 15 council did when the Apostles made a decision which was binding regardless of whether people dissented from it or not.”
Of all the clueless statements that Perry has made over the years–and the competition for that distinction is fierce–this statement may set a new standard of cluelessness. The Protestant right of private judgment never meant the private judgment of an individual trumps the judgment of Apostles (or other Bible writers). The point of private judgment is not to deny the binding authority of Scripture on the conscience of the individual, but to deny the binding authority of popes, bishops, and uninspired traditions on the conscience of the individual. How could Perry be so ignorant of what the doctrine means?
“Is the authority of the NT ‘self locating’ in the order of knowing?”
Why does Perry assume the negative?
“He tends to treat it as tactual succession, a mere physical lineage, but AS includes teaching among other things. If some claimant lost the right teaching, then the succession can be lost too.”
The problem with this rejoinder is that if right doctrine is the measure of apostolic succession, then apostolic succession can’t be the measure of right doctrine. In that event, tracing your lineage back to an apostolic see, even if that were successful, doesn’t guarantee, or even create a presumption of, salient continuity between the deposit of faith and later stages down the line.
Yet Perry’s appeal to the pentarchy was grounded in the claim that these five sees were directly founded by the apostles. If, however, that’s inadequate; if, instead, right teaching is the criterion, then how does Perry determine the ecumenicity of a church council? Does it turn on whether or not the council teaches true doctrine? But that won’t do.
i) For one thing, Perry doesn’t regard veracity as a sufficient condition of normativity. So even if a council taught truly, that wouldn’t make it ecumenical or normative in Perry’s eyes.
ii) Moreover, he could only assess the teaching of a council by reference to a source of right teaching which is independent of the council under review. But if he has access to extraconciliar right teaching, then conciliar teaching is, at best, superfluous.
“Consequently, not all claimants are equally plausible, which Steve assumes but never demonstrates.”
“Plausible” by what standard? Right teaching? That only pushes the question back a step. What’s his source and standard of right teaching? Not the episcopate, since he’d have to evaluate the teaching of the episcopate by…right teaching.
Apostolic authority? But isn’t that mediated by…the episcopate?
“But let’s suppose Steve is right, what follows? Does the truth of Protestantism follow?”
I don’t need to prove Protestantism to disprove Orthodoxy.
“If AS were true but insufficient it would sill falsify Protestantism.”
And if Protestantism were true but insufficient it would still falsify Orthodoxy.
What does Perry think he’s going to accomplish by tossing hypothetical defeaters into the ring–much less reversible defeaters, which we can easily toss back in his face?
“In the same way, Steve hasn’t shown that AS is false but only insufficient to select a particular tradition claiming it.”
i) The onus is not on me to prove apostolic succession. Rather, the onus lies on Perry to prove his own sectarian assumptions.
ii) Perry was the one who appealed to the selective power of pentarchial ratification. If that’s insufficient, then that’s a deficiency internal to his own position.
“But that is worthwhile all by itself. If AS is true, at best it only narrows down the choices by eliminating all of Protestantism a viable option.”
Iffy hypotheticals don’t narrow down the choices. Hypotheticals bake no bread.
“Perhaps there aren’t 33,000 Protestant denominations. Suppose its only say 3,000 or 300. Perhaps its limited to three traditions, the Lutherans, the Reformed and the Anabaptists. If I can eliminate all those three with AS, that seems like progress”
If you assume that only one institutional church is the one true church, then–like Perry–you to find some way to fix the lottery so that you have a decent chance at holding the ticket with the winning number.
But from an evangelical standpoint, there is more than one winning ticket. Many of the “33,000” denominations and independent churches instantiate the true church.
“Yes, within the context of Catholic/Orthodox theological discussion. Your objections are outside of that context, which required me to go beyond what these two traditions accept and give a sketch of the argument leading up to it.”
No, my objections were internal to the logic of Perry’s paradigm-case, as I’ve explicated in some detail.
“Nope.”
That’s an impressive counterargument.
“I don’t need Tertullian to be a church father to bear witness to Christian teaching…”
I’ll remember that when I quote Eusebius or Epiphanios on iconolatry.
“Steve also counts Tertullian as a heretic, so why would Steve’s use of Tertullian words against the Orthodox position in the past count for anything?”
If that’s an allusion to Tertullian’s Montanism, then I’d cut him some slack.. That betrayed a lapse of judgment on Tertullian's part. But I’d also make allowance for his early position in church history. He was a theological pioneer. Pioneers frequently make mistakes which subsequent theologians avoid. Those of us who come after them can learn from their experience. Unlike us, Tertullian didn’t have many before him to lean for guidance. He had to blaze his own trail. Given his historical circumstances, Tertullian was a champion of the faith. We should honor his memory and improve on his efforts.
