The Modernist, anyone we know?
Padraic42
The Modernist Persona
Jack Taylor
WE have all had the experience of meeting someone, hearing him
tell us he is Catholic, then finding out as the conversation
continues that he denies or is entirely ignorant of some portion
of the Catholic faith.
Many such people seem to love being in the Church and are involved
in almost every parish ministry-yet they do not know or believe
that missing Mass without just cause on Sunday is a serious sin,
that using artificial contraception or living together before
marriage are grave moral evils, or that doing any of these things
would require the rite of reconciliation before one could receive
the Eucharist worthily. The concept of sin as an actual stain on
the soul is unfamiliar or unreasonable to them.
They put off baptizing a new child until it can be conveniently
done at the next family reunion, and they wonder aloud why a small
child should go to a first confession before receiving First
Communion. The most vocal among them openly disagree with the
teachings of the Holy Father or the lessons of Sacred Scripture,
particularly those of Paul on sexual morality.
When we ask them how this can square with traditional Church
teachings, they tell us that the lessons in Scripture are really
more suitable for an earlier time-as is our current pope. They say
they cannot conceive of a God who would impose all these intricate
rules on mankind in the name of love. God, after all, is love, and
rules-well, rules are of human origin.
We come away from these encounters dazed, wondering how these
people can believe themselves Catholics. I submit that they are
<not> Catholics, but rather are more accurately described as
Modernists or as Neo-Modernists. They are the product of a
systematic teaching program which has been in full swing since the
close of the Second Vatican Council. That teaching program is the
outgrowth of an earlier movement which, in 1907, Pius X condemned
as Modernism in his encyclical <Pascendi Dominici Gregis>.
To point this out is not to invite name-calling. The purpose is to
state a fact already well known: that a large non-Catholic
subculture has come to share the pews with Catholics in churches
around the world. The purpose is also to suggest that, contrary to
appearances, the ascendancy of this subculture is passing.
If Catholics would like to speed the process, they need to
understand both the origins and the failures of the Modernist
movement and the opportunities at hand for bringing NeoModernists
into the fullness of the Catholic faith.
To begin with, Modernism is not so much a theological movement as
it is a philosophical one. It springs from the ideas of Rene
Descartes (15961650), who is rightfully called the father of
modern philosophy, but who was not a Modernist in the sense that
the word came to describe a movement within the Catholic Church.
Descartes believed in the objective content of divine revelation,
but he sought a way of presenting the reality of God to skeptics
who would not accept revelation as an avenue of truth.
A calculus of faith
In Descartes' day, science was the source of brilliant successes.
The application of mathematical methods in astronomy had resulted
in great advancements; the Copernican Revolution had shown,
contrary to some interpretations of Scripture, that the earth was
not at the center of the solar system. Scientists seemed to
demonstrate findings with precision and clarity.
Descartes hoped to bring a similar clarity to the belief in God by
applying mathematical and scientific methods. He desired to build
a kind of calculus of faith, starting from some fundamental
principle which even the skeptics could not deny, and working to
the undeniable existence of God. To this end, he began to examine
everything in the world from the skeptic's point of view, creating
a procedure that came to be known as "methodic doubt."
He first concluded that the man's senses are not reliable. A stick
looks straight when it is held in the air, but looks bent when it
is stuck in the water. Since both the true and false images of the
stick are presented to the mind by the same senses, the senses
cannot be trusted.
(Here he ignored the fact that, using all of his senses, man can
confirm the stick to be straight. This is characteristic of a
scientific method that tends to dissect things and isolate one
attribute from all others when analyzing anything.)
Next he concluded that the mind of man, trapped inside a body fed
unreliable information by the senses, cannot be certain that the
images it receives truly represent reality. He went so far as to
speculate that some evil higher being could be feeding the
information to the mind, making it <think> that there is an
objective world out there when in fact there is not. In the long
run, Descartes concluded that almost everything we normally take
for granted can be doubted.
