And I believe God.
Who is the greater authority?
The Church is not God in human form, Jesus is/was/is.
Richard
The authority of the Church comes from God. He is the one who said that the gates of Hell will not prevail against her, that the Spirit will guide us into all truth (which is the exact opposite of having 47.000 different denominations).
He is also Jesus the one who was a model of obedience to the Father.
You have to take it up with the Chief commander, I’m not the one in charge (thank God). 
If you can justify a doctrine with the original apostolic teaching, as documented in the earliest apostolic scriptures, then that teaching is standing on a solid rock.
If the doctrine is not standing on that teaching, the doctrine might be correct but can/needs to be questioned.
I do believe in some doctrines that are derived from the early understanding, rather than straight from the biblical scriptures. Such doctrines include what the early ecumenical creeds listed as basic teachings.
Trinity or the two natures of Christ represent early interpretation and fits to what the gospels tell. That is why I accept these doctrines even if these are not directly mentioned in the NT scriptures. Yet, I avoid using the theological term ‘Trinity’ and rather speak about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit because that reflects better what the NT scriptures write. As long as we use expressions borrowed from the NT scriptures, there is a better possibility for a wide agreement among the Christians.
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The real presence is more than documented (and you carefully avoided any answer on the Sarx/Soma difference), just like the belief of the early Church in it, it was unironically more solid that Jesus’ divinity. And I have also quoted historians, in the past, who testified this.
Oh give it a rest!
You have been repeating the same dogma since we first started this conversation and done nothing to validate it, Scriptural or otherwise.
Just leave it at that and move on
Richard
That’s honestly bollocks.
The rule of faith of the Church (not of “a denomination”. Of the Church) in the first millenniums speaks for itself. And it’s the furthest thing from the Protestants tenets.
- “Hence by tradition the fathers usually mean doctrine which the Lord or His apostles committed to the Church, irrespective of whether it was handed down orally or in documents, and in the earlier centuries at any rate they prefer to employ other words or phrases to designate the Church’s unwritten traditional teaching. The ancient meaning of the term is well illustrated by Athanasius’s reference 1 to ‘the actual original tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church, which the Lord bestowed, the apostles proclaimed and the fathers safeguarded’.”
- “On the other hand, the ancient idea that the Church alone,
in virtue of being the home of the Spirit and having preserved
the authentic apostolic testimony in her rule of faith, liturgical
action and general witness, possesses the indispensable key to
Scripture, continued to operate as powerfully as in the days of
Irenaeus and Tertullian. Clement, for example, blamed 2 the
mistakes of heretics on their habit of ‘resisting the divine tradi-
tion’, by which he meant their incorrect interpretation of
Scripture; the true interpretation, he believed, was an apostolic
and ecclesiastical inheritance. “
Quoted from here Full text of "103911481-J-N-D-Kelly-Early-Christian-Doctrines.pdf (PDFy mirror)" , chapter 2, Tradition and Scripture.
Also from Thomas Bokedal, The Early Rule-of-Faith Pattern as Emergent Biblical Theology, pages 1/2 of this https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/c8b3c1d7-e383-4d66-86a1-b8dccd23ded9/contentpdf: “Due to their defining qualities, Scripture and Rule of Faith emerged within the faith community – to use the German theologian Karlmann Beyschlag’s phrasing – as ”two sides of one and the same norm” (zwei Seiten einer Norm). The Early Rule-of-Faith Pattern as Emergent Biblical Theology such, the regula fidei could even be seen as a property of sacred Scripture, emphasizing the arrangement of the Old and New Testament texts into a whole, with special attention given to reading biblical passages in their intra-scriptural context. Alternatively, when associated more with baptismal confession or apostolic tradition in the broader sense, the regula could be viewed as a scripturally de fined or aligned Rule. Applied to various types of scriptural exegesis, this Rule of Faith, or Rule-of-Faith pattern of biblical reading, occurs around AD 200 in Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian of Carthage and Clement of Alexandria, as well as in other early Christian writers.”
