Edski is like one of those dolls where you pull a string to play a prerecorded message. He lacks adaptive intelligence. Every conversation with him goes the same way.
Or, to vary the metaphor, have you ever seen a bug that fell into the bottom of a bucket, or bathtub, or sink? It can’t get any traction on the slick, steep sides, so it just keeps going round and round the bottom of the bathtub or bucket. Well, talking to Edski is like watching one of those ill-fated bugs.
Before I comment on his latest inanities, I’d like to make a general observation which ought to be fairly obvious to anyone who didn’t suffer from Edski’s insectival outlook. Scholars work with ancient texts. Archeologists also work with coins, pottery, and so on.
One can glean a lot of useful information this way. But you can’t know what it’s like to be alive at a certain place and time except by being alive at a certain place and time. There’s no substitute for the actual experience.
Ancient texts don’t attempt to exhaustively describe how people viewed the world. So much was taken for granted. Subconsciously registered. And even if they did attempt to be exhaustive, there are aspects of experience remain resistant to literary reproduction. There are things you can’t capture in words on a page. Moreover, it’s not as if ancient texts go into Proustian detail about what it felt like to be alive at a certain time and place.
The scholars that Edski is fond of quoting or misquoting didn’t live in the ANE. They’re simply working with ancient texts. Suppose you study a photograph of roast pheasant. You could learn a lot from pouring over every detail of the photograph. But you’ll never know what roast pheasant tastes like by seeing a color photograph of roast pheasant.
BABINSKI SAID:
“Actually that's exactly what I want you to think concerning NT writings, all of which appear to have retained the assumption of a flat earth just as older Scriptures did. The people who wrote the NT appear to assume a flat earth even in a world in which the spherical earth belief was the majority view among educated philosophers.”
Two problems:
i) Suppose NT writers shared the viewpoint of “educated philosophers.” Even if that were the case, we wouldn’t expect them to depict the earth in spherical terms, for NT writers reflect a literary tradition. Their imagery is frequently a carryover from OT imagery.
To see the typical stupidity of Edski’s inference, suppose we applied his reasoning to the imagery we find in Dante or Milton. Both poets resort to the furniture of Classical mythology. Yet that hardly means they share the viewpoint of Greek and Roman pagans. Dante was a Thomist, while Milton was a Puritan.
ii) Moreover, Edski’s inference is typically stupid in another respect: I could just as well say that, to all appearances, C. S. Lewis though Venus was a tropical paradise with floating islands. But minimally intelligent readers (unlike Edski) appreciate the fact that you can’t tell what Lewis really thought Venus was like by examining the terms of his depiction. For that doesn’t tell us what he intended to do with his depiction. To know what Perelandra means, you have to go outside the narrative. You have to know something about Lewis. The story won’t give you that. You can’t truly understand the writing unless you understand something about the writer.
“So, YES there was diversity in biblical times. But there is no evidence of such diversity in the Bible, not in the OT nor the NT which continued to reflect phrases and ideas and assumptions of a flat earth throughout.”
Once again, imagine if we took that approach to The Martian Chronicles.
“Second, can you cite some writings from the ancient Near East that demonsrate a spherical earth? Or that they debated the earth's shape?”
That’s an argument from silence.
“There was no debate back then, the earth appeared flat.”
As I’ve illustrated on multiple occasions now, it’s simplistic to say the earth appears to be flat. There are various clues to the contrary, which any thoughtful and observant percipient can “see” for himself. But talking to Edski is like pulling the string on a doll. All you get is the prerecorded message.
Mind you, I have no doubt that if everyone living in the ANE was as gullible as Edski, then the earth would appear to be flat. Of course, if everybody back then was as gullible as Edski, we’d still be eating raw meat.
“They didn't have telescopes and a Babylonian map of the world agrees with Sargon's geography concerning how limited their knowledge was of the earth's geography. The horizon spread out 360 degrees around them, and they imagined that was the earth, the flat circle of the earth. Isaiah agreed. Job agreed.”
i) Ancient maps naturally describe the known world, not the unknown world. However, any traveler would know perfectly well that the world didn’t come to an end at the point where he stopped sailing or walking or riding a donkey. It’s not as if travelers hit a barrier or event horizon. It’s not as if ancient mariners came to a point where the ocean either poured over the edge of the flat earth or else bumped up against the side of the cosmic fishbowl. Likewise, it’s not as if travelers by foot or donkey came to a point where the land petered out into nothingness. Just a blank.
They could always see additional land and sky beyond the point where they chose to stop. To have an empire, you have to have traders and soldiers. Armies to police or occupy the outposts of the empire. But armies know full well that political borders don’t coincide with the outer limits of the world. However vast the empire, there is always more land or sea beyond the national boundaries.
But it’s incomprehensible to Edski to put himself in the situation of men and women who lived every day in the real world. He keeps his eyes confined to an ancient text, as if an ancient author or reader didn’t interpret a text in light of his real world experience.
ii) Isaiah and Job don’t say the earth is a “disk.” And how could a disk have “corners”? A square disk?
To any halfway intelligent reader, that would be a clue regarding the figurative nature of the discourse. But, of course, Edski is a rationalist who never permits reason to contaminate the purity of his rationalism.
“Daniel and Matthew agreed that from a "great" height you could see or be seen to the ends of the earth.”
i) Once again, Edski is too credulous to put himself in the position of people actually living back then. Anyone could know by personal experience that there was more to the world than what you could see from climbing the nearest mountain. People frequently traveled well beyond what was observable from a mountaintop. They knew from firsthand experience that there were rivers and hills and valleys on the other side of the visible horizon. They knew the world didn’t only go as far as the eye can see, then suddenly terminate. Just take the far-flung travels of Abraham or Paul. Edski keeps imputing his own stupidity to the ancients.
ii) Indeed, at the risk of stating the obvious, and one must always belabor the obvious when dealing with Edski, one reason that hikers climb hills and mountains is to get their bearings. Which direction should they go? What’s the best route? What’s nearby or far away? How’s the terrain?
They use that as a temporary frame of reference to proceed on their journey. A hiker will do this periodically. He will see as much as he can from one hill. He will use that information to chart a path. He will move beyond the visual perimeter of that particular vantage-point, then climb another hill to reorient himself.
Of course, someone with Edski’s mentality wouldn’t survive very long in the bush.
“That the sun traversed the sky from one end of heaven or end of the earth to the other, just as Babylonians and Egyptians pictured it doing.”
And if that’s what they really thought, then we’d expect the sun to alternate course. To set in the west, then rise in the west and set in the east–back and forth, back and forth.
But it doesn’t do that. Instead, it always sets in the west and rises in the east, as if it…you know…went around the earth. A circular trajectory.
“I invite bloggers to consider the evidence, not to invent evident of a ‘diversity of views’ in the ancient Near Eastern world.”
The “evidence” ought to include what was evident to observers. Such as annual variations in the position of the sun along the horizon, at sunup and sundown.
“They knew little back then, so the way they ordered the cosmos and spoke about it seems to have made perfect sense--flat earth sense.”
Once again, talking to Edski is like pulling the string of a doll. Always the same prerecorded message.
But as I’ve illustrated, a flat earth doesn’t make “perfect sense” of the phenomena–even from the limited perspective of a prescientific, earthbound observer.
I have no doubt that this would make perfect sense to Ed Babinski, if he were living in the ANE. But not all denizens of the ANE were as dimwitted as he.
“Steve, I also AGREE with you that the book of Revelation is a mashup of OT and Intertestamental works, Ezekiel and the Book of Enoch being among them.”
Needless to say, I disagree with that pejorative description.
“Ancient logistics? How ancient? And how sophisticated? Basil and Augustine lived 200 years after the NT was already completed, and in a sophisticated Roman center of North African civilization. They had books galore. I assume they read Greek (or Latin translations of Greek) philosophers some of whom were the fathers of science itself. The Romans were also great architects, greater than the Hebrews in countless ways. Aquaducts, heated bath houses, and many feats of mechanics and engineering previously unknown. Even the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem was no Coloseum. So of course Basil was questioned by his pagan neighbors how the waters of the firmament in Genesis 1 remained above a solid inverted bowel-shaped firmament. "With admirable ingenuity Basil suggested that the firmament, which appears hemispherical on the underside, may, like a building enclosing a dome-shaped bath, have a flat roof." Both Basil and Augustine interacted with other educated people in a world of early science and Roman architecture. Educated peers, pagans and fellow Dhristians asked them questions about how to interpret Scripture concerning the truth of Genesis 1. However, the questions Basil and Augustin were being asked at this much later date were not the same questions that prompted the composition of Genesis 1 in the first place. No mechanical or engineering concerns were essential in the world of the OT that already shared with its neighbors some basic concepts concerning the creation and overall structure of the cosmos.”
Notice that Edski is moving the goalpost. He originally said things like:
“The ancients did not have your knowledge of modern physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, etc.; Today the geography of the earth and heavens is observed and measured more deeply than ever before via telescopes…But the ancients did not have the means we do today to test out such ideas. They couldn't see what lay beyond the clouds or beyond ‘the waters’ which they believed lay ‘above the highest heavens’; Today I assume there are no more flat earthers--at least none willing to take up the challenge of defending such a view in public, possibly because we now have photos and videos of what the earth looks like from space.”
Now, however, he’s appealing to how scientifically astute Greco-Roman pagans were. How they could raise mechanical/engineering objections to a triple-decker universe. Yet by his own yardstick, Greco-Roman pagans didn’t have telescopes or “photos and videos of what the earth looks like from space,” or our knowledge of “modern physics, astronomy, geology,” &c.
When confronted with obvious counterexamples, Edski changes the rules.
“In fact, I doubt that ancient Mesopotamians went round trying to pose scientific types of questions to each other's cosmic geographies at all. They were more interested in which god or gods were in charge and trying to make that god's feats appear the most marvelous.”
Actually, the Mesopotamians took a very keen interest in technological challenges:
Mesopotamian engineers had to worry about water storage and flood control as well as irrigation… Mesopotamian engineers built very large weirs and diversion dams, to create reservoirs and to supply canals that carried water considerable distances across the flat countryside. The scale of their irrigation was larger than in Egypt, and Mesopotamian irrigation was interventionist and active. Almost certainly the idea of diversion dams was brought to Mesopotamia from the hills, since the rivers are mostly perennial. Mesopotamian tradition suggests so: Sargon of Assyria, probably learned it from the ancient nation of Urartu. The scale and ambition of early Iron Age Mesopotamian projects was matched only in China and Egypt.
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH17oldirrigation.html
Continuing with Edski:
“What's strange is that you should bring this up as highly relevant to the point of ancient cosmic geography. You offer no evidence that the ancients shared the same concerns or thoughts as Augustine and Basil. No proof that the Qumranites did either in the first century, who had copied The Book of Enoch among other holy books.”
I don’t have to offer evidence for that. Rather, I’m answering you on your own terms. You were the one who framed the issue in terms of what prescientific people could know. I’m merely countering you own your own grounds by pointing out what prescientific people were in a position to know. You’re too muddleheaded to keep track of your own argument.
“There is no inherent incompatibility between being taken somewhere in the spirit (leaving one's body behind) and being taken literally upwards to heaven, multiple heavens if Paul is right. *smile*”
Paul doesn’t say he was taken “literally upwards.”
“The ancients certainly saw no incompatibility when it came to imagining spirits descending downward beneath the earth (again, leaving their bodies behind, at death).”
All you’re doing is to repeat the same mistake. You can’t very well prove that “ascending” imagery is literal by appealing to “descending” imagery, for to make the argument go through, you must first establish that “descending” imagery is literal.
Like the bug at the bottom of the bathtub, you just keep going round and round. You haven’t advanced the argument. You’re too obtuse to even grasp the question at issue.
“In fact if you want to also have the "city of Jerusalem" descending purely spiritually to earth, that's fine too. What would mean the Bible begins with a myth about a Temple Cosmos in chapter 1, and ends with another myth, about a descending city of God.”
That brief statement contains so many layers of incompetence that it will take a potato peeler to correct you:
i) Viewing the world in Gen 1 as a cosmic temple is hardly synonymous with myth. It means the (unfallen) world was sacred space. That’s not inherently mythical.
ii) Ontologically speaking, the cosmic temple isn’t modeled on the tabernacle (or Solomon’s temple). Rather, the tabernacle is modeled on the cosmic temple. That’s the order of being.
iii) Literarily speaking, the depiction of the cosmic temple may make use of architectural metaphors drawn from the tabernacle. That’s the order of knowing.
iv) The Apocalypse is a different genre than Genesis. The Apocalypse is basically an allegory about world history. An allegory about real-world people, places, institutions, and events–past, present, and future. The symbolic imagery, such as the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem, stands for something that happens in real space and time. But one needs to distinguish the symbol from the literal referent.
There’s nothing “mythical” about any of this.
“Steve, Chiding me for not mentioning exactly how many levels of heaven the Mesopotamians believed in (which varied) makes little sense.”
You misrepresented your sources.
“Secondly, attempting to cite the "political" rise and fall of particular gods to try and explain away "Mesopotamian cosmic geography" makes as little sense as citing modern day politics to explain away modern day cosmologies.”
That comparison only works under the assumption that Mesopotamian cosmographies had the same function as modern-day cosmologies.
“Beale in his book, The Erosion of Inerrancy, attempted to argue that not even the Egyptians and Babylonians believed in a firm sky. For instance he cites someone who argues that the Egyptian god's hands are not shown touching the sky to hold it aloft, the hands are merely "raised," and it was an "air god" so maybe, he argues, it's only saying that the sky is held up by air. But this type of argument propsed by Beale missed the fact that the sky is alread held up by her toes and fingers at opposite horizons, and the air god's head has the mountains on it which are also in direct contact with the sky (goddess') belly, suggesting as Keel says that the mountains at the far ends of the earth are holding up the sky. Pyramid scolls state the same thing. And there's passages about the sky being held up by pillars at the earth's four corners. And there's a wall-ring representation of the Egyptian sky above the earth. Beale mentions none of that to his readers.”
