“Circular. It’s like you didn’t read my last post. What Protestants do accept from those councils as binding they accept only because it can be backed up by Scripture.”
Not so. They are authoritative because they are Church Councils. The only thing backing them is the magisterium and the pope.
“If your understanding of John 6 is essentially materialistic”
John 6 goes on to say, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat”. So yes. Jesus wants us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. That is why he says, *I* am the mana in the desert. *I* am the living bread come down from heaven.
This is all acripture, yet you do not accept it. Why?
“pseudo-Aristotelian scheme Aquinas invented”
As opposed to what Luther invented? I’m sorry but Aquinas came first. Scripture is pretty clear that Christ wants us to eat his flesh and drink of his blood. This is a hard teaching, and people are still trying to explain it all away today.
So you aren’t really a sola scripturist after all. You’re a Protestant bound by 15th century tradition of Luther.
“anachronistically superimposing a doctrine on the text that as to its specifics was unheard of until about the 15th Century.”
You’re correct. That’s exactly what you’re doing. I fixed this for you.
“So here’s the deal. We can go round and round on this”
Or you can simply admit ath you elevate protestant tradition over the authority of scripture. :)
“Scriptural justification for why Trent should anathematize those who accept all the words of John but reject Aquinas’ use of substance and accidence in describing an event that never provably occurs.”
Show me evidence for this position prior to Luther.
“Until this post, I did not cite Trent. Vatican I happened in the late 1800’s. And no matter which of these I do cite”
It does matter. You’re citing the evidence that you believe supports your case, while ignoring the evidence that demonstrates your case to be false. It’s the same church that decided Chalcedon as Trent.
“Infallibility is a heavy burden to bear. There can be no contradictions or the concept fails, and these are easy to show in the later councils.”
This is bad logic. You’re saying, “we can accept what we do like and reject that which we don’t like. We can pick and choose doctrines. This is why Protestants are adopting homosexuality and supporting abortion. :)
“The early councils were not relevant to infallibility”
Yes, they are relevant, as they are infalliable Church declarations, just like the rest of the councils.
“closer in time to the Gospel advent and thus were focused more on doctrines that had their foundation in Scripture.”
So IOW, you like the label, “Now with less Rome than before, but don’t worry, we still have lots of Rome.”
“Athanasius fighting the Arians nearly single handed, even against the bishop of Rome, the Church might have turned fully to that heresy. And Athanasius’ weapon of choice in the battle was Scripture, holding it preeminent even over the confused maneuvering of the bishop of Rome, who temporarily sided with the Arians.”
“Rome when we like it, not-Rome when we don’t”
Athanasius wasn’t a protestant, sir. :)
“The Byzantine Greek has an excellent pedigree. Why settle for a 4th Century translation”
Fine, then we use the Codex Vaticanus. It still doesn’t explain why you use Luther’s canon.
“and also the source of some textual errors that are cured by resort to the Byzantine textual tradition.”
TR dates back to the ninth century, a full 6 centuries later than Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. And none of them use a canon invented in the 15th century. :) If they don’t, why do you?
“reverting to the Vulgate would be a retrograde decision.”
So explain to me why, if we would want to use the source closest to Jesus, that you would use a Canon invented in the 15th century over the one in use from the fourth?
“Surely you agree the Gospels and epistles were written by the authors for which they are named.”
Some don’t have names attached to them. Hebrews for one. Yes, I agree that Paul wrote his letters, John, Matthew, Mark and Luke all wrote their Gospels and Luke wrote Acts as well. That’s what the Fathers of the Church say.
“engaging in circular reasoning”
So you cannot produce evidence of a proto-bible. Thank you. As I said, this is 100 percent myth. :) The earliest complete bibles that we do have are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus and oddly enough, they do not use Luther’s canon. ;)
“I thought it was Rome’s position that all Christianity was or at least should be construed as under Rome from the first days of the Petrine See in Rome.”
Eusebius himself writes (same source for the Papal lists btw), that there are 5 patriarchal sees in his time. The first three in Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. The re-established one in Jerusalem (the first was destroyed in Bar Kochba, and restored by Juvenal in the 4th, and Constaninople, as elevated by Constantine.
Rome never writes that it is the sole source for Christianity. No, far from it. Petrine primacy asserts only that Peter was elevated beyond all the other 12. That is all, not that the other 11 did not exist.
“If not, why do you object to the existence of other Christian denominations?”
Who says I object? I am simply arguing that our division only goes back to the 15th century. I am arguing that we should all be one again, like we were prior and that the division is not the will of Christ. But, I would not insist that someone leave the Protestant church unless he were sincerely convicted of this fact.
