Were the church fathers Roman Catholic? [Archive]

JasonTE

February 2nd 2003, 09:45 PM

phantaz sunlyk said:

Scripture was never intended to be understood divorced from Ecclesial Tradition

Who ever claimed that church tradition should be ignored? There are many factors to be taken into account when interpreting scripture, and church tradition is one of them. But taking such traditions into account isn't equivalent to the assertion that the traditions of the Roman Catholic denomination are infallible.

The church fathers defined the church and defined tradition in different ways. Do you agree with the premillennial traditions of Papias? Do you agree with Irenaeus' tradition that Jesus lived to be over 40 years old? Do you agree with Cyprian's tradition of rejecting heretical baptism? Or Basil's tradition that Mary was a sinner? The fathers didn't agree among themselves about how to define concepts such as the church and tradition, much less did they all agree with the Roman Catholic definitions.

that the Roman Church had a basic reputation for pre-eminence

Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn't. The same Cyprian who commends the Roman bishop Cornelius condemns the Roman bishop Stephen for departing from the unity of the church. The same Jerome who calls the Roman bishop Damasus a successor of Peter condemns the Roman bishop Siricius as a supporter of heresy.

The earliest sources who comment on the significance of the Roman church give non-papal reasons for its significance: the faith of the Romans (Paul), virtues such as love and generosity (Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth), the church's location in the capital of the empire (Irenaeus), the fact that some of the apostles had visited the city (Tertullian), etc. For so many sources, spanning multiple generations and numerous locations around the world, to comment on the significance of the Roman church without mentioning a papacy is devastating to the claims of Roman Catholicism.

The Roman Catholic historian Klaus Schatz describes the scholarly consensus:

"There appears at the present time to be increasing consensus among Catholic and non-Catholic exegetes regarding the Petrine office in the New Testament….The further question whether there was any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the negative. That is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the author of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably 'no.'…If we ask in addition whether the primitive Church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer....Rome did not succeed in maintaining its position against the contrary opinion and praxis of a significant portion of the Church. The two most important controversies of this type were the disputes over the feast of Easter and heretical baptism. Each marks a stage in Rome’s sense of authority and at the same time reveals the initial resistance of other churches to the Roman claim." (Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996], pp. 1-2, 11)

Compare these facts to the claims of Roman Catholicism:

"We therefore teach and declare that, according to the testimony of the Gospel, the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed Peter the Apostle by Christ the Lord....At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture as it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his Church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all the other Apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction; or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through the Church on Peter as her minister....That which the Prince of Shepherds and great Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus Christ our Lord, established in the person of the blessed Apostle Peter to secure the perpetual welfare and lasting good of the Church, must, by the same institution, necessarily remain unceasingly in the Church; which, being founded upon the Rock, will stand firm to the end of the world. For none can doubt, and it is known to all ages, that the holy and blessed Peter, the Prince and Chief of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind, and lives presides and judges, to this day and always, in his successors the Bishops of the Holy See of Rome, which was founded by him and consecrated by his blood. Whence, whosoever succeeds to Peter in this See, does by the institution of Christ himself obtain the Primacy of Peter over the whole Church....Wherefore it has at all times been necessary that every particular Church - that is to say, the faithful throughout the world - should agree with the Roman Church, on account of the greater authority of the princedom which this has received...If, then, any should deny that it is by institution of Christ the Lord, or by divine right, that blessed Peter should have a perpetual line of successors in the Primacy over the universal Church, or that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema." (First Vatican Council, session 4, chapters 1-2)

"Indeed, 'from the incarnate Word's descent to us, all Christian churches everywhere have held and hold the great Church that is here [at Rome] to be their only basis and foundation since, according to the Savior's promise, the gates of hell have never prevailed against her.'" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 834)

doctrinal development is a necessary manner of explaining any Christian body which is alive today and claims continuity with the past

What sort of doctrinal development are you referring to? We have to distinguish between possibilities and probabilities. Trinitarian doctrines such as the deity of the Holy Spirit and the two natures of Christ, for example, are the probable or certain conclusion to apostolic teaching. You can't avoid Trinitarian conclusions if you follow what Jesus and the apostles taught. As the fathers said:

"The religious perspicuity of the ancient Scriptures caused them [the Arians] no shame, nor did the consentient doctrine of our colleagues concerning Christ keep in check their audacity against Him." - Alexander of Alexandria (Epistles on the Arian Heresy and the Deposition of Arius, 1:10)

"Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faith's sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrines so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture" - Athanasius (De Synodis, 6)

"For among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life,--to wit, hope and love, of which I have spoken in the previous book. After this, when we have made ourselves to a certain extent familiar with the language of Scripture, we may proceed to open up and investigate the obscure passages, and in doing so draw examples from the plainer expressions to throw light upon the more obscure, and use the evidence of passages about which there is no doubt to remove all hesitation in regard to the doubtful passages." - Augustine (On Christian Doctrine, 2:9)

"We shall therefore endeavor to persuade Arius to acknowledge the substance of the Holy Trinity, and we shall adduce proofs of this position from Holy Scripture." - Theodoret (Dialogues, 2)

"Holy Scripture clearly teaches us both natures [of Christ]." - Theodoret (Letter 99)

"For there have risen many who have given to the plain words of Holy Writ some arbitrary interpretation of their own, instead of its true and only sense, and this in defiance of the clear meaning of words. Heresy lies in the sense assigned, not in the word written; the guilt is that of the expositor, not of the text." - Hilary of Poitiers (On the Trinity, 2:3)

"I call the God of heaven and earth to witness, that when I had heard neither word, my belief was always such that I should have interpreted o0moiou/sion by o0moou/sion. That is, I believed that nothing could be similar according to nature unless it was of the same nature. Though long ago regenerate in baptism, and for some time a bishop, I never heard of the Nicene creed until I was going into exile, but the Gospels and Epistles suggested to me the meaning of o0moou/sion and o0moiou/sion." - Hilary of Poitiers (On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterns, 91)

Such cannot be said of the papacy, papal infallibility, the sinlessness of Mary, private confession to a priest, numbering the sacraments at seven, etc. To the contrary, many of the doctrinal developments of Roman Catholicism contradict what Jesus and the apostles taught. To develop Trinitarian doctrine, you need only follow apostolic teaching to its logical end. To develop the sinlessness of Mary, however, you must reject Biblical references to Mary sinning, along with hundreds of years of church fathers and Roman bishops referring to her as a sinner, in favor of an unverifiable, speculative doctrine of later church history. The two aren't in the same category.

i pray the Rosary every day. am i, according to you, not saved?

How would I know whether you're saved? I accept the apostolic gospel of salvation through faith alone, so I hold to a high view of God's grace. Eternal life is a free gift. A person can be saved, then be unfaithful to the gospel, as we see with Peter and the Galatians, for example. I don't know whether you're saved. But I know that you shouldn't be praying the Rosary. It involves an attempt to contact Mary, who is among the physically deceased. Scripture commands us not to attempt to contact the physically deceased, even if we think they're spiritually alive (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Isaiah 8:19, 19:3). There are hundreds of passages on prayer in the Bible, spanning dozens of authors over centuries of history, and not a single one of them encourages us to pray to Mary or anybody else other than God. I agree with Athenagoras, Origen, Lactantius, and other early church fathers who condemned prayers to the dead. And the Rosary involves praying to Mary, who has been dead for nearly two thousand years now, even though she's spiritually alive in Heaven. Praying to the deceased is an unwise thing to do, and it's a form of disobedience to God. It's also contrary to early patristic tradition. But the fact that you pray to Mary doesn't give me enough information to determine that you aren't saved.

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 12:27 AM

**8** say hey jason, afor i even begin:
ya said--

I know that you shouldn't be praying the Rosary. It involves an attempt to contact Mary, who is among the physically deceased. Scripture commands us not to attempt to contact the physically deceased, even if we think they're spiritually alive

**7** hmm. sounds pretty clear.
ya say--

There are hundreds of passages on prayer in the Bible, spanning dozens of authors over centuries of history, and not a single one of them encourages us to pray to Mary or anybody else other than God. I agree with Athenagoras, Origen, Lactantius, and other early church fathers who condemned prayers to the dead. And the Rosary involves praying to Mary, who has been dead for nearly two thousand years now, even though she's spiritually alive in Heaven. Praying to the deceased is an unwise thing to do, and it's a form of disobedience to God. It's also contrary to early patristic tradition.

**8** goodness me. had i only known!
ya say--

I accept the apostolic gospel of salvation through faith alone, so I hold to a high view of God's grace. Eternal life is a free gift. A person can be saved, then be unfaithful to the gospel, as we see with Peter and the Galatians, for example.

**7** the "gospel" is NOT "salvation through faith alone". the gospel is the announcenment that "the risen Christ is Lord". minor anachronism on your part, no biggee. and how was Peter unfaithful to the "gospel" re Galatians, such that his snobbery is comparable to my alleged anti-Scriptural contact with the physically deceased? isn't that like comparing apples and atom bombs, from your point of view?
well, now that we knoweth that i need to have faith, i ask what i need to have faith in?
by the by, not only do i pray the Rosary, i also believe that icons play an essential role in worship, that Christ is physically present in the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration, etc.
is that paganism? i mean, i assure you that my faith in Christ is quite sincere. there are many on this board who'll back me on this. but what do YOU say. i INSIST on doing the things i mentioned above. DO I THEREBY, IN DOING THOSE THINGS, DEFINITELY FORSAKE AUTHENTIC FAITH???
i just went to your site. its quite full of articles. it appears that you're prepared to the point that all you basically need to do is cut & paste. my area of expertise lies in the Trinity and Christology, hence i'm not so prepared as you are. i'll start with one segment of your response per day.
adios and shalom.

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 12:54 AM

**7** here we go. i claimed that Scripture should not be divorced from tradition, to which Jason replied--

Who ever claimed that church tradition should be ignored?

**8** yes yes, i see that i've drastically underestimated your reasonableness, etc., etc.
however, we're more than likely going to have quite a few viewers, and it is my wish that they at least be presented with evidence enough so that they'll know what the argument is about; something they would be quite unaware of given the nature of your response, which seemed to have no motivation whatever for constructive statements so long as Catholicism went down.
so, here we go. what is Tradition?
i here copy from an upcoming essay i'm working on regarding the issue of the procession of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic and Orthodox communions. comments are welcome.

A. Scripture and Tradition

I realize that the majority of those who will be reading this are neither Catholic nor Orthodox, yet due to the specific nature of the theological problem at hand, along with the parties who are chiefly involved in the dispute, my manner of dealing with it will necessarily require more than the simple analysis of Scripture. In order for this approach to make any sense at all, a word needs to be said regarding Scripture and Tradition, and the manner of authority which these two have, in light of eachother, in Catholicism and Orthodoxy. While it is my prayer that none will take offence, and it is my hope that the brief analysis below will bear fruit for Protestants even while remaining in their own Tradition, it must be confessed at the outset that the very state of the evidence itself is—it seems to me, and many others as well—so absolutely clear in this area, that it cannot be helped that I will sound as though I’m advancing an apologetic, though this is not directly my intention. I ask the reader to bear in mind that the only reason I bring this up is to place the Filioque within a context wherein it can be both understood and, if it is possible at all, settled.

According to the Catholic Church, the books of Scripture ‘present God’s own word in an unalterable form, and they make the voice of the holy Spirit sound again and again in the words of the prophets and apostles. It follows that all the preaching of the church, as indeed the entire Christian religion, should be nourished and ruled by sacred scripture.’ (DV, 21) Likewise, the Orthodox, for their part, affirm that the ‘Christian Church is a Scriptural Church: Orthodoxy believes this just as firmly, if not more firmly, than Protestantism. The Bible is the supreme expression of God’s revelation to the human race, and Christians must always be a “People of the Book”.’ (War-OC, 199) The fact that Catholics and Orthodox actually affirm this needs to be emphasized if for no other reason than the fact that it is often assumed, atleast implicitly, that we either ‘don’t go by the Bible’ or that we feel that we have some sort of right to go over[I] it. Neither of these widespread assumptions is even close to the truth. Protestants, Catholic, and Orthodox all agree that Scripture is the authoritative word of God; that it cannot be gone against, and that all doctrine must come from Scripture. Insofar as all agree on this, we are on common ground.

A common distinction, which I accept, is made between [I]formal sufficiency and material sufficiency. Catholics and Orthodox both maintain that Scripture is materially sufficient, yet deny that it is formally sufficient. The difference between the two can be thought of thusly: if a man wishes to build a house, and he has all of the brick, lumber, concrete, etc., that he needs in order to build it, he has all of the material he needs. Yet something is still lacking. He needs to know how to put it all together. That which is required for ‘putting it all together’ can be called formal sufficiency. The analogy isn’t perfect, but I think it gets the basic point across with sufficient clarity. And I don’t believe it is true that Protestants, at this point, wish to part company with us. Tekton has in no uncertain terms spoken out against those of the kjv-only mentality, showing that going by ‘the Bible alone’ can often be counter-productive, and this due to the fact that the Bible cannot be understood if it is taken out of context, which exaggerated forms of Sola Scriptura invite, albeit with the best intentions.

The Bible cannot be understood if it is taken out of context. At this point, I think it is safe to say that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all agree. The question that arises is what constitutes the context within which Scripture must be read if it is to be understood properly? This, I believe, is where the parting of the ways occurs (though the distance between us should not be exaggerated regarding this point, and an attempt should be made to see how close we can come to one another without compromise or the forsaking what we believe to be essential—I believe that in this regard concord is not so far away as is often imagined). A very common and very sane answer, insofar as it goes, is to claim that we must go back to the original historical context of Scripture, and then we will be able to determine what, for example, ‘Saint Paul really said’. The Catholic Church, in claiming that ‘in order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current’ (CCC-110), shows its agreement with this principle. And while ‘hitherto Orthodox scholars have not been prominent in this field’, the Orthodox Church does not ‘forbid the critical and historical study of the Bible’. (War-OC, 201) Hence the historio-critical method of exegesis, which is without doubt the prime method of exegesis and doctrinal formulation employed, and employed very well, by Tekton, can be regarded as the common property of Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics. The difference, however, is this—whereas (it seems) Protestants feel that this is, in toto, the whole of the context in which Scripture must be placed in order to properly understand it, Catholics and Orthodox believe that Scripture must be viewed within a Traditional-Ecclesial context, and that the historio-critical context is not enough by itself.

Thus the Catholic Church claims that ‘the church does not draw its certainty about all revealed truths from the holy scriptures alone. Hence, both scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal devotion and reverence.’ (DV, 9) Likewise, the Orthodox believe that ‘in the ocean of meanings which belong to the Spirit beyond the literal sense, no navigator can avoid going astray without the guidance of the same Spirit who hands down the understanding of them in the Church from generation to generation’, and therefore, ‘Scripture requires a tradition which is unchanged from the apostles. It represents another form of preserving and making use in its continuous effectiveness of that integral revelation fulfilled in Christ. … Tradition keeps this dynamism of the Scripture contemporary without changing it, for tradition represents an application and a continuous deepening of the content of Scripture.’ (Sta-ODT1, 45) So there isn’t a dichotomy between Scripture and Tradition according to the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Indeed, according to us ‘”Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal.” Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age.”’ (CCC, 80)

How might Tradition be defined? Tradition, I think, could loosely be described as Christian belief proclaimed and lived. A more analytic definition would be: a mechanism which instantiates concrete patterns of behavior and linguistic expressions which define a religious communities beliefs. And it is important not to be quick to confuse the ‘mechanism’ with the ‘expressions’ which result from the mechanism itself, for these expressions (whether verbal expressions or, for example, liturgical practices) are culturally and historically conditioned, and therefore not always as absolute as the mechanism itself (though we would expect an analogous form of expression to instantiate in different cultures, cf. CCC, 83). And while there certainly is a difference between ‘Tradition’ and ‘traditions’, it is agreed on all hands that a near unanimous consensus amongst the previous generations of the Church and Church fathers regarding an article of faith constitutes Tradition instantiated in the dogmatic realm, and therefore a revealed article of faith on par with Scripture. Articles of Tradition such as these serve the Catholic or Orthodox exegete in much the same way that historical commentaries serve the modern exegete; they are lamps we carry with us as we search for truth in the garden of Scripture.

The historical demonstration of this is quite straightforward. The ‘word of God’ in Jewish thought came with the authority of God. In the New Testament the ‘word of God’ refers not only to the written word, but to the spoken word as well—

Acts 4:31 they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

1 Thess. 2:13 when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word (cf. Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5, etc.)

Both the spoken word and the written word carried the authority of God, and the apostles were, in some respects, vested with divine authority, and commissioned to carry the word of God into the world—

Lk. 10:16 Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.

Mt. 28:18-20 All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always

The apostles themselves entrusted the deposit of faith to others—

1 Tim. 2:13-14 Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

And likewise, those appointed by the apostles were to, in their turn, entrust the deposit to others, the implication being that this pattern was to be perpetuated—

2 Tim. 2:2 and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.

The idea that is being advanced here can perhaps be further brought to light by interpreting the following two texts in light of one another—

Isa. 59:21 And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says YHWH: my Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says YHWH, from now on and forever.

Jn. 20:21-22 Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.

The implication is that the office of proclaiming Christian truth is perpetual and indefectible.

JasonTE

February 3rd 2003, 01:33 AM

phantaz sunlyk said:

the "gospel" is NOT "salvation through faith alone". the gospel is the announcenment that "the risen Christ is Lord". minor anachronism on your part, no biggee.

The resurrection and the deity of Christ are part of the gospel, but not its entirety. The Judaizers apparently believed in Christ's deity and resurrection, but Paul condemns them for advocating a false gospel (Galatians 1:6-9). What they did was tell people that they attain justification through works. Roman Catholicism does the same thing.

and how was Peter unfaithful to the "gospel" re Galatians, such that his snobbery is comparable to my alleged anti-Scriptural contact with the physically deceased?

Paul tells us that Peter was unfaithful to the gospel (Galatians 2:14).

I didn't intend to compare Peter's behavior to praying the Rosary. It was you, not me, who associated the Rosary with the question of whether you're saved. I responded by telling you that your saying the Rosary is not sufficient grounds for me to conclude that you aren't saved. My comments about Peter were made in response to Roman Catholicism in general. Catholicism teaches a gospel of works, comparable to the false gospel of the Judaizers.

by the by, not only do i pray the Rosary, i also believe that icons play an essential role in worship, that Christ is physically present in the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration, etc.

The earliest church fathers rejected the veneration of images. The Roman Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott explains:

"Owing to the influence of the Old Testament prohibition of images, Christian veneration of images developed only after the victory of the Church over paganism. The Synod of Elvira (about 306) still prohibited figurative representations in the houses of God (Can. 36)." (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma [Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974], p. 320)

In my Catholic, But Not Roman Catholic series, which I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, I document examples of the fathers rejecting the veneration of images, even the use of images in some cases.

As far as the eucharist is concerned, there were multiple views held by the fathers. The Council of Trent claimed that transubstantiation has always been held by the Christian church, but the fact is that the doctrine was widely contradicted in the patristic era. Even some Roman bishops, such as Gelasius and Gregory the Great, contradicted transubstantiation. For other examples, see the relevant sections of Philip Schaff's church history, such as section 95 at:

http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/3_ch07.htm

Baptismal regeneration was widely held by the church fathers from about the middle of the second century onward. The earliest fathers, however, discuss salvation without even mentioning baptism, and some of their arguments about justification are inconsistent with the doctrine. Even when it later became popular, we still find some opposition to it and some inconsistencies among those who advocate it.

But what do these things have to do with Roman Catholicism? Catholics aren't the only ones who hold to doctrines such as the veneration of images, a physical eucharistic presence, and baptismal regeneration. Even if all of the fathers had supported such doctrines, it wouldn't lead to the conclusion that they were Roman Catholic.

i INSIST on doing the things i mentioned above. DO I THEREBY, IN DOING THOSE THINGS, DEFINITELY FORSAKE AUTHENTIC FAITH???

I've given you examples of the church fathers contradicting Roman Catholicism. I've linked you to another web site where I've documented hundreds of such examples. If you want to start a new thread about how many false doctrines a person can hold while still being saved, why don't you do that? As things currently stand, it looks as though you're trying to change the subject, because you don't like the implications of what I originally documented. You're changing the subject from whether the church fathers were Roman Catholic to whether a person can hold to some false doctrines and still be saved. I've already answered that question. But you haven't answered the documentation I've provided on the original subject of this thread.

You seem to be suggesting that it's unkind or unreasonable for me to criticize Roman Catholicism as I have, since such criticism implies that you might not be saved. What about the dozens of anathemas your denomination has issued against just about anybody who disagrees with it on just about any subject? What about the Council of Trent anathematizing anybody who numbers the sacraments at less or more than seven, even though the numbering of seven is a tradition of the Middle Ages that has no basis in scripture or the church fathers? How about the First Vatican Council proclaiming that obedience to the Pope is necessary for salvation? Or Pope Pius XII, just over 50 years ago, threatening loss of salvation to anybody who would oppose the historically groundless doctrine of Mary's bodily assumption to Heaven? Considering that your denomination's ecumenism is a recent thing, and that there were centuries of anathemas and persecutions that led up to it, I don't think Catholics have much credibility when they claim to be offended by criticism. Now, maybe you didn't intend to imply that you were offended, but when you repeatedly ask me whether I think you're saved, and you refer to me viewing your beliefs as "pagan", it's difficult to avoid that implication. And if you're offended by the suggestion that your beliefs are unchristian, or that you might not be saved, then surely, to be consistent, you would also be offended by the even harsher criticism your denomination has issued against those who have disagreed with it over the centuries.

"The orthodox Roman Catholic [of the past] would have told me that I was bound for hell because I rejected the true Church. He was dealing with a concept of absolute truth. But the new Roman Catholic who sits at my fireside says, 'You are all right, Dr. Schaeffer, because you are so sincere.'" (Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998], p. 109)

"The final authority [for Catholics] is the living Magisterium, which, a priori, stands above criticism. Words, documents, and entire epochs of Church history have suffered the death of a thousand qualifications, and Rome still remains; ever-changing, ever the same. But what about the Protestant evangelical who, without a Magisterium, contemplates the path taken by his Roman Catholic counterpart?" (John Montgomery, God's Inerrant Word [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1974], p. 275)

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 01:36 AM

moving along...