So according to Babinski, the Egyptians thought the structure of the world was literally a combination of a disk with “corners,” along with body-parts of a goddess. A round square with fingers and toes.
It doesn’t even occur to Babinski that this incongruous imagery might be a case of mixed metaphors.
“The same goes for his discusssion of Enuma Elish in which he ignores passages that say Tiamat's skin was stretched out, and she was raised aloft kind of like raising a tent, and guards were placed to keep her waters from escaping, and he neglects other passages that mention the heavens being made of stone, abodes of the gods.”
Hmm. Did Mesopotamians really believe the sky made from the bisected corpse of a sea goddess? How could a “solid dome” be made from the raw materials of a sea goddess? If a sea goddess is a personification of the sea, then wouldn’t she be made of salt water? Seems like a better candidate for a Jell-O dome.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Oral tradition?
One of the stock objections to sola Scriptura in Catholic apologetics is the claim that oral tradition preceded the composition of the NT. However, orality is not the norm in Scripture. Let’s take a few examples:
Exodus 17:14
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."
Exodus 24:7
Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient."
Deuteronomy 31:11
When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing.
Joshua 8:34
And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.
In these examples we see the interplay between the spoken word and the written word. At the same time, we also see the priority of the written word to the spoken word. The public reading of the word of God. The speaker is reciting a text.
I’d add that these are not incidental cases. For the Mosaic law is the foundational document of divine revelation.
Let’s take some further illustrations:
Jeremiah 36:8-10
And Baruch the son of Neriah did all that Jeremiah the prophet ordered him about reading from the scroll the words of the Lord in the Lord’s house.
In the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord. Then, in the hearing of all the people, Baruch read the words of Jeremiah from the scroll, in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the secretary, which was in the upper court, at the entry of the New Gate of the Lord’s house.
Nehemiah 8:1-3
And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.
Nehemiah 9:3
And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.
Not only is the written word chronologically prior to the spoken word, but the written word is causally prior to the spoken word. For the speaker is simply reciting a text–like a speaker who delivers a prepared speech.
The speaker doesn’t ad lib, then commit his extemporaneous speech to writing. The process is just the reverse. He’s like an actor reciting a script. A mouthpiece.
Let’s move to the NT:
John 20:31
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Revelation 1:1-3
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
Revelation 1:11
"Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea."
Revelation 1:19
Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.
Revelation 2:1
"To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
Revelation 2:8
"And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: 'The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.
Revelation 2:12
"And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: 'The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.
Revelation 2:18
"And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: 'The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
Revelation 3:1
"And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: 'The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars."'I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
Revelation 3:7
“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: 'The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.
Revelation 3:14
"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
Notice the sustained appeal to the written word. Jesus doesn’t tell John to pass along his message to the churches, by word of mouth. No. Jesus dictates a series of letters to the churches.
And, of course, John will also commit his visions to writing.
Exodus 17:14
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."
Exodus 24:7
Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient."
Deuteronomy 31:11
When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing.
Joshua 8:34
And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.
In these examples we see the interplay between the spoken word and the written word. At the same time, we also see the priority of the written word to the spoken word. The public reading of the word of God. The speaker is reciting a text.
I’d add that these are not incidental cases. For the Mosaic law is the foundational document of divine revelation.
Let’s take some further illustrations:
Jeremiah 36:8-10
And Baruch the son of Neriah did all that Jeremiah the prophet ordered him about reading from the scroll the words of the Lord in the Lord’s house.
In the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord. Then, in the hearing of all the people, Baruch read the words of Jeremiah from the scroll, in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the secretary, which was in the upper court, at the entry of the New Gate of the Lord’s house.
Nehemiah 8:1-3
And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.
Nehemiah 9:3
And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.
Not only is the written word chronologically prior to the spoken word, but the written word is causally prior to the spoken word. For the speaker is simply reciting a text–like a speaker who delivers a prepared speech.
The speaker doesn’t ad lib, then commit his extemporaneous speech to writing. The process is just the reverse. He’s like an actor reciting a script. A mouthpiece.
Let’s move to the NT:
John 20:31
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Revelation 1:1-3
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
Revelation 1:11
"Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea."
Revelation 1:19
Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.
Revelation 2:1
"To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
Revelation 2:8
"And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: 'The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.
Revelation 2:12
"And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: 'The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.
Revelation 2:18
"And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: 'The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
Revelation 3:1
"And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: 'The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars."'I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
Revelation 3:7
“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: 'The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.
Revelation 3:14
"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
Notice the sustained appeal to the written word. Jesus doesn’t tell John to pass along his message to the churches, by word of mouth. No. Jesus dictates a series of letters to the churches.
And, of course, John will also commit his visions to writing.
The Historical Nature Of Early Christianity (Part 1)
(This will be a three-part series.)
Papias described the origin of Mark's gospel as follows:
"Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely." (in Eusebius, Church History, 3:39)
If we don't begin with an assumption of a fictional genre, what's the most natural way of taking Papias' comments? He's referring to Mark's mediation of what was remembered of Jesus' actions and words by a historical witness who had contact with Jesus. He's discussing the historical memory of witnesses. Richard Bauckham discusses the evidence from Papias at length in his Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 12-38, 202-239. As he documents, Papias uses terminology that was part of the historiographical language of his day.
Bauckham also discusses a contemporary of Papias by the name of Quadratus (pp. 53-54). Here's what Quadratus wrote:
"But the works of our Saviour were always present, for they were genuine:— those that were healed, and those that were raised from the dead, who were seen not only when they were healed and when they were raised, but were also always present; and not merely while the Saviour was on earth, but also after his death, they were alive for quite a while, so that some of them lived even to our day." (in Eusebius, Church History, 4:3)
Notice the interest in historical evidence. Notice that the people Jesus healed are historical figures. They aren't fictional.
Bauckham points out something else that should be noted. Quadratus is concerned with emphasizing that the people in question were "always present". He uses that phrase twice. The people who were the recipients of Jesus' miracles seem to have served as ongoing historical witnesses to the miracles. The early Christians were concerned with having such witnesses and emphasizing their presence.
Irenaeus refers to Polycarp as a historical witness who provided eyewitness testimony:
"I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse— his going out, too, and his coming in— his general mode of life and personal appearance, together with the discourses which he delivered to the people; also how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he would call their words to remembrance. Whatsoever things he had heard from them respecting the Lord, both with regard to His miracles and His teaching, Polycarp having thus received information from the eye-witnesses of the Word of life, would recount them all in harmony with the Scriptures." (Fragments, 2)
"But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried on earth a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time,— a man who was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics." (Against Heresies, 3:3:4)
Papias described the origin of Mark's gospel as follows:
"Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely." (in Eusebius, Church History, 3:39)
If we don't begin with an assumption of a fictional genre, what's the most natural way of taking Papias' comments? He's referring to Mark's mediation of what was remembered of Jesus' actions and words by a historical witness who had contact with Jesus. He's discussing the historical memory of witnesses. Richard Bauckham discusses the evidence from Papias at length in his Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 12-38, 202-239. As he documents, Papias uses terminology that was part of the historiographical language of his day.
Bauckham also discusses a contemporary of Papias by the name of Quadratus (pp. 53-54). Here's what Quadratus wrote:
"But the works of our Saviour were always present, for they were genuine:— those that were healed, and those that were raised from the dead, who were seen not only when they were healed and when they were raised, but were also always present; and not merely while the Saviour was on earth, but also after his death, they were alive for quite a while, so that some of them lived even to our day." (in Eusebius, Church History, 4:3)
Notice the interest in historical evidence. Notice that the people Jesus healed are historical figures. They aren't fictional.
Bauckham points out something else that should be noted. Quadratus is concerned with emphasizing that the people in question were "always present". He uses that phrase twice. The people who were the recipients of Jesus' miracles seem to have served as ongoing historical witnesses to the miracles. The early Christians were concerned with having such witnesses and emphasizing their presence.
Irenaeus refers to Polycarp as a historical witness who provided eyewitness testimony:
"I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse— his going out, too, and his coming in— his general mode of life and personal appearance, together with the discourses which he delivered to the people; also how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he would call their words to remembrance. Whatsoever things he had heard from them respecting the Lord, both with regard to His miracles and His teaching, Polycarp having thus received information from the eye-witnesses of the Word of life, would recount them all in harmony with the Scriptures." (Fragments, 2)
"But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried on earth a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time,— a man who was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics." (Against Heresies, 3:3:4)
Does religion originate in the brain?
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Inaudible oral tradition
Last week or so I posted a number of comments over at Green Baggins. I’m reposting them here:
steve hays said,
October 7, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“What you are doing here is presenting a false dilemma: either Scripture is sufficient to preserve the Church in the unity Christ intended, or Scripture has no intrinsic meaning. That’s a false dilemma because there is a middle position.”
Notice how Bryan rigs the issue by framing the issue in terms of whether or not Scripture is sufficient to preserve the intended unity of the church. But before he can run with that, he needs to establish two key assumptions:
i) He needs to show that Scripture is supposed to preserve the unity of the church.
ii) He also needs to show, by responsible exegesis, that his allusion to Jn 17:21 supports his claim.
“The Scripture, being divinely inspired, has an intrinsic meaning that can be properly and rightly known only by the aid of the Spirit working through the Church.”
Textbook case of begging the question.
“Men may grasp at it with their own minds, but without the divinely established interpretive authority Christ established in the Church He founded, they fall into a thousand different incommensurable and irresolvable interpretations. The last five hundred years demonstrates that fact most clearly.”
Is he admitting that we can grasp the meaning of Scripture with our own minds?
“The Church never diminished Scripture to make room for Tradition. Tradition was always there since the Church was born on Pentecost. Tradition was there before the first book of the NT was written.”
And OT Scripture was there before the Christian church existed. For that matter, the prophet Amos was there before the papacy existed.
“Tradition is that by which the Church knew who wrote which books, and which books were to be canonized.”
“The Church” doesn’t know anything. “The Church” is a personification for a bunch of people.
And Bryan doesn’t really mean “the Church.” That’s his euphemism for the papacy and the episcopate. Bryan always speaks in code language. Using this rhetorical bait-and-switch tactic. Classic doubletalk, where “the Church” doesn’t mean “the Church.”
“The Catholic Church claims its authority on what Christ gave to St. Peter in Caesarea, not on the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 16. St. Peter already had the keys before the Gospel of St. Matthew was ever written. You’re evaluating the doctrine of the Catholic Church through a Protestant paradigm, as if the Catholic Church too holds to ‘sola scriptura.’ But that just begs the question, i.e. assumes precisely what is in question between us. From the Catholic point of view, we (Catholics) were there before the NT was written.”
From the Jewish point of view, Moses was there before the bishop of Rome.
“We knew about the keys before the NT was written.”
The collective “we” is just an imaginary retrojection. Bryan didn’t know about the keys before the NT was written.
“We didn’t learn this from Scripture, but from the lips of the living God incarnate, as He spoke them at Caesarea.”
Bryan is play-acting. Bryan didn’t hear this from the lips of Christ. Pope Benedict XVI didn’t hear this from the lips of Christ. We’re all in the same boat.
“One of our leaders (i.e. St. Matthew) later wrote the account down, in a book you got from us.”
i) Matthew was not a Roman Catholic. And the church of Rome doesn’t hold the copyright to the Gospel of Matthew.
ii) BTW, it’s nice to see that Bryan affirms the apostolic authorship of Matthew, but that hardly represents mainstream Catholic Bible scholarship. That’s the sort of thing evangelical scholars would still defend.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 8:34 am
Bryan Cross said,
“As Sean pointed out in the first comment in this thread, St. Paul commands the Christians to “hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.” (2 Thess. 2:15)”
i) This is a good example of how Bryan makes a specious case for Romanism. He begins by positing a false premise, then proceeds to build on his false premise.
ii) Notice the fatal equivocation of terms. See how he’s putting words in the mouth of St. Paul.
Paul doesn’t command Christians in general to do this. Rather, Paul commands the Thessalonians to do this. This command was directed at Christians living in the mid-1C. Christians living at the time the apostles were alive. Christians who actually had direct word-of-mouth knowledge of apostolic teaching. Christians who actually heard the apostles preach and teach.
iii) In the nature of the case, that type of firsthand access to the spoken word of the apostles is hardly interchangeable with 3rd, 4th, 5th-hand acquaintance.
iv) By contrast, the written word is accessible to posterity. As we know from the OT, that’s a primary reason Scripture was inscripturated in the first place: a permanent, public record of God’s revealed will.
v) Also notice that Bryan must quote a written source to even establish the existence of an oral source. So his knowledge of the oral source is dependent on his knowledge of the written source.
vi) As long as we’re quoting 2 Thes, here’s something else we should also quote:
“…not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way…” (2 Thes 2:2-3).
“I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write” (2 Thes 3:17).
So the Thessalonians are not to credit every putative apostolic “tradition” as an actual apostolic tradition. To the contrary, they are to be on their guard against spurious apostolic traditions.
Therefore, if Bryan is serious about applying 2 Thes to the situation of modern-day Christians, he needs to explain and defend the process by which he authenticates oral apostolic tradition.
“And that imperative applied to all Christians in the generation after the Apostles. They were to hold to everything the Apostles had taught, not only to those things written down by the Apostles. Not only does Scripture nowhere say to follow only what the Apostles wrote; it explicitly states that the believers should also abide by what they taught by word of mouth.”
Once again, Bryan is putting words in the mouth of St. Paul. Once again, Bryan is building on a false premise. Paul does not “explicitly” apply that command to all Christians in the generation after the apostles. Indeed, that’s not even implicit in what he says.
