The Early Christians' Willingness To Suffer And Die

In a recent thread, I've been discussing some of the errors of Touchstone and Jon Curry in an ongoing discussion at Debunking Christianity. Rotten Arsenal added the following comments there this morning:

We don't have outside corroborating sources to verify the deaths of the disciples as martyrs. We don't have original copies of the gospels. In short, we have the Bible to tell us how things went down. One source isn't enough. So, to point at the disciples martyring themselves as a sign of Jesus's death and resurrection is not a good argument. This is a pretty poor and old apologist argument that relies on those needing reassurance of faith that the unprovable stories give themselves self-validation. I thought this was a dumb argument when I read it in McDowell's terrible "More Than A Carpenter" and I think it's a poor argument now.

Even beside that point, people die for lies or falsehoods all the time. David Koresh is an example. Would you burn for a lie? No? Well I guess Koresh really was Jesus come back to save us. Oops! Screwed the pooch on that one! All those people surely wouldn't have allowed themselves to die if Koresh wasn't telling the truth... right?

And while the Islamic suicide bombers weren't first hand witnesses to Mohammed's deeds, that doesn't stop them from blowing themselves up in his and Allah's name. But I guess they are killing themselves and others for a lie, but that's okay because their religion is fake.... isn't it?

I've written on some issues relevant to Rotten Arsenal's comments here. I think most people are aware of the erroneous nature of the comparison between the disciples of Christ and David Koresh and suicide bombers. And his comment about "original copies of the gospels" doesn't carry much weight, given the evidence we have for the reliable transmission of the texts. But some other points bear mentioning, or repeating, since some critics of Christianity seem to be ignorant or forgetful of them (some of these are meant to respond to Rotten Arsenal, but not all of them):

- The apostles are among the relevant early Christian sources, but they aren't the only ones. If a non-apostle meets the same criteria as an apostle in this context, then that non-apostle is relevant to a consideration of the larger issue involved.

- Martyrdom isn't all that's relevant. So is suffering in general, though it does make sense to differentiate between degrees of suffering.

- The issue is probability, not certainty. Arguing that it would be possible that somebody like an apostle died for a known lie, such as by giving one or two examples of others who have done such a thing, would weaken the force of the Christian argument, but it wouldn't eliminate it. A general tendency isn't disproven by an exception.

- The Bible isn't our only source. We also have data from Josephus, Clement of Rome, Tacitus, and other early sources relevant to the suffering and death of the early Christians. Not all of the sources give us all of the relevant data, but the overall scenario that a knowledgeable Christian is going to refer to when making the argument in question is derived from a wide variety of sources, including extra-Biblical sources.

- The Bible isn't just "one source" in this context. It's a collection of documents written by multiple sources.

- Christian sources can credibly report information relevant to Christianity, much as Jews credibly report information relevant to the Holocaust, Romans credibly reported information relevant to the Roman empire, etc. Just as Christian sources could have had bad motives or could have been in a bad position to judge an issue for some other reason, so could other sources. There's value in disinterested or hostile corroboration, but historians often accept historical claims without such corroboration, and so should we. For some examples of the reasons why, see here and here.

- The earliest Christians referred to John the Baptist's doubts about Jesus' identity, Judas' betrayal of Jesus, Paul's rebuke of Peter, and other examples of error, including rejection of the faith, among their leaders. We know that they were willing to criticize their leaders, and if it's to be argued that other apostles, for example, went the way of Judas in rejecting the faith prior to death, it should be explained why those other apostles' reputations didn't similarly go the way of Judas' reputation.

- The sort of apathy of Christianity's enemies that critics often assume needs to be demonstrated, not just assumed. For some examples of the evidence we have against common assumptions of apathy, see here. People don't normally crucify their opponents, imprison them, and send out messengers to argue against them across a wide geographical spectrum, for example, if they're highly apathetic about those opponents. The idea that somebody like the apostle Peter denied the faith before his death, or that claims of his martyrdom didn't arise until a few decades or more after his death, yet the early enemies of Christianity were too apathetic to leave any traces of such an objection in the historical record, is something that needs to be argued rather than just asserted. The ability of the early enemies of Christianity to notice and object to what the Christians would have been doing in some of the scenarios skeptics propose needs to be given more consideration than skeptics often give it. Many objections of the early enemies of Christianity are reflected in the historical record. The early Christians refer to hundreds of charges of contradictions in the New Testament, the non-historicity of Biblical events, immoral behavior by Christians, etc. If the earliest Christian reports about the suffering and death of men like Paul and Peter were false to the degree skeptics suggest, where do we see objections along those lines reflected in the early arguments of Christianity's enemies?

Again, the above are just some of the considerations that ought to be taken into account. For more on this subject, see here.

Said on Triablogue

A couple threads ago, I questioned how, in lieu of a Church hierarchy, one determines what Scripture means or what reference one is to use when checking one's interpretation of Scripture for accuracy. I never did get a response. Is that because there is no such reference, or that the references vary, depending on mood?

Oh, for the Blessed Mother's sake, how shall we ever answer this?

1. Global skepticism cuts both ways.
2. Try "exegesis," as Rhology said...and just to drive the point home...

a. The GHM doesn't select for any particular theological tradition. But, hey, if you have an alternative, by all means tell us all about it.

b. The results of using the GHM are often not the issue among Protestants. As we've demonstrated many times on this blog, for example in interacting with Arminians, the issue isn't the exegesis itself, but the aprioristic commitments the ones reading it have. In the case of the Arminians, their own theologians admit they are committed to libertarian freedom and concepts of God's love. These two presuppositions feed into each other and affect their exegesis. We know this, because when we ask where Scripture teaches LFW, they can't answer. They admit to assuming it. By way of contrast, the Reformed don't do that.

c. Some conflicts, as over Presbyterian and Baptist views of baptism, are actually instances of different views of ecclesiology. We Baptists enjoy bringing that to the attention of our Presbyterian brothers to no end. On the other hand, some of us are willing to stipulate that the Bible lays out a basic eccelesiology for the NT churches internally but not much with respect to their external relations. In that event, the differences between us are over certain points that each side believes (or denies) extend from one covenant administration (Abrahamic) to another (New Covenant). That's a function of certain inferences that are often made by each side.

d. Liberal and conservative exegesis rarely differs at all. In that case, the difference lies not in the result of the work but the authority each side gives it.

e. Some differences between us, as over eschatology with respect to Dispensationalism and Covenantalism, are a result of using a "literal" hermeneutic vs. a Grammatical-Historical Hermeneutic. So, in that event, the differences in result are methodological.

3. You have clear ideas, as Steve said; are you incapable apart from Mommy Church, to adjudicate who has the better argument? Has Roman Catholicism killed that many brain cells? Must be something in the sacramental wine.

4. Where does Scripture teach the need for an infallible Magisterium? Don't cite the Scriptures, provide a full argument and accompanying exegesis. Let's see how long it will take you to realize that doing that is usually a vicious regress for the Roman Catholic.

5. Don't you have to interpret papal decrees, dogmas, and other "tradition?" How is it they are clear but Scripture isn't? Commenters like you, James, should stop and think for a minute that when you make that claim, you're insulting the Spirit of God. He can't be clear or is intentionally obscure, but Rome - and nobody else - is. Steve was right - whereas Christ is the one Head of the Church, you turn the Church into a freak, 2 headed mutant beast. Given the number of addresses for the Magisterium in Dulles' book, this makes me truly wonder if the multi-headed dragon in the Bible is, indeed, the Roman Communion after all.

6. Apropos 5, are you infallible? No. You can't get infallibility to jump from the speaker/teacher/book from the mouth or page. To attain the level of certainty you seem to want means you need to be infallible as well. Why is it that Roman Catholics don't bother to consider that fundamental concept?

7. So, it seems to me that, as Steve noted elsewhere Catholic piety isn't just a recipe for nominalistic, superficial piety, its a recipe for stunted Christian growth and understanding. Most of them on the 'net strike me as no better than the general population of the Baptistboard, where they cite but rarely exegete Scripture, and when they do, the assume what they need to prove.

Catholic fundamentalism

To judge by the reaction that I and others get from many Catholic commenters, I think one basic problem is that many Catholics are getting their version of Catholicism, not from Catholic theologians, but from lay Catholic apologists, including some recent converts to the faith. (Not to mention Catholics who get their theology from Mother Angelica.) These apologists paint a fundamentalistic picture of Catholicism. They think that Evangelicalism is fraught with uncertainties, and Catholicism is the deus ex machina which sweeps away these alleged uncertainties. When you read a Catholic theologian, by contrast, he will frequently present a far more nuanced and concessive view. For example, let’s contrast the version of the Magisterium we’re treated to in lay apologetic circles with some of the caveats in Cardinal Dulles’ exposition:

“Bishop Cardoni, in his votum on infallibility at Vatican I, made the point that the pope is seriously obliged, under pain of sin, to take the necessary means to ascertain that his [dogmatic] definition in fact conforms with the Christian revelation…The inseparability of the definition from the process raises questions as to whether we are here confronted, in effect, with a new condition [of infallibility]. What if it were evident that in a given case the pope did not have access to certain essential data or did not take the requisite measures to ascertain what was in Scripture or tradition? Are we to assume that a miracle would supply for the diligence lacking to the pope?” “Moderate Infallibilism,” P. Empie et al eds. Teaching Authority & Infallibility in the Church (Augsburg 1980), 89-91.

