The decree on Banez I was imaging here would be a doctrinal decree, just like when the Church settled the matter on Nicaea and other doctrines. It has NOTHING to do with saying that I have “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.”
Settling the predestination matter would have definitely to do with “foundational truth”. Predestination is very much one of the core teachings, the Church simply hasn’t settled the matter yet and has left the door open to interpret the mistery in the way the Dominicans interpreted or in the way the molinists (but I find Fr Most’s interpretation much better) interpreted it.
But if the Church decrees that the Dominicans (which, again, is one tenable intepretation of the mistery, despite the fact that I loathe this intepretation) were right all along then yes, I would accept it, because I don’t think I have an higher authority than the Holy Spirit and yes, I do think, just like 1500 of Christians before the reformation, that the Church has the key to the correct interpretation of doctrine.
Again, reading comprehension is a must, otherwise we just go in circles.
Perhaps your writing is that superior that i can’t comprehend it. I include your own previous post that stated your position.. it does not mean that you can just call other’s comprehension as subpar. I found that insulting and feeling superiority. Amazing. That is not a good discussion brother. I can of course calling your character or your intelligence in question. I won’t do that and I am not going to go into your level.
I also find it insulting that you attribute to me things I have never said. Again; I’m responsabile for what I actually say, not for what you understand.
You objectively twisted what I said. When something like that happens (and it has happened repeatedly) there are two possibilities:
Lack of reading comprehension (and superficial reading).
Arguing in bad faith.
i think the first possibility is much less insulting than the second one.
Deliberately (if you don’t like your reading comprehension being called subpar the only other option is thinking that you did that on purpose, which I don’t think you did) twisting what I said, saying that I “loathe” Craig and talking about me as if I’m some unthinking moron who would accept that the moon is made of ladies’ tears if the Church said so is not a good discussion either, brother.
You either engage what I actually say and stop with the fallacies or we’d better call it a day. I’ve always engaged your points meticulously, you haven’t done the same.
And nothing else should you say, because if you really don’t understand the difference between accepting an eventual doctrinal decree from an Ecumical Council on a fundamental matter of faith like predestination with what you said I’d do, namely that i have “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” there is literally nothing I can do about it.
I killed the conversation? Seriously? Please reread what you just did and the way you argued. You say objectively incorrect things, things that don’t make sense, such as equating the acceptance of the fact that the Church could settle the matter on predestination and I would accept it (this is very much a doctrinal problem which the Church could, in principle, settle) with your idea that I have “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” and you said that I killed the discussion?
You claim that I loathe Craig (just for having refuted his theory, how dared I, how dared i) and you say that I am the one who killed the discussion?
You asked me for proofs of what I was saying and when I bring them you dismiss them saying that they don’t matter because the reformers in the XVI century said so (despite the fact that for the first 1500 years Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium have always been understood as part of the same rule of faith) and I am the one who killed the discussion?
I loathe BANEZ ‘ views (and yet if the Church in an ecumenical council decreed that Banez was right all along I would accept that because I don’t think I have an higher charism of intepretation than that of the Church, you can chalk it up to a lack of self-esteem if you like) , not Craig’s (And even then, loathing someone’s views doesn’t mean loathing him as a person! I also find the prosperity Gospel repulsing; it doesn’t mean that aren’t a lot of amazing persons and Christians subscribing to it)! Which is why I uncoincidentally said those words after mentioning him and then I went on describing what I would do if the Church actually decreed that he was right and I (and the molinists, and Fr Most, and many others) was wrong.
That was very clear from the message you quoted.
Do I think you are purposely making things up? Not really. But holy Molly you do have a problem of very (VERY) superficial reading.
Do you understand now that you were very much wrong when you claimed that I loathed Craig (which bytheway would have been wrong even if those words actually referred to him, because loathing someone’s doctrine doesn’t mean loathing him as a person)?
And there is one thing I could have phrased better, and I’m sorry for it, because I don’t think you have actual reading comprension problems, I think you just read very superficially which unavoidably leads to these errors (everyone would make those errors if they read superficially).
Hmm, I guess I read that wrong since you put those sentences next to each other. Sorry. However, I do lose any interest in continuing this conversation. Thank you for your meticulous answer. It did sharpen my view and and my understanding more concerning sola scriptura.