“Well, that would concern me”
And that’s my concern. Your bibles throw out books of the bible for no other reason than the fact that Luther decided in the 15th century to do so. You said you are concerned about modernism? Well that is what happened in the 15th. Your statement earlier that “an event that never provably happens,” I can cite from Erasmus. That is where this idea comes from, sir.
“even though there was substantial evidence that some of them were forgeries.”
As always. Prove this is so. :)
“And I believe, as Luther and Calvin did, that Christians have a moral duty to defy bad theological precedents that have no grounding in the Christian’s real Constitution, the Scriptures.”
Including those of Luther himself?
“Nice sidestep, a condescending pat on the head rather than an attempt to reconcile a clear challenge to infallibility.”
If you disagree on Apostolic Succession, than you automatically disagree on infalliablity. Infalliability has apostolic succession as one of it’s premisses, just like Calculus has Algebra as one of it’s premisses. Ergo, one should first discuss apostolic succession before tackling infalliability.
“Are Protestants who reject the uniquely Roman view of Peter anathema, per Vatican I, or united with Christ, per Vatican II?”
Do you believe there is an unbroken succession of Popes and that the authority granted by Christ to St. Peter was handed down to them?
They are authoritative because they are Church Councils. The only thing backing them is the magisterium and the pope.
But the subject was not your opinion of why Protestants were largely in agreement with Nicaea et al, but why Protestants themselves consider the doctrines of those councils true, and you cannot speak to that without referring yourself to Protestant opinion, which you do not do. I do not think you have any interest in it. Your strategy appears to be this: plant a Roman flag in anything and everything, regardless of whether the thing so claimed is truly Roman (in modern terms), and then claim we Protestants got there too late. And if I allow you to define Protestantism in purely Roman terms, as nothing more than a breach from the Roman church in the 15th Century, how can you possibly lose with such a strategy?
And that of course means you really have no need of any Protestant to opine on anything. The matter has already been decided by Rome. We are just here to capitulate to Rome, with none of our serious questions answered (infallibility, Honorius, etc.), and none of our pre-15th Century history considered.
But if you presume Rome is the answer in the formation of the question, then the question is begged, the logic circular, and nothing accomplished. We are not here to capitulate. We do have serious questions that will not go away until meaningfully answered. And our history is fully intertwined with the history of the whole church, from the beginning, for Christians who believe as we now do have been present and active in the church from its inception.
Regarding councils, you plant your Roman flag in Athanasius and then tell us the reason we accept, for example, the deity of Christ, is simply because Nicaea said so. That’s not why we accept the doctrine, and it isn’t even why Athanasius accepts it:
“Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faiths sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrines so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture.”Athanasius, De Synodis, 6, NPNF, II, IV:453, Migne, PG, 26:689
“Yes, it behooved, say I too; for the tokens of truth are more exact as drawn from Scripture, than from other sources ; but the ill disposition and the versatile and crafty irreligion of Eusebius and his fellows, compelled the Bishops, as I said before, to publish more distinctly the terms which overthrew their irreligion; and what the Council did write has already been shown to have an orthodox sense, while the Arians have been shown to be corrupt in their phrases, and evil in their dispositions.”
Athanasius, De Decretis, 32, NPNF, Series II, IV:172, Migne, PG, 25:476.
There is more, but it will be enough to look at these. If Athanasius grounds his argument against the Arian with Scripture, then why is it wrong for Protestants, speaking their own mind and not the mind of Rome, to say they find not only merit in his argument, but a model for the Protestant use of Scripture? We see in Athanasius not a Roman but a Berean, for a person is what they do, not where they are from. We may rightly say of Athanasius what Spurgeon said of Bunyan, “Prick him anywhere, and he bleeds Bibline.”
“And your other, 'The Son was not before His generation,' is equivalent to saying, 'There was once when He was not,' for both the one and the other signify that there is a time before the Word. Whence then this your discovery? Why do you, as 'the heathen, rage, and imagine vain phrases against the Lord and against His Christ.' for no holy Scripture has used such language of the Saviour, but rather 'always' and 'eternal' and 'coexistent always with the Father.' For, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God John 1:1.'”Available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/28161.htm
And on and on he goes, one Scripture after another, blow after blow, till nothing of Arian’s delusions remain. I have used these same arguments in debate with modern Arians, and they are still as effective, not because of the vote in Nicaea, but because:
Heb 4:12 … the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Now I know you wish to claim Athanasius as an uncontested property of modern Rome, but Athanasius should not, by your own standards, be seen as Roman. I am sure you would consider a position on the Eucharist which deviates from the modern view of transubstantiation to be problematic, yes?