Rather, he applies that statement to listeners or readers who were contemporaneous with the author of the letter. This is all that St. Paul actually says in the verse cited.
Paul doesn’t say, “After I’m dead, your children are obligated to hold to hearsay claims attributed to the me and my fellow apostles.”
Rather, the Thessalonians are to hold to what *he* taught *them*. Either face-to-face communication, or via his signed letters, delivered by one of his known couriers.
“But on the contrary, claiming that all one needs to interpret Scripture are some exegetical tools, the historico-critical method and some lexicons, denigrates Scripture, by reducing it to a merely natural book, decipherable through natural tools and the natural power of human reason.”
That’s clearly fallacious. The nature of the audience has no bearing on the nature of the book. You might as well say the book can’t be inspired unless the reader or listener is also inspired.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 8:40 am
BTW, I can’t help but notice that Bryan is giving us his private interpretation of 2 Thes 2:15. I don’t see him quoting an infallible interpretation of 2 Thes 2:15 from the extraordinary Magisterium.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 10:02 am
BTW, I can’t help noticing that Bryan takes the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes for granted. But that’s not something he got from reading your average Roman Catholic scholar. Rather, that’s a carryover from his bad old days as a benighted evangelical. Like many evangelical converts to Rome, Bryan is to the right of his adopted denomination on Bible criticism. It’s not as if the hierarchy requires the laity to affirm the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes.
Now it’s possible that Bryan merely assumes the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes for the sake of argument. But if this is a purely tu quoque appeal, then he will need to restructure his argument. For a letter from a forger commanding his readers to adhere to his bogus apostolic traditions doesn’t seem to be a very promising starting-point to make the case for oral apostolic tradition.
So either way, Bryan has backed himself into a dilemma. Does he or does he not affirm the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes? If so, then on what grounds? It can’t be grounded in the official policy of his adopted denomination, for the Roman church doesn’t require that of its members. That’s not de fide. Indeed, there are Catholic Bible scholars in good standing with their ecclesiastical superiors who openly deny the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 10:22 am
Tom Riello said,
“My concern would be similar to what Pope Benedict has expressed about such notions: The Scripture is left to the playground of the exegetes and the historical/critical scholars to decide what is or is not still in force. Could your argument against Bryan possibly prove too much? Namely, that the Bible is subject to the whims of exegesis and the academy. One says this passage is still operative, the other says that this was for that particular time (I am thinking of Paul’s not allowing women to the ordained ministry) and still another says the passage is not authentic. How would you defend your position contra the liberal academy? What makes it different? (Please know that I am not asking in order to engage in some polemical fight but out of a genuine desire to hear your answer).”
i) Exegesis applies to texts generally–whether biblical, papal, patristic, conciliar, or secular. Bryan assumes that readers of Green Baggins can properly interpret his statements. Bryan assumes that he can properly interpret the statements of commenters at Green Baggins.
You had to interpret my statement to frame your question, and I had to interpret your question to answer it.
So if you think that leaves it to the “playground” of exegetes, than you objection applies with equal force to Magisterial statements as well as statements made by Catholic epologists like Bryan.
ii) Either exegetes give arguments for their interpretations or they don’t. If so, then it’s a question of judging the quality of the argument.
If you think we can’t judge the quality of an argument, then we can’t judge the quality of arguments for Roman Catholicism.
iii) As to historical/critical scholars, that depends, in part, on the evidence they adduce, but that also depends on their methods and assumptions. If, say, a historical/critical scholar is screening the witness of Scripture through the filter of methodological naturalism, then we’re entitled to challenge that hermeneutical grid.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 11:42 am
Tom Riello said,
“Given what you said, my concern is this: It seems that this understanding of interpretation only allows for making a quality argument, nothing more, nothing less.”
And why is that a source of concern? Didn’t Jesus and the Apostles reason from the Scriptures? They argued down their opponents.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Tom Riello said,
“Certainly you don’t think Jesus and the Apostles thought that their reasoning from the Scripture was only the putting forth of a quality argument.”
They thought it was sufficient to argue for their interpretation. That’s what they gave their audience. “My interpretation is right for this reason. Or, your interpretation is wrong for this reason.”
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Nick said,
“A recent example is when Steve Hays went around saying the Levitical Sacrifices modeled Penal Substitution, even condemning other Protestants for not believing it, but Steve went utterly silent (and even mocked me) when I called him out to prove that. Just see this article on his blog, scroll down to my first comment.”
That’s a documentable lie. I pointed out that Nick committed stock word-study fallacies.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the Church didn’t teach it.”
Mitt Romney said,
“I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the LDS Church didn’t teach it.”
Helen Keller said,
"I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the Swedenborgian Church didn’t teach it."
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the Church didn’t teach it.”
Unless you already knew that a church which teaches ecclesial infallibility is infallible, there would be no reason to believe its self-referential teaching.
“From the day of Pentecost, there was never a Tradition-less Church-less hermeneutical vacuum within which to interpet Scripture, against which one could test every incoming component of Tradition.”
From the day of Pentecost, there was never a Scripture-less church, for the Apostles preached from the OT.
steve hays said,
October 9, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Bryan Cross said,
” … what these Church Fathers did believe … has implications for papal primacy, even in cases where they may not have fully grasped the extent of those implications”).
That type of argument would enjoy some degree of salience if you were dealing with an inspired writer. For even if he were not fully conscious of all the implications of his statement, the unintended implications would still be inspired implications. And you could therefore draw valid inferences from what he said, regardless of whether or not he was fully aware of all that entailed.
But when you’re dealing with uninspired writers (e.g. church fathers), you can’t properly attribute to them a position of which they themselves were oblivious. You can’t make them bear witness to something they didn’t mean to affirm or deny.
Indeed, it’s often the case, because we’re shortsighted creatures, that when someone points out the unintended implications of something we said, we will retract what we said. We may exclaim, “Well, I hadn’t thought that through. But now that you draw my attention to the implicit consequences of my stated position, I see that I need to modify or retract my statement.”
steve hays said,
October 9, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“As discussed above regarding a tree and its fruit, because of this relation of truth and love, if the more deeply persons imbibe a particular position, the more they tend to lose graciousness and charity and become rude and uncharitable, this testifies against the truth of that position.”
i) I doubt that commenters like Pastor King and TFan have any fundamental objection to judging a belief-system by its fruits. They can speak for themselves, but I expect that one reason they oppose Roman Catholicism is because they’ve been judging Roman Catholic theology by its fruits.
ii) I’d also note that civil, charitable, ecumenical dialogue is hardly a historical trademark Bryan’s adopted denomination. Google the text of “Exsurge Domine.” Or Google the text of “Ad Extirpanda.”
“This discussion (above) is not genuine ecumenical dialogue, because genuine ecumenical dialogue is not about scoring points or ‘winning debates,’ but about reaching the truth together, in love.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, the usual purpose of a public debate is not for one debater to convince the other, or vice versa. Rather, debates are ordinarily for the benefit of the confused or the undecided. For the audience, and not the debaters.
That’s why most debaters debate. Not to persuade their opponent, which is normally an unrealistic expectation, but to get their best arguments in the public record.
“And when the uncharitable option is taken, communication becomes impossible, because then everything the other person says is (or can be) construed (and perceived) as insincere, malicious, deceitful, etc.”
Without commenting in Bryan’s motives, I’d simply like to make a general and fairly obvious point: not all writers or speakers argue in good faith. We see this all the time in politics, don’t see?
So there’s no presumption that everyone is entitled to the most charitable construction on what they say. That’s person-variable. Some people are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but others are not. That’s just the world we live in.
steve hays said,
October 9, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Nick said,
Turretin Fan #168,
I still don’t follow your logic. I was explicitly and repeatedly speaking of “a genuine inspired apostolic *doctrine*” and *you* not caring if they were inscripturated, to which you keep replying “I’m completely satisfied with the Bible. I don’t need something else.”
You’re missing the point that an inspired *doctrine* is part of Divine Revelation, it’s part of the Deposit of Faith that must be preserved and never lost. To say you’re fine with the Bible alone – *indifferent* to a genuine inspired oral Doctrine – is to say you don’t care about the full extent of God’s Teachings He gave specifically to help and assist man.
Well, TFan is more than able to speak for himself, but I assume he’s simply agreeing with God’s own judgment on the matter. If God didn’t see fit to preserve this or that inspired utterance, then why should TFan take issue with God’s providential wisdom?
Putting the same thing in reverse, God has, in fact, inscripturated everything that ought to be preserved for the ages. Nothing was lost that we can’t do without. Unlike the Romanist, we trust in God’s selection criteria. God knows best which of his words need to be memorialized for the benefit of his people.
steve hays said,
October 10, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“So, in my opinion, the ‘logjam’ is broken up by backing up, epistemically, to common ground between us. In particular, we agree that Christ came from heaven, became man, and founded a Church in the first century. That’s common ground.”
Actually, traditional covenant theology accentuates the continuity between the OT church and the NT church. So Bryan’s comparison is equivocal.
“We agree about the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible (excepting the deuteros).”
No, that’s not common ground. Vatican II limits inerrancy to saving articles of faith. Not only is that all the wording requires, but the wording reflects Conciliar deliberations involving an influential speech by Cardinal König, who dissuaded the bishops from reaffirming the traditional RC position on the plenary inspiration of Scripture.
That’s why liberal scholars like Joseph Fitzmyer, John Meier, Luke Timothy Johnson, and the late Raymond Brown (to name a few) reflect mainstream RC Bible scholarship.
However, I agree with TFan that this is a diversion from the issue at hand. I only mention this so that Bryan’s errors don’t go unchecked.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:01 am
Bryan Cross said,
“That’s not true. See ‘Vatican II and the Inerrancy of the Bible.’”
For documentation:
Any memory of old theories of verbal inspiration was to be omitted, and hence any form of an impersonal, mechanistic interpretation of the origin of Scripture… But this little word veritas that intruded here proved to be a living cell that continued to grow. But what did it mean? Only, “religious” or even “secular7′ truth, to use the language of the 1962 schema? This was the real problem that now had to be taken up with full force both inside and outside the conciliar discussion. This did not happen, and new suggestions for the solution of the inerrancy question, as modem research posed it, could be made only hesitantly.
Form F was worked out in the third session of the Council. The first change that strikes us is in the title of Article 11: “Statuitur factum inspirationis et veritatis S. Scripturae.” Inerrantia is replaced by the positive term veritas, which is notably extended in the text. In the course of the discussion on the schema in the autumn of 1964, various fathers from the Eastern and the Western Churches made important speeches on the necessity of an interpretation of the inerrancy of Scripture that would be in harmony with the latest findings of exegesis. It was variously pointed out that the doctrine of inerrancy received its particular and narrower formulation in the 19th century, at a time when the means of secular historical research and criticism were used to investigate the secular historical accuracy of Scripture, and this was more or less denied – which had inevitable consequences for its theological validity. The teaching office of the Church sought to concentrate its defense at the point of immediate attack: i.e. to defend the inerrancy of Scripture even in the veritates profanae generally defending the claim of the Bible and of Christianity to be revelation. To defend scriptural inerrancy in this sphere of secular truths various theories were employed which sought to prove the absolute inerrancy of Scripture on the basis of these conditions and attitudes.
Because of the apologetical viewpoint from which they started, they were in danger of producing a
narrowness and a false accentuation7 in the doctrine of inerrancy. Also in the area of the interpretation of Scripture and the rules pertaining to this we can see a similar phenomenon, which the Council observed in different spheres of theology and endeavoured to nullify: namely, the tendency to an apologetical isolation and the claim to absolutism of a partial view. With this kind of motivation for the defense of the inerrancy of Scripture in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, there was a weakening of the awareness that Scripture as the inspired, written word of God is supposed above all to serve the preservation and expansion of the saving revelation and reality given through Christ in the world. Of course it was always realized that this was the real purpose of Scripture. In the question of inerrancy, however, the emphasis was placed on the one-sided and isolated – accentuation of the veritates profanae. This tended to create uncertainty rather than a joyful confidence that God’s truth and salvation remain present in the world in an unfalsified and permanent form–namely through the inspired word. It was necessary to reawaken this awareness. The doctrine of inerrancy needed its own centre and the right accentuation.
In this respect the most important contribution was undoubtedly the speech by Cardinal Koenig on 2 October 1964. Several other fathers who took part in the discussion from 2 to 6 October either verbally or in writing came back to this point. The Cardinal first of all pointed out the new situation that exists in relation to the question of inerrancy. As a result of intensive Oriental studies our picture of the veritas historica and the fides historica of Scripture has been clarified. Many of the 19th century objections to the Old Testament in particular and its reliability as an account of historical fact are now irrelevant But Oriental studies have also produced another finding: “ . . . laudata scientia rerum orientalium insuper demonstrat in Bibliis Sacris notitias historicas et notitias scientiae naturalis a veritate quandoque deficere.” Thus Cardinal Koenig admitted that not all the difficulties could be solved. On the contrary, in certain cases they have an urgency that is borne out by scientific research. His speech mentioned a few examples: according to Mk 2:26 David had entered the house of God under the high priest Abiathar and eaten the bread of the Presence. In fact, however, according to 1 Sam 21: l ff. it was not under Abiathar, but under his father Abimelech. In Mt 27:9 we read that in the fate of Judas a prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. In fact it is Zech 11: 12f. that is quoted. In Dan 1: 1 we read that King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in the third year of King Jehoiakim, i.e. 607 B.C., but from the authentic chronicle of King Nebuchadnezzar that has been discovered we know that the siege can only have taken place three years later. Other geographical and chronological points could be quoted in this connection.
The fact that this speech could be held in a plenary session without any protest being made is surely significant… Thus Cardinal Koenig implicitly gives up that premise that comes from the aprioristic and unhistorical thinking that has dominated teaching on inerrancy since the age of the Fathers: if one admits that a sacred writer has made a mistake, then one is necessarily admitting that God has made a mistake with the human author.
