Witnesses In Every Generation

People often underestimate how much Christians of earlier generations were concerned about having evidence for Christianity and how much evidence they had access to. For example:

"if they [non-Christian Jews] had only been in their own land with that testimony of the Scriptures, and not every where, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ." (Augustine, The City Of God, 18:46)

Why is there such a hurry?

Near the end of my last post, I briefly discussed our culture's recent pattern of rapid changes on a series of moral issues. As the sexual revolution and other cultural developments have unfolded, we've seen major changes on moral issues (and other significant issues) happening with a lot of speed. In other contexts in life, that sort of pattern, or even one event without a pattern, would make us suspicious. Why does this man who wants you to sign some paperwork about a financial transaction keep pressuring you to do it sooner rather than later, insisting that you don't need more time to look into the details? Why is the used car salesman trying so hard to get you to buy the car so soon, and why is he so evasive in response to your questions? We consider it shameful to be misled by efforts to get us to make an overly quick decision in contexts like those. But an overly quick decision is even worse in the sort of moral context I referred to above. Yet, few people in our culture seem to have much of a sense of shame over how rapidly they've changed their positions on so many moral issues (and other significant issues) with so little justification.

It's predictable that the pattern will continue. Polyamory, incest, pedophilia, and other issues will become more prominent, and there will be an ongoing process of trying to get people to rapidly change their views without thinking much about it or doing much research. In the future, we ought to point out to people that they generally consider it shameful to behave that way in other contexts in life and that they ought to be more consistent by applying that sort of reasoning to these moral contexts as well.

For example, let's say somebody is undecided about something like abortion, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, or polyamory. He should take more time to research it rather than giving in to the pressure to change his mind too quickly. Getting people to take more time to think through these issues is good and will have a lot of positive short-term and long-term results. If we want somebody to not support a particular candidate or referendum or piece of legislation, for example, convincing him of our position isn't the only way to accomplish that objective. We can also accomplish it by persuading him to withhold his support until he's looked into the issue more.

I suspect one of the mistakes Republicans and others have made when issues like abortion and same-sex marriage are being evaluated by voters (and in non-voting contexts) is to neglect some of the options on the table. People ought to be pro-life on abortion, for example, but you don't have to convince somebody of a pro-life position in order to convince him to refrain from supporting a pro-choice referendum, piece of legislation, or whatever. Just convince him to withhold his support for either position (pro-life or pro-choice) until he's done more research. Sometimes it's appropriate to pressure people into making a binary choice. But we need to also be open to the possibility of trying to persuade people to refrain from supporting either side until they know more about the issue. To convince people to not support a pro-choice referendum, all you need to do is persuade them to hold off on adopting a pro-choice position. The large majority of people don't know much about subjects like the moral issues I've mentioned in this post. We should take advantage of that ignorance by reminding them of how hesitant they are when they're ignorant about something in other areas of life. And we should point out how the speed with which proponents of these new moral positions are trying to get people to make changes is suspicious, just as we're suspicious when people act that way in other contexts.

Joe Rogan's Discussion With Matt Walsh About Same-Sex Marriage

I'm going by the video here. I know the discussion was lengthier than what's in the video just linked, but I've only seen some brief clips of the remainder of the discussion. I want to respond to the portion of the exchange in the video I linked, which has already gotten more than two million views. It's the portion of the discussion Rogan's YouTube channel chose to highlight. Walsh made a lot of good points, but I want to reinforce some of those and make some points of my own.

The Recent Exchange Between Mike Licona And Dale Allison On Jesus' Resurrection

They appeared on Sean McDowell's YouTube channel in a video released today. Both make a lot of good points, and there's some significance in what they agree about, but far more can and should be said about other relevant issues. And they both substantially underestimate the evidence for Christianity beyond Jesus' resurrection.

To Endear Jesus To People's Hearts

"It has been the distinctive aim, and the sincere desire, though the feeble and defective endeavour, of my ministry amongst you, to make known and to endear the Saviour to your hearts." (Octavius Winslow, A Pastoral Letter [London, England: Houlston and Stoneman, 1852], 6)

Work For The Bread That Doesn't Perish

John 6 is often brought up in contexts like soteriology, the eucharist, and the historicity of John's gospel and miracles. That's appropriate, and it should keep happening, but the passage is also relevant in another context that should get more attention than it does.

