Therefore what?
The exact context I presented it in. For critics of Catholicism to be consistent and avoid double standards. The anti-Marian/Catholic ideology informing the views and objections of several participants here has repeatedly been turned to show how their same reasoning undercuts their own views. Don’t critique Catholic beliefs with arguments that are far more devastating to your own belief system. That is the therefore. After hammering this home several times I added:
One of the things Non-Catholics do need to be more honest about is the evidence for Marian apparitions and things like Fatima. The latter seems more well evidenced than the resurrection. Some might not like this, but Catholic miracles often make non-Catholics behave as atheists or philosophical naturalists.
One user specifically asked me for scientific evidence of the perpetual virginity. Hence, the impetus for the last sentence of the above quote. The treatment of Catholic miracles by Protestants generally amplifies this.
But since I think Catholicism is truth and that we all should seek and assent to truth, absolutely everyone should become Catholic. I won’t mince words there.
I suspect all Christians evangelize with hope of sharing the good news that everyone may believe as well even though we probably don’t believe this will happen.
Vinnie
Irenaeus does indeed testify that apostolic teaching was still being transmitted outside the surviving apostolic writings.
But saying “that was still possible in the second century because people like Polycarp were close to the apostles” does not prove the next step you need for your argument: namely that this mode of transmission later ceased to be a reliable authority and that only written Scripture remained.
Irenaeus himself does not present apostolic tradition as a temporary emergency measure that would expire once the last near-apostolic generation died out. He presents it as something publicly preserved in the churches through their succession and received faith.
So the the point of the matter is not whether oral apostolic teaching still existed in Irenaeus’s day (you have now conceded that it did), the point of the matter is: where does Irenaeus, or any early Father of the Church, say that this ecclesial transmission was expected to become unreliable and be replaced by Scripture alone after a certain generation?
That is a fair question, but notice that it is now a different question.
My original point was historical: Irenaeus believed that, around A.D. 180, the apostolic faith could still be reliably known through the public tradition and succession of the churches. You now seem to concede that.
Whether that claim continued to prove reliable over succeeding centuries is the next question. And I am perfectly happy to examine that.
But simply saying that it “needed to be proven in time” does not establish that the transmission eventually failed, much less that, once it failed, Scripture alone became the only reliable authority.
You would need to show that transition historically.
In fact, what we find after Irenaeus is not the Church announcing that living apostolic transmission had expired. We continue to find Christians appealing to the received faith of the churches, episcopal succession, the rule of faith, the Fathers, and eventually ecumenical councils as means of identifying and preserving apostolic doctrine.
So yes: let us test Irenaeus’s claim through time. But then the historical question becomes very concrete:
When did the Church cease to regard this living ecclesial transmission as reliable, and where do the early Christians say that from that point onward Scripture alone was to replace it?
That is the transition your argument still needs to establish. And even Protestant historians, as I have documented, agree that until the “Protestant revolution” it was simply unthinkable to divorce the Scripture from Traditions and from the living Magisterium and the interpretive role of the Church. Adolf von Harnack In History of Dogma, vol. III, “Tradition,” p. 207: “but the revolution which was characterised by the isolation of the Bible, its deliverance from the authority of ecclesiastical tradition, and the annihilation of the latter, only took place in the sixteenth century, and even then it was, we know, not completely successful“.
The idea that a later dogmatic definition can make explicit something that was not originally expressed in the same technical language is not a modern Catholic invention. We can see exactly that process in the first millennium.
Nicaea is the clearest example. The apostles never left us the technical formula that the Son is homoousios with the Father. Athanasius nevertheless explains that the bishops had to “collect the sense of the Scriptures” and state it “more distinctly still” because the Arians could accept biblical language while interpreting it in an Arian sense.
He then says that, although the Nicene expressions “are not in so many words in the Scriptures,” they nevertheless “contain the sense of the Scriptures.”
That is doctrinal development in practice: not a new revelation, but a more explicit and precise formulation of what the Church believed had already been received.
The same pattern appears with the divinity of the Holy Spirit and with the title Theotokos at Ephesus. The later technical formulations were not claimed to be verbatim apostolic sentences. They were authoritative clarifications of the apostolic faith made necessary by later controversies.
So requiring a Catholic dogma to be traceable as an unchanged sentence orally repeated from Paul through every generation imposes a standard that even the great dogmatic definitions of the first millennium do not satisfy.
Speaking specifically of the Immaculate Conception, this doctrine is not found in the first millennium in the fully developed technical formulation of 1854, but that is precisely the point about doctrinal development.
The same is true, in a different degree, of other dogmatic formulas: for example the apostles did not leave us the Nicene formula that the Son is homoousios with the Father; the Church later formulated it more precisely because controversy required a sharper expression of what it believed had already been received, especially because the Arians had proved time and time again that the Arian reading of the Scriptures was reasonable and could be supporterd with a number of theological and scriptural arguments.