“In response to questions such as these, many appeal to divine providence as assuring that the pope will not abuse his powers as supreme teacher in cases involving infallibility…Although accepted by many theologians from Joseph Leutgen to Karl Rahner, this argument from divine providence has some weaknesses. In general, it is hazardous to appeal to what God in his providence would or would not permit. He has permitted doubts and disagreements to persist for some time about who is the true pope, and this would seem to be an evil at least as great as a particular error in papal teaching,” ibid. 91.

“Further, the argument appears to assume too hastily that an erroneous papal teaching under the claim of infallibility would destroy the faith of the universal Church. Why could not the faithful find ways of recognizing the error through theological criticism being brought to bear on the pronouncement, through the unfavorable reaction of the bishops and other pastors, and through the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit which, according to Vatican II, gives a certain inerrancy to the faith of the entire people of God (Lumen gentum 12)?” ibid. 91.

“Perhaps in our day, thanks to a greater appreciation of the many ways in which the Spirit instructs the Church, we should recognize that adequate investigation of the sources of revelation is a true condition for an infallible teaching,” ibid. 91.

“Again, Vatican I did not rule out the view of most theologians since the Middle Ages that it is possible for a pope to fall into heresy or schism. If he did so, he would presumably be incapable of validly exercising his office (since heresy and schism, if externally manifested, automatically excommunicate from the Church). Thus, any alleged definitions issued by a schismatical or heretical pope would be invalid. But it is not always easy to determine what deviations amount to heresy or schism. Hence in some cases it could be doubtful whether the pope were validly defining,” ibid. 92.

“In view of the transcendence of the content of faith, one may properly hesitate to employ expressions such as ‘revealed doctrines,’ although such expressions appear in some church documents (e.g. DS 3803, defining the Immaculate Conception). It must be recognized that the categories used in ecclesiastical definitions are human and that the definitions therefore fall short of adequately expressing the content of revelation itself. Dogmas must be seen as human formulations of the Word of God, formulations not undialectically identified with the revelation they transmit. Thus it is possible that one and the same faith may be expressed in formulas that stand in tension with one another and, indeed, that seem contradictorily opposed,” ibid. 93.

“Did Vatican I assume too rapidly that the faithful were abjectly dependent for the content of their faith on the authoritative teaching of the pope, so that if he erred they would all be led inevitably into the same errors? Do we today count more, as suggested above, on the many ways in which the Holy Spirit teaches the faithful and on their capacity, thanks to these resources, to detect the errors even of a pope? If so, can we not admit more conditions to infallible teaching than were explicitly recognized by Vatican I?” ibid. 95.

“Regarding the concepts and terms in use at Vatican I, it may be sufficient to point out that these depended very much on the presuppositions and perspectives just examined. The fathers at that Council had a highly authoritarian mentality; they saw truth as descending from above, that is to say, from the highest pastors in the Church, through subordinate or local pastors, to the simple faithful in the pews. They had a relatively static view of the universe and operated more easily with juridical and metaphysical than with historical or psychological methodologies. These factors must be borne in mind when the contemporary reader, from the standpoint of a more dynamic and empirical approach to reality, reads in the conciliar texts terms such as ex cathedra, ‘irreformable,’ ‘definition,’ and ‘infallibility’,” ibid. 96.

Trick questions for Protestants

Bryan Cross has posted a dozen trick questions for Protestants. The form of a question tends to dictate the form of the answer. Bryan’s questions are laden with certain assumptions. Therefore, it’s not a matter of simply answering his questions. We really need to question his questions. To challenge the way he has chosen to cast the question. Here are his questions:

1. Whose determination of the canon of Scripture is authoritative? (If your answer is "the Scriptures testify to their own canonicity", then, since persons disagree about the content of this testimony, whose determination of the content of this testimony is authoritative?)

2. Whose interpretation of Scripture is authoritative? (Again, if your answer is "Scripture interprets Scripture", then, since persons disagree about the content of Scripture's interpretation of Scripture, whose determination of the Scripture's interpretation of Scripture is authoritative?)

3. Whose determination of the identity and extension of the Body of Christ is authoritative? (If you deny that Christ founded a visible Church, then skip this question.)

4. Whose determination of which councils are authoritative is authoritative? (If you deny that any Church councils are authoritative, then skip this question.)

5. Whose determination of the nature and existence of schism is authoritative?

6. Whose determination of the nature and extension of Holy Orders (i.e. valid ordination) is authoritative?

7. Whose determination of orthodoxy and heresy is authoritative? (If your answer is "Scripture", then go to question #2.)

8. If your answer to any of questions 1-7 is "the Holy Spirit", or "Jesus" or "the Apostles", then whose determination of what the Apostles, the Holy Spirit, or Jesus have determined is authoritative?

9. Given your answers to the above questions, how does your position avoid individualism and the perpetual fragmentation that necessarily accompanies it? (If your answer appeals to the "fundamentals of the faith" or the "essentials of the faith", then whose determination of what are "the essentials of the faith" is authoritative?)

10. Does not even nature teach you that a visible body needs a visible head? If so, then does grace therefore destroy nature, or does grace build upon nature?

11. Why do you think that your present [Protestant] pastor has more authority than the successor of St. Peter? In other words, why do you "obey" and "submit" (Hebrew 13:17) to your Protestant pastor rather than the successor of St. Peter?

12. Whose determination of the nature of "sola scriptura" is authoritative?


http://principiumunitatis.blogspot.com/2008/01/questions-for-protestants.html

Notice a pattern? Every question is framed in terms of authority. That’s not explicit in #10, but you could argue that headship is also a question of authority. So that’s the recurring motif.

Indeed, Bryan said at the outset that “I'm drawing attention here to what I believe to be the fundamental, meta-level source of all the divisions between Christians: the issue of authority.”

You can’t answer his questions as he phrases them without buying into the assumptions which he has built into his questions.

Now, just because he thinks that authority is the “fundamental,” meta-level” issue doesn’t mean a Protestant would share his authoritarian paradigm. Of course, there is a generic sense in which the conflict with Rome comes down to an issue of authority: the authority of scripture over against the authority of the church. But this doesn’t mean that every specific question related to the conflict with Rome should be framed in terms of authority.

To see the problem, let’s rephrase a number of his questions:

1. Whose determination of the canon of Scripture is correct? Whose canon (e.g. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Ethiopian) enjoys the best evidentiary support? E.g. internal and external attestation.

2. Whose interpretation of Scripture is correct? What’s the best method to arrive at the correct interpretation of Scripture? E.g. Allegorical method. Grammatico-historical method.

3. How does Scripture define the identity and extension of the church?

4. To what extent are councils true or false in light of Scripture?

5. How does the Bible distinguish between licit and illicit schism?

6. What does the Bible say about the qualifications for church office?

7. How does the Bible draw the lines between orthodoxy and heresy?

8. See #2.

9. Should we stipulate in advance of the fact what consequences ought to be avoided, and then construct a just-so story to avoid those consequences, or should we take our cue from how God has governed his people in the past?

10. Does not even nature teach you that a normal body has one head (e.g. Christ) rather than two heads (e.g. Christ and the Pope)? If so, then doesn’t Catholicism destroy nature by turning the church into a two-headed freak mutant?

11. How does the Bible describe and circumscribe the authority of a pastor?

12. Whose determination of the nature of "sola scriptura" is correct? How do we determine sola scriptura?

You only have to start rephrasing his questions to see how prejudicial his questions really are. He built the answer into the question. He’s trying to steer the Protestant towards a Catholic answer. But as soon as we recast his questions to eliminate the tendentious assumptions, then they no longer point in that direction. The original questionnaire was an exercise in rhetorical sleight-of-hand.

Why is he so fixated on the issue of authority? In responding to a commenter, he says: “Your position leaves us with no authoritative determination of what is orthodoxy and what is heresy. One man's orthodoxy is another man's heresy, and there is no one to provide the authoritative adjudication. If no one can provide the authoritative determination of orthodoxy and heresy, then we are left with theological relativism.”

I guess the point he’s getting at is that unless you have sufficient authority for what you believe, you can’t be sure of what you believe. But if that’s his concern, and if he converted to Catholicism because it supposedly offers a level of certainly unavailable to the Protestant, then he’s guilty of the very thing for which he faults the Protestant: "painting one's target around one's arrow."

