Replies

SR: “So rather than metmom coming in as representing some modern, novel speculation, she believes about this passage what Augustine believed, and many others early Christians of good reputation as well.”

MPU: Today, believing what the early church believed is referred to derisively as “Protestantism.” We know it is Christianity.

Yes, this is an ongoing problem in these conversations we're having. Catholics trace their authority as a function of uninspired history. Evangelicals trace authority as a function of certified divine revelation, i.e., the truth content of any would-be authority as measured against Scripture. This is why the starting point for Rome is always whatever random thing they've decided to dogmatize. Got a doctrine that is missing from or inconsistent with Scripture? No problem. Just walk it backward into Scripture anachronistically by projecting present Roman dogmas back into the ancient texts, both Biblical and patristic. This works even when the novelties are completely foreign to or even contradict what the original author was saying, because you only have to press the Magisterial Authority Override (MAO) button, and boom, you've got new dogma. Just like 3D printing.

The real kick in the head is they then turn around and complain that "private judgment" leads to all sorts of doctrinal novelty among evangelicals, even though we don't have anything remotely as cool as a MAO button. We are actually forced to get back in the ring again and again and defend our position against Scripture, a combat arena where only the most sound Scriptural arguments get any traction over time. It's such a messy process, and I think this is part of the problem. Some folks would rather have it handed to them.

This is where I see a real confluence, BTW, between Catholicism and the left. It's about the having someone in total control, doling out the resources. In the golden age of Rome, which was peaking just about the time the Roman schism was happening (c. 150-200ad), there was this massive welfare system, where Rome was handing out food and other resources on a large scale. The Roman ecclesiastical faction that rose to power under the emperors was fully acclimated to that style of total dependency on a centralized power structure and a sharply stratified social culture. Bread and circuses for the masses, "generously" provided by their earthly masters.

And when it is shown by solid evidence (Peter Lampe and others) that this ecclesiastical evolution really did take place, and that what came before it was a decentralized, but spiritually vital, generic Christianity, expressed even in Rome as a loose network of independent fellowships with no single bishop, it is we who are charged with revisionism, when in fact the revisionism is the work of Rome, to cover the trail of that messy, pope-less beginning.

So as a result of that initial dictatorial imprint, Rome has evolved an entirely different way of approaching the doctrine of divine revelation. In Rome's culture, it is still emperor-driven, top down. But Jesus designed us to avoid having a human "top banana," because there's only room at the top for one Person, Jesus Himself. That we would ever have to look to some single top mortal was specifically denied by Jesus. Instead, we were told we would receive a body of truth from the Holy Spirit, and we did, and we were to be guided by that body of truth, not by a succession of Roman Emperor wannabes.

This is why evangelicals of all periods since the apostolic era have rejected these pretensions to imperial power, and instead have protected the handing on of Scripture, even to the point of martyrdom when necessary. The fact remains that Jesus was building His Ecclesia and could not then and cannot now or ever be stopped. This is why the Reformation was inevitable. The suffocating power of Rome was such that if God had not broken its back, there would have been no place of refuge for those generic, genuine Christians who are His body.

So evangelicals have a revelation-driven model, and Rome has an emperor-driven model. This is so pervasive in the thinking of each it is genuinely hard for one side to understand the other. We have our very own Denominational Inquisitor (you know who you are), who constantly badgers us about what top-down model we belong to, when the whole point is we don't even accept the premise of a human top-down model. We don't rely on a mechanical succession of office holders, least of all a spurious list of supposed popes. We rely on the unseen power of God at work in disseminating the Gospel to the elect, wherever they may be, by the going forth of His word according to His purposes.

This leads to a complete misunderstanding on their part of how we use and relate to these labels, why we are able as a group, to consistently represent a unified front on all major tenets of the Gospel, as well as a unified understanding of Christian morality, which expresses itself as solid support for traditional moral values in public life. It's not about the labels, it's about God at work, and Jesus building His Ecclesia. Sorry AF, I don't need to file papers for that one; they were already submitted some 2000 years ago and entered in Jesus' name. Who am I to question the word choices of the Holy Spirit?