With Mary, the historical development is longer, but the underlying trajectory is already visible very early.
The Fathers develop the Mary–Eve parallel, presenting Mary as the obedient counterpart to the virgin Eve. Over time they speak increasingly strongly of Mary’s unique holiness and purity. Augustine is particularly significant, because, although he strongly taught the universality of original sin, when discussing whether saints could be without sin he explicitly says:“We must except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honour to the Lord.”
That is not yet the 1854 definition and Augustine is not explicitly saying that Mary was preserved from original sin at the first instant of her conception, but it shows something important: Mary was already being treated as a unique exception when the Church reflected on the universality of sin.
The later controversy concerned the precise explanation of that exceptional holiness: did purification occur after conception, or was Mary preserved from original sin from the first instant by a prevenient application of Christ’s merits?
The 1854 definition settles that later question.
So the Catholic claim is not has never been: “The apostles explicitly taught the 1854 formula word for word” it was instead: “the apostolic deposit contained the theological realities from which the doctrine developed —(Mary as the New Eve, her unique relation to Christ, her extraordinary holiness and freedom from sin ) and the Church eventually defined with greater precision how that unique grace applied to original sin itself”.
That is the same kind of developmental logic seen elsewhere in the first millennium: an inherited faith is later articulated with a degree of technical precision that the earliest sources did not yet possess.
The evidence for the Immaculate Conception is not identical in strength or chronology to Nicaea or Ephesus, and there is no need to pretend otherwise, but the relevant point is that later technical precision does not by itself prove later invention in any way, shape or form.
You know what is an invention? The divorce between Scripture and Tradition + the unique interpretive role of the Church, as the Protestant historian Adolf Von Harnack evidenced.
Not exactly.
Not quite, there is one important distinction between our positions.
I agree with the obvious point that if an oral teaching left absolutely no surviving trace whatsoever, then we cannot examine it today.
But that is not the same as saying that every oral apostolic teaching which survived came down to us through Scripture.
An oral teaching could have been transmitted for a time through the churches and only later been recorded in a patristic text, a creed, a liturgical practice, a conciliar document, or some other written testimony.
Once it is written down, we possess written evidence of an earlier oral transmission. That does not mean the teaching originally came to us through Scripture.
In fact, this is exactly why Irenaeus matters. You have already conceded that in his time apostolic teaching was still known through the living tradition of the churches. Our knowledge of that fact today comes from Irenaeus’s writings — but Irenaeus is not Scripture.
So if by “those oral teachings which never made it into any surviving evidence were lost to us,” then yes, of course.
But if you mean “all apostolic teaching that survived was preserved in written Scripture,” then no , that is a much stronger claim, and it is precisely what still needs to be demonstrated.
The thing is that your response still leaves the central historical problem untouched.
You first conceded that living apostolic teaching could still be available in the second century through Irenaeus and you now concede that Origen, writing in the third century, is a legitimate example of a Christian claiming that the Church had received a practice from the apostles.
So the question becomes increasingly unavoidable: WHEN exactly did this living ecclesial transmission cease to function, and where is the evidence for that transition?
Because when we move beyond Origen into the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, the historical evidence does not show Christians saying that unwritten apostolic transmission had now expired and that Scripture alone remained.
J. N. D. Kelly, in Early Christian Doctrines, p. 42, describes the third- and fourth-century understanding of apostolic tradition in these words: “That this was embodied, however, in Holy Scripture, and found a parallel outlet in the Church’s general unwritten teaching and liturgical life, was taken for granted.”
Notice the wording: “found a parallel outlet” in the Church’s “general unwritten teaching and liturgical life.” Kelly is not describing a residual oral memory that was disappearing; he is describing an established ecclesial understanding of how apostolic tradition continued to be transmitted.
And after surveying the Fathers, Kelly concludes on pp. 47–48: “Throughout the whole period Scripture and tradition ranked as complementary authorities, media different in form but coincident in content.”
He continues: “If Scripture was abundantly sufficient in principle, tradition was recognized as the surest clue to its interpretation.”
The surest clue (!), and he explains why: the Church retained this as: “a legacy from the apostles which was embedded in all the organs of her institutional life.”
That is J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 47–48.
Adolf von Harnack is even more useful here because he was certainly not defending Roman Catholic dogma, being himself a Protestant.
As already documented, In History of Dogma, vol. III, p. 207, Harnack writes: “In ecclesiastical antiquity, on the contrary, the bond was by no means severed which connected Scripture with the maternal organism of the Church.”
He then says that the Church, its doctrine, institutions, and constitution were regarded as: “the source of knowledge and the authoritative guarantee of truth.”
And, describing the ancient conviction concerning continuity with the apostles “Everything in it, rather, was apostolic, and the guidance of the Church by the Holy Ghost had preserved this apostolic fabric from any change.”
Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. III, p. 207.
So again, by the fourth century we do not find the historical model you are proposing, namely, that oral apostolic transmission had become unreliable and Scripture was now the only dependable authority.