The actual aim of inspiration allows us to find a better solution: one can still maintain the true influence of God on the human authors without making him responsible for their weaknesses. These relate only to the form or the outer garment of the Gospel, and not the latter itself, however much the two might be inwardly connected- indeed, without this genuine humanity, with all its limitations, Scripture would appear like a foreign body in our world. But God speaks to us in this way, in our language, from out of our midst.
A number of Council fathers followed the example of Cardinal Koenig and refer to him as an authority: others, admittedly in the minority, produced the traditional statements, without, however, dealing with the new points raised by Cardinal Koenig.
H. Vorgrimler, ed. Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (Herder & Herder,
1969), 3:204-207
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:18 am
For the record, I was just quoting from Aloys Grillmeier’s eyewitness account of the proceedings at Vatican II. For a corroborative eyewitness account, see Hans Küng’s My Struggle for Freedom: Memoirs (Eerdmans 2003), 366-68. They were there, Bryan was not. Therefore, I have more confidence in their firsthand accounts than a newbie convert who wasn’t on the scene, knows none of the participants, &c.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 9:54 am
Notice that Sean has quietly abandoned his original claim. He’s no longer appealing to what Paul said. Rather, he’s appealing to what church fathers said Paul said. This is the typical bait-n-switch tactic of the Romanist.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 10:04 am
I also notice that Sean has yet to furnish an infallible interpretation of his prooftext. Instead, he’s given us the private interpretation of church fathers. And Bryan is in the same boat.
It’s gratifying to see their unspoken faith in the right of private judgment.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 10:44 am
Tom Riello said,
“I brought this up earlier to Steve in reference to the 2Thess 2:15 referring only to them but it needs to be said again: why should we limit it this only to the Thessalonians? Scripture is not a dead letter but living and active and as Pope Benedict reminds us we are contemporaries with Scripture by the Spirit.”
That’s a fair question in its own right, but it changes the subject. Bryan attributed a specific claim to Paul that Paul never made. It’s important to clarify what Paul did or didn’t say.
Now, you may think that Paul’s statement has applicability beyond the immediate referent. And there’s some truth to that.
But before we get to that point we can’t allow this constant bait-and-switch to go unchallenged. Paul never said what Bryan imputes to Paul. Yet that was a premise of Bryan’s argument. We don’t permit Bryan to continue building on a false premise.
Concerning your question, I don’t think any of us object to following identifiable apostolic traditions. Other than Scripture, where do we find identifiable apostolic traditions?
You can’t simply appeal to oral tradition, for unless you can document the oral tradition, there’s nothing to appeal to. But, of course, if you can document the oral tradition in question, then it ceases to be an oral tradition.
And even if you can document a putative apostolic tradition, the next question is how to verify its apostolicity.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 11:10 am
BTW, we need to distinguish between oral transmission and oral tradition. If my mother tells me something about her childhood, that’s oral transmission. If my mother tells me something her mother told her about her mother’s childhood, that’s oral tradition. Likewise, if my grandmother tells me something about her childhood that’s oral transmission, not oral tradition.
2 Thes 2:15 deals with oral transmission, not oral tradition. The Thessalonians heard certain things firsthand from the lips of Paul. That’s not equivalent to oral tradition. Tradition is second or thirdhand information.
2 Thes is dealing with firsthand information, not hearsay.
This doesn’t mean secondhand information is inherently untrustworthy. Depending on the chain-of-custody, secondhand info can be reliable.
But that’s not what Paul is referring to in 2 Thes.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 11:41 am
Nick said,
“It’s also a good indication to me that a thread is going down-hill fast and that I shouldn’t invest any further time.”
I doubt your absence will be sorely missed.
“Nobody, be they Catholic or Protestant should be beating around the bush when someone asks for clarification…”
To the contrary, Romanists like you, Bryan, and Sean excel in the fine art of obfuscation rather than clarification. I don’t plan to follow you down every rabbit trail.
“You did the same thing to me on your Psub thread (see post #105), where I spoke openly and directly, and you came back with one line brush offs when it came to defending your original claims.”
You committed classic word-study fallacies of the sort James Barr exploded decades ago. It’s not incumbent on me to tutor you in basic lexical semantics. For a good introduction to the subject, see Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning (2nd ed.).
Let’s also keep in mind that you don’t speak for the church of Rome. You’re not an authorized representative. You’re not even a priest, much less a bishop, much less the Prefect, much less the Pope.
Some lay Catholic apologists are more influential than others, and so I focus on them. But you’re not that high on the pecking order.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Sean said,
“And you wonder why some of us no longer bother to participate on some of the other Reformed blogs.”
Sounds like a promising development. Anything we can do to expedite that trend?
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Nick said,
“But two factors go against that idea: (a) Paul is speaking in the context of salvation, holding onto saving truths, which would suggest God would preserve Providentially and (b) it isn’t a leap of logic to suggest 1st Thessalonians was included in his comment on ‘by letter’ in 2Th2:15, and if so means the ‘by word of mouth’ would also be included in the saving truths category.”
i) Suppose we play along with this for the sake of argument. If oral tradition preserves saving truths which are not preserved in Scripture, and if the church of Rome is the repository of this information, then all non-Catholics are damned.
However, that’s hardly the position of Vatican II, which make allowance for the salvation, not only of non-Catholics, but even non-Christians.
ii) But there is another problem with Nick’s argument. Protestants don’t contend that 1-2 Thessalonians contain all things necessary for salvation. Sola Scriptura doesn’t refer to 1-2 Thessalonians, but to the 66 books of the canon in toto. So even if 1-2 Thessalonians omitted one or more saving articles of the faith, how does that undercut the Protestant position? It doesn’t.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Tom Riello said,
“I just wanted to point people to a brilliant little post by Dr. Michael Liccione over here.”
Okay, let’s comment on that:
Michael Liccione:
“The Catholic Church teaches that each of those is necessary and that all are mutually supporting. Scripture alone does not suffice, because a set of writings composed and collected by people over a period of centuries cannot certify itself as divinely inspired and inerrant.”
That’s far from obvious. On the one hand, later writings can certify earlier writings. Likewise, contemporary writings can certify each another. And there’s even a sense in which earlier writings can prophetically certify later writings.
“Of themselves, they tell us what various people said and did about God, but they do not tell us why what some of those people said is true or why what they did was appropriate.”
Once again, that’s far from obvious. Take the argument from prophecy. If it comes true, then it was true.
“I have spent years advancing two theses: (1) if it isn’t clear, from the beginning until now, which visible body counts as ‘the Church,’ then the question what counts as Scripture and Tradition is open to a debate that can never be definitively settled.”
Once more, that’s far from obvious. For even if we accept his tendentious criterion of visibility, why stipulate that visibility must be embodied in just one “church.” Why can’t several churches “visibly” embody the truth?
“(2) if whichever body counts as ‘the Church’ is never preserved from error when interpreting Scripture and Tradition, then the meaning of Scripture and Tradition is up for indefinite debate, even if their content is not. In the final analysis, the Christian religion would reduce to a matter of opinion. And if that’s so, then there is no principled way to distinguish between divine revelation on the one hand and human opinion about the ‘sources’ thereof on the other. I’m sure that’s not a result you desire.”
Several problems with this argument:
i) The is an argument for a historical claim (i.e. what God has done in church history) which entirely eschews historical evidence. But we don’t normally prove historical events by a priori reasoning. Imagine Liccione applying that to type of reasoning to other historical claims, like the stock market.
ii) The argument is regressive. The meaning which “the Church” assigns to Scripture then shifts to the meaning of “the Church’s” interpretation.
iii) What, exactly, is so bad about “opinion”? After all, some opinions are right while others are wrong. What’s so bad about with having an opinion as long as you are right and the other guy is wrong? Does Liccione think all opinions command equal deference?
iv) His objection is self-defeating. Liccione thinks the church of Rome is the true church, but, of course, that’s just his opinion. In the final analysis, his analysis reduces to a matter of opinion.
v) A major reason that NT writers penned the NT is because the apostles couldn’t be everywhere–in time and space. So they communicate through the written word rather than the spoken word. For instance, John wrote to the Ephesian church (in 1 John) to settle a doctrinal crisis.
But imagine one of troublemakers saying, you don’t have to pay attention to that letter, since the meaning of his words is always open to debate. John can’t settle the issue by writing a letter. You may think he condemns Docetism, but that’s just your opinion. Only the Church can settle this issue.
So even though we have apostolic letters which were written with the express intention of settling an issue, Liccione has a loophole which gives 1C heretics permission to flout apostolic authority. It’s a license for insubordination.
Liccione doesn’t develop his theory from actual apostolic practice. To the contrary, he has an armchair theory which subverts the very purpose of a written document like 1 John.
vi) In fact, it’s striking that some letters were written even though oral transmission was available. Take the letters to the 7 churches in Asia Minor (Rev 2-3). Jesus doesn’t appear to the 7 churches, even though it certainly lay within his power to speak to them directly and individually.
Instead, Jesus communicates to them via the written word. He dictates the letters to the apostle John. This illustrates the priority of the written word. Although Jesus could just as easily have bypassed the literary medium, appeared to the 7 churches in person, and spoken to the congregants face-to-face, he uses a writer (John) to express his will.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Nick said,
“You’re confusing issues here. A person need not know each and every saving truth to be saved, and baptized infants are the epitome of this. Now, *if* Rome is the True Church and someone refuses to submit to it, it’s akin to refusing to submit to Christ, and thus they will indeed be damned. But that in iteslf says nothing itself of the content or extent of Divine Revelation, which is the subject we’re on.”
So in your Looking Glass world you redefine saving truths as damning truths. Saving truths aren’t something one must believe to be saved; rather, saving truths are something one must disbelieve to be damned.
If that’s the case, if Roman church is The One True Church, then the Roman church is the most dangerous institution in the world. Catholic apologists are a dire threat to the immortal well-being of humanity. For the state of ignorance is far safer than disbelief.
Therefore, by your reasoning, Roman Catholicism should be banned. Catholic literature should be burned. Catholics should be rounded up and quarantined. That way we won’t run the risk of learning saving truths which damn us. The less we know, the better our odds.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Nick said,
“Where did I say 1-2 Thess contain all things necessary for salvation?”
I see that you have problems following the argument. Nothing new.
Even if 1-2 Thes were insufficient, that doesn’t mean Scripture is insufficient. For even assuming that 1-2 Thes omit certain saving truths, if the omitted truths are stated elsewhere in Scripture, then that’s sufficient for sola Scripture.
steve hays said,
October 12, 2010 at 9:59 am
David Meyer said,
“Because that entails the several ‘truths’. Church #1 proclaims doctrine A as the truth. Church #2 proclaims doctrine A false. Thus these two churches do not (cannot) visibly or otherwise embody the truth. Either one or neither is the true Church.”
You don’t seem to know much about the facts on the ground. To take an obvious counterexample, the OPC and the PCA are two different churches. The OPC adheres to the Westminster Standards, and the PCA adheres to the Westminster standards. Different churches, same doctrine.
steve hays said,
October 12, 2010 at 4:09 pm
David Gadbois said,
“Here we are after 325 posts and we still are left without any identification much less documentation and proof of the existence of Roman Catholic oral tradition.”
That’s because you’re a godless outsider, David.
It’s like Free Masonry. Just as you have to become a 33º Mason before they divulge the trade secrets, you have to learn the secret handshake, the countersign, solve a few riddles , take a blood oath, and sacrifice a two-headed toad under a blue moon before The One True Church admits you into the esoteric mysteries of the disciplina arcana.
steve hays said,
October 7, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“What you are doing here is presenting a false dilemma: either Scripture is sufficient to preserve the Church in the unity Christ intended, or Scripture has no intrinsic meaning. That’s a false dilemma because there is a middle position.”
Notice how Bryan rigs the issue by framing the issue in terms of whether or not Scripture is sufficient to preserve the intended unity of the church. But before he can run with that, he needs to establish two key assumptions:
i) He needs to show that Scripture is supposed to preserve the unity of the church.
ii) He also needs to show, by responsible exegesis, that his allusion to Jn 17:21 supports his claim.
“The Scripture, being divinely inspired, has an intrinsic meaning that can be properly and rightly known only by the aid of the Spirit working through the Church.”
Textbook case of begging the question.
“Men may grasp at it with their own minds, but without the divinely established interpretive authority Christ established in the Church He founded, they fall into a thousand different incommensurable and irresolvable interpretations. The last five hundred years demonstrates that fact most clearly.”
Is he admitting that we can grasp the meaning of Scripture with our own minds?
“The Church never diminished Scripture to make room for Tradition. Tradition was always there since the Church was born on Pentecost. Tradition was there before the first book of the NT was written.”
And OT Scripture was there before the Christian church existed. For that matter, the prophet Amos was there before the papacy existed.
“Tradition is that by which the Church knew who wrote which books, and which books were to be canonized.”
“The Church” doesn’t know anything. “The Church” is a personification for a bunch of people.
And Bryan doesn’t really mean “the Church.” That’s his euphemism for the papacy and the episcopate. Bryan always speaks in code language. Using this rhetorical bait-and-switch tactic. Classic doubletalk, where “the Church” doesn’t mean “the Church.”
“The Catholic Church claims its authority on what Christ gave to St. Peter in Caesarea, not on the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 16. St. Peter already had the keys before the Gospel of St. Matthew was ever written. You’re evaluating the doctrine of the Catholic Church through a Protestant paradigm, as if the Catholic Church too holds to ‘sola scriptura.’ But that just begs the question, i.e. assumes precisely what is in question between us. From the Catholic point of view, we (Catholics) were there before the NT was written.”
From the Jewish point of view, Moses was there before the bishop of Rome.