By contrast, Perry can’t plead the same mitigating circumstances to excuse his own errors.
“I gave the reason why it was normative in terms of previous employment going back to Acts 15, Irenaeus, et al.”
Of course, he can’t very well cite Acts 15 to document apostolic succession.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Avatar review
I just saw James Cameron's Avatar.It was an immersive experience in the fullest sense of the phrase. I felt transported to another world.
The CGI and other special effects were seamless, smoothly integrated, not at all clunky. Moreover, the CGI didn't seem exploitive in the slightest. It wasn't mere eye candy, mainly present to draw attention to the director's technical wizardry. Rather, the CGI and other special effects serviced the story (well, not that I thought too highly of the story). And I saw the regular version, not the 3D version which I hear from some corners is even more visually stunning.
However, that's about all the movie had going for it. The plot was threadbare. And it was predictable. Perhaps because it's derivative. How many times have we seen the same story play out? Outsider enters into a community. Community welcomes him with tremendous suspicion if not outright hostility. After some time and thru a series of trials he wins their trust. He even wins the heart of a native girl. The outsider originally had a hidden, malicious agenda in entering the community, but he comes clean after he comes to grok the community and their ways. He becomes one of them. He fights for them. And he's willing to die for them. As others have pointed out, it's like Dances with Wolves. Or The Last Samurai. But on another planet and in the future. The hero in a thousand places.
Most of the actors were bland. They improved when they became CGIs but not by much (for those that became CGIs). The actor who played the colonel made a good villain though.
The movie is simple-minded. The planet may be teeming with life but not so the story. Humans are evil, except for the enlightened scientists. The natives, the Na'vi, are good. Corporations are selfish and greedy. The natives are selfless and altruistic. They're at one with nature. It was a pretty black and white movie. Not a whole lot of subtlety or nuance.
Again, among the humans it's only the enlightened scientists who want to truly understand the Na'vi on their own terms. The scientists have no sinister ulterior motives. They just want to do a little science and a little cultural anthropology. Dennis Nedry is nowhere to be found. Nor Hwang Woo-Suk. Not in this Cameron 'verse.
The corporation is only there for a valuable mineral worth millions of dollars per gram or ounce or whatever. They don't care about the natives let alone the planet or its environment. They're greedy, plain and simple. But in reality, i.e. back on planet earth c. 2009, there are some corporations which care about profits as well as taking care of workers, local communities, the environment, etc. Not all corporations are the spawn of Satan.
Technology doesn't fare too well. It's largely portrayed negatively. It's either associated with environmental abuse or the military - and anything which so much as smacks of the military is implicitly negative. Of course, it's actually technology that allowed the scientists to grow avatars in their labs and the paraplegic protagonist to inhabit his avatar and become a Na'vi. But otherwise technology is placed in negative contrast to nature or the environment.
What's portrayed positively is being at one with nature. The entire planet is a neural network of life. The Na'vi commune with the creatures on the planet - literally, via their ponytails. The Na'vi commune with their goddess Eywa which is the planet itself (we might instead name her Gaia). Moreover, when a creature dies, it becomes part of the planet. And the planet has some sort of sentience as seen when it "hears" the main character's "prayer" and fights back.
I think Cameron must've come of age in the '60s and '70s, and so taken his cue from this period. As if John Lennon's "Imagine" became a futuristic scifi movie. Whether or not this is the case, the movie plays like an idealized liberal romance. It's the story of a simple, peace-loving people in perfect communion with nature fighting against those who would destroy all that they hold dear. It's the story of the oppressed poor fighting against their bourgeoise oppressors a la the Socialists or Communists. It's the story of noble savages fighting against a technologically advanced, powerful, yet morally corrupt civilization. Perhaps like the jihadi "freedom fighers" fighting against the evil American empire. Noam Chomsky and Edward Said would be proud.
The movie is meant to be symbolic, allegorical. After all, the movie is titled Avatar. The chief scientist responsible for the avatar project is named Dr. Grace Augustine. The planet is named Pandora. It houses a precious mineral called "unobtanium."
An avatar is a manifestation ("incarnation") of a deity into human form. It's as if the gods descended onto earth in human form - or, rather, in Na'vi form. The protagonist, Jake Sully, fulfills several prophecies among the Na'vi people (perhaps not unlike Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert's Dune) and gains their hearts. He's their messiah, their savior. But from what? From the evil military industrial complex of course! On the surface, titling the film Avatar sounds clever, but the allegorical symbol is only as good as its moral or lesson.
