Blessed art thou among women
The DataRat
"One who is not a believer must wonder
how Catholics can believe what they do,
when their own bibles teach something
different"
Your favorite rodent was going to do a
hit piece here on the Romanist New American
Bible (NAB). When he went to do research
for that article, he came away utterly amazed
that someone could hold to Romanist beliefs
~and~ read the Romanist NAB !
It's got flaws, but ...overall... the NAB says
the same thing as Christian Bibles like the
NASB and NIV. Everywhere in it, Romanism
is contradicted.
Guess this just goes to show that the Bible is
a closed book to the unregenerate !
The DataRat
Carlovingian
"The DataRat" <dat...@home.com> wrote in message
news:39A4355E...@home.com...
>
>
> "One who is not a believer must wonder
> how Catholics can believe what they do,
> when their own bibles teach something
> different"
>
Since you do not hold the complete Truth, I'll try to help you.
St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165) represents Palestine advised, " We know
that He, before all creatures, proceeded from the Father by his power and
will,... and by means of the Virgin became man, that by what way the
disobedience
arising from the serpent had its beginning, by that way also it might have
an undoing. For Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that
was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin
Mary, taking faith and joy, when the Angel told her the good tidings, that
the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the Highest
overshadow her, and therefore the Holy One that was born of her was the Son
of God, answered, 'Be it to me according to Thy word.'"
Tertullian (A.D. 160 - 240) represents Africa and Rome says, "God recovered
His image and likeness, which the devil had seized, by a rival operation.
For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of
death. Equally into a virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was
the builder-up of life; that, what by that sex had gone into perdition, by
the same sex might be brought back to salvation. Eve had believed the
serpent; Mary believed Gabriel; the fault which one committed by believing,
the other by believing has blotted out."
St Irenaeus, who represents St. John the Divine (Apostle), for he had been
taught by St. Polycarp, friend and associate of St. John, so of the other
Apostles states, "As Eve by the speech of an Angel was seduced, so as to
flee God, transgressing His word, so also Mary received the good tidings by
means of the Angel's speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to
His word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the other drawn to
obey God; that of the virgin Eve the Virgin Mary might become the advocate.
And, as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it
is saved, the balance being preserved, a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's
obedience."
These three writers do not speak of the Blessed Virgin merely as the
physical instrument of our Lord's taking flesh, but as an intelligent,
responsible cause of it; her faith and obedience being accessories to the
Incarnation, and it gaining it as her reward. As Eve failed in these
virtues, and thereby brought on the fall of the human race in Adam, Mary by
means of them (virtues) had a part in its restoration. These three Fathers
of the Church unanimously declare that she was not a mere instrument in the
Incarnation, such as David of Judah; they declare she co-operated in our
salvation, not merely by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon her body, but
by specific holy acts, the effect of the Holy Spirit within her soul; that ,
as Eve forfeited privileges by sin, so Mary earned privileges by the fruit
of grace.
Eve was entitled by Adam "the Mother of all living things"; however, this
"woman, being seduced, was in the transgression" and her title was passed on
to the Second Eve, Mary, to bring forth the Second Adam, Christ, to fulfill
the Scripture, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed." The Seed of the woman is the Word Incarnate, and
the Woman, whose Seed or Son He is, His Mother Mary.
Pied Piper
John McAlpine (left), who started me pondering Newman and Catholicism;
sponsor at my reception into the Catholic Church: 8 February 1991
As a committed evangelical Protestant with a great respect for the history
of Christian doctrine, I subscribed to a fairly widespread non-Catholic view
of Church history: a vague, ethereal, semi-legendary conception of the early
Church as quasi-Protestant, and lacking those elements which are now termed
"Catholic distinctives." If the early Christians weren't technically &
exhaustively Protestant (as defined theologically and ecclesiologically by
the revolutionary movement in the 16th century), they certainly (in the
main, anyway) weren't Catholic - or so I had casually assumed.
Many Protestants (particularly evangelicals) date the downfall of the early
Church at 313, with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine and the
subsequent "paganization" of institutional Christianity. Others will place
this alleged calamitous event around 440, with the beginning of the papal
reign of Pope St. Leo the Great, who - in the eyes of many Protestant
historians - was the first pope in the full-blown jurisdictional sense
(however that is defined by these same historians). Still another school of
thought believes that the derailing of the young Christian Church occurred
soon after the last Apostle's death and the cessation of the writing of New
Testament books, around the year 100, or else sometime during the course of
the second century A.D. at the latest.
This whole endeavor to date the "apostasy" of institutional, historic
Christianity strongly reminds me of arbitrary attempts to maintain that
human life or personhood in the womb begins at a time other than conception,
which is clearly the determinative biological event. It simply can't be done
with any logical or historiographical rigor. The Church, like a human soul
and body in the womb, organically develops from the beginning in a gradual,
consistent fashion, and it is altogether futile to try and assign a date to
its supposed demise. Like the preborn child, the essence is there from the
first.