Yet it would be a mistake to imagine that this office consisted of no more than the mere ‘repetition of the exact same words’ from generation to generation. When new circumstances arise, new questions are bound to arise, and new needs will therefore need to be met. This, in fact, is why we have any epistles from Paul. He didn’t write to tell the Churches the articles of faith. He wrote to answer certain questions, correct certain misunderstandings, and meet certain needs that needed to be specifically addressed at that time. We have no reason whatever to assume that the basic foundations of the Christian Faith weren’t possessed already by the communities he wrote to, quite the opposite; we therefore have no reason to assume that what was written is an exhaustive account of those foundations. Likewise, we have no reason to expect that the final answer to questions that had not yet arisen would be addressed by the New Testament. Yet this does not imply that the Christian community lacked the means whereby those questions, if they were to arise (and they were, in abundance), could be definitively answered, and the New Testament gives us an indication of how this would work out. Acts 15 is our first example of a Church council. The ‘apostles and elders met together to consider’ the matter, and after ‘much debate’ (15:6-7), a decision is reached; it being taken for granted that it has divine authority: ‘For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …’ (15:28) Indeed, it was the promise of Christ to the Church that when ‘the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth’ (Jn. 16:13).

Though it would be interesting to investigate the relationship between this authoritative office and Church praxis, such an endeavor is beyond our scope here. The point is simply that the Church was understood as being invested with a certain guarantee as regards the maintenance of articles of faith, along with a promise of indefectibility in the further elaboration and explanation of those articles in future generations. That this fact wasn’t lost on the Church fathers is so obvious from their writings that it hardly needs to be pointed out. A few examples will suffice—

Clement of Rome

The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Spirit, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits, having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. (Ep. Cor. 42)

Irenaeus

It is within the power of all, therefore in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up to those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and the succession of these men down to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these heretics rave about. (Ag. Her. 3:3:1)

Origen

When heretics show us the canonical Scriptures, in which every Christian believes and trusts they seem to be saying: ‘Lo, he is in the inner rooms’. But we must not believe them, nor leave the original tradition of the Church, nor believe otherwise than we have been taught by the succession in the Church of God.(Hom. Mt. 46)

Basil of Caesarea

While the unwritten traditions are so many, and their bearing on ‘the mystery of godliness’ is so important, can they refuse to allow us a single word which has come down to us from the Fathers—which we found, derived from untutored custom, abiding in unperverted churches—a word for which the arguments are strong, and which contributes in no small degree to the completeness of the force of the mystery? (On the Holy Spirit, 27:67)

Such, then, is basically the understanding which the Orthodox and Catholic communions have maintained regarding Tradition throughout their histories. And it should go without saying that, in the past, they never understood themselves as subordinating Scripture to Tradition. The way in which both are understood precludes even the possibility thereof. If we seek a further analogy to shed light on how the two relate to one another, perhaps the figure of a bicycle wheel would best bring the point home. Christ, the light of life and the Church would be the hub, Scripture would be the spokes, the world would be the pavement, and Tradition would be the wheel—‘where the rubber meets the road, so to speak—where Christian belief is applied either in praxis or as theological statement. The analogy is once again imperfect, and likewise, it would take quite a bit of philosophical precision interacting with historical data to do full justice to the issue. Yet the basic idea isn’t really difficult at all to grasp. Tradition provides the form wherein the orthodox doctrine of Christ is preserved and presented to the world (and as such, just with the tire in the above analogy, it must change in order to maintain its true form), along with serving as a guide for the interpretation of Scripture. Scripture, on the other hand, is something like the ultimate testimony of the Church’s faith, unchanging and therefore constantly in need of sound and sure interpretation, while at the same time being a mirror—the face of orthodoxy—which serves as a constant corrective and guide for the Church’s dogmatic proclamations and ecclesial practices. For the Orthodox and Catholic communions, the attitude is basically the same as it was during the patristic era—

Throughout the whole period Scripture and tradition ranked as complementary authorities, media different in form but coincident in content. To inquire which counted as superior or more ultimate is to pose the question in misleading and anachronistic terms. If Scripture was abundantly sufficient in principle, tradition was recognized as the surest clue to its interpretation, for in tradition the Church retained, as a legacy from the apostles which embedded in all the organs of her institutional life, an unerring grasp of the real purport and meaning of the revelation to which Scripture and tradition alike bore witness. (Kel-ECD, 47-48)

The result of this, of course, is that the Church fathers’ words carry weight. To this day, for example, any Orthodox theological work will almost certainly be loaded with quotations from the fathers, to the point that it is almost difficult to tell the difference between a work from the seventh, seventeenth, or twentieth century. Likewise, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is full of references not only to Scripture, but the fathers, councils, and church documents as well. Both Scripture and Tradition are assumed to have come from Christ, to the apostles, to the fathers, to the present, in a basically straight line. Of course, it would be an extreme exaggeration to act as though Scripture and Tradition, when joined, somehow manage to ‘clear up any possible ambiguity’, or any such thing. Though throwing decisive light on many questions, Tradition—left to itself—is capable of being taken in several different directions.

Hence it cannot be imagined that the dogmatic authority which Tradition brings with it serves as an instant ‘end all’ to theological questioning. As was mentioned above, with new times come new questions, and with new questions comes the need for new answers. This brings us to the issue of doctrinal development.

....well, that's it for that. i writ it hoping to be as agreeable as possible to Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. with folks like Farrell Till on the loose, i think we'd be better off seeing where we (can) agree rather than fighting over issues that have a chance of being solved.

that said, i continue with Jason's paragraphs re Tradition--

Who ever claimed that church tradition should be ignored?

**7** certainly not me, though i wonder what exactly you mean by the words "church" and "tradition"? at any rate, if you're happy with my definition of Tradition above, as i said, i'd be much happier agreeing than fighting...
ya said--

There are many factors to be taken into account when interpreting scripture, and church tradition is one of them.

**8** as i said, before i rejoice i need to know how, exactly, you define the key terms "church" and "tradition".
ya said--

But taking such traditions into account isn't equivalent to the assertion that the traditions of the Roman Catholic denomination are infallible.

**7** depends on what ya mean by "church", and what "traditions" ya accept :thumb:
ya said--

The church fathers defined the church and defined tradition in different ways.

**8** give me a definition that covers most of the bases.
ya said--

Do you agree with the premillennial traditions of Papias?

**7** don't know much about eschatology. i let my Protestant friends Dee Dee Warren and J. P. Holding take care of that. but, no, from what i know of it, i don't accept it.
i do, however, accept what Eusebius records of Papias in Eccl. Hist. 3:39, to the effect that "i do not think that i derived so much benefit from books as from the living voice of those that are still surviving."
do you agree with that?
ya said--

Do you agree with Irenaeus' tradition that Jesus lived to be over 40 years old?

**8** i don't even agree that Irenaeus said that given his citation of the gospels (which are clear regarding Jesus' age), and the lack of his followers to carry on such a teaching.
ya asked--

Do you agree with Cyprian's tradition of rejecting heretical baptism?

**7** mormons and jw's, heck yeah. so does my Church. do you agree with Cyprian that baptism is actually efficacious regarding salvation?
ya said--

Or Basil's tradition that Mary was a sinner?

**8** my, now that's something they didn't teach me in sunday school! seriously though, are you referring to the sermon "On Humility"? as i recall, he merely said she "doubted" while her Son was on the cross.
at any rate, do you agree with Basil that Mary is the Mother of God?
ya said--

The fathers didn't agree among themselves about how to define concepts such as the church and tradition, much less did they all agree with the Roman Catholic definitions.

**7** well said good sir fellow.
first, neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic communions maintain that everything every padre ever said is infallible. but you left quite a bit out, Jason, which i'm sure we'll be coming to. you remind me of the skeptic who can't see the clear testimony of the rez because of the seemingly hard to reconcile minor details in the separate gospel accounts.
second, i'm not so sure that any of the above could be called "traditions", properly speaking. this especially since, according to you, the fathers couldn't define it.
third, that they didn't agree 100% with (today's) Catholic teachings doesn't especially matter when doctrinal development is taken into account.
but, i suggest we settle on the big picture afor we move on to details. you say you agree that we need 'tradition'. you seem to want to side with the early padres. let's see what we come up with there.
rockoncoolman:thumb:

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 01:40 AM

**8** say hey Jason, aroooooooo! :yipee:
ya said--

I responded by telling you that your saying the Rosary is not sufficient grounds for me to conclude that you aren't saved.

**7** awesome! let it be known, according to Jason Engwer saying the Rosary is not definitely opposed to the gospel.
peace!

JasonTE

February 3rd 2003, 02:04 AM

phantaz sunlyk said:

Neither of these widespread assumptions is even close to the truth. Protestants, Catholic, and Orthodox all agree that Scripture is the authoritative word of God; that it cannot be gone against, and that all doctrine must come from Scripture. Insofar as all agree on this, we are on common ground.

There have been disputes within Roman Catholicism about whether scripture is materially sufficient (whether all doctrine is derived from scripture under the guidance of the church). For you to say that "all agree on this" is false. There have been, and there still are, disputes on this subject within your own denomination. Even though past generations of Roman Catholics often denied the material sufficiency of scripture, it's a historical fact that the concept is widespread in the patristic literature. In order to put forward an image of credibility, the acceptance of material sufficiency has become more popular in Roman Catholicism in recent times.

Tradition, I think, could loosely be described as Christian belief proclaimed and lived.

And why should anybody be persuaded by such looseness? It's ripe for abuse, and your denomination's history proves it. What's traditional in one generation is condemned as heresy by another generation. That's why we keep going back to the original revelation (2 Kings 22:8-13) rather than looking for an unbroken succession of true doctrine throughout church history. There was no such unbroken succession in the Old Testament era, and we haven't been promised any such thing in this New Testament era either. God's promise to preserve Israel didn't require an institution like the RCC or an infallible Vicar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, nor does His promise to preserve the Christian church. The church existed before Roman Catholicism, and it doesn't need Roman Catholicism in order to survive.

Both the spoken word and the written word carried the authority of God

Since the apostles are no longer preaching orally, we look to the written records they left us. The best argument for sola scriptura is process of elimination. The scriptures are God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Try proving that the same is true of the tradition of the Assumption of Mary. Or the papacy. Or numbering the sacraments at seven. Or the concept that all people must go through Mary in order to be saved. What Roman Catholicism asks us to add to scripture isn't as credible as scripture.

When we look at the earliest references to tradition among the church fathers, what do we find? We find some things that are insignificant and unverifiable, such as Papias' reference to how vegetation will grow during the millennial kingdom (Fragments, 4). Other traditions are false, such as Irenaeus' claim that Jesus lived to be over 50 years old (Against Heresies, 2:22:4-5). Some early references to tradition just refer to the oral teaching of what's written in scripture. Irenaeus, for example, refers to doctrines such as monotheism and the virgin birth as traditions of the church. The earliest references to tradition not only weren't the same as Roman Catholic tradition, but sometimes even contradicted Catholicism.

Written documents are generally a more reliable way of passing on information than oral tradition. Thus, Peter wrote down his teachings before his death, so that people would later be able to remember them (2 Peter 1:13-15, 3:1-2). Scripture equates all that the prophets spoke with all of scripture (Luke 24:25-27). However reliable oral traditions of apostolic teaching may have been during the time of Papias or Polycarp, it would be absurd to argue that they're just as reliable today.

When evangelicals and Catholics discuss what a church father like Irenaeus or Augustine believed, what sources do we consult? What if I was to tell Catholics that I know of an oral tradition of Irenaeus in which he contradicts Roman Catholic teaching? Would Catholics accept my claim of having an oral tradition from Irenaeus? No. When we want to know what a church father believed, we go to written documents.

There are no video tapes of Jesus teaching or audio tapes of Paul's instructions to church leaders. The Catholic complaint that evangelicals are being too narrow when they limit themselves to written documents is seen to be ridiculous when we consider the historical circumstances in question. By the time Roman Catholicism's unbiblical traditions arise in the historical record (the papacy, the Assumption of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, etc.), it's too late for such traditions to be anywhere near as credible as the written documents of the apostolic era.
The suggestion might be made that evangelicals are erring on the side of carefulness. They're being too careful. There might be some words of Jesus, some church practices, or something else in post-Biblical documents that were received from the apostles. While that possibility does exist, it would exist with any rule of faith. You could ask Catholics why they don't accept the oral traditions of Papias, for example. All of us have to make judgments about just where to draw the line. I don't think any non-Biblical tradition is so credible that it ought to be added to scripture as part of the Christian rule of faith.

If evangelicals go an inch too far into carefulness in one direction, then Catholics go a mile too far into carelessness in the other direction. There are many teachings of Catholicism that can't in any logical way be traced back to the apostles. Even many Roman Catholic theologians and apologists will refer to a doctrine like the papacy or the Assumption of Mary as just one possible interpretation of the evidence among others, something that didn't develop until hundreds of years after the time of Christ. I'd prefer not to err at all, but in this case erring on the side of carefulness is better than erring on the side of carelessness.

The implication is that the office of proclaiming Christian truth is perpetual and indefectible.

You quoted a passage from Isaiah and a passage from John's gospel. Of course, neither one says a thing about any infallible magisterium or Pope. Even if we assumed that such passages were referring to an unbroken succession of Christian doctrine, why would those doctrines have to be the doctrines of Roman Catholicism? Why not just doctrines such as the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the second coming, etc.?

You can't defend the claims of Roman Catholicism, so, instead, you're making a vague case for a nebulous concept of tradition that's ripe for abuse. It can be used to justify all sorts of heresies, even things as historically groundless as praying to the dead, venerating images, and the Assumption of Mary, for example. As I said before, if Protestants are erring on the side of carefulness by their adherence to sola scriptura, at least that's better than Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy careening out of control into one heresy after another in the name of Sacred Tradition.

JasonTE

February 3rd 2003, 02:45 AM

phantaz sunlyk said:

Likewise, we have no reason to expect that the final answer to questions that had not yet arisen would be addressed by the New Testament.

Your denomination teaches that public revelation has ceased:

"'The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries. Throughout the ages, there have been so-called 'private' revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church. Christian faith cannot accept 'revelations' that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such 'revelations'....God has revealed himself fully by sending his own Son, in whom he has established his covenant for ever. The Son is his Father's definitive Word; so there will be no further Revelation after him." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 66-67, 73)

Pope Pius IX wrote:

"For the Church of Christ, watchful guardian that she is, and defender of the dogmas deposited with her, never changes anything, never diminishes anything, never adds anything to them; but with all diligence she treats the ancient documents faithfully and wisely" (Ineffabilis Deus)

And your citation of Acts 15 is irrelevant, since that council was attended by apostles. The same cannot be said of the Fourth Lateran Council, the First Vatican Council, the Second Vatican Council, etc. To compare a council led by apostles to a council held by the Roman Catholic denomination is a false comparison.

Though it would be interesting to investigate the relationship between this authoritative office and Church praxis, such an endeavor is beyond our scope here. The point is simply that the Church was understood as being invested with a certain guarantee as regards the maintenance of articles of faith, along with a promise of indefectibility in the further elaboration and explanation of those articles in future generations. That this fact wasn’t lost on the Church fathers is so obvious from their writings that it hardly needs to be pointed out.

You then go on to quote Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Origen, and Basil. All four of those fathers contradicted the Roman Catholic definition of tradition. I've documented numerous examples in my Catholic, But Not Roman Catholic series:

http://www.ntrmin.org/catholic_but_not_roman_catholic_index.htm

In fact, in the June 17 segment of my series, I quote the same passage from Basil that you've cited. I also quote what you left out. Basil goes on to tell us what unwritten traditions he's referring to, and he includes traditions that are rejected by Roman Catholicism. The same can be said of the traditions of Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, and Origen. Why cite such people when their beliefs and the church they believed in contradict yours?

I've already documented Athanasius saying that scripture is sufficient by itself. In his day, the majority of churches, including the Roman church, were supporting the Arian heresy. As Athanasius explained, the faith was sufficient without the churches (Festal Letter 29). Similarly, Augustine tells us that ecumenical councils can err, and he rejects the concept of a papacy:

"But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them" (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 2:3)

The result of this, of course, is that the Church fathers’ words carry weight. To this day, for example, any Orthodox theological work will almost certainly be loaded with quotations from the fathers, to the point that it is almost difficult to tell the difference between a work from the seventh, seventeenth, or twentieth century. Likewise, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is full of references not only to Scripture, but the fathers, councils, and church documents as well.

Do you want to know how to tell the difference between the church fathers and Orthodoxy and Catholicism? Compare what the fathers of the first few centuries said about the veneration of images to what those two groups teach today. Compare the earliest fathers' premillennialism to the amillennialism of the RCC. Compare the earliest fathers' rejection of Purgatory to the RCC's teaching on the subject. Compare the patristic view that Mary is a sinner to the Roman Catholic view that she was sinless from conception onward. Compare the widespread rejection of transubstantiation among the fathers to its being dogmatized in Roman Catholicism. Compare the public confession of sins in the early church to the private confession to a priest practiced today. Etc. To attribute such changes to development of doctrine is an argument that can be used to justify anything. And since it proves anything, it proves nothing.

You asked whether I agree with what the church fathers taught. I'm not the one claiming that the church fathers were members of my denomination passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession. Since the RCC makes heavier claims about the church fathers, it carries a heavier burden of proof.

You suggested that the fathers' disagreements with Roman Catholicism were minor. No, they were of major significance. When nobody for hundreds of years refers to Mary as sinless, while church fathers around the world and Roman bishops refer to her as a sinner, that's not just a minor problem for Roman Catholicism. It's a major problem. It's a direct contradiction of the claims of the RCC, such as the claims made in Pope Pius IX's decree Ineffabilis Deus. Likewise, when the fathers of the earliest centuries repeatedly condemn the veneration of images, or repeatedly advocate a non-papal system of church government, or deny the doctrine of Purgatory, for example, those aren't just minor disagreements among a minority of people. Rather, it's a matter of Roman Catholic doctrines being absent and widely contradicted for hundreds of years.

See the following article at my web site, in which I document the RCC saying that doctrines absent or contradicted for hundreds of years were always held by the Christian church:

http://members.aol.com/jasonte2/develop.htm

If your denomination claims that doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception and private confession to a priest were always held by the Christian church, how can you appeal to a process of doctrinal development to explain why such doctrines were absent or contradicted for centuries?

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 07:09 PM

**8** ah hem.
a bit of a letdown. no positive statements at all regarding tradition and its relationship to Scripture, clumsy usage of Scripture as though it were a newspaper written yesterday, and prooftexting of the padres like a JW apologist.
i'll be back later ... with a clear headed presentation of doctrinal development (being that concept which you say you believe in, yet, as with "tradition" and "church", you only speak with definiteness with regard thereto when you have something bad to say about the Catholic Church's alleged misuse of it).
see ya in Oz?

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 08:31 PM

B. Doctrinal Development

About four hundred years after the death of the apostles, and seventy five after the Council of Constantinople, which put the finishing touch on the dogmatic formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity; twenty years after the Nestorian controversy; one year before the Council of Chalcedon was completed; and three hundred and some years before the second council of Nicea—the ‘triumph of orthodoxy’ and the last of the ‘seven ecumenical councils’—was finished; Vincent of Lerins gazed over the course of the Church’s history and into its future, and made an observation regarding the faith ‘once and for all delivered to the saints’—
But perhaps someone is saying: “Will there, then, be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ?” Certainly there is, and the greatest. For who is there so envious toward men and so exceedingly hateful toward God, that he would try to prohibit progress? But it is truly progress and not a change of faith. What is meant by progress is that something is brought to an advancement within itself; by change, something is transformed from one thing into another. It is necessary, therefore, that understanding, knowledge, and wisdom grow and advance strongly and mightily as much in individuals as in the group, as much in one man as in the whole Church, and this gradually according to age and the times; and this must take place precisely within its own kind, that is, in the same teaching, in the same meaning, and in the same opinion. The progress of religion in souls is like the growth of bodies, which, in the course of years, evelve and develop, but still remain what they were. (Comm., 23:28-29)

With this, we have a fairly precise definition of what has come to be known as the development of doctrine, which basically explains exactly how and why a faith which is unchangeable can nevertheless grow and expand in some sense. It is no irony that this definition was given by the very man who told us that we are only to accept as true ‘that which has been believed everywhere, by all, and at all times’—without doctrinal development, this would be impossible. As Newman somewhere remarked, in characteristically paradoxical and precise fashion, ‘to be is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’

The realization of this fact hadn’t been completely lost on the fathers, though an exact articulation of it wasn’t to come until perhaps the greatest mind of the 19th century—the above mentioned John Henry Cardinal Newman—heroically fought through a personal crisis in coming to terms with it. In the classic The City of God, Augustine remarked in passing that when the ‘restlessness of heretics stirs up questions about many things belonging to the Catholic faith, in order to provide a defense against these heretic we are obliged to study the points questioned more diligently, to understand them more clearly, and to preach them more forcefully; and thus the question raised by the adversary becomes the occasion of instruction.’ (16:2:1) This would seem to give only a negative account for doctrinal development, as though it only occurred due to the claims of heretics. Yet two hundred years prior to Augustine, Origen seems to have glimpsed the positive aspect when he remarked ‘that the holy Apostles, in preaching the faith of Christ, treated with the utmost clarity of certain matters which they believed to be of absolute necessity to all believers, even to those who seemed somewhat dull in regard to the investigation of divine knowledge. Naturally, they left the grounds of their assertions to be investigated by those who would deserve the excellent gifts of the Spirit … indeed, they stated that certain things are so; but as to the how and the wherefore of their being so they were silent.’ (De. Princ. 1: preface: 3) Likewise, Irenaeus claimed that the faith of the Church continuously ‘has its youth renewed by the Spirit of God, as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel; and it causes the vessel containing it also to be rejuvenated.’ (Ag. Her. 3:24:1)

Indeed, when the fact of the complexity of human culture, growth, and progress is taken into account; alongside the distinctness of each particular society; and also the intellectual potential of societies and religious communities; and when it is added to this that the gospel must interact with these within a course of history, the necessity of doctrinal development advances with such clarity that no argument beyond a purely a priori need be given in its defense. A few passages in Scripture seem to stand out, as almost explicit advocates of doctrinal development. For example, in Jn. 14:26, Christ promises that ‘the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things’. Yet another is to be found in Mt. 13:31f., wherein Christ states that the Kingdom of heaven ‘is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’ Mk. 4:26f is a yet more exact illustration of this principle. Christ states that the ‘kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground’ and ‘the seed would sprout and grow’. The plant does not enter the world full grown, though when it is full grown it will be substantially identical with the seed which came in the first place, as ‘the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.’