He’s taking aim at theological relativism, then painting a target around his arrow. The Magisterium is the solution to theological relativism.

But there are several problems with that move:

i) You don’t achieve certainty by setting an artificial goal for yourself, then concocting an etiological fable which will conduct you to your goal. Just because he wants to avoid “individualism” or “fragmentation” doesn’t mean those consequences are, in fact, avoidable.

On the face of it, we live in a messy world. God could have made things far more neat and tidy, but he hasn’t chosen to do so. It’s futile to turn the church into a movie set where every street is clearly marked. We need to conform our doctrine of the church to the reality of the church.

ii) As a practical matter, Bryan’s alternative doesn’t achieve certainty. His appeal to apostolic succession is fraught with uncertainties every step of the way. For you would have to verify every link in the chain.

iii) There’s nothing wrong with probabilities as long as God is in control of the variables. I don’t have to be sure of everything as long as God is sure of everything, and I’m sure of God.

God didn’t give Abraham a roadmap when God called him out of Ur and set him on his journey. God guided Abraham every step of the way without posting road signs every step of the way.

Bryan is like a man who consults a psychic because he feels the need to see where he’s going before he takes the next step. But that is not how God leads his people. God sees the future, we don’t. But God takes us by the hand. We don’t need to see where we’re going as long as our divine guide will be our eyes and ears. That’s the walk of faith.

"A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom"

Since one of the debunkers is ransacking the old work by White on Christianity and Science, here's a contemporary review of the same: 1, 2, 3.

Touchstone's Implausible Reconstructions Of Early Christianity

In his thread at Debunking Christianity on Francis Xavier, Touchstone has made a lot of dubious assertions, often without any attempt at documentation. He doesn't seem to know much about early Christianity, the arguments used by Christian scholars to substantiate their conclusions, or the argumentation of non-Christian scholars who accept some of the facts that Touchstone disputes.

I responded to some arguments similar to Touchstone's two years ago, in response to Bill Curry of Debunking Christianity. See, for example, here and here.

Touchstone writes:

"I don't think the desire is overt in embellishing or inventing, generally, in either case. For the admirers of Xavier, there's the desires to glorify. So, too, with Jesus, but even that I think is overridden by the crisis of disconfirmation that was Jesus' death. Here was acute, devastating cognitive dissonance. Given a credulous worldview pre-disposed to magical thinking in both cases, legend happens. A follower of Jesus reports several days after Jesus' death that she had a vision of Jesus in a dream. Relayed to another follower, that becmes just a vision. Passed on once again, it morphs from 'vision' to 'appearance'. At this point, passed along in passionate retelling to others sympathetic to the legend, credulous in their worldview, Jesus has now 'appeared', isn't that miraculous???...If you are part of the growing sub-sect that is harboring the fantasies of resurrection, and you hear James was brought in and stoned by the Romans, why of *course* it would be because he was preaching the resurrection! It might have been, so you think, therefore it was."

Do people normally believe whatever they want to believe in the manner Touchstone is suggesting? Does a person who wants to make more money believe that his paycheck for $500 is actually a paycheck for $5000? No, and, if he did, his desire would soon come into contact with the contrary desires of the bank, his employer, etc. If his family shared his desire for a larger paycheck, would that desire be sufficient to result in hallucinations every time one of them looks at the ink on the check? Would they all agree that the paycheck is for $5000 rather than, say, $7000 or $10000? Since ancient Roman historians often reported events that they would have desired to be true, such as a Roman victory in a war or something virtuous done by a Roman leader, do modern historians discussing Roman history normally engage in the sort of unverifiable reconstruction of events that Touchstone has engaged in above, involving people believing something just because they desire it to be true?

N.T. Wright, after studying religious movements in Israel around the time of Jesus' death, commented:

"So far as we know, all the followers of these first-century messianic movements were fanatically committed to the cause. They, if anybody, might be expected to suffer from this blessed twentieth century disease called 'cognitive dissonance' when their expectations failed to materialize. But in no case, right across the century before Jesus and the century after him, do we hear of any Jewish group saying that their executed leader had been raised from the dead and he really was the Messiah after all." (cited in Paul Copan and Ronald Tacelli, edd., Jesus' Resurrection: Fact Or Figment? [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 183)

Psychological studies and other data have shown that hallucinations and other relevant psychological disorders tend to occur under conditions different from those of the resurrection witnesses. See, for example, here, here, here, and here. For example, the apostle Paul wasn't a "follower of Jesus" and "sympathetic to the legend" when he thought he saw the risen Christ.

And if Touchstone wants us to believe that the early Christians had "a credulous worldview pre-disposed to magical thinking" to such an extent as his theory suggests, then he ought to interact with the sort of data discussed here and here.

On some of the issues relevant to early Christianity, we don't just have the testimony of Christian sources, but also corroboration from non-Christian sources. See, for example, here and here. Like the pre-Christian Paul, these sources weren't "followers of Jesus" and "sympathetic to the legend".

He writes:

"That is, if I asked you to substantiate the Biblical claims that the disciples a) were witness to the resurrection/reappearance of Jesus and b) went to martyr's deaths in defense of a), I think you'd have great difficulty, save for relying on the self-attestation of the followers of Jesus."

Historians and courts of law, for example, frequently accept the testimony of people engaging in "self-attestation". Do we dismiss all reports of Roman history coming from Roman sources, similar to Touchstone's dismissive approach above?

For more on the problematic nature of Touchstone's objection, see here.

He writes:

"I can't find grounds for the conviction that the disciples were party to the resurrection/reappearances of Jesus at all, let alone later martyrs in witness to that claim."

Touchstone is disagreeing with the vast majority of scholars, then, both Christian and non-Christian. Based on evidence such as 1 Corinthians 15, the vast majority of scholars believe that the early Christians, including disciples of Jesus, believed they saw the risen Christ. See, for example, Gary Habermas' research on scholarly trends discussed here and here. If Touchstone is saying that he sees no grounds for the conclusion that Jesus' disciples thought they saw the risen Jesus, as his comments and the context of what he was responding to suggest, then how does he explain 1 Corinthians 15 and the other evidence that leads both Christian and non-Christian scholarship to disagree with him?

He writes:

"We don't have the reliable autobiographical or contemporary accounts in Jesus' case, like we do with Xavier. If we did, I believe it parallel Xavier's in many respects: fairly plausible biography that has fantastic legends grafted on later."

Touchstone gives us no reason to doubt the Christian claims about Jesus comparable to the evidence he cited against the claims about Francis Xavier. Instead, he just tells us that he thinks the two cases would be seen to be comparable if we had more data relevant to Jesus. But without such data, why are we supposed to agree with Touchstone's conclusion?

He writes:

"For example, if I recall correctly, Josephus has narrative on the stoning of James. This account is controversial in its own right, but the account as it is recounts the *stoning* of James, the result of charges brought by the sanhedrin by breaking the law."

Maybe if Touchstone were more familiar with the evidence, he wouldn't have to say "if I recall correctly". Given his recent association with Debunking Christianity, which has had the likes of Acharya S and Evan on its staff, and given the presence of doubts about Jesus' existence on that blog (another position the vast majority of scholars reject), is Touchstone suggesting that both passages in Josephus might be fraudulent? If so, that's a conclusion rejected by the large majority of scholars. If Touchstone doesn't think that such arguments of those who deny Jesus' existence are credible, then why does he keep making comments to the effect of "if we assume Jesus' existence" or "this account is controversial in its own right"? If Touchstone doesn't deny Jesus' existence himself, he at least seems to be willing to assign that position more credibility than it deserves.

Biblical Evidence for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin

As you know, I've been on summer vacation for a few months, to mark my official return to the Blogosphere this week, I've decided to follow up our recent posts on Roman Cathlolicism with a few of my own, dedicated in sum to Dave Armstrong in particular.

The first of these is titled Biblical Evidence for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. The feast for which is on August 15. Enjoy the hor'dourves.














































Get it?

Ecclesial consumerism

Bryan Cross tries to acquit himself of the charge that he’s guilty of the very thing he accuses the Protestant of, namely: ecclesial consumerism:

http://principiumunitatis.blogspot.com/2008/07/tu-quoque-catholic-convert.html

As he summarizes the charge: “But the objection to this argument is that the person who moves from Protestantism to Catholicism does the very same thing, essentially creates ‘Church’ in his own image by reading the Bible and deciding that the doctrine of the Catholic Church most closely matches what the Bible teaches. So, the objection is a form of the tu quoque (i.e. you too) objection.”

Here’s his attempt to deflect the charge:

“But there is a very important difference. What is problematic in the Protestant approach is not that the individual uses his own intellect and will in making decisions about the identity and nature of the Church. We can't but use our own intellect and will in making decisions. Individualism is not equivalent to individual agency. So, that's not the issue.”