Intuitively sensing this, I myself took a more complex, nuanced view that
the ostensible "Church" was truly Christian all through this period, down
through the early Middle Ages, up to the period of the Inquisition and
Crusades (roughly 1100-1500), at which time it did, however, lose much of
its integrity and moral authority, if not the title and claim "Christian"
altogether. I was reluctant to go the whole way and deny that Catholicism
was Christian, because I knew too much about what it had always taught on
the "central doctrines" of Christianity, such as the Trinity and all the
Christological doctrines, and its indispensable role in preserving both
medieval culture and the Bible itself. To deny Christian status to
Catholicism at any point of its development would be to cut off the limb on
which Protestantism sits: in effect, this would logically reduce to a very
curious and self-defeating standpoint that Christianity is not an historical
religion by its very nature.
Rather, I believed that the Catholic Church had "passed the baton," so to
speak, to the Protestants in the sixteenth century, who succeeded in
reforming the Church universal. In other words, I held to an "organic"
conception of Church history, somewhat like the Protestant Church historian
Philip Schaff, and many Reformed, Anglican and Lutheran theologians and
historians, whereby Protestantism was a legitimate development of, heir to,
and legatee of, historic Catholicism. Henceforth, in my thinking,
Protestantism became the superior and more "biblical" form of Christianity,
since the Catholic Church had "obviously" compromised itself both morally
and theologically with its reactionary and extremely harsh, "un-ecumenical"
Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.
This was the background of my ecclesiological thinking when, in early 1990,
I began to moderate an ecumenical discussion group in my home. A friend of
mine, John McAlpine, whom I had met in the pro-life movement, and with whom
I enjoyed conversing, stunned me one night when he claimed that the Catholic
Church had never contradicted itself in any of its dogmas. This, to me, was
self-evidently incredible and a priori implausible, and so I embarked
immediately on a research project designed to debunk once and for all this
far-fetched notion that any Christian body could even claim infallibility,
let alone actually possess it.
During the course of this study, I gleefully discovered many of the standard
"anti-infallibility" works, which are cited again and again: the Anglican
George Salmon's The Infallibility of the Church (originally 1890), Johann
von Dollinger's Letters of Janus and Letters of Quirinus (1869-1870) and
Hans Kung's Infallible?: An Inquiry (1971). Salmon's work has been refuted
decisively twice, by B.C. Butler, in his The Church and Infallibility: A
Reply to the Abridged "Salmon", and also in a series of articles in The
Irish Ecclesiastical Record, in 1901 and 1902 (1)
Yet Protestant polemicists Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie still claimed
in 1995, in a major critique of Catholicism, Roman Catholics and
Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, (2) that Salmon's book has "never
really been answered by the Catholic Church." I was amused recently by the
accusation of a prominent professional anti-Catholic, that I must have never
been familiar with the best Protestant arguments against infallibility and
Catholicism in general - hence my eventual conversion on flimsy grounds! The
truth was quite otherwise: the above works are the cream of the crop of this
particular line of thought, as evidenced by Geisler and MacKenzie's citation
of both Salmon and Kung as "witnesses" for their case (3). And the Church
historian Dollinger's heretical opinions are also often utilized by Eastern
Orthodox polemicists as arguments against papal infallibility. I know this
well as a result of my own ongoing dialogues with Orthodox Christians over
the Internet.
George Salmon revealed in his book his profoundly biased ignorance not only
concerning papal infallibility, but also with regard to even the basics of
the development of doctrine:
Romish advocates . . . are now content to exchange tradition, which their
predecessors had made the basis of their system, for this new foundation of
development . . . The theory of development is, in short, an attempt to
enable men, beaten off the platform of history, to hang on to it by the
eyelids . . . The old theory was that the teaching of the Church had never
varied. (4)
Here Salmon is quixotically fighting a straw man of his own making and
seeking to sophistically force his readers into the acceptance of a false
and altogether logically unnecessary dichotomy: that development of doctrine
implies change in the essence or substance of a doctrine and therefore is
utterly contrary to the claims of the Church to be the Guardian and
Custodian of an authoritative tradition of never-changing dogma. But this is
emphatically not the Catholic notion, nor that of Newman, to whom Salmon was
largely responding. Nor is it true that development was a "new" theory
introduced by Cardinal Newman into Catholicism, while the "old theory" was
otherwise. This is unanswerably proven by the writing of St. Vincent of
Lerins, one of the Church Fathers, who died around 450 A.D., in his classic
patristic exposition of development, The Notebooks:
Will there, then, be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ?