Even skeptics concur
It was not that Descartes <himself> doubted. He was examining
everything from the perspective of a skeptic to find something
even the skeptic could not doubt. What he found is summed up in
the phrase, "<Cogito, ergo sum>" ("I think, therefore I am"). No
skeptic could doubt this. Even if the entire world is an illusion,
the skeptic, by the simple fact that he is pondering the illusion,
must admit that he himself exists.
After demonstrating the certainty of his own existence as a
thinking mind, Descartes reasoned his way back to the existence of
the world and to the existence of a God who is all good and
therefore would not fool man by creating the world as an illusion.
The validity of Descartes' reasoning was challenged for being,
among other things, circular, but an important aspect of his
thought remains with us to this day-the concept of man as a mind
trapped in a body. It is because of Descartes' thus splitting man
that today one can still pick up popular books about the so-called
"mind/body problem."
Descartes himself . was not very interested in this problem. The
important point is that this severing of the mind from the body
was a direct divergence from the previously established Scholastic
and Catholic view of man as a composed unity of body and soul. The
human soul, in the Scholastic sense, is much more than a mind. It
is the substantial form of a man. It is the nature of the soul to
form the body, and the body and soul together are the man.
Man, in this sense, has direct knowledge of the objective world
around him because he sees it, hears it, tastes it, puts his hands
on it. It is evident to him, and need not be proven. This is not
to say that some knowledge of the world does not result from
proofs. Through proofs one can come to the knowledge, for example,
that the tangent of an angle is always equal to the inverse of the
cotangent of that same angle.
But one can know that a river exists by seeing it and putting
one's feet in it. This type of knowledge is more certain than
knowledge obtained by proofs. It cannot, and need not, be proven
through a series of mathematical or logical propositions and
conclusions.
Unfortunately, there was no great Scholastic philosopher among
Descartes' associates to hammer this point home. As a consequence,
modern philosophy has thought of man ever since in a dualistic
manner: mind distinct from body.
Descartes' division of man created a division in modern philosophy
itself. Some philosophers believed, like Descartes, that the only
things we can know with certainty are concepts in the mind. These
are the "Rationalists." A counter-movement thought we can know
things for sure only through our senses; what is in our minds,
since it cannot be sensed, measured, and weighed, is basically
unknowable. These are the "Empiricists."
It is beyond the scope of this article to trace out the various
schools of thought spawned by these two philosophies, but it can
be known that they all came to despair because each was looking at
only a part of man while trying to understand how man as a whole
can know things.
It's all in your mind
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) tried to bring these two lines back
together, but only succeeded in driving man further inside
himself, believing, in the end, that man can know things only in
his own mind, never things <in themselves> as they exist outside
of his mind.
In what he called his own "Copernican Revolution," Kant declared
that the mind does not conform itself to the world, rather the
world conforms itself to the mind. The world we know is
constructed inside our minds from unstructured sense data our
minds receive.
In the face of a philosophy like this, the objective world becomes
unknowable, then irrelevant, and finally nonexistent. The only
thing worth studying is how man conceives things in the depths of
his own mind.
This is the reason why modern philosophers have ceased to be able
to say anything intelligible to the average man who continues to
live in the objective world, transporting body and soul to and
from work, using his five senses to navigate the objective reality
of rush-hour traffic. The Church, though, never abandoned
Scholasticism and has fostered a flowering of interest in
Scholasticism in the twentieth century.
The effect of Rationalism, when applied to theology, also led to
despair. It separated belief in God from the objective events of
history, such as the burning bush and the Incarnation of Jesus
Christ. It focused on how man <conceives of> God rather than how
man can <know> God through creation and revelation.
This tendency showed up almost immediately in the person of the
Jewish philosopher Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677), whose life
overlapped with that of Descartes. In Spinoza we find the
foreshadowing of the Modernist persona in religion. He followed
Descartes in seeking the origin of truth in the confines of his
own mind, but he departed from Descartes in that he abandoned
belief in traditional theology entirely.
