Posted on 01/27/2007 10:04:44 AM PST by Gamecock
Perhaps the most important aspect of the continuing controversies between Protestants and Catholics is the area of epistemology, or how we human beings know things--in this case, how we know divine truth. The question "How do you know?" is central to the Catholic polemic as it is presented to Protestants by some of the former's ablest contemporary defenders. 1 Unfortunately, these apologists not only commit a fundamental error in the target they direct this attack against, but they also miss a
The first mistake lies in the confusion of modern "evangelical" Christianity--almost universally identified by Catholic apologists as "fundamentalism"--with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Many Catholic apologists have honed to near perfection the technique of blasting to smithereens the anti-creedal, anti-historical, anti-intellectual positions of "Bible-Only" fundamentalists. By focusing their attention on the "no creed but Christ" foolishness of the latter and wrongly equating it with the classical Protestant formal principle of Sola Scriptura, they attempt to expose what they believe to be a glaring inconsistency in something they rather generically call "the Protestant view". 2
After discarding this caricature as hopelessly false, the defenders of Rome then attempt to establish the authority of their Church by building a step-by-step inductive argument, or more simply stated, by gratuitously piling up "historical" facts as if such can stand on their own outside of their basic interpretive framework. In so doing, they ironically end up exposing a basic inconsistency in their own apologetic! This inconsistency appears when the Catholic principle of how humans know divine truth meets its Protestant opponent on the field of historical battle. Let us try to follow their reasoning.
The Bible--"Just Another Ancient Book"?
The argument usually begins by admitting up front that it is not going to treat the Scriptures as if they are divinely inspired, but merely as legitimate historical documents. It then proceeds to build a chain of "purely" historical evidence--passages of Scripture, quotations from early Christians and Councils, etc--which is supposed to show that Christ instituted a Church with certain properties, properties which are today found only in the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In a debate on Sola Scriptura with Patrick Madrid (then of Catholic Answers), James White asked Madrid how he could know that the Roman Church is the one true Church. Madrid responded as follows:
This is how I know, Mr. White. I can look independent of what I see in Scripture. In fact, I'm not going to even treat Scripture as an inspired document for the moment, just for the sake of argument. I'm going to look at whether or not a man named Jesus Christ lived. Can I prove that historically? Yes. Can I prove that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead and appeared to many people who as eyewitnesses claimed that He died and rose from the dead? I can prove that. In two minutes I can't prove it for your satisfaction, but I think we would all agree that those things are true. I can demonstrate through non-Christian, unbiased sources, in fact sometimes actually biased against the Christian position, that Jesus Christ instituted a church. We can look at the writings of these early Christians, not only the apostles but also the men and women in the post-apostolic era. I can look at the Scripture and see what, independent of whether or not I believe it is inspired, I can look and see a description of the church that Jesus established. All of you know the verse in Matthew 16 verse 18, "On this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Mr. White and I would argue all night long over what the rock is, but the fact is Jesus established a church. The next point is that as I look at Scripture I see that the church is described as having certain functions, certain attributes, certain characteristics, certain jobs that it has to perform, and I can compare and find out, well, historically, yes, I can show that that was done, through the writing of the Scriptures. So if I believe that Jesus is God, and I believe that His promise is true that He founded a church, then I have to say, this is the next step, I have to say, does that church, is there a church today which fits that description which is doing all the things that Jesus said. If that's true, if I can find that, and I have, by the way, it's the Catholic Church, then I know that what is described here in this book is the same church that I see today. So when that church tells me, Jesus said in Luke 10:16, "He who listens to you listens to Me, he who refuses to hear you refuses to hear Me," when I hear that Church speak I know that it is Jesus speaking through the church.
Notice that Madrid's argument follows the familiar evidentialist pattern of much of "evangelical" Protestantism, though it is used by him not to establish the authority of the Bible, but of the Roman Church 3 --a fact which reveals that there are two competing ultimate authorities in the debate: Sola Scriptura and the Catholic Magisterium. It is then marshalled against a caricature of the Protestant position--which, it is said, amounts to believing the Bible is inspired simply "because it says it is". 2 I quote Madrid again, from his essay "Sola Scriptura: A Blueprint for Anarchy":
Another problem for Sola Scriptura is the canon of the New Testament. "There's no inspired table of contents" in Scripture that tells us which books belong and which ones don't. That information comes to us from outside Scripture. Our knowledge of which books comprise the canon of the New Testament must be infallible; if not, there's no way to know for sure if the books we regard as inspired really are inspired. it must be binding; otherwise folks would be free to have their own customized canon containing those books they take a fancy to and lacking the ones they don't. And it must be a part of divine revelation; if it's not it's merely a tradition of men, and if that were so, Protestants would be forced into the intolerable position of championing a canon of purely human origin.