“We knew about the keys before the NT was written.”
The collective “we” is just an imaginary retrojection. Bryan didn’t know about the keys before the NT was written.
“We didn’t learn this from Scripture, but from the lips of the living God incarnate, as He spoke them at Caesarea.”
Bryan is play-acting. Bryan didn’t hear this from the lips of Christ. Pope Benedict XVI didn’t hear this from the lips of Christ. We’re all in the same boat.
“One of our leaders (i.e. St. Matthew) later wrote the account down, in a book you got from us.”
i) Matthew was not a Roman Catholic. And the church of Rome doesn’t hold the copyright to the Gospel of Matthew.
ii) BTW, it’s nice to see that Bryan affirms the apostolic authorship of Matthew, but that hardly represents mainstream Catholic Bible scholarship. That’s the sort of thing evangelical scholars would still defend.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 8:34 am
Bryan Cross said,
“As Sean pointed out in the first comment in this thread, St. Paul commands the Christians to “hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.” (2 Thess. 2:15)”
i) This is a good example of how Bryan makes a specious case for Romanism. He begins by positing a false premise, then proceeds to build on his false premise.
ii) Notice the fatal equivocation of terms. See how he’s putting words in the mouth of St. Paul.
Paul doesn’t command Christians in general to do this. Rather, Paul commands the Thessalonians to do this. This command was directed at Christians living in the mid-1C. Christians living at the time the apostles were alive. Christians who actually had direct word-of-mouth knowledge of apostolic teaching. Christians who actually heard the apostles preach and teach.
iii) In the nature of the case, that type of firsthand access to the spoken word of the apostles is hardly interchangeable with 3rd, 4th, 5th-hand acquaintance.
iv) By contrast, the written word is accessible to posterity. As we know from the OT, that’s a primary reason Scripture was inscripturated in the first place: a permanent, public record of God’s revealed will.
v) Also notice that Bryan must quote a written source to even establish the existence of an oral source. So his knowledge of the oral source is dependent on his knowledge of the written source.
vi) As long as we’re quoting 2 Thes, here’s something else we should also quote:
“…not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way…” (2 Thes 2:2-3).
“I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write” (2 Thes 3:17).
So the Thessalonians are not to credit every putative apostolic “tradition” as an actual apostolic tradition. To the contrary, they are to be on their guard against spurious apostolic traditions.
Therefore, if Bryan is serious about applying 2 Thes to the situation of modern-day Christians, he needs to explain and defend the process by which he authenticates oral apostolic tradition.
“And that imperative applied to all Christians in the generation after the Apostles. They were to hold to everything the Apostles had taught, not only to those things written down by the Apostles. Not only does Scripture nowhere say to follow only what the Apostles wrote; it explicitly states that the believers should also abide by what they taught by word of mouth.”
Once again, Bryan is putting words in the mouth of St. Paul. Once again, Bryan is building on a false premise. Paul does not “explicitly” apply that command to all Christians in the generation after the apostles. Indeed, that’s not even implicit in what he says.
Rather, he applies that statement to listeners or readers who were contemporaneous with the author of the letter. This is all that St. Paul actually says in the verse cited.
Paul doesn’t say, “After I’m dead, your children are obligated to hold to hearsay claims attributed to the me and my fellow apostles.”
Rather, the Thessalonians are to hold to what *he* taught *them*. Either face-to-face communication, or via his signed letters, delivered by one of his known couriers.
“But on the contrary, claiming that all one needs to interpret Scripture are some exegetical tools, the historico-critical method and some lexicons, denigrates Scripture, by reducing it to a merely natural book, decipherable through natural tools and the natural power of human reason.”
That’s clearly fallacious. The nature of the audience has no bearing on the nature of the book. You might as well say the book can’t be inspired unless the reader or listener is also inspired.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 8:40 am
BTW, I can’t help but notice that Bryan is giving us his private interpretation of 2 Thes 2:15. I don’t see him quoting an infallible interpretation of 2 Thes 2:15 from the extraordinary Magisterium.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 10:02 am
BTW, I can’t help noticing that Bryan takes the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes for granted. But that’s not something he got from reading your average Roman Catholic scholar. Rather, that’s a carryover from his bad old days as a benighted evangelical. Like many evangelical converts to Rome, Bryan is to the right of his adopted denomination on Bible criticism. It’s not as if the hierarchy requires the laity to affirm the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes.
Now it’s possible that Bryan merely assumes the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes for the sake of argument. But if this is a purely tu quoque appeal, then he will need to restructure his argument. For a letter from a forger commanding his readers to adhere to his bogus apostolic traditions doesn’t seem to be a very promising starting-point to make the case for oral apostolic tradition.
So either way, Bryan has backed himself into a dilemma. Does he or does he not affirm the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes? If so, then on what grounds? It can’t be grounded in the official policy of his adopted denomination, for the Roman church doesn’t require that of its members. That’s not de fide. Indeed, there are Catholic Bible scholars in good standing with their ecclesiastical superiors who openly deny the Pauline authorship of 2 Thes.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 10:22 am
Tom Riello said,
“My concern would be similar to what Pope Benedict has expressed about such notions: The Scripture is left to the playground of the exegetes and the historical/critical scholars to decide what is or is not still in force. Could your argument against Bryan possibly prove too much? Namely, that the Bible is subject to the whims of exegesis and the academy. One says this passage is still operative, the other says that this was for that particular time (I am thinking of Paul’s not allowing women to the ordained ministry) and still another says the passage is not authentic. How would you defend your position contra the liberal academy? What makes it different? (Please know that I am not asking in order to engage in some polemical fight but out of a genuine desire to hear your answer).”
i) Exegesis applies to texts generally–whether biblical, papal, patristic, conciliar, or secular. Bryan assumes that readers of Green Baggins can properly interpret his statements. Bryan assumes that he can properly interpret the statements of commenters at Green Baggins.
You had to interpret my statement to frame your question, and I had to interpret your question to answer it.
So if you think that leaves it to the “playground” of exegetes, than you objection applies with equal force to Magisterial statements as well as statements made by Catholic epologists like Bryan.
ii) Either exegetes give arguments for their interpretations or they don’t. If so, then it’s a question of judging the quality of the argument.
If you think we can’t judge the quality of an argument, then we can’t judge the quality of arguments for Roman Catholicism.
iii) As to historical/critical scholars, that depends, in part, on the evidence they adduce, but that also depends on their methods and assumptions. If, say, a historical/critical scholar is screening the witness of Scripture through the filter of methodological naturalism, then we’re entitled to challenge that hermeneutical grid.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 11:42 am
Tom Riello said,
“Given what you said, my concern is this: It seems that this understanding of interpretation only allows for making a quality argument, nothing more, nothing less.”
And why is that a source of concern? Didn’t Jesus and the Apostles reason from the Scriptures? They argued down their opponents.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Tom Riello said,
“Certainly you don’t think Jesus and the Apostles thought that their reasoning from the Scripture was only the putting forth of a quality argument.”
They thought it was sufficient to argue for their interpretation. That’s what they gave their audience. “My interpretation is right for this reason. Or, your interpretation is wrong for this reason.”
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Nick said,
“A recent example is when Steve Hays went around saying the Levitical Sacrifices modeled Penal Substitution, even condemning other Protestants for not believing it, but Steve went utterly silent (and even mocked me) when I called him out to prove that. Just see this article on his blog, scroll down to my first comment.”
That’s a documentable lie. I pointed out that Nick committed stock word-study fallacies.
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the Church didn’t teach it.”
Mitt Romney said,
“I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the LDS Church didn’t teach it.”
Helen Keller said,
"I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the Swedenborgian Church didn’t teach it."
steve hays said,
October 8, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“I wouldn’t believe in ecclesial infallibility if the Church didn’t teach it.”
Unless you already knew that a church which teaches ecclesial infallibility is infallible, there would be no reason to believe its self-referential teaching.
“From the day of Pentecost, there was never a Tradition-less Church-less hermeneutical vacuum within which to interpet Scripture, against which one could test every incoming component of Tradition.”
From the day of Pentecost, there was never a Scripture-less church, for the Apostles preached from the OT.
steve hays said,
October 9, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Bryan Cross said,
” … what these Church Fathers did believe … has implications for papal primacy, even in cases where they may not have fully grasped the extent of those implications”).
That type of argument would enjoy some degree of salience if you were dealing with an inspired writer. For even if he were not fully conscious of all the implications of his statement, the unintended implications would still be inspired implications. And you could therefore draw valid inferences from what he said, regardless of whether or not he was fully aware of all that entailed.
But when you’re dealing with uninspired writers (e.g. church fathers), you can’t properly attribute to them a position of which they themselves were oblivious. You can’t make them bear witness to something they didn’t mean to affirm or deny.
Indeed, it’s often the case, because we’re shortsighted creatures, that when someone points out the unintended implications of something we said, we will retract what we said. We may exclaim, “Well, I hadn’t thought that through. But now that you draw my attention to the implicit consequences of my stated position, I see that I need to modify or retract my statement.”
steve hays said,
October 9, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“As discussed above regarding a tree and its fruit, because of this relation of truth and love, if the more deeply persons imbibe a particular position, the more they tend to lose graciousness and charity and become rude and uncharitable, this testifies against the truth of that position.”
i) I doubt that commenters like Pastor King and TFan have any fundamental objection to judging a belief-system by its fruits. They can speak for themselves, but I expect that one reason they oppose Roman Catholicism is because they’ve been judging Roman Catholic theology by its fruits.
ii) I’d also note that civil, charitable, ecumenical dialogue is hardly a historical trademark Bryan’s adopted denomination. Google the text of “Exsurge Domine.” Or Google the text of “Ad Extirpanda.”
“This discussion (above) is not genuine ecumenical dialogue, because genuine ecumenical dialogue is not about scoring points or ‘winning debates,’ but about reaching the truth together, in love.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, the usual purpose of a public debate is not for one debater to convince the other, or vice versa. Rather, debates are ordinarily for the benefit of the confused or the undecided. For the audience, and not the debaters.
That’s why most debaters debate. Not to persuade their opponent, which is normally an unrealistic expectation, but to get their best arguments in the public record.
“And when the uncharitable option is taken, communication becomes impossible, because then everything the other person says is (or can be) construed (and perceived) as insincere, malicious, deceitful, etc.”
Without commenting in Bryan’s motives, I’d simply like to make a general and fairly obvious point: not all writers or speakers argue in good faith. We see this all the time in politics, don’t see?
So there’s no presumption that everyone is entitled to the most charitable construction on what they say. That’s person-variable. Some people are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but others are not. That’s just the world we live in.
steve hays said,
October 9, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Nick said,
Turretin Fan #168,
I still don’t follow your logic. I was explicitly and repeatedly speaking of “a genuine inspired apostolic *doctrine*” and *you* not caring if they were inscripturated, to which you keep replying “I’m completely satisfied with the Bible. I don’t need something else.”
You’re missing the point that an inspired *doctrine* is part of Divine Revelation, it’s part of the Deposit of Faith that must be preserved and never lost. To say you’re fine with the Bible alone – *indifferent* to a genuine inspired oral Doctrine – is to say you don’t care about the full extent of God’s Teachings He gave specifically to help and assist man.
Well, TFan is more than able to speak for himself, but I assume he’s simply agreeing with God’s own judgment on the matter. If God didn’t see fit to preserve this or that inspired utterance, then why should TFan take issue with God’s providential wisdom?
Putting the same thing in reverse, God has, in fact, inscripturated everything that ought to be preserved for the ages. Nothing was lost that we can’t do without. Unlike the Romanist, we trust in God’s selection criteria. God knows best which of his words need to be memorialized for the benefit of his people.
steve hays said,
October 10, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Bryan Cross said,
“So, in my opinion, the ‘logjam’ is broken up by backing up, epistemically, to common ground between us. In particular, we agree that Christ came from heaven, became man, and founded a Church in the first century. That’s common ground.”
Actually, traditional covenant theology accentuates the continuity between the OT church and the NT church. So Bryan’s comparison is equivocal.
“We agree about the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible (excepting the deuteros).”
No, that’s not common ground. Vatican II limits inerrancy to saving articles of faith. Not only is that all the wording requires, but the wording reflects Conciliar deliberations involving an influential speech by Cardinal König, who dissuaded the bishops from reaffirming the traditional RC position on the plenary inspiration of Scripture.
That’s why liberal scholars like Joseph Fitzmyer, John Meier, Luke Timothy Johnson, and the late Raymond Brown (to name a few) reflect mainstream RC Bible scholarship.
However, I agree with TFan that this is a diversion from the issue at hand. I only mention this so that Bryan’s errors don’t go unchecked.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:01 am
Bryan Cross said,
“That’s not true. See ‘Vatican II and the Inerrancy of the Bible.’”
For documentation:
Any memory of old theories of verbal inspiration was to be omitted, and hence any form of an impersonal, mechanistic interpretation of the origin of Scripture… But this little word veritas that intruded here proved to be a living cell that continued to grow. But what did it mean? Only, “religious” or even “secular7′ truth, to use the language of the 1962 schema? This was the real problem that now had to be taken up with full force both inside and outside the conciliar discussion. This did not happen, and new suggestions for the solution of the inerrancy question, as modem research posed it, could be made only hesitantly.
Form F was worked out in the third session of the Council. The first change that strikes us is in the title of Article 11: “Statuitur factum inspirationis et veritatis S. Scripturae.” Inerrantia is replaced by the positive term veritas, which is notably extended in the text. In the course of the discussion on the schema in the autumn of 1964, various fathers from the Eastern and the Western Churches made important speeches on the necessity of an interpretation of the inerrancy of Scripture that would be in harmony with the latest findings of exegesis. It was variously pointed out that the doctrine of inerrancy received its particular and narrower formulation in the 19th century, at a time when the means of secular historical research and criticism were used to investigate the secular historical accuracy of Scripture, and this was more or less denied – which had inevitable consequences for its theological validity. The teaching office of the Church sought to concentrate its defense at the point of immediate attack: i.e. to defend the inerrancy of Scripture even in the veritates profanae generally defending the claim of the Bible and of Christianity to be revelation. To defend scriptural inerrancy in this sphere of secular truths various theories were employed which sought to prove the absolute inerrancy of Scripture on the basis of these conditions and attitudes.