Certainly there is, and the greatest . . . But it is truly progress and not
a change of faith. What is meant by progress is that something is brought to
an advancement within itself; by change, something is transformed from one
thing into another. It is necessary, therefore, that understanding,
knowledge and wisdom grow and advance strongly and mightily . . . and this
must take place precisely within its own kind, that is, in the same
teaching, in the same meaning, and in the same opinion. The progress of
religion in souls is like the growth of bodies, which, in the course of
years, evolve and develop, but still remain what they were . . . Although in
the course of time something evolved from those first seeds and has now
expanded under careful cultivation, nothing of the characteristics of the
seeds is changed. Granted that appearance, beauty and distinction has been
added, still, the same nature of each kind remains. (5)
St. Augustine (354-430), the greatest of the Church Fathers, whom
Protestants also greatly revere, expressed similar sentiments in his City of
God (16,2,1), and On the 54th Psalm (number 22), so this concept predated
Newman by at least fourteen centuries, Salmon's claims notwithstanding.
George Salmon thus loses much credibility as any sort of expert on Christian
history, papal infallibility, or development, for this and many other
reasons, as demonstrated by his Catholic critics. Yet Geisler and MacKenzie,
while presenting a fairly accurate picture of Newman's (and Catholic)
development themselves, state that Salmon's book is "a penetrating critique
of Newman's theory." (6)
It is beyond our purview here to examine the faulty and jaundiced reasoning
employed by the above-cited "anti-infallibility" works, and my own ambitious
and zealous adoption of them, in my effort to refute the Catholic Church on
historical grounds. Suffice it to say that it is largely a matter of
misunderstanding or misapplying the true doctrine of infallibility, as
defined dogmatically by the First Vatican Council in 1870, or else a
conveniently selective and dishonest presentation of historical facts and
patristic citations. These practices run rampant throughout the current
anti-Catholic literature, and always have. And I, too, was guilty of it.
Bias has a way of blinding one to even basic logical errors.
The First Vatican Council of 1870 defined papal infallibility as follows:
We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman
Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in discharge of the
office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme
Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be
held by the universal Church, is, by the divine assistance promised to him
in Blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the divine
Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine
regarding faith or morals; and that, therefore, such definitions of the
Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church,
irreformable.
Thus, the conciliar definition was careful to limit absolute infallibility
to very specific and strict parameters, and it is these which anti-Catholic
polemicists almost always overlook or distort when bringing to the table
such famous examples of supposed papal fallibility as Honorius, Vigilius and
Liberius. None of them succeed when subjected to the proper historical and
logical scrutiny. They only "work" when presented in isolation without the
Catholic counter-replies which reveal their utter inadequacy.
Furthermore, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) did not change this
teaching in the slightest, despite the claims of heterodox self-proclaimed
"Catholics" and misinformed non-Catholics and nominal, undereducated
Catholics. Referring to the decree on the Pope from Vatican I, the Council
declared:
This teaching concerning the institution, the permanence, the nature and
import of the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and his infallible
teaching office, the sacred synod proposes anew to be firmly believed by all
the faithful . . .
The college or body of bishops has for all that no authority unless united
with the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, as its head, whose primatial
authority, let it be added, over all, whether pastors or faithful, remains
in its integrity. For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of
Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and
universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise
unhindered. The order of bishops is the successor to the college of the
apostles in their role as teachers and pastors, and in it the apostolic
college is perpetuated. Together with their head, the Supreme Pontiff, and
never apart from him, they have supreme and full authority over the
Universal Church; but this power cannot be exercised without the agreement
of the Roman Pontiff. The Lord made Peter alone the rock-foundation and the
holder of the keys of the Church (cf. Mt. 16:18-19) . . . (7)
Returning to my own intellectual and spiritual journey; to give one example
as an illustration of faulty "anti-Catholic" reasoning: I quickly realized
that the early Christians held a very "high," literal view of the Eucharist
(the Real Presence), as does the Catholic Church today. The historical and
patristic evidence supporting this fact is so overwhelming that even the
most vehement opponents of the Catholic Church rarely seek to deny it. But,
undaunted, I stooped to the level of special pleading, in claiming that St.
Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers, adopted a symbolic view of the
Eucharist. I based this on his oft-stated notion of the sacrament as
"symbol" or "sign." I failed to realize, however, that I was arbitrarily
creating a false, logically unnecessary dichotomy between the sign and the
reality of the Eucharist, for St. Augustine - when all his remarks on the
subject are taken into account - clearly accepted the Real Presence. The
Eucharist - for Augustine, and objectively speaking - is both sign and
reality. There simply is no contradiction.
A cursory glance at Scripture confirms this general principle. For instance,
Jesus refers to the sign of Jonah, comparing the prophet Jonah's three days
and nights in the belly of the fish to His own burial in the earth (Matthew
12:38-40). In this case, both events, although described as signs, were
quite real indeed. Jesus also uses the terminology of sign in connection
with His Second Coming (Matthew 24:30-31), which is believed by all
Christians who adhere to the Nicene Creed, and who have not denied biblical
authority or the possibility of miracles, to be a literal event, and not
symbolic only.