The Catholic doesn't have this problem, claim Madrid and the others, because he has an external authority--the Church--to tell him that the Bible is inspired and which books are contained in it. Madrid continues:
Sola Scriptura becomes "canon" fodder as soon as the Catholic asks the Protestant to explain how the books of the Bible got into the Bible. Under the Sola Scriptura rubric, Scripture exists in an absolute epistemological vaccuum, since it and the veracity of its contents "dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church." [quoting the Westminster Confession of Faith]. If that's true, how then can anyone know with certitude what belongs in Scripture in the first place? The answer is, you can't. Without recognizing the trustworthiness of the Magisterium, endowed with Christ's own teaching authority (c.f., Matt. 16:18-19; 18:18; Luke 10:16) guided by the Holy Spirit (John 14:25-26; 16:13), and the living apostolic Tradition of the Church (1 Cor. 11:1; 2 Thess. 2:15, 2 Timothy 2:2), there is no way to know for certain which books belong in Scripture and which do not. As soon as Protestants begin to appeal to the canons drawn up by this or that Father, or this or that council, they immediately concede defeat, since they are forced to appeal to the very "testimony of man and Church" that they claim not to need.
The problem with this line of reasoning should be manifestly obvious. Notice the numerous Scriptural references Madrid cites as part of his proof that we need the Church to tell us what the Scriptures are. Since he has already told us that no one (particularly Protestants, of course) can know the Scriptures apart from the witness of the Church, how then can he cite these passages of Scripture as part of his "proof" for how he knows those Scriptures in the first place?
The problem is particularly acute when we examine the central passage of Scripture Madrid cited--Matthew 16:18-19. These verses supposedly imply that the Church will be infallible (so that the gates of Hades will not prevail against it). But on the Catholic premise that the infallible witness of the institutional body of bishops is necessary in order for one to "know for sure" that the book of Matthew is legitimate while, say, the Gospel of Thomas is not, how can the book of Matthew be used as part of a "proof" of the existence of that infallible body of bishops? Thus, the Roman apologist uses Scripture to support his claims about the infallible Church and then inconsistently asserts that no one can know what Scripture is until the infallible Church tells him so!
These facts show us that despite the assertion that the authority of the Roman Church can be "proven" by the use of the New Testament records "merely" as legitimate historical records, exactly the opposite is occurring. Madrid and all Catholic apologists who use this type of argument are tacitly assuming from the get-go that they "know for sure" what books are trustworthy historical records, nay, even infallible historical records! On what basis do they reject the numerous heretical writings, many of which also claim to be presenting the "catholic" (universal) faith?
Those Marvelous, Unbiased, Infallible Catholic Historians
But the problems don't stop with this disingenous use of Scripture.4 Catholic apologists treat all of Church history with the same question-begging, "neutral" evidentialism. I will not even attempt to get into detailed refutations of Catholic historical points as historical points. Such is beyond the limited scope of this essay, and at any rate, has been done by others far better than I ever could. 5
My focus is on the inconsistent epistemology that is used by the Catholic apologists.
If we were to take the principle that such apologists apply exclusively against Sola Scriptura and make it into a general principle, it would be this: infallible external confirmation is a prerequisite for any claim to "know for sure" that a chosen ultimate authority is the correct one. Very well. If this principle is true, we should rightly expect Catholics to jump at the chance to show us such an infallible external proof for their Church, especially if they are going to parade through the town square proclaiming that Sola Scriptura is invalid because it has no infallible external proof. It seems obvious that if the identity and supreme authority of Scripture must be "proven" by means of an infallible external authority, then so must the identity and supreme authority of "the Catholic Church".
