And?
i am not a Catholic.
Oh dear.
(see my previous posts)
Richard
I was offering proper nuance to your your claim about the magisterium. Maybe you are not here to discuss things in good faith.
Vinnie
3 Likes
I still think (or maybe I want to think
) he is genuinely confused.
I think a lot of people today have authority issues that partly stem from modernity where all views are allegedly equal and we are our own individual benchmarks for ethics, ultimate meaning, etc. I can see how surrendering control can be difficult and fearful for many. I know it is for me. Some people need to be their own magisterium and I battle this frequently. Deferring to the Church is easy for some but for others is a profound act of epistemic and psychological humility and it is very difficult on some issues. We would rather preserve the illusion of our own control. When we try hard to not be ruled by external dogmas, we often become trapped in a mental prison of our own making which is to be ruled by an internal dogma. If truth, meaning and morality is objective and external to us, we can’t control it and there is a natural fear of what it might say to us or ask of us. When there is an actual correct answer, our views may very well be objectively wrong.
Vinnie
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Totally spot on. Which is also why I think that mandatory military service should be restored. It helps a lot.
That’s nothing more than the old temptation of the serpent.
Perfect.
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Shouldn’ the proofing done by you instead? How do I prove that something do not exist? My proposition will fail if only you can provide one example of oral teaching that survived intact thru us without the benefit of being put in writing.
that is why even Nicene creed need to be examined thru the written scripture. When WLCraig (the one you loathed) said that there is a concencuss among NT scholars that a statement from Nicene creed was not supported by NT, he was not alone though he is the known one thru his podcast and teaching.
exactly, that is why we need the written scripture that is unchanging. A changed sentence create a changed meaning. That is exactly why Jesus was teaching that not even “one dot or one iota” will pass from the Law in Mt 5:18.
Then how do you recognised today which one is more trustworthy? Thru the written biblical support. Because Arianism led to the destruction of the deity of christ and made His sacrifice void.
as a scientist yourself, you do know that this kind of thing is not exact science. We can’t say exactly when, but we have a common experience that the oral teaching without being written can’t last many generations. Do I need to prove this to you?
I am sorry if I do not respond of your abundant research from Kelly, Harnack Schaff etc, because they each have their own interpretations.
how do you propose to exactly proof that something no longer exists? I do not need to prove anything because it is not there anymore. I think you are the one who should prove that the oral transmission continue.
I thought this is self evident from my point of view, but apparently not from your point of view. Of course I never ignored the role of the Holy Spirit concerning all these. The Holy Spirit could and can do all things. He is God after all. What He can do is different whether He did it or not. I love to have the original written Scripture being preserved to the present time. That is not the case and we just have to accept that fact. We just have to accept that is how the Holy Spirit worked.
I could however bring you to see a passage in the Bible to see how the oral transmission might cease to exist.
Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:25)
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)*
What did these passages imply? Jesus did many other things that was not recorded by the book of John. John only wrote what was necessary for belief.
Question? Should there be many oral teaching about Jesus teaching or His acts around that time that was not part of the written scripture? Should be as apostle John said so himself. Perhaps if there were 37 approximate number of Jesus individual miracles, there were miracles #38 to #10,000 that was not recorded. If we take it at face value, the number of miracles that Jesus did in that 3 years ministry was quite high. The written scripture only recorded about 37 of them. Where was the rest? they were perhaps circulated among the apostles, the believers who were the witness of those miracles and the believers who experienced the miracles themselves. Where are they now? Lost. Can the Holy Spirit keep them orally circulated among believers till the present time? Of course He can, but He didn’t. Do we have any other records of Jesus’ miraculous acts beside the written scripture? Nope.
I respect that view. However are you open to the idea that Catholicism might be wrong if there is a sufficient proof for that? Because my other brother @1Cor15.54 has the conviction that even if the Catholicism was wrong as long as it is not foundational truth or the core doctrine, he would not hesitate to embrace that belief because the RCC said so.
You have never discussed with me. And I do not appreciate being talked about in public with a negative emphasis
You have made your position very clear. Calling ime confused is just an excuse for not taking responsibility for your words and how they come across.
Richard
That is what fundamentalists hold in a very direct sense.
So if it creeps in slowly it doesn’t count as “new”?
He may not be alone but he is incorrect.
Perhaps. However he based his statement on sola scriptura. Saying that he was incorrect meaning that you have to show that the Bible supported the proposition of “eternally begotten Son”.
Then he hasn’t considered John 1, where the Word is already there and is God right from before the beginning.
Given that he has to be denying that the Son is begotten of the Father at all.
Organic development out of clear belief in the early Church tradition. .
It’s sad I have to qualify this. There is only one person in this thread with a fundamentalist like view of sola scripture as far as I can see. Dei Verbum:
(1) In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him (2) they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, (3) they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. (4)
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. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).
12. However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, (6) the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.
Vinnie
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I am not defending Craig here. You should level your argument to him, not me. However, from the short video that I saw in his podcast, He did not deny it but he did not confess it either. For him, that made Jesus less of God than then Father. That is unacceptable to Craig since he firmly believe that they are coequal.
You wrote that your proposition would fail if I could provide one example of an oral apostolic teaching that survived but was later rejected by Protestants.
Consider prayer and Eucharistic commemoration for the dead.
John Chrysostom, in the fourth century, says explicitly: “Not in vain did the Apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful Mysteries.” (Homily 3 on Philippians
That is not merely Chrysostom saying, “this is an old custom.” He explicitly attributes the practice to the Apostles.
