I’ll comment on this:
Let's deal with a few of Triablogue’s question begging approaches to the issue - Where is there evidence that Jesus’ statement was misreported? Answer: There is no evidence for that. Triablogue insinuates that Jesus’ statement was misreported, but that is not what the text says.
Well, at least Bradley's consistent. His reading comprehension for what I said is no better than his reading comprehension for what John said. Here's what I originally said:
That doesn’t necessarily mean one of the seven disciples misreported what Jesus said. Rather, that what he reported was misinterpreted.
And here's what I said in a subsequent response to Bradley.
Jesus made a statement (21:22) that gave rise to a false rumor (21:23). How did his true statement give rise to a false rumor? I can only think of two possibilities: it was misreported or it was misinterpreted.
So I specifically said the rumor isn't necessarily the result of misreporting. Rather, I offered two possible explanations. Evidently, Bradley can't count to two, which must entail all manner of inconvenience in his life.
The text says that people were basing their speculation on what Jesus said.
Since Bradley has such poor reading skills, let's break it down for him:
22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”
23 So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die;
yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”
Notice how John contrasts what Jesus actually said with the rumor. John tells us the "brothers" attributed to Jesus a statement that Jesus didn't make. They attribute a prediction to Jesus.
So either the report of what he said was garbled, or else they drew a fallacious inference from the report. But even in the latter case, the misinterpretation is what circulated, as if that's what Jesus said–and meant.
First, is there evidence that the statement was misunderstood? Not necessarily.
I didn't say it was necessarily misunderstood, just as I didn't say it was necessarily misreported. Rather, I said it was one or the other.
What Jesus actually said could be answered “Yes, the Beloved Disciple will see the Second Coming” or “No, the Beloved Disciple will not see the Second Coming.”
Answered? Jesus wasn't asking a question. Rather, he was posing a hypothetical.
The error – which people to this day fall into, including Protestants with “Rapture Hysteria” and huge arguments about “pre-mill” and “post-mill” – is ascribing too much certainty to texts that are not all that certain.
If that's such a problem, why doesn't the One True Church® clear that up once and for all by teaching us the correct eschatology?
Second, would the statement have been any less misunderstood if it had been in writing between circa 33 AD and circa 90 AD? There's no evidence that it would have been.
i) If the source of the problem is a misreported statement, then a written record that preserves the actual statement solves the problem.
ii) If the source of the problem is a misinterpreted statement, then John's written correction solves the problem.
The rumor notwithstanding, Jesus made no prediction.
In fact, again, looking at Protestantism – as much as it may shock – shock! – Triablogue to do so, we see all kinds of errors of this kind even though Protestantism claims to have a definite text. Baptists, Calvinists and Lutherans damn each other to Hell based on their different positions on the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.
Ironically, Bradley is illustrating the penchant of Catholics to indulge in urban legends.
Why so much dispute if Triablogue is right that the problem arises only when there is an oral tradition?
Bradley is burning a straw man.
Third, with respect to strawmen arguments, Triablogue’s approach to oral tradition is …what’s the word…ah, yes.. “moronic.” Is Triablogue really asserting that any speculation by anyone constitutes “oral tradition”?
Notice that Bradley his imputing his own interpretation to me, then accusing me of conflating “speculation” with “oral tradition,” when he was the one, not me, who interjected “speculation” into the discussion. Bradley is completely devoid of mental discipline.
Is he claiming that Catholics teach that the magisterial teaching authority steps in immediately whenever anyone says something wrong somewhere?
He continues to veer off on a tangent. But as far as that goes, the Magisterium is more likely to step in when someone says something right, and replace the truth with Magisterial error.
If Triablogue does, then he should never read or listen to Bart Ehrman who believes that the Holy Spirit should have prevented copying errors when the scriptures were being copied.
At this point we need to call the fire department to douse Bradley's flaming straw men.
Bart Ehrman’s position is lame, but for the same reason so is Triablogue’s position.
As far as that goes, Ehrman begins with a Catholic presupposition. Both Ehrman and the church of Rome treat the canon of Scripture as an arbitrary collection of books which is held together by sheer external authority.
Fourth, his ahistorical position that the Gospel of John corrected the misinformation among those who believed that the Beloved Disciple was going to live to see the Second Coming is knee-slappingly funny in its polemical approach. How does he know this? Obviously, he cannot.
I know that because that's explicitly what John is doing in the epilogue.
Now let's compare two of Bradley's claims.
On the one hand:
Clearly, however, since the Beloved Disciple died before the Gospel of John was written – because the Gospel of John mentions the conundrum – the church had worked out the true meaning of Jesus’ accurately reported words before the Gospel of John was written.