Harnack describes precisely the opposite historical consciousness: the Church continued to understand herself as organically connected with apostolic tradition.
Philip Schaff, a Reformed/Presbyterian historian and certainly no defender of later Roman Catholic dogmas, is even more explicit. In History of the Christian Church, vol. III, §118, pp. 606–608, describing the Nicene and post-Nicene Church, he writes: “The divine Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and the oral tradition or living faith of the catholic church from the apostles down, together form the one infallible source and rule of faith.”
He continues: “Both are vehicles of the same substance: the saving revelation of God in Christ.”
And regarding the function of ecclesiastical tradition: “the church tradition determines the canon, furnishes the key to the true interpretation of the Scriptures, and guards them against heretical abuse.”
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. III, §118, pp. 606–608.
That is especially significant because Schaff later criticizes distinctively Roman Catholic doctrines , he is therefore not saying this because he wants to defend Catholicism; he is describing what he believes the ancient Church actually thought.
So let us put the chronology together.
Second century: you concede Irenaeus and living apostolic tradition.
Third century: you concede Origen as a genuine example of a tradition claimed to have been received by the Church from the apostles.
Third and fourth centuries: Kelly says apostolic tradition was understood as having a “parallel outlet” in Scripture and the Church’s “general unwritten teaching and liturgical life.”
Fourth century and after: Harnack says the bond between Scripture and the Church “was by no means severed,” and that the Church regarded herself as preserving an apostolic fabric under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Nicene and post-Nicene period: Schaff explicitly describes “the oral tradition or living faith of the catholic church from the apostles down” alongside Scripture.
All of this does directly undermine the historical proposition that unwritten apostolic transmission simply survived for a few generations, gradually disappeared, and left Scripture as the sole reliable authority.
At this point, saying that Origen “does not negate my proposition” is not enough.
What historical evidence establishes your proposition?
At what date did this transition occur?
Which Christians announced it?
Where do we find the Church saying that the apostolic tradition which Irenaeus and Origen regarded as living and reliable had ceased to be so, and that henceforth only the written Scriptures remained as the authoritative rule?
Because the evidence from the centuries immediately following Origen does not show that transition. It shows the opposite: the continued conviction that the apostolic faith remained present in Scripture and in the living faith, teaching, worship, and succession of the Church.
I understand why you read it that way. My phrase “through a never-ending chain of successors” was too compressed and could easily give that impression, I could definitely have phrased it better.
What I meant was that the apostolic deposit continues to be transmitted through successive generations of the Church, not that every individual sentence ever spoken orally by Paul must remain permanently unwritten and be repeated verbatim by a traceable list of named successors all the way to the present day.
Those are two very different claims.
2 Timothy 2:2 itself gives us the basic structure: Paul → Timothy → faithful men → others.
What is continuous there is the ecclesial transmission of apostolic teaching through successive teachers. The text does not say that every oral statement must remain oral forever, nor that every individual proposition must be recoverable today together with the name of every person who transmitted it.
Indeed, something may begin as oral apostolic teaching, be transmitted orally for generations, and later be recorded in writing. Its later written attestation does not somehow erase the fact that its earlier mode of transmission was oral.
So yes, I can see why my wording caused the misunderstanding, and I would phrase it more carefully now.
But my actual claim remains the same: Paul envisages his teaching being entrusted to successive generations of teachers rather than telling Timothy that, once the apostles die, reliable transmission will henceforth be restricted to written apostolic documents.
Whether a particular later Catholic doctrine can legitimately be traced to and developed from that apostolic deposit is a separate question, and it has to be examined on its own historical and theological evidence.
No, I don’t think we can simply agree to that, because that is precisely the point that still needs to be demonstrated.
It is certainly true that, on a purely human level (which means pretending that the Holy Spirit doesn’t assist the Church as explicitly promised by Christ Himself) , an uncontrolled oral report can become less reliable as time passes.
But apostolic Tradition, as understood by the early Church, was not conceived as a centuries-long game of telephone in which isolated individuals privately repeated sentences from memory. It was transmitted publicly within the churches, through their teaching, worship, succession, and received faith.
Irenaeus says explicitly: “when we refer them to that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.2.2.)
And in the very next chapter, after actually listing the succession of bishops of Rome, he writes “In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us.”
He immediately adds: “the faith … has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.” ( Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3.3.)
Notice what Irenaeus is claiming. He is not treating apostolic tradition as an increasingly suspicious memory whose reliability automatically diminishes with every generation. He explicitly connects its preservation with the public succession of ministers in the churches.
And this understanding certainly does not disappear by the fourth century.
Basil of Caesarea writes: “Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us ‘in a mystery’ by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force.” ( Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 27.66.)
Basil then gives concrete examples of things he says were not received from an explicit written prescription, including the sign of the cross, turning East in prayer, parts of the Eucharistic invocation, and certain baptismal practices.
