For anyone else reading who is confused about what this debate entails, here is the passage in Jude, as translated by in the ESV:
” 8Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. 9But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” 10 But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. 11Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. 12These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.”
Now, while a child of the Reformation, and thus one who “...believ[es] on the whims of the day, the contents of our stomachs, and the opinions of our wives”, I haven’t had any alcohol for a month or more, just ate some pizza, and my wife is at work - she was hired a couple of weeks ago at St Mary’s Hospital in Tucson - so take all this into account and give my thoughts the lack of respect they undoubtedly deserve...
No one doubted Moses was the single authority for Israel, and rebellion against him was rebellion against God. However, citing that as evidence that the Pope is the undoubted single authority for all Christianity is an impressive stretch.
It isn’t found in Scripture, and no, one verse in Matthew with disputable meaning is NOT the way God ordains a perpetual office...look at the care God took in setting up the priesthood in the OT.
Nor did ‘church fathers’ consider the Bishop of Rome supreme over them. I believe - and those of you whose opinions are NOT being influenced by pizza & Diet Coke can tell me if I’m wrong - that the Vicar of Christ was, in the early church, the Holy Spirit.
I probably shouldn’t stick my nose into the ecumenical thread discussion, particularly one where all agree I’m an alcoholic, wife-obeying (aren’t we all?), unstable pepperoni pizza-demon, but it seems odd that someone would use Jude to show rebellion against the Pope is dangerous when the same NT doesn’t show Papal supremacy in the first place.
Just FWIW, which probably isn’t much, given the audience. Still, it reads more like a passage on Rome than on the Orthodox...
Rare as it may be, and not to talk about being worthless, I for once agree with you. :)
This passage in Jude does not now and never has been considered in any way primacy of the Bishop of Rome over other bishops.
And you have been exposed to the logic of whims, contents of the stomach and the direction of the wind argument which says that every time one reads a new Scriptural verse in a different fashion, then one is justified in creating new theologies, which occur on every crossroads or mallfront stores that some individual happens on and rents. We are in it for the long term in which God is eternal, not some sort of electronic gadget that has to be reinvented every couple of years.
Even some Latins are caught up in the nonsense that the Pope is some sort of dictator and should cast pronouncements around like a robed Thor. That ain’t it and it never was. The Bishop of Rome was looked at as primus inter pares and that was really that. The fact that Rome was the buttress against heresy in the first millennium kinda helped (it wasn’t until the second that the forces of heresy moved west).
I understand the logic of infallible declaration and really, the Church has always taken that tack with its declarations of doctrine, albeit normally with hundreds of years of deliberation, thought and prayer.
In the end, the Church will continue; the Faith will continue and the novelties will be cast aside in the same manner that the Subordinationists or the Arians were.
Except for 250 PRINCES OF ISRAEL!
Maybe you *should* stay out of it....