Regarding this last passage, Newman comments that ‘an internal element of life, whether principle or doctrine, is spoken of rather than any mere external manifestation; and it is observable that the spontaneous, as well as the gradual, character of the growth is intimated’, and that the development ‘comes of its own innate power of expansion within the mind in its season, though with the use of reflection and argument and original thought, more or less as it may happen, with a dependence on the ethical growth of the mind itself, and with a reflex influence upon it.’ (New-EDCD, 2:1:16) Now, that Newman was a theologian and patristic historian of the highest order no one would doubt. In his seminal work on the ‘encounter of Christian thought and Classical culture’ in the Cappadocian Fathers, the present day world authority on the history of Christian doctrine—Jaroslav Pelikan—notes that when ‘the Gifford Lectures were inaugurated in 1881, the most eminent religious thinker in the British Isles—who was by almost universal consensus, John Henry Newman, eighty years old but destined to live on for almost another decade—was not named the first encumbent’, and he compares this slight to ‘the failure a few years later to confer the first Nobel prize in literature on Leo Tolstoy’, while going on to state F. L. Cross in support of the fact that there ‘was perhaps no one in any country who, in the first half of the nineteenth century, had a greater knowledge of Athanasius than Newman.’ (Pel-CCC, 5) Yet as with all great figures in the world of religion and ideas, Newman’s work is quite capable of being abused and distorted. Clever readers will, in light of the quotation from Newman at the top of this paragraph, understand how this could come about. The questions that immediately need to be answered could be stated, in summary fashion, thusly—‘If we grant that Christian doctrine continually grows, how then can anyone state with certainty which change is true to the original revelation, and which is a departure therefrom? Have we not, in granting the idea of development, taken away the only yardstick available for the measuring of Christian truth—that yardstick being an objective and utterly fixed, unmovable, and unambiguous norm? Has the door not been opened which would allow any distortion of doctrine whatever to enter the Church?’, etc.
Such questions are certainly valid. It must be granted that it is by no means ‘easy’ to tell, at first glance, which doctrines are authentic and which are inauthentic in the same sense in which it is ‘easy’ to immediately be able to distinguish between a college and a grade school book on mathematics. In other words, just as with Tradition, the idea of doctrinal development—though it goes a considerable distance in disambiguating between the claimants to orthodoxy—is not an immediate ‘epistemic salve’ which makes everything crystal clear. (cf. Swi-RMA, 101-224) Yet granting as much, Newman offers seven ‘notes’ to help us in our search.

...to be continued

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 08:37 PM

...

Newman begins by distinguishing between an authentic development and a corruption. He notes that it may be objected that ‘an intellectual development may be in one sense natural, and yet untrue to its original, as diseases come of nature, yet are the destruction, or rather the negation of health; that the causes which stimulate the growth of ideas may also disturb and deform them; and that Christianity might indeed have been intended by its Divine Author for a wide expansion of the ideas proper to it, and yet this great benefit hindered by the evil birth of cognate errors which acted as its counterfeit; in a word, that what I have called developments in the Roman Church are nothing more or less than what used to be called her corruptions; and that new names do not destroy old grievances.’ (New-EDCD, 5:pref.:2) Newman goes on to illustrate what, exactly, a corruption is with an analogy. ‘Corruption … is the breaking up of life, preparatory to its termination. This resolution of a body into its component parts is the stage before its dissolution; it begins when life has reached its perfection, and it is the sequel, or rather the continuation, of that process towards perfection, being at the same time the reversal and undoing of what went before. Till this point of regression is reached, the body has a function of its own, and a direction and aim in its action, and a nature with laws; these it is now losing, and the traits and tokens of former years; and with them its vigour and powers of nutrition, of assimilation, and of self-reparation. (New-EDCD, 5:pref.:3)

Newman then goes on to lay out the above mentioned seven ‘notes’ whereby we might distinguish a development from a corruption. ‘There is no corruption if it retains one and the same type, the same principles, the same organization; if its beginnings anticipate its subsequent phases, and its later phenomena protect and subserve its earlier; if it has a power of assimilation and revival, and a vigorous action from first to last.’ (New-EDCD, 5:pref.:4) The remainder of Newman’s work consists of articulating, in the abstract, what exactly these seven notes consist of, followed by a demonstration of their application within Scripture and the history of Christianity in contradistinction to doctrinal corruptions. A brief word will be given in regard to each of these seven before moving on.

The ‘preservation of type’ may be found, in more or less satisfactory a manner, in following something along the lines of what philosophers call ‘the criteria of identity’. Newman draws on Vincent of Lerins’ analogy with the human body. Though it grows, such that it isn’t at each moment absolutely identical with its appearance at previous moments, it remains always substantially identical with itself in the past. The Markan parable noted above is also valuable in demonstration of this theme. It is not merely the identity of external appearance over time which guarantees the identity of type; rather, it is the harmonious coordination of the actuality of a body or idea with the internal form which it possessed from its inception.

Second, we have the ‘continuity of principles’. Newman states that doctrines develop ‘by the operation of principles, and develop variously according to those principles.’ In illustration of this, he points out that ‘a belief in the transitiveness of worldly goods leads the Epicurean to enjoyment, and the ascetic to mortification’—the form in each case being determined by the underlying principles which the various parties accept. (New-EDCD, 5:2:2) He then points out that the ‘science of grammar affords another instance of special laws in the formation of systems. Some languages have more elasticity than others, and greater capabilities; and the difficulty of explaining the fact cannot lead us to doubt it. There are languages, for instance, which have a capacity for compound words, which, we cannot tell why, is in matter of fact denied to others. We feel the presence of a certain character or genius in each, which determines its path and its range’, and that the manifestations of a distinctive body or idea are ‘exhibited in particular instances … which rules their formation on certain, though subtle, determinations’—the particular principles which govern it. (New-EDCD, 5:2:4) Citing at random the Incarnation of the Word, Newman briefly lays out nine distinctively Christian principles that follow therefrom—dogma, the definitive revelation of supernatural truths; faith, ‘the absolute acceptance of the divine Word with an internal assent’; theology, the analysis of and inferences drawn from the articles of faith; sacramentalism, the communication of sanctification through matter; the mystical sense of Scripture, the investing of the literal word ‘with a sacramental office’ vis-à-vis revealed truth; grace, being the unmerited gift of God whereby we are sanctified; asceticism, as we cannot be brought to the perfection of God’s will for us ‘without mortifying our lower nature’; the malignity of sin, which makes evident to us our distance from God; and the capability of the sanctification of matter, which restores nature to its proper glory and intrinsic harmony with the spiritual element within man. (New-EDCD, 7:1:4)

Next we have ‘the power of assimilation’, which might be described as a body or idea taking into itself that which is external to itself, whereby it transforms the external element and brings it into accordance with the idea or body, while simultaneously achieving growth in conformity to its own type and principles. Good examples of this would be C. S. Lewis’s use of mythic-poetic literature and imagination in order to throw light on Christianity within a context of ‘joy’; Aquinas’ use of Aristotle, whose thought ‘had to be baptized before it was put to use for the Church’; Pseudo-Dionysius’ use of neo-Platonic language and thought categories in order to articulate Christian mysticism and construct an ‘apophatic theology’; and the 2nd century Apologists’ use of the Stoic and Platonic concept of ‘the Logos’ in order to articulate the specifically Christian notion of ‘natural revelation’, which was fully manifest in a specifically historical instance in the Incarnation of the Son of God. In each of these cases, we see something brought into Christianity which was initially, to greater and lesser extents, foreign to it; yet it doesn’t corrupt Christianity—quite the contrary—Christianity ‘purges’ the foreign element and transforms it, using it in its own service. ‘The stronger and more living is an idea, that is, the more powerful hold it exercises on the minds of men, the more able is it to dispense with safeguards, and trust itself against the danger of corruption.’ (New-EDCD, 5:3:5)

The application of this note is of especial interest for we who are mainstream Christians when defending this or that doctrine or custom which is claimed to be ‘of pagan origin’. Heretics, for example, are quite fond of pointing to this or that practice of Christians, such as Christmas or Easter, while pointing out that these things were originally part of paganism. Newman’s comments are enlightening here. Whereas the heretic claims, ‘”These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:” we on the contrary, prefer to say, “these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.” That is, we prefer to say, and we think Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed—but living—and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;” claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world …’ (New-EDCD, 8:2:12)

The fourth note is ‘logical sequence’. By this Newman doesn’t mean so much the arriving at theological conclusions by analytic deductions so much as the progression of a doctrine’s application and articulation throughout history. He cites, among other things, the growth of monasticism as an instance in illustration. The monastic way of life is both an acute attitude of penance, which is but the consequence of the monks’ acute realization of his own wretchedness before God; also it is a devotion to and adoration of God for his own sake which encapsulates the whole of the monks’ existence. Monasticism began with St. Antony of Egypt, who, when the Church was becoming popular in the secular world, withdrew into the desert to ‘fight the devil’ and draw near God. Soon, many sought him out and desired to live in like manner. Antony’s followers were brought together in small communities, ‘living together alone’ to greater or lesser extents. The cenobitic form of monasticism was put into a more definite form by St. Benedict, the ‘father or western monasticism’, who formulated a synthesis of solitude and community life, formed around the principles originally implicit in Antony’s retreat into the desert, in The Rule of St. Benedict, which to this day is the guide for Catholic monks. The eremitic form of monasticism was developed gradually and in different ways, yet in each case it distinctly expressed that which it was a continuation of. In the East, the tradition of the Desert Fathers was further developed in line with the doctrine of theosis, and given a definite stamp by St. Gregory Palamas’ classic defense of hesychastic prayer. In the West, St. Bruno founded the Carthusian Order, whose extreme solitude and arduous way of life is the closest thing the Catholic Church has to the Eastern hermit; St. Romuald founded the Camaldolese Order, whose ‘threefold good’—the life of solitude, community, and evangelism—provides a synthesis of the eremitic life and the communal life. Each of the above serve as examples of the logical sequence of the specifically Christian notions of penance and the love of God; each of them individually, the logical continuation of particular aspects thereof throughout the course of history. Sections III. C and III. D below will deal more fully with some of the specific ways aspects of monasticism develop theology in Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

...to be continued...

spl_cadet

February 3rd 2003, 09:06 PM

:munches some popcorn: :duh:

Y'know, we could just end this debate and show the Church is right by using the "argument from orthodoxy" (concieved of by me, unless someone else did it first and I did it independently of them). Namely, while remembering Christ's promise about His Church in Matthew 16:18, see who has stuck to orthodoxy. One thing I can think of that where all but the Catholic Church moved into heterodoxy is a doctrinal change first starting in 1930 with the Anglican's Lambeth Conference.

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 09:33 PM

...

Moving along, we come to the ‘anticipation of its future’, the fifth note. By this Newman means that the explicit doctrinal statements of later generations will be shown to be evident implicitly in the testimony of earlier generations, demonstrating, when viewed historically, continuity with and fruition of that which preceded them. The first example that comes to mind, of course, is the explicit definition of the Church’s Trinitarian faith as defined in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. As modern day Arians are ever happy to point out, this Creed is not to be found explicitly in either Scripture or the ante-Nicene testimony. Yet we who are orthodox in faith would respond that, granting the explicit formulation isn’t there, the Wisdom Christology evident in the New Testament and subsequent generations of the Church, alongside the understanding of the Spirit as God’s personal and empowering presence in both believers and the Church as a whole, cannot but vindicate the exact formulation given in the Nicene era. As this issue has been covered in depth elsewhere on Tekton, I feel no need to bring forth further evidence here.

Newman’s sixth note is ‘a conservative action upon its past’. Contrasted with an authentic development which is conservative upon its past, a corruption ‘is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous history.’ (New-EDCD, 5:6:1) The movement from seed to blossom is development; from blossom to withering is a corruption. In the former case we have a growth ‘which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds’. (New-EDCD, 5:6:2) A corruption, on the other hand, doesn’t cease to ‘develop’—rather, its development doesn’t coincide with those developments which occurred up to that point.

The final note is ‘chronic vigour’, or, in other words, ‘endurance’. A corrupt doctrine won’t remain the same over time, it will change essential forms again and again. Such is the case with the various heretical groups which deny the deity of Christ, the adherents of which are ever ready to deny both that we Trinitarians are orthodox, and that those who in the past likewise fought against the Trinity can be identified with them. JW’s are as unwilling to identify themselves with Arius as they are with St. Alexander of Alexandria, and Christadelphians think that JW’s are as far off the mark as are Trinitarians, yet both the JW and the Christadelphian hold in common the belief that Jesus is not God. Hence the Trinitarian can illustrate his Christology in a straight line throughout the course of history, from Jesus to St. John, from St. John to St. Ignatius, from St. Ignatius to St. Irenaeus, from St. Irenaeus to Origen, from Origen to St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, from St. Gregory Thaumaturgus to St. Athanasius, from St. Athanasius to St. Gregory Nazianzen, and so forth and so on to Ss. Augustine, Maximus Confessor, John Damascene, Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Gregory Palamas, and up into the present. The heretic can claim no such lineage, neither with regard to the prestige nor the existence of its members. It is possible to point to the Ebionites, Paul of Samsoata, Arius, Eunomius, Charles Taze Russel and other such unfortunate figures in the history of Christianity, and claim of all of them that they denied the deity of Christ. Yet at the same time, that common thread which joins each of their Christologies proves equally destructive to their individual theologies, for it is the only thing they really agree on. Such theologies lack the essential note of ‘chronic vigor’; they are all bound by a common error which takes a form for a brief period of time before dying out. Authentic doctrine, on the other hand, re-asserts itself throughout the course of history, and being in the world yet not of the world, perpetuates.

Such, then, is the basic idea of authentic doctrinal development as issued by Newman. Development is neither change nor a departure from the past; it is the explicit articulation of that which has until then been held implicitly, the application of truth revealed in the past within present categories, and so on. In the words of perhaps the 20th century’s greatest Eastern Orthodox theologian, Dumitru Staniloae, “Through its very fidelity to the deeds and words of Christ as these are known from apostolic preaching, theology can still advance in understanding without going beyond the content of revelation. … Progress in the understanding of dogmas is possible … because their content is infinite and hence apophatic (ineffable), that is, it can never be comprehended in notions or words that might exhaust it. … Progress takes the form of an emphasis placed more strongly now on one aspect of the inexhaustible richness of dogmas and now on another, according to the preoccupations and the spiritual development of the faithful at a particular time. But the aspect that receives this greater emphasis opens up an increased understanding of the whole content of the dogmas and gives promise of future advancement in understanding it.” (Sta-ODT1, 90-92

...well then, enough of that. let's see what cap'n anti-Popery had to say about doctrinal development.
jason saith--

What sort of doctrinal development are you referring to? We have to distinguish between possibilities and probabilities.

**8** uh huh, more of that top notch mind going full steam. "possible" and "probable" based on what, and what comes of being in either category, and whence the defence for this conclusion?
just like before, you show absolutely no ability at analytic precision whatever, hence the context is sufficiently vague for you to be able to drivel on the ground and turn what could be a dialogue into a mud-puddle.
Tradition--no definition; Development--no definition. oh well, we takes what we gets.
jason saith--

Trinitarian doctrines such as the deity of the Holy Spirit and the two natures of Christ, for example, are the probable or certain conclusion to apostolic teaching. You can't avoid Trinitarian conclusions if you follow what Jesus and the apostles taught.

**7** ha, as though "probable" isn't identical with "possible"? and ignoring the pathetic imprecision that it seems as though i'm going to be forced to deal with, i think you overestimate the explicitness of Scripture with regards to the Trinity given the way you treat the text. i'm friends with a JW who could kick you into Pluto's orbit going by the bible only.
jason doth quote--

cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture" - Athanasius (De Synodis, 6)

**8** pgs. 824-849 of Hanson's _The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God_ are recommended. the orthodox position was upheld via the mystical interpretation of Scripture, and it was the Arian party who were the Sola Scripturians par excellence.
jason quoteth--

throw light upon the more obscure, and use the evidence of passages about which there is no doubt to remove all hesitation in regard to the doubtful passages." - Augustine (On Christian Doctrine, 2:9)

**7** aye, Augustine, whose most important OT citations in establishing the deity of Christ come from Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon. out of curiousity, how much light gets thrown on passages from those books when you read your Bible?
thus spake jason--

Such cannot be said of the papacy, papal infallibility, the sinlessness of Mary, private confession to a priest, numbering the sacraments at seven, etc.

**8** what, exactly, "cannot be said"? of course, i can find padres backing up every Catholic doctrine--it just depends on knowing where to look, and if need be, 'when' to look. speaking of which, i didn't see much "crystal clear following of logic" brought about by you to show that the ante-Nicene's likewise clearly (according to your doctrinal cognitive ability) believed in the deity of Christ.
go ahead and try it...
ye say--

To the contrary, many of the doctrinal developments of Roman Catholicism contradict what Jesus and the apostles taught.

**7** your grasp on what either Jesus, or the apostles taught will be dealt with in future posts, provided you don't bore me to death before to long.
the word of jason came to phantaz sunlyk, saying--

To develop Trinitarian doctrine, you need only follow apostolic teaching to its logical end.

**8** hmm. the persons who started Mormonism, the JW's, and the Christadelphians came from a Sola Scriptura background...
jason saith--

To develop the sinlessness of Mary, however, you must reject Biblical references to Mary sinning,

**7** show it.
jason doth say--

along with hundreds of years of church fathers and Roman bishops referring to her as a sinner,

**8** uh huh. is this anything like your "crystal clear" quote from Basil, in which i wouldn't have had a chance to have drawn the conclusion you desired had you not put it into my head beforehand?
thus spake jason--

in favor of an unverifiable, speculative doctrine of later church history. The two aren't in the same category.

**7** had ya fun yet spazzo? next we start from the ground up. Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. if you keep up with your unwillingness to simply follow the course of history, in a straight line, without jumping off into ten thousand different tangents, i'll drop you altogether.
here comes santy clause, here comes santy clause
:bonk:

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 09:41 PM

:yipee:

good to have ya aboard prodigy! bring a mop and stick around, i'll need ya help. cap'n Jason has hisself a whole website of organized confusion to cut and paste.

peace in Christ :thumb:

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 09:46 PM

**8** yo homey, ya said--

In his day, the majority of churches, including the Roman church, were supporting the Arian heresy.

**7** (cough). prove it.

Chuck_D

February 3rd 2003, 10:33 PM

Hey Phantaz,

I'd like to jump in from the sidelines and ask: would you mind giving a practical application of the factors for Doctrinal Development that you listed to validate one the Catholic doctrines considered "really bad" by us Protestants? Maybe the Pope as the Vicar of Christ or veneration of Mary (whichever you'd prefer to tackle.)

I've got mixed feelings about the factors in your DD post, and maybe seeing them in action will help evaluate em.

phantaz sunlyk

February 3rd 2003, 10:57 PM

**7** say hey chuck d--

I'd like to jump in from the sidelines and ask: would you mind giving a practical application of the factors for Doctrinal Development that you listed to validate one the Catholic doctrines considered "really bad" by us Protestants?

http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter4.html
sections 2 & 3
be sure and hit me up with any comments, criticisms, etc., you may have.
peace in Christ

Chuck_D

February 3rd 2003, 11:20 PM

Thanks Phantaz,

I'll holla when I have a chance to go through em.

JasonTE

February 4th 2003, 01:52 PM

phantaz sunlyk,

Considering that there's much in my earlier posts that you haven't responded to, why would you criticize me for not discussing the subjects you want me to discuss? If you want me to address development of doctrine or some other subject at more length, why don't you address more of what I've written? If you're only going to respond to portions of what I've written, then don't expect me to address everything you write.

Your claim to want to follow a "straight line" in history, beginning with Clement of Rome, without "jumping off", is contradicted by your own posts. You've raised a wide variety of issues (veneration of images, the Rosary, the eucharist, etc.), and you've cited sources spanning hundreds of years (Irenaeus, Basil, etc.). For you to now claim that you want to follow a "straight line" through history, beginning with the earliest fathers, is absurd. And for you to tell me that you'll "drop me" if I don't do as you wish is ridiculous, considering that I'm the one who started this thread, and you're in no position to demand that I follow your tangents. Your lengthy citations of Cardinal Newman hardly qualify as a "straight line" from the beginning of church history.

I've given examples of Roman Catholic doctrine being widely contradicted among the church fathers. I've cited Roman Catholic documents claiming that such doctrines have always been held by the Christian church. If a doctrine was absent or widely contradicted for hundreds of years, while Roman Catholicism claims that it was always held by the Christian church, how does development of doctrine explain that contrast? It doesn't.