Protestants tend to use the same flawed analysis when they find the abundant
patristic citations extolling the greatness and centrality of Holy
Scripture, and thus assume that these Fathers believed in the Protestant
formal principle of Scripture Alone (sola Scriptura), when in fact, further
objective study reveals that they accepted Tradition and Scripture as part
of a unified whole. The historical centrality of Scripture in the contention
against heretics, for example, did not mean that Tradition was divorced from
Scripture, since the Church Fathers routinely appealed to apostolic
Tradition in order to decisively counter heretical claims. In actuality,
that was the bottom line for the Fathers, the coup de grace. And this appeal
was an historical, rather than a biblical argument, based on apostolic
Church authority, as opposed to the methodological approach of Scripture
Alone.
Examples in the Fathers are legion. For instance, St. Augustine makes many
remarks which show that he regarded the authority of the Church as supreme,
all the while accepting the primacy of Scriptures. In other words, they were
two sides of the same coin for him and the early Church, not opposed in
terms of ultimate authority, as in Protestantism:
The authority of our Scriptures, strengthened by the consent of so many
nations, and confirmed by the succession of the Apostles, bishops and
councils, is against you. (8)
No sensible person will go contrary to reason, no Christian will contradict
the Scriptures, no lover of peace will go against the Church. (9)
Wherever this tradition comes from, we must believe that the Church has not
believed in vain, even though the express authority of the canonical
Scriptures is not brought forward for it. (10)
To be sure, although on this matter, we cannot quote a clear example taken
from the canonical Scriptures, at any rate, on this question, we are followi
ng the true thought of Scriptures when we observe what has appeared good to
the universal Church which the authority of these same Scriptures recommends
to you. (11)
Not knowing facts such as the above, or else refusing to acknowledge them, I
proceeded with my hostile research, cavalierly assuming beforehand that the
early Church was much more Protestant than Catholic, and that the Catholic
Church had become corrupt over time (even while technically remaining
Christian by the minimalist, Protestant criterion of "central doctrines").
Such is the standard view of Protestants, especially those most in line with
"Reformation thought." They assume, usually almost without any direct
analysis, that the Catholic Church has added to the Christian faith, that
faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).
My Catholic friend John, confronted with the mass of jaded, highly selective
historical evidence I had compiled, and my relentless polemics, was
understandably frustrated. He kept urging me to read John Henry Cardinal
Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. What little
familiarity I had with Newman had shown me that he was a very impressive
figure. I knew that he was a brilliant Church historian, and highly
respected by all, regardless of theological affiliation.
So I started reading the Essay in October 1990, after having been somewhat
"softened" in the previous months by my reading of Catholic books by the
cultural historian Christopher Dawson, pro-life heroine Joan Andrews, the
famous Trappist monk and convert Thomas Merton, and the marvelous,
unparallelled summary The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam, which has been
described by Lutheran historian Jaroslav Pelikan as the best single volume
written for the purpose of explicating and defending Catholicism. The
timing - in God's Providence, and in retrospect - was perfect. A few months
before, I had also concluded, as a result of intense discussions in my
ecumenical group, that the Catholic Church possessed the highest and most
sublime moral theology of any Christian group. Furthermore, I had been
convinced (around July 1990) of the wrongness of contraception, after
involved arguments and the dumbfounded realization that all Christians of
all types had opposed it until 1930, when the Anglicans adopted it at their
Lambeth conference for "hard cases" only. This was my first overt change of
opinion, but little did I suspect what was yet to come.
Charles Harrold, the editor of an anthology of Newman's writings, described
the Essay as follows:
It was composed in 1845, when Newman was halting midway between two forms of
Christianity . . . Its aim was to explain and justify what Protestants
regarded as corruptions and additions to the primitive Christian creed, and
to show these to be legitimate developments . . . In a series of eloquent
and erudite analogies, he seeks to show that the present highly complex
doctrines of the Church lay in germ in the original depositum of faith,
which has evolved or developed through progressive unfolding and
explication. (12)
One can see, given the above description of my views and methodology in
1990, that the Essay was probably the most appropriate and relevant work I
could have read at that time, regardless of whether I was going to be
convinced by it or not. It provided the "best shot" that the Catholic Church
was likely to give, in defense of its doctrines which showed marked "growth"
(a neutral term) throughout history, to the dismay of Protestants.
Finally, I was now reading some sort of response to the research I had been
doing for months, under the influence of thoroughly Protestant
presuppositions. Newman wrote, near the beginning:
However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history, we
are told, is its best refutation . . .
In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essay that,
granting that some large variations of teaching in its long course of 1800
years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found to arise
from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with a harmony and
a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripture revelations, which,
instead of telling to their disadvantage, actually constitute an argument in
their favour, as witnessing to a superintending Providence and a great
Design in the mode and in the circumstances of their occurrence. (13)
I was already quite intrigued and looking forward (intellectually) to what
Newman was going to say. The very premise of his approach was so novel and
curious to me that it guaranteed my continued avid interest. He went on to
assert, shortly after this statement:
And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever
it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and
unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever
there were a safe truth, it is this. And Protestantism . . . as a whole,
feels it, and has felt it. This is shown in the determination . . . of
dispensing with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a
Christianity from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless
they had despaired of it . . . To be deep in history is to cease to be a
Protestant . . . I have elsewhere observed:
"So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a system of doctrine as he
would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept
away as if by a deluge . . . Let him take which of his doctrines he will,
his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, . . . his notion of
faith, . . . his denial of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the
ministerial commission, or of the visible Church . . . the Scriptures as the
one appointed instrument of religious teachings and let him consider how far
Antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it" (14) . . .