And in On the Holy Spirit 29.71 he says even more explicitly: “For I hold it apostolic to abide also by the unwritten traditions.” ( Basil, On the Holy Spirit 29.71.)
In the very next sentence he appeals to 1 Corinthians 11:2 and 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and describes the tradition under discussion as one which those who established it from the beginning: “rooted firmly in the churches, delivering it to their successors” and whose use: “through long custom advances pace by pace with time.” (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 29.71.)
That is particularly difficult (to put it mildly) to reconcile with your proposed rule that after “a generation or two” an unwritten apostolic tradition necessarily became suspect simply because time had passed.
By the late fourth century, Basil is still explicitly speaking of “unwritten traditions,” calling adherence to them “apostolic,” and describing their transmission “to their successors.”
And this is not merely a Catholic retrospective interpretation of the evidence.
Adolf von Harnack, in History of Dogma, vol. III, p. 207 says the same thing: “In ecclesiastical antiquity, on the contrary, the bond was by no means severed which connected Scripture with the maternal organism of the Church.”
He continues: “The Church, its doctrine, institutions, and constitution, were held, in and by themselves, to constitute the source of knowledge and the authoritative guarantee of truth.” ( Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. III, “Tradition,” p. 207.)
And immediately afterward: “Everything in it, rather, was apostolic, and the guidance of the Church by the Holy Ghost had preserved this apostolic fabric from any change.”
Harnack then says: “This thought was necessarily emphasised more and more strongly … in the fourth and following centuries.” ( Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. III, p. 207.)
So I can certainly agree with the limited proposition that an uncontrolled human oral report may become less reliable as time passes.
What I cannot simply concede is the much stronger proposition according to which: “Therefore an unwritten apostolic tradition could only remain reliable for one or two generations, after which it necessarily became suspect.”
That is not a rule Irenaeus states.
It is not a rule Basil states.
And it is not how Harnack describes the self-understanding of the ancient Church.
In fact, the surviving evidence points in the opposite direction: the Church understood apostolic tradition as something preserved publicly and ecclesially through succession, worship, teaching, and received practice, not merely through the unaided memory of isolated individuals.
So if you want to argue that this mechanism necessarily became unreliable after one or two generations or five or ten or twenty generations, that transition still needs to be demonstrated historically rather than assumed.
I think you are drawing a distinction here that is real, of course general Church history and the history of doctrine are different fields. But when the question is what the Church at Nicaea understood itself to be, how local churches related to the universal Church, and what kind of authority bishops believed an ecumenical council possessed, those fields necessarily overlap. These are simultaneously institutional, ecclesiological, and doctrinal questions, so simply classifying Kelly as a historian of doctrine does not make his evidence any less historical.
There is also an important asymmetry here, as I have cited Kelly by name, work, page, and exact wording, while you are appealing to books and historians you have read, and to what “most historians may agree,” but so far without identifying the historians, the books, or the passages supporting the specific reconstruction you are proposing ( namely -if I correctly understood, correct me if I’m wrong- that the early Church was essentially a network of autonomous local churches which only gradually coalesced into something resembling a universal Church).
I am perfectly willing to examine those historians, but an unspecified scholarly consensus cannot simply be placed above named and checkable evidence.
There is also a methodological problem with suggesting that historians of doctrine merely begin with modern Catholic or Orthodox doctrine and then project it backwards.
A historian can begin with a later doctrinal formulation and ask how it developed without assuming that the final formulation already existed unchanged in the first century. In fact, tracing precisely what changed, what remained continuous, and when particular formulations emerged is the whole purpose of doing history of doctrine.
And my argument about Nicaea does not require me to claim that the Church of A.D. 325 was institutionally identical in every detail to the modern Roman Catholic Church. I have never argued that.
My actual historical claim is the following: the local churches did not understand themselves merely as independent sovereign units entering into a voluntary federation. They understood themselves as parts of one catholic Church, and supra-local episcopal and conciliar structures already existed before and at Nicaea.
That proposition can be tested historically, so if the historians you have read actually dispute that proposition, then the useful next step is not simply to classify Kelly as “doctrinal history.” It is to compare the evidence directly:
Which historians? Which books? Which pages? And, above all, which primary sources support the reconstruction of the early Church as essentially a federation of autonomous local churches?
Also let me nitpick a little bit.
Actually, Protestants collectively are far more numerous than the Orthodox Church. The Catholic Church is the largest one, yes, while the Orthodox Church is much smaller than Protestantism as a whole, even though it is by far the closest major Christian communion to the Catholic Church and the only other one to have retained apostolic succession.
The observing crowd was huge, so apparently there happened something. What the crowd saw was the ‘light show’ and the behaviour of the children. Nothing more.
I did not claim to know what caused the ‘light show’ - I told it was interesting. As I do not have better explanations, I lean towards associating the ‘light show’ with the claimed (subjective) visions. Nothing ‘anti-catholic’ here, just an attempt to analyse what was actually observed.