`For here also He has used both terms of Himself, flesh and spirit; and He distinguished the spirit from what is of the flesh in order that they might believe not only in what was visible in Him, but in what was invisible, and so understand that what He says is not fleshly, but spiritual. For for how many would the body suffice as food, for it to become meat even for the whole world? But this is why He mentioned the ascending of the Son of Man into heaven; namely, to draw them off from their corporeal idea, and that from thenceforth they might understand that the aforesaid flesh was heavenly from above, and spiritual meat, to be given at His hands. For `what I have said unto you,' says He, `is spirit and life;' as much as to say, `what is manifested, and to be given for the salvation of the world, is the flesh which I wear. But this, and the blood from it, shall be given to you spiritually at My hands as meat, so as to be imparted spiritually in each one, and to become for all a preservative to resurrection of life eternal.'Athanasius, ad Serap. iv. 19, concerning John 6:62-64
To which any Protestant could give a hearty Amen. Note carefully, he says “For for how many would the body suffice as food,” as though this was a problem, and you confuse me to no end when you appear here to agree, not with Jesus, but with his poor confused, materialistic audience, who are trying to figure out how Jesus means to make his body into literal, corporeal food for them:
John 6 goes on to say, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat”. So yes. Jesus wants us to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
But that is adverse to what Athanasius says above, that Christ seeks to “draw them off from their corporeal idea,” and instead to view his flesh and his blood as “spiritual meat,” “imparted spiritually in each one.” This language of distinction between the corporeal and the spiritual is perfectly conformed to the Protestant belief in the spiritual presence, but is entirely incompatible with transubstantiation as formulated by Aquinas. And Athanasius came well before Aquinas.
And here you lose me completely:
As opposed to what Luther invented? I’m sorry but Aquinas came first.
I’m sorry, but Aquinas, though he did come before Luther, came well after Jesus and John, Augustine, and Athanasius, to mention only a few, all of whom distinguish the spiritual from the corporeal, in a manner compatible with Protestant understanding.
By contrast, the entire point of transubstantiation is the opposite, to permanently and pathologically conflate the spiritual with the corporeal, in opposition to the clear words of Christ, in an amazing leap beyond anything dreamed of during the patristic period. Indeed, transubstantiation is a doctrine no one had heard of before the 9th Century AD, when Paschasius Radbertus, a monastic from Corbey, France, published his book, “On the Body and Blood of the Lord.” It would later fall to Aquinas to fine tune the theory, adding the Greek concepts of accidence and substance to explain how the elements of the Eucharist could be corporeally the body of Christ and only seem to be bread and wine.
And if you doubt my assertion that Aquinian transubstantiation is a vicious and unholy conflation of the spiritual and the corporeal, in that the corporeal swallows the spiritual whole, reflecting a materialistic rather than a spiritual mindset, consider this:
"Even though a mouse or a dog were to eat the consecrated host, the substance of Christ’s body would not cease to be under the species, so long as those species remain, and that is, so long as the substance of bread would have remained; just as if it were to be cast into the mire. Nor does this turn to any indignity regarding Christ’s body, since He willed to be crucified by sinners without detracting from His dignity; especially since the mouse or dog does not touch Christ’s body in its proper species, but only as to its sacramental species."(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part Three, Question 80, Article 3, RO3).
So what does this mean? If Athanasius is not Aquinas on the Eucharist, is he still Roman enough for you? You roundly condemn Protestants as unfaithful to Scripture for holding positions common to Christians up till Nicaea, yet you claim these early believers, who don’t believe as you do on this critical doctrine, are proof of the antiquity of Roman doctrines of which they had never heard. It really makes no sense.
And will you also disown Augustine?
"But doth the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.”. . .It seemed unto them hard that He said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you:” they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, “This is a hard saying.”. . .But He instructed them, and saith unto them, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood."(Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 99, Section 8).
We could press on and on, but the hour is late, and I am not a young man. This will have to do for now. Suffice it to say that your arguments all alike proceed from the tacit assumption that modern Rome owns the original copyright on all the key creations of early Christianity, when in fact the Rome you think you see there in the shadows of the first three centuries did not come into being until much later, as evidenced by the late innovation of transubstantiation and other such doctrines for which there is no primary evidence from the proto-Christian era, though there is much evidence for the existence and use of the Scriptures during that same period, despite your claims to the contrary.