In verses 26-27, Jesus rebukes the crowd for being overly focused on physical food and not focused enough on spiritual food. And he said that in a context in which problems like lack of food and poverty were much bigger than they are today, especially in a place like modern America. It's a documented fact that there's been a major decrease in poverty worldwide over the last several decades. It's also a fact that the modern world has far more technology, medicine, comforts and conveniences, literacy, and other advantages than people had in Biblical times. Yet, people, including Christians, frequently don't make the relevant distinctions between the Biblical context and ours. As if the tens of trillions of dollars we spend on government programs to help people in physical contexts, military assistance in such contexts, private charities, etc. don't make us significantly different than ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, or the Roman empire or only make us a little different. But even in a setting in which people were much worse off in these contexts than they are today, Jesus often made comments like the ones in John 6:26-27. How much more should we be doing it today?

The culture often suggests that the primary or only context in which Christians are doing good is when they benefit people physically in the short term (giving food to people, giving them clothing, giving them medicine, providing shelter, etc.). And Christians frequently accommodate that mindset by giving an inordinately large amount of attention to that sort of work. (And the fact that liberal professing Christians do that more than conservatives doesn't prove that conservatives aren't doing it. You can do something to a lesser extent, yet be guilty of doing it to some degree.) If people still haven't noticed the explicitly Christian names of the hospitals they go to, the widespread presence of explicitly Christian charities in so many contexts, etc., then they're culpably negligent. We can point these things out to them from time to time, but we need to keep the priorities Jesus set out in this passage in John 6 (and in many other places). There's some value in explaining to people what charity work and other such things Christians have done over the centuries, but we need to avoid taking that too far. You can be overly focused on it and leave people with false impressions. Mind precedes matter, and there are higher priorities than benefitting people physically in the short term.

I've occasionally heard John Piper make a good point in this context. One of the reasons why Christians should be so focused on work like evangelism and missions is to benefit people physically over the long term. The afterlife will have a physical dimension after the resurrection. The spiritual has priority over the physical, but as far as the physical is concerned, the long term has priority over the short term.

Eternal Life To Take In Immeasurable Riches

"Every day for all eternity - without pause or end - the riches of the glory of God's grace in Christ will become increasingly great and beautiful in our perception of them. We are finite. They are 'immeasurable' - infinite [Ephesians 2:7]. Therefore, we cannot ever take them in fully. Let that sink in. There will always be more. Gloriously more. Forever. Only an infinite being can fully take in infinite riches. But we can, and we will, spend eternity taking in more and more of these riches. There is a necessary correlation between eternal existence and infinite blessing. It takes the one to experience the other. Eternal life is essential for the enjoyment of immeasurable riches of grace." (John Piper, Providence [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020], approximate Kindle location 3130)

Enfield Miscellany (Part 10)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. The other parts in the series can be accessed through the following links: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. I'll cite Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes below. Tapes from Grosse's collection will be referred to with "MG" [e.g., MG7B is Grosse's tape 7B], and Playfair's tapes will be designated by "GP" [e.g., GP42B is Playfair's tape 42B].)

Events Involving Water

Some of the earliest apparently paranormal events we know of in the Enfield case involved water. They occurred before the Hodgsons knew that something paranormal was occurring in their house. Peggy initially thought the puddles of water she found around the house had a normal cause, though it seems likely in retrospect that they were paranormal. The family figured out that something paranormal was going on during the night of August 31, 1977. But earlier that month, she was finding puddles of water in places where you wouldn't expect to find them, like underneath one of the beds (MG65B, 0:53). There would be many other such incidents as the case went on. On tape GP5A, you hear Playfair and the family discussing a "funny" shape some water they found on the floor had (9:33). Playfair checked the slope of the floor and tried to duplicate the water pattern by normal means, but wasn't able to. John Burcombe heard a shuffling noise (a noise the poltergeist seems to have often produced) coming from the area of the Hodgsons' bathroom and found the floor flooded with water (MG6B, 14:17). Janet was the closest person at the time, but she was standing at the stove and stirring some soup she was heating up. Burcombe was convinced that she couldn't have faked the incident, because of the timing involved and the lack of any watery footprints. He mentions that anybody who produced that much water by normal means would have to get their shoes wet in the process. He also says the water was in the process of coming out from underneath the closed bathroom door when he got there, which provides further evidence that the water had just started to appear, with nobody near enough to explain the water's appearance by normal means. The toilet lid was down, and the toilet brush was lying diagonally across the top of the lid. Peggy Nottingham had seen the poltergeist do something similar on another occasion, as she explains in the video here. Notice that before she refers to the bathroom events, she refers to how a puddle of water appeared in the kitchen "from nowhere". There were at least a few episodes in which the poltergeist left the toilet brush lying diagonally across the toilet seat, as shown in the reenactment in the video linked above, so it was a pattern in the poltergeist's behavior. On another occasion, Margaret saw water falling out of the air, with no apparent source, as if coming from an invisible faucet (MG33A, 0:16). As late as August of 1979, about two years after the earliest water incidents reported, there was still some activity involving water (MG95B, 11:52). Peggy Hodgson even reported water coming through the bedroom ceiling (12:37). There were many events involving water. These are just some examples among a lot more that could be cited. Burcombe repeatedly checked the house for leaking pipes and other such problems and couldn't find any normal explanation for these incidents. Vic Nottingham often helped the family and was a professional builder, so he could easily have noticed any plumbing or other relevant problems if there were any. Besides, the water often appeared in places that would be irrelevant to something like a plumbing issue, and other aspects of these incidents make a normal explanation unlikely. On July 10, 1978, the bathroom was inspected for water leaks by some workmen with the local council, and no leaks were found (MG91B, 15:30).