If church fathers and Roman bishops for hundreds of years refer to Mary as a sinner, which is demonstrably the case, how does one justify the claims in Pope Pius IX's Ineffabilis Deus by appealing to development of doctrine? In the West, we find Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, and others, including Roman bishops, denying that Mary was sinless from conception onward. In the East:

"On the other hand, almost all Eastern theologians, so far from acknowledging her [Mary's] spiritual and moral perfection, followed Origen in finding her guilty of human frailties. Basil, for example, reproduced Origen's interpretation of the sword prophesied by Simeon as signifying her loss of faith at the crucifixion. Chrysostom went much further" (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978], p. 495)

Even sources that refer to her as sinless in some sense, such as Ephraim and Augustine, refer to her as a sinner in other contexts. They believed that she became sinless later in life. Augustine tells us that it was the universal belief of the church of his day that Christ was the only immaculately conceived human (On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, 2:47-48). Yet, Pope Pius IX wrote:

"The Catholic Church, directed by the Holy Spirit of God, is the pillar and base of truth and has ever held as divinely revealed and as contained in the deposit of heavenly revelation this doctrine concerning the original innocence of the august Virgin -- a doctrine which is so perfectly in harmony with her wonderful sanctity and preeminent dignity as Mother of God -- and thus has never ceased to explain, to teach and to foster this doctrine age after age in many ways and by solemn acts." (Ineffabilis Deus)

These claims of the Pope are demonstrably false. How does the belief that Mary was a sinner develop into the concept that she was sinless from conception onward? That's not development. That's contradiction. The same can be said with regard to the premillennialism of the earliest church fathers, their rejection of the veneration of images, etc. When Roman Catholicism claims that something absent or contradicted for hundreds of years was a belief always held by the Christian church, development of doctrine doesn't explain the contradiction between the RCC's claims and the facts of history. When a belief is rejected and replaced with its opposite, that isn't development. It's contradiction. Replacing the sinfulness of Mary with the sinlessness of Mary isn't development. Replacing the rejection of the veneration of images with the acceptance of it isn't development. Etc.

Even when there is no contradiction, the development isn't necessarily valid. For example, why should we accept the development of privately confessing sins to a priest? Or numbering the sacraments at seven? You might as well publicly confess sins to a deacon or number the sacraments at nine. If you're going to appeal to the alleged authority of the RCC as a validation of such developments, then how can the authority of the RCC be a development itself? As I explained earlier, the doctrine of the papacy, which is the heart of the RCC's authority claims, was absent and contradicted in the earliest generations of Christianity. To accept the numbering of the sacraments at seven or the Assumption of Mary, for example, on the basis of the authority of the RCC is a fallacious argument, since the authority of the RCC is itself an unproven development of doctrine.

You've raised a number of straw men. You mentioned that Augustine cited from books that aren't in my canon of scripture in order to argue for Trinitarian doctrine. He also said that the books that are in my canon are sufficient to prove the Trinity. The fact that he also cited other material doesn't disprove my argument. Augustine's view of authority is rejected by Roman Catholicism, and so is his canon of scripture. (He accepted the Septuagint version of 1 Esdras, which is a different book than the Roman Catholic 1 Esdras. See The City of God 18:36.) Yes, Augustine disagreed with me in accepting a different canon of scripture. But I don't claim that Augustine was a member of my denomination. His disagreements with Roman Catholicism are more significant than his disagreements with me, since Roman Catholicism does claim Augustine as one of its members. As I said before, if you make heavier claims, you bear a heavier burden of proof. Roman Catholicism makes different claims about the church fathers than Protestants do.

You said that you can cite a church father supporting each doctrine of the RCC. Well, Catholics don't even agree among themselves about what the doctrines of the RCC are. They don't even agree about how to define their rule of faith. One will tell you that four papal decrees are infallible. Another will tell you that papal infallibility has been exercised only twice. And somebody else will give you some other number. They disagree with each other about which papal decrees are authoritative, which portions of which councils represent infallible teaching, etc.

But among those doctrines that most conservative Roman Catholics agree on, is there patristic support for every one of them? No. Who among the church fathers numbered the sacraments at seven in the same way that Trent did, for example? But even if a doctrine was supported by a church father, what does that prove? For example, we can find support for the Assumption of Mary among fathers who lived a few hundred years or more after the time of the apostles. But the doctrine is absent and contradicted prior to that time. Epiphanius, a father of the fourth century, tells us that no tradition had been passed down from the apostles regarding the end of Mary's life. And we know that later sources that advocated the doctrine were influenced by the apocryphal literature where the doctrine makes its first appearance. That apocryphal literature was condemned as heretical by numerous Roman bishops. So, why should we be impressed with the fact that some fathers living a few hundred years after the apostles accepted an assumption of Mary under the influence of an apocryphal, heretical source?

"The doctrine [of the Assumption of Mary] first emerged in various New Testament apocrypha of the 4th cent., and on the strength of a passage in pseudo-Dionysius became accepted in orthodox circles by the 7th cent. Finally in 1950 Pope Pius XII, in the decree Munificentissimus Deus, defined it as a divinely revealed dogma, making claims that have little historical support: 'This truth is based on Sacred Scripture,...it has received the approval of liturgical worship from the earliest times, it is perfectly in keeping with the rest of revealed truth.' What is clearly true is the recognition that it is 'deeply embedded in the minds of the faithful' (or at least many of them), and on this basis it was declared and defined as a dogma revealed by God" (The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions [Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999], John Bowker, editor, p. 101)

I've documented the RCC claiming that every one of its teachings was always held by the Christian church, passed down in unbroken succession. For you to try to recast such claims in light of Newman's speculations, so that centuries of rejection of Roman Catholic teaching among the church fathers becomes consistent with a Catholic view of church history, is a line of argumentation that any group could use to justify any belief system. As I said before, it proves anything, so it proves nothing. Telling us that oak trees grow from acorns isn't a sufficient response when I've documented that the early church believed in apple seeds, not acorns. For example, the patristic belief that Mary was a sinner isn't an acron that grows into the oak of the sinlessness of Mary. Rather, what you're doing is trying to derive an oak tree from an apple seed.

You said that a Jehovah's Witness could argue against the deity of Christ from scripture. As I've documented, the church fathers disagreed with you. They thought that such doctrines are clear in scripture. This is another example of you rejecting what the church fathers believed.

But what if the deity of Christ wasn't clear in scripture? Would it logically follow that the authority claims of the RCC are true, or that we need some infallible institution to interpret the scriptures for us? No. You can't just assume that the deity of Christ is a true doctrine, then go looking for some authority that will verify the doctrine for you. That's putting the cart before the horse. All that your argument has done so far is lead us to the conclusion that the deity of Christ isn't supported by the evidence. You've done nothing to prove that it should be accepted on the basis of some non-Biblical authority, much less on the basis of the RCC's alleged authority.

If you want Biblical arguments for Trinitarian doctrine, I would suggest J.P. Holding's material and Glenn Miller's, among others. For example:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/trin01.html

But, as I said before, whether Trinitarian doctrine is Biblical doesn't settle the matter of the RCC's authority claims. Rather than making vague arguments about tradition and development of doctrine, you need to produce detailed historical verification of the RCC's authority claims. You haven't done that, and you cannot do it.

JasonTE

February 4th 2003, 02:47 PM

By the way, phantaz sunlyk said that the Arians adhered to sola scriptura, and he challenged my claim that the Arian heresy was accepted by the large majority. Actually, the Arians didn't just argue from scripture. They held their own church councils, attended by hundreds of bishops. Augustine, when arguing against Arianism, objected to their citation of Arian councils, and said that both sides should appeal to scripture alone instead.

Jerome tells us that "the whole world" was Arian:

"For the Emperor and all good men had one and the same aim, that the East and West should be knit together by the bond of fellowship. But wickedness does not long lie hid, and the sore that is healed superficially before the bad humour has been worked off breaks out again. Valens and Ursacius and others associated with them in their wickedness, eminent Christian bishops of course, began to wave their palms, and to say they had not denied that He was a creature, but that He was like other creatures. At that moment the term Usia was abolished: the Nicene Faith stood condemned by acclamation. The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian." (The Dialogue Against the Luciferians, 19)

Significantly, the Arian heresy was supported in Rome. The historian Philip Schaff tells us:

"Even the papal chair was desecrated by heresy during this Arian interregnum; after the deposition of Liberius, the deacon Felix II., 'by antichristian wickedness,' as Athanasius expresses it, was elected his successor. Many Roman historians for this reason regard him as a mere anti-pope. But in the Roman church books this Felix is inserted, not only as a legitimate pope, but even as a saint, because, according to a much later legend, he was executed by Constantius, whom he called a heretic. His memory is celebrated on the twenty-ninth of July. His subsequent fortunes are very differently related. The Roman people desired the recall of Liberius, and he, weary of exile, was prevailed upon to apostatize by subscribing an Arian or at least Arianizing confession, and maintaining church fellowship with the Eusebians. On this condition he was restored to his papal dignity, and received with enthusiasm into Rome (358). He died in 366 in the orthodox faith, which he had denied through weakness, but not from conviction....The apostasy of Liberius comes to us upon the clear testimony of the most orthodox fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Jerome, Sozomen, &c., and of three letters of Liberius himself, which Hilary admitted into his sixth fragment, and accompanied with some remarks. Jerome says in his Chronicle: 'Liberius, taedio victus exilii, in haereticam pravitatem subscribens Romam quasi victor intravit.' Comp. his Catal. script. eccl c. 97. He probably subscribed what is called the third Sirmian formula, that is, the collection of Semi-Arian decrees adopted at the third council of Sirmium in 358. Hefele (i. 673), from his Roman point of view, knows no way of saving him but by the hypothesis that he renounced the Nicene word (oJmoouvsio"), but not the Nicene faith. But this, in the case of so current a party term as oJmoouvsio", which Liberius himself afterwards declared 'the bulwark against all Arian heresy' (Socr. H. E. iv. 12), is entirely untenable." (http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/3_ch09.htm, section 121 and footnote 1342)

As I've documented, the primary opponent of Arianism, Athanasius, said that scripture alone is sufficient to refute the heresy. He said that the Council of Nicaea is useful, and taught correct doctrine, but that it was only a reflection of what's already taught in scripture. If we're going to add church councils to scripture, as an equal authority, then which church councils will we add? The Arian church councils attended by hundreds of bishops?

phantaz sunlyk

February 4th 2003, 06:45 PM

**8** arrrrrr har har--

If you want Biblical arguments for Trinitarian doctrine, I would suggest J.P. Holding's material

**7** yah, i know. go to his Tektonitron Apologetics encyclopedia, look under "Trinity", and you'll find that i've written 3 of his articles, amounting to over 100 pgs.
http://www.tektonics.org/PS_NC.html
http://www.tektonics.org/PS_FS.html
http://www.tektonics.org/holtb01.html
the last of which, by the way, being a review of a new JW apologists' work, whom i'm certain could tear you to shreds in a debate over the deity of Christ going by (your form of) sola scriptura--so far i'm not impressed with either your Scriptural or historical knowledge.
thus spake jason--

Considering that there's much in my earlier posts that you haven't responded to, why would you criticize me for not discussing the subjects you want me to discuss?

**8** if you'll notice, i'm methodically decomposing your bogus posts one at a time. you vomitted forth a post claiming that the early fathers weren't Roman Catholics. i went to your site and saw with my own eyes what a spiteful and loathesome attitude you have, conjoined to a kjv-onlyist mentality.
(hence my manner of dealing with you, which i attempt to justify here, with j.p. holding--
http://www.tektonics.org/madmad.html
to me you're no different than farrell till--and let it be known that i made it clear in one of my initial posts that i was seeking concord and dialogue.)
after that, i laid down a fourfold claim, and said that IT'LL TAKE ME LONGER TO RESPOND due to the fact that this area isn't my specialty, and i'm not prepared as you are (industrious fellow that you are, doing jw-style research for who-knows-how-long?).
if you'll notice, so far i've only (substantially) responded to TWO OF THE SECTIONS WITHIN your FIRST response to my claim. and you ask why i haven't responded to your other posts? hello, bag-o-bricks, YOU HAVEN'T EVEN ALLOWED ME TO RESPOND TO YOUR FIRST!!!!!!!
the reason why i NOW wish to go in chronological order is due to the fact that the issues of "Tradition" and "Development" are conceptual a prioris which govern historical exegesis. see ch. 1 of Pelikan's _Development of Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomena_. similarly, a modern person would do well to read G. B. Caird's works on Imagery in the Bible afor approaching apocalyptic lit., and you would do well to approach N. T. Wright's work afor imposing anachronistic categories on Paul's epistles (both of the above authors, by the way, write books that don't come with crayons--no doubt a new experience for you).
now that the ground-work is laid, i'll proceed to analyze Christianity from its inception. we'll see how your diatribe works when its forced to stay on the ground.
ring around the rosey...

phantaz sunlyk

February 4th 2003, 06:58 PM

**8** hope ya dig 'em chuck.
by the way, you aren't the dude from 'public enemy' are ya?
ha! peace in Christ.

spl_cadet

February 4th 2003, 06:58 PM

And JasonTE, to be fair, we must ask you as well why you haven't responded to my post, in regards to my argument from orthodoxy.
:looks down to post: Ooh, a Bible thingiemabobber for use while you are posting! Me likes.:thumb:

Chuck_D

February 4th 2003, 09:11 PM

phantaz sunlyk:
**8** hope ya dig 'em chuck.
by the way, you aren't the dude from 'public enemy' are ya?
ha! peace in Christ.

Nah, I'm not him. Don't believe the hype! :rofl:

phantaz sunlyk

February 4th 2003, 09:50 PM

**8** by the TIME i get to arizona
(ooooh, ooooooh, ooooh-oooooh-oooooooooooh!) :thumb:

JasonTE

February 5th 2003, 03:08 AM

phantaz sunlyk said:

the reason why i NOW wish to go in chronological order is due to the fact that the issues of "Tradition" and "Development" are conceptual a prioris which govern historical exegesis

Whatever you now want to do, people can go read your earliest posts in this thread and see your inconsistencies and ignorance. Anybody who attempts to defend Roman Catholicism by citing things like "doctrinal development" and "the pre-eminence of Rome" is ignorant. Protestants don't deny that doctrine can develop, nor do they deny that Rome had a pre-eminence in early church history. Such concepts can be defined in different ways, and I've given you example after example of the fallacious nature of Cardinal Newman's definition of development. When church fathers and Roman bishops for hundreds of years refer to Mary as a sinner, the later belief that she was sinless isn't the development of an oak tree from an acorn. Rather, it's a false claim to have derived an oak tree from an apple seed. The same can be said of other doctrinal developments within Catholicism.

You can keep quoting Newman, keep telling me to read other authors, etc., but that doesn't accomplish much if I've already refuted the argument you're making in your citation of these sources. If I document widespread rejection of the essence of a modern Catholic teaching among the church fathers, it does you no good to quote Newman saying that doctrines can develop within the same essence. I've already proven that there is no such continuity between what the church fathers taught and what the RCC teaches. Why keep citing Cardinal Newman if his argument has already been refuted? If you don't want to listen to me, then why don't you go read William Goode and other scholars who have answered Newman's claims?

It can't be denied that much of what the RCC teaches was absent or contradicted for hundreds of years of church history. It also can't be denied that the RCC's own documents claim that such doctrines were always held by the Christian church. I can understand why you'd rather not address such facts and would prefer, instead, to make vague, speculative arguments about a nebulous tradition and a nebulous doctrinal development that can justify any and every heresy the RCC comes up with. Anybody who thinks that the Assumption of Mary is a historical fact and an apostolic dogma can't have much concern for historical facts or apostolic dogmas.

JasonTE

February 5th 2003, 03:09 AM

spl_cadet said:

And JasonTE, to be fair, we must ask you as well why you haven't responded to my post, in regards to my argument from orthodoxy.

I've addressed the argument in my responses to phantaz sunlyk and in the series I mentioned in the first post in this thread. You may also want to see a debate I had with a Roman Catholic apologist by the name of Phil Porvaznik. The debate addresses the nature of the church, among other subjects:

http://members.aol.com/jasonte3/debate2.htm

Just as God promised that the Christian church wouldn't be destroyed, He also promised that Israel wouldn't be destroyed. And He didn't use an institution such as the RCC to fulfill His promises to Israel. There was no unbroken succession of true doctrine in the Old Testament era (2 Kings 22:8-13).

Besides, I reject the claim that the RCC has maintained orthodoxy. Modern Roman Catholics disagree among themselves about how to define their denomination's infallibility. There have been many heretical Popes, councils contradicting each other, etc. Much of what the RCC teaches today is demonstrably false, such as its teachings on justification. If we were to look for an unbroken succession of true doctrine as the fulfillment of Matthew 16, the RCC would fail that standard. But the standard itself is false. Nothing in Matthew 16 requires the sort of infallibility the RCC claims for itself.

phantaz sunlyk

February 5th 2003, 05:12 AM

**8** g'day jason. i went and looked at your website again today. in your picture you even look spiteful and too spastic to be able to carry on a conversation.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

Whatever you now want to do, people can go read your earliest posts in this thread and see your inconsistencies and ignorance.

**7** this from a guy who quotes from Francis Schaeffer in order to prove that Rome has gone slack re who goes to hell? (and, oh yeah, i have all of his books too, and his point wasn't simply about the Catholic Church, but about the current epistemic trends in the culture at large as they impose on all theological fronts. at any rate, it seems strange to whimper about from a guy who can't tell me that wilfully praying something that displeases God will effect the well being of my soul, ahhhhhhhh ha ha!--the inconsistency!)
my "inconsistencies"? here is what my second post to you stated--
it appears that you're prepared to the point that all you basically need to do is cut & paste. my area of expertise lies in the Trinity and Christology, hence i'm not so prepared as you are. i'll start with one segment of your response per day.
are you blind and clumsy, or just in such a bad mood from the last time you read Mt. 16:18f that you can't keep concentration when you try to read?
anybody reading this thread will be able to see that you're a spazzo who is full of spite and can't keep calm enough to carry a conversation. alongside getting steamed because ye can't match the level of wit being tossed your way :rant:
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

Anybody who attempts to defend Roman Catholicism by citing things like "doctrinal development" and "the pre-eminence of Rome" is ignorant.

**7** i hate smurfing ignorance!!!
i can see that you want to say something clever, but the constipated-overtone is all that seems to come out, arrrr har har.
ye forgot to mention "AND THAT THE ROMAN CHURCH OF TODAY IS A LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH".
but, as can be seen from your posts, you haven't the patience to be able to actually sit down and systematically approach an issue.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

Protestants don't deny that doctrine can develop

**8** lip service, just like your talk of using "tradition" to interpret Scripture. your idea of development is translating the King James Version into vernacular.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

Such concepts can be defined in different ways, and I've given you example after example of the fallacious nature of Cardinal Newman's definition of development

**7** you've given no such thing, as Newman takes much of what you whimper and moan about and examines it in his book. you didn't interact with--still less define--anything; as though it weren't bad enough that you couldn't wait your turn!
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

When church fathers and Roman bishops for hundreds of years refer to Mary as a sinner, the later belief that she was sinless isn't the development of an oak tree from an acorn.

**8** which was asserted rather than proven, and the ESSENCE of the belief in the Immaculate Conception was the anti-typological identification of Mary with Eve, which was made in the second century.
and as though i couldn't say the same about the Trinity? ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ha ha! there is not ONE passage in Scripture that defines all three as one God, Jesus is constantly DISTINGUISHED FROM "God" in Scripture, the only clear canidate for a non-ontological subordinationist in the second century is Athenegoras, the Western fathers identify his procession with God's creating of the world, Origen states that the Father 'excels the Son and Spirit as much or more than the Spirit and Son excel the rest of creation', i can cite dozens of passages from Trinitarian world authorities on Church history who'll flat out confess that the early Church was not orthodox regarding its Trinitarian doctrine--is that an oak from an acorn? you're simply being inconsistent, alongside exaggerating all the evidence (alongside misinterpreting magisterial statements), and you keep doing this back and forth like a pinball in the 'hotbox'.
the truth is, you wouldn't know a development if it hit you on the noodle :argh:
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

The same can be said of other doctrinal developments within Catholicism.

**7** sure it can be said, and i'll bet you'll be the one to do it, yes? after all, your head seems to do allright so long as it doesn't have to either adapt to three dimensions or adopt an 'intake' mode.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

You can keep quoting Newman, keep telling me to read other authors, etc., but that doesn't accomplish much if I've already refuted the argument you're making in your citation of these sources.

**8** poppycock. you've refuted nothing; rather, you've simply gone off on tangents before i could address all of your nonsense.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

If I document widespread rejection of the essence of a modern Catholic teaching among the church fathers, it does you no good to quote Newman saying that doctrines can develop within the same essence.

**7** nay, you documented nothing but cut n' paste fragments strung together and left to hang without contextual comment. not that i think your advancement of comment on context, theological or otherwise, would be an altogether auspicious endeavor on your part.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

If you don't want to listen to me, then why don't you go read William Goode and other scholars who have answered Newman's claims?

**8** because i don't buy color-by-number books. why don't you try Aidan Nichols, Yves Congar, Jaroslav Pelikan, or Richard Swinburne?
upgrade ya grey matter, cuz one day it may matter.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

It can't be denied that much of what the RCC teaches was absent or contradicted for hundreds of years of church history.

**7** so much for overstatement.
i deny it.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

It also can't be denied that the RCC's own documents claim that such doctrines were always held by the Christian church.

**8** in kernal form, yes. ...that's that Ghost of Development falling from the sky again to stomp your bogus claims into the ground. no wonder you claim, with comic dogmatic certitude, things like "i have already proven" and "it is demonstrably false" and "it is an positive historical fact" time after time in your posts. you're too dense to realize that you're wrong.
thus spake Grumpy Smurf--

I can understand why you'd rather not address such facts and would prefer, instead, to make vague, speculative arguments about a nebulous tradition and a nebulous doctrinal development that can justify any and every heresy the RCC comes up with.

**7** and i can understand why you string together discoordinate prooftexts conjoined to magisterial texts taken out of contexts imposed with reckless brutality, and run from doing the necessary conceptual groundwork as though it were the plague--it keeps you from seeing the truth and lets you do what you love most, which is transpose hate through and by and with your 'religion'.
i also doubt that you have the mental capacity for such an enterprise, which can account for atleast half of the kjv-onlyist style exegetes such as yourself, who like their theology in as small of bites as possible.
THIS IS THE LAST TIME I WILL WITHDRAW FROM THE COURSE OF MY SYSTEMATIC RESPONSE IN ORDER TO ADDRES YOUR HISSY-FITS. IF YOU WON'T LET ME ANSWER SYSTEMATICALLY, WHICH I PLAINLY STATED WAS MY INTENTION AT THE OUTSET, YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO END THIS CONVERSATION. so far i'm HALF WAY DONE with your FIRST response to me.
thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump, look at that frosty go!!!!!

spl_cadet

February 5th 2003, 11:27 AM

JasonTE:
spl_cadet said:
Besides, I reject the claim that the RCC has maintained orthodoxy. Modern Roman Catholics disagree among themselves about how to define their denomination's infallibility. There have been many heretical Popes, councils contradicting each other, etc. Much of what the RCC teaches today is demonstrably false, such as its teachings on justification. If we were to look for an unbroken succession of true doctrine as the fulfillment of Matthew 16, the RCC would fail that standard. But the standard itself is false. Nothing in Matthew 16 requires the sort of infallibility the RCC claims for itself.