And the practice did survive. The Catholic Church still offers the Eucharistic sacrifice for the faithful departed today; see Catechism of the Catholic Church §1371:
Now compare that with the major Protestant traditions.
Luther, in the Smalcald Articles, rejects the rites and Masses associated with the dead and writes:
“God has commanded or assigned us nothing about the dead.”
And the Westminster Confession, one of the foundational confessions of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, states explicitly that prayer is to be made for the living:“but not for the dead.”
Westminster Confession of Faith 21.4:
So here is the historical sequence:
A fourth-century bishop explicitly says that the Apostles ordered the liturgical commemoration of the dead; that practice continued in the historic Church and continues in Catholicism today; and major branches of the Reformation later explicitly rejected prayer and liturgical rites for the dead.
That seems to satisfy your own criterion rather directly.
And there is also a methodological problem with the phrase “without the benefit of being put in writing.”
If you mean that the tradition must have remained oral forever and must never have been written down by anyone, then your test is impossible in principle and it’s bad faith to argue otherwise: how the hell could I historically demonstrate the existence of an ancient oral tradition today unless somebody eventually recorded that tradition in writing?
The relevant distinction is not: oral tradition vs. anything that was ever written down.
It is: apostolic tradition transmitted in the Church vs. teaching derived solely from the canonical Scriptures.
Chrysostom’s written testimony is evidence that he believed the Church possessed a practice transmitted from the Apostles. The fact that Chrysostom eventually wrote about that oral/liturgical tradition does not magically make the tradition originate in Scripture.
And it shows directly that the Church retained practices inherited by the apostles while the reformers, in their novelty (which is recognized as such even by Protestant historians like Von Harnack), which consisted in divorcing the Scripture from Tradition and Magisterium (Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium were all parts of the same rule of faith for the Church of the first 1500+ years), refused that.
You wanted a proof, I provided it.
This is rich. Actual historians have “their own intepretation” and so you can simple discard and ignore the evidence they have produced (downgrading it to simple personal intepretation that can be dismissed) instead of trying to refute it. Wow. Just…wow.
I’m certainly not going to accept that the Holy Spirit produces thousands of different churches with mutually incompatible belief. The Holy Spirit is God and God is not the author of confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33)
Why did you say that I “loathe” Craig? I’ve simply shown that his own intepretation destroys (inadvertently, I’ve never doubted his faith) the Christian monotheism William Lane Craig and the Nicene Creed - #6 by 1Cor15.54
That’s not “loathing” him at all, just showing what happens when someone think that they can judge the decrees of an ecumenical council and that modern people somehow are in position of knowing better and that the Holy Spirit wasn’t inspiring the Fathers at the council (which would lead us to believe that their decrees were manmade decrees and, as such, disputable).
But I certainly don’t loathe him. He is a sincere Christian who has done a lot to promote the love and faith for and in Christ.
Which shows once again how fallacious is that concept.
I’d love for you to show me where I ever stated or even implied anything like that. But then again, you also told me that I “loathe” Craig, so I’m not sure where some of these characterizations are coming from.
What I have actually said is that Catholicism does not claim that every judgment, opinion, or action of the Church or her members is protected from error.
The claim of protection from error is much narrower: it concerns the Church’s definitive teaching on matters of faith and morals under the conditions in which the Magisterium teaches infallibly (Nicaea is one such examples amongst many).
And the Church has certainly never claimed the impeccability of her members or leaders.
Of course. I am not arguing against those historian that you mentioned. If you want, perhaps I could also provide some historians that counter that views. That of course is useless argument back and forth. No point of arguing back and forth endlessly. we should be capable today of formulating our own argument. We have access to those information anyway, much much more than them.
Why not? How about if the Holy Spirit produces two different churches with mutually incompatible belief. RCC vs Orthodox. Is it acceptable?
Not sure why you keep changing my argument. I never said that one example of an oral apostolic teaching that survived but was later rejected by Protestants.
this is what I wrote.
Anyway, concerning the prayer or commemoration for the dead, It was rejected by the reformation faith because
- It was not in the canonical scripture.
- It was against the Bible’s teaching that praying for the dead can affect one’s salvation. there are some biblical verse that state explicitly the finality of that judgement.
Isn’t this just proving my point that whatever the scripture did not mention should be rejected. Why?
We have agreed that the oral teaching of the apostles and the written Scripture should teach the same truth (admittedly with oral teaching contained much more examples and acts of Jesus). Therefore if a teaching came to us from 4th century claiming to have originated from the apostles and yet did not conform to the truth of the written scriptures should be rejected as suspect. This case actually should be a clear case even for you if you have agreed that both oral and written teaching should contain the same truth and not against one another.
Because Christianity was not composed of idiots for 1500 years. The concept that “ whatever the scripture did not mention should be rejected” is a later invention , which was completely alien to the early Christians.
You come up with a XVI century novelty and claim that this how it should be done and the whole of Christianity has erred for 1500 + years.
By all means, go ahead. Let’s do this.
Show me some historians who argue that the rule of faith in the Church of the first millennium was not constituted by Scripture, Tradition, and the authoritative interpretation of the Church.
Show me historians who claim that the early Church operated according to sola Scriptura, and that the decrees of ecumenical councils could simply be disputed or openly rejected while remaining within the bounds of orthodox Christianity.
I genuinely can’t wait to see the evidence. Really.
what? Isn’t that your position al along?
No and if your reading comprehension is that subpar it’s useless that we continue arguing.