Posted on 05/06/2007 11:58:17 AM PDT by NYer
Most of the post centers on the tussle over ETS matters and leadership, (he has resigned from the presidency) but:
There is a conversation in ETS that must take place, a conversation about the relationship between Evangelicalism and what is called the “Great Tradition,” a tradition from which all Christians can trace their spiritual and ecclesiastical paternity. It is a conversation that I welcome, and it is one in which I hope to be a participant. But my presence as ETS president, I have concluded, diminishes the chances of this conversation occurring. It would merely exacerbate the disunity among Christians that needs to be remedied.
The past four months have moved quickly for me and my wife. As you probably know, my work in philosophy, ethics, and theology has always been Catholic friendly, but I would have never predicted that I would return to the Church, for there seemed to me too many theological and ecclesiastical issues that appeared insurmountable. However, in January, at the suggestion of a dear friend, I began reading the Early Church Fathers as well as some of the more sophisticated works on justification by Catholic authors. I became convinced that the Early Church is more Catholic than Protestant and that the Catholic view of justification, correctly understood, is biblically and historically defensible. Even though I also believe that the Reformed view is biblically and historically defensible, I think the Catholic view has more explanatory power to account for both all the biblical texts on justification as well as the church’s historical understanding of salvation prior to the Reformation all the way back to the ancient church of the first few centuries. Moreover, much of what I have taken for granted as a Protestant—e.g., the catholic creeds, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the Christian understanding of man, and the canon of Scripture—is the result of a Church that made judgments about these matters and on which non-Catholics, including Evangelicals, have declared and grounded their Christian orthodoxy in a world hostile to it. Given these considerations, I thought it wise for me to err on the side of the Church with historical and theological continuity with the first generations of Christians that followed Christ’s Apostles.
(Comments are open over there, btw. Worth a visit to add your support, if you like!)
Ridiculous...The scripture in it's original languages have been translated to death and it turns out that any person with an 8th grade education can understand them...
It's a matter of picking the most honest translater(s), believing what the scriptures say and trusting God when he says He will 'preserve' His words forever...
But of course, you will claim that your understanding is guided by the Holy Spirit, while denying that anyone else's, like that of the ECFs for example, possibly can be ... which is precisely the solipsistic nonsense at the heart of the Protestant error.
Now there you go again...It's not just my claim, it's God's claim as well...And you call it nonsense...
God claims that you, Iscool, have the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and nobody else does?
Do tell. You have Scripture for that?
Well, ZC will tell you that as soon as you translate them, they aren't the scriptures anymore, but only a translation of the scriptures.
Having a bit of experience with languages and translations myself, I tend to agree with him. Language shapes the way we think. There are expressions and words even in a language as close to English as German which can't be perfectly translated. And you're not talking about modern German to modern English, you're talking about 3000 year old Hebrew and 2000 year old Greek to modern English.
As far as your assertion that anybody with an eighth grade education can understand scripture ... parts they can, parts they can't. Take it up with 2 Peter 3:16.
So apparently the individuals involved in the interpretive disagreements that precipitated the thousands of Protestant splits all had nothing higher than a 7th grade education?
-A8
So you're admitting that the Catholic Church officially teaches evolution and the Documentary Hypothesis, right? Thank you for your honesty.
I gave up sola scriptura and have never gone back. But according to you that isn't enough. I had to admit that the Bible doesn't always tell the truth. I had to believe that the creation account of Genesis is mythology and is an amalgam of pagan creation myths from the ancient middle east. So much for your "unchanging" church.
Listen to me, Sunshine: No one, and I mean NO ONE has the right to say G-d says things that aren't so. And if you really believed in Him at all you wouldn't dare say imply such a thing.
You know bo-diddley-squat about my six years in the Catholic Church or what I went through trying to be loyal. I didn't even leave the Church when I was first told to go because it was the "one true church." And I had to go directly to mass after being told that because it was a holyday of obligation. And after that I attended an eastern rite Catholic Church until I did leave, and that was almost five months later, during which time I submitted as much as my conscience allowed me to.
Meanwhile your church welcomes abortionist politicians, Marxists, and homosexuals, but you tell me that I was in rebellion. I accept that. Too bad I was a literalist instead of a homosexual. In that case they'd have fought tooth and nail to keep me.
Go back to your Darwin and your Wellhausen, blasphemer!
Finally, I notice that this whole thread is celebrating the return to the Church of a man who says he still subscribes to an Evangelical “sola scriptura” mission statement and is choosing to “err on the side of the Church.” That you are turning flips over this guy while scolding me for my refusal to become a higher critic and evolutionist shows what a hypocrite you truly are.
That's a pathetic retort. First of all, everyone knows without having to ask what a Fundamentalist Protestant thinks of the documentary hypothesis. With Catholic clergy the assumption runs the other way. Furthermore, why does the Catholic Church give the imprimatur to Bibles published with higher critical de-mythologizing commentaries?
I am getting sick and tired of Catholics making excuses for their Church promoting higher criticism and evolutionism because it isn't "official." It might as well be, and you know it!
Enough with the hand-waving. Please name the scientific experiment proving that bread and wine cannot become flesh and blood. Please name the scientific experiment proving that the resurrection of the dead is impossible. Please name the scientific experiment showing that scientific experiments alone provide knowledge of the world.