Oddly, this challenge goes unanswered. Though Catholic apologists often like to point out that even heretics quote the Bible in support of their errors, I have yet to find even one Catholic apologist who honestly attempts to grapple with the fact that many heretics (both past and present) also claim to be "the Catholic Church". 6 With tongue in cheek, I must ask these apologists how they can "know for sure" that the particular organization they are defending is the real "Catholic Church". How do they "know for sure" that the Protestant Reformers--or for that matter, the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses--weren't right after all?
Never ones to follow the supposedly Mormon-esque "I know its true because I feel it in my heart" tactic they wrongly attribute to classical Protestants, these heroically "objective" warriors tell us they have an answer to our query. They ask us to wait patiently while they zealously weld into place beam after beam of historical data, following a blueprint only they can see. Soon, they point proudly to the veritable skyscraper they have built, and note with triumph that its shadow overwhelms the pitiful shack of Protestant "novelties" that were seemingly spun from whole cloth barely five centuries ago.
Unfortunately for them, this massive edifice of historical trivia turns out to be utterly useless as a "proof". This is so because the very apologists who are compiling the evidence are not themselves infallible, and so, on their own criterion of knowledge, they cannot really "know for sure" that they are dealing with history fairly. How do they "know for sure" that they have not left some relevant historical facts out of the picture, or allowed their own peculiar biases to warp their reading of history, or perhaps even that the "historical" sources they are drawing upon are not clever frauds which have simply not been detected yet? 7
All these questions reveal that the use of historical evidences as a ground of faith in the trustworthiness of the Roman institution is a well-meaning, but nevertheless misguided tactic. Such evidences do have their place--as warrants, or supports, of the trust these Catholics already had in their Church (although they can still be challenged by Protestants). But if, as the Roman defenders tell us, the warrants for our faith must be infallible, these warrants can never serve as the foundations, since they, like the apologists who adduce them, are fallible.
If one still doubts the validity of my reasoning here, just ask why, if the historical skyscraper produced by Catholic apologists is really so incredible, really so "obvious", why does it not convince Protestants like James White, who is at least as well-informed about Church history as Patrick Madrid? And why can a James White or a William Webster produce similar skyscrapers that appear "obvious" to Protestants but not to Catholics? One begins to suspect that it is just not enough to say one's faith is true because it is "historical".
Conclusion
The claim that the identity and supreme authority of the Roman Catholic institutional Church can be established to be true solely by the use of non-inspired historical writings (which include those writings known as "the Bible") is false for two reasons.
First, it tacitly assumes the very thing that it is supposed to be proving. Both Catholics and Protestants take the Scriptures as reliable sources of information about God even if any given individuals in either camp cannot produce external supports for it. Protestants at least admit that this is what they are doing. Catholics, on the other hand (particularly the apologists), propose to treat Scripture "only as a historical document", which they then use to build up the authority of their Church. But in so doing, they ignore the fact that they are assuming that they "know" what books constitute "Scripture"--the very thing they deny that can be done apart from their Church!
Second, the claim that the identity and supreme authority of the Roman Catholic institutional Church can be established to be true solely by the use of non-inspired historical writings neglects to factor into its equation the fact that historical arguments are by their nature fallible, since they are constructed by fallible people who can never know all the facts and their inter-relationships with perfect clarity.
Thus, the apologetic tactic used by many Roman Catholic apologists today actually undermines the very "certainty of faith" it is supposed to safeguard. The Catholic tells the Protestant that he cannot know that Scripture is trustworthy since he doesn't have an infallible Church to vouchsafe the canon to him--that he has only a "fallible collection of infallible books". But the Protestant need not be nervous about admitting the truth of the last phrase, for he is still in a better epistemological position! He can simply reverse the argument and point out that the Catholic cannot know that Rome is the true Church, since all he has is "a fallible collection of (possibly false) historical trivia".
Hence, like the fundamentalists they so vehemently oppose, the argument of today's Catholic apologists rests in what one of their number, Patrick Madrid, termed "an absolute epistemological vaccuum". The irony is too delicious to ignore.
1. I am referring primarily to Gerry Matatics, Scott Hahn, James Akin, Dave Armstrong, David Palm, Scott Butler, Robert Sungenis, Patrick Madrid, and Tim Staples, though there are a host of lesser known lay apologists who follow in their footsteps.
2. I have dealt with this point in my papers "The Reformation and Fundamentalism", and "Holy Scripture and the Holy Catholic Church".