For Spinoza, biblical miracles were misinterpreted natural events,
and the writings of the prophets applied only to their time of
life, not to his. He did not see support in Scripture for belief
in angels or the immortality of the human soul, and he once told
his fellow students in the synagogue that they knew more about
physics or theology than Moses.
With Spinoza we find revealed religion replaced with pantheism:
The universe and everything in it is God. Individual things are
just different <modes> of God. Spinoza's is a religion of the
mind, independent of historical events, institutions, dogma, and
doctrines. Spinoza set the theme that would be developed over the
next three hundred years.
A few examples will suffice to demonstrate how a religion of the
mind eventually denied that God was an objective reality and laid
the foundation for Modernism.
The Deists in England, for example, took the line that God would
only do things in reasonable ways. They held that, since knowledge
of God had to be accessible to all, it would not come through
revelation to just a select group of people, but through common
reason which is accessible to all.
Matthew Tyndall (1657-1733), one of the most respected Deists of
the eighteenth century, declared that, since the essence of
Christianity is ethics, grasped by natural reason, there is no
need for divine revelation. Religion thus is separate from
miracles, history, religious institutions, and priestly
hierarchies. No one needs anyone else to tell him what to do; we
can all figure it out for ourselves through reason.
In France, Rationalism took a nastier turn. Francois Marie Arouet
de Voltaire (1694-1778), who coined the term "modern," was
impressed with English Deism and believed that the rational man
would believe in God, but certainly not institutional religion. He
used his formidable wit and skill as a writer to heap scorn on the
concept of Christian salvation and to paint the Church as a cruel
instrument of an oppressive hierarchy.
In doing so, he planted the seeds for the darker side of the
French Revolution (1789), in which reason finally reigned supreme.
People found reasons for scuttling boats full priests and nuns in
the Seine because drowning them individually, or tied together in
pairs in what was called a "Republican wedding," was taking too
long.
In Germany, the idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831) did not scorn religious dogma or institutional
religion, but trivialized it as a phase in man's intellectual
evolution. All ideas, according to Hegel, have their moment in
history before encountering antithetical ideas with which they are
combined into a higher synthesis. The higher synthesis has its
moment as an idea before it, too, undergoes the same process in a
continuous witch's brew of evolving truth. Religious doctrines and
dogma then are a phase through which man passed on the way to an
ever higher consciousness.
When David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) combined Hegel's theory
with the historical biblical criticism that was popular at the
time, the result was predictable. In his three-volume work <The
Life of Jesus, Critically Examined>, he tells us that the Gospels
were neither revelation nor history, but the ideas of people who
were deeply moved by the moral example of Jesus.
The Gospel writers were pre-scientific people, innocent of
historical methods, who saw no inconsistency in weaving myths into
to life Jesus. They projected their own faith onto the life of the
man Jesus.
Thus far, the movements discussed are not Modernism as the term
applies to a movement in the Catholic Church, but they bring
together two streams of thought that form the current from which
Modernism is liberally watered.
The first is the tendency to see God as something conceived in
man's mind, rather than as something exterior to man. The second
is to blend such thinking with a biblical criticism that claimed,
among other things, that the Gospels were written, a couple of
generations after the fact, by people who had no contact with the
historic Jesus. These writers, it is suggested, were not
interested in history. They were more interested in convincing
non-believers and passing on the faith as they conceived it.
The reality of God is reduced to the way people <conceive of> God
in various religious communities. The Old Testament writers
conceived of a judgmental God in a way characteristic of their
times. New Testament writers conceived him in as more loving, but
still within the context and moral prejudices of their times.
In this manner, the traditional relationship (God's dictating
man's concept of morality) is turned on its head; it is man's
morality, in any given time or place, that dictates his concept of
God.
Modernism is the attempt by Catholic theologians, most prominently
George Tyrrell (1861-1909) in England and Alfred Loisy (18571940)
in France, to introduce these trends into Catholic theology.
Tyrrell, an Irish-born Jesuit, was a scholar and a poet.