The Authority Debate Between Jimmy Akin And The Other Paul

You can watch it here. Paul made some good points, but I want to add some points of my own, in response to Jimmy and in response to what came up in the question and answer segment.

Access To Jesus' Census Record

There's a chapter on the census of Luke 2 in a book published a few years ago by Sabine Huebner, a historian at the University of Basel in Switzerland (Papyri And The Social World Of The New Testament [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019]). She makes some points others have made about the plausibility of Luke's account (that the author of the gospel would have had a lot of knowledge of Roman censuses, including from firsthand experience; that there's precedent for a Roman census occurring in a client kingdom; etc.). She concludes:

Trends Toward Underestimating Prophecy

Something I just posted on Facebook:

Justification Apart From Baptism In Ignatius

He never advocates justification through baptism in his letters, but he often refers to faith as a means of justification without mentioning baptism. For example:

Were Ephesus and Constantinople prominent because of a perpetual office instituted by Jesus or the apostles?

Because none of the earliest Christian sources refer to a papacy, Catholics often resort to suggesting that any sort of reference to a prominence or primacy of the Roman church is adequate evidence for the office. But when sources like Paul, Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus, and Tertullian commend the Roman church for non-papal reasons, it doesn't make sense to equate that with affirming that the Roman bishop has papal authority. It's sometimes suggested that critics of Catholicism are asking for too much when they make that sort of distinction. But it does make sense to distinguish between two concepts that aren't the same, and we do that with other early churches and early bishops. Think of how prominent churches other than Rome were in early church history (Jerusalem in the book of Acts, Ignatius' comments about the significance of the church of Ephesus, what Irenaeus said about the importance of the churches of Ephesus and Smyrna, the prominence of Constantinople in later centuries, etc.). All that Protestants and other critics of Roman Catholicism are doing is applying the same reasoning to Rome that we and Roman Catholics apply to other churches.

Petrine Primacy Isn't A Papacy

A good passage of scripture to bring up in discussions of the papacy is Matthew 11:11. We're told that nobody born of women is greater than John the Baptist. We don't conclude that he therefore was a Pope or that nobody, including Peter, could have had any authority over John. He could be unsurpassed in one sense without being unsurpassed in another sense. Similarly, when Jesus goes on in the same verse to say that he who is the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John, it doesn't follow that some sort of jurisdictional primacy is in view. Matthew 11:11 illustrates the fact that there are multiple ways in which somebody can be considered to have a primacy. Somebody like John can simultaneously be unsurpassed in one context without being unsurpassed in another. And the placement of the passage in Matthew 11 is significant, since Peter's primacy in 10:2 is often cited as evidence that he was a Pope, as are the comments about him in chapter 16. As I told a Catholic I had a discussion with earlier this year, do a search on terms like "greatest" and "first" in Matthew's gospel and see what conclusions you end up with if you interpret all of those passages as referring to papal authority. We use categories and language of primacy often in our everyday lives without thinking of a papacy or something equivalent to it. One person will be a leader among a group of friends (making certain decisions for the group, taking the initiative more often than anybody else, etc.) without having any equivalent of papal authority. We speak of who the greatest military leader was, the greatest American president, or whatever without having any equivalent of a Pope in mind.

