Though one might need read it entirety (my apologies) to fully grasp his position, Webster again, to explain my mention of Augustine, I’ll bring here this small portion;
However, the theological giant who provided the most comprehensive and influential defense of the symbolic interpretation of the Lord’s Supper was Augustine.13 He gave very clear instructions and principles for determining when a passage of Scripture should be interpreted literally and when figuratively. Passages of Scripture must always be interpreted in the light of the entire revelation of Scripture, he concluded, and he used John 6 as a specific example of a passage that should be interpreted figuratively.14
Augustine argued that the sacraments, including the eucharist, are signs and figures which represent or symbolize spiritual realities. He made a distinction between the physical, historical body of Christ and the sacramental presence, maintaining that Christ’s physical body could not literally be present in the sacrament of the eucharist because he is physically at the right hand of God in heaven, and will be there until he comes again. But Christ is spiritually with his people.15 Augustine viewed the eucharist in spiritual terms and he interpreted the true meaning of eating and drinking as being faith: ‘To believe on Him is to eat the living bread. He that believes eats; he is sated invisibly, because invisibly is he born again.’16
>>Webster is selectively reading the concept of Sola Scriptura into St. Augustine’s writings. Perhaps, St. Augustine believed in the primacy of scripture as all of the Fathers did, but he didn’t believe that scripture alone was sufficient.
He is either uninformed or dishonest.
“For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom, to the knowledge of which a few spiritual men attain in this life, so as to know it, in the scantiest measure, indeed, becuase they are but men, still without any uncertainty...The consent of peoples and nations keep me in Church, so does her authority, inaugerated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The SUCCESSION of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the APOSTLE PETER, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave it in charge to feed his sheep, down to the present EPISCOPATE...The epistle begins thus:—’Manicheus, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are the wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain.’ Now, if you please, patiently give heed to my inquiry. I do not beleive Manichues to be an apostle of Christ. Do not, I beg you, be enraged and begin to curse. For you know that it is my rule to beleive none of your statements without consideration. Therefore I ask, who is this Manicheus? You will reply, An Apostle of Christ. I do not beleive it. Now you are at a loss what to say or do; for you promised to give knowledge of truth, and here you are forcing me to beleive what I have no knowledge of. Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manicheus. But should you meet with a person not yet beleiving in the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not beleive? For MY PART, I should NOT BELEIVE the gospel except moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to beleive in the gospel tell me not to beleive in Manicheus, how can I BUT CONSENT?”
C. Epis Mani 5,6
“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”
Letter 164 to Evodius of Uzalis
“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 following 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”
C. Cresconius I:33
“It is obvious; the faith allows it; the Catholic Church approves; it is true”
Sermon 117:6
“If therefore, I am going to beleive things I do not know about, why should I not believe those things which are accepted by the common consent of learned and unlearned alike and are established by most weighty authority of all peoples?”
C. Letter called Fundamentals 14:18
“Will you, then, so love your error, into which you have fallen through adolescent overconfidence and human weakness, that you will seperate yourself from these leaders of Catholic unity and truth, from so many different parts of the world who are in agreement among themselves on so important a question, one in which the essence of the Christian religion involved..?”
C. Julian 1:7,34
“The authority of our Scriptures, strenghtened by the consent of so may nations, and confirmed by the succession of the Apostles, bishops and councils, is against you”
C. Faustus 8:5
“No sensible person will go contrary to reason, no Christian will contradict the Scriptures, no lover of peace will go against the CHURCH”
Trinitas 4,6,10
http://www.cin.org/users/jgallegos/trad.htm
Luther brought a much needed correction on some issues, particularly the sale of indulgences, but where did that get him with the Church, but to be much maligned and hated to this very day?
When we see "the church" going against what is plainly written, then it is by reason one must oppose such, even if only by words and discussion.
Authors like Webster help peel up the musty layers, allowing one to get another peek at how some doctrines and dogmas, slipped and slid away from original, earliest usage, not to mention the sense of meaning one gets from a plain reading of the scriptural texts themselves.
Compare the Didache to what came about later. There wasn't an wholesale change, but one of degrees, leading away from the communion of believers and their thanks giving which in later years changed the meaning of the root form of the greek, to the capitalized "Eucharist" with all it's freighted meanings, for example. This later freight, and cargo of other kinds (of that not explicitly found in scripture) one can all but see being constructed bit by bit.
From one of the links again, for the man has addressed points which you raise, and the circular logic in evidence supporting them.