“The issue is the criterion by which we decide what is the true Church. The approach in the Protestant case (because in Protestantism ‘apostolic succession’, insofar as the term is used, is thought to refer fundamentally to the doctrine of the Apostles) is to interpret Scripture, while typically assuming sola scriptura, and work out what one thinks was the Apostles' doctrine, and then find a present-day community of persons who shares that doctrine, call them ‘the Church’, and then join ‘the Church’.”

“So what exactly is the relevant difference between the Protestant picking out a Protestant denomination that fits his own interpretation of Scripture, and the Protestant adult who becomes Catholic for the right reason? In the former case, the individual works out a set of doctrines from Scripture, and then seeks out those persons who are presently teaching according to that set of doctrines, and joins their community and submits to them. In the latter case, by contrast, the individual finds in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say about the basis of the transmission of Magisterial authority, and then traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. In both cases the individual inquirer is using his intellect and will. But in the former case he is using his own determination of *doctrine* from his interpretation of Scripture to define and locate ‘the Church’, but in the latter case he is using the *succession of sacramental authority* from the Apostles to locate the Church and then let the Church tell him what is and is not orthodox doctrine.”

Unfortunately for Bryan, his attempt to rebut the comparison is unsuccessful. The prior identification of the correct criterion is a common concern for Catholic and Protestant alike. Hence, there is a rather exact analogy when we compare Bryan’s conduct to the Protestant conduct he assails.

Both groups consider the identification of the correct criterion to be the primary issue. For your rule of faith will, to some extent, select for your theology (or theological options) and corresponding ecclesial affiliation.

It’s not a case of first determining your doctrinal stance, then choosing a church that happens to match your doctrinal stance. Rather, it’s a case of first determining your criterion (whether sola Scriptura or sola Ecclesia), which will, in turn, affect your theological method, resultant theology, and subsequent choice of a Christian fellowship. So the parallel holds in both cases.

But I’d also add that Bryan presents a very artificial version of how people choose churches. For one thing, people don’t generally attend churches as individuals. Rather, they attend churches as families.

For example, if a Baptist marries a Presbyterian, then there are certain options. She can leave her church to attend his church. He can leave his church to attend her church. They can compromise by attending a neutral church. And so on and so forth.

There’s no direct correlation between my beliefs and the beliefs of my denomination. They may intersect, but that doesn’t mean they coincide. I may be prepared to affiliate with a number of different denominations as long as they fall within certain acceptable parameters.

In addition, since many or most Protestants don’t identify any particular denomination or local church or independent church with the one true church, they don’t use their theology to locate or find “The Church.” They don’t use their theology to select for “The Church” since, in their theology, there is not one-to-one correspondence between the one true church and any particular denomination or local church or independent church. So they are more flexible than Bryan’s wooden caricature allows for.

Another Deconversion

On December 6, 2006, I responded to comments Charles had made responding to a particular person who was responding to a post Steve had written. My response included the following:

I have more reason to believe he is an atheist pretending to be a Christian. He spouts atheist arguments on every single issue, and thus far has demonstrated no ability to grasp basic Christian concepts.Sorry if I don't buy the whole: If it looks like a goat, sounds like a goat, eats trash like a goat, but says it's a sheep, then we must believe it's a sheep. So until [this person] can show me evidence that he actually believes the Gospel (a good way to start demonstrating this would be if he stopped attacking it), I'm going to label him as a non-Christian.

Nor was my judgment unique. Indeed, even before I penned the above, Steve had written of this person (November 22, 2006):

You’re a professing Christian on Sundays, but an honorary atheist on Mondays.

Who is this individual? Why, none other than Touchstone.

So imagine my shock when Jason Engwer informed me that the latest contributor to Debunking Christianity was…you guessed it: Touchstone.

Apparently, we at Triablogue knew Touchstone was an atheist almost two years before he did. Assuming we believe everything in Touchstone’s deconversion story. (Given his loose handling of the truth when he was commenting over here, my bias is to not believe anything he says.)

It is ironic that now Touchstone wishes to make it sound like he was a very strong Christian before defecting. Now he states:

In cases like mine, inevitably, there are questions raised and suspicions launched about the actuality or sincerity of my faith in the first place. For what it's worth, I claim to be an atheist who was a deeply committed, "sold out" believer for decades.

… I was an avid student of theology, a circumstance which had faith-building and faith-destroying ramifications for me over the years. In any case, I was not a "lukewarm Christian", one of those who slowly drifted out of the faith. My faith did not fade away, it came crashing down, quite unexpectedly, and frankly not of my own choosing (at least at the start). I was a cradle Evangelical fully immersed, well-read and fully on board. As a poster on a forum for (Christian) homeschoolers commented recent in a large "discussion" over my atheism: it's the "worst case scenario". Such is the dissonance for many who have known me, a good share of them have decided I've just been lying or faking it all these years, or I somehow just was never saved, never a Christian that "took".

For those interested, in August of 2007 I wrote The Case Against Touchstone which goes into more detail as to why I never believed Touchstone’s profession of faith. Apparently, this “sold out” believer was so transparent that we had no problems spotting exactly who he really was, and we knew it for two years.

Perhaps Touchstone’s psychology is such that he really thought he was a Christian until recently…but I don’t buy it. You simply don’t make the arguments that T-Stone made, you don’t support the atheist argument in every discussion, you don’t actively attack Christians and promote atheist views if you’re a Christian. The signs were there for years. There’s nothing “recent” about his deconversion, except for his admission of it.

"The Magisterium in the NT"

I’ve reviewed most of Cardinal Dulles’ recent book on the Magisterium: Teacher & Guardian of the Faith (Sapientia 2007). Now I’ll circle back and review his case for the Magisterium in the NT.

The first thing I’d note is the he begins with the NT data in building an exegetical case for the Magisterium. Yet that’s an illogical starting point.

In stating the “rationale” for the Magisterium, he argued for the antecedent probability of the Magisterium (4-5).

Now, I myself don’t accept that methodology. I think we should operate with a revealed rule of faith. Not resort to mere conjecture.

If, however, we grant his methodology for the same of argument, then the rationale for the Magisterium would apply, not only to the new covenant community, to the old covenant community.

So is there an OT magisterium, or the functional equivalent? The closest thing we have to a teaching office in the OT is the judicatory. Here are some representative passages:

Deuteronomy 1:9-18
9"At that time I said to you, 'I am not able to bear you by myself. 10The LORD your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are today as numerous as the stars of heaven. 11 May the LORD, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times as many as you are and bless you, as he has promised you! 12 How can I bear by myself the weight and burden of you and your strife? 13 Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads.' 14And you answered me, 'The thing that you have spoken is good for us to do.' 15So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officers, throughout your tribes. 16And I charged your judges at that time, 'Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. 17 You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s. And the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.' 18And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do.

Deuteronomy 16:18
18"You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

Deuteronomy 17:8-13
8"If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to the place that the LORD your God will choose. 9 And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision. 10Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the LORD will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you. 11According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left. 12The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 13And all the people shall hear and fear and not act presumptuously again.

2 Chronicles 19:8-11
8Moreover, in Jerusalem Jehoshaphat appointed certain Levites and priests and heads of families of Israel, to give judgment for the LORD and to decide disputed cases. They had their seat at Jerusalem. 9And he charged them: "Thus you shall do in the fear of the LORD, in faithfulness, and with your whole heart: 10 whenever a case comes to you from your brothers who live in their cities, concerning bloodshed, law or commandment, statutes or rules, then you shall warn them, that they may not incur guilt before the LORD and wrath may not come upon you and your brothers. Thus you shall do, and you will not incur guilt. 11And behold, Amariah the chief priest is over you in all matters of the LORD; and Zebadiah the son of Ishmael, the governor of the house of Judah, in all the king’s matters, and the Levites will serve you as officers. Deal courageously, and may the LORD be with the upright!"

Now, this is somewhat analogous to a teaching office insofar as a judge must interpret the law in order to apply the law. Of course, judges qua judges weren’t teaching the people. But it’s somewhat analogous.

Having said that, is the OT judicatory analogous to the Catholic Magisterium? No.

i) The composition of the OT judicatory wasn’t limited to a clerical class. It included local chieftains and tribal elders—as well as priests.

ii) Judicial rulings were not infallible. If they were infallible, you wouldn’t have an appellate process. What is more, if they were infallible, you wouldn’t have warnings about corrupt judges.

So there is no OT precedent for the Catholic Magisterium. Yet the logic of the argument would require an OT equivalent.

Let’s now transition to Dulles’ arguments:

“Jesus designates him [Peter] as the rock on whom the Church is to be built, gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and empowers him to bind and loose—terms probably signifying the authority to make binding decisions for the whole community” (12).