You can believe in a Petrine primacy, as I and many other non-Catholics do, without believing in a papacy. I also believe in a primacy of John the Baptist, a Pauline primacy, and primacies of other Biblical figures. Peter is the greatest among the Twelve in some ways, and my sense is that he's probably the greatest among the Twelve overall. (You could argue that John the son of Zebedee is the greatest, because of his influence on later history through his gospel and because of other factors, but my sense is that Peter is the more significant of the two overall.) However, I'd place Paul ahead of Peter if you go beyond the Twelve. That Pauline primacy doesn't involve a papacy, just as Peter's primacy doesn't.

If a papacy had existed in early Christianity, we probably wouldn't have to go to passages like Matthew 10:2 and 16:18-19 to find unverifiable, possible allusions to it. Go here for a discussion of how the papacy is absent across many contexts where we'd expect to see it mentioned if the office existed early on. And go here for a collection of resources on the papacy more broadly.

We can think of a series of steps involved in sorting through these issues. For example, if a passage like Matthew 10:2 or John 21:15-17 is cited in support of a papacy, is a papacy implied by the text in question? None of the passages cited by Catholics (in scripture or in the earliest sources outside of scripture) logically lead to a papacy. We can go on to ask whether we'd expect a papacy to be mentioned in certain places if the office existed at the time (e.g., the many New Testament passages on church government issues, the early patristic comments on why the Roman church is significant). We can also ask if any of the relevant sources seem to deny the concept of the papacy. You can read my material linked above for examples of all three of these questions being addressed. But we don't need to go through all of these steps to be justified in not believing in a papacy. The insufficiency of the arguments for a papacy are enough to justify not accepting the concept, even if we thought that no early source contradicts the concept or have never even considered whether any early source does so. We take the same approach with any other matter involving some type of primacy (Matthew 11:11, the unique name given to James and John in Mark 3:17, the unique language applied to Paul in the context of Acts 9, the focus on Paul in Acts, Paul's having written more books of scripture than any other apostle, John's being referred to as "the elder", etc.).

"At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture as it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his Church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all the other Apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction; or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through the Church on Peter as her minister....For none can doubt, and it is known to all ages, that the holy and blessed Peter, the Prince and Chief of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind, and lives presides and judges, to this day and always, in his successors the Bishops of the Holy See of Rome" (First Vatican Council, session 4, chapters 1-2)

The Letters of Samuel Rutherford

I love The Letters of Samuel Rutherford. I think they should be far better known than they are. In fact, I'd say The Letters of Samuel Rutherford should be considered a Christian literary classic. Just like (say) The Confessions by Augustine of Hippo, Proslogion by Anselm of Canterbury, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, Communion with God by John Owen, The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, etc.

For one thing, The Letters of Samuel Rutherford offer a historical window into the 1600s. The age of the Puritans. Rutherford lived from 1600-1661. A time of tremendous political and religious upheaval in the British isles and continental Europe. A time when there was both philosophical theorizing over the proper relationship between church vs. state (e.g. Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan during this period; Rutheford also penned Lex, Rex) as well as literal persecutions and wars with the state and its arm of the established church (episcopacy) attempting to subjugate genuin Christians. The English Civil War, Crown vs. Parliament, the beheading of Charles I which was shocking at the time since monarchs had virtually never been executed by their people, Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, and so on. Yet it was likewise a time of tremendous reformation and revival for Protestant Christians. The Westminster Assembly was convened in this period by Parliament to reform the church, and Rutherford played a role in it. And consider that Rutherford lived contemporaneously with fellow Christians like John Owen (1616-1683), John Bunyan (1628-1688), Blaise Pascal (1623-1662); political leaders like Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), William Bradford who governed Plymouth Colony (1590-1657), King James of the KJV (1566-1625); artists like Rembrandt (1606-1669), Shakespeare (1564-1616), John Milton (1608-1674); and scientists like Galileo (1565-1642), Kepler (1571-1630), even Isaac Newton as a young man (1643-1727). I think there are some significant parallels from this period with us today.

More importantly, I think, The Letters display Rutherford as a devoted pastor who dearly loved his flock. Ironically, the bulk of The Letters (approximately 220 out of 365 letters) were written while Rutherford was in exile away from his flock. His flock lived in and around the little town of Anwoth in southwest Scotland near the English border. However, Rutherford was forced to move away from Anwoth by the ecclesiastical powers-that-be of the day. They forced Rutherford to live far north in Aberdeen where the ecclesiastical powers-that-be thought he'd be silenced. Yet thanks to God's providence, thanks to God who can bring good out of evil, Rutherford's exile did the opposite of silencing him inasmuch as his exile served as a major inspiration behind The Letters. Even today we can say of The Letters of Samuel Rutherford: "though he died, he still speaks" (Heb 11:4).