That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is easy to
determine. (15)
This was clearly now a frontal attack on the entire edifice of my Protestant
ecclesiology: a turning of my argument on its head, with the forceful
assertion that it was Catholicism, not Protestantism, which had the
historical record on its side. And I respected history enough to shudder at
this prospect. I also knew full well that Newman would bring to bear an
enormous weight of historical evidence to support his case, as the book
before me was 445 pages long!
After summary statements such as the above, Newman proceeded to make
brilliant specific analogies in order to bring home his point. The first had
to do with the doctrine of purgatory, vis-a-vis the doctrine of original
sin, which is, of course, accepted by Protestants as well:
Some notion of suffering, or disadvantage, or punishment after this life, in
the case of the faithful departed, or other vague forms of the doctrine of
Purgatory, has in its favour almost a consensus of the first four ages of
the Church. (16)
Newman then recounts no less than sixteen Fathers who hold the view in some
form. But in comparing this consensus to the doctrine of original sin, we
find a disjunction:
No one will say that there is a testimony of the Fathers, equally strong,
for the doctrine of Original Sin. (17)
In spite of the forcible teaching of St. Paul on the subject, the doctrine
of Original Sin appears neither in the Apostles' nor the Nicene Creed. (18)
This is a crucial distinction. It is a serious problem for Protestantism
that it by and large inconsistently rejects doctrines which have a consensus
in the early Church, such as purgatory, the (still developing) papacy,
bishops, the Real Presence, regenerative infant baptism, apostolic
succession, and intercession of the saints, while accepting others with far
less explicit early sanction, such as original sin. Even many of their own
foundational and distinctive doctrines, such as the notion of Faith Alone
(sola fide), or imputed, extrinsic, forensic justification, are well-nigh
nonexistent all through Church history until Luther's arrival on the scene,
as, for example, prominent Protestant apologist Norman Geisler recently
freely admitted:
. . . these valuable insights into the doctrine of justification had been
largely lost throughout much of Christian history, and it was the Reformers
who recovered this biblical truth . . .
During the patristic, and especially the later medieval periods, forensic
justification was largely lost . . . Still, the theological formulations of
such figures as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas did not preclude a
rediscovery of this judicial element in the Pauline doctrine of
justification . . .
. . . one can be saved without believing that imputed righteousness (or
forensic justification) is an essential part of the true gospel. Otherwise,
few people were saved between the time of the apostle Paul and the
Reformation, since scarcely anyone taught imputed righteousness (or forensic
justification) during that period! (19)
On the other hand, Protestants clearly accept developing doctrine on several
fronts: the Canon of the New Testament is a clear example of such a
(technically "non-biblical") doctrine It wasn't finalized until 397 A.D. The
divinity of Christ was dogmatically proclaimed only at the "late" date of
325, the fully worked-out doctrine of the Holy Trinity in 381, and the Two
Natures of Christ (God and Man) in 451, all in Ecumenical Councils which are
accepted by most Protestants. So development is an unavoidable fact for both
Protestants and Catholics.
The trick for Protestants (granting Church history an important and
legitimate role, whether it is considered normative and authoritative or
not), is to determine a non-arbitrary rationale for accepting some doctrines
while rejecting others. It will not do to simply say that certain doctrines
are "unbiblical" and thus unworthy of Protestant allegiance, since it must
immediately be explained why the majority of early Christians believed in
them, and why beliefs such as the Canon of the New Testament and Scripture
Alone are adopted despite the absence of biblical rationale, or why (chances
are) many other strands of Protestantism disagree with the one making the
claim, when Scripture is allegedly so "clear" and able to be interpreted in
the main without difficulty by the layman.
Newman writes, regarding the New Testament Canon:
As regards the New Testament, Catholics and Protestants receive the same
books as canonical and inspired; yet . . . the degrees of evidence are very
various for one book and another . . . For instance, as to the Epistle of
St. James . . . Origen, in the third century, is the first writer who
distinctly mentions it among the Greeks and it is not quoted by name by any
Latin till the fourth . . . Again: The Epistle to the Hebrews, though
received in the East, was not received in the Latin Churches till St.
Jerome's time . . . Again, St. Jerome tells us, that in his day, towards
A.D. 400, the Greek Church rejected the Apocalypse, but the Latin received
it. Again: The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books . . . Of these,
fourteen are not mentioned at all till from eighty to one hundred years
after St. John's death, in which number are the Acts, 2nd Corinthians,
Galatians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, and James. Of the other
thirteen, five, viz. St. John's Gospel, Philippians, 1st Timothy, Hebrews,
and 1st John, are quoted but by one writer during the same period. On what
ground, then, do we receive the Canon as it comes to us, but on the
authority of the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries? . . . The fifth
century acts as a comment on the obscure text of the centuries before it.