3. From a strictly classical Protestant--e.g., Reformed--viewpoint, this serves to show that Rome and "evangelicals", for all their disagreements, share the same fundamental view of man's spiritual problems. Just show unbelievers enough "evidence" to convince "any reasonable mind", and they will have a foundation for coming to faith. That NOBODY grounds their most basic beliefs on collections of external evidences (but rather, at best, merely supports such beliefs with external evidences) is a fact of human nature that is missed by evidentialists in all camps. We shall see momentarily how this approach mires the Catholic apologist in epistemological quicksand.
4. I say it is "disingenous" because of the intial premise that Scripture was going to be treated "only" as a collection of valid historical works. If Catholic apologists would simply admit that they, like the Protestants they criticize, are relying on a conviction about Scripture that they brought to their apologetics--not that they derived from their apologetics!--the debate might actually progress beyond the level of playground bragging about how their daddy can beat up our daddy.
5. I refer the reader to the essays at William Webster's site Christian Resources, and to the much more detailed versions of the same contained in Webster's book The Church of Rome at the Bar of History. Also see the following articles by James White: Looks Can Be Deceiving, Is Roman Catholic History Reliable?, and Jesus, Peter, and the Keys: A Summary Response. Also see White's debate with "Brother John Mary" at Resolved: The Church of the Council of Nicea is not the Roman Catholic Church.
6. Not only do organizations such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah's Witnesses) claim to be the true heirs of Apostolic teaching, but so did ancient heretical groups like the Arians. Although it is a very long document, I would refer the reader to Athanasius' work De Synodis, which quotes at length numerous Arian creeds which all purport to be setting forth "the catholic faith" in the name of "the catholic church". Additionally, the fifth century work by Vincent of Lerins, The Commonitory, notes what I said above, that even heretics are wont to quote the Scriptures profusely in the name of their own dogmas. These facts serve to show that Catholic apologists are doing the same thing with their ultimate authority (the Church) that Protestants do with theirs (the Scriptures)--they take it for granted and use its authority to deny the claims of competitors.
7. I am here referring to the fact that between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, a series of "historical" documents were used by various Popes and Roman Catholic doctors to firmly ensconce the Roman papacy as the supreme authority in the Western Church. These documents (the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, the Liber Pontificalis, and the Donation of Constantine) purported to be records from the early Church, and they clearly showed the Roman pontiff exercising dominion over other churches as their head. (For much more detail on these forgeries, see William Webster's article "Forgeries and the Papacy".) Whether or not the Popes and doctors knew these documents to be fraudulent is irrelevant. We can give them the benefit of the doubt and still maintain that this provides us with an undeniable witness to the extreme fallibility of historical apologetics. One can never derive "absolute certainty" from any historical record, given the limits of the inductive process that is used to gather the data and the fallibility of the human beings who gather it.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on Pro-Life or Catholic threads.
Why not? I see that exact behavior daily on FR
Are you saying I'm on your list?
Is there any reason you dislike the Catholic Church? It's just that I'm positive this isn't the first one you've posted.
Yes, that would be the same William Webster who was exposed as an outright liar in a recent thread, isn't it? He had edited the writings of a Catholic saint to make it appear that the saint was denying the Assumption of Mary, even though the saint was asserting the Assumption. That's an intellectual gold mine, you've got there.
Essentially, on a previous post ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1773583/posts ), Webster quoted St. Epiphanius as saying, essentially, "we don't know what happened to Mary when she died"; whereas what St. Epiphanius said was, "we don't know what happened to Mary when she died, but we do know she was assumed into Heaven."
Likewise, he asserted St. Jerome denied the Assumption of Mary, when, in fact, St. Jerome credited her appearance to him as preventing him from believing the Hebrew's misstatements about the meaning of "a virgin shall give birth."
The very title of the article stated that two popes condemned the doctrine of the assumption of Mary as heretical, when in fact, they only called a 5th-century, fictional book about Mary a heresy. Of course, Webster claimed that this book was the source of the doctrine of the assumption, which was either a falsified hostorical presumption, or a blatant lie.
Yes, that William Webster, what a valuable tool of Satan he was.
(Was this William Webster the same con man who wrote "Consequences of Trade to the Wealth and Strength of any Nation, by a Draper of London," and then wrote "The Draper Confuted" under a different pseudonym? The ethics and intellectual honesty of such a man is astounding!)
Nope. Not unless you ask to be.