Because of the apologetical viewpoint from which they started, they were in danger of producing a
narrowness and a false accentuation7 in the doctrine of inerrancy. Also in the area of the interpretation of Scripture and the rules pertaining to this we can see a similar phenomenon, which the Council observed in different spheres of theology and endeavoured to nullify: namely, the tendency to an apologetical isolation and the claim to absolutism of a partial view. With this kind of motivation for the defense of the inerrancy of Scripture in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, there was a weakening of the awareness that Scripture as the inspired, written word of God is supposed above all to serve the preservation and expansion of the saving revelation and reality given through Christ in the world. Of course it was always realized that this was the real purpose of Scripture. In the question of inerrancy, however, the emphasis was placed on the one-sided and isolated – accentuation of the veritates profanae. This tended to create uncertainty rather than a joyful confidence that God’s truth and salvation remain present in the world in an unfalsified and permanent form–namely through the inspired word. It was necessary to reawaken this awareness. The doctrine of inerrancy needed its own centre and the right accentuation.
In this respect the most important contribution was undoubtedly the speech by Cardinal Koenig on 2 October 1964. Several other fathers who took part in the discussion from 2 to 6 October either verbally or in writing came back to this point. The Cardinal first of all pointed out the new situation that exists in relation to the question of inerrancy. As a result of intensive Oriental studies our picture of the veritas historica and the fides historica of Scripture has been clarified. Many of the 19th century objections to the Old Testament in particular and its reliability as an account of historical fact are now irrelevant But Oriental studies have also produced another finding: “ . . . laudata scientia rerum orientalium insuper demonstrat in Bibliis Sacris notitias historicas et notitias scientiae naturalis a veritate quandoque deficere.” Thus Cardinal Koenig admitted that not all the difficulties could be solved. On the contrary, in certain cases they have an urgency that is borne out by scientific research. His speech mentioned a few examples: according to Mk 2:26 David had entered the house of God under the high priest Abiathar and eaten the bread of the Presence. In fact, however, according to 1 Sam 21: l ff. it was not under Abiathar, but under his father Abimelech. In Mt 27:9 we read that in the fate of Judas a prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. In fact it is Zech 11: 12f. that is quoted. In Dan 1: 1 we read that King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in the third year of King Jehoiakim, i.e. 607 B.C., but from the authentic chronicle of King Nebuchadnezzar that has been discovered we know that the siege can only have taken place three years later. Other geographical and chronological points could be quoted in this connection.
The fact that this speech could be held in a plenary session without any protest being made is surely significant… Thus Cardinal Koenig implicitly gives up that premise that comes from the aprioristic and unhistorical thinking that has dominated teaching on inerrancy since the age of the Fathers: if one admits that a sacred writer has made a mistake, then one is necessarily admitting that God has made a mistake with the human author.
The actual aim of inspiration allows us to find a better solution: one can still maintain the true influence of God on the human authors without making him responsible for their weaknesses. These relate only to the form or the outer garment of the Gospel, and not the latter itself, however much the two might be inwardly connected- indeed, without this genuine humanity, with all its limitations, Scripture would appear like a foreign body in our world. But God speaks to us in this way, in our language, from out of our midst.
A number of Council fathers followed the example of Cardinal Koenig and refer to him as an authority: others, admittedly in the minority, produced the traditional statements, without, however, dealing with the new points raised by Cardinal Koenig.
H. Vorgrimler, ed. Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (Herder & Herder,
1969), 3:204-207
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:18 am
For the record, I was just quoting from Aloys Grillmeier’s eyewitness account of the proceedings at Vatican II. For a corroborative eyewitness account, see Hans Küng’s My Struggle for Freedom: Memoirs (Eerdmans 2003), 366-68. They were there, Bryan was not. Therefore, I have more confidence in their firsthand accounts than a newbie convert who wasn’t on the scene, knows none of the participants, &c.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 9:54 am
Notice that Sean has quietly abandoned his original claim. He’s no longer appealing to what Paul said. Rather, he’s appealing to what church fathers said Paul said. This is the typical bait-n-switch tactic of the Romanist.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 10:04 am
I also notice that Sean has yet to furnish an infallible interpretation of his prooftext. Instead, he’s given us the private interpretation of church fathers. And Bryan is in the same boat.
It’s gratifying to see their unspoken faith in the right of private judgment.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 10:44 am
Tom Riello said,
“I brought this up earlier to Steve in reference to the 2Thess 2:15 referring only to them but it needs to be said again: why should we limit it this only to the Thessalonians? Scripture is not a dead letter but living and active and as Pope Benedict reminds us we are contemporaries with Scripture by the Spirit.”
That’s a fair question in its own right, but it changes the subject. Bryan attributed a specific claim to Paul that Paul never made. It’s important to clarify what Paul did or didn’t say.
Now, you may think that Paul’s statement has applicability beyond the immediate referent. And there’s some truth to that.
But before we get to that point we can’t allow this constant bait-and-switch to go unchallenged. Paul never said what Bryan imputes to Paul. Yet that was a premise of Bryan’s argument. We don’t permit Bryan to continue building on a false premise.
Concerning your question, I don’t think any of us object to following identifiable apostolic traditions. Other than Scripture, where do we find identifiable apostolic traditions?
You can’t simply appeal to oral tradition, for unless you can document the oral tradition, there’s nothing to appeal to. But, of course, if you can document the oral tradition in question, then it ceases to be an oral tradition.
And even if you can document a putative apostolic tradition, the next question is how to verify its apostolicity.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 11:10 am
BTW, we need to distinguish between oral transmission and oral tradition. If my mother tells me something about her childhood, that’s oral transmission. If my mother tells me something her mother told her about her mother’s childhood, that’s oral tradition. Likewise, if my grandmother tells me something about her childhood that’s oral transmission, not oral tradition.
2 Thes 2:15 deals with oral transmission, not oral tradition. The Thessalonians heard certain things firsthand from the lips of Paul. That’s not equivalent to oral tradition. Tradition is second or thirdhand information.
2 Thes is dealing with firsthand information, not hearsay.
This doesn’t mean secondhand information is inherently untrustworthy. Depending on the chain-of-custody, secondhand info can be reliable.
But that’s not what Paul is referring to in 2 Thes.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 11:41 am
Nick said,
“It’s also a good indication to me that a thread is going down-hill fast and that I shouldn’t invest any further time.”
I doubt your absence will be sorely missed.
“Nobody, be they Catholic or Protestant should be beating around the bush when someone asks for clarification…”
To the contrary, Romanists like you, Bryan, and Sean excel in the fine art of obfuscation rather than clarification. I don’t plan to follow you down every rabbit trail.
“You did the same thing to me on your Psub thread (see post #105), where I spoke openly and directly, and you came back with one line brush offs when it came to defending your original claims.”
You committed classic word-study fallacies of the sort James Barr exploded decades ago. It’s not incumbent on me to tutor you in basic lexical semantics. For a good introduction to the subject, see Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning (2nd ed.).
Let’s also keep in mind that you don’t speak for the church of Rome. You’re not an authorized representative. You’re not even a priest, much less a bishop, much less the Prefect, much less the Pope.
Some lay Catholic apologists are more influential than others, and so I focus on them. But you’re not that high on the pecking order.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Sean said,
“And you wonder why some of us no longer bother to participate on some of the other Reformed blogs.”
Sounds like a promising development. Anything we can do to expedite that trend?
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Nick said,
“But two factors go against that idea: (a) Paul is speaking in the context of salvation, holding onto saving truths, which would suggest God would preserve Providentially and (b) it isn’t a leap of logic to suggest 1st Thessalonians was included in his comment on ‘by letter’ in 2Th2:15, and if so means the ‘by word of mouth’ would also be included in the saving truths category.”
i) Suppose we play along with this for the sake of argument. If oral tradition preserves saving truths which are not preserved in Scripture, and if the church of Rome is the repository of this information, then all non-Catholics are damned.
However, that’s hardly the position of Vatican II, which make allowance for the salvation, not only of non-Catholics, but even non-Christians.
ii) But there is another problem with Nick’s argument. Protestants don’t contend that 1-2 Thessalonians contain all things necessary for salvation. Sola Scriptura doesn’t refer to 1-2 Thessalonians, but to the 66 books of the canon in toto. So even if 1-2 Thessalonians omitted one or more saving articles of the faith, how does that undercut the Protestant position? It doesn’t.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Tom Riello said,
“I just wanted to point people to a brilliant little post by Dr. Michael Liccione over here.”
Okay, let’s comment on that:
Michael Liccione:
“The Catholic Church teaches that each of those is necessary and that all are mutually supporting. Scripture alone does not suffice, because a set of writings composed and collected by people over a period of centuries cannot certify itself as divinely inspired and inerrant.”
That’s far from obvious. On the one hand, later writings can certify earlier writings. Likewise, contemporary writings can certify each another. And there’s even a sense in which earlier writings can prophetically certify later writings.
“Of themselves, they tell us what various people said and did about God, but they do not tell us why what some of those people said is true or why what they did was appropriate.”
Once again, that’s far from obvious. Take the argument from prophecy. If it comes true, then it was true.
“I have spent years advancing two theses: (1) if it isn’t clear, from the beginning until now, which visible body counts as ‘the Church,’ then the question what counts as Scripture and Tradition is open to a debate that can never be definitively settled.”
Once more, that’s far from obvious. For even if we accept his tendentious criterion of visibility, why stipulate that visibility must be embodied in just one “church.” Why can’t several churches “visibly” embody the truth?
“(2) if whichever body counts as ‘the Church’ is never preserved from error when interpreting Scripture and Tradition, then the meaning of Scripture and Tradition is up for indefinite debate, even if their content is not. In the final analysis, the Christian religion would reduce to a matter of opinion. And if that’s so, then there is no principled way to distinguish between divine revelation on the one hand and human opinion about the ‘sources’ thereof on the other. I’m sure that’s not a result you desire.”
Several problems with this argument:
i) The is an argument for a historical claim (i.e. what God has done in church history) which entirely eschews historical evidence. But we don’t normally prove historical events by a priori reasoning. Imagine Liccione applying that to type of reasoning to other historical claims, like the stock market.
ii) The argument is regressive. The meaning which “the Church” assigns to Scripture then shifts to the meaning of “the Church’s” interpretation.
iii) What, exactly, is so bad about “opinion”? After all, some opinions are right while others are wrong. What’s so bad about with having an opinion as long as you are right and the other guy is wrong? Does Liccione think all opinions command equal deference?
iv) His objection is self-defeating. Liccione thinks the church of Rome is the true church, but, of course, that’s just his opinion. In the final analysis, his analysis reduces to a matter of opinion.
v) A major reason that NT writers penned the NT is because the apostles couldn’t be everywhere–in time and space. So they communicate through the written word rather than the spoken word. For instance, John wrote to the Ephesian church (in 1 John) to settle a doctrinal crisis.
But imagine one of troublemakers saying, you don’t have to pay attention to that letter, since the meaning of his words is always open to debate. John can’t settle the issue by writing a letter. You may think he condemns Docetism, but that’s just your opinion. Only the Church can settle this issue.
So even though we have apostolic letters which were written with the express intention of settling an issue, Liccione has a loophole which gives 1C heretics permission to flout apostolic authority. It’s a license for insubordination.
Liccione doesn’t develop his theory from actual apostolic practice. To the contrary, he has an armchair theory which subverts the very purpose of a written document like 1 John.
vi) In fact, it’s striking that some letters were written even though oral transmission was available. Take the letters to the 7 churches in Asia Minor (Rev 2-3). Jesus doesn’t appear to the 7 churches, even though it certainly lay within his power to speak to them directly and individually.
Instead, Jesus communicates to them via the written word. He dictates the letters to the apostle John. This illustrates the priority of the written word. Although Jesus could just as easily have bypassed the literary medium, appeared to the 7 churches in person, and spoken to the congregants face-to-face, he uses a writer (John) to express his will.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Nick said,
“You’re confusing issues here. A person need not know each and every saving truth to be saved, and baptized infants are the epitome of this. Now, *if* Rome is the True Church and someone refuses to submit to it, it’s akin to refusing to submit to Christ, and thus they will indeed be damned. But that in iteslf says nothing itself of the content or extent of Divine Revelation, which is the subject we’re on.”
So in your Looking Glass world you redefine saving truths as damning truths. Saving truths aren’t something one must believe to be saved; rather, saving truths are something one must disbelieve to be damned.
If that’s the case, if Roman church is The One True Church, then the Roman church is the most dangerous institution in the world. Catholic apologists are a dire threat to the immortal well-being of humanity. For the state of ignorance is far safer than disbelief.
Therefore, by your reasoning, Roman Catholicism should be banned. Catholic literature should be burned. Catholics should be rounded up and quarantined. That way we won’t run the risk of learning saving truths which damn us. The less we know, the better our odds.
steve hays said,
October 11, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Nick said,
“Where did I say 1-2 Thess contain all things necessary for salvation?”
I see that you have problems following the argument. Nothing new.
Even if 1-2 Thes were insufficient, that doesn’t mean Scripture is insufficient. For even assuming that 1-2 Thes omit certain saving truths, if the omitted truths are stated elsewhere in Scripture, then that’s sufficient for sola Scripture.
steve hays said,
October 12, 2010 at 9:59 am
David Meyer said,
“Because that entails the several ‘truths’. Church #1 proclaims doctrine A as the truth. Church #2 proclaims doctrine A false. Thus these two churches do not (cannot) visibly or otherwise embody the truth. Either one or neither is the true Church.”