He proposed "Immanentism," in which religious truth exists in the
heart and mind of the individual believer, not in some
unchangeable, objective reality exterior to man. Loisy, a priest-
scholar and historian, used biblical criticism to propose that
Jesus had never thought of himself as God, but only as a prophet.
Loisy believed that Jesus had never intended to establish a Church
and sacramental system at all. To get back on track with Jesus, he
wanted the Church to stop teaching doctrines and dogmas and
concentrate on bringing the world a message of hope. The
combination of the ideas of these two men is Modernism-a faith
which is <subjective>, based on a communal life without the
constraints of institutions and creeds.
The heresy that didn't die
Though Modernism was condemned and both Tyrrell and Loisy were
excommunicated, it remained a strong, formative force among
theologians right up to the Second Vatican Council. But, the
teaching office of the Church has always looked on the faith in
another way. Certainly faith includes the way we live in whatever
times we find ourselves; but there is another meaning to the word
faith which indicates its <objective> content, the deposit of
faith, which does not change from community to community or from
age to age.
Since the <life> of faith is a response to the <content> of the
faith, you cannot have one without the other. Part of the
objective content of the faith is the belief that the Gospels were
written by apostles and that they conveyed the historic events of
the life of Jesus as witnessed by his followers. It was not the
faith of Christians that created the events in the life of Jesus,
but the events witnessed in the life of Jesus that created the
faith of Christians.
The apostles wrote about these events in order to convince their
audience, but that does not mean that what they said is not true.
When a lawyer describes events to jurors to persuade them of the
innocence of his client, these events must have some grounding in
fact, particularly when there are other eyewitness present. The
same is true for the Gospel writers.
The Second Vatican Council itself came down resoundingly against
Modernist theories. While the Church encouraged the legitimate use
of critical methods in exegesis (when freed from the secularizing
prejudices), <Dei Verbum>, declared that the Church maintains that
the "apostles and other men associated with the apostles . . .
committed the message of salvation to writing" (7).
The four Gospels these men wrote, "whose historicity she
unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of
God, while he lived among men, really did and taught" (19). The
Church reminded the faithful that "the task of authentically
interpreting the word of God . . . has been entrusted exclusively
to the living teaching office of the Church" (9).
The Council also went against Modernism in <Lumen Gentium>,
affirming the hierarchical structure of the Church and the
necessity of unity with the Holy Father, who, by virtue of his
office, "has full, supreme and universal power over the whole
Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered" (22).
Making an end run
When Modernist theories were explicitly rejected at the Council,
Modernists tried to sell their program at the parish level by
making it appear that Vatican II had endorsed their views. Within
months of the close of the Council, a new catechism was issued by
the Dutch bishops, it expounded Modernist views.
The catechism was published in numerous languages and was quickly
being sold around the world. Soon it became the source of
catechetical works emphasizing the essence of the Eucharist as a
communal meal, but not as the Real Presence of Jesus Christ;
emphasizing the priesthood of all believers, but never the
sacrament of holy orders; emphasizing the conscience of the
individual, but never the binding authority of the magisterium of
the Church and particularly not the authority of the Holy Father.
This phase has been called NeoModernism because it moved to
aggressive proselytizing at the parish level, whereas Modernism
before Vatican II was more of an ivory-tower phenomenon.
The Vatican met the challenge head-on, calling on the Dutch
bishops to correct their catechism and countering its effect with
the promulgation of Pope Paul VI's <Creed of the People of God>,
which reaffirmed the Catholic truths that Modernism was denying.
Neo-Modernist teaching, however, has continued at the street
level. Educational texts and programs incorporating its creedless
Christianity are still cranked out in such quantities that the old
method of placing such books on an index is impossible. Religion
teachers who drank deeply of Modernist principles are still at
their posts, and many of this graying cadre are still true
advocates of the Modernist movement. It is probably true that this
group will have to die out before it will become possible to teach
pure Christianity again without resistance.
At the same time, things have steadily gone downhill for the
Modernist movement. In 1993, the Church brought out the <Catechism
of the Catholic Church>, which is thoroughly orthodox despite
aggressive attempts by Modernists to implant their themes in it.