A neutral analysis of the case needs to consider all possible explanations. The possibility that the claimed ‘visions’ were just creations of human (child) brains is a real option. What is the likelihood of that explanation is another matter. Especially the predictions of something happening during a given time give some credibility to the stories.
Assuming that the ‘light show’ was connected to the claimed visions and the subjective visions were something real, we end up speculating who or what the claimed ‘Lady of Rosario’ was?
I understand that the Catholics want to interpret the ‘Lady of Rosario’ as the mother of Jesus. I do not see any strong support to that claim. There are other possibilities, like misleading spiritual creatures.
2 Corinthians 11:14 tells:
“And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (NIV)
That suggest that misleading spiritual creatures can and sometimes do masquerade as servants of light. That is such a possibility that we need to evaluate all visions carefully to exclude such betrayals. I have not read all the claimed messages of the ‘Lady of Rosario’, so I cannot make a full judgement of what was told. What was told in the summary did not include such messages that I would hear as the voice of our Lord.
That is not an ‘anti-catholic’ conclusion as I do believe that the Holy Spirit speaks also to Catholic believers. This is just my preliminary conclusion based on what is told.
I agree that 2 Corinthians 11:14 means alleged supernatural manifestations must be tested carefully, but if we are going to test Fatima, then we should test the actual message itself (on top of the spiritual fruits it has produced).
And when you go to the Fatima material, the message is repeatedly centred on God, Christ, repentance, adoration, and the salvation of sinners.
The children reported that the Angel taught them to pray: “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You! I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You!”
They were also taught: “Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world…”
Another Fatima prayer says: “O most Holy Trinity, I adore You. My God, my God, I love You in the most Blessed Sacrament.”
And the prayers attributed to Our Lady herself include: “O Jesus, it is for love of You, and for the conversion of sinners…” and: “O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of hell; lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need.”
So the actual spiritual direction of the message is very clear: believe in God, adore God, love God, adore the Trinity, love Jesus Christ, repent, pray for sinners, seek forgiveness, and desire their salvation.
If someone wants to argue that the Fatima message is contrary to Christ, then the relevant question is very simple: which specific teaching in the actual message contradicts Christ or the Gospel?
Because the message itself repeatedly directs faith, adoration, love, repentance, and prayer toward God and Jesus Christ. I hope the problem is not that Mary doesn’t speak of the Blessed Sacrament in Zwinglian terms (because his was indeed a novelty introduced 500 years ago).
And Marian apparitions are not merely a late medieval or modern Catholic phenomenon either.
One of the earliest historically attested accounts occurs in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, written in the fourth century about Gregory Thaumaturgus, a third-century bishop. Gregory of Nyssa relates that, while Gregory Thaumaturgus was struggling with a doctrinal question, he saw a woman whom the narrative identifies as “the mother of the Lord” together with John the Evangelist. She asks John to explain “the mystery of piety” to Gregory, and the result is instruction in the Christian faith, especially the doctrine of God and Christ.
So already in a patristic source, the earliest well-attested Marian apparition tradition is not about Mary replacing Christ or drawing worship to herself. It is presented as directing a Christian bishop toward orthodox Christian doctrine.
A bit later we have Gregory of Tours, who died in A.D. 594, and he records a number of stories involving the Virgin Mary in his collections of miracles.
In one account, workers building a church dedicated to Mary were unable to move heavy columns, Mary appeared and showed them what to do, after which the columns could be moved.
In another famous story, a Jewish boy who had received the Eucharist was thrown into a furnace by his father, but survived unharmed. The boy later said that the woman he had seen represented in the church (namely the Virgin Mary) had protected him from the flames.
Whatever judgment one makes about the supernatural character of these stories (which are definitely less documented than Fatima, especially because Fatima is much closer in time as an actual event and in happened in modern times with -mostly- modern media), the historical point is important: in the early centuries Christians were already recording Marian apparitions and miraculous interventions as part of the religious life of the Church.
EDIT: on the subject I found Stephen J. Shoemaker particularly interesting. Shoemaker is Professor and Head of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon, and he specializes in the history of Christianity, particularly ancient and early medieval Christianity, early Byzantine and Near Eastern Christianity, Christian apocrypha, and the early devotion to the Virgin Mary.
He received his Ph.D. from Duke University and has published extensively on the earliest Marian traditions.
In his book Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (Yale University Press, 2016), Shoemaker argues that evidence for Marian devotion reaches substantially further back than is sometimes assumed.
In chapter 1, “A Virgin Unspotted: Devotion to Mary in the First Two Centuries,” pp. 30–63, he examines Marian piety in the first two Christian centuries. In particular, the Protevangelium of James is described as attesting: “to a surprisingly advanced piety centered on Mary’s ‘sacred purity’ and exceptional holiness already by the later second century.” ( Stephen J. Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, ch. 1, pp. 30–63.)