You don’t seem to know much about the facts on the ground. To take an obvious counterexample, the OPC and the PCA are two different churches. The OPC adheres to the Westminster Standards, and the PCA adheres to the Westminster standards. Different churches, same doctrine.
steve hays said,
October 12, 2010 at 4:09 pm
David Gadbois said,
“Here we are after 325 posts and we still are left without any identification much less documentation and proof of the existence of Roman Catholic oral tradition.”
That’s because you’re a godless outsider, David.
It’s like Free Masonry. Just as you have to become a 33º Mason before they divulge the trade secrets, you have to learn the secret handshake, the countersign, solve a few riddles , take a blood oath, and sacrifice a two-headed toad under a blue moon before The One True Church admits you into the esoteric mysteries of the disciplina arcana.
Fiction In Early Christianity: Some Preliminaries
Before I discuss some ancient sources relevant to the historicity of early Christianity, I want to address some general principles involved. When somebody like Richard tells us that the early Christians were communicating in a fictional genre when they referred to things like the virgin birth and Jesus' resurrection, here are some of the factors we should keep in mind:
- We live most of our lives in the real world. Speaking in fictional terms isn't our normal frame of reference. We don't begin with a default assumption that a claim made by a historical source is being made within a fictional context.
- If you've spent a lot of time reading the New Testament, the church fathers, and other relevant historical sources, ask yourself whether a conclusion like Richard's has ever even entered your mind. If you've thought of it before, how seriously did you take it? Your experience and impressions aren't sufficient to settle this issue by themselves, but they should be taken into account. How likely is it that the fictional nature of early Christianity, if Richard is correct, would be so subtle that you would have missed it in so many contexts and for so long a period of time? Would all of the sources involved be likely to be so subtle in their communication of the fictional nature of the religion?
- In a way, Richard's theory is even more radical than the view of those who deny Jesus' existence. People who argue against Jesus' existence will often acknowledge that Christians were communicating in a historical genre in one or more of the gospels and in patristic documents as early as the first or second century. Even they would think Richard has gone too far. He's made Christ mythers look somewhat moderate. That's hard to do.
- Richard has suggested that you need the sort of higher education that he has in order to understand this issue. But, as I'll be documenting later, scholars with a higher standing than Richard have contradicted his theory. If we're going to trust the judgment of scholars who are more knowledgeable of these issues than we are, then why trust Richard rather than the others?
- Christianity came out of Judaism, and the early Christians made much of Jesus' Messiahship and prophecy fulfillment. Did the ancient Jews think the Messiah would be a fictional figure or one who should be largely fictionalized by his followers? Did they think prophecy would be fulfilled through fictional stories? When the early Christians cite prophecy as such an allegedly convincing line of evidence for the Divine nature of their religion, is it likely they were referring to the writing of fictional stories as evidence of the supernatural?
- When the early Christians and their enemies agree about something, like the empty tomb, are we to believe that both sides decided to fabricate stories involving an empty tomb? It's hard enough to think of the early Christians as being so interested in making up stories they knew to be fictional and continuing to follow those stories under persecution and other difficulties. It's even harder to imagine the early enemies of the religion responding by not only making up their own stories that they presented as fictional, but even by making up stories so similar to the Christian alternative. Were there so many people who were so interested in conducting themselves in such a fictional context, with so much subtlety, and with such similar content (e.g., the empty tomb)?
- Would uneducated and low-ranking members of society (Mary Magdalene, Peter, etc.) be likely to operate on such a large scale with the sort of interest in fiction, and subtlety in expressing it, that Richard's theory suggests?
- If the relevant documents are fictional, why do they have so many of the markers of non-fiction?
- What would happen if we applied reasoning like Richard's to Greek history, Roman history, American history, etc.?
Those are several factors to take into account. I'm not trying to be exhaustive. And I realize that Richard can keep redefining his theory as he goes along, claim that he was misunderstood, etc. But I think the points I've made above are reasonable responses to his theory as he presented it in his posts on this blog.
- We live most of our lives in the real world. Speaking in fictional terms isn't our normal frame of reference. We don't begin with a default assumption that a claim made by a historical source is being made within a fictional context.
- If you've spent a lot of time reading the New Testament, the church fathers, and other relevant historical sources, ask yourself whether a conclusion like Richard's has ever even entered your mind. If you've thought of it before, how seriously did you take it? Your experience and impressions aren't sufficient to settle this issue by themselves, but they should be taken into account. How likely is it that the fictional nature of early Christianity, if Richard is correct, would be so subtle that you would have missed it in so many contexts and for so long a period of time? Would all of the sources involved be likely to be so subtle in their communication of the fictional nature of the religion?
- In a way, Richard's theory is even more radical than the view of those who deny Jesus' existence. People who argue against Jesus' existence will often acknowledge that Christians were communicating in a historical genre in one or more of the gospels and in patristic documents as early as the first or second century. Even they would think Richard has gone too far. He's made Christ mythers look somewhat moderate. That's hard to do.
- Richard has suggested that you need the sort of higher education that he has in order to understand this issue. But, as I'll be documenting later, scholars with a higher standing than Richard have contradicted his theory. If we're going to trust the judgment of scholars who are more knowledgeable of these issues than we are, then why trust Richard rather than the others?
- Christianity came out of Judaism, and the early Christians made much of Jesus' Messiahship and prophecy fulfillment. Did the ancient Jews think the Messiah would be a fictional figure or one who should be largely fictionalized by his followers? Did they think prophecy would be fulfilled through fictional stories? When the early Christians cite prophecy as such an allegedly convincing line of evidence for the Divine nature of their religion, is it likely they were referring to the writing of fictional stories as evidence of the supernatural?
- When the early Christians and their enemies agree about something, like the empty tomb, are we to believe that both sides decided to fabricate stories involving an empty tomb? It's hard enough to think of the early Christians as being so interested in making up stories they knew to be fictional and continuing to follow those stories under persecution and other difficulties. It's even harder to imagine the early enemies of the religion responding by not only making up their own stories that they presented as fictional, but even by making up stories so similar to the Christian alternative. Were there so many people who were so interested in conducting themselves in such a fictional context, with so much subtlety, and with such similar content (e.g., the empty tomb)?
- Would uneducated and low-ranking members of society (Mary Magdalene, Peter, etc.) be likely to operate on such a large scale with the sort of interest in fiction, and subtlety in expressing it, that Richard's theory suggests?
- If the relevant documents are fictional, why do they have so many of the markers of non-fiction?
- What would happen if we applied reasoning like Richard's to Greek history, Roman history, American history, etc.?
Those are several factors to take into account. I'm not trying to be exhaustive. And I realize that Richard can keep redefining his theory as he goes along, claim that he was misunderstood, etc. But I think the points I've made above are reasonable responses to his theory as he presented it in his posts on this blog.
The Pope Isn't Catholic
Scott Windsor has posted two more responses to me on the papacy, here and here. Since he didn't interact much with what I said, there isn't much for me to say in response.
One thing worth noting is that he made such broad dismissive comments about scholars who disagree with his conservative Roman Catholicism:
Apparently, you have to agree with Scott's conservative Catholicism in order to be a Catholic scholar. Scott has repeatedly made such comments in response to scholarship he disagrees with, even if the scholars offer evidence to support their conclusion within the comments I've cited.
In light of Scott's comments above, keep in mind that recent Popes taken some liberal positions as well. See here. And much of the scholarship Scott disagrees with and dismisses as non-Catholic has come from scholars appointed by Popes and never disciplined by the Popes. Maybe those Popes aren't Catholic either.
One thing worth noting is that he made such broad dismissive comments about scholars who disagree with his conservative Roman Catholicism:
The next criticism is that Engwer singles out liberal and perhaps even dissenting views, as if dissenters represent Catholicism and/or Catholic teaching - and just because they’ve written some books or teach somewhere they are now “Catholic scholars.” This may work if Mr. Engwer is preaching to his own choir, but the objective reader will note the criticisms made of his choice of “scholars” - and should dismiss them, just as I have....
First off, Schaff is quite the anti-Catholic, as one can easily see in the commentary he adds to his rendition of the ECFs. Likewise, J.N.D. Kelly is no supporter of Catholicism! Mr. Engwer does not present actual EVIDENCE to counter what I said, he provides non- or anti-Catholic commentary. That’s not valid scholarship.
Apparently, you have to agree with Scott's conservative Catholicism in order to be a Catholic scholar. Scott has repeatedly made such comments in response to scholarship he disagrees with, even if the scholars offer evidence to support their conclusion within the comments I've cited.
In light of Scott's comments above, keep in mind that recent Popes taken some liberal positions as well. See here. And much of the scholarship Scott disagrees with and dismisses as non-Catholic has come from scholars appointed by Popes and never disciplined by the Popes. Maybe those Popes aren't Catholic either.
How Historical Were Early Christian Belief And Literature?
I'm going to be writing more posts about issues raised in my recent discussion with Richard. The posts will be partly a response to him and partly intended to address some larger issues. Before I start with those posts, I want to make some introductory comments. I don't want to have to explain this context in each post, so I'd prefer to do it in one introductory post like this one. And some of Richard's posts have disappeared, so I want to quote him now, in case more will disappear later. I know he deleted some of his comments earlier, and he may have deleted other posts after that. Or it may be a problem with Blogger. I don't know.
Here's some of what he said in our discussion:
He also made a lot of other claims. And I've responded to him there. I won't be repeating everything I said.
Notice that he used a lot of broad language and claimed to be addressing a lengthy period of time. He said that we "do not have any surviving historiography or biography", and he mentioned the first three centuries. When I cited the example of Ignatius' comments about how Jesus truly was born of a virgin, truly was crucified under Pontius Pilate, truly rose from the dead, etc., he claimed that Ignatius was saying that those things truly occurred within a fictional story, not that they were historical events.
Those are some significant and broad claims Richard is making. They're also massively false claims. And they're claims that are widely contradicted by modern scholarship, including non-Evangelical scholarship.
I'll be addressing some of these issues in the coming days. I'm not just doing this to reply to Richard, but also because I think it will be beneficial for readers to have the historical nature of the early Christian claims reinforced in their minds. What I'll be posting will be representative examples. Much more could be said. The evidence against Richard's position is abundant. The vast majority of people, including scholars, don't hold a position even close to Richard's. But many people do hold views that are somewhat similar, so there's also a broader application in that sense.
Here's some of what he said in our discussion:
Early Christian mythography (in the form of "gospels", "acti apostolorum", or sayings collections) all registered within a specific modality vis-a-vis the broad array of other Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac literary works. The generic and modal signals within the New Testament gospels inform and orient the ancient reader toward a mythographic aretology aimed at such outcomes as ethical and political gravitas, entertainment, and socio-religious propaganda (particularly in the wake of the 70 C.E. Jerusalem crisis). One finds a developmental trajectory from the earliest strata of Q, to the rhetorically potent, mythological embellishments of Mark, to their fusion and further embellishment in the compilations Matthew and Luke, concluding with a third creative work, i.e. John. We really do not have any surviving historiography or biography from earliest Christian prose (from the first 3 centuries of the common era). They are all mythographies. Jesus and the apostles are used as literary vehicles propped up in various compiled episodes, composed for their rhetorical performance articulating the socio-political and philosophical distinctions and contestations of these early subaltern movements and communities. For instance, to embroider Q with a mythic birth and then a postmortem raised ascension was to decorate the tale with the standard honorific embellishments granted to others said to have been demigods. Here one thinks of the virgin birth of such towering individuals in the Greek orient as Alexander the Great (Plutarch et al) and the road appearances of Romulus, Aristeas, Proteus, et al. I have an article appearing in JBL in the fourth quarter that more fully documents the primary accounts. Since the gospel authors continued this mode and genre into the subsequent centuries (Luke-Acts, btw, was not known by Papias and does not turn up until the mid second century, the actual time of its composition), it is unacceptable for the modern historian to assign the Gospels any serious value as accurate renditions of Jesus or his earliest movement....
The earliest Christians enter this arena, staking out their own philosophical position through the use of mythography or storytelling. Jesus thus became the literary vehicle articulating the various responses of disparate early Christian communities. Have you yet noticed, Jason, the shocking lack of interest in supporting or defending the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection in the first 2 centuries? Instead the discussion runs almost immediately toward the aforesaid philosophical fray (e.g. Justin, de Resurrectione; the Coptic Treatise on the Resurrection). The Johannine School and the Thomas School were quite evidently in fierce polemic over these matters (cf. Riley again, Resurrection Reconsidered). Not only is there a gaping lack of support (only conspicuous vis-à-vis the historical claims of modern Christianity, mind you) provided for the historicity of the resurrection—indeed which martyr makes any mention of such a conviction in her or his dying testimony in early Christian prose?—but the topic receives such negligence as to be rendered irrelevant. The earliest writers make no visible effort to distinguish their tales from analogous stories and motifs recurring in the broader classical literary domain, except perhaps in terms of quality or degree of significance, never in terms of veracity or generics.
He also made a lot of other claims. And I've responded to him there. I won't be repeating everything I said.
Notice that he used a lot of broad language and claimed to be addressing a lengthy period of time. He said that we "do not have any surviving historiography or biography", and he mentioned the first three centuries. When I cited the example of Ignatius' comments about how Jesus truly was born of a virgin, truly was crucified under Pontius Pilate, truly rose from the dead, etc., he claimed that Ignatius was saying that those things truly occurred within a fictional story, not that they were historical events.
Those are some significant and broad claims Richard is making. They're also massively false claims. And they're claims that are widely contradicted by modern scholarship, including non-Evangelical scholarship.