That said, there is a grain of truth in the movie. It would be wonderful to have a world at peace and people genuinely loving and taking care of the earth and all its creatures. It would be wonderful for people to recognize and worship the one, true, living God, the God of the Bible - not Gaia or other false deities or no deities. It would be wonderful if people recognized and bowed their hearts to the truth.
Many liberals seem to think the problem is that some humans refuse to get with the program and cooperate and so are causing the rest of humanity its problems. The few are keeping the many - the rest of humanity - from utopia. But the problem isn't merely some humans (e.g. conservatives). The problem is all humans. The problem is sin - our sin. We live in a fallen world. We ourselves are fallen. We're sinners. We have rebelled against God himself. That's the problem. Or as G.K. Chesterton once responded to the question of what's wrong with the world: "I am."
If we were united together as one, we wouldn't take care of earth and all its creatures. We wouldn't commune with God. Instead, we'd build a tower to the heavens to make war against God.
Since our hearts harbor rebellion against God, and since we have rebelled against God, he must punish our sin and rebellion if justice is to be maintained.
Yet, the Bible teaches that those who repent of their sin and rebellion against God and trust in Jesus Christ, God has promised to forgive and in fact welcome back with open arms. Jesus Christ came to save his people from their sins. He died in their place so that they could have peace with God. Christ is the propitiation for our sins.
Socialism, liberalism, conservatism, environmentalism, capitalism, or any other ism can't save us. There are no other deities or avatars or saviors who can save us - not Gaia or Eywa or Jake Sully or Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Jesus Christ is the only Lord and Savior, and it is only through him that we can be saved. "Many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. . . . For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect" (Mark 13:6, 22). "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'" (John 14:6).
He's the only way to commune with God, to be one with him, his creatures, and his creation. And then to await the new heavens and the new earth, when God restores Eden.
Baptismal Justification
I've been having a discussion with Bryan Cross on the subject of justification. Below is a portion of my latest response, relevant to the subject of attaining justification through baptism. For those who want to read the full discussion, keep in mind that what I'm about to quote is only a portion of what I wrote in my latest post. You'll have to look over the entire post to read the portions I left out here:
Bryan wrote:
"Of course it wasn’t accompanied by baptism under the Old Covenant, since Christ established Christian baptism only in the New Covenant."
Christian baptism was established later, but Paul, James, and other New Testament authors suggest continuity between justification through faith in the Old Testament era and justification through faith in the New Testament era. You could argue for a diminished continuity by adding baptism for those living in the New Testament period, but that would be, as I said in my last post, a diminished continuity. The higher level of continuity that I'm suggesting makes more sense of the New Testament theme of continuity in the means of justification.
You write:
"And it seems clear that Abraham’s faith was accompanied by works, as James points out."
It was eventually accompanied by works. But works of faith come later than faith. Genesis 15:6 is about a faith that would result in works, but the works come after the faith. When somebody trusts God in response to a promise God makes, as in Genesis 15, that's faith in the heart (as in Acts 15:7-11 and Romans 10:10), not faith accompanied by an outer manifestation like baptism.
You write:
"A person can be justified even prior to baptism, but the grace by which he is justified nevertheless has come to his through that sacrament."
Jesus and the apostles neither said nor implied that. And I was addressing the normative means of justification. I'm aware that Catholicism allows exceptions. But baptismal justification is the norm in Catholicism.
Are the Biblical examples of justification apart from baptism exceptional? They could be in some cases, such as the thief on the cross. But it wouldn't make sense to dismiss all of them, or even most of them, in that manner. There isn't a single individual who's described as coming to faith, but having to wait until baptism to be justified. Nor is there any individual who's described as only having a lesser, unjustifying faith prior to baptism or not having faith at all until baptism. Rather, we repeatedly see people justified as soon as they believe, prior to or without baptism. That includes people who could easily have been baptized. It's not as though people like Cornelius and the Galatians didn't have access to baptism, nor is there any reason to think that God couldn't have waited until their baptism to give them the Holy Spirit and the confirming evidence of their justification. It would make no sense to dismiss a passage like Luke 18:10-14, Acts 19:2, or Romans 10:10 as an exception to the rule. Justification upon believing response to the gospel, prior to baptism, is the rule, not the exception.
You write:
"A mere suggestion is not sufficient to warrant schism from the Church, or the public charge that the Catholic Church teaches a false gospel."