One suggestion I might add is not to look down at others when their view might be different from you. Other than that. Peace.
Peace unto you, brother. Just one thing, because I think it’s important.
I don’t look down on people. If I did, I wouldn’t read what they write as carefully and meticulously as I do, sometimes spending literal hours researching their arguments so I can address them properly.
If I looked down on people, I would do things like:
Not read what they write, or not read it in full.
Read it superficially and then draw conclusions that completely misrepresent what they actually said.
Or I would do something I consider even more poisonous to a serious discussion: use circular reasoning.
For example: “Show me an instance of the kind of thing you claim actually happening historically.”
Then, once the evidence is produced: “Well, that doesn’t count, because the Reformers rejected it 500 years ago.”
That also opens at least two very large Pandora’s boxes.
First, if we accept the idea that Christians were fundamentally mistaken for centuries about how doctrinal authority worked (namely that Scripture was to be received within apostolic Tradition and authoritatively interpreted within the Church ) then why on God’s green earth should we assume that the Reformers, appearing roughly 1,500 years after the apostles, finally got the structure of Christian authority right?
I can’t help but quoting the Protestant 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 same Von Harnack who immediately contrasts this with antiquity: “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 goes even further than merely saying that Scripture was not isolated from Tradition, because History of Dogma, vol. III, section “2. Tradition,” p. 210, he writes “You might not believe the contents of the Symbol unless you could convince yourself of their truth from Scripture; but on the other hand, your interpretation of Scripture had to be regulated by the creed laid down in the Symbol.”
He then states “The Church alone furnished the gubernaculum interpretationis.”
Gubernaculum interpretationis literally means “the helm of interpretation” that is, the guide by which interpretation is directed (and if the Protestant historian Von Harnack is wrong about this, it should be shown with actual evidence, especially because what he says fits with the writings of the fathers)
How does it make sense to argue that the Fathers closest to the apostolic age, and the Church for centuries afterward, misunderstood the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and ecclesial authority, while people living more than a millennium later recovered the correct model?
And if the Church could be wrong on something this fundamental for so many centuries, why should I have greater confidence in the Reformers’ judgment?
Second, why did this supposed recovery of the correct rule of faith produce such extraordinary doctrinal fragmentation (let alone actual wars)? If sola Scriptura was the corrective that Christianity had been missing, why did its adoption result in competing Protestant traditions disagreeing not merely on minor details, but on baptism, the Eucharist, predestination, perseverance, church government, ordination, the role of tradition, and even which doctrines should be considered essential? Christ explicitly prayed for the unity of His followers: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” ( John 17:21).
And Paul tells Christians: “that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” ( 1 Corinthians 1:10)
He then treats factionalism among Christians as evidence not of spiritual maturity, but of carnality: “For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” ( 1 Corinthians 3:3)
Galatians is even more explicit. Among the works of the flesh Paul lists stuff like variance, seditions and heresies (Galatians 5:20–23).
And Paul also commands Christians: “mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.” (Romans 16:17)
Jesus Himself in Matthew 12:25–26 says very clearly: “every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.
So biblically, division, factionalism, rivalry, and separation are not presented as characteristic fruits of the Holy Spirit. Quite the opposite: the Spirit is associated with unity, peace, and truth, while faction and division are repeatedly condemned.
The question, then, is this: how can something that produced so much division be described as the work of the Holy Spirit?
And how can lasting unity be maintained without some central authority capable of giving a correct and binding interpretation on fundamental matters of faith and morals (and no, I am obviously not talking about whether churches should use pipe organs or guitars. I am talking about matters such as the Eucharist, predestination, the respective roles of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium in forming the rule of faith, and serious moral questions involving the protection of innocent life, the permanence of a valid marriage, and that kind of stuff)?
Feel free to take your time answering those questions. Hell, feel free not to answer them at all. By all means, do whatever you want.
I have noted several times that when we read the same texts, we see something different. That is unfortunate but not surprising because we seem to have different frames of interpretation.
I do not know your frame exactly, I can only see how you cite and comment on this Forum. The impression of that is that your frame of interpretation is within the RCC. You try to put the pieces you see into this framework and interpret them through your experience. That is the way how most people try to understand the reality around them: put the new pieces into an existing framework and give the new pieces a meaning that agrees with the existing framework. So quite a logical behavioural model in itself.