It is a bestseller around the world to a degree that the authors
of the Dutch Catechism could only envy.
A 1995 survey of Catholic priests in American showed a major shift
away from Modernist views. Contemporary research, including the
recent work at Oxford University by Carsten Peter Thiede, a
leading authority on New Testament manuscripts, places the writing
of the synoptic Gospels in a period predating A.D. 66-70, thus
establishing their prophetic content regarding the destruction of
Jerusalem and placing them firmly within the lifetimes of
eyewitnesses to the existence of Jesus.
There is also evidence of a movement away from Modernism's
emphasis on individual communities toward a unity centered on the
Holy See and the Pope's stands against "the culture of death,"
which is the secular inheritance of modern philosophy.
Dying, but not dead
At the same time, the Modernist movement, even as it is losing
ground in scriptural scholarship and theology, has inflicted deep
wounds in the body of the Church. Those teachers who continue
teach the Neo-Modernist line are not healing the body, but pouring
salt in the wounds. Pointing this out is not divisive; it is the
responsible thing to do, especially for the sake of children and
converts who have been exposed to Neo-Modernist teaching since
Vatican II.
Neo-Modernist teachers do not assent to the creed of the Catholic
Church and, therefore, would not themselves have passed the most
rudimentary catechism class at any time in Christian history. In
dissenting from the creed, they have refused to teach it and have
created a class of people who, not having been taught the creed,
cannot be considered to be Catholic in the full sense of the word.
Many people are in this state through no fault of their own. They
are Modernists, not by deliberate choice, but because they have
been caught in the Modernists' web. Should we begin calling them
such? It would serve no good purpose. They have, in some sense,
been baptized into the body of the Catholic Church. Many of them
are innocent of the Christian creed, which should have been their
true inheritance. It is in their innocence of the creed that we
should think of them as Modernists and not Catholics. Why? Because
they stand in a good position to embrace the fullness of the
Catholic faith.
Among the young, such as the hundreds of thousands who attend
World Youth Days, there is a hunger for the fullness of the faith,
an openness to the sacramental life, a willingness to adhere to an
exacting morality. We should provide them with authentic teachers
to compensate for the Neo-Modernist teachers they had. We should
rain down catechisms among them in the universities, high schools,
and CCD programs and exhort them to take up and read the fullness
of the faith.
In this way, they can come to know the creed and say "<Credo>, I
believe!" By believing, they can begin to hope; by hoping, they
can truly learn to love; and by loving, which starts with knowing
the creed, they can become fully Catholic. This should be our
great enterprise as we approach the first day of the next
millennium-the prayerful evangelization of the Church from the
inside out.
What then of the Neo-Modernist teachers and clergy who still
occupy their posts? They too should be the objects of our
solicitude and prayer. When Thomas More was condemned to death by
his fellow Englishmen for adhering to the authentic faith that
they themselves had abandoned, he showed no rancor and refrained
from guessing their motives.
He said he hoped and prayed to see them in heaven someday, and he
knew it was possible, because both Stephen, who was stoned to
death, and Saul, who held the coats of those who stoned Stephen,
now stand side by side as saints of the one, holy, catholic, and
apostolic Church. We should be so charitable. We should be so
true.
Jack Taylor freelances from Northern Virginia.
This article was taken from the November 1996 issue of "This
Rock," published by Catholic Answers"
Pax Christi, Pat
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
KayJay
TIREBITER:
There are many many many many tracts on the internet which are there for
the sole purpose of re-printing and distributing.
Unless you have a warrant from THIS ROCK, please desist your tantrums
against Pat.
KayJay
--------
Ecc. 2:23
Padraic42
>> The Modernist Persona
>
>[snip more of Pat's theft]
>
>>
>> Jack Taylor freelances from Northern Virginia.
>>
>
>material and you persist in your sin. But I am just pointing out your sin
>out of love. Because we all love you Pat, we just hate your sinful
>behavior.
>
Still chasing moving cars George? We really can';t stand your innane
accudsations. Stolen? Let's see, all material as to the author and from where
is given.