My point is this. I would love to keep going with you, and if I had no other obligations, I probably would. But your responses thus far have given me no hope of a conversation in which fundamental assumptions can be reached and challenged. I have been through this before. I know it can be painful. I have been an atheist, a practitioner of eastern meditation, a flagrant rebel sinner, and a prodigal son returning to his Father and finding grace. I know it is possible to talk about these things in a way that deals honestly with those assumptions. I don’t believe we are there yet. I should probably be spending my time in other pursuits. I bear you no ill will, and I have enjoyed talking with you, but I cannot spend the rest of my natural days chasing the circle of your argument for Rome. There is no profit in it. Maybe in the future.
Peace,
SR
Not so. They are authoritative because they are Church Councils. The only thing backing them is the magisterium and the pope.
If you read the texts from the earliest councils, they rely upon Scripture almost exclusively to prove the conclusions they make. What makes, or SHOULD make, anything binding upon a Christian is doctrine derived from Holy Scripture. It has always been considered God-breathed truth, so it has preeminence. As SR stated, doctrines that have come from later councils, that contradict Scripture or which make binding on one's salvation belief in a doctrine NOT Scripturally proven, are NOT binding upon a Christian. You seem to make total obedience to whatever the "Magesterium" deems de fide a prerequisite to eternal life. I've read the convoluted wording of the various canon laws that attempt to lay it all out, but I don't have a Juris doctorate to decipher it. Here's a link to a few that will help you see what I'm talking about: http://www.catholicplanet.com/CMA/heresy-infallibility.htm. An excerpt:
Canon 751: “Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
The Catechism echoes Canon 751:
“Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same….” (CCC, 2089)
Now there are two types of teachings of the Magisterium: infallible teachings of the Sacred Magisterium, and non-infallible teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium. And consequently there are two types of assent to those teachings: the assent of faith (sacred assent), and the religious submission of will and intellect (ordinary assent). Heresy involves the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt of infallible teachings, which require the assent of divine and catholic faith (sacred assent). This includes all truths taught by the Magisterium under any of the three ways that the Magisterium teaches infallibly.
However, one can also be a heretic by obstinately denying or doubting certain teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium, namely, those necessary and essential to salvation. For even though the Ordinary Magisterium is non-infallible, it cannot err in such a way as to lead the faithful away from the path to salvation. Most of the heresies in the early Church were of this type, since there were not many magisterial pronouncements at that time.
A teaching falls under the Universal Magisterium (i.e. the ordinary universal Magisterium) when the Bishops of the Church “…even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.” (Lumen Gentium, n. 25)
All other teachings of the Magisterium, other than those that fall under one of the three modes of infallibility, are, without exception, ordinary and non-infallible, and are subject to the possibility of error, even on matters of faith and morals, but never to such an extent that any error, or set of errors, could lead the faithful away from the path of salvation.
These teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium are referred to by then Cardinal Ratzinger, with particular wording, as “the non-infallible teaching of the Magisterium” and “non-irreformable magisterial teaching,” in the document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called 'The Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,' n. 28 and 33. This wording demonstrates Cardinal Ratzinger's understanding that not all Magisterial teachings are infallible or irreformable.
In the same Address to the U.S. Bishops cited above, Pope John Paul II said: “With respect to the non-infallible expressions of the authentic magisterium of the Church, these should be received with religious submission of mind and will.” Clearly, the term religious submission of will and intellect refers to the ordinary non-infallible teachings of the Magisterium and is a different degree and type of assent than the divine and Catholic faith due to infallible teachings.
Therefore, the Magisterium can teach both infallibly and non-infallibly. Heresy is the denial or obstinate doubt of the infallible teachings and also of those ordinary teachings which are essential to salvation; heresy is a refusal to give the full assent of faith due to those teachings. The denial or doubt of non-infallible teachings in general might also be sinful and culpable, but the sin is not generally the sin of heresy and is a lesser matter, because the assent required is a lesser degree of assent.
So, though you assert that Apostolic Succession and Papal Primacy go hand in hand with "infallibility", a closer look at the actual sidesteps and caveats, not to mention the contradictions SR noted between Vatican I and Vatican II WRT anathema/not anathema and other historical events, you really do not have such a nice neat little package called the "unity" of the Catholic Church. Even Trent could not get everyone to agree on the Canon of Scripture, so there was no unanimous consent on that either. If you care to look into that, here is another informative link for your reading pleasure: http://thesearewritten.blogspot.com/2007/08/cardinal-cajetan-on-biblical-canon.html.
I will address the rest of your points tomorrow. Have a good night.