The communication challenges and disagreements start when the other person has a differing frame of interpretation. Sentences get a meaning through interpretation and the interpretation reflects the frame of interpretation. We have differing frames and therefore, we often see the texts in different light. What a text tells to you is not necessarily what it tells to me.
I try to understand what was the context of the texts before I interpret the text. It does not matter if the text was biblical scriptures, early Apostolic/Church Fathers, ancient texts from Egypt or Mesopotamia, or the comments of political leaders that are told in the news today. Context matters.
When I read the early writings, I try to form a picture of the situation. What was the cultural context, what were the general beliefs during that time, how did the earlier writings and teachings probably affect the opinions of the writer, what was the personal situation and intention of the writer?
With the help of this background, it is possible to understand the text more deeply than just by citing a sentence. It also helps to avoid anachronisms - the danger that we force meanings from our era into the texts that are from an earlier era.
Just picking selected sentences from texts that are assumed to be authoritative does not help if the frames of interpretation are different. Whatever you pick, the other person may interpret it in another way, and selecting just a sentence may give a misleading impression of the writing. This kind of picking of a sentence and using the disconnected sentence as a weapon is a tactic used by apologists who aim to winning debates. May give a subjective feeling that I had stronger weapons but may miss the crucial point.
I do think we believing Christians are part of the same, universal and fundamentally unified body of Christ, even if our interpretations of some doctrines may differ and some groups see themselves as better than the others. In the same sense, I do expect and interpret that the early ‘homegroups’ of believers and local churches had the basic sense of belonging among the followers of Christ, together with the other comparable groups and churches that formed an ecumenical network of catholic and apostolic local churches.
I interpret the early writings through this context. There was no unified Catholic Church before the council of Nicaea but there was a sense of being part of a larger unity (ecumenical network) of followers of Jesus. A feeling of sharing the same basic roots, teachings of Jesus and his Apostles, and being followers of the same Lord. There were disputes with the other cults and beliefs in the diverse culture. That probably strengthened the ingroup-outgroup thinking (we vs. the others).
My own background is membership in a congregational denomination that has a tradition of having cooperative attitudes towards the other Christian churches.
The local churches within the denomination are basically ‘autocephalous’ but are also members in a network that have close relationships and national cooperation. We have joint central administration, workers mainly get their education and training through the same theological seminar, representatives of local churches meet twice a year to decide about common matters, missionary work to other countries is organized through a centralized unit, etc.
In addition, cooperation with the other churches is active; how active depends more on the other parties than us. There is a two-way movement of believers and leaders from and to other groups, including baptists, Pentecostals and others. Our elders and retired priests include persons who have served in comparable roles in some other churches and some former members of our congregation are serving or have served in the roles of pastors or other leaders in the other churches (baptists, Pentecostals and others). We arrenge joint activities and individuals attend and can serve in the services of another church and vice versa. So, rather close relationships both mentally and at the practical grassroot level.
From this background, I probably interpret the pre-Nicene texts differently than you.
You are asserting. There is not a chance in Hell that your view will change, and you are not interested in any alternative view. Once I have declared that i do not accept the magisterium authority that is it. I do not need to know why you do, I know why you do, So where is the discussion?
Discussion does not mean one person trying to change the mind of the other. I have never condemned your view or claimed it wrong, but you cannot say the same thing about my views.
That is not discussing and there is no good faith from you either. You want me, not only to accept,your view, which I do, but to make it mine, which I will not. Good faith does not mean one is right over the other!
This belief lifts up the question of what does it mean to be parts of the united body of Christ, ‘catholic’ and ‘apostolic’ - to be one?
I think that belonging to the same centralized organization is not a necessary or even a good condition for spiritual unity. What else could we set as the criteria of belonging to the united body of Jesus?
I actually agree with you on one important methodological point: context matters enormously.
We should not take Irenaeus, Cyprian, Ignatius, Athanasius, or anyone else and simply pour twenty-first-century Catholicism into their texts, the problem that is that that principle cuts both ways.