Thanks, Gamecock. Hope I'm up to it (smile).xxx
I attended a lovely memorial service for a Catholic friend at the university today. She died very suddenly of a massive stroke and heart attack just before Christmas. Afterwards I complimented the Catholic chaplain on the service. I mentioned that she, a Catholic, and I, a born again protestant shared our faith with eachother freely. He and I both agreed that IF we can keep our eyes on Jesus, the rest of the stuff doesn't really matter and it doesn't enter into it. We should be embracing our alikeness instead of our differences, which is divisive. Now, given my personality, that's not easy, but I believe it's necessary in today's world. satan would love nothing more than to have us fighting all the time. he must be absolutely delighted on these threads. Mxxx
Them's fightin' words, dangus. We are NOT anti-historialists nor are we anti-itellectualists. You are a bad boy (or girl).
Ping to #20
Everything that is contrary to right reason is sin. Accordingly, therefore, the philosophers think fit to define the most generic passions thus: lust, as desire disobedient to reason; fear, as weakness disobedient to reason; pleasure, as an elation of the spirit disobedient to reason. If, then, disobedience in reference to reason is the generating cause of sin, how shall we escape the conclusion, that obedience to reason--the Word--which we call faith, will of necessity be the efficacious cause of duty? For virtue itself is a state of the soul rendered harmonious by reason in respect to the whole life. Nay, to crown all, philosophy itself is pronounced to be the cultivation of right reason; so that, necessarily, whatever is done through error of reason is transgression, and is rightly called, (amarthma) sin. Since, then, the first man sinned and disobeyed God, it is said, "And man became like to the beasts:" being rightly regarded as irrational, he is likened to the beasts. Whence Wisdom says: "The horse for covering; the libidinous and the adulturer is become like to an irrational beast." Wherefore also it is added: "He neighs, whoever may be sitting on him." The man, it is meant, no longer speaks; for he who transgresses against reason is no longer rational, but an irrational animal, given up to lusts by which he is ridden (as a horse by his rider).
But that which is done right, in obedience to reason, the followers of the Stoics call proshkon and kaqhkon, that is, incumbent and fitting. What is fitting is incumbent. And obedience is founded on commands. And these being, as they are, the same as counsels--having truth for their aim, train up to the ultimate goal of aspiration, which is conceived of as the end (telos). And the end of piety is eternal rest in God. And the beginning of eternity is our end. The right operation of piety perfects duty by works; whence, according to just reasoning, duties consist in actions, not in sayings. And Christian conduct is the Operation of the rational soul in accordance with a correct judgment and aspiration after the truth, which attains its destined end through the body, the soul's consort and ally. Virtue is a will in conformity to God and Christ in life, rightly adjusted to life everlasting. For the life of Christians, in which we are now trained, is a system of reasonable actions--that is, of those things taught by the Word--an unfailing energy which we have called faith. The system is the commandments of the Lord, which, being divine statues and spiritual counsels, have been written for ourselves, being adapted for ourselves and our neighbours. Moreover, they turn back on us, as the ball rebounds on him that throws it by the repercussion. Whence also duties are essential for divine discipline, as being enjoined by God, and furnished for our salvation. And since, of those things which are necessary, some relate only to life here, and others, which relate to the blessed life yonder, wing us for flight hence; so, in an analogous manner, of duties, some are ordained with reference to life, others for the blessed life. The commandments issued with respect to natural life are published to the multitude; but those that are suited for living well, and from which eternal life springs, we have to consider, as in a sketch, as we read them out of the Scriptures. Clement of Alexandria-Book 1
Good point.
Check your freepmail
As true today as it was three days ago.
Knowing full well it is a lie, you repeat it anyway.
We disagree.
Discuss the issues all you want but do NOT make it personal.
The author's point here is 100% right. So Catholic apologists should make every effort not to use the word "proof" because it sets up an impossible standard.
I think this author makes an interesting point overall. I'll have to read it more in-depth, but just off the top of my head, I'll offer this: the Fathers are admittedly not infallible. They made mistakes, said things they shouldn't have said, etc. So yes, one has to be careful in using them.
Basically I'd say this. If all of the Fathers *agree* on something, we should probably agree on it as well: because if we don't it probably means there's been some kind of novelty introduced somewhere along the line. If the Fathers disagree, well then there's more room for debate.
Any comments on that assessment?
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