The same ones that say that "we now know" that the world was not created in six days 5767 years ago. The rejection of the truth of the Biblical creation account is based on uniformitarianism, and uniformitarianism insists that the dead cannot rise and that bread and wine only become body and blood once eaten/drunk. If you are not a uniformitarian on these issues then you have no excuse other than blind prejudice against the Hebrew Bible to suddenly invoke uniformitarianism when it comes to Genesis.
It appears that you have failed to distinguish science from scientism.
So you're saying that "science" denies the truth of the "old testament" but that only "scientism" can doubt the "new?"
Again, please name the scientific experiment that shows that there are no angels.
Angels are outside our daily experience, just as is a miraculous six-day creation from nothing a mere 5767 years ago. If you're going to invoke the authority of our daily experience to deny Genesis, then you have no grounds other than personal preference (and hypocrisy) to wave it in the face of angels.
Since you Catholics are so hostile to the "old testament," why don't you just tear it out of your "bibles?" I'm sure that would make it much easier to convert all those lefties and intellectuals you lust after.
No Vatican pronouncement declares that all Catholics must believe everything (or anything) that falls under "higher criticism", or the theory of evolution.
-A8
Honest question, worthy of an honest response.
I think you are confusing anabaptists with protestants. The faithful Reformed denominations (Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, e.g.) are delighted to honor their ties to the ecf. Luther, after all, was an Augustinian monk, and Calvin built upon the scholarship of his predecessors. The Baptists are the guys who have this annoying habit of reinventing square wheels!
We think you guys "jumped the shark" when Aquinas imported Aristotle into the canon, but even that incredible scholar preached the inspiration of Scripture and had a clear testimony of his walk with God.
I have more in common with a pious RC believer than I do with a culturally-identical "Oneness" pentecostal.
That's unfair.
However, MD, having known ZC for some time I have to say that the Church failed him.
I cannot agree with his decision to leave the Church, but many pastors and laymen make it extremely difficult for people who believe in true doctrine - like the complete inerrancy of Scripture - to be comfortable in the Church or accepted as they should be in the Body of Christ.
I have been personally berated by priests for refusing to assent to heresies they falsely told me were Church teaching.
I was dressed down at my pre-Cana workshop - by a priest! - in front of my fellow workshoppers for standing up for the Church's teaching on contraception and sodomy as both practices were being advocated from the pulpit of a church - mere feet away from the tabernacle.
It is a wonder and a blessing from the Holy Ghost that more people like me were not driven into the arms of non-Catholic groups that actually take the Scriptures and morality more seriously than so many local parishes do.
People like ZC are not the problem. People like Thomas Gumbleton and his enablers are the problem.
Apparently you don't get it...Here is just the example the verse is talking about...
2Pe 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Peter is not talking about people that don't possess a Phd, he's talking about people who are unlearned in the scripture...
Who did that specifically? Wideawake?
I'm sorry you got burned by some Catholics, ZC, but your posts/rants, which are theories that are informed mainly by your experiences, have long been insufferable.
Hey, give me a link to the thousands of Protestant splits would ya??? I keep hearing about them from you guys but never see the evidence...
Quite true.
The above is characteristic of what is problematic with many of your posts. Your project your personal experiences of Catholics on to ALL, as if Catholics are all the same. The absurdity of it!!
You can't not have noticed the many threads on this topic.
No experiments have proven uniformitarianism. That is a meta-level assumption that is brought to the scientific process. It is often a useful assumption, but its usefulness does not justify absolutizing it. The error of scientism treats such assumptions as unquestionable dogma. The Church (more than any other institution in the world right now) is aware of the problem of scientism, and deeply concerned about it. (Think of Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg address of last year, or the recent articles by Cardinal Schoenborn in First Things on the subject of scientism and evolution.)
It is not the case that uniformitarianism must be entirely rejected or entirely accepted. That is a false dilemma. In different contexts there are different reasons (stronger or weaker) for making uniformitarian assumptions. For example, just because we know that the the bread turns into the body of Christ at the moment of consecration does not mean we must believe that no form of evolution took place before the creation of man.
The bottom line is this: nothing here justifies schism. Two wrongs don't make a right. The Church is the Church, and always will be.
-A8
I thought you said all that was required was an eighth-grade education. Now you're saying that people have to be "learned in the scripture". Which is it?
And another thing. Where do you get off telling me what 2 Peter 3:16 means? I have more than an eighth-grade education; according to your own doctrine I don't need you to put on your Pope hat and tell me what the Bible means.
-A8
I get that you think I'm a very bad man. Clearly we have a disagreement. I don't get why that means you are right to jump to conclusions based on careless readings of what I write.
And it STILL doesn't sound like you submitted. I don't know what the official stand of the Catholic Church is on Evolution and on the methods (as distinct from some of the hypotheses) of higher criticism.
I get that you think I'm an evil person and that I am saying things I don't have a right to say. I DON'T get that you understand or even care to understand what I actually mean to say.
It's just a matter of logic to say that there is a contradiction between saying you submitted to the church and then when it said something you disagreed with about how to read Scripture you left.
I Think the request for the name of the bishop who asked you to leave still stands. If I don't know anything about your six years in the Catholic Church that's probably because you haven't said much, and certainly haven't answered the questions that were asked.
I don't know what I've said or done that would justify your manner of response.
I will venture a guess: No one who had the authority to do so ever told you to leave the Church. Someone may have told you that he or she thought you would be happier elsewhere, and didn't understand how you could maintain on the one hand that you were submitting to the true church and on the other hand telling the body to which you were submitting what it ought to do and/or think.
(It's all in Tom Sowell: If I get slammed for being nice and just as slammed for being aggressive, I might as well not try to be nice.)
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