You didn't address my point. For 1900 years, all Christianity agreed on a moral truth, one so important that commiting that particular sin was called murder by the leaders of the Protestant Schism (my personal quirk, I don't call it a Reformation). Then, starting in 1930 with the Anglican's Lambeth Conference, the Protestants began moving away from this moral. Within twenty-five years at most the Catholic Church was the only one continuing to hold to the orthodox position on this truth, while all others supported the heterodox position and encouraged the commision of this sin. Now I ask you, seeing as how the Catholic Church is the only one to continue to hold to the orthodox position, how is it not the true Church, as obviously all the others abandoned complete orthodoxy? Might I also note that heterodoxy is the definition of heresy.

JasonTE

February 5th 2003, 01:20 PM

phantaz sunlyk said:

which was asserted rather than proven, and the ESSENCE of the belief in the Immaculate Conception was the anti-typological identification of Mary with Eve, which was made in the second century.

The fathers who compared Mary and Eve didn't associate that contrast with Mary being sinless from conception onward. To the contrary, they referred to Mary as a second Eve and a sinner at the same time. Tertullian, in his treatise On the Flesh of Christ, refers to Mary committing multiple sins in chapter 7, then refers to her as a second Eve in chapter 17. Similarly, John Chrysostom refers to Mary as a sinner and refers to her as a second Eve elsewhere. Just because modern Roman Catholics arbitrarily, irrationally decide to associate the Eve/Mary contrast with Mary being sinless from conception onward, that doesn't change the historical fact that the church fathers and Roman bishops considered her a sinner.

You said that I haven't documented my claims, but I have. You quoted J.N.D. Kelly in one of your earlier posts. Then why don't you accept my citation of him on this subject? I've already quoted him saying that the Eastern fathers accepted Origen's view that Mary sinned. Regarding Augustine, Kelly writes:

"he [Augustine] did not hold (as has sometimes been alleged) that she [Mary] was born exempt from all taint of original sin (the later doctrine of the immaculate conception). Julian of Eclanum maintained this as a clinching argument in his onslaught on the whole idea of original sin, but Augustine's rejoinder was that Mary had indeed been born subject to original sin like all other human beings, but had been delivered from its effects 'by the grace of rebirth'." (Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978], p. 497)

I've already cited sections 47 and 48 of book 2 of Augustine's On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, where he explains that it was the belief of the universal church of his day that Christ was the only immaculately conceived human. Since I've given you such documentation in this thread, and I've provided other documentation at my web site and in the series I linked to in my first post, why would you act as if I haven't provided such documentation? I've cited church fathers and modern scholars on this subject. All you've done so far is give us a fallacious argument about the Eve/Mary contrast.

Here are some examples of the fathers denying that Mary was sinless. Many more examples could be cited.

"About the words of Simeon to Mary [Luke 2:34-35], there is no obscurity or variety of interpretation....By a sword is meant the word which tries and judges our thoughts, which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of our thoughts. Now every soul in the hour of the Passion was subjected, as it were, to a kind of searching. According to the word of the Lord it is said, 'All ye shall be offended because of me.' Simeon therefore prophesies about Mary herself, that when standing by the cross, and beholding what is being done, and hearing the voices, after the witness of Gabriel, after her secret knowledge of the divine conception, after the great exhibition of miracles, she shall feel about her soul a mighty tempest. The Lord was bound to taste of death for every man--to become a propitiation for the world and to justify all men by His own blood. Even thou thyself, who hast been taught from on high the things concerning the Lord, shalt be reached by some doubt. This is the sword. 'That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.' He indicates that after the offence at the Cross of Christ a certain swift healing shall come from the Lord to the disciples and to Mary herself, confirming their heart in faith in Him. In the same way we saw Peter, after he had been offended, holding more firmly to his faith in Christ. What was human in him was proved unsound, that the power of the Lord might be shewn." - Basil (Letter 260:6, 260:9)

"even to have borne Christ in the womb, and to have brought forth that marvellous birth, hath no profit, if there be not virtue. And this is hence especially manifest. 'For while He yet talked to the people,' it is said, 'one told Him, Thy mother and Thy brethren seek Thee. Butt He saith, who is my mother, and who are my brethren?' [Matthew 12:46-48] And this He said, not as being ashamed of His mother, nor denying her that bare Him; for if He had been ashamed of her, He would not have passed through that womb; but as declaring that she hath no advantage from this, unless she do all that is required to be done. For in fact that which she had essayed to do, was of superfluous vanity; in that she wanted to show the people that she hath power and authority over her Son, imagining not as yet anything great concerning Him; whence also her unseasonable approach. See at all events both her self-confidence and theirs. Since when they ought to have gone in, and listened with the multitude; or if they were not so minded, to have waited for His bringing His discourse to an end, and then to have come near; they call Him out, and do this before all, evincing a superfluous vanity, and wishing to make it appear, that with much authority they enjoin Him. And this too the evangelist shows that he is blaming, for with this very allusion did he thus express himself, 'While He yet talked to the people;' as if he should say, What? was there no other opportunity? Why, was it not possible to speak with Him in private?" - John Chrysostom (Homilies on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 44)

"For where parents cause no impediment or hindrance in things belonging to God, it is our bounden duty to give way to them, and there is great danger in not doing so; but when they require anything unseasonably, and cause hindrance in any spiritual matter, it is unsafe to obey. And therefore He answered thus in this place, and again elsewhere, 'Who is My mother, and who are My brethren?' (Matt. xii. 48), because they did not yet think rightly of Him; and she, because she had borne Him, claimed, according to the custom of other mothers, to direct Him in all things, when she ought to have reverenced and worshiped Him. This then was the reason why He answered as He did on that occassion....And so this was a reason why He rebuked her on that occasion, saying, 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?' [John 2:4] instructing her for the future not to do the like; because, though He was careful to honor His mother, yet He cared much for the salvation of her soul" - John Chrysostom (Homilies on the Gospel According to St. John, 21)

Leo I, a Roman bishop of the fifth century, taught that sin is transmitted by means of sexual intercourse, thus suggesting that Mary was conceived in original sin:

"And whereas in all mothers conception does not take place without stain of sin, this one [Mary] received purification from the Source of her conception. For no taint of sin penetrated, where no intercourse occurred." (Sermon 22:3)

Elsewhere, Leo refers to Jesus being the only one conceived without sin. He even refers to Christ's stock, a reference to Mary, being corrupt:

"For the earth of human flesh, which in the first transgressor was cursed, in this Offspring of the Blessed Virgin only produced a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock." (Sermon 24:3)

And elsewhere:

"And therefore in the general ruin of the entire human race there was but one remedy in the secret of the Divine plan which could succour the fallen, and that was that one of the sons of Adam should be born free and innocent of original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by His example and His merits. Still further, because this was not permitted by natural generation, and because there could be no offspring from our faulty stock without seed, of which the Scripture saith, 'Who can make a clean thing conceived of an unclean seed? is it not Thou who art alone?'" (Sermon 28:3)

The unclean seed would include Mary. And he refers to there being one from Adam who is sinless.

Roman Catholic scholar Michael O'Carroll comments that Leo viewed sin as being communicated by means of sexual intercourse (Theotokos [Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988], p. 217). The Protestant historian Philip Schaff lists Leo I among seven Roman bishops who rejected Mary's sinlessness (The Creeds of Christendom [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998], Vol. I, p. 123).

As I said, many other examples could be cited, and I do cite other examples in my Catholic, But Not Roman Catholic series and at my web site. Anybody who reads scholars such as Kelly, O'Carroll, and Schaff will find much documentation of widespread rejection of the sinlessness of Mary among church fathers and Roman bishops.

and as though i couldn't say the same about the Trinity?

You keep repeating the same erroneous argument. Again, I don't make claims about church history comparable to those of the RCC. I don't claim that the church fathers were members of my denomination passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession. If a church father contradicted a Trinitarian doctrine, then so much the worse for that church father. I don't claim that they were members of my denomination. I don't claim that all apostolic teaching was held throughout church history by an infallible denomination. As I said before, if you make heavier claims about church history, then you bear a heavier burden of proof. I never claimed that all Trinitarian doctrine has been held by every generation in unbroken succession by an infallible institution. But, as I've documented, the RCC has claimed that doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception and privately confessing to a priest were always held by the Christian church. Since your denomination makes different claims about church history than I make, your denomination and its apologists carry a different burden of proof. Clearly, as your posts have shown, you can't bear that burden.

JasonTE

February 5th 2003, 01:38 PM

spl_cadet said:

Within twenty-five years at most the Catholic Church was the only one continuing to hold to the orthodox position on this truth, while all others supported the heterodox position and encouraged the commision of this sin.

You didn't respond to what I said about Matthew 16 and the nature of the Christian church. If you're wrong in your interpretation of Matthew 16, then citing birth control as an example of the application of your interpretation doesn't have much significance. Why should we be concerned with an example you give of a principle that's false? I reject the claim that Matthew 16 requires an unbroken succession of true doctrine. Citing birth control as an example of an unbroken succession doesn't prove that you're correct about Matthew 16.

As far as birth control is concerned, are you aware that some Protestants do oppose it? Your claim that only the RCC opposes it is wrong.

Besides, if you're going to refer to murder of the unborn child, what about the RCC's inconsistencies on such issues? While the Bible has consistently taught that life begins at conception, your denomination hasn't been so consistent. For example, from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"It was long debated among the learned at what period of gestation the human embryo begins to be animated by the rational, spiritual soul, which elevates man above all other species of the animal creation and survives the body to live forever. The keenest mind among the ancient philosophers, Aristotle, had conjectured that the future child was endowed at conception with a principle of only vegetative life, which was exchanged after a few days for an animal soul, and was not succeeded by a rational soul till later; his followers said on the fortieth day for a male, and the eightieth for a female, child. The authority of his great name and the want of definite knowledge to the contrary caused this theory to be generally accepted up to recent times....Now [Pope] Gregory XIV had enacted the penalty of excommunication for abortion of a 'quickened' child but the present law makes no such distinction, and therefore it must be differently understood." (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01046b.htm )

phantaz sunlyk

February 5th 2003, 02:20 PM

**7** it was recently pointed out to me that Jason "Ang-we-ur" :rant: has been dealt with rather thoroughly on several occasions by actual Catholic apologists.
see here for the more than capable Dave Armstrong's treatment of him, and then some--
http://ic.net/~erasmus/ERASMUS4.HTM
and here for Phil Porvaznik's handling of him, among other things--
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/apolog.htm
and oh!, the inconsitency!
thus spake fatboy:eww:

You keep repeating the same erroneous argument. Again, I don't make claims about church history comparable to those of the RCC. I don't claim that the church fathers were members of my denomination passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession. If a church father contradicted a Trinitarian doctrine, then so much the worse for that church father.

**8** hence, as i've said all along, you put yourself in a position whence, a fortiori, you can't affirm either Tradition or Doctrinal development. yet Grumpy Smurf, no doubt in an attempt to avoid getting flat out crushed, earlier said that he affirmed that sometimes 'Tradition' is necessary for interpreting Scripture along with stating that he did believe in (note the precision!!!!!) 'probable' Doctrinal Developments.
Cap'n Lightheart :rant: did state that the doctrine of the Trinity was an instantiation of 'probable' (='legit') doctrinal development in 'church' history (leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that he can't even define 'church' such that we can trace its course through a 'history'--ahh, the easy life of a docetistic heretic!); legit over-against Catholic doctrines which were deemed invalid by due to ambiguities in the Patristic record, yet the exact same thing is found with regard to the Trinity, which all of the sudden doesn't matter?
we don't need no stinking patristic support!!!!!
this tells me two things about you--
1)that you don't believe in doctrinal development, you believe in selective deduction;
2)that you have no actual knowledge of Patristic history (who would have walked into that if they had?????), but rather, you've seen Patristic quotes presented and arranged by anti-Catholics, which serves as your sources as opposed to a holistic collection of the padres writings and serious scholarly resources.
conjoined to your refusal to dialogue and careful, friendly discussion, your repeated refusal to let me get a word in edgewise (a sure sign of a debator who in his heart of hearts is scared of his own shadow, therefore drowning out the possibility of discussion via the creation of an unsystematic pattern of argument), blatant stubborness, and (now, as is obvious) inconsistency and dishonesty (say whatever need be said and move the targets back and forth, just make the Catholics look bad--because of all of that, i end my conversation with you. the above links thrash anything you may have to say ten times over.
yeeeeeeeeah suckkkkkkka :thumb:

phantaz sunlyk

February 5th 2003, 02:27 PM

**8** i'd be more than happy to continue with my presentation of a case for the Catholic Church if anyone would like to discuss it in a friendly manner. :rofl:
peace in Christ

spl_cadet

February 7th 2003, 11:28 AM

JasonTE:
spl_cadet said:
You didn't respond to what I said about Matthew 16 and the nature of the Christian church. If you're wrong in your interpretation of Matthew 16, then citing birth control as an example of the application of your interpretation doesn't have much significance. Why should we be concerned with an example you give of a principle that's false? I reject the claim that Matthew 16 requires an unbroken succession of true doctrine. Citing birth control as an example of an unbroken succession doesn't prove that you're correct about Matthew 16.

However, you are wrong in comparing it to the OT covenant, where that unbroken succession of doctrine wasn't needed. The OT covenant was one of lineage, not of faith and belief in Christ like the NT, which requires as it's very basis a successsion of true doctrine (the Trinity).

As far as birth control is concerned, are you aware that some Protestants do oppose it? Your claim that only the RCC opposes it is wrong.

Yes, some individuals do oppose it. However, no denomination does. Christ didn't set up individuals, He set up a Church.

Besides, if you're going to refer to murder of the unborn child, what about the RCC's inconsistencies on such issues? While the Bible has consistently taught that life begins at conception, your denomination hasn't been so consistent. For example, from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
<snip>

Simple, as we learned more scientifically about the beginning of life, we changed it to reflect that. After all, if it were indeed not alive or ensouled then there wouldn't be anything wrong with it, no more than killing an ant isn't morally wrong. It's rather comparable to the change from geocentricism to heliocentricism. As more is known, we modify. We do not actively change however. As that article pointed we have always opposed abortion of an ensouled person, we were merely incorrect about when it happened to be ensouled.

brianberean

February 10th 2003, 02:13 PM

spl_cadet:
:munches some popcorn: :duh:

Y'know, we could just end this debate and show the Church is right by using the "argument from orthodoxy" (concieved of by me, unless someone else did it first and I did it independently of them). Namely, while remembering Christ's promise about His Church in Matthew 16:18, see who has stuck to orthodoxy. One thing I can think of that where all but the Catholic Church moved into heterodoxy is a doctrinal change first starting in 1930 with the Anglican's Lambeth Conference.

Funny you should bring up Matt 16:18 in a thread concerning the church fathers. What an excellent example of a subject they disagreed with each other and the RCC of today about!

Brian

Revolg

February 10th 2003, 09:28 PM

JasonTE:
Last year, I began a series of posts at the New Testament Research Ministries web site (http://www.ntrmin.org) documenting examples of the church fathers contradicting Roman Catholicism. The series is titled Catholic, But Not Roman Catholic. It covers a large variety of topics: praying to the dead, the papacy, the sinlessness of Mary, salvation, Purgatory, etc. If you're interested in receiving a quarterly text file that contains the segments for each quarter of the year, you can send an e-mail request to:

JasonTE@aol.com

You can access archives for previous segments at:

http://www.ntrmin.org/catholic_but_not_roman_catholic_index.htm

First of all the earliest Christian Church fathers were apart of the early beginnings of the church probably weren't all Roman Catholic. However most of our understanding of the Trinity is better explained in the theologians of the Roman Catholic Church. You can check the Ecole Archive or the Early Christian Writings pages on google.

Ric

February 10th 2003, 09:37 PM

Bartholomew

March 4th 2003, 04:48 PM

I find it highly informative and well worth the documentation and time you have put into it. Thanks for all of your hard work. (Regarding the Catholic But Not Roman...)

Have you ever considered making it a news letter to send out by email for people to read?

~Matt

Jude3b

January 30th 2004, 06:08 PM

There is no recognized denominations in the Bible. Therefore the church fathers were not Roman Catholic. The body of Christ is referred to as the church of God at Corinth usually. It is made up of saved believers on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not a religion like Romanism and the other denominations. Sincerely, Jude 3b

Rdr. Arsenios

January 30th 2004, 11:32 PM

Jason writes:

I agree with Athenagoras, Origen, Lactantius, and other early church fathers who condemned prayers to the dead. And the Rosary involves praying to Mary, who has been dead for nearly two thousand years now, even though she's spiritually alive in Heaven. Praying to the deceased is an unwise thing to do, and it's a form of disobedience to God. It's also contrary to early patristic tradition. But the fact that you pray to Mary doesn't give me enough information to determine that you aren't saved.

The undivided Church of the first thousand years, and indeed all of the divided Church, all Orthodox Churches, even those not in communion with Eastern Orthodoxy, all of them petition saints in the spirit, and especially the Mother of our Lord... And one of the defining characteristics of Holy Tradition, as opposed to pious traditions, is that it is that Tradition which is believed by all, at all times, and practiced by all, everywhere... And prayers to the Theotokos [the God-birther] most certainly qualifies...

Now Rev. 5:8 reads:
"...the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints."

Now these golden vials, in the possession of the 24 holy elders, worshipping at the throne of God, are filled with incense, which are the prayers of the saints...

Where do these elders OBTAIN these vials full of incense, that are the prayers of the saints, if not FROM the saints?

And how do the saints GIVE prayers to the elders?

They pray to them... [That be a daaaah!]

We do too...

Our faith is in spirit and in truth, so that the absence of the body does not take one out of communion with the one Church - And Paul himself examined the man with the problem of incest in spirit, as if he were present in the flesh, and pronounced judgement on him [the man later repented...]

We do not pray to the dead, but to the living... For their intercession, just as the holy 24 elders carry the prayers of the saints to the very throne of God...

The Theotokos is exalted above these elders, worshipping at the throne of God... For she is the Mother of God on earth... The Son of Man... No other person on earth ever can claim that blessedness...

[geo] Arsenios

JasonTE

January 31st 2004, 01:41 PM

George Blaisdell said:

The undivided Church of the first thousand years, and indeed all of the divided Church, all Orthodox Churches, even those not in communion with Eastern Orthodoxy, all of them petition saints in the spirit, and especially the Mother of our Lord.

There are Anglicans and Lutherans, for example, who claim a succession from the apostles, and they don't all believe in praying to the deceased. But, regardless of what people believe on this subject today, the fact remains that hundreds of Biblical passages on prayer never advocate praying to the dead, and some of the earliest church fathers tell us that we're to pray only to God.

And one of the defining characteristics of Holy Tradition, as opposed to pious traditions, is that it is that Tradition which is believed by all, at all times, and practiced by all, everywhere... And prayers to the Theotokos [the God-birther] most certainly qualifies.

Would you tell us what first century sources support praying to Mary? And what about other Eastern Orthodox doctrines that weren't always supported by everybody everywhere? What about the church fathers who rejected the Eastern Orthodox canon of scripture? Or the fathers who taught universalism? What about the fathers who opposed the veneration of images? Or those who supported premillennialism?

Now Rev. 5:8 reads:
"...the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints."

Now these golden vials, in the possession of the 24 holy elders, worshipping at the throne of God, are filled with incense, which are the prayers of the saints...

Where do these elders OBTAIN these vials full of incense, that are the prayers of the saints, if not FROM the saints?

And how do the saints GIVE prayers to the elders?

The fact that the elders present the prayers to God doesn't prove that the prayers were directed to the elders. Not only does this passage not support your conclusion, but isn't it also significant that this is the only sort of alleged evidence you can find in scripture? Prayer is a topic covered in hundreds of Biblical passages spanning thousands of years of history. We never see David praying to Moses, Daniel praying to Samuel, Paul praying to Stephen, John praying to Mary, etc. Yet, in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, we see millions of people offering millions of prayers to Mary, Joseph, Jude, etc. every day. If the Biblical authors agreed with the practice of praying to the deceased, don't you think you would have much more evidence for it than an eisegetical speculation about Revelation 5:8?

You tell us that the people you pray to are spiritually alive, but that isn't the issue. The Biblical commands against trying to contact the deceased (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Isaiah 8:19, 19:3) are about the physically deceased, not the spiritually deceased. Otherwise, Moses would have been sinning by speaking with the spiritually dead Pharaoh, the apostles would have been sinning by preaching the gospel to spiritually dead sinners, etc. When you or a Roman Catholic pray to Mary or Joseph, for example, you're trying to contact a physically deceased person. That's a sin.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

spl_cadet

January 31st 2004, 01:49 PM

You tell us that the people you pray to are spiritually alive, but that isn't the issue. The Biblical commands against trying to contact the deceased (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Isaiah 8:19, 19:3) are about the physically deceased, not the spiritually deceased.

There's a rather large difference between necromancy and praying to the saints. One relies upon human power and seeks to further human goals and power, the other relies soley upon God's power and conforms to His will.

And since you have a problem with praying to those physically dead, is it alright to pray to Enoch and Elijah? After all, they were assumed bodily into Heaven before they died :tongue:

Seasanctuary

January 31st 2004, 05:10 PM

There's a rather large difference between necromancy and praying to the saints. One relies upon human power and seeks to further human goals and power, the other relies soley upon God's power and conforms to His will. Actually, a good deal of nonChristian magic relies on the good will and rules of spiritual entities. Gods are appeased. Lack of results is blamed on improper human approaches to the spirits. ...besides, do you really ONLY pray that God do whatever he wants? Or, instead, do you ask for things you'd like to be done such as safe road trips, healing for sick church members, the discernment of world leaders, etc?