I’m not going to go into all the problems with this appeal, which I done elsewhere. But I’ll say the following:

i) Dulles seems to treat the keys as a separate prerogative from the power to bind and loose. I think it more likely that the keys are a metaphor for the power to bind and loose. And as Dulles admits on the next page, this same prerogative is conferred on the Twelve (Mt 18:18).

ii) Although I don’t reject the possibility that Peter is the referent in this verse, Gundry has argued otherwise in his commentary on Matthew, and he presents a respectable argument for his interpretation.

iii) Mt 16:18-19 says absolutely nothing about apostolic succession, Roman primacy or the papacy.

iv) Even if you believe in Petrine primacy and apostolic succession, that doesn’t select for Roman primacy or the papacy since Rome was not the only place where Peter ministered.

I could say more, but that’s a start.

“In the early chapters of acts, we see Peter as the unquestioned leader and spokesman of the apostolic leadership (Acts 1:15; 2:25; 4:8; 5:29; 10:24)” (12).

Except that if we see that in the “early” chapters of Acts, then we also see a shift in the later chapters of Acts, as other leaders come to the fore (e.g. Paul, James). So this appeal cuts both ways.

“In the two letters ascribe to him we see Peter from ‘Babylon’ (a code name for Rome) directing his fellow presbyters of other communities” (12-13).

i) Roman residency is quite insufficient to establish Roman primacy or the papacy. Unless there is something unique about Peter’s Roman residency, every place where he ministered could claim the same distinction.

ii) Apropos (i), he’s probably writing to other communities here he ministered.

iii) Contemporary Catholic scholars reject the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, and they also question the Petrine authorship of 1 Peter. Ray Brown, in his NT introduction, is a case in point.

Speaking of which, Dulles refers the reader to the following material;

“On the concept of authorship in the New Testament era, see Raymond E. Brown, ‘Canonicity,’ New Jerome Biblical Commentary §89 (Prentice Hall, 1990), 1051-52…Still valuable is the article of Kurt Aland, ‘The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries’…” (15n5).

And what does Brown say? “In principle there can be no objection to designating as pseudonymous 2 Peter, Jas, Jude, and the Pastorals, Col, Eph, and 2 Thes” (1051).

And Dulles himself says, “Leaders of the next generation, it would seem, sometimes exploited the reputation of the founders by attributing to Peter, Paul, James, and John writings composed after their death, turning the founders into literary mouthpieces to give added authority to later works…” (15).

Keep Dulles’ disclaimer in mind as we proceed. Moving along:

“When a dispute broke out about the need for Christians to observe the Mosaic Law, a consultation was held with the Apostles and presbyters at Jerusalem, who handed down a judgment that they attributed to themselves and the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:1-29)” (14).

Two problems:

i) This tells us nothing about the status of a church council absent the participation of Apostles.

ii) Dulles is assuming that Acts is historically reliable. But contemporary Catholic scholars are less sanguine. Fitzmyer, in his commentary, says “the issue of the historical character of the Lucan account in Acts has been well studied, and it is clear today that a middle ground has to be sought between the skeptical approach and a conservative reaction to it. Once has to admit that at times Luke’s information is faulty and that he has confused some things in his narrative…” (124), while Brown, in his NT introduction, accuses Luke of “romanticizing” early church history.

Continuing with Dulles:

“Since his [Paul’s] oral preaching and his letters are of equal authority, the community of Thessalonica is to stand firm and hold to both (2 Thes 2:15)” (15).

Two more problems:

i) This is one of the letters which Brown classifies as pseudonymous (ditto: Aland). As we’ve seen, Dulles himself endorses the thesis of canonical pseudepigrapha. In that event, 2 Thes 2:15 is not a Pauline command to the church of Thessalonica. Rather, it’s the command of a Pauline imposter.

ii) Bracketing Catholic scholarship, the Thessalonians should hold to the oral preaching which they heard direct from the lips of Paul himself. It doesn’t extend to allegedly apostolic tradition from some thirdhand source (or worse). To the contrary, this very epistle warns the reader to be wary of spurious apostolic communications (2:2; 3:17). That’s the point of 2 Thes 2:15. It’s the polar opposite of a blanket endorsement of allegedly apostolic traditions.

“The Church experienced the need for continuing doctrinal authority to see to it that the biblical message was faithfully proclaimed and rightly interpreted” (15-16).

That conclusion doesn’t follow from his prooftexts. Rather, it’s tacked on.

“It is not surprising, therefore, that in certain passages from the Gospels the Apostles are addressed in a manner that would seem to include their successors. For example, Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus promises to remain present until the end of the age with those whom he sends to speak and act in his name” (16).

More problems:

i) Dulles is equivocating. Most Protestants don’t deny apostolic succession in the generic sense that the Apostles made disciples and appointed men to carry on after they died. But “apostolic succession” is a term of art with a specialized meaning in Catholic theology. Indeed, Dulles defines his terms at a later point:

“Each bishop receives with ordination the three functions (munera) discussed above in chapter 1: those of sanctifying, teaching, and governing. The capacity to exercise the munus of sanctifying, as occurs in sacramental actions such as the consecration of the Eucharist, is inseparable from the order itself, and can never be lost. The munera of teaching and pastoral rule, however, cannot be exercised except by bishops in the hierarchical communities with the head and members of the episcopal college (LG 22). Hierarchical communion, a condition for the exercise of these latter functions, is ruptured by schism or heresy” (49).

So this is what Dulles actually means by apostolic succession. Needless to say, you can’t get any of that from the text of Mt 28:19-20, and it’s deceptive to cite Mt 28:19-20 as a prooftext for apostolic succession when there’s such a gap between the content of the text and your operative definition.

ii) The kind of apostolic succession Matthew is dealing with is one generation of disciples making another generation of disciples—for the duration of the church age. This has nothing to do with “apostolic succession” in the Catholic sense of the term.

“Again, in his high-priestly prayer, Jesus asks the Father to consecrate his disciples in the truth (Jn 17:17-19). In other passages of the Last Discourse the reliability of the Apostles’ future testimony is attributed to the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, whose assistance is needed for every generation (14:26, 15:26-27, 16:7-15).

i) While 16:8-10 might apply to every generation, the scope of that statement is hardly restricted to the episcopate.

ii) Conversely, you can’t channel the other promises through 16:8-10, as if 14:26 and 15:26-27 apply to every generation. In context, they apply to the Apostolate.

So his prooftexts either prove too much or too little. They either apply too widely or too narrowly to single out the episcopate.

“Insofar as the Holy Spirit continues to keep the Church in the truth through the testimony of duly commissioned witnesses, the Church perpetually remains apostolic” (16).

More problems:

i) That conclusion doesn’t follow from his Johannine prooftexts. It’s yet another add on.

ii) Even if, ex hypothesi, the inference were valid, it doesn’t single out the Roman Catholic church as the recipient of this promise. As usual, Catholic apologists have Catholicism etched on their spectacles, so whenever they see a promise to the church, they assume, without further ado, that this promise much be referring to their own denomination. But that isn’t exegesis.

“The prophets and teachers of Antioch lay hands on Barnabas and Paul with prayer and fasting when sending them on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:3).

And what does Dulles think that’s supposed to prove? Ordination? Holy Orders? But Paul was already an apostle. Barnabas was already an evangelist.

“Barnabas and Paul take pains to install presbyters in each of the churches they establish in Asia Minor…Peter and the Twelve lay hands on representatives of the Greek-speaking Christians at Jerusalem (Acts 6:6). Paul exhorts the presbyter-bishops of Ephesus to carry on his ministry as guardians commissioned by the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28). To meet a crisis of leadership at Corinth, Paul affirms the authority of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicaus (1 Cor 16:15-18)” (16-17).

This is all irrelevant to the issue at hand. Except for the Plymouth Brethren, the Primitive Baptists, and a few Pentecostal fringe-groups, most every Protestant denomination accepts the principle of church office. We agree that the Apostles set up a regular Christian ministry. The Apostles laid the foundation, while pastors are custodians of that foundation.

None of the material cited by Dulles begins to specify the Catholic Magisterium. Indeed, drawing our attention to the house-church of Stephanas only reminds us of the vast gap between NT polity and Catholic polity.

“The preservation of continuity through duly commissioned, Spirit-=guided leaders is further developed in the Pastoral Letters…Paul instructs Titus…He likewise admonishes Timothy” (17).

It’s deceptive for Dulles to attribute these statements to Paul when Dulles, in fact, regards the Pastorals as pseudepigraphal. And this goes to the heart of his argument. Traditionally, the Pastorals were cited as evidence of apostolic succession under the assumption that they were written by an Apostle to one or more of his successors. That, alone, won’t get you apostolic succession, but that’s a necessary condition for the argument to have any traction.

If, however, you deny the Pauline authorship of the Pastorals, then what we actually have is an imposter who is writing to a fictitious deputy of Paul. The whole exercise is a literary artifice. Paul is not the writer, while Timothy and Titus are not the recipients. So even if, for the sake of argument, the Pastorals taught apostolic succession, that would be an imaginary apostolic succession.