In any event, this huge difference in perspective cannot be overcome by "flesh and blood" argumentation. Divine intervention is the only hope, just as it was for Peter, and all who have followed his example of faith. Yet Paul says faith comes by hearing of the word of God, and so we remain constant, in season and out, in presenting the truths of divine revelation, according to the rule of divine wisdom presented in James:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
(James 3:17-18)

Because we know that with God, all things are possible.

Peace,

SR

Yes, this is an ongoing problem in these conversations we're having. Catholics trace their authority as a function of uninspired history. Evangelicals trace authority as a function of certified divine revelation, i.e., the truth content of any would-be authority as measured against Scripture.

False premise; Catholics trace their authority to the Messiah telling a Jewish Apostle that he is Peter, and upon this rock He will build His Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Observant Catholics actually believe the LORD Jesus Christ. Evangelicals tend to trace authority from personal experiences, with a personal Saviour, a personal interpretation of the Bible, a personal decision as to what constitutes sin in their eyes, a personal decision as to what, if any, church attendance, church membership, or church authority they think should apply to them, this year, this month, this day.

We have our very own Denominational Inquisitor (you know who you are), who constantly badgers us about what top-down model we belong to, when the whole point is we don't even accept the premise of a human top-down model.

I view people who are antiCatholic but hide their affiliation as Catholics trying to remove their Catholic baptism or members of some sect or cult that fear the light will expose them to ridicule because of what their sect or cult believes. I cannot imagine an observant Catholic or Independent Fundamental Baptist being too ashamed, embarrassed, or frightened to affirm his or her denominational/sect/faith group affiliation on an anonymous website as they purport to prophesy to others what is true or false.

Got a doctrine that is missing from or inconsistent with Scripture? No problem. Just walk it backward into Scripture anachronistically by projecting present Roman dogmas back into the ancient texts, both Biblical and patristic. This works even when the novelties are completely foreign to or even contradict what the original author was saying, because you only have to press the Magisterial Authority Override (MAO) button, and boom, you've got new dogma. Just like 3D printing.

Too much true. When you presume perpetual magisterial veracity, then all invoked evidenced must support or at least not contradict you.

..in all cases the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” — John Henry Newman,

It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity....Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. . — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.

Thus the reasoning (akin to Mormonism),

Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law; for, seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. .(Providentissimus Deus; http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus_en.html)

Under Rome, one cannot even know what writings are of God without a prior assent to Rome:

..the believer cannot believe in the Bible nor find in it the object of his faith until he has previously made an act of faith in the intermediary authorities between the word of God and his reading. Catholic Encyclopedia>Tradition and Living Magisterium; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm

Thus when faced with their circularity (invoking Scripture to prove one must submit to Rome to know what Truth is), they resort to appealing to Scripture as merely a historically reliable document. Upon which one is sppsd to find warrant to submit to Rome, and not examine the evidence to ascertain the veracity of RC teaching.

Yet the reality is that the church itself began with souls having correctly judged both men and writings as being of God, while a perpetual infallible magisterium was never necessary to provide or preserve Truth.

We are actually forced to get back in the ring again and again and defend our position against Scripture, a combat arena where only the most sound Scriptural arguments get any traction over time.

The contrast is btwn presumed perpetual magisterial veracity versus veracity based upon Scriptural substantiation.

In the golden age of Rome, which was peaking just about the time the Roman schism was happening (c. 150-200ad), there was this massive welfare system, where Rome was handing out food and other resources on a large scale. The Roman ecclesiastical faction that rose to power under the emperors was fully acclimated to that style of total dependency on a centralized power structure and a sharply stratified social culture. Bread and circuses for the masses, "generously" provided by their earthly masters.

So as a result of that initial dictatorial imprint, Rome has evolved an entirely different way of approaching the doctrine of divine revelation. In Rome's culture, it is still emperor-driven, top down. But Jesus designed us to avoid having a human "top banana," because there's only room at the top for one Person, Jesus Himself. That we would ever have to look to some single top mortal was specifically denied by Jesus. Instead, we were told we would receive a body of truth from the Holy Spirit, and we did, and we were to be guided by that body of truth, not by a succession of Roman Emperor wannabes.

Post of the day at least. This does not exclude leadership, but not as under Roman Caesario- papacies, in which "It follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock...the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors." - VEHEMENTER NOS, an Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906.