This hit home for me with CRI. I was listening to one of Hank's shows on Calvinism where he had two speakers that were on opposite sides of the issue. They went at it hammer and tongs--respectfully of course, but Hank kept *stressing* amidst it all that, and I quote: "it was an in-house debate", and that both positions "were acceptable within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy." I am still a bit puzzled over this last statement. How is it that Hank is able to define what positions were permissible within Christian orthodoxy?
Campion, you hit on something here, namely that Hank defines *the historic Christian faith* by the fact that there have been both Calvinists and non-Calvinists within this loose amalgam of Protestant Christianity. Namely--if you want to put it this way--there were respected Protestant Fathers on both sides of the issue, therefore both positions were tolerable.
However, what made him choose only the Protestant Fathers for this analysis? Why Luther and Calvin, and not Cajetan and Bellarmine? And why stop at the 1500s instead of going back through the 15th, the 13th, the 9th, the 4th, all the way back to the Apostolic Age itself?
It is not a matter of tradition vs. no tradition. Rather, it is matter of selective tradition vs. universal tradition.
Good question. The tradition of Cajetan, for example, disagreed with what became official dogma canonizing the Apochyphra. If you go all the way back to the post Apostolic age there is no "universal" tradition that is binding on the Christian conscience outside of Scripture because there never was any "unanimous consent of the fathers in the first place" regarding certain dogmas currently promulgated by the Roman Church. To the the extent there was anything resembling a unanimous consent in the teachings of the fathers, it repudiated papal ecclesiology.
Cordially,