The book then devotes chapter 2, “Mother of God and Mother of Mysteries: The Third Century,” pp. 64–99, to third-century evidence. Among other things, Shoemaker discusses the Sub tuum praesidium, the ancient prayer asking for Mary’s intercession, as evidence that Marian cult was emerging by the later third century.
And in chapter 5, “The Memory of Mary: The Fourth and Early Fifth Centuries,” pp. 166–204, Shoemaker surveys patristic evidence for Marian intercession and apparitions, as well as Marian feast days, shrines, miracles, liturgical prayer, hymnography and material evidence.
The chapter concludes that: “the cult of the Virgin had already begun by the second half of the fourth century.” ( Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, ch. 5, pp. 166–204.)
So Shoemaker in his historical reconstruction finds significant evidence already in the later second century, further evidence of Marian cult and intercession in the third century, and an unmistakably developed public cult by the second half of the fourth century.
Your neutral requirement may border on ad hominem territory. That’s like saying we need non Christian sources for Jesus. I don’t accept this line of thinking which assumes Christians or Catholics cannot do quality research. The Catholic Church conducted a 13 year investigation into the matter. Far more research than you or I. A vast number of alleged apparitions are never confirmed by the Church. Only 16 are accepted by the Vatican I think out of over 1500 public cases (and tens of thousands of less prominent reports). History has shown the Church to be extremely cautious in these matters.
It also wasn’t a vague, futuristic prophecy. The timing was very precise, which grants high levels of credibility. Somebody says they are receiving messages from God or Mary and that on Sept 15, we should go to this field at noon for a special miracle so that we may see and believe. If we do so and see a miracle along with tens of thousands of people (diverse heterogeneous crowd) who also witness the sun dancing in the sky and doing things it shouldn’t be, that is going to be some very strong evidence. The visions and messages the children received were thoroughly Christian. If someone suggests they may be of the devil, I would quote Jesus and say a house divided against itself cannot stand .
And technically, you do not necessarily have to be Roman Catholic to experience an apparition of the Mother of God.
Vinnie
All the Christian groups should share the claim of being part of the universal body of Christ.
If we use the words ‘catholic’ and ‘Apostolic’ from the groups that belong to the universal body, we could say that all the Christian groups, ‘homechurches’ and local congregations have been Apostolic and catholic since the first century.
The earliest situation that we see in the NT scriptures and at least some other early sources describe a context of local churches that were connected but were not subject to a common central authority. It seems that the first church, that in Jerusalem, had a wide respect because that was the place with the original Apostles (Acts 15). Anyhow, Jerusalem was not the head of a unified organization.
The earliest descriptions describe a leadership system where the local church was lead by a group of elders that could be called ‘episcopos’ or ‘presbyteros’ - apparently both titles could be used from the same persons. It seems that this phase was relatively short but it can be classified as ‘congregational’.
Relatively soon after this phase, the leadership of the local churches with pagan Christians turned to a leadership system of one (local) leader that was called ‘episcopos’. That was starting the phase that we could classify as ‘episcopal’.
A centralized system where local churches operated as parts of a unified Church developed later. That development had started but did not yet exist during the council of Nicaea.
Who was the bishop that had leadership over the participants of the ecumenical council, the ‘primus inter pares’?
I do not now remember all the sources we read during a class on ‘Church history’. One book I remember was ‘The story of Christianity’ (Volumes 1 and 2) by Justo Gonzales. Volume 1 deals with the first centuries. That was just one of several sources.
As I wrote, I have not read all the messages, so I cannot make any kind of ‘final opinion’.
It is very much possible that Ethan Muse et al. did a poor selection of the messages that were lifted up.
Edit:
I am a bit worried and cautious about any structures or doctrines that build fences between a believer and our Lord. The purpose behind targeting our attention to Mary or the other dead Saints may be well-meaning but knowing the nature of the human mind, that may build such a fence. The hope and focus becomes targeted to the additional mediator, instead to the Lord.
There is such a risk also in strongly hierarchical leadership systems. There is a practical need for leadership in the churches. There is also a practical need to have experienced and well-educated teachers and other persons that can guide the less experienced away from such teachings that lead astray. It is also beneficial that some persons can work full-time in arranging the activities of the churches.
These viewpoints can be seen as supporting a system where the leadership is clear and some persons work as ‘clergy’, persons who are separated to full-time serving within the churches.
However, if this creates a mental image that there are persons or layers between an ordinary believer and our Lord, what is basically ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ can turn into something that is harmful for the faith. Something that separates an ordinary believer from the Lord, instead of helping and supporting a direct contact to our Lord.
The early Church was not administratively centralized in the later Roman sense, and its local ministry developed over time, but that does not mean the local churches understood themselves as independent sovereign congregations that only later combined into a universal Church.
The evidence points instead to an already existing consciousness of one universal Church, expressed through increasingly developed supra-local structures.