Mind you, I don’t share Dulles’ views on pseudonymity. I’m merely evaluating his appeal on his own grounds.

Dulles proceeds to cite 1 Tim 4:14 and 2 Tim 1:6 to show that “the idea of apostolic succession in the ordained ministry is beginning to emerge” (17).

Two problems:

i) His interpretation is dubious. As a leading commentator notes, “the increasingly popular understanding of the ‘gift’ as a commissioning to office (making Timothy the paradigm of later church officers to whom the gifts and authority for ministry were limited) is out of place in this text,” P. Towner, The Letters To Timothy and Titus, 322.

“The language here and in the parallel text in 2 Tim 1:6 will not bear the strain imposed by making charisma into ‘office.” As Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 772-73, points out, even if in 4:14 the idea of neglecting an office is reasonable enough (though can an office be ‘in you’?), the imagery of fanning into flame the ‘gift of God’ cannot be applied sensibly to an ‘office’ (773). See also Marshall, 564-65,” ibid. 322n40.

ii) To say that we see the idea of apostolic succession “beginning to emerge” is prejudicial. This assumes that the Pastorals only present a seminal version of church polity. A work in progress. An unfinished product which has to be completed by subsequent, postapostolic developments.

But why should we assume that NT polity is deficient? Why not assume that Paul and other NT writers who speak to the subject laid down the necessary ingredients of church polity?

To Dulles, the NT data is defective because he views it through the lens of Catholicism. But does his viewpoint reflect the viewpoint of the NT writers?

If you’re Catholic, then, by definition, NT polity is inadequate since it falls far short of Catholic polity. You look at the data and see all the missing pieces.

But that’s a consequence of Catholic theology. That begs the question in favor of Catholicism. And whatever else that may be, it’s not exegesis.

He then has a section on the “Responsibilities of Pastors,” in which we read things like “Paul in the Second Letter of Timothy…to Titus he writes…Paul warns…(Eph 4:14)” (17-18).

Once more, it’s duplicitous of Dulles to attribute these statements to Paul when he denies the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles and Prison Epistles.

And there’s a larger point which he overlooks: he quotes the Pastorals to establish the authority of church office, but he doesn’t hold the Magisterium to the qualifications laid down in his deutero-Pauline prooftexts. What does Paul say on the subject?

1 Timothy 3:1-7

1The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? 6He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

Titus 1:6-9

6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. 9He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

But many popes, cardinals, and bishops don’t measure up to this standard. If you applied that yardstick to the papacy, then many popes would be antipopes. If you applied that yardstick to the episcopate, then that would invalidate the ordination of many cardinals and bishops. If these are qualifications for church office, then noncompliance disqualifies you for (or from) church office.

Why is it that Catholics like Dulles appeal to the Pastorals in making a case for apostolic succession when they fail to measure the Magisterium by the actual job description contained therein? Because apostolic succession would immediately unravel.

It’s quite unscrupulous of Dulles to cite this material in support of Catholic ecclesiology when he’s so selective about how he applies it. He only cites it to establish the rights of a bishop, without holding bishops to the commensurate responsibilities. But if apostolic succession would come apart at the seams as soon as you compare the Magisterium with the Pauline job description, then that falsifies the Magisterium.

Continuing:

“Peter in his Second Letter…” (18).

But Dulles doesn’t believe that Peter wrote 2 Peter. It’s unethical of Dulles to take the position of Ray Brown or Kurt Aland on authorship, then continue to attribute these documents to their putative authors for polemical purposes.

“If the ‘angels’ of the seven churches of Asia Minor in the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation are, as many believe, bishops, we have here a confirmation that by late New Testament times each local church in Asia Minor may have had a single bishop as its pastor” (19).

Several problems with this inference:

i) There are good arguments for both the late dating and the early dating of Revelation.

ii) The identity of the “angels” is disputed. Aune rings the changes on the interpretive options. Cf. Revelation 1-5, 108-12.

iii) Even if we identify the “angels” as church officers, that wouldn’t establish singular eldership. The “messengers” could just as well be delegates to Patmos from the seven churches of Asia Minor.

iv) Dulles is apparently unaware of the fact that, as Aune points out, “sometimes the address shifts to the second person plural” (109). So the singular number is not used throughout. Rather, it alternates with the plural number, depending on the context.

v) Dulles is tacitly assuming an evolutionary view of NT polity, where Revelation represents a development away from plural eldership to singular eldership. But why assume that everyplace had to use the same model? Why not assume a measure of flexibility? After all, the NT church had a limited talent pool. Would we really expect a standardized model throughout the far-flung Roman Empire? Certainly we see this on the mission field, where missionaries have to be adaptable—and the NT church was a missionary church. Why superimpose a diachronic grid on the data? Why assume there couldn’t be legitimate variation from one place to another?

“The New Testament exhibits Church order in its formative stages, but more time was needed for Church order to assume its definitive form” (20).

i) Once again, this assessment begs the question by assuming that the NT only gives us an embryonic version of church polity.

You would only make that assumption if you treat the Catholic Magisterium as your point of reference. Did the NT writers think they were giving us a merely “formative” version of Church order? Subdividing the material into stages on a trajectory to the Catholic Magisterium superimposes a Catholic framework onto the data. Dulles didn’t extrapolate that framework from his prooftexts.

ii) And who would supply the “definitive form”? The Magisterium. So the Magisterium is writing its own job description. The evolution of the Magisterium by and for the Magisterium. Like a military dictator who pins medals on his own uniform.

“Together with the promise of perpetuity, Christ has given to the Church the means whereby she can assuredly remain ‘the pillar and the bulwark of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15; cf. 2 Tim 2:19)” (65).

i) Here we see traditional Catholic prooftexting. And because it’s traditional, it doesn’t bother to go back and reexamine the text in context. But, in context, this has reference to the local church. And, in context, the local church would be the church of Ephesus, not the church of Rome or the universal church.

ii) Moreover, it’s disingenuous to cite traditional prooftexts for your position after you deny the traditional authorship associated with the traditional prooftexts.

iii) The “promise of perpetuity” doesn’t single out the church of Rome.

Dulles’ case for the Magisterium in the NT is a tissue of fallacies. It has a cumulative effect if you ignore the fact that every link in the chain is broken. A string of fallacies only adds up to a fallacious sum-total.

Double Cross

I’ve been asked to comment on a post by Bryan Cross:

http://principiumunitatis.blogspot.com/2008/07/dr-robert-godfrey-on-sola-scriptura.html

“His article starts by distinguishing between ‘Protestant Catholics’ and ‘Roman Catholics’. This is odd for two reasons, first because he uses titles that each side generally does not use for itself. Protestants generally do not refer to themselves as Catholics, let alone ‘Protestant Catholics’. And Catholics do not generally refer to themselves as ‘Roman Catholics’. We are Catholics, and if we are in the Latin Rite Particular Church within the Catholic Church, we are properly ‘Latin Rite Catholics’, not Roman Catholics.”

I assume Godfrey draws this distinction because he wishes to deny to the Church of Rome its monopolistic claim to be the “universal” church.

“Second, Dr. Godfrey's terminology suggests that both Protestants and Catholics are members of a larger genus, i.e. Catholic.”

That might be a valid criticism. Depends on what Godfrey meant. However, this semantic quibble is of no consequence. I doubt most people think of “Catholic” as a synonym for “universal.” For them, it’s just a brand name, like Bayer, or Kleenex or Xerox. So I myself don’t have any objection to calling papists Catholics, or the church of Rome the Catholic church.

“Dr. Godfrey says here that the Protestant conception of sola scriptura is that ‘Scripture alone is our authority’. If we took this statement at face value, it would imply that no Protestant pastor or session or presbytery or general assembly has any authority over any Protestants. But of course in practice such Protestant offices and bodies do exercise some sort of authority over those persons who have placed themselves under them. So either Dr. Godfrey is not being careful here, or he is endorsing the individualism of private judgment and solo scriptura.”

Here I think Cross is being pedantic. Godfrey is speaking, not in absolute terms, but in the context of the historic conflict with Rome.

“Rather, the Catholic Church teaches that the oral tradition and teaching authority of the Church already existed, from the day of Pentecost on, in the teaching and preaching of the Apostles. The New Testament Scriptures were eventually added to the oral tradition and to the teaching authority of the Church.”

Actually, that formulation assumes a two-source theory which modern Catholicism denies.

No, the Scriptures weren’t “added to oral tradition,” as if these two modes of transmission continued on parallel tracks. Oral tradition dried up. The written word supplanted the spoken word. The spoken word was committed to writing.

What is more, it’s misleading to treat orality as prior to textuality. 1C Jews didn’t belong to an illiterate or preliterate culture. Speaking and writing could coexist side-by-side. For example, Paul was both a preacher and a writer. Cross is peddling the position of the liberal German form critics.