And now from the pages 2/3 of the same pdf: The regula fidei attained a multivalent function during the period we are looking at, and could be equated with Scripture, baptismal confession, or apostolic tradition more broadly. Thus, the tension posed between Scripture and unwritten Christian tradition in the Western churches since the Reformation and Counter-Reformation does not appear in the early Christian centuries, neither in the New Testament, during the New Testament period, nor subsequently.“
Scriptures get twisted to fit a certain narrative, tradition is disregarded, the rule of faith of the early Church idem, at least I can say that if I’m in error I’m in good company, what else can I say.
It’s certainly harder to claim that the reformers represented a return to grassroot Christianity while the Church was the one who deviated from the truth of the faith, though. At the very least we can say that it doesn’t hold up to historical scrutiny.
And the quote from KellyI reported in the previous post when he outlined the beliefs of the early Church “the true interpretation, he believed, was an apostolic and ecclesiastical inheritance” is exactly the point I was trying to make.
That’s not actually an argument, just some assertions and opinions, and since your main premise appears to be that reality includes an A-T framework, concluding that organisms have intrinsic teleology follows, but isn’t convincing.
I’m not saying that organisms don’t have goals, only that those goals are not directed.
Fitness, adaptation and survival are not dependent on intrinsic teleology. They occur, and can be measured regardless of philosophy.
Again just your opinion.
Natural selection does not require a goal directed organism, and works perfectly well, both in nature and in simulations, with organisms that aren’t goal-directed.
You’re not differentiating the teleology of the programmer from the teleology of the simulated ‘organisms’. There are simulations such as Tierra in which there are no fitness functions, and lines of code (in the ‘organisms’) are definitely not deliberate. Genetic algorithms and evolutionary simulations frequently produce results that were not anticipated by or known to the developers, so they are demonstrably not goal-directed.
What is documented is what Jesus told during the occasion when he blessed the bread and wine. How we understand that is interpretation.
There is also an interpretation that Jesus was talking about Eucharist when he talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood (John 6:22-63). That is an interpretation, not a fact.
There appears to be some evidence that the early Christians used the same expressions as Jesus when they talked about the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper. That shows that they wanted to obey the command of Jesus, not that they interpreted the expressions in a particular way.
I have got the impression that the interpretations of some early Christians seemed to be quite concrete. If Jesus had said that it rains dogs and cats, they probably would have expected that dogs and cats are seen dropping through the open windows of the firmament. From this viewpoint, it is possible that they really believed that the bread transforms into flesh and wine into blood.
On the other hand, the Corinthian church seemed to understand the matter in a different way. Everybody had their own lunch with themselves and when the time of the common remembrance came, they utilized what they had, everybody eating from their own lunch. Some were drunk, some did not have anything. Paul uses strong language to rebuke them.
Although the Corinthians may be an extreme example, it shows that there were diverse practices and understanding about the topic during the first century.
The Sarx/Soma difference is probably not a crucial difference in this matter. I am not an expert of the language, so cannot tell what would be the best translations. I have understood that ‘soma’ means usually ‘body’ and ‘sarx’ means usually ‘flesh’, often in a mortal or negative sense. It seems natural to say that ‘the bread is the flesh of Jesus’, rather than ‘the bread is the body of Jesus’. Whatever translation we use, the basic interpretation does not depend on using ‘sarx’ or ‘soma’.
The two natures of Jesus is an issue that is hard to grasp because it deviates so much from our usual expectations. From that viewpoint and the philosophical ideas of that time, I think it is natural that there were differing opinions about the matter and it took time before the diverse opinions merged into a commonly acceptable expression. The ecumenical creeds may have settled some debates but did not fully remove the confusion around the topic. We still have movements that have deviating interpretations about the matter, like JW and the Oneness Pentecostalism.
Sarx gets the point across in a much stronger way, so as to do away with all sorts of symbolism, there is a reason why he uses that word instead of soma like the Synoptics.
The fathers of the Church are quite clear about the interpretations of the early Christians, though. We cannot say that we have no proofs and then decide to ignore the fathers.
This is what historians have to say about the issue.
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 440:
“Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at once, was in general unquestionably realistic. The consecrated bread and wine were regarded as, and spoken of as, the body and blood of the Lord.”
Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, pp. 115–116:
“The bread and wine are spoken of as the body and blood of Christ, and the language is strongly realistic.”
Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, p. 36:
“Christians believed that the bread and wine of the Eucharist were the body and blood of Christ.”