Finally, in terms of practical theology, The Letters illustrate Rutherford's deep care in guiding his flock, most of whom were average laypeople, from highborn to lowborn, how to walk with the Lord in tremendous suffering. Suffering that most of us today wouldn't have to face. Suffering that most of us today hear but faint echoes of when we hear of tragedies in developing nations or persecutions in nations like China or the Muslim world. From losing one's spouse and/or children to dealing with debilitating diseases to enemies of the faith seeking to literally kill them. Rutherford himself lost a wife at a young age (~30) as well as experienced the deaths of all but one of his half a dozen children. All the while Rutherford holds forth to his flock (and to us) "the loveliness of Christ".

To my knowledge, Banner of Truth publishes two versions of The Letters. A Puritan Paperbacks edition that contains a selection of Rutherford's letters and a full version that contains all 365 of Rutherford's letters along with other material (e.g. a biographical sketch of Rutherford's life). Personally I'd recommend the full version (ISBN-10 0851513883 | ISBN-13 978-0851513881). The full version is also available to download and read for free via Project Gutenberg which in turn is made possible thanks entirely to Andrew Bonar's work (see here). In fact, the Banner of Truth's full version is a facsimile edition of Andrew Bonar's work back in the 1800s so you'd get the same edition via Project Gutenberg as Banner of Truth publishes. (Banner of Truth has likewise published The Loveliness of Christ which is a very short book that takes a handful of quotations or excerpts from The Letters. It's much briefer than even the Puritan Paperbacks edition of The Letters. It's a good book to whet one's appetite for the full work.)

Portage Publications has a nice pdf version of The Letters. And our friends at Monergism have done various versions of The Letters as well.

Some others who have commended The Letters:

• Charles Spurgeon: "When we are dead and gone let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford's Letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men."
• Richard Baxter (who was no friend to Presbyterians including Rutherford): "Hold off the Bible, such a book as Mr. Rutherford's Letters the world never saw the like."
• A contemporary of Robert Murray M'Cheyne's said that "The Letters of Samuel Rutherford were often in his hand".
• Handley Moule: "[The Letters are] a small casket stored with many jewels".

One last thing. I've long loved the poem and hymn "The Sands of Time Are Sinking", written by Anne R. Cousin, based on The Letters of Samuel Rutherford. The full edition of The Letters has a section that tells us which letters lie behind the poem. And I enjoy this version of the hymn:

Other Anti-Roman-Catholic Views Of The Pre-Reformation Lollards

My last post discussed their views on the relationship between baptism and justification. There are many other topics on which they disagreed with Roman Catholicism.

The Oxford Dictionary Of The Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) goes as far as to say that, for the Lollards, "The Scriptures were the sole authority in religion and every man had the right to read and interpret them for himself." (994) J. Patrick Hornbeck's book cited in my last post refers to affirmations of sola scriptura or something similar by Lollards (A Companion To Lollardy [Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2016], 74, 141, 149, 170). He provides many examples of Lollard rejection of the papacy and other Roman Catholic authorities.

There was Lollard support for the concept of an invisible church, consisting only of believers (113, 116, 170).

In my last post, I quoted Susan Royal commenting, "Every one of the seven traditional sacraments of the medieval church was called into question or even rejected wholesale by some lollards." (Lollards In The English Reformation [Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2020], approximate Kindle location 3678). See chapter 4 in her book for a discussion of many examples. I've already cited some of her comments on Lollard views of baptism and justification, in my last post. She also gives examples of rejection of infant baptism and belief in the salvation of unbaptized infants (3879). Some Lollards denied that there's a physical presence of Christ in the eucharist (3773). Royal refers to how some Lollard views "inclined closely to Zwingli's later view of the Lord's Supper" (3800). Hornbeck's book mentioned above gives some examples as well. He rightly notes that there was a diversity of views of the eucharist and a lot of controversies surrounding eucharistic issues in the centuries leading up to John Wycliffe's time and the Lollard movement that followed (29). Hornbeck writes, "Yet to the extent that it is possible to glimpse lollards' views on the eucharist, it may be a valid assessment that most lollards tended to take one of two positions on the sacrament: either they argued that while Christ is spiritually present in the eucharist, so also are the material substances of bread and wine; or else they described the sacrament in figurative terms, stating that it merely commemorates the Last Supper." (121) He refers elsewhere to Lollard views that "the eucharist is Christ's body in only a figurative sense" (123), "merely a memorial" (183). And "It would be tedious to recount in detail every case in which a defendant confessed to believing that the substances of bread and wine remain in the consecrated elements." (124) Much more could be cited. Royal's book also addresses the other sacraments and how Lollards viewed them.