Regarding Elijah, there are apologists who maintain that he was no assumed into Heaven but was rather just transported somewhere else on Earth.

Tercel

January 31st 2004, 07:16 PM

I was a Protestant until I studied Christianity's theological history and became Eastern Orthodox. Hence Jason, I'm somewhat intrigued that you are apparently so knowledgable of the Fathers yet still very much Protestant.

You mentioned:
"That apocryphal literature was condemned as heretical by numerous Roman bishops"
Research into the history of the canon is a hobby of mine. Can you give me some further information on these condemnations? A link?

Earlier you quoted some Fathers in support of Sola Scriptura, but I think if you carefully examine the context you might find that a number of them are actually saying that "Scripture alone is enough to clearly refute the particular heretical doctrine I am attacking here." It is common tactics in a debate to find common ground and demonstrate your conclusions follow from what both sides agree upon. With heretics, they rejected the standard teaching of the Church, but still accept Scripture. Thus it becomes difficult to use Church-teaching against them, but both sides accept Scripture, so hence the Fathers' claims that the heretics teachings can be shown to be false from Scripture.

And what about other Eastern Orthodox doctrines that weren't always supported by everybody everywhere?Eastern Orthodoxy only requires at a fundamental level that you accept validity of the declarations of the 7 Councils as they pertain to faith. Beyond that you are free to differ in any way you so desire: There are plenty other beliefs that are considered normative, but they are not binding.

I feel it is necessary to correct a misunderstanding about the infallibility of the Councils that I saw earlier in the thread. It is not necessary to believe that universal councils are always infallible: You can be Orthodox and yet hold that if an 8th council were to happen tommorrow, it might get it wrong. Another understanding of infallibility is post-hoc: To accept that the declarations of the 7 councils are true (if you didn't you wouldn't be East Orthodox) and therefore consider them infallible. Their infallibility does not necessarily arise from a pre-determined assumption that God would make them infallible, but can arise from a post-determined acceptance by us that they are true. I do not think it is necessary to hold beliefs about the infallibleness of the Church to be East Orthodox, only that the Church has not so far engaged in error. That said, there's certainly nothing wrong with having the former belief.

What about the church fathers who rejected the Eastern Orthodox canon of scripture?There is no such thing as an "Eastern Orthodox" canon of scripture. Different churches within the Eastern Orthodox communion use slightly different canons of scripture.

Or the fathers who taught universalism?Exactly, as one 20th century Orthodox historian/theologian I was reading pointed out: Some of the Church Fathers taught universalism and there is no record of their getting condemned for it, thus it must be considered legitimate for the moment to be Eastern Orthodox and believe universalism (even if it isn't normative).

What about the fathers who opposed the veneration of images?That was perfectly within their rights. Subsequently, the church as a whole has accepted that the veneration of images is worthwhile. And now, over a 1000 years on, I can only consider the complete rejection of images as a serious deviate from the Christian faith as it has been universally practiced. Frankly, speaking as someone who has spent the vast majority of my life in starkly-imageless Baptist churches, I feel Protestants are really missing out here. A graphic depiction of Gospel scenes, Jesus, saints etc inevitably provides food for thought and aids understanding. When the gospel is merely read in Church, it is impossible to see the reality as clearly in ones mind's eye as it is when you have it in colour in front of you as well.
Our modern science has discovered that TV/Movies is more immersive and compelling than radio - sound and picture better than sound alone. The same principle applies to Christian images - seeing and hearing the Truth is better than merely hearing it. Seeing a painting of our Saviour as well as reading His words, more inspiring than merely reading His words alone. When all the senses of your body are reporting to you the glory of God, surely it becomes easier to worship Him than when only some are?

Or those who supported premillennialism?The Orthodox Church teaches against premillennialism? News to me! I don't even think Orthodoxy has any teaching on the end-times that could be considered "normative" nevermind certain.

In regard to Tradition, tradition etc and its varient of possible meanings and interpretations, the understanding of it that has served me best is as follows.
My university's religious studies department offers courses named "The Christian Tradition" and "The Islamic Tradition". I think their use of the word Tradition is the best way to use it in theology - it means the sum total of everything Christianity ever has been or it, everything ever done or believed by Christians. Tradition becomes synonymous with Christianity. As such, the Scripture forms a part of Tradition.

Phantas,
You mentioned earlier that you wrote a large essay on the filioque issue and thought the issue was very clear. I would be fascinated to see your ideas - could you summarise your ideas/conclusions for me in one or two paragraphs (bullets points are fine)?

ChrisChillin

January 31st 2004, 07:39 PM

Frankly, speaking as someone who has spent the vast majority of my life in starkly-imageless Baptist churches, I feel Protestants are really missing out here.

One of the great things about being Protestant, or Baptist, is that somebody can make a general statement about either grouping and it'll be misleading because of the lack of uniformity. Not all of us are missing out buddy, although I'm sure you know that. My Baptist church has very vivid and colorful stained glass windows depicting many scenes from the life of Christ, and one above the choir loft that has Jesus with outstretched arms and the words "Come Unto Me." I do have to agree with you that those who are in the "starkly imageless" category are missing out on the beauty and wonder of art serving in a context of worship.

JasonTE

January 31st 2004, 09:11 PM

spl cadet said:

There's a rather large difference between necromancy and praying to the saints. One relies upon human power and seeks to further human goals and power, the other relies soley upon God's power and conforms to His will.

The passages condemning attempts to contact the deceased don't say anything about it being acceptable to do so if you do it through the power of God. If the passages were only condemning some attempts to contact the deceased, then why don't we see examples of David praying to Moses in the Psalms, Daniel praying to Samuel, Paul praying to Isaiah, John praying to Mary, etc.? Why do some of the earliest church fathers condemn praying to anybody other than God? Your speculation that the Old Testament is only condemning some attempts to contact the deceased, not all attempts, is not only speculative, but also highly unlikely, given the absence of prayers to the dead in the earliest sources and the condemnation of such a practice in the early fathers.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

JasonTE

January 31st 2004, 09:45 PM

Tercel said:

You mentioned:
"That apocryphal literature was condemned as heretical by numerous Roman bishops"
Research into the history of the canon is a hobby of mine. Can you give me some further information on these condemnations? A link?

I was referring to the apocryphal literature that makes the first extant reference to a bodily assumption of Mary. I wasn't referring to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament (Tobit, 1 Maccabees, etc.).

Eastern Orthodoxy only requires at a fundamental level that you accept validity of the declarations of the 7 Councils as they pertain to faith.

That's an arbitrary standard, and it isn't what George Blaisdell was describing in the post of his that I was responding to. But, accepting the standard you're describing for the moment, what Eastern Orthodoxy requires isn't the only issue that's important. If a church mishandles its finances, and the pastor preaches sermons based on the Gospel of Thomas, would it be reasonable to defend that church by saying that it doesn't require its members to support financial corruption and the Gospel of Thomas? The errors of a church are significant even if the errors aren't considered to be required belief.

Another understanding of infallibility is post-hoc: To accept that the declarations of the 7 councils are true (if you didn't you wouldn't be East Orthodox) and therefore consider them infallible.

But why would anybody consider the teachings of Second Nicaea, for example, to be true? The later church fathers supported the veneration of images, but the practice was widely condemned among the earlier fathers. How can an institution claiming apostolic succession, claiming to pass on the same tradition from generation to generation, contradict itself from one generation to another on issues such as the veneration of images and the canon of scripture?

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Tercel

February 1st 2004, 03:51 AM

Jason,

I was referring to the apocryphal literature that makes the first extant reference to a bodily assumption of Mary. I wasn't referring to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament (Tobit, 1 Maccabees, etc.).Thanks for that clarification...
I thought for a moment I'd missed something MAJOR in my studies of the history of the Western Church's canon. Because as far as I know, no Pope (of Rome) or Western Council (with the possible exception of Ladocia in 360) ever rejected the OT Apocrypha.

But why would anybody consider the teachings of Second Nicaea, for example, to be true?Well clearly there do exist reasons since a huge number of people do. From the fatherest West of the ancient Roman Empire to the furtherest East, everyone seems to have regarded images as okay. Even the Oriental Orthodox who had schismed some couple of hundred years before 2 Nicaea, agree with it. If I recall correctly, there was an independent council in the West (in Spain?) at a similar time on the issue of images which also judged similarly to 2 Nicaea.

So really: The only ones who disagree with 2 Nicaea with it are Protestants, who's opinion can be reasonably classed as "reactionary" against the RCC, and a few of the very early Fathers (whos opinions could perhaps be considered to be unduly influenced by Judaism). Since the vast majority of Christians in history agree with 2 Nicaea's findings, I think that in itself is a reasonable reason to accept it. The rest of Christians in history could read their scriptures just as well as you can (2 Nicaea for example, has a canon saying that Bishops must have memorised the Psalms (!) and read the Scriptures diligently and regularly), and so arguments in the form "Their opinion is unscriptural" (ie "How I choose to read my Bible, disagrees with how they understood it, and I'm right of course!") are likely to be bad arguments.

To attempt to deal with the typical scripture arguments raised against images in brief:
1. Christians do not follow most of the mosaic law.
2. The prohibition against images is part of the mosaic law.
3. Therefore whether to keep this prohibition or not needs to be judged carefully on other grounds than "the Bible says so".
4. The prohibition was put into effect to stop inferior representations of God, eg as a Bull.
5. It is the Christian revelation that God became Man.
6. Therefore we can represent God as a man in the sure knowledge that this is not an inferior representation, but a true representation.

It seems clear from Christian history and the widespread disagreement amongst Christians in all ages, that the exact canon of scripture has not been clearly revealed by God (Personally I believe He doesn't give a damn) and there is no such thing as the "one true canon".

Seasanctuary

February 1st 2004, 05:16 AM

I thought for a moment I'd missed something MAJOR in my studies of the history of the Western Church's canon. Because as far as I know, no Pope (of Rome) or Western Council (with the possible exception of Ladocia in 360) ever rejected the OT Apocrypha.
Yep, the "OT Apocrypha" (by which I take you to mean what the Catholics call the Deuterocanonicals), were accepted by the general church (though questioned by individuals sometimes) right up until Martin Luther declared that 1 Maccabees was not really part of the Bible during a debate over indulgences. Of course, Luther threw out books from the Old and New Testaments...but Protestantism followed his lead as far as cutting the Christian Old Testament down to the size of the Jewish Bible of the time.

JasonTE

February 1st 2004, 02:42 PM

Tercel said:

I thought for a moment I'd missed something MAJOR in my studies of the history of the Western Church's canon. Because as far as I know, no Pope (of Rome) or Western Council (with the possible exception of Ladocia in 360) ever rejected the OT Apocrypha.

The Roman bishop Gregory I denied the canonicity of 1 Maccabees. Near the time of the Reformation, Cardinal Ximenes produced an edition of the Bible that denied the canonicity of the Apocrypha in its preface. The Bible was dedicated to Pope Leo X, and it was published with the Pope's approval. You may want to see the following:

http://www.christiantruth.com/apocryphaintroduction.html

Also, keep in mind that different sources defined "the Apocrypha" in different ways. Different versions of the Septuagint included different books. The Old Testament canon of the councils of Hippo and Carthage in the fourth century seems to have been different from the modern Roman Catholic canon. Apparently, they included the Septuagint version of 1 Esdras, which is a different book than the Vulgate 1 Esdras. See Augustine's City of God 18:36, for example, where Augustine refers to the Septuagint version of 1 Esdras as scripture. Roman Catholicism denies that the Septuagint 1 Esdras is canonical.

From the fatherest West of the ancient Roman Empire to the furtherest East, everyone seems to have regarded images as okay. Even the Oriental Orthodox who had schismed some couple of hundred years before 2 Nicaea, agree with it. If I recall correctly, there was an independent council in the West (in Spain?) at a similar time on the issue of images which also judged similarly to 2 Nicaea.

The issue isn't what people believed at the time of Second Nicaea in the eighth century. The issue is what people believed in the earliest centuries. Even the conservative Roman Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott acknowledges:

"Owing to the influence of the Old Testament prohibition of images, Christian veneration of images developed only after the victory of the Church over paganism. The Synod of Elvira (about 306) still prohibited figurative representations in the houses of God (Can. 36)." (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma [Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974], p. 320)

I give many examples of the earliest fathers opposing the veneration of images at:

http://www.ntrmin.org/catholic_but_not_roman_catholic_index.htm

Since the vast majority of Christians in history agree with 2 Nicaea's findings, I think that in itself is a reasonable reason to accept it.

No, assuming that the majority is correct doesn't make sense, especially when the minority consists of the earliest church fathers. Do you want to take a poll of modern professing Christians and see how many agree with the Trinitarian view of God? Or Jesus' presence in the eucharist? Or the acceptability of abortion? Or the acceptability of lust? Should we always go with the majority?

To attempt to deal with the typical scripture arguments raised against images in brief

I was addressing church history and the alleged continuity of Eastern Orthodox tradition. I wasn't addressing whether the veneration of images is consistent with Biblical teaching.

My view is that there's nothing wrong with the possession and use of images, including in church settings, but that it's better to err on the side of carefulness than on the side of carelessness. It's conceivable that an Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic church could use images in an acceptable way, but in general I think they tend toward carelessness rather than carefulness. When I see a Roman Catholic bowing before a statue of Mary, for example, and putting a crown on it, lighting candles before it, praying before it, kissing it, burning incense to it, referring to how holy it is, etc., I think that's unhealthy behavior. Probably the most relevant passage of scripture on this issue is 2 Kings 18:4. There was nothing wrong with the bronze serpent in itself, but it was abused by people who went too far in venerating it. What I see in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy seems to me to be more careless than careful.

But, again, the issue I was originally addressing was post-Biblical beliefs on this subject. You may think that some of the church fathers went too far in opposing the veneration of images, but the fact remains that they opposed the practice. Why, then, should we believe that the veneration of images is an apostolic tradition always held by the church?

Jason Engwer

JasonTE

February 1st 2004, 02:55 PM

Seasanctuary said:

Yep, the "OT Apocrypha" (by which I take you to mean what the Catholics call the Deuterocanonicals), were accepted by the general church (though questioned by individuals sometimes) right up until Martin Luther declared that 1 Maccabees was not really part of the Bible during a debate over indulgences. Of course, Luther threw out books from the Old and New Testaments...but Protestantism followed his lead as far as cutting the Christian Old Testament down to the size of the Jewish Bible of the time.

I don't know what you mean by "the general church", but there were some popular Bible translations and commentaries that denied the canonicity of the Apocrypha. And some of the people who rejected the Apocrypha were among the most influential leaders of their day. Even among those who accepted Apocryphal books, there were disagreements over which Apocryphal books to include. The most logical and careful solution to the dispute is to go with the Jewish canon. We don't have as much evidence to go by as we do on other subjects, but the evidence we do have suggests that the Apocrypha shouldn't be included.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Seasanctuary

February 1st 2004, 05:13 PM

The most logical and careful solution to the dispute is to go with the Jewish canon.
Only if you don't mind being anachronistic.

The "Jewish canon" you speak of does not appear to have been a well-formed concept when Jesus came onto the scene. In fact, the modern idea of canon appears to have formed during the time of early Christianity.

It would be nice if the Jewish Bible had been well defined and accepted as such when Jesus was born. It would be nicer still if the Christian Bible had been well defined and accepted as such when the last of the apostles died. Unfortunately, the appearance of Christians and other non-traditional sects probably spurred everyone involved into defining canonical limits.

In other words, the "Jewish canon" was defined by Jews who knew about Christianity but did not accept it. This dirties the waters when it comes to claiming that Christians should adopt the Jewish canon for any books written before Jesus. Although, in a sense you are right when you say it's "safer"...because if Jews and Christians who knew of each other and disagreed theologically...but picked some mutual books as authoritative...then those intersecting books are obviously unquestioned by all.

My theory is that with the appearance of the Greek Christian books and then the destruction of Jerusalem together spurred a conservative return to the Hebrew Jewish books and a moving back of Scriptural outskirts to the time of Nehemiah ... the last time the Jews made their glorious repossession of Jerusalem and rededication to God. By the latter part of the first century, the Jews were a scattered exiled people again. They wouldn't want their holy books to culminate in that ruin.

The Christians, on the other hand, saw the time from Nehemiah to the Greek and then Roman rule as a historic crescendo leading to the death of Christ and then his resurrection and the beginning of a new age. Those "intertestamental" books would have greater value to Christians in that they show the connection to the Hebrew Scriptures and do not make such a sudden leap from the Hebrew Nehemiah to the Greek Gospels centuries later and no clue how we got there.

...I recommend "The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon" by Lee M. McDonald.

JasonTE

February 1st 2004, 06:46 PM

Seasanctuary said:

In other words, the "Jewish canon" was defined by Jews who knew about Christianity but did not accept it. This dirties the waters when it comes to claiming that Christians should adopt the Jewish canon for any books written before Jesus. Although, in a sense you are right when you say it's "safer"...because if Jews and Christians who knew of each other and disagreed theologically...but picked some mutual books as authoritative...then those intersecting books are obviously unquestioned by all.

I'm not just referring to the agreement between Jewish and Christian sources regarding the non-Apocryphal books. I'm also referring to the absence of any good reason for accepting the Apocryphal books. And there are good reasons to believe in a closing of the canon prior to the writing of the Apocrypha, regardless of any failure to recognize that closing by some Jews. Josephus' comments about a cessation of prophecy prior to the writing of the Apocrypha seem to be corroborated by other sources. And it's the best explanation of Jesus' comment in Luke 11:51. I don't see any good reason to think that the Jews formed their canon around opposition to Christianity, as some Roman Catholics claim. Nobody forming a canon around opposition to Christianity would include books like Isaiah and Daniel while excluding books like Tobit and 1 Maccabees. I don't see any good reason to conclude that the Jews had bad motives in choosing the books they chose. The Jewish judgment on the canon doesn't answer every question we have, but it's the best option we have available, certainly preferable to relying on something like the alleged infallibility of the Council of Trent.

The Christians, on the other hand, saw the time from Nehemiah to the Greek and then Roman rule as a historic crescendo leading to the death of Christ and then his resurrection and the beginning of a new age. Those "intertestamental" books would have greater value to Christians in that they show the connection to the Hebrew Scriptures and do not make such a sudden leap from the Hebrew Nehemiah to the Greek Gospels centuries later and no clue how we got there.

Certainly the early Christians would have been interested in intertestamental history. But they wouldn't need to include that history within the canon in order to know about it and appreciate it. The Old Testament canon, no matter which of the books are included in it, has many gaps of time within it. And the New Testament, in the genealogies of Christ and elsewhere, makes some references to intertestamental history. It's not as if there's no bridge between the testaments within the Protestant canon.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Tercel

February 1st 2004, 08:34 PM

Those "intertestamental" books would have greater value to Christians in that they show the connection to the Hebrew Scriptures and do not make such a sudden leap from the Hebrew Nehemiah to the Greek Gospels centuries later and no clue how we got there.This seems to me typical of today's interdenominational movement within Protestantism. The understanding of history that is propaged goes something like:
OT, ~gap~, NT, ~gap~, today's "Christian" church (ie nondenominational Protestantism)

The gaps do not seem to be considered important, nor does it seem encouraged to enquire into them.

Tercel

February 1st 2004, 09:27 PM

The Roman bishop Gregory I denied the canonicity of 1 Maccabees.Do you have a reference? I tried google, but the given locations of the quotes from him on this doesn't seem to make sense and I couldn't find the quote either on ccel or here (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/gregory.html).

Also, keep in mind that different sources defined "the Apocrypha" in different ways. Different versions of the Septuagint included different books. The Old Testament canon of the councils of Hippo and Carthage in the fourth century seems to have been different from the modern Roman Catholic canon. Apparently, they included the Septuagint version of 1 Esdras, which is a different book than the Vulgate 1 Esdras. See Augustine's City of God 18:36, for example, where Augustine refers to the Septuagint version of 1 Esdras as scripture. Roman Catholicism denies that the Septuagint 1 Esdras is canonical.I already know this. I find the idea that a dispute over one book invalidates the entire apocrypha somewhat amusing.

The issue isn't what people believed at the time of Second Nicaea in the eighth century. The issue is what people believed in the earliest centuries.I don't agree. The use of images or not in churches is an ecclesiastical matter, and in my opinion is similiar to questions like "should the sermon be before or after the hymns". This is not a fundamental part of the gospel such as the doctrine of the death and resurrection is Christ, this is simply a matter of church order. As such, I feel churches are free to do whatever they like. The vast vast vast majority of the churches in our history found images to be useful in Church. A failure to learn from 2000 years of Christian experience and the insistence that they didn't know what they were talking about and they were wrong to use images stikes me as silly.

Why, then, should we believe that the veneration of images is an apostolic tradition always held by the church?Well I think anyone who claims that the veneration of images was taught by the apostles probably needs to check their history. But this strikes me as entirely missing the point. The use of images in churches has nothing to do with what the apostles did or didn't teach (and we can't truly know what the apostles taught). We do know that the use of images dates back to the first few hundred years of Christianity, and we do know that images were universally accepted in the Church for ~1000 years. It's definitely a tradition, and definitely a tradition of the "apostolic Church", regardless of whether it's a tradition that can be traced to the apostles themselves.

Much more serious than arbitrary things like images or the canon, are issues of soteriology. Surely in studying the Fathers you have realised that your Protestant soteriology is an invention of 16th century men and has no place in the early Church's understanding of Christian doctrine?

Rdr. Arsenios

February 2nd 2004, 03:55 PM

writes:

The fathers who compared Mary and Eve didn't associate that contrast with Mary being sinless from conception onward.