The comment you're responding to is just one argument among many I made. I did say that my argument "suggests" my conclusion, but it wasn't my only argument. And I, of course, don't hold the view that Roman Catholicism is "the Church".
You write:
"It is St. John who tells us at the beginning of his gospel (written later in his life, according to tradition) that Jesus said to Nicodemus, 'unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.' (John 3:5) Jesus is the one who 'added' baptism, just as He did in Mark 16:16, and just as Peter did on Pentecost: 'repent, and let each of you be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.' (Acts 2:38) It is baptism that now [in the New Covenant] saves us. (1 Pet 3:21)"
Mark 16:16 is an extra-Biblical source. It has some significance as an early text, but the readers should keep in mind that it's an extra-Biblical text. The authentic gospel of Mark says nothing of baptismal justification. (Similarly, the authentic letters of Ignatius of Antioch say nothing of it. The inauthentic longer versions of his letters, on the other hand, include reference to the concept.)
You've made no attempt to explain the large number of Biblical examples of justification apart from baptism that I cited earlier. As I said, such passages have moved many advocates of baptismal justification to argue that baptism didn't become a requirement (in normative cases) until after Jesus' public ministry. Do you hold that view? If so, then citing John 3:5 makes little sense. We know that Jesus frequently forgave people, pronounced peace to them, and healed them (often with justificatory implications) during His earthly ministry. See the examples cited here. In John's gospel, the reasoning that Ronald Fung applied to Galatians (in my quote above) is applicable again. John refers to justification through faith many times (1:12, 3:15-16, 3:18, 3:36, 5:24, 6:35, 6:40, 6:47, 7:38-39, 11:25-26, etc.), and baptismal justification is alleged to be referred to only once, in 3:5. Three of those references to justification through faith come later in Jesus' discussion with Nicodemus (3:15-16, 3:18). Using one reference to "water" to argue for the inclusion of baptism in such a large number of other passages that neither state nor imply its inclusion is dubious.
What does 3:5 mean, then? Jesus is speaking with a teacher within first-century Judaism and rebukes him, in that capacity, for not understanding what He was saying (3:10). Do the Old Testament scriptures or other sources a teacher in Judaism should have been familiar with teach baptismal justification? No. But the Old Testament does associate the Holy Spirit with water without having physical water in view (Isaiah 44:3), and John associates the Spirit with non-physical water elsewhere (John 7:37-39). Spiritual washing is a common theme in scripture (Psalm 51:2). Jesus probably is referring to Ezekiel 36:25-27, and it should be noted that He possibly alludes to the wind of resurrection from Ezekiel 37:9-14 in John 3:8. Jesus goes on to clarify what He's saying by referring to justification through faith three times, without any mention of baptism (3:15-16, 3:18).
Some of the same points I've made about other passages can be made regarding Acts 2:38. I've cited other passages in Luke's writings in which people are justified apart from baptism, including passages portrayed as normative and in which the people involved could easily have been baptized. Most likely, Acts 2:38 has a meaning similar to Matthew 3:11. The people in Matthew 3 weren't being baptized to attain repentance. Rather, they were repenting, then being baptized on the basis of that repentance. Not only would it be irrational to think that unrepentant people would be baptized in order to attain repentance, but Josephus specifically tells us that John's baptism was for people who had already repented (Antiquities Of The Jews, 18:5:2). Given the availability of such a reasonable understanding of Acts 2:38 (one similar to how we all read Matthew 3:11), it wouldn't make sense to adopt some other view of the passage that would be so inconsistent with what Luke says elsewhere and what other Biblical authors say (documented above).
1 Peter 3:21 is a passage addressed to Christians in the context of discussing sanctification. Baptism saves in that sense, not in the sense of justification. Like the baptism of John the Baptist, Christian baptism doesn't remove the filth of sin (1 Peter 3:21). Instead, it's a public pledge made to God that commits Christians, like those to whom Peter is writing, to faithfulness to God in their present experience of persecution. As J. Ramsey Michaels observes:
"It is unlikely that the present passage [1 Peter 3:21] intends to say something so banal as that baptism's purpose is not to wash dirt off the body. What early Christian would have thought that it was? More probably Peter, like James, has moral defilement in view, i.e., the 'impulses' that governed the lives of his readers before they believed in Christ...The 'removal of the filth of the flesh' is not a physical but a spiritual cleansing, and Peter's point is not that such cleansing is an unimportant or unnecessary thing, only that baptism is not it. The analogy of the passage in Josephus (18.117) suggests that Peter may simply be insisting that the inward moral cleansing to which he refers is presupposed by the act of water baptism. This interpretation is confirmed by the positive definition of baptism with which the argument now continues." (Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 49, 1 Peter [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988], p. 216)
In other words, Peter is contradicting your position rather than supporting it.