You suggest that I am interpreting the evidence through a Roman Catholic framework. Fair enough; maybe that’s indeed what I’m doing, but then you explain that your own model for understanding the pre-Nicene Church comes from your experience in a modern congregational denomination: locally autonomous churches, cooperative networks, common administration, shared theological education, joint meetings, missionary cooperation, and so forth.
So apparently modern ecclesial frameworks become a methodological problem only when they are Catholic.
More seriously, that does not make your interpretation wrong in principle, but it does mean that neither of us can settle the historical question merely by identifying the other person’s framework.
So let’s get that out of the way.
The real point of matter is which interpretation actually explains the ancient evidence better?
And here I think your model runs into serious problems.
I have never argued that the Church of A.D. 180 already possessed every administrative structure of medieval or modern Roman Catholicism, It obviously did not and I have stated it a number of times already.
My claim is, and was, much more specific: the evidence points to an already existing consciousness of one universal apostolic Church, possessing a common normative faith and increasingly developed supra-local structures of authority.
That is very different from claiming that the second-century Church already had the complete administrative centralization of later Catholicism.
Take Irenaeus in context.
He is not writing about Christians merely feeling connected to one another. He is confronting rival groups claiming authentic Christianity and explaining how the genuine apostolic faith can be identified.
In Against Heresies I.10 he speaks of: “The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world” and says that, although geographically scattered, she preserves the faith: “as if occupying but one house” believes: “as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart” and proclaims and hands it down: “as if she possessed only one mouth.”
He then says that the churches in Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere do not believe or hand down something different. This is very obviously not compatible with the idea that multiple churches could disagree on fundamental matters.
That language is not coming from my Catholic framework. It is Irenaeus’s.
And the context makes it stronger, not weaker, because his point is precisely that the public apostolic faith of the Church can be distinguished from competing claims because the churches throughout the world share one ecclesial tradition.
Then in Against Heresies III.3 he appeals to: “the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world” and to the succession of those entrusted with the churches down to his own time.
So he is using Church, apostolic tradition, succession, and trans-local doctrinal agreement as criteria for identifying orthodox Christianity.
That is substantially more than an ecumenical network of autonomous congregations.
Cyprian makes the point even clearer. He strongly defended the authority of local bishops, so he is a very useful test case precisely because we do not need to project later Roman administrative centralization onto him.
And yet he writes:“the episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole” and immediately after : “the Church also is one, which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude.” (On the Unity of the Church 5)
So Cyprian simultaneously affirms substantial local episcopal authority and one universal episcopate and one Church.
That is why I think the choice between later Roman administrative centralization and aloose federation of autonomous congregations is a false dichotomy.
There is an obvious third historical possibility: one universal ecclesial body, expressed through local episcopal churches in communion with one another, sharing a normative apostolic faith, succession, discipline, synods, and increasingly developed supra-local structures.
And that aligns with what the evidence actually shows.
This is also why your statement that: “There was no unified Catholic Church before the council of Nicaea” depends entirely on what you mean by unified.
If you mean: “there was not yet a worldwide administrative structure identical to later Roman Catholicism,” then I agree.
But if you mean: “there was not yet an identifiable universal Church which understood itself as doctrinally one, apostolic, visibly structured, and distinguishable from heretical or schismatic bodies,” then I do not think the sources support that claim. They actually support very clearly the opposite and restating your view without actually addressing the sources doesn’t change that.
This is where the already quoted multiple times Adolf von Harnack becomes particularly interesting.
Harnack was certainly not a Roman Catholic apologist. Quite the opposite. In History of Dogma he famously wrote: “Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel.” (History of Dogma, Vol. I, 1901, p. 17.)
This means that he had no theological incentive whatsoever to manufacture a Catholic reading of antiquity.
And yet, when he turns from theological judgment to historical description, he writes in History of Dogma, vol. III, p. 207: “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 immediately: “In ecclesiastical antiquity, on the contrary, the bond was by no means severed which connected Scripture with the maternal organism of the Church.”
Then: “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.”
And: “Everything in it, rather, was apostolic, and the guidance of the Church by the Holy Ghost had preserved this apostolic fabric from any change.”
That is significant precisely because Harnack did not think the ancient Church was necessarily correct in believing all this.
He could distinguish between two different questions: “What did the ancient Church and ancient Christians actually believe about authority?” and: “Was the ancient Church correct to believe it?”