Even Justo González, the historian YOU cited, says that the second-century churches: “all agreed on the one faith, and could jointly prove that this faith was indeed apostolic.”
He describes apostolic tradition as “an open and shared tradition” and then adds “This common witness was further strengthened by the network connecting bishops and resulting in a high degree of collegiality. (Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity, vol. 1, rev. ed. (HarperOne, 2010), pp. 80–81.)
That certainly allows for administrative decentralization ( It does not imply doctrinal autonomy, since González says in the same context that the churches “all agreed on the one faith” and could “jointly prove that this faith was indeed apostolic” as I have quoted above) and development, but it is not a picture of isolated congregations gradually inventing a universal Church: González is describing churches already sharing one apostolic faith, connected through a trans-local episcopal network.
The primary sources are even clearer. Around A.D. 180, Irenaeus writes that: “The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world” has received one faith from the apostles, and that although scattered throughout the world she preserves it “as if occupying but one house” and proclaims and hands it down: “as if she possessed only one mouth.”
This is the crucial point: the Church could hardly proclaim and hand down the apostolic faith “as if she possessed only one mouth” unless there already existed a real consciousness of belonging to one universal Church, together with a common rule of faith and ecclesial authority capable of preserving and regulating the Church’s understanding of that faith.
Only ad individual possessed by Choronzon could hand out multiple mutually contradictory statements on fundamental matters of faith and at the same time claiming that the Church was speaking “as if she possessed only one mouth”
That does not mean the administrative structures of the later Catholic Church already existed in fully developed form, but it does mean that doctrinal interpretation was not treated as the autonomous prerogative of each local congregation or individual believer. He then explicitly says that the churches in Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt and Libya do not believe or hand down a different faith. ( Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.10.1–2.)
By the middle of the third century, Cyprian is even more explicit: “The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole.” And: “The Church also is one, which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude.” (Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 5.)
Cyprian is extremely important because he is not describing a highly centralized ecclesiastical monarchy: Individual bishops possess real local authority, yet he still insists that “the episcopate is one” and “the Church also is one.”
So the equation: no centralized universal bishop = no unified universal Church simply does not follow.
And by Nicaea in 325, supra-local structures are not merely emerging; the council already presupposes them: Canon 4 requires the bishops of a province to participate in episcopal appointments and says that ratification belongs to the metropolitan; Canon 5 orders provincial synods twice a year to review ecclesiastical judgments; Canon 6 explicitly says: “Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail” and recognizes the wider jurisdiction of Alexandria, comparing it with established customs in Rome and Antioch. (Council of Nicaea, Canons 4–6.)
The phrase “ancient customs” is of essential importance because Nicaea is not creating supra-local ecclesiastical structures from nothing; it is regulating structures it already regards as established. While at the same time establishing doctrines that are binding for literally every christian in the world.
So I agree that the Church’s administrative organization developed. I agree that presbyteros and episkopos were not everywhere sharply differentiated from the beginning, and I agree that the later degree of Roman centralization did not already exist in the first or second century.
But none of that proves that the universal Church itself was a later creation or that major doctrinal disagreements (with different congregations teaching mutually incompatible doctrines) were allowed.
What the evidence shows much more naturally is development of structure within an already existing consciousness of one universal Church.
Most perfectly said. And one of the strongest documented examples is Zeitoun, Egypt.
The importance of Zeitoun is that this was not a Roman Catholic apparition occurring within a Roman Catholic devotional environment. The reported apparitions took place from 1968 to 1971 above St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church in Zeitoun, Cairo.
Donald A. Westbrook, in a scholarly article published in Nova Religio by the University of California Press, states that the apparitions “were first observed by nearby Muslim public transit workers.”
He further reports that the site attracted: “tens of thousands of Christian and Muslim pilgrims”and explicitly describes Zeitoun as “a non-Catholic example” within the broader study of Marian apparitions.
Westbrook’s exact bibliographical reference is:
Donald A. Westbrook, “Our Lady of Zeitoun (1968–1971): Egyptian Mariophanies in Historical, Interfaith, and Ecumenical Context,” Nova Religio 21, no. 2 (November 2017), pp. 85–99, DOI 10.1525/nr.2017.21.2.85. https://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-abstract/21/2/85/71130/Our-Lady-of-Zeitoun-1968-1971-Egyptian
There is also direct evidence from the official website of St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church at Zeitoun, which reproduces the Coptic Patriarchate’s statement concerning the events.
According to that official statement, the appearances were witnessed by “many thousands of citizens and foreigners belonging to different religions and sects”.
The same statement describes the figure as appearing in different forms above and between the church domes. It says that she would “move and march and bow before the Cross on the church roof”, and it further describes her facing the crowds and blessing them with her hands and movements of her head.
The official church website also preserves information about the beginning of the events and the early witnesses. Its Arabic account identifies Farouk Mohammed Atwa as a driver employed by the public transport authority and describes the earliest observers as including workers from the public-transport garage. Initially, the figure in white was interpreted simply as a woman standing on the church dome who might be attempting suicide.