I'll be addressing some of these issues in the coming days. I'm not just doing this to reply to Richard, but also because I think it will be beneficial for readers to have the historical nature of the early Christian claims reinforced in their minds. What I'll be posting will be representative examples. Much more could be said. The evidence against Richard's position is abundant. The vast majority of people, including scholars, don't hold a position even close to Richard's. But many people do hold views that are somewhat similar, so there's also a broader application in that sense.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Superrichard
Jason Engwer has been responding to a commenter who goes by the avatar of “Richard.” However, “Richard” is not a real person.
The commenter in question is actually a fat, 10-year-old boy by the name of Barney who lives in Missoula Montana with his mom and stepdad.
Barney is often bullied at school because he speaks with a lisp and can’t hit a baseball. As a defense-mechanism, Barney has concocted the folkloric superhero of “Richard,” giving our subaltern boy the mythographic aretology of a polyglot historian and literary scholar. The socio-politically embellished metanarrative lends an air of palpability and honorific gravitas to his rhetorical performance–thereby fostering the illusion that he’s a formidable conversation partner.
We may safely assume that the nomen of “Richard” is just a literary vehicle or sociorhetorical construct, parroting banner language from thesaurus.com, as well as conventional protocols in Marvel comic books and the Disney Channel–far removed from the fat, lisping, henpecked, latrine-using 10-year-old in Missoula.
Modern mimesis and paideia in pulp fiction and Hollywood movies decidedly move in continuity and imitatio with regard to literary or cinematic modality and genre. “Richard’s” refusal to provide confirmable evidence retarding his academic identity, along with his recourse to the stock authority-figure of the expert witness, constitute modal signals pointing an astute reader to the mythographic genre of his emblematic narratology.
The commenter in question is actually a fat, 10-year-old boy by the name of Barney who lives in Missoula Montana with his mom and stepdad.
Barney is often bullied at school because he speaks with a lisp and can’t hit a baseball. As a defense-mechanism, Barney has concocted the folkloric superhero of “Richard,” giving our subaltern boy the mythographic aretology of a polyglot historian and literary scholar. The socio-politically embellished metanarrative lends an air of palpability and honorific gravitas to his rhetorical performance–thereby fostering the illusion that he’s a formidable conversation partner.
We may safely assume that the nomen of “Richard” is just a literary vehicle or sociorhetorical construct, parroting banner language from thesaurus.com, as well as conventional protocols in Marvel comic books and the Disney Channel–far removed from the fat, lisping, henpecked, latrine-using 10-year-old in Missoula.
Modern mimesis and paideia in pulp fiction and Hollywood movies decidedly move in continuity and imitatio with regard to literary or cinematic modality and genre. “Richard’s” refusal to provide confirmable evidence retarding his academic identity, along with his recourse to the stock authority-figure of the expert witness, constitute modal signals pointing an astute reader to the mythographic genre of his emblematic narratology.
Not yet
"Ms. Avery," I said, glancing down at the chart in my hands, and then back up to the woman lying before me on the ER stretcher. "I'm Dr. Lesslie. What can we do for you tonight?"
Mary Avery was 82 years old and had come to the emergency department because of increasing shortness of breath. She told me she had "a touch of asthma" but no other medical problems. Tonight was something different, and not her usual asthma.
"Do you have any history of diabetes?" I asked. "Or any heart trouble?"
"No sir," she answered calmly, between labored breaths. "Not yet."
This last comment took me by surprise, and I looked intently into her eyes. She smiled at me, nodding her head.
She was struggling to breathe, and yet there was a profound peace surrounding this woman. Not yet. I thought I knew what she meant.
A few days earlier, our minister had based his sermon on Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 1, verse 21. His message centered on how we ought to live, and where our focus should be. More importantly, he stressed the assurance we should have about where each of us is headed. Our eternal destination, I suppose.
I remembered thinking a good bit about the issue of preventive medicine. Now don't get me wrong. I've long been a proponent of our taking care of ourselves and doing the necessary things to prevent serious medical problems from developing. We should be keeping track of our lipids and our blood pressure, exercising regularly, watching our diet and our weight, not smoking, and generally not abusing our bodies. But I began to think about this term "preventive". Was that really accurate? What are we really preventing? Are we going to live forever if our cholesterol is perfect? Or our BMI is ideal? Or our colonoscopy is completely clear? We all know the answer to that. Yet, there may exist a false sense of security when all of these things are fine. And there's a not-so-subtle danger here. We can easily become distracted by the good health we are enjoying, and quickly lose track of the ultimate realities of this thing called life. But make no mistake - there's always something else looming just around the corner.
Then it occurred to me that perhaps postponing medicine might be a better term. After all, even in the best of circumstances, we are only postponing the inevitable, aren't we? We are all headed to the same final destination.
Yet, I remain convinced that we need to take care of ourselves, of our bodies, so that we can more effectively live. But what does that mean? Our minister also addressed this. He painted the picture of an elderly person who was in excellent health and who had spent his life focused on paying his bills and staying out of trouble. And where did that put him? What was the meaning of his walk on this earth?
Paul understands this, and makes it clear to us today in his letter. He knows where our focus needs to be, where we need to find our purpose and meaning, and where we need to place our hope. Mary Avery understood this as well, and had lived it. That's what she had meant by "not yet".
"Dr. Lesslie," Mary whispered, still quietly panting. "Please do what you can for me. But whatever happens, it will be all right. You know we're all like the flowers of the field. We flourish, and then..." Her voice trailed off.
She was still smiling, still peaceful. And she was still looking intently into my eyes.
Then she said, "There's only one thing that endures."
That night, Mary endured. She was suffering from a worsening of her asthma, and had to be admitted to the hospital. A few days later, she was able to go home.
Over the next two years, we saw her occasionally in the ER with flare-ups of her asthma. She was always smiling, always positive, always at peace. And she never developed diabetes or heart disease.
Then one day we learned she had reached her final destination.
Amen.
(Source.)
Robert Lesslie is a Christian (Associate Reformed Presbyterian) emergency medicine doctor based in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Mary Avery was 82 years old and had come to the emergency department because of increasing shortness of breath. She told me she had "a touch of asthma" but no other medical problems. Tonight was something different, and not her usual asthma.
"Do you have any history of diabetes?" I asked. "Or any heart trouble?"
"No sir," she answered calmly, between labored breaths. "Not yet."
This last comment took me by surprise, and I looked intently into her eyes. She smiled at me, nodding her head.
She was struggling to breathe, and yet there was a profound peace surrounding this woman. Not yet. I thought I knew what she meant.
A few days earlier, our minister had based his sermon on Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 1, verse 21. His message centered on how we ought to live, and where our focus should be. More importantly, he stressed the assurance we should have about where each of us is headed. Our eternal destination, I suppose.
I remembered thinking a good bit about the issue of preventive medicine. Now don't get me wrong. I've long been a proponent of our taking care of ourselves and doing the necessary things to prevent serious medical problems from developing. We should be keeping track of our lipids and our blood pressure, exercising regularly, watching our diet and our weight, not smoking, and generally not abusing our bodies. But I began to think about this term "preventive". Was that really accurate? What are we really preventing? Are we going to live forever if our cholesterol is perfect? Or our BMI is ideal? Or our colonoscopy is completely clear? We all know the answer to that. Yet, there may exist a false sense of security when all of these things are fine. And there's a not-so-subtle danger here. We can easily become distracted by the good health we are enjoying, and quickly lose track of the ultimate realities of this thing called life. But make no mistake - there's always something else looming just around the corner.
Then it occurred to me that perhaps postponing medicine might be a better term. After all, even in the best of circumstances, we are only postponing the inevitable, aren't we? We are all headed to the same final destination.
Yet, I remain convinced that we need to take care of ourselves, of our bodies, so that we can more effectively live. But what does that mean? Our minister also addressed this. He painted the picture of an elderly person who was in excellent health and who had spent his life focused on paying his bills and staying out of trouble. And where did that put him? What was the meaning of his walk on this earth?
Paul understands this, and makes it clear to us today in his letter. He knows where our focus needs to be, where we need to find our purpose and meaning, and where we need to place our hope. Mary Avery understood this as well, and had lived it. That's what she had meant by "not yet".
"Dr. Lesslie," Mary whispered, still quietly panting. "Please do what you can for me. But whatever happens, it will be all right. You know we're all like the flowers of the field. We flourish, and then..." Her voice trailed off.
She was still smiling, still peaceful. And she was still looking intently into my eyes.
Then she said, "There's only one thing that endures."
That night, Mary endured. She was suffering from a worsening of her asthma, and had to be admitted to the hospital. A few days later, she was able to go home.
Over the next two years, we saw her occasionally in the ER with flare-ups of her asthma. She was always smiling, always positive, always at peace. And she never developed diabetes or heart disease.
Then one day we learned she had reached her final destination.
Amen.
(Source.)
Robert Lesslie is a Christian (Associate Reformed Presbyterian) emergency medicine doctor based in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
The Historical Nature Of Early Christianity
In another thread here, I've been having a discussion with a person who goes by the screen name Richard. Some of you may be interested in reading the exchange. Richard claims to be a scholar with credentials relevant to early Christianity, yet he refuses to further identify himself. He claims that when sources like Ignatius refer to how Jesus was born of a virgin, resurrected, etc., they aren't making historical claims. Rather, they're making claims about what happened within a fictional story. Thus, for example, the docetists and their Christian opponents were arguing about whether Jesus physically existed within a fictional story, not whether He physically existed in history. Richard makes many claims about the genre of the gospels, what men like Ignatius and Justin Martyr believed, etc. It's a somewhat lengthy discussion, but I think it could be beneficial for those interested in reading it.
Here are some examples of his claims:
Here are some examples of his claims:
One finds a developmental trajectory from the earliest strata of Q, to the rhetorically potent, mythological embellishments of Mark, to their fusion and further embellishment in the compilations Matthew and Luke, concluding with a third creative work, i.e. John. We really do not have any surviving historiography or biography from earliest Christian prose (from the first 3 centuries of the common era). They are all mythographies....
To apply another analogy, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Davy Crocket all existed in real North American history. Yet when most people mention or think of these emblems of American folktale, the refer not to the actual mundane persons, but to those images produced within the culture, Hollywood renditions and rentions in art, comic books, and literature. The actual historical persons are all but irrelevant to most everyone, as evidenced by the very loose depictions produced by these individuals. They have become owned by a cultures and, as such, are no longer tightly tethered to their original, mundane personae. Given the prolific, characteristically whimsical depictions of Jesus, the Apostles, and Saints in early Christian narrative, not to mention Ignatius's own apparent lack of interest in recovering or preserving historically faithful data regarding Jesus et al, the philologist can safely assume that the nomen "Jesus" for ignatius and his treatments of him are far removed from the actual latrine using, skinny Palestinian peasant of a century prior. He shows not interest in knowing Jesus in such a way....
I do not post my name here because I frankly do not want it associated with this blog. No offense. It is just a fragile world and I typically select my dialogue partners with great care. This, rather, is my effort to give back to the community, though at some personal hazard....
I believe in mutually beneficial discourse where everyone is intelligent, has something to offer, and has something to learn. Whereas the apologist often only wants a spectacle, a dogfight aimed at demonstrating the viability of the signature claims of his socio-religious group. That is why I have chosen to exclude Evangelicals from my academic dialogues. Such loaded intentions typically skew the discussion so pathetically that they end up resulting in hostility, social abuse, and obfuscation of the central issues. I hope, Jason, that you can surprise me by conducting yourself as a gentlemen, thus disturbing my stereotype, should you find it offense or unfair.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Scholarly Opinion On The Gospels' Genre
In his recent commentary on Matthew, Grant Osborne writes the following about scholarly opinion on the genre of the gospels:
"The current consensus is that the closest parallel is Greco-Roman biography, but that should probably be widened to include Jewish as well as Hellenistic biographies." (Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010], p. 30)
Here are the comments of some other New Testament scholars:
"Lemcio's work coheres strongly with the general, though quite recent, acceptance in Gospels scholarship that, generically, the Gospels are biography - or, more precisely, they are biographies (bioi) in the sense of ancient Greco-Roman biography." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], p. 276)
"Readers throughout most of history understood the Gospels as biographies (Stanton 1989a: 15-17), but after 1915 scholars tried to find some other classification for them, mainly because these scholars compared ancient and modern biography and noticed that the Gospels differed from the latter (Talbert 1977: 2-3; cf. Mack 1988: 16n.6). The current trend, however, is again to recognize the Gospels as ancient biographies. The most complete statement of the question to date comes from a Cambridge monograph by Richard A. Burridge." (Craig Keener, A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], p. 17)
In an email earlier this year, Michael Licona told me that Richard Burridge recently mentioned to him that the scholarly trend is toward seeing the gospels as biographies rather than "literary inventions" or "myth".
"The current consensus is that the closest parallel is Greco-Roman biography, but that should probably be widened to include Jewish as well as Hellenistic biographies." (Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010], p. 30)
Here are the comments of some other New Testament scholars:
"Lemcio's work coheres strongly with the general, though quite recent, acceptance in Gospels scholarship that, generically, the Gospels are biography - or, more precisely, they are biographies (bioi) in the sense of ancient Greco-Roman biography." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], p. 276)
"Readers throughout most of history understood the Gospels as biographies (Stanton 1989a: 15-17), but after 1915 scholars tried to find some other classification for them, mainly because these scholars compared ancient and modern biography and noticed that the Gospels differed from the latter (Talbert 1977: 2-3; cf. Mack 1988: 16n.6). The current trend, however, is again to recognize the Gospels as ancient biographies. The most complete statement of the question to date comes from a Cambridge monograph by Richard A. Burridge." (Craig Keener, A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], p. 17)
In an email earlier this year, Michael Licona told me that Richard Burridge recently mentioned to him that the scholarly trend is toward seeing the gospels as biographies rather than "literary inventions" or "myth".
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