His answer to the second question was often no (which, of course, opens the two Pandora’s boxes I mentioned earlier Christology and Trinity - #517 by 1Cor15.54 , because If Christianity had been fundamentally wrong for a millennium and a half, why should we assume that the Reformers finally got it right so many centuries later? And if the Reformation was truly the work of the Holy Spirit, why did it produce such extensive fragmentation and division, both of which are repeatedly condemned in the Gospels and throughout the New Testament?) but none of that led Harnack to rewrite the answer to the first question in order to strengthen the case for the Protestant “revolution,” as he himself called it, or to make it appear that the Reformers were simply rediscovering the original structure of Christianity.
He becomes even more explicit when discussing Scripture and the Church’s creed: “your interpretation of Scripture had to be regulated by the creed laid down in the Symbol.” Then: “No hesitation prevailed in the Church on this point” and: “The Church alone furnished the gubernaculum interpretationis” which means the governing guide of interpretation. (History of Dogma, vol. III, nella sezione “Tradition”, alle pp. 209–210)
Again, that is impossible to reconcile with the idea that the ancient rule of faith amounted to Scripture interpreted autonomously by local congregations, and not because of my catholic framework. The notion the scriptures were interpreted autonomously by local congregations and that there wasn’t the consciousness of a universal Church capable of issuing definitive and binding intepretations simply doesn’t align with the historical evidence. The Catholic or Protestant framework is neither here nor there (again: Von Harnack IS a Protestant, this didn’t make him think he could twist historical facts).
And this is what makes Harnack such an interesting witness.
He was perfectly willing to say, in short (I’m not quoting him now, just summarizing his thought): “yes, this is how the ancient Church actually understood itself, and I think important parts of that development were wrong.”
That is an intellectually coherent position.
What is much harder historically is to say: “No, the ancient Church really functioned rather like my modern congregational denomination; Catholics merely interpret it differently and the binding authority of the Church is a later dispotic invention.”
Because now the problem is no longer my framework.
You have to explain why Irenaeus, Cyprian, the developing episcopal and conciliar structure, and even a historian as critical of Catholic dogmatic development as Harnack all seem remarkably unwilling to describe the ancient Church in congregational terms.
Perhaps they all suffered from my Catholic interpretive framework too.
And this is where the appeal to “different frames of interpretation” reaches its limit, because texts require interpretation, but interpretations are not infinitely elastic.
If Irenaeus says one Church, one faith, one tradition, one house, one soul, one heart, one mouth; if he appeals to apostolic succession as a criterion of authentic doctrine; if Cyprian says “The episcopate is one” and “The Church also is one”; if Scripture was interpreted under an ecclesial creed; if bishops were regarded as successors of the Apostles; and if ecumenical councils acquired binding doctrinal authority throughout orthodox Christianity.
If all of this is true (and if it isn’t it should be proven) then there comes a point where saying “that text means something different to me” is no longer an historical argument or even an argument that has any intrinsic value.
Otherwise no evidence could ever count against a preferred model.
So yes, I completely agree with you: context matters, let us use it.
Let us ask what Irenaeus was doing when he appealed to worldwide ecclesial agreement, apostolic tradition, and succession against rival claimants to Christianity.
Let us ask what Cyprian meant by one episcopate and one Church.
And let us ask why Adolf von Harnack ( who had every theological reason to reject the ancient Catholic system ) nevertheless described the isolation of Scripture from ecclesiastical Tradition as a sixteenth-century revolution.
Those are historical questions, and no, they cannot finally be answered by comparing our respective denominational experiences.
A modern understanding about history writing is that all writers and interpretations are subjective at some level. There are no fully neutral interpreters. Acknowledging and taking into account the subjective viewpoint is honesty. We have both our own subjective viewpoints and in some matters, your viewpoint may help seeing the truth. In some matters, it may be the opposite.
Even if I am a ‘Protestant’ child of the western Christianity and lean towards an interpretation that is closer to the eastern Christianity in some matters, I try not to let it colour my interpretations of pre-Nicene Christianity. I try to take the information about the context from the works of various historians, read critically, and let that guide my interpretations more than my background.
What may complicate the conclusions is that the language (words, expressions) I use reflects my background and the conclusions may sound as something that I did not intend when read by someone who uses different language.