(20)
Newman makes another brilliant analogy between the "lateness" of the
development of the papacy and the Marian doctrines, and the Creed and the
Canon:
Ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the Economy
of grace . . . was reserved for the fifth century, as the definition of our
Lord's proper Divinity had been the work of the fourth . . . In order to do
honour to Christ, . . . to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation . . .
to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of
Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God . . . The
title 'Theotokos,' or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from
primitive times, and had been used, among other writers, by Origen,
Eusebius, . . . St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St.
Gregory Nyssen. (21)
If the Imperial power checked the development of Councils, it availed also
for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like
manner, both remained undefined . . . All began to form, as soon as the
Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church. (22)
The venerable Cardinal then defines seven characteristics of all true
developments:
It becomes necessary . . . to assign certain characteristics of faithful
developments . . . the presence of which serves as a test to discriminate
between them and corruptions . . . I venture to set down Seven Notes . . .
as follows: - There is no corruption if it retains one and the same type,
the same principles, the same organization; if its beginnings anticipate its
subsequent phases, and its later phenomena protect and subserve its earlier;
if it has a power of assimilation and revival, and a vigorous action from
first to last. (23)
A corruption is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to
illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous
history . . . A true development . . . is an addition which illustrates . .
. the body of thought from which it proceeds . . . it is of a tendency
conservative of what has gone before it. (24)
After consideration, especially, of Newman's analogies between Protestant
developments and distinctively Catholic ones, and his "Seven Notes," it
became clear to me that Protestantism represented a massive corruption of
historical Christianity, rather than a consistent development, as I formerly
believed, and my thinking underwent a paradigm shift of massive proportions.
For Protestantism undeniably introduced radically new doctrines such as sola
fide, sola Scriptura, sectarianism, private judgment, the notion of an
invisible, non-hierarchical church, and symbolic baptism and Eucharist,
which were sheer novelties, rather than reforms, supposedly hearkening back
to the alleged state of affairs in the early Church. But they simply cannot
be found in the early Church.
Newman builds his case to its climax, with the following lucid comment:
If it be true that the principles of the later Church are the same as those
of the earlier, then . . . the later in reality agrees more than it differs
with the earlier, for principles are responsible for doctrines. Hence they
who assert that the modern Roman system is the corruption of primitive
theology are forced to discover some difference of principle . . . for
instance, that the right of private judgment was secured to the early Church
and has been lost to the later, or again, that the later Church rationalizes
and the earlier went by faith.
Moreover . . . the various heresies . . . have in one respect or other . . .
violated those principles with which she rose into existence, and which she
still retains. Thus Arian (25) and Nestorian (26) schools denied the
allegorical rule of Scripture interpretation; the Gnostics (27) and
Eunomians (28) for Faith professed to substitute knowledge; and the
Manichees (29) also . . . The dogmatic Rule . . . was thrown aside by all
those sects which, as Tertullian tells us, claimed to judge for themselves
from Scripture; and the Sacramental principle was violated, ipso facto, by
all who separated from the Church . . . In like manner the contempt of
mystery, of reverence, of devoutness, of sanctity, are other notes of the
heretical spirit. As to Protestantism it is plain in how many ways it has
reversed the principles of Catholic theology. (30)
In other words, the early heretics were the ones who usually operated on the
basis of the so-called perspicuity, or clearness of Scripture, without
authoritative interpretation by authoritative ecclesiastical bodies.
Protestants look back today with the benefit of hindsight and speak of the
"early Church" or simply, "the Church," yet fail to recognize that this
"Church" which they tacitly assume was one and unified, is none other than
the organically-connected ancestor of the present-day Catholic Church, which
operates on the same principles (apostolic succession, a certain
understanding of the organic relationship of Church, Bible, and Tradition,
sacramentalism, sacerdotalism, papacy, conciliarism, episcopacy, the
communion of saints, etc.).
One need not posit an absolute break of continuity in order to equate the
present Catholic Church with the "Church" of the early centuries. One need
only understand the true nature of development, whereby doctrines can grow
in the sense that they are more clearly understood, and more deeply and
thoroughly explicated, while not undergoing any essential transformation.
But Protestantism requires a radical change of principle, and hence, fails
the test of what constitutes a true development, in Newman's analysis.
Besides, corruption can just as easily consist of subtraction as addition.
Corruption entails a departure from normalcy and precedent.
Furthermore, it is instructive to realize that what we now consider orthodox
in early Christianity, is simply the position of the Roman apostolic see,
which was proven right again and again on this score, far beyond
coincidence, given the multiplicity of heretical sects in the early
centuries, and the thousands of competing Christian denominations today.