You write:
"Faith comes by hearing, of course. But if it comes to a person in its fullness (as a virtue), it has come to them through the sacrament of baptism, even if they have not yet been baptized. The Spirit ordinarily works through the sacrament, but the Spirit is capable of outrunning the sacrament, as John outran Peter at the tomb."
If you want people to accept your assertion, you should offer more than an analogy to John's outrunning Peter. As I said above, there are no Biblical examples of what you consider the normative role of baptism. But there are many Biblical examples of people being justified apart from baptism, in a wide variety of contexts, including contexts in which people could easily have been baptized.
You write:
"When Paul says 'Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?', he is asking them if they were confirmed when they were baptized."
You're not giving us any reason to agree with your conclusion. How are you getting baptism and confirmation from a reference to believing in Acts 19:2? You go on to cite 1 Timothy 6:12, but the fact that Timothy made a confession wouldn't lead us to your conclusion about how baptism and Roman Catholic confirmation allegedly relate to the reception of the Holy Spirit. Acts 19:2 only mentions faith. Your additions to the passage are unreasonable.
You write:
"Correct, but this believing includes baptism"
If you want us to believe that Galatians 3:2, Ephesians 1:13-14, and other passages are including baptism when they refer to faith, you need to argue for that position rather than just asserting it. There were Greek terms available for conveying the concept of baptism. A different term is sometimes used for baptism just after belief has been mentioned (Acts 8:12-13, 18:8). We don't begin with a default assumption that references to belief include baptism. If you want baptism included, you carry the burden of proof.
You write:
"In neither the Cornelius situation nor the Acts 19 situation is faith truly separated from baptism. Faith precedes it, but the Apostles do not take this as nullifying the need for baptism."
It's not just a matter of faith coming before baptism. Rather, justification does as well. Cornelius' example and Paul's assumed soteriology in Acts 19:2 involve the reception of the Spirit, the seal of adoption and justification, at the time of faith and prior to baptism. That's why the Christians in Jerusalem, after hearing Peter mention Cornelius' reception of the Spirit without any mention of his baptism, respond by saying that Cornelius had been given eternal life (Acts 11:18). Peter goes on to use Cornelius as an example of a person whose heart had been cleansed through faith, demonstrated by his reception of the Spirit (Acts 15:7-11). Peter says nothing of baptism in that context, and the reception of the Spirit that confirmed Cornelius' justification occurred prior to his baptism. Besides, reception of the Spirit is normally associated with the beginning of the Christian life, so the description of what happened in Acts 10:44-46 would be sufficient to support my conclusion even if we didn't have the further confirmation in Acts 11 and Acts 15.
You write:
"If a person believes, he will, like the Ethiopian eunuch, respond by seeking baptism, in which he is united to Christ, what St. Paul refers to as coming to 'belong to Christ' (Gal 5:24)"
As I documented earlier, many things in the Christian life unite us to Christ in many ways (Romans 8:17, 13:14, 2 Corinthians 4:10-11, Philippians 3:10-12). Something can unite us to Jesus without being a means of attaining justification, as the examples cited above illustrate.
You write:
"You’re thinking of the faith in an entirely subjective, inward and individualistic way. But faith is public. It involves a public ‘yes’ to the gospel, and that public yes means the reception of baptism and incorporation into His Body, the Church."
Faith begins inwardly, then is manifested outwardly. That's why scripture refers to justifying faith as something that happens in the heart (Acts 15:7-11, Romans 10:10).
And it's not as though including baptism in faith is the normal meaning of the Greek language in question. Rather, you're reading your Catholic theology into terms that normally don't include baptism. Faith and baptism are different things. The relevant Greek terms have objective meaning, and that meaning isn't determined by Catholic theology. As I said above, there were other Greek terms available if the authors wanted to communicate the concept of baptism, and they do often use such terms. The problem, for you, is that they don't use those terms in places where you want us to believe that baptism is involved....
You write:
"You don’t seem to realize Who is doing the baptizing. Does the believer exercise his free will in stepping into the font? Of course. But that’s not baptism. Who does the baptizing? Christ. Christ is the Baptizer."
You're singling out the elements of the ceremony (and the arranging of it) that you attribute to Christ alone. But terms like "baptism" and "getting baptized" are often used in the sense of all of the activities combined. If a person is "stepping into the font" and taking other actions in order to be baptized by Christ, then more than faith is involved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)