From St. John Chrysostom:
"...even to have borne Christ in the womb, and to have brought forth that marvellous birth, hath no profit, if there be not virtue. And this is hence especially manifest. 'For while He yet talked to the people,' it is said, 'one told Him, Thy mother and Thy brethren seek Thee. Butt He saith, who is my mother, and who are my brethren?' [Matthew 12:46-48] And this He said, not as being ashamed of His mother, nor denying her that bare Him; for if He had been ashamed of her, He would not have passed through that womb; but as declaring that she hath no advantage from this, unless she do all that is required to be done. For in fact that which she had essayed to do, was of superfluous vanity; in that she wanted to show the people that she hath power and authority over her Son, imagining not as yet anything great concerning Him; whence also her unseasonable approach. See at all events both her self-confidence and theirs. Since when they ought to have gone in, and listened with the multitude; or if they were not so minded, to have waited for His bringing His discourse to an end, and then to have come near; they call Him out, and do this before all, evincing a superfluous vanity, and wishing to make it appear, that with much authority they enjoin Him. And this too the evangelist shows that he is blaming, for with this very allusion did he thus express himself, 'While He yet talked to the people;' as if he should say, What? was there no other opportunity? Why, was it not possible to speak with Him in private?" - John Chrysostom (Homilies on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 44)

Anybody who reads scholars such as Kelly, O'Carroll, and Schaff will find much documentation of widespread rejection of the sinlessness of Mary among church fathers and Roman bishops.

The witness of the early Church regarding the sinlessness of the Theotokos is divided - Although none seem to regard her as immaculately conceived, for Joachim and Anna, her parents, were of a priesty class, and dedicated her to the temple at an early age, as they had agreed with God to do, should He bless them with a child... So that she was not reared in sins, and indeed her very conception was blessed by God, enabled by Him with two very pious and elderly and childless married people, the grandparents of our Lord... Yet she was conceived and born of flesh and blood, specially prepared by God for her calling, to bring forth our Lord into flesh by the coming upon her of the Holy Spirit... Thus she who was not immaculately conceived herself immaculately conceived...

The divided opinions center around not her conception by her parents, but around her life of having sinned, and not having sinned... Chrysostom, above, in a pastoral homily, toward a sinful people who did not think virtue was needed for their salvation, remarks that even carrying the physical body of our Lord in the womb is no guarantee, if we do not have virtue... And the differences in the theologumenoi reflect the differing takes on the degree of the virtue of the Theotokos...

Those who have encountered Her in prayer or in vision tend to be the ones who think that she was utterly obedient and sinless, in the sense at least of not committing any sins... Sins of ignorance and those of omission would not be counted in this accounting... Hindsight gives us 20:100, down from 20:400 in real time - [both blind] - So that we can all say that we could have done better had we but known better, hence we fall short of the mark of the sinlessness of perfection... Yet did she ever walk up and sock some rude boy in the nose??? And the answer is, No, she did not... From her earliest beginnings, and even before them, truth be told, she was reared in an utterly pious enviornment - That was her life... God carefully prepared her for her monumental role in the salvation of the human race... The very first, the utterly most complete, and the totally prototypical, joining of God to human flesh... The rest of us can only say, in varying degrees, with Paul: "Not I, but God in me..." Yet she brought forth the very Person, the very Hypostatic Person Who is the Logos of God, Who is the Only Begotten of God, into human flesh, and was not consumed thereby...

No one else has done that, and all the early fathers agree that she was of uncommonly great and pious virtue - The differences are only over whether or not she ever committed any sin ever, or not... All rank her higher than any apostle, and above any saint, indeed she is for them all:

"...more honorable than the cherubim, and by far more glorious than the seraphim..."

These are also St. John Chrysostom's words... Taken from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom... Which he wrote down from the Church, for the Church... Which we [Orthodox] follow to this day...

[geo] Arsenios

Tercel

February 2nd 2004, 04:14 PM

Thus she who was not immaculately conceived herself immaculately conceived...I've corrected you on this before George: Remember, what Westerners mean by "immaculate conception" is being born without the effects of Original Sin. As such, the Orthodox Church does NOT believe Jesus was immaculately conceived. "What is not assumed is not healed” (St Gregory the Theologian). "Born of a virgin" isn't the same thing as what Westerners mean when they say "immaculately conceived".

Rdr. Arsenios

February 2nd 2004, 05:07 PM

The...fact remains that hundreds of Biblical passages on prayer never advocate praying to the dead, and some of the earliest church fathers tell us that we're to pray only to God.

Not everything was written down... The New Testament solidly attests to this, that there are equally binding both oral and written traditions... Yet you are right, we do not pray to the dead, but to the living in Christ... For the faithful worship in spirit and in truth, and we pray for intercession to our betters... And it matters not when they walk the earth if we ask their intercession, or when they have passed from the earth, that we ask their intercession... God left the Church in the hands of incarnate, fleshy, and God bearing elders, and it is this Church that is the ground and pillar of truth, and the one who overcomes is made a pillar of this Church... So that for the first thousand years, the Church, faithful and united, guarded the truth, and rejected error...

Nowhere in the Bible do you find it written that the Bible is the pillar and ground of truth, or that the only truth is written in the Bible, or that only the Bible is inerrant truth - And the fact is that everyone has an individual opinion, be it scholarly or churchly or anything else, yet it is the Church is where the truth is grounded and held supported aloft for all to see... And the Church is the communion of Churches established by Christ and His Apostles... It is not some hairy fairy pie in the sky discarnate entity of the heavens, but the ark of salvation upon the sea of life upon this earth that is one with the heavenly throne of God...

Theanthropic...

Would you tell us what first century sources support praying to Mary?

Would you settle for second century? She was still alive and walking the earth during the first... There are hundreds of catacomb writings from the second and third centuries asking intercessions from those departed on behalf of those still upon the earth... Including the Theotokos... Though in her case, they are for her intercession for the departed...

And what about other Eastern Orthodox doctrines that weren't always supported by everybody everywhere? What about the church fathers who rejected the Eastern Orthodox canon of scripture? Or the fathers who taught universalism? What about the fathers who opposed the veneration of images? Or those who supported premillennialism?

There were tons of controversies in the Church - There are controversies today - Though none so doctrinal as the earlier ones... Orthodoxy is the primitive Church that keeps rigorously to the first 7 Ecumenical Councils -

And I know you regard that as "arbitrary" -

Christ's Church does NOT regard the determinations of the first 7 ecumenical councils as arbitrary at all, but as fully cannonical - These are the established and immutable determinations of the Body of Christ, Who is its Head... We are bound by these, for we are a part of that Body...

The fact that the elders present the prayers to God doesn't prove that the prayers were directed to the elders.

How do the elders obtain the prayers that are incense in vials? You have not answered that question... I offered it as a clue, not as proof... Faith is not proof, my friend...

You tell us that the people you pray to are spiritually alive, but that isn't the issue. The Biblical commands against trying to contact the deceased (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Isaiah 8:19, 19:3) are about the physically deceased, not the spiritually deceased. Otherwise, Moses would have been sinning by speaking with the spiritually dead Pharaoh, the apostles would have been sinning by preaching the gospel to spiritually dead sinners, etc.

Old Testament stuff...

The New Testament tells us to believe the Church...

When you or a Roman Catholic pray to Mary or Joseph, for example, you're trying to contact a physically deceased person. That's a sin.

They bear God within them, and we are asking their righteous and holy intercession in our behalf, for Christ is our intercessor, and these bear Christ, and are His new creation, mature in the faith... The Church has taught intercessory prayer for 2000 years now... And I know you think that you can logically figure out the truth outside the discipleship of the Church... But I would suggest to you that the epistemological prerequisite to Truth that you lack is the very discipleship of repentance within the Church that leads to illumination of the nous, and divinization in Christ... eg sainthood... And when you get to this point, THEN you will have the epistemological, the spiritual epistemological, the epistemology of faith, that is needed for knowing the truth... Outside this, you have but the logical opinions of men reading and inferring their human opinions... Each the king of his own thought and mind...

"But we have the nous of Christ..." [Paul]...

That is one nous...

[geo] Arsenios

Rdr. Arsenios

February 2nd 2004, 05:48 PM

[geo] had written:

"Thus she who was not immaculately conceived herself immaculately conceived..."

I've corrected you on this before George: Remember, what Westerners mean by "immaculate conception" is being born without the effects of Original Sin. As such, the Orthodox Church does NOT believe Jesus was immaculately conceived. "What is not assumed is not healed” (St Gregory the Theologian). "Born of a virgin" isn't the same thing as what Westerners mean when they say "immaculately conceived".

That's an important point -

Christ indeed was born under the curse, under the Law, and subject to the temptations of the flesh... His only difference is that He did not sin... He assumed our entire sinful and fleshy human nature in His sinless flesh, and by His Life, presented it resurrected to the Father... Where that holy flesh now
sits at the right hand of God...

And you are right, that westerners have a mistaken understanding of immaculate conception -

For Christ was immaculately conceived, in that He was fathered by the Holy Spirit, as indeed also are fathered those baptized into Christ's Body, the Church... Everyone born into the flesh is born into the temptations thereof - for the flesh desires to avoid pain, seek pleasure, and preserve and assert itself, its own soulish life...

Christ, through the Theotokos, was born into this kind of temptation, but being God, did not sin in any way whatsoever...

Even in the worst temptation, where He sweated clots of blood praying, while His disciples slept in disobedience to Him, and He was abandoned by all, even here, He asked as a fleshy person, that the cup be taken from Him, and then submitted His flesh to crucifixion, that "Thy will, not my will, be done..."

I wonder if our friend Jason would see this "weakness" of Christ's as a "sin"...

Yet Christ was conceived without seed - His conception was immaculate, being without the passion and pleasure of sexual congress, but certainly not 'immaculate' in the western understanding of being outside temptation, being not born under the curse of Adam... Indeed, He undid that curse... Being a reconciliation for anyone who is willing....

[geo] Arsenios

JasonTE

February 2nd 2004, 09:47 PM

Tercel said:

Do you have a reference? I tried google, but the given locations of the quotes from him on this doesn't seem to make sense and I couldn't find the quote either on ccel

The web site I linked you to documents the quote.

I find the idea that a dispute over one book invalidates the entire apocrypha somewhat amusing.

I didn't argue that rejecting one book is equivalent to rejecting all of them. What I said is that among the sources that accepted some Apocryphal books, they disagreed about which Apocryphal books to accept.

The use of images or not in churches is an ecclesiastical matter, and in my opinion is similiar to questions like "should the sermon be before or after the hymns". This is not a fundamental part of the gospel such as the doctrine of the death and resurrection is Christ, this is simply a matter of church order.

You dismiss the issue as not being of much significance, but the church fathers who oppposed the veneration of images considered it more significant. The Second Council of Nicaea did as well.

Surely in studying the Fathers you have realised that your Protestant soteriology is an invention of 16th century men and has no place in the early Church's understanding of Christian doctrine?

The church fathers advocated a large variety of differing and contradictory views of justification, and justification through faith alone was among them. Some of the fathers also advocated the concept of eternal security. I give some examples in my series on the church fathers:

http://www.ntrmin.org/catholic_but_not_roman_catholic_index.htm

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte

JasonTE

February 2nd 2004, 09:56 PM

George Blaisdell wrote:

No one else has done that, and all the early fathers agree that she was of uncommonly great and pious virtue - The differences are only over whether or not she ever committed any sin ever, or not... All rank her higher than any apostle, and above any saint, indeed she is for them all:

"...more honorable than the cherubim, and by far more glorious than the seraphim..."

These are also St. John Chrysostom's words... Taken from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom... Which he wrote down from the Church, for the Church... Which we [Orthodox] follow to this day...

No, your quote from John Chrysostom does not reflect what all of the fathers believed. And Chrysostom didn't write what you're quoting. The historian Philip Schaff writes:

"It is an abridgment and improvement of that of St. Basil, and, through the influence of the distinguished patriarchs of Constantinople, it has since the sixth century dislodged the liturgies of St. James and St. Mark. The original text can hardly be ascertained, as the extant copies differ greatly from one another. The present Greek and Russian ritual, which surpasses even the Roman in pomp, cannot possibly have come down in all its details from the age of Chrysostom. Chrysostom is indeed supposed, as Proclus says, to have shortened in many respects the worship in Constantinople on account of the weakness of human nature; but the liturgy which bears his name is still in the seventh century called 'the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles,' and appears to have received his name not before the eighth." (http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/3_ch07.htm , section 99)

David Farmer writes:

"the establishment of the 'Liturgy of St. Chrysostom' is most probably not due to him; its general use is caused by the influence of Constantinople and its present form is much more recent than his time." (Oxford Dictionary of Saints [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997] p. 267)

I also suggest that you stop repeating unhistorical traditions about Mary, such as the apocryphal concept that her parents dedicated her to the temple at an early age. You seem to be relying on a lot of bad sources for your view of church history.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte

Tercel

February 2nd 2004, 10:32 PM

The web site I linked you to documents the quote.Oh, yes, so it does. But there's still the problem that the particular book quoted from isn't online, so I can't have a look at the quote in context. :rant: Which is a pain in the... But anyway the quote looks reasonably clear as it stands.

The church fathers advocated a large variety of differing and contradictory views of justification, and justification through faith alone was among them.I was curious about this, but I didn't spot anything in your index on this. As far as I am aware, the Greek Fathers barely use the word for "justification", and Augustine's use of it corresponds to the modern RCC use.

Does it not bother you as a Protestant that the Father's main focus was deification, and they saw salvation as salvation from death or the devil, not hell or God?

Rdr. Arsenios

February 3rd 2004, 01:38 AM

:

No, your quote from John Chrysostom does not reflect what all of the fathers believed. And Chrysostom didn't write what you're quoting. The historian Philip Schaff writes:

"It is an abridgment and improvement of that of St. Basil, and, through the influence of the distinguished patriarchs of Constantinople, it has since the sixth century dislodged the liturgies of St. James and St. Mark. The original text can hardly be ascertained, as the extant copies differ greatly from one another. The present Greek and Russian ritual, which surpasses even the Roman in pomp, cannot possibly have come down in all its details from the age of Chrysostom. Chrysostom is indeed supposed, as Proclus says, to have shortened in many respects the worship in Constantinople on account of the weakness of human nature; but the liturgy which bears his name is still in the seventh century called 'the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles,' and appears to have received his name not before the eighth." (http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/3_ch07.htm , section 99)

Well, this Lutheran makes a telling argument, in that your criticism that John Chrysostom did NOT write that Liturgy, but merely shortened Basil's Liturgy [We still serve that one too, especially during Lent], and you can see that Chrysostom but received what was given to him... And shortened it somewhat... Which itself attests to it's apostolic origin... And I should tell you that I am not a neo-scholastic scholar of Church history - I but receive the traditions handed down to me in faith by the hands of the pillar and ground of Truth, Christ's holy body, the Church, Whose Head is Christ... Schaff is outside that tradition, and I must tell you, I do not look outside Christ's holy Body for understanding that Body... The entire New Testament will give you no example of that happening anywhere... God is the Head of Christ's Church on earth, and that is a great Mystery, and it is not to be understood from outside the communion of visible churches that is the Body of Christ...

Are you ever going to tell me your theory of how it is that those holy elders worshipping at the throne of God came to be in possession of those vials of incense that are the prayers of the saints? This is the third time I have asked - And if you just don't know, or do not have a theory and don't want to speculate, I can sure appreciate your decision not to answer...

David Farmer writes:

Another neo-scholastic scholar outside the communion of the original Church? Your faith is in scholarship, my friend...

"the establishment of the 'Liturgy of St. Chrysostom' is most probably not due to him; its general use is caused by the influence of Constantinople and its present form is much more recent than his time." (Oxford Dictionary of Saints [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997] p. 267)

St. Chrysostom was the influence ON Constantinople... So much so that he was pirated off to slave labor where he died a martyr's death, because he stood for the faith, and the existing politics was very corrupted, and hated him, and managed to get rid of him... But not before he accomplished what God had placed him there to do... The work of the Church was huge at that time, for the switch in tactics of the "oposition" went from opposition and horrific persecutions, which strengthened the faith, to co-opting it in politics and its 'imposition', as it were, upon the whole of the population, which was not really ready to receive it... This was the time of the flowering of monasticism, as the apostolic continuation of the practice of the faith, which by apostolic standards had been watered down considerably in the process of the Church's struggle to accomodate the huge influx of semi-dedicated converts joining the Church via the emperor's official embracing of the Church...

I also suggest that you stop repeating unhistorical traditions about Mary, such as the apocryphal concept that her parents dedicated her to the temple at an early age. You seem to be relying on a lot of bad sources for your view of church history.

Well, you are right, we DO have different sources... Yours are the scholars, and mine the apostolic Church... You seem to believe in scholarship, Jason... I do not share this faith... My faith is that given once for all to the apostles, and handed down from generation to generation... Yours seems to be in historical research and human logic... One is the tradition of the Church, and the other is that of men...

That is the fundamental flaw in scholastic Christianity, Jason - It is of necessity the faith in scholarship... I really see no way to get around it...

[geo] Arsenios

Rdr. Arsenios

February 3rd 2004, 02:00 AM

Tercel writes:

"Which is a pain in the..."

We call this particular barnyard bunny [...] a dairy-haire...

Well, some of us do...

I mean, I do...

Sometimes....

All seriousness aside...

:-)

geo

Jude3b

February 3rd 2004, 05:43 AM

No, none of the Apostles were Roman Catholic. They were Christians, saints, believers and they were members of the church of God, the body of Christ.
Sincerely, Jude 3b

JasonTE

February 3rd 2004, 07:40 AM

Tercel said:

I was curious about this, but I didn't spot anything in your index on this. As far as I am aware, the Greek Fathers barely use the word for "justification", and Augustine's use of it corresponds to the modern RCC use.

Terminology isn't as important as what concepts were believed, and Evangelical concepts such as sola fide and eternal security were advocated by some of the fathers. You're correct that Augustine held views similar to Roman Catholicism on some issues relating to salvation, but he also held some views contrary to Roman Catholicism. Even within a single church father, we sometimes find contradictions. Some fathers will speak of justification through faith alone in one passage, even using the term "faith alone", but will contradict the concept elsewhere. Some fathers will suggest universal salvation in one passage, but will suggest that salvation isn't universal elsewhere. They'll advocate one view of the atonement in one place and another view in another place. As I said, there are many differing and contradictory views among the fathers on matters relating to salvation.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

JasonTE

February 3rd 2004, 08:02 AM

George Blaisdell said:

And I should tell you that I am not a neo-scholastic scholar of Church history - I but receive the traditions handed down to me in faith by the hands of the pillar and ground of Truth, Christ's holy body, the Church, Whose Head is Christ... Schaff is outside that tradition, and I must tell you, I do not look outside Christ's holy Body for understanding that Body... The entire New Testament will give you no example of that happening anywhere... God is the Head of Christ's Church on earth, and that is a great Mystery, and it is not to be understood from outside the communion of visible churches that is the Body of Christ...

How do you know that Eastern Orthodoxy is the church founded by Christ? Since Jesus and the apostles repeatedly appealed to verifiable evidence to support what they were saying, such as fulfilled prophecy and historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection, why are you so opposed to people judging your claims according to the historical evidence? What do we do when one Eastern Orthodox source contradicts another? What if a bishop such as Epiphanius is opposed to the veneration of images, whereas a later bishop advocates the practice? What if one Eastern Orthodox source gives us one view of salvation, and another Eastern Orthodox source gives us another view? If a Roman Catholic told you that he knows that Roman Catholicism is true because Roman Catholicism is the church, and he believes whatever the church tells him, how would you respond to such an argument?

Are you ever going to tell me your theory of how it is that those holy elders worshipping at the throne of God came to be in possession of those vials of incense that are the prayers of the saints?

Revelation 8:3-4 refers to prayers going up to God, using imagery similar to what we see in chapter 5. The issue we were discussing was whether we should pray to deceased people, not whether they ever have a role in bringing our prayers to God. Your assumption that the elders can hold the vials only if the prayers are directed to them is unproven and unproveable. The fact that you have to resort to such argumentation tells us something. There are hundreds of passages of scripture on the subject of prayer, and we're never encouraged to pray to the deceased. Scripture repeatedly condemns any attempt to contact the deceased, and some of the earliest church fathers condemn praying to anybody other than God. And you want us to accept prayers to the dead on the basis of the elders holding vials of prayer in Revelation 5?

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Tercel

February 3rd 2004, 06:04 PM

Terminology isn't as important as what concepts were believed, and Evangelical concepts such as sola fide and eternal security were advocated by some of the fathers.You REALLY need some hyperlinks between the index and the contents of your site.
I seriously, seriously doubt this claim regarding sola fide. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "eternal security" - once saved, always saved?

I encountered two errors on your site in my very brief browse:

"This strange theory [of the atonement, the Ransom-from-Satan] is variously held by Irenaeus, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Augustin, Leo the Great and Gregory the Great." (Philip Schaff)Schaff is wrong here - I suggest you steer clear of 19th century scholarship. I have wondered before if Schaff might be a bit biased. Irenaeus doesn't hold it. (your second error is your misinterpretation of Irenaeus in 11/4/02, funnily enough he isn't contradicting himself (!) - the "apostasy" is death, not Satan. Hence your commentary is flat wrong.)
Gregory Nazianzen doesn't only not hold it, he actively attacks it as wrong:

“Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether." (Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 45:22)

You're correct that Augustine held views similar to Roman Catholicism on some issues relating to salvation, but he also held some views contrary to Roman Catholicism.Certainly his views on total depravity (if I may be anachronistic here) and Calvinistic predestination, weren't entirely retained by the RCC.

Even within a single church father, we sometimes find contradictions. Some fathers will speak of justification through faith alone in one passage, even using the term "faith alone", but will contradict the concept elsewhere. Some fathers will suggest universal salvation in one passage, but will suggest that salvation isn't universal elsewhere. They'll advocate one view of the atonement in one place and another view in another place. :eek: :eek: :eek:
ARGGH! How would you like it if I read the Bible like that?!?
"Well, here Paul contradicts himself, because earlier he said X and now he's saying Y. Oh, and look, now James is contradicting Paul and advocating salvation by works. And Matthew too is teaching salvation by works against Paul."
Such a reading of the Bible would be simply ruled out of court by most Protestants! I'm happy accepting that the Fathers disagreed about some issues. BUT DISAGREED WITH THEMSELVES??? For God's sake man, who are you trying to kid, a person doesn't ususally disagree with themselves! If you read their writings in such a way that you think they disagreed with themselves, then chances are about 99.99% that you are reading them wrongly. If ever you come across a self-contradiction in a writer, any writer, be they today or a millennia ago, the first conclusion should be "I have misunderstood what this writer is saying"!