This fact and the others recounted above in Newman's Essay and my own
commentary upon it, are what basically compelled me to become a Catholic
(along with the profundity and beauty of unchanging Catholic moral
teaching). I had too much respect for logic, historical theology, and Church
history to resist what I felt to be an utterly unanswerable argument. I
discovered, with the inestimable assistance of Cardinal Newman, that the
Catholic Church had far and away the most cogent, consistent claim to
ecclesiological and apostolic preeminence, and this, coupled with my
simultaneous intensive study of what happened in the sixteenth century
(especially the stated reasons for the Protestant Revolution, and the
motivations of its leading proponents) and the theological and moral views
of the major Protestant Founders (such as: sola fide, sola Scriptura,
libertine views of clerical vows and divorce, lying, filthy language,
disrespect for authority and precedent, plundering and violence, iconoclasm,
anti-intellectualism, etc.) made any further resistance to Catholicism on my
part equivalent to rearranging chairs on the deck of the sinking Titanic.
Thus it was fitting that a little more than a month after completing the
Essay, while reading Cardinal Newman's meditation on "Hope in God the
Creator," I quietly gave up what little remaining emotional resistance I had
to conversion, and realized that I had already entered the gates of Rome
(and therefore, historic Christendom) for good. And, thus far, I've never
had the slightest desire or inclination to look back.
FOOTNOTES
1. Butler: New York, Sheed & Ward, 1954, 230 pages. A friend was recently
able to obtain the articles from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in the
library of a well-known evangelical seminary in the Chicago area.
2. Geisler, Norman L. and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and
Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books,
1995, p.206, which calls it the "classic refutation of papal infallibility."
See also p.459.
3. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., pp.206-207.
4. Salmon, George, The Infallibility of the Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Book House (originally 1888), pp.31-33 (cf. also pp.35, 39).
5. 23:28-30, cited from Jurgens, William A., The Faith of the Early Fathers
(Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1979), vol. 3, p.265.
6. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., p.459.
7. Vatican II: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, chapter III: "The Church
is Hierarchical," sections 18, 22. From edition / translation by Austin
Flannery (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1988 revised ed.,
pp.370,375).
8. C. Faustus, 8,5.
9. The Trinity, 4,6,10.
10. Letter 164 to Evodius of Uzalis.
11. C. Cresconius, 1,33.
12. Harrold, Charles F., A Newman Treasury, London: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1943, pp.83-84.
13. All quotes from the Essay are taken from the edition published by the
University of Notre Dame Press, 1989, with a foreword by Ian Ker, from the
1878 edition of the original work of 1845; pp.vii-viii.
14. Newman, John Henry, Historical Sketches, vol.1: The Church of the
Fathers, London: 1872, p.418.
15. Newman, Essay, ibid., pp.7-9.
16. Ibid., p.21
17. Ibid., p.21.
18. Ibid., p.23.
19. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., pp.247-248,503.
20. Newman, Essay, pp.123-126.
21. Ibid., p.145.
22. Ibid., p.151.
23. Ibid., pp.170-171.
24. Ibid., pp.199-200,203.
25. Arianism: a heresy holding that Jesus Christ was a mere created being
and not co-equal with the Father.
26. Nestorianism: a heresy which denied that Christ had a Divine Nature.
27. Gnosticism: a heresy which claimed a secret knowledge ("gnosis") which
went beyond revelation, faith, and reason.
28. Eunomianism: akin to Arianism, it held that Jesus was inferior in
essence to the Father, and that the Holy Spirit was created by Jesus.
29. Manichaeanism: a form of Gnosticism; it held to a sub-personal cosmic
dualism between good and evil and was severely ascetic.
30. Newman, Essay, pp.353-354.
Biographical Index / Main Index / Eastern Christianity and Ecumenism /
Converts Page / Cardinal Newman / C.S. Lewis
Copyright 1996 by Dave Armstrong. All rights reserved.
V1_0
"Pied Piper" <ok...@netzero.net> wrote:>
[ Lots of interesting stuff snipped. ]
>That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is
>easy to determine. (15)
You can also apply this to the issues of the Papacy, and the Immaculate
conception, and see that those two do not show up in the early Church.
>On the other hand, Protestants clearly accept developing doctrine on
>several fronts: the Canon of the New Testament is a clear example of
>such a (technically "non-biblical") doctrine It wasn't finalized until
>397 A.D. The divinity of Christ was dogmatically proclaimed only at
>the "late" date of 325, the fully worked-out doctrine of the Holy
>Trinity in 381, and the Two Natures of Christ (God and Man) in 451,
>all in Ecumenical Councils which are accepted by most Protestants. So
>development is an unavoidable fact for both Protestants and Catholics.
"Development" is not the correct word - recognision is, and
perhaps "defended". In each of the councils you see a clear defense
against some new theology, not a "creation" of a new one to replace a
worn-out one. In all cases the new theology created a conflict in the
scripture if extended to its logical conclusion.
>In other words, the early heretics were the ones who usually operated
>on the basis of the so-called perspicuity, or clearness of Scripture,
>without authoritative interpretation by authoritative ecclesiastical
>bodies.