It also overlooks the fact that orality frequently presupposes textuality. Orality is a mode of textual transmission. You can transmit a text orally. Commit the text to memory, then quote it from memory. Bible writers do this all the time.

“But the Church has never existed without her teaching authority, and without the oral tradition in the form of the preaching of the Apostles.”

And the church has never existed without Scripture. The Apostles were preaching from the OT scriptures. From Messianic prophecy.

It’s also misleading to speak of the church’s “teaching authority” in the abstract, as if there’s some sort of free-floating entity called “teaching authority.” Rather, that authority was grounded in the Apostolate. It’s not something you can treat as detachable and transferable.

“It is not difficult to show that since Scripture is the Word of God, and obviously nothing can have more authority than the Word of God, that therefore the Scripture must be the "ultimate" [i.e. highest] intrinsic authority in the Church. But no one disagrees with that. That is not what the Protestant-Catholic disagreement concerning sola scriptura is about. The Catholic Church teaches that her leadership is the servant of the Word of God. (CCC 86).”

This is one of those dishonest tactics that Catholic epologists like Cross resort to. They pretend that Protestants just don’t understand the nature of the claim.

But we’re perfectly aware of what Rome says on paper. In practice, however, Rome pays lipservice to the final or ultimate authority of Scripture. At a functional level, Rome subordinates the authority of Scripture to the authority of the Magisterium.

“So the point of disagreement (between Protestants and the Catholic Church) regarding sola scriptura is not primarily about which authority in the Church has the most or highest intrinsic authority, but is rather about who has final or highest interpretive and teaching authority, and on what ground or basis these persons have such interpretive and teaching authority.”

That’s a purely formal distinction which doesn’t obtain in a real world situation. Interpretive or teaching authority is the functional equivalent of the most or highest intrinsic authority because you can’t appeal the Magisterial teaching or interpretation to the higher court of Scripture. Rather, the Magisterium presumes to speak for Scripture. Scripture means whatever the Magisterium says it means. Therefore, Scripture has no authority over the Magisterium.

“(The disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church regarding whether the Word of God was also passed down as oral Tradition depends for its resolution on who has interpretive and teaching authority to give the authoritative ecclesial judgment on this question.)”

The equation of sacred tradition with oral tradition is obsolete. Catholicism now operates with a concept of living tradition. Oral tradition is static. It can’t develop.

If Jesus really said things to the Apostles which were never committed to writing, but were, instead, passed along by word-of-mouth, then that’s a fixed deposit.

“Bound up in the [Protestant] concept of sola scriptura is much more than the mere notion that Scripture is the highest intrinsic authority in the Church. The Protestant conception of sola scriptura includes the assumption of perspicuity, namely, that the Scripture is sufficiently clear and plain that whatever is necessary to be believed for salvation can be known by everyone who reads it.”

That’s a simplistic caricature of the actual position. For example, “Perspicuity does not exclude the means necessary for interpretation (i.e. the internal light of the Spirit, attention of mind, the voice and ministry of the church, sermons and commentaries, prayer and watchfulness). For we hold these means not only to be useful, but also necessary ordinarily,” Turretin, Institutes, 1:144.

“This perspicuity assumption is taught nowhere in Scripture or Tradition; it is a novel assumption imported by Protestants from outside Scripture and Tradition to the process of interpreting Scripture. We do not find it in the first 1500 years of the Church, just as if the Apostles did not teach any such doctrine to the Church.”

In public debates with the Jews, as well as writing to Christians, the Apostles appeal directly to the OT Scriptures. They assume their audience can follow an exegetical argument. They assume their audience can decide for themselves which side has the better of the argument.

Whether or not “Tradition” teaches perspicuity begs the question in favor of Bryan’s Catholic ecclesiology.

“Nor would the Apostles likely have done so, given that the printing press was not invented until the fifteenth century.”

Two problems with that objection:

i) That objection would cut, with equal force, against Magisterial documents. Textuality isn’t limited to Scripture. It includes the church fathers, papal bulls, canon law, &c.

ii) The absence of the printing press didn’t prevent Jesus and the Apostles from constantly referring their audience to the OT scriptures—just as it didn’t prevent OT prophets from constantly referring their audience to the provisions of the Mosaic covenant.

“So the Catholic response to the sixteenth century Protestant claim regarding perspicuity is ‘Who told you that perspicuity is true?’”

Jesus, the Apostles, and prophets.

“And what ecclesial authority did he have?"

That begs the question in favor of Bryan’s Catholic ecclesiology.

“I want to focus not on the origin but on the implications of the perspicuity assumption. The perspicuity assumption implies that we do not need any interpretive authority, if by 'need' we are referring to only what is necessary to know and believe for salvation.”

Two more problems:

i) As the quote from Turretin illustrates, this is a straw man argument.

ii) Bryan also rigs the issue by casting the issue in terms of interpretive “authority.” But why should we accept that framework?

For example, Bryan is attacking perspicuity in the context of a post on his blog. Do his readers require interpretive authority to correctly interpret his objections to sola Scriptura? Has the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith issued an authoritative interpretation of Bryan’s post? Can we find that on the Vatican’s official website? I don’t think so.

So Bryan’s objection to perspicuity is self-refuting. For his objection to perspicuity presupposes perspicuity. He applies perspicuity to his own statements. He conveniently exempts his own statements from his general argument. And he is banking on the competence of his readers to correctly interpret his statements.

If we were to apply his objections to perspicuity to his own statements, his exercise would be futile.

You don’t need an authoritative interpretation to have a correct interpretation. If you got it right, then authority is irrelevant.

“And whatever else might be good to know, we can decide for ourselves whether we want to learn it.”

That attitude isn’t limited to Protestant circles. It’s just as prevalent in Catholic circles. You can resist any authority, whether Biblical authority or ecclesial authority. Simply shifting the locus of authority changes nothing.

“So right here, in an implicit assumption hidden behind the more obvious and explicit definition of sola scriptura, is the basis for the individualism that makes each Protestant interpreter his own final interpretive authority.”

Once again, he frames the issue in terms of authority: individual authority over against ecclesial authority. Why should we accept that framework?

Consider the dustup between the blind man and the Pharisees in Jn 9. Which side had more authority? The Pharisees were the authority-figures in that exchange. So what?

He was right and they were wrong. Authority is irrelevant. He wasn’t making himself the final authority. It was never a question of who was in authority. It was simply a question of who was right and who was wrong.

In fact, pulling rank is a typical tactic on the part of those who are losing the argument. When the argument doesn’t go their way, they invoke their authority as a last-ditch appeal.

“But what if salvation is more complicated than that? What if there are gradations of happiness in heaven, and our measure of happiness in the life to come has something to do with how we live in this life? What if we are called to be saints in this life, to be perfect, and yet we only do the very minimum, squandering a life-time of opportunities for acts of heroic virtue? In that case, the minimalistic and nominalistic approach to Christianity that seeks to do whatever just gets people inside the pearly gates is a misleading theology that potentially detracts from our eternal happiness.”

Noting is more minimalistic than Catholic piety. Fornicate Monday through Saturday. Go to confession. Arrive late at Mass. Skip the hymns. Skip the prayers. Skip the homily. Trust in a wafer for your salvation. Light a candle to the BVM when you get in trouble. Pay a priest to recite a requiem Mass for you’re after dead.

In Catholicism, the Mass is a mousetrap. Trap Jesus in a piece of bread for long enough to swallow him. That way, you have Jesus inside of you. That way, God can’t damn you without damning Jesus.

“If as perspicacity implies we do not need an interpretive authority, then there is no point to a Magisterium having authority in perpetual succession from the Apostles.”

So true.

“Perspicuity makes the Church's Magisterium both superfluous, obsolete and presumptive, for surely Jesus would not have established an enduring interpretive authority if we did not need such a thing.”

So true.

“Therefore, given the perspicuity of Scripture, it follows logically that those persons claiming to have interpretive authority from the Apostles are at best mistaken and at worst presumptive, having at some point arrogated to themselves an authority that they do not have.”

So true.

“Perspicuity in this way is incompatible with the Catholic Church's long-standing teaching regarding the role and authority of the bishops in succession from the Apostles.

So true.

Bryan is on a roll here. This is the best part of his post.

“The Protestant notion of perspicuity entails and grounds the ecclesial consumerism that in practice leads to the vast proliferation of sects, for since there is no given interpretive authority, then by default we are left to accumulate to ourselves teachers who teach according to what we believe. (2 Tim 4:3).”

Of course, Bryan himself is an ecclesial consumer. He’s a product of the American religious supermarket. He himself has strolled down various aisles of spirituality, buying one product, and then another. He decided for himself from whom to learn what’s necessary for salvation. He ended up accumulating to himself teachers who teach according to what he believes. The only difference is that his teachers are Catholic teachers. He has hired Catholic masseurs to rub his itching ears.