This fits independently with Westbrook’s academic finding that the first observers were Muslim public-transit workers.
There is also a surviving English transcription of the report submitted by the ecclesiastical investigators appointed in connection with the events. After interviewing eyewitnesses, the investigators stated that they themselves spent several nights near the church attempting to observe the phenomenon. Their report describes seeing the figure in complete form, moving among the domes, bowing before the Cross, and blessing the crowds.
So even without deciding whether the phenomenon was genuinely supernatural, the historical point is very clear: Zeitoun was not a Roman Catholic visionary phenomenon.
It occurred at a Coptic Orthodox church; a peer-reviewed academic study states that the first observers were Muslim public-transit workers; the site subsequently attracted very large numbers of Christians and Muslims; and the official Coptic Orthodox statement itself reports witnesses belonging to different religions and sects.
Moreover, the official Coptic description portrays the figure as bowing before the Cross and blessing the assembled crowds, an especially interesting detail given that Muslims were the first observers.
This presents a basically insurmountable difficulty for the claim that reported Marian apparitions can be explained merely as Roman Catholics seeing what prior Catholic devotional expectations predisposed them to see.
AD JESUM PER MARIAM.
I wonder what you think that really means.
I have a feeling that is is derogatory to Protestants and pours doubt on their membership of Christianity.
Richard
Christians are people who accept Christ as God, Lord and Saviour. Not having apostolic succession doesn’t make them non Christians.
So your feeling was incorrect and I’m afraid I have to reiterate that you are indeed confused.
This was already established when you told me that I was quoting “ all manner of human authorities on an equal par with Scripture” Christology and Trinity - #308 by RichardG .
I will ask you not to repeat what I have refuted.
I am not the one confused. Perhaps you do not realise what your assertions mean to us on the other end of them. Your pride and clear superiority of this succession betray you.
And as for your ridiculous quote.
You claim Magisterium as holding supreme authority, so how is that not on an equal par with Scripture, and you quote Catholic theologians as if I must accept or agree with them.
Like I said, I am debating and discussing, you however appear to be defending Catholicism as if your (eternal) life and faith depended on it.
Richard
The Magisterium has never been conceived as merely human authority during the first millenium. It was part of the rule of faith just like tradition and scripture.
I‘ve mostly quoted historians. Which are a very different things from theologians.
It kind of does. One thing are people genuinely convinced that they are in the right and born in a schismatic Church, but a Catholic who willingly goes into schism is definitely not in a good position. And if I’m convinced (and I think I have good reasons to be convinced) that the fullness of the truth is in Catholicism (which doesn’t mean that other denominations are devoid of truth) the least I can do is defend it.
This is the view of Catholics as outlined in Dei Verbum:
God is the author of Scripture.
For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.
Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation.
The Magisterium is a servant not an author.
But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, (8) has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, (9) whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.
Scripture is the life force of the Church or rule of faith
The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body. She has always maintained them, and continues to do so, together with sacred tradition, as the supreme rule of faith, since, as inspired by God and committed once and for all to writing, they impart the word of God Himself without change, and make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound in the words of the prophets and Apostles. Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture. For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life. Consequently these words are perfectly applicable to Sacred Scripture: “For the word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12) and “it has power to build you up and give you your heritage among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32; see 1 Thess. 2:13).
The Church is a servant of Jesus and it serves as the safeguard and arbiter of scripture which it deems God’s inspired word. The Church can never disagree with scripture and we cannot separate Scripture from tradition and the Church that canonized it. As Dei Verbum also writes:
It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls."*
The Church also cannot create wholly new doctrines. Even the Immaculate Conception must be a product of organic development as opposed to a substantial change or something substantially new. Dei Verbum says:
The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Tim. 6:14 and Tit. 2:13).
You are correct that the dogmatic pronouncements of the magisterium are seen as authoritative. Like the Supreme Court or an umpire, the Church holds supreme interpretive authority, but not constitutive authority. They did not write the rules of the game (baseball) or the laws of the land (constitution). They are authorized interpreters. Individual apologists and private interpretation of scripture are like a person sitting on their porch critiquing the Supreme Court’s binding decision on some issue. We may be well read, disagree with them and so on, but our personal reading has zero power to bind anyone else or establish constitutional law. The Church was established by Jesus so we will not be overturning its dogmatic decisions.
Vinnie
You should know he is just going to say he doesn’t have to agree with them either.
Oh I know that pretty well.
Oh dear.
Like I said, you have no idea what your words mean to those who are neither Catholic or share your viewpoint.
I think we have reached the end of our discussions.
Richard
I think we did quite a while ago. And this reply of yours shows that you didn’t read what I wrote after the part you’ve quoted, so you mix confusion (just like when you think I’m quoting theologians, when as a matter of fact i was quoting historians) with superficial reading.
That’s…quite the mix.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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