The problem, as usual, is you can't stand the truth.
Keep up the attacks George, it only shows how far gone you are from the
truth.
Padraic42
>
>TIREBITER:
>
>There are many many many many tracts on the internet which are there for
>the sole purpose of re-printing and distributing.
>
>Unless you have a warrant from THIS ROCK, please desist your tantrums
>against Pat.
It's typical of him KJ. He keeps this up to try and squelch the truth.
Notice he snippe dthe article. Can't stand anyone seeing the truth?
KayJay
On 25 Jun 1998, Padraic42 wrote:
> It's typical of him KJ. He keeps this up to try and squelch the truth.
> Notice he snippe dthe article. Can't stand anyone seeing the truth?
Maybe he was being kind to TElecom users?
>
>
> Pax Christi, Pat
> Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
>
>
>
>
>
KayJay
--------
Ecc. 2:23
Padraic42
>
>In article <199806252050...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>padr...@aol.com (Padraic42) wrote:
>
>
>> >You still haven't figured out that stealing is wrong? This is copyrighted
>> >material and you persist in your sin. But I am just pointing out your sin
>> >out of love. Because we all love you Pat, we just hate your sinful
>> >behavior.
>> >
>> Still chasing moving cars George? We really can';t stand your innane
>> accudsations. Stolen? Let's see, all material as to the author and from
>where
>> is given.
>
It is not, and I for one am really tired of these empty charges of yours. In
fact, I did ask about what files I could repost from the web site I got this
from. One one group was singled out that I could not, and have not, posted.
These are empty charges (as usual) and continues to show how lame your
garbage is.
And since it seems important for George to try and cover the article, here it
is again. With the name of the author and were it was originally published.
"The Modernist Persona
Jack Taylor
A calculus of faith
Even skeptics concur
Making an end run
Dying, but not dead
Jack Taylor freelances from Northern Virginia.
This article was taken from the November 1996 issue of "This
Rock," published by Catholic Answers"
Pax Christi, Pat
Mark Dyches
In article <biter.of.tires-ya0240...@news.acns.nwu.edu>,
biter.o...@nwu.edu (George Tirebiter) wrote:
>In article <199806250316...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>padr...@aol.com (Padraic42) wrote:
>
>> The Modernist Persona
>
>[snip more of Pat's theft]
>
>>
>> Jack Taylor freelances from Northern Virginia.
>>
>> This article was taken [STOLEN] from the November 1996 issue of "This
>> Rock," published by Catholic Answers"
>
>You still haven't figured out that stealing is wrong? This is copyrighted
>material and you persist in your sin. But I am just pointing out your sin
>out of love. Because we all love you Pat, we just hate your sinful
>behavior.
George-
You're kidding, right? I hope so! _I_ quote from various sources here all
the time - for example, I often quote from the English translation of the
CCC (copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.) which also
lists a number of other copyrights. Same with the CIC/83. Same with the
Sacramentary. Same with the NAB. The list goes on and on.... my quotes are
'lifted/stolen' whatever, with the purpose of passing along Church
doctrine.
Have you ever looked at the list of copyright in the Sacramentary? Do you
think that a priest or even a layman in discussing or writing about a
question of, for instance, the Movements and Postures in the General
Instruction (which in itself includes three or four copyright notices) of
the Sacramentary is _sinning_ by not citing the copyrights?
I tend not to paraphrase for three reasons:
1) there are far too many translations (some which may be personal
interpretations that may be in error) that may come of paraphrasing, and;
2) the idea of making certain that a copyright is always attached to what
one posts is just plain silly ("Fools in their heart say there is no God."
- Psalm 53,1. New American Bible, Copyright 1990 Oxford University Press,
Old Testament copyright 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine,
Washington, D.C. (Books 1 Samuel - 2 Maccabees copyright 1969). Revised
Psalms of the New American Bible copyright 1991 CCD).