This would apply to the Pope as well, now wouldn't it? The filique is
an addition to the creed by the Pope on the behest of the King of
Spain - and any such additions were condemmend by three of those same
ecclesiastical bodies that you refer to above - long before this
addition. The true operation of the authoritative ecclesiastical body
is laid out for us in the book of Acts: Peter is *very* influential,
but the solution is reached by all and not 'forced' upon the body by
Peter.
>In spite of the forcible teaching of St. Paul on the subject, the
>doctrine of Original Sin appears neither in the Apostles' nor the
>Nicene Creed. (18)
This doctrine *did* however appear in the Roman Catholic Church prior
to Vatican II - which is where the protestants got that idea from.
Obviously the "doctrinal development" took a full circle on this one.
Some of the other fruits of this doctrine of the guilt of original sin
are: Limbo (never an official Roman Catholic doctrine, however) and (in
part) the Immaculate Conception.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception becomes rather superflous if
there is no guilt of original sin - for Mary would not need to be born
free of the guilt of original sin if there is no guilt! However, at
this point it is tied to the Papal infalibility claims - if you admit
that it was unneeded you also admit that the Pope was fallible when he
made it dogma (and needed/required).
[As a side note: Although the guilt of the Original Sin of Adam is
*not* transferred, the *effects* of that sin {an inclination to sin,
pain of childbirth, etc.} are indeed transferred.]
The biggest issue to me is a conflict between the doctrines of "free
will" and "Papal infallibility" - at some point the two will inevitably
conflict. It is amusing to me that the doctrine of Calvinism seems to
be merely an extension of "papal infallibility"!
-V
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Carlovingian
"V1_0" <v1...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8odqhq$572$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <Gg2p5.1703$aE5....@news-east.usenetserver.com>,
> "Pied Piper" <ok...@netzero.net> wrote:>
>
> [ Lots of interesting stuff snipped. ]
>
> >That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is
> >easy to determine. (15)
>
> You can also apply this to the issues of the Papacy, and the Immaculate
> conception, and see that those two do not show up in the early Church.
>
This is a prayer from the early Church (2nd Century)
Under your protection we take refuge,
O Holy Mother of God.
Despise not our petitions,
Who are in the trail
And deliver us from every danger,
O, glorious and blessed Virgin.
Amen.
V1_0
<B0BFF07E312E46FD.00612FAD...@lp.airnews.net>,
Yes? I see nothing about an immaculate conception. And this prayer
*must* be taken in the correct context - that Mary (and any other
Saint) has *no* authority or ability outside of God. Mary (and the
other Saints) act only as agents of God - it is implied in any prayer
to a Saint that we are asking them to add their prayers to ours, and if
it is God's will, to assist us as God allows.
I have no issue with the title "Holy Mother of God", but prefer the
word "Theotokos" (birth giver of God) because "mother" is thought by
many to imply create/originate, which is not the case in Jesus'
divinity. The 3rd ecuminical council specifically delt with this -
even though it was not the central issue.
I have no issue with prayers to the Saints - provided that all of the
assumptions discussed in the above paragraphs are held to.
Carlovingian
Are you a Greek Rite Catholic?
V1_0
<3C4D388BDE27AB25.E99C9B35...@lp.airnews.net>,
Short answer: No.
The term "Greek Rite Catholic" is a confusing term to me. I am Orthodox
Christian - we don't use the term 'rite' per se. Today's meaning of
the word "Catholic" also implies affiliation with the Roman Catholic
church - though it did not always have this meaning.
The Orthodox Church's theology has similarities to that of the Roman
Catholic Church as both churches were at one time the same Church -
before the Pope started to assert *supremecy* over the Church. This is
why our churches agree on asking the saints to pray for us, the
Theotokos, free-will, and many other things. Our Churches don't agree
on purgetory, Papal infallibility, Papal Supremecy, doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception, married clergy, and a few other things. Much of
the theology and terms of Orthodoxy ("Theotokos" to name one) are Greek
in origin - but then again most of the New Testament was originally
written in Greek (not to imply that Greek is in anyway better than any
other language/culture - it just worked out that the language was what
was available).
As for the terms "Greek" Orthodox, "Russian" Orthodox, etc. The
nationality refers to (usually) the language that services are held in
and certain other (small 't') traditions. (As opposed to Holy
Tradition which, as well as the same doctrines and dogmas, is the same
in all Orthodox churches). I personally have a (small) objection to
prefixing Orthodox Christian with a nationality as it seems to engender
a certain misconception that you must be part of that nationality to be
in the religion - unfortunately sometimes by both people in the church
and outside it.
bam
"The DataRat" <dat...@home.com> wrote
> Guess this just goes to show that the Bible is
> a closed book to the unregenerate !
Well, that's just your spin, Ratso. The alternative though (which you will
not accept because it hurts your ego) is that you don't understand
scripture. You have "urges", and you dig through scripture to satisfy them.
(poor Ratso, goes to bed every night hoping he's not a reprobate)
BAM