And I could quote many more (and I will if requested) but i don’t want to make a wall of text . The question is already quite clear.
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You are trying to make me believe what you do.
I am not dismissing your views, as you are mine.
Richard
The fact that I brought nothing scriptural or otherwise is objectively not true, which is why i said bollocks.
Raymond E. Brown is an historian and, regarding the use of sarx instead of soma in the Gospel of John (specifically aimed at refuting gnosticism and docetism) he says, on pages 284–286 of his commentary The Gospel According to John (I–XII) (Anchor Bible, Vol. 29, 1966), that while soma (body) could easily lend itself to a spiritualized, corporate, or metaphorical interpretation in the Hellenistic world, sarx (flesh) possesses a raw, much clearer material reality. In other words, by using sarx, John forces a literal confrontation with the physical reality of Christ, and he does that while writing about the Eucharist. He even uses the verb trōgō which means chewing.
Make of that what you will; i quoted historians in order to shed a little more light on the subject. I didn’t use apologists.
The use of sarx was hardly irrelevant as you can see.
This strikes me as a low effort evasion as opposed to a counterargument. Since you think the argument or reasoning presented is valid, you can elaborate or explain what underlying assumptions are wrong. You haven’t even attempted to justify your own presumption on the matter even though it was called out. Can you resolve the problem of induction? Can you offer a coherent, non-teleological ontology that accounts for the regularities of nature and the goal-oriented behavior of biological organisms? Or is your mechanistic philosophy an unexamined position you only assume instead of arguing for?
So you admit organisms have goals. Those “goals” aren’t directed? An undirected goal is like a round square. Its nonsense. Maybe you meant to say ‘there is no evidence those goals are “extrinsically” directed’ or that they are not consciously directed by the organism itself? Welcome to intrinsic teleology. These organisms are most certainly internally directed towards their biological goals as opposed to say, random decay. You seem to be misunderstanding what intrinsic teleology is and assuming your mechanistic worldview is the default starting point for all discussion. It certainly is not.
You are confusing empirical observations with ontology. We observe organisms surviving and adapting but what exactly is adaptation and survival? Without teleology you only have physical particles colliding and changing state. The idea of being fit or unfit presupposes a normative standard (e.g., staying alive vs. dying). The ontological question that you miss is what must reality be like for biological concepts like “fitness,” “adaptation,” and “survival” to be meaningful in the first place? You cannot escape these teleological terms. The occurrence of these very observations you mention are also examples of intrinsic teleology and they can be observed and measured due to the intrinsic teleology or goal directness (regularity) of the chemical and physical substrate of reality. That was the argument I made that you dismissed.
You are free to dialogue with the information presented. Twice now you have characterized my view as opinion when when your dismissal of the reasoning I put forth is exactly that, opinion. It also misunderstands what I am saying as you default to definitions of teleology I am not defending. I can try to exhume Paley if you want to argue against ID proponents.
That is just your opinion. You have not demonstrated this and cannot demonstrate this. Nor, apparently, will you even attempt to do so.
I think you are confusing intrinsic teleology (directedness towards some end) with predictability. A chess program can make unexpected moves the programmer did not explicitly anticipate. That does not mean the program lacks goal-directedness. In fact, it seems to me that every evaluation loop of a chess program is intrinsically structured to win the game.
Just like a parasite is only capable of existing in Tierra because it is running on a designed CPU that executes designed code that utilizes memory allocations designed to store data and so on. It’s a closed artificial/digital ecosystem where CPU time equals survival and memory equals space.
You are appealing to an 80-instruction ancestor program that was explicitly designed and hand-coded as a self-replicating digital organism by Thomas S. Ray. Success (a teleological term) is built in as digital programs compete for “resources” and the reaper program terminates old code which means this is a specifically engineered (fine-tuned) environment .
You are essentially appealing to a watch (an example of extrinsic teleology and an artifact to boot) or a fine-tuned universe, to claim everything else in nature, including natural substances, do not have intrinsic teleology. And you do this all the while maintaining they have “goals.” Wow.
It almost seems to me that in order to refute intrinsic teleology, you have to become an intelligent design proponent. Glad to have you in the theist camp.
Vinnie
Thank you for the watch!