On the other hand:
A real problem is that Triablogue is sawing the branch he’s sitting on. By arguing that oral tradition is incompetent and wrong, how do we know that the Bible is right or that we have the right Bible? Because Triablogue says so? Good luck with that. Because the Bible says so? Well, the Koran makes the same claim.
The answer is that we trust the Bible because we trust the Church that saw the Resurrected Jesus. (See Augustine, Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus 5:6 “For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”)
Bradley's argument is predicated on the assumption that John didn't write the Gospel attributed to him. Rather, that's a posthumous production, by a different hand.
But Bradley immediately turns around and assures us that we depend on ecclesiastical tradition. Yet the church fathers attribute the Fourth Gospel to the Apostle John! So Bradley's the one who's sawing off the branch he's seated on.
Clearly, however, since the Beloved Disciple died before the Gospel of John was written – because the Gospel of John mentions the conundrum – the church had worked out the true meaning of Jesus’ accurately reported words before the Gospel of John was written.
Even if we accept Bradley's theory of posthumous composition for the sake of argument, the Fourth Gospel wasn't written by "the church," but by an anonymous narrator. It's the narrator, and not "the church," who glosses the statement which it puts in Jesus' mouth. That's the alternative to Johannine authorship.
But let’s say that the Gospel of John had been written before the Beloved Disciple had died, does Triablogue really believe that the statement “if he tarries till I come what is it to you?”would never have been interpreted as possibly meaning that the Beloved Disciple was to live until the Second Coming?
Which misses the point. What John 21 gives us is not merely a reliable record of what Jesus actually said, but the correct interpretation. Both what he said and what he meant.
Absent that, the rumored prediction would go unchecked and drive out the truth. Indeed, it's because the rumor was beginning to take hold that John felt the urgent need to scotch the rumor once and for all. If all we had was oral tradition to go by, the prediction is what would be remembered, while the truth would be long forgotten.
Christianity does not have a tradition about how the Beloved Disciple is still living to this day in hiding waiting for the parousia. Why not? Answer: because there was a teaching authority that taught rightly.
i) To begin with, there's a standing assumption that people die unless we have evidence to the contrary. That's both empirical and Biblical.
ii) Moreover, it's not as if Catholic scholars automatically credit traditions or legends about the later life and death of John.
iii) Has the Magisterium issued a death certificate for John? Is that locked away in the secret Vatican archives?
That teaching authority has to be a living teaching authority – go back to my question about what would have happened if the Gospel of John had been written before the Beloved Disciple had died.
Jn 21 answers that question. John penned the epilogue before he died, and took the occasion to set the record straight.
If Protestantism had existed at that point, what would it have said that wasn’t a “development of doctrine” or was an authoritative statement from “scripture alone.”
It's not as if Scripture was subsequent to oral transmission. For a time they occurred side by side, but Scripture was also phased in as the Apostles phased out.
Fifth, the most blindingly stunning problem in the Triablogue post is that it doesn’t seem to understand that for the first three generations of Christianity, apart from some letters of Paul, all of Christianity was Oral Tradition.
i) Which ignores the foundational role of the OT in Christian proclamation.
ii) Moreover, if a generation is about 20 years (give or take), then Bradley is saying the Gospels, Acts, and General Epistles weren't written until the 90s. That's a pretty radical dating scheme. And that disregards the testimony of the church fathers. So, once again, Bradley is sawing off the branch he's seated on. He points Protestants to ecclesiastical tradition, then summarily dismisses the traditional authorship and dating of the NT.
Christians didn’t have the Bible until the Second Century! Yet, apparently, they were sufficiently competent to pick the right books without having a written text to turn to!
That's a simpleminded, all-or-nothing argument.
A real problem is that Triablogue is sawing the branch he’s sitting on. By arguing that oral tradition is incompetent and wrong, how do we know that the Bible is right or that we have the right Bible? Because Triablogue says so? Good luck with that. Because the Bible says so? Well, the Koran makes the same claim.
I've addressed these schoolboy objections on many different occasions.
Finally, let's compare these two statements:
On the one hand:
Christianity does not have a tradition about how the Beloved Disciple is still living to this day in hiding waiting for the parousia. Why not? Answer: because there was a teaching authority that taught rightly. That teaching authority has to be a living teaching authority...
On the other hand:
The answer is that we trust the Bible because we trust the Church that saw the Resurrected Jesus. (See Augustine, Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus 5:6 “For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”)
Needless to say, "a living authority" didn't see the Risen Lord. Those who saw him died 2000 years ago–after leaving a record of what they saw. Conversely, Benedict XVI didn't see him.
Again, I recommend that you read the Bauckham book.
Bauckham is hardly one to automatically defer to tradition. He critically and painstakingly sifts tradition.