If you think they were advocating your sola fide, and then they elsewhere that they contradict it, the logical conclusion is: The didn't actually believe it, and you were reading your own belief into their writings, and you don't actually understand what the DO believe.

As I said, there are many differing and contradictory views among the fathers on matters relating to salvation.As I said, a suggestion a Bible author could disagree with themselves would get laughed out of court, I'm surprised the Roman Catholics don't do the same when you do that to the Fathers. Back when I was a liberal Protestant I wasn't an inerrantist so I was happy to say that some Bible writers simply got it wrong, but it was when I started to say that some Bible writers contradicted themselves on various issues that I got a mental shock: People generally don't contradict themselves, and it you think they are doing so when they're explaining their beliefs, then you aren't understanding them properly.

Jude3b

February 3rd 2004, 07:24 PM

Paul wasn't Roman Cathoic, he was Jew who got saved and thereby was a Christian.

Jude 3b

JasonTE

February 3rd 2004, 09:33 PM

Tercel said:

You REALLY need some hyperlinks between the index and the contents of your site.

There are two versions on the index page I linked you to. The download version is organized by topic with links. Even in the text format, you can go directly to any section you want to with the Ctrl F command.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "eternal security" - once saved, always saved?

Yes, though, in some cases, salvation might be lost in this life but certain of being regained later.

Schaff is wrong here - I suggest you steer clear of 19th century scholarship.

I have more recent sources that agree with Schaff, such as the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Everett Ferguson, editor (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), p. 145, and J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978), pp. 173-174. I cite Schaff a lot, even though he's an older source, because his work is available online. I don't cite him because he's the only or the most recent source I have.

the "apostasy" is death, not Satan

J.N.D. Kelly cites the same passage I cited, and Kelly cites it as a reference to Satan, as I did and as Schaff did. In section 1 of chapter 22 of the same book of Irenaeus, we read:

"But the Word of God is the superior above all, He who is loudly proclaimed in the law: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God;' and, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;' and, 'Him shall thou adore, and Him alone shall thou serve.' Then in the Gospel, casting down the apostasy by means of these expressions, He did both overcome the strong man by His Father's voice, and He acknowledges the commandment of the law to express His own sentiments, when He says, 'Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God.' For He did not confound the adversary by the saying of any other, but by that belonging to His own Father, and thus overcame the strong man."

The apostasy is Satan, not death. Irenaeus is referring to Jesus resisting the temptations of Satan in the wilderness.

Gregory Nazianzen doesn't only not hold it, he actively attacks it as wrong

My series doesn't include Gregory Nazianzen on this subject. He's mentioned in passing in my quote from Schaff, but I don't include him in my discussion of the ransom to Satan concept.

ARGGH! How would you like it if I read the Bible like that?!?

I don't deny that the church fathers should be harmonized if it's reasonably possible. But we don't have evidence for the inerrancy of the fathers akin to the evidence we have for the inerrancy of scripture. The fathers sometimes contradicted themselves.

BUT DISAGREED WITH THEMSELVES??? For God's sake man, who are you trying to kid, a person doesn't ususally disagree with themselves!

I'm not trying to "kid" anybody. Patristic scholars frequently refer to the church fathers being inconsistent with themselves. For example, Augustine's view of Matthew 16 changed over time, and his view of the afterlife, particularly with regard to the concept of Purgatory, developed over time. I could give other examples, and I do in my series.

People generally don't contradict themselves, and it you think they are doing so when they're explaining their beliefs, then you aren't understanding them properly.

If people generally don't contradict themselves, then it logically follows that they sometimes do contradict themselves. What's your objection, then?

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Tercel

February 3rd 2004, 10:57 PM

The download version is organized by topic with links.Nice! :thumb:

I have more recent sources that agree with Schaff, such as the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Everett Ferguson, editor (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), p. 145, and J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978), pp. 173-174.Yes, for some reason numerous modern sources wrongly classify Irenaeus, Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzus on the Atonement. They all subscribe to Recapitulation, but I have seen them classified under both Penal Substitution and Ransom. I suspect they're all copying someone else and nobody's bothered to actually check.

I cite Schaff a lot, even though he's an older source, because his work is available online. I don't cite him because he's the only or the most recent source I have.Well, be warned he's not necessarily the most reliable of scholars, as his very basic mistake here indicates.

J.N.D. Kelly cites the same passage I cited, and Kelly cites it as a reference to Satan, as I did and as Schaff did.There is absolutely no way "apostasy" in Irenaeus can be consistently read as "Satan". He refers to Satan as an apostate, ie someone who has engaged/engages in apostasy.

Against Heresies. V,21,3
the apostate angel of God [Satan] is destroyed by its voice, being exposed in his true colours, and vanquished by the Son of man keeping the commandment of God. For as in the beginning he enticed man to transgress his Maker's law, and thereby got him into his power; yet his power consists in transgression and apostasy [ie rejection of God], and with these he bound man

Satan's power is in apostasy, and he himself is "an apostate" or "the adversary". But the "apostasy" itself can't be read as "Satan" else that makes no sense. "Satan's power consists in trangsgression and satan"? Hmm. And, as you point out, to read it as "satan" means Irenaeus appears to subscribe to the Ransom theory of the atonement, when we already know that he subscribes to the recapitulation model. Thus not only does a reading of Satan not make grammatical sense, it renders Irenaeus self-contradictory as well.

Apostasy means (care of dictionary.com):
1: the state of having rejected your religious beliefs
2: the act of abandoning a party or cause

in other words it is rejection of God, which we call "sin" or "unrighteousness", and in the recapitulation model that Irenaeus subscribes to is inevitably bound up with death. Thus it would be valid to render "apostasy" in Irenaeus as "sin", "unrighteousness" or "death", but not "satan". If there did exist a passage in Irenaeus where apostasy apparently had to be rendered as "Satan" it would warrent careful inspection.
There is no good reason to read apostasy in V,1,1 as "Satan" - it makes perfect sense if it means "unrighteousness, sin and death", and is Irenaeus' recapitulation model. "it" is also used rather than "he" as the pronoun reference to apostasy, suggesting a netural source rather than Satan (although given the text has come via two translations, that probably doesn't mean much).

In section 1 of chapter 22 of the same book of Irenaeus, we read:

"But the Word of God is the superior above all, He who is loudly proclaimed in the law: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God;' and, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;' and, 'Him shall thou adore, and Him alone shall thou serve.' Then in the Gospel, casting down the apostasy by means of these expressions, He did both overcome the strong man by His Father's voice, and He acknowledges the commandment of the law to express His own sentiments, when He says, 'Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God.' For He did not confound the adversary by the saying of any other, but by that belonging to His own Father, and thus overcame the strong man."Again, no necessity of rendering apostasy as "Satan" (though in this passage that would make sense), it makes equal sense here to render it as "unrighteousness".

My series doesn't include Gregory Nazianzen on this subject. He's mentioned in passing in my quote from Schaff, but I don't include him in my discussion of the ransom to Satan concept.Well his quote is wrong, so you might want to consider removing it.

But we don't have evidence for the inerrancy of the fathers akin to the evidence we have for the inerrancy of scripture.Well I don't accept inerrancy of Scripture, but I do think its best not to read authors as contradicting themselves.

Patristic scholars frequently refer to the church fathers being inconsistent with themselves. For example, Augustine's view of Matthew 16 changed over time, and his view of the afterlife, particularly with regard to the concept of Purgatory, developed over time.I'm not denying that someone's opinion might change over time. But when you try and read two different models on the atonement into one work, and make general statements about how the Fathers often disagreed with themselves, then I have to object.

Rdr. Arsenios

February 3rd 2004, 11:48 PM

How do you know that Eastern Orthodoxy is the church founded by Christ?

Because it is the communion of the Churches, the apostolic sees, of Antioch, Jerusalem, Thessalonika, etc... All named in the Bible... All still in existence and in communion, having maintained historical continuity and communion up to the present times... "Against which the gates of Gehenna shall not prevail..." Which once included Rome... And now excludes Her...

Since Jesus and the apostles repeatedly appealed to verifiable evidence to support what they were saying,

The proof of the faith is revelation following discipleship... Christ and the Apostles showed their claims, and related what they had seen with their own eyes, but the key to their words is power, Spirit, and revelation within discipleship... Not logical demonstration and conclusion, which is the way of vain philosophy where the fallen and Adamic human mind is the sovereign king of determining for itself what is true and false, following the rules of logic...

"But we hold the mstery of the faith in a purified conscience..." This means, dear Jason, that discipleship [unto a purified conscience] is prerequisite to anyone holding the faith, which itself is a mystery that is entered, and not a syllogism deduced and proven...

why are you so opposed to people judging your claims according to the historical evidence?

The historical evidence is a slam-dunk... Eastern Orthodoxy is the apostolic communion of the original Biblical Churches... I do not think you will find anyone saying otherwise... Rome used to be a part of our communion, until She separated from us and went her own way, believing that She is the one true Church, and the reformation birthed itself from Her excesses...

What do we do when one Eastern Orthodox source contradicts another?

Athiest rationalists love to ask the same question of the books and authors of the Bible... And deride Christians in the process... I would suggest that if you think Orthodox sources contradict each other, they either do indeed contradict each other, or they do not, and you are misunderstanding them, and as long as you are outside the Church, you cannot know which...

Knowledge comes with discipleship, and that comes from the Church, both educational and praxaeological, and it is in the course of the praxis that the knowledge of doctrine is apprehended... Doctrine iis no mere head trip of logical ratiocination and speculation - That is the western error, to think that they can intellectually apprehend the faith unto knowledge... It is simply not true - One can only end up in the utter and specious vanity of one's own logical processes, and end up with doctrines of men...

What if a bishop such as Epiphanius is opposed to the veneration of images, whereas a later bishop advocates the practice?

The great heresies came from within the Church, and not from outside Her, and are each and every and all very logically persuasive, including that of icons, and the great iconoclast-iconodule controversy, and the reesolution of it in the 7th ecumenical council - And no person in Orthodoxy is infallible - The fathers normally run a goo 80% or so right, and lots of errors, for all are human... It is the Church that is the pillar and ground of the Truth, not the particular persons who are members of it...

So that those who love to find divisions in the body of Christ will have their appetites more than satiated, for in human terms, there are few if any sins that have not been committed within that communion...

What if one Eastern Orthodox source gives us one view of salvation, and another Eastern Orthodox source gives us another view? If a Roman Catholic told you that he knows that Roman Catholicism is true because Roman Catholicism is the church, and he believes whatever the church tells him, how would you respond to such an argument?

What if? What if?? What if???

Whatchyagonnado, squad leader??

What if a JW tells you he is sure that his church is right, and he believes his church? We're just gonna have to have all our syllogistic strings lined up in a row to prove ourselves right and prove those other guys wrong, RIGHT??? Boy oh boy THEN we'll have the faith, won't we??

The problem with this is that I have never met a man who could not prove himself right to his own satisfaction...

Or to put it differently - We are called to Orthodoxy, and we do not judge those outside our communion - Our lives are our witness, and some of us are pretty good witnesses, and some, like me, are pretty lousy ones...

Revelation 8:3-4 refers to prayers going up to God, using imagery similar to what we see in chapter 5. The issue we were discussing was whether we should pray to deceased people, not whether they ever have a role in bringing our prayers to God. Your assumption that the elders can hold the vials only if the prayers are directed to them is unproven and unproveable.

So my surmise is true? You do NOT know how the elders at the throne of God came to be in possession of the vials that contain the incense that is the prayers of the saints??

You can just say so, you know...

The Orthodox have no problem with those vials, for intercessory prayer is sought and given throughout the communion of the Church, and it is to Christ that we pray when we ask, say, Paul to intercede to God for us, for what is it that he has? He alont with the others who are mature in the faith? "We have the mind of Christ..." And "It is not I, but Christ IN me..." that we seek in our intercessions, asked for and given... Do you really think that all this is wiped out when Paul dies upon the earth? I mean, he was not OF this earth when he was ON it... For him, to die is gain... Do you think he leaves the Church at death? Or enters into it more fully? For the Church is the Body of Christ, and Paul was a member of it, mature in Christ, perfected in the faith... And he died, and it was gain... Do you think he stops praying for the churches he fathered just because he is no longer in the flesh? Do you really think that the new Paul in Christ at death cannot any longer hear our requests for his intercession? Or that he is unwilling to take our prayers which we give to him to the very throne of God in Heaven? The very sweetness of those prayers? Do you really believe that Paul's "Christ in me" somehow departs when he falls asleep in the Lord? Or that 'Christ in me' cannot any longer hear our prayers?

The Church Christ founded in the Apostles has been teaching intercessory prayer from the beginnings - Had it not, there would have been great controversy, as there was over about every other matter, but never about the role of the Theotokos, and never about praying to departed saints for their intercession in our behalf... That witness lives uncontested from the beginnings in the pillar and ground of truth, Christ's Church...

The fact that you have to resort to such argumentation tells us something.

I simply asked you a question about were you thought those vials of incense that are the prayers of the saints in the possession of the elders in Revelation came from, and you do not know - I have already told you I do not regard it as an argument - Just a clue... I only reflect the uncontested witness of the Church on the issues of intercessory prayers to saints departed from their earthly sojournes... It is not a matter for proof and argumentation...

There are hundreds of passages of scripture on the subject of prayer, and we're never encouraged to pray to the deceased. Scripture repeatedly condemns any attempt to contact the deceased, and some of the earliest church fathers condemn praying to anybody other than God. And you want us to accept prayers to the dead on the basis of the elders holding vials of prayer in Revelation 5?

No - I never said that, nor do I advocate prayers to the deceased... The Church prays for the intercession of holy men and women of God who are in heaven, the saints... You are insisting on misrepresenting this as "praying to the deceased" - The new man in Christ is not deceased in Christ when he separates from his or her body at death, nor does Christ in that person become deceased, but they are much benefitted upon their death, and are closer to God, for they are now no longer suffering the limitations of their earthly bodies...

What is so hard about this?

[geo[ Arsenios

JasonTE

February 4th 2004, 10:07 PM

Tercel said:

And, as you point out, to read it as "satan" means Irenaeus appears to subscribe to the Ransom theory of the atonement, when we already know that he subscribes to the recapitulation model. Thus not only does a reading of Satan not make grammatical sense, it renders Irenaeus self-contradictory as well.

You're assuming that a person can hold only one view of the atonement. That's an unreasonable assumption, and I reject it. No matter how you define "the apostasy", Irenaeus is referring to the atonement. And he isn't referring to recapitulation. So, how can you deny that his view of the atonement was multifaceted?

There is no good reason to read apostasy in V,1,1 as "Satan" - it makes perfect sense if it means "unrighteousness, sin and death", and is Irenaeus' recapitulation model.

That section of Irenaeus refers to a personal entity. Irenaeus refers to God persuading the apostasy.

Again, no necessity of rendering apostasy as "Satan" (though in this passage that would make sense), it makes equal sense here to render it as "unrighteousness".

Earlier, you said that I was wrong, and that I should consult sources more recent than Schaff. Now you're saying that my interpretation "makes equal sense" in this passage I've cited, and that citing sources more recent than Schaff isn't enough, since you claim that the recent sources I've cited must be repeating an error they received from another source.

The passage from Irenaeus that I cited in my series refers to a personal being. And the most natural reading of the second passage I cited, in this thread, is that "the apostasy" is referring to Satan. In the midst of repeatedly referring to Jesus overthrowing Satan, he refers to casting down "the apostasy". Elsewhere (Against Heresies 3:23:1), Irenaeus refers to Satan possessing mankind and having power over him until Christ overcame Satan. I think my interpretation of the original passage is probable. Even if it was inconclusive, your claim that it's wrong is unjustified, and your claim that Irenaeus couldn't hold the recapitulation view and the ransom view at the same time is erroneous.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

JasonTE

February 4th 2004, 10:29 PM

George Blaisdell said:

Our lives are our witness, and some of us are pretty good witnesses, and some, like me, are pretty lousy ones...

I agree that you're a poor witness. Scripture tells us to be reasonable (Acts 17:2, 1 Peter 3:15, etc.), but you refuse to be.

The Church Christ founded in the Apostles has been teaching intercessory prayer from the beginnings - Had it not, there would have been great controversy

Athenagoras, Origen, and Lactantius condemn praying to anybody other than God. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Cyprian describe prayer as something to be offered only to God. Your claim that praying to the deceased has always been practiced by the church is false.

Your comments about deceased people being spiritually alive in Heaven are irrelevant. The Biblical passages about not attempting to contact the deceased (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Isaiah 8:19, 19:3) are about the physically deceased, not the spiritually deceased. If people who are spiritually alive in Heaven are physically deceased, the fact that they're spiritually alive doesn't change the fact that they're physically dead. And since the hundreds of Biblical passages on prayer never encourage us to pray to anybody other than God, saying that the people in Heaven are spiritually alive doesn't change the fact that we're never encouraged to pray to them. If Eastern Orthodoxy's practice of praying to the deceased has always been held by the church, why is it never mentioned in hundreds of Biblical passages on prayer? Why do some of the earliest church fathers condemn the practice?

Because it is the communion of the Churches, the apostolic sees, of Antioch, Jerusalem, Thessalonika, etc... All named in the Bible... All still in existence and in communion, having maintained historical continuity and communion up to the present times... "Against which the gates of Gehenna shall not prevail..." Which once included Rome... And now excludes Her...

How do you know that Rome is wrong, whereas Eastern Orthodoxy is right? How do you reach your conclusion without using evidence or logic?

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Rdr. Arsenios

February 4th 2004, 11:39 PM

George Blaisdell said:

I agree that you're a poor witness. Scripture tells us to be reasonable (Acts 17:2, 1 Peter 3:15, etc.), but you refuse to be.

Well, I must say that it is nice to find at least something that we can agree upon... But the reasonableness you advocate is the reasonableness of the supremacy of human reason in the Christian faith, and in contradistinction to this, I am telling you that human reason failed, and that Christ came to reveal the faith, not to logically compel it... And that for Christians from the very beginnings, it was not intellectual persuasion, but discipleship, that brought the disciples to knowledge, and the knowledge was revealed, not logically persuaded...

Luke, for instance, writes: 24:45 "Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures..."

This is called, in the Orthodox Tradition, the enlightenment of the nous, for understanding is predicated, within discipleship, upon the mind of the disciple being opened by God, and not by its being persuaded to its own intellectual satisfaction...

The Christian path that wrote the Bible is one of discipleship and revelation, not intellectual prowess and mastery of the data of the Bible...

The Christian moves in the power of the Spirit, and not in the vanity of the intellect... The vanity of the intellect is the teaching of but mere men, however smart they be... But the Church is the pillar and ground of truth... So you can believe the Church, or human intellect outside the communion of the Church...

I believe the Church...

You call me unreasonable...

I am only stumbling toward faith...

You sound like you've got it all figured out...

I haven't even figure out true repentance...

I still sin... And if I truely repented, I would not...

For true repentance is to never commit the repented sin again...

I am a very poor witness indeed...

We agree on that at least...

[geo] Arsenios

Amazing Rando

February 5th 2004, 10:41 AM

Just a general comment here for JasonTE and Jude3b- George and Tercel are making you guys look like a couple of pompous jerks. You'd both do well to emulate the Christlike humility that George especially is showing.

Tercel

February 6th 2004, 05:16 PM

You're assuming that a person can hold only one view of the atonement. That's an unreasonable assumption, and I reject it.I'm not exactly saying that. One person can certainly use multiple images to describe the atonement, or they can be uncertain about its actual workings. But I think it is a reasonable assumption that one person cannot hold two contradictory views of how the atonement really worked. The Recapitulation and Ransom models are, I believe, mutually exclusive - the most that can be done is to incorporate aspects of one into the other but I see no way anyone could hold to both fully fledged models at once and be coherent.

No matter how you define "the apostasy", Irenaeus is referring to the atonement.In V,1,1? Agreed.

And he isn't referring to recapitulation.Disagreed. The first time I read the passage, I immediately thought “this is a very concise explanation of recapitulation”. It never once crossed my mind, nor did it ever do so until you suggested it, that Irenaeus was advocating the Ransom theory in this passage. I accept that if you were to translate “the apostasy” in the passage as “Satan”, then it would seem that Irenaeus was advocating the Ransom theory. But you’d need a good reason to turn a recapitulation passage in a writer that advocated recapitulation, into a Ransom theory. At face value, such a suggestion could be dismissed out of hand.

Now you seem convinced that my case is unproven. But here’s the way I see things:
Gregory Nazianzus and Irenaeus are two of my three favourite (Athanasius being the other) early Fathers. I am reasonably familiar with their ideas and writings, and indeed one of the reasons I like them so much is because I agree with them 99% of the time and believe what they believed.

You presented a quote from Schaff saying that Irenaeus and Gregory (among others) subscribed to the Ransom theory. I have no hesitation in saying this quote is factually incorrect. I have done studies on both Irenaeus’ and Gregory’s views on the atonement. Both subscribe to the Recapitulation model, (as does Athanasius). Now, it is of course possible for authors to use imagery from their non-dominant model (and some authors eg Paul, Cyril of Jerusalem etc use imagery from so many models we are left wondering exactly which model of the atonement they felt was most accurate), and possible for authors to change their beliefs during their life. But I know of no good reason to think either of these are the case for either of the two authors.

In Oration 45:22 (http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-56.htm#P5873_2010446) (part of which was quoted by me earlier) Gregory attacks the Ransom-from-Satan theory and then (a version of) Penal Substitution. It would seem, therefore, likely that he follows his teacher Athanasius in advocating the Recapitulation model. His other writings make it quite clear that he does. If you are interested in having a browse, I once made list of quotable-quotes from my reading of Gregory. I’ve just gotten Word to turn it into HTML and I’ve put it here (http://www.geocities.com/mailtercel/gregorynazorian.html). The formatting’s not wonderful as it was intended only for my personal reference. Probably many of his comments would not make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