I’m still mulling over the contents a bit, and I think the definitive answer for the meaning of life is certainly still up in the air, but this discussion certainly has opened up some new ideas for me!
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Personally, I feel like both explanations are valid. The author did say to not to try and be 100% good or 100% evil, and it did seem like some of his objective statements on why we should do these things involved appealing to God. But, there is also much backing in acting in diversity as an insurance policy. Personally, it reminds me of old arguments I would look at where people would wonder they would possibly know if what they are doing is what God wants them to do. The most eye opening statement I had seen on this topic was (and O quote) “Just do something;” evidently, it was actually a book title. As mere mortals, we don’t exactly have the means to objectively know what God wants us to do, but anything done in his name and with Jesus teachings in mind should be sufficient.
As a listener, I find this debate an example of how a differing use of words, from differing viewpoints, can make communication very difficult. I know because I have gone through this mess and maybe, just maybe, has understood a bit of what is happening.
One confusing point is the use of the term ‘teleology’. It has different meanings in natural sciences and in the type of philosophy Vinnie studies.
In natural sciences, it is used in the sense that there is a predescribed endpoint in the future and the development and evolution are goal-oriented processes that aim towards the defined endpoint. It would mean that mutations are also goal-oriented changes in the genome. Research has refuted this hypothesis, at least in the sense that what we can observe and predict does not seem to support this claim.
The way how Vinnie uses ‘intrinsic teleology’ could be translated to the language of natural science crudely as: a process makes sense from some viewpoint, it is not random chaos. A child grows towards adulthood, a seed germinates and grows to a plant. Some individuals survive and reproduce in one type of environment better than the others and the copies of their genes increase in the following generations.
Well, this is a very crude simplification, not an exact translation, but I hope it makes the approach more understandable.
From the philosophical viewpoint of Vinnie, what he claims is sensible and appears to be true.
From the viewpoint of natural sciences, what Roy claims is sensible and appears to be true.
Both true but do not talk about the same matter.
A difference that makes this even more complicated is that the philosophical approach of Vinnie is more interested about ontology and ‘essence’ than the visible material. Ontology and ‘essence’, in the meaning of that type of philosophy, are outside of the field of natural sciences. Attempts to talk with the language of natural sciences is talking past the point of that kind of philosophy. The arrow miss the mark.
I hope this helps. Vinnie can correct where I have misunderstood his justifications. That type of philosophical talk is alien language for those living on the world of natural sciences, could be from a parallel universe, so not easy to translate.
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A counterargument isn’t necessary since what you linked to wasn’t an argument.
You didn’t present any reasoning.
Your underlying assumption seems to be that reality includes an A-T framework - which is also your conclusion.
Yes - for goal-oriented behaviour of organisms, at least. I already did.
The apparent goal-oriented behaviour of biological organisms is a result of billions of years of evolution in which organisms that survived and reproduced outcompeted organisms that did not, leading to strong selection for any organism that happened to have more inclination to survive or reproduce than its contemporaries, so that today almost all organisms have an instinct to survive and reproduce.
I refer you to pinboards, which have multiple goals, all of which score points and none of which are directed towards.
You are committing the fallacy of composition and not realising that collections of particles (e.g. organisms) can have properties that are not properties of the individual particles.
Yes, it is my opinion that what you have presented is your opinion.
Pointing out that my statement is also an opinion does nothing to elevate yours beyond opinion, and tends to confirm what I said.
I can and did:
Try reading the entire post before responding to any of it. You may discover that what you claim was not attempted actually was included later in the post.
I’m appealing to the undesigned digital organisms that evolve from Thomas Ray’s original designed digital organism[1] during runs of Tierra, which included lines of code that were not hand-coded.
This is obvious to anyone who knows how Tierra works, which suggests you looked up just enough about Tierra to get details of the author and the original organism, but not enough to understand what Tierra does when you run it.
How things seem to you is not how things are.
P.S. I could have written more, but your post suggests you wouldn’t read it beyond cherry-picking things you thought you could score points against, so it’s not worth the effort.[2]
Or from other original ‘organisms’ design by other people, myself included, some of which included sections of random code that was not designed. ↩︎
To forestall an identical counterclaim, I did read your entire post; the parts I haven’t quoted are built on and negated by the flaws in the parts I did quote. ↩︎