“And both the explosion of competing Protestant sects and their inability to reconcile with each other over the past five hundred years undermines the notion that we have no need [if not in the sense of personal salvation, at least in the sense of corporate unity] for a living interpretive authority.”

Of course, this sort of invidious comparison pivots on a fallacy of arbitrary selection. He takes his own church as the frame of reference, then wags his finger at all the other Christian “sects.”

Needless to say, that begs the question. Why should Rome supply the standard of comparison?

Bryan is arguing from his position. But you’re not entitled to argue from your position before you argue for your position.

Bryan is like a marble that deplores the vast proliferation of other marbles. There are too many marbles in the world. A veritible explosion of competing marbles.

But Bryan is just another marble. What makes his marble so special? Even if there are too many marbles in the world, that doesn’t make his marble the one true marble. As one marble to another, he’s in no position to be so disapproving. If we have too many marbles, then maybe his marble should be melted down to lessen the proliferation of competing marbles.

Let’s also remember that sola Scriptura is not the only reason for the proliferation of “sects.” The Inquisition impeded the explosive growth of denominations. Does Bryan think we should go back to the good old days of Torquemada?

“Protestant history testifies that we need a perpetual interpretive authority in order to maintain ecclesial unity.”

That begs the question of whether we need to maintain ecclesial unity. And how we define it. There was a lot of ecclesial disunity in 2nd Temple Judaism.

“So in this way Protestant history testifies against perspicuity, and in favor of what the Catholic Church has always taught about her bishops and the nature of their authority as passed on through sacramental succession from the Apostles.”

It only testifies against perspicuity if you buy into Bryan’s gratuitous assumptions. And even if you buy into his gratuitous assumptions, Catholicism is not the only alternative. Why not become Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox?

Moreover, Bryan hasn’t established sacramental apostolic succession. His skipping over many crucial steps in the argument.

“But already he has begged the question, possibly without realizing it. Consider what is implicit in his claim that ‘it can be shown that [my] position is the clear position of Scripture’. He is implicitly assuming here that no heretic could show [to that heretic's own satisfaction, and to those likeminded to him] that his own heresy is ‘the clear position of Scripture’.”

How does that follow from what Godfrey said? And how is that an implication of sola Scriptura?

Bryan has smuggled a subjective condition into Godfrey’s statement. The question at issue is not whether a heretic can prove something “to his own satisfaction.”

If Bryan is going to relativize every interpretation merely on the grounds that someone else can *claim* to show otherwise, then Bryan’s scepticism applies with equal force to his own interpretations.

He is also committing a level-confusion. The point at issue is not how we apply the rule of faith to a particular question (e.g. Christology), but the identity of the rule of faith itself. Whether we correctly apply the multiplication tables, and whether the multiplication tables are the correct standard to apply, are to very different issues.

“For if heretics can in principle do this, then the fact that someone can show [to his own satisfaction and that of those likeminded to him] that his own position is ‘the clear position of Scripture’ does not show whether that position is heretical or orthodox, in which case we would need the living Church authority to adjudicate the question for us.”

If, ex hypothesi, the arguments and counterarguments are equally matched, then how would the church adjudicate the question? That’s not a principled resolution to the dispute. That’s invoking the church has a makeweight. The church has no new evidence to shift the balance in one direction or another. Unless the church can argue for the superiority of its interpretation, this is a purely arbitrary show of force. Take it on our say-so even though we can’t give you a good reason to believe us.

BTW, it’s interesting how often, in their desperation, Catholic epologists take the side of Arians and other heretics. They concede that Arian exegesis was as plausible as orthodox exegesis.

How they think that playing the Arian card when debating Protestants is a good strategy has always struck me as self-defeating. All this tells me is that Catholics are no better than Arians.

It’s like a guy who’s a serial killer at heart, but he contents himself with watching splatter flicks instead because he’s afraid of getting caught. If the only thing that restrains Catholics from becoming Arians is faith in Mother Church, then that’s not much of a recommendation.

“Therefore, Dr. Godfrey's methodology, if it is to be consistent with Protestantism, must assume at least implicitly that in principle no heretic can show [to that heretic's his own satisfaction and to that of those likeminded to him] that his own heresy is ‘the clear position of Scripture’.”

This is such a dumb statement. It’s like saying that if I can’t prove to a conspiracy theorist that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job, then his explanation is just as good as mine. Or if I can’t prove to a ufologist that little green men didn’t crash land at Roswell, then his explanation is as good as mine. Whether you can persuade someone else is irrelevant to what is true. And if the evidence lies on one side of the ledger, then the church can’t drag it over to the other side of the ledger by ecclesiastical fiat. Authority is no substitute for truth.

“To approach Scripture as though each individual has the authority to determine definitively for him or herself what it says, is not to approach the Scripture in a neutral manner.”

Another straw man argument. Sola Scriptura isn’t predicated on the *authority* of the individual—much less the ability of an individual to determine *definitively* what Scripture means.

Because Catholics don’t expect to find answers in Scripture, they don’t bother to see what Scripture had to say on the subject. What interpretive process does the Bible hold believers to?

Take OT judges. Judges had to interpret the Mosaic law in order to apply the Mosaic law to a particular case. And, if you want to bring authority into the discussion, OT judges even had the judicial authority to do that.

Yet their judicial rulings weren’t infallible. They didn’t *definitively* interpret OT case law. It was a fallible judicial process. Innocent men could be convicted. Guilty men could be acquitted.

“It is to approach Scripture as though the first 1500 years of Christianity were deeply misguided, and Protestantism is true.”

So true.

“In order to talk about the issue of sola scriptura, therefore, we have to step back from debating the interpretation of the Scriptures themselves. That is the point Tertullian made here, and St. Vincent of Lerins made here.”

Citing Tertullian and Vincent begs the question in favor of Bryan’s ecclesiology.

“We have to examine how exactly the Church has operated from the beginning regarding the resolution of disputes over the interpretation of Scripture.”

“From the beginning” would have reference to the NT church. It’s hard to come up with any examples of disputes over the interpretation of Scripture in the NT church. There were various disputes in the NT church, but were there any disputes over the interpretation of Scripture?

Moreover, “the church” is a vague descriptor. Who was disputing with whom? What does Bryan have in mind? Apostles? False teachers?

“Only if the practice of the early Church...”

Notice that he’s shifting grounds. The “early church” is not synonymous with “the church from the beginning.” Even if the early church is inclusive of the NT church, that designation also postdates the NT church.

“Only if the practice of the early Church was to treat Scripture as self-interpreting, and as though there was no need for adjudication of interpretive disagreements by the Apostles and bishops would we be justified in approaching Scripture as though we ourselves have the authority to determine definitively for ourselves what it says.”

Now he begs the question by smuggling bishops into the process, as if episcopal authority is interchangeable with apostolic authority. That may represent his own viewpoint, but it’s no way to argue with a Protestant.

“If, however, the Church did not treat Scripture as self-interpreting, but relied upon the decisions of the bishops to determine what is the orthodox and authorized teaching of the Church and the authoritative interpretation of Scripture, then for us to approach Scripture as though the bishops are not the interpretive authorities of Scripture is performative, if not propositional, heresy.”

Notice the bait-and-switch tactic. Apostles have now dropped out of the process entirely.

“There is no neutral interpretive starting point here. Either we come to Scripture recognizing and submitting to the ecclesial authority of the bishops, or we come to Scripture rejecting [knowingly or unknowingly] the ecclesial authority of the bishops.”

True. At the same time, that’s a false dichotomy since there’s no reason we should cast the issue in prelatial terms to begin with.

What about recognizing and submitting to the final authority of Scripture while also consulting the history of interpretation—including modern commentaries?

“So the impossibility of neutrality here concerns those who know that the Apostles appointed bishops and gave them perpetual authority in the Church.”

Bryan is trading on equivocations.

“If we wish to know how to approach the Scriptures, we must determine what those bishops taught about their own authority in relation to the deposit of faith and the interpretation of Scripture. Otherwise, we will beg the question and talk past each other in the Protestant-Catholic ecumenical dialogue.”

To the contrary, it begs the question to insist that we must first determine what bishops said about their own authority. And, by definition, a bishop believes in episcopal authority. He’s not a “neutral” witness to his own office.

Moreover, even if we accept this prelatial framework for the sake of argument, Bryan is skipping over a number of preliminary steps.

You have to identify the true bishops. Before you can do that, you have to identify the true church. You must also verify the valid ordination of a bishop. If his ordination was invalid, he’s not a true bishop. And there are many impediments to valid ordination. Even if he’s a true bishop, you must also sift the true statements from the false statements since, even on Catholic ecclesiology, the average prelate is not infallible.

Bryan has a very lopsided view of ecumenical dialogue. He assumes everything he needs to prove, then imposes his tendentious assumptions on his Protestant conversation-partner. For someone who’s pursuing a doctorate in philosophy, he has a remarkably blinkered outlook.