Sometimes, then, the Fathers speak and write in a way that would eventually be seen as unorthodox. But this is not the only difficulty with respect to the criterion of orthodoxy. The other great one is that we look in vain in many of the Fathers for references to things that many Christians might believe in today. We do not find, for instance, some teachings on Mary or the papacy that were developed in medieval and modern times.3
At first, this clear lack of patristic consensus led Rome to embrace a new theory in the late nineteenth century to explain its teachings — the theory initiated by John Henry Newman known as the development of doctrine. In light of the historical reality, Newman had come to the conclusion that the Vincentian principle of unanimous consent was unworkable, because, for all practical purposes, it was nonexistent. To quote Newman:
The obvious problem with Newman’s analysis and conclusion is that it flies in the face of the decrees of Trent and Vatican I, both of which decreed that the unanimous consent of the fathers does exist. But to circumvent the lack of patristic witness for the distinctive Roman Catholic dogmas, Newman set forth his theory of development, which was embraced by the Roman Catholic Church. Ironically, this is a theory which, like unanimous consent, has its roots in the teaching of Vincent of Lerins, who also promulgated a concept of development. While rejecting Vincent’s rule of universality, antiquity and consent, Rome, through Newman, once again turned to Vincent for validation of its new theory of tradition and history. But while Rome and Vincent both use the term development, they are miles apart in their understanding of the meaning of the principle because Rome’s definition of development and Vincent’s are diametrically opposed to one another. In his teaching, Vincent delineates the following parameters for true development of doctrine:
First of all, Vincent is saying that doctrinal development must be rooted in the principle of unanimous consent. That is, it must be related to doctrines that have been clearly taught throughout the ages of the Church. In other words, true development must demonstrate historical roots. Any teaching which could not demonstrate its authority from Scripture and the universal teaching of the Church was to be repudiated as novel and therefore not truly catholic. It was to be considered heretical. This is the whole point of Vincent’s criticism of such heretics as Coelestius and Pelagius. He says, ‘Who ever before his (Pelagius) monstrous disciple Coelestius ever denied that the whole human race is involved in the guilt of Adam’s sin?’6 Their teaching, which was a denial of original sin, was novel. It could not demonstrate historical continuity and therefore it was heretical.
But, with Newman, Rome redefined the theory of development and promoted a new concept of tradition. One that was truly novel. Truly novel in the sense that it was completely foreign to the perspective of Vincent and the theologians of Trent and Vatican I who speak of the unanimous consent of the fathers. These two Councils claim that there is a clear continuity between their teaching and the history of the ancient Church which preceded them (whether this is actually true is another thing altogether). A continuity which can they claimed could be documented by the explicit teaching of the Church fathers in their interpretation of Scripture and in their practice. Vatican I, for example, teaches that the papacy was full blown from the very beginning and was, therefore, not subject to development over time.
In this new theory Rome moved beyond the historical principle of development as articulated by Vincent and, for all practical purposes, eliminated any need for historical validation. She now claimed that it was not necessary that a particular doctrine be taught explicitly by the early Church. In fact, Roman Catholic historians readily admit that doctrines such as the assumption of Mary and papal infallibility were completely unknown in the teaching of the early Church. If Rome now teaches the doctrine we are told that the early Church actually believed and taught it implicitly and only later, after many centuries, did it become explicit.
From this principle it was only a small step in the evolution of Rome’s teaching on Tradition to her present position. Rome today has replaced the concept of tradition as development to what is known as ‘living tradition.’ This is a concept that promotes the Church as an infallible authority, which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who protects her from error. Therefore, whatever Rome’s magisterium teaches at any point in time must be true even if it lacks historical or biblical support. The following statement by Roman Catholic apologist Karl Keating regarding the teaching of the Assumption of Mary is an illustration of this very point. He says it does not matter that there is no teaching on the Assumption in Scripture, the mere fact that the Roman Church teaches it is proof that it is true. Thus, teachings do not need to be documented from Scripture:
Still, fundamentalists ask, where is the proof from Scripture? Strictly, there is none. It was the Catholic Church that was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.7
This assertion is a complete repudiation of the patristic principle of proving every doctrine by the criterion of Scripture. Tradition means handing down from the past. Rome has changed the meaning of tradition from demonstrating by patristic consent that a doctrine is truly part of tradition, to the concept of living tradition — whatever I say today is truth, irrespective of the witness of history. This goes back to the claims of Gnosticism to having received the tradition by living voice, viva voce. Only now Rome has reinterpreted viva voce, the living voice as receiving from the past by way of oral tradition, to be a creative and therefore entirely novel aspect of tradition. It creates tradition in its present teaching without appeal to the past. To paraphrase the Gnostic line, it is viva voce — whatever we say. Another illustration of this reality relates to the teaching of the Assumption of Mary from the French Roman Catholic historian, Joussard:
In these conditions we shall not ask patristic thought — as some theologians still do today under one form or another — to transmit to us, with respect to the Assumption, a truth received as such in the beginning and faithfully communicated to subsequent ages. Such an attitude would not fit the facts...Patristic thought has not, in this instance, played the role of a sheer instrument of transmission.8