(BTW - if you want to do away with the educational and personal criteria
for use of copyrighted material, I just violated International Copyright
Law, as this message will be clearly 'transmitted' by 'electronic' means).
3) there are instances where others might (and usually do) more eloquently
express views that I hold in concert with them. Papal Encyclicals (when
published in print format) generally carry two or three copyrights - yet
they are posted in electronic format on the Vatican site with no copyright
attached. If I electronically transmit an entire encyclical from a printed
format, you would have me guilty of the sin of theft and 'hate my sinful
behavior'?
So if Pat, for reasons of education, edification, etc., posts anything
bearing a copyright, you would have him, too, guilty of the sin of theft
(and bear in mind that there are _degrees_ to the sin of theft,
theologically) and 'hate (his) sinful behavior'?
Please tell me that you're kidding...
Peace,
-MD-
textman
/ ON ORTHODOX DATING
.
So Padraic42 posted some article by some guy called something
Taylor, and entitled something or other. Now this is actually quite
an interesting essay. However, I would like to draw the Reader's
attention to the following bits in particular:
> <snip>
> The Second Vatican Council itself came down resoundingly against
> Modernist theories. While the Church encouraged the legitimate use
> of critical methods in exegesis (when freed from the secularizing
> prejudices), <Dei Verbum>, declared that the Church maintains that
> the "apostles and other men associated with the apostles . . .
> committed the message of salvation to writing" (7).
Now I have no problem with this ... unless it is taken to mean that
all the NT documents were necessarily written before the Fall of
Jerusalem, and/or by the person whose name is in the title. If this
statement is taken to mean that NO NT document could have been
written after 100CE, then it is either an unhistorical statement or
is falsely interpreted (as seems to be the case here).
.
> The four Gospels these men wrote, "whose historicity she
> unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of
> God, while he lived among men, really did and taught" (19).
However, not everything can be taken as historical fact simply
because one or another of the gospels or epistles says so. The
historical value of this or that document or passage must be
determined by factors inherent in the text. Thus we should not be
upset if someone suggests that the fourth gospel may not always be
as historically based as Mark. This is just normal procedure. The
four gospels are not equally historical, or equally rich in
historical roots. Each document, each letter, is a unique and
independent unit. Our basic respect for the text demands that we
treat them as such.
.
> The Church reminded the faithful that "the task of authentically
> to the living teaching office of the Church" (9). <snip>
.
Yes, well, unfortunately the bishops and clergy are far more
interested to demonstrate how the sacred scriptures approve and
support all manner of priestcraft and theological fancy, then with
actually interpreting the Word of God in anything even remotely
resembling an authentic (ie. honest and passionate) manner!
.
> A 1995 survey of Catholic priests in American showed a major shift
> away from Modernist views. Contemporary research, including the
> recent work at Oxford University by Carsten Peter Thiede, a
> leading authority on New Testament manuscripts, places the writing
> of the synoptic Gospels in a period predating A.D. 66-70, thus
> establishing their prophetic content regarding the destruction of
> Jerusalem and placing them firmly within the lifetimes of
.
Oh yes, the gospels MUST have been written by eyewitnesses ...
because otherwise they will be utterly worthless! Oh yes. Sure thing.
Of course, textman thinks such an assumption is gross and disgusting;
but what does he know? ... So anyway, here it is in good old year 65.
The news of Paul's recent death sweeps through the churches like
wildfire. In response the four evangelists, in four different rooms
in four different parts of the Empire, all independently hit upon the
same idea. 'Hey! I know. I'll write down the historical facts about
Jesus Christ so that in 2000 years the Roman Catholic Church will
have lots and lots of yummy historical facts to play with.' ...
And thus were the Gospels written for the bishops of the Catholic
Church. ... Yes? No? Maybe? ... I'm afraid the answer is NOT. Such an
absurd proposal has nothing to do with the long and complex historical
process that led to the formation of the NT. It does, however, have
everything to do with maintaining the power and authority of the
bishops. So ask yourself this, Dear Reader, when you go to read the
scriptures: is it more important that the text serves the bishops, or
does the text rather serve the Spirit & the Truth? How you answer this
question determines whether or not you are worthy to be a disciple of
Christ!