Hornbeck refers to how some Lollards held a view of predestination similar to John Calvin's (112). Hornbeck describes a "scholarly commonplace" of viewing the Lollards as holding a view of predestination that anticipates Calvin's, though Hornbeck challenges that scholarly conclusion. He thinks some Lollards held a view like Calvin's, but that many didn't.

I'm just giving some representative examples among many more that can be found in sources like the ones I've cited. Elsewhere in Hornbeck's book, there are references to Lollard opposition to prayers to the dead (138) and the veneration of images (139-41), for example.

Justification Apart From Baptism Among Pre-Reformation Lollards

I've written a lot over the years in response to the false claim that nobody believed in justification through faith alone prior to the Reformation or between the time of the apostles and the Reformation. See here, for example. The claim often focuses on the relationship between baptism and justification. We'll be told that all of the church fathers believed in baptismal regeneration or that none of the patristic or medieval sources believed in justification apart from baptism, for example. In recent months, I've written some posts about support for justification through faith alone, including justification apart from baptism in particular, in the first two centuries of church history. See here, here, and here. What I want to do in this post is discuss some examples at the other end of the spectrum, from the closing years of the medieval era.

More Patristic References To Mary As A Sinner

I've posted collections of examples of scripture and extrabiblical sources prior to the Reformation referring to Mary as a sinner. See here, here, and here. Other examples:

"A woman from the multitude cries out, that blessed was the womb that had borne him, and the breasts which had given him suck. And the Lord answers, 'Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it' [Luke 11:28]: because even before this he had rejected his mother and his brethren, because he prefers those who hear God and obey him. For not even on the present occasion was his mother in attendance on him. It follows that neither on the previous occasion did he deny having been born. So now, when he hears this once more, once more he transfers the blessedness away from his mother's womb and breasts and assigns it to the disciples: he could not have transferred it away from his mother if he had had no mother." (Tertullian, Against Marcion, 4:27)

"But He on the Cross, committeth His mother to the disciple, teaching us even to our last breath to show every care for our parents. When indeed she unseasonably troubled Him, He said, 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?' [John 2:4] And, 'Who is My mother?' [Matthew 12:48] But here He showeth much loving affection, and committeth her to the disciple whom He loved." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 85:2, v. 24)

"Having signified how great mischiefs are bred from not believing the resurrection, he takes up the discourse again, and says, 'But now hath Christ been raised from the dead;' [1 Corinthians 15:20] continually adding, 'from the dead,' so as to stop the mouths of the heretics. 'The first-fruits of them that slept.' But if their first-fruits, then themselves also, must needs rise again. Whereas if he were speaking of the resurrection from sins, and none is without sin;—for even Paul saith, 'I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified;'—how shall there be any who rise again, according to you?" (John Chrysostom, Homilies On First Corinthians, 39:5)

"So too Christ our Lord Himself teaches us, at one time calling Himself Son of God and at another Son of man: at one time He gives honour to His Mother as to her that gave Him birth; at another He rebukes her as her Lord." (Theodoret, Dialogues, 2)

We want a king!

We should keep in mind that one of the reasons people can have for being Roman Catholic or finding Catholicism appealing is the sort of interest in a king that the ancient Israelites had, an interest that can be sinful. People can have sinful reasons for desiring some other belief system, including Protestantism, but my focus here is on Catholicism and the connection between the papacy and a monarchy. We should keep in mind that a desire for a monarchical form of church government can be, and I think often is, part of why people are Catholic or are attracted to Catholicism. And the motives for wanting that sort of authority structure don't have to be entirely sinful in order to be partly sinful or to be inadequate to justify accepting the papacy.

"your wickedness is great which you have done in the sight of the Lord by asking for yourselves a king" (1 Samuel 12:17)

The Largeness, Complexity, And Difficulty Of Extrabiblical Tradition

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

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

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

And those councils often disagreed with each other.

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