.
the one who serves the Word: textman ;>
eof
Christopher Beattie
textman wrote:
> / ON ORTHODOX DATING
> .
> So Padraic42 posted some article by some guy called something
> Taylor, and entitled something or other. Now this is actually quite
> an interesting essay. However, I would like to draw the Reader's
> attention to the following bits in particular:
> > <snip>
> > The Second Vatican Council itself came down resoundingly against
> > Modernist theories. While the Church encouraged the legitimate use
> > of critical methods in exegesis (when freed from the secularizing
> > prejudices), <Dei Verbum>, declared that the Church maintains that
> > the "apostles and other men associated with the apostles . . .
> > committed the message of salvation to writing" (7).
> .
> Now I have no problem with this ... unless it is taken to mean that
> all the NT documents were necessarily written before the Fall of
> Jerusalem, and/or by the person whose name is in the title. If this
> statement is taken to mean that NO NT document could have been
> written after 100CE, then it is either an unhistorical statement or
> is falsely interpreted (as seems to be the case here).
> .
Baring the possible question on the date of the Apostle John.
Let's say for the sake of argument that he was probably 14
at the time of the crucifixion, and that was perhaps A.D. 33,
which would have plaved him at 81 at the turn of the century,
which was rare but possible for his lifespan. There is
considerable uncertanty among schollars on the dates of many
works from the early church, and these dates have in general
shrunk as more and more information is known.
Moreover we have to look at the hidden adgendas of those
schollars who have traditionally proposed late dates. Their
purpose is generally to provide a line item veto on any
passage which doesn't meet their personal opinions. Such
passages they will insist are additions to the text, and
can be removed at ones leasure.
But the notion of late dates for the writings of the Gospels
and the letters is easily dismissed even by the early 20th
century Catholic Encyclopedia as we can see in the following
quote.
<http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/03274a.htm>
St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and St. Polycarp, of
Smyrna, had been disciples of Apostles; they wrote
their epistles in the first decade of the second century
(100-110). The employ Matthew, Luke, and John. In
St. Ignatius we find the first instance of the
consecrated term "it is written" applied to a Gospel
(Ad Philad., viii, 2). Both these Fathers show not only
a personal acquaintance with "the Gospel" and the
thirteen Pauline Epistles, but they suppose that their
readers are so familiar with them that it would be
superfluous to name them. Papias, Bishop of Phrygian
Hierapolis, according to Irenćus a disciple of St. John,
wrote about A.D. 125. Describing the origin of St.
Mark's Gospel, he speaks of Hebrew (Aramaic)
Logia, or Sayings of Christ, composed by St.
Matthew, which there is reason to believe formed the
basis of the canonical Gospel of that name, though the
greater part of Catholic writers identify them with the
Gospel. As we have only a few fragments of Papias,
preserved by Eusebius, it cannot be alleged that he is
silent about other parts of the New Testament.
The so-called Epistle of Barnabas, of uncertain origin,
but of highest antiquity (see BARNABAS,
EPISTLE), cites a passage from the First Gospel
under the formula "it is written". The Didache, or
Teaching of the Apostles, an uncanonical work dating
from c. 110, implies that "the Gospel" was already a
well-known and definite collection.
St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, and disciple of St. Paul,
addressed his Letter to the Corinthian Church c. A.D.
97, and, although it cites no Evangelist explicitly, this
epistle contains combinations of texts taken from the
three synoptic Gospels, especially from St. Matthew.
That Clement does not allude to the Fourth Gospel is
quite natural, as it was not composed till about that
time.
<end>
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textman
Dear Chris, your quoted article in no way disproves anything I have
said for the simple reason that it is very very skimpy with the
evidence. Just because some ancient Christian believed this or that
about this or that document doesn't mean it can be regarded as proof.
Every proposal requires evidence to back it up, especially when we
are dealing with ancient authors.
.
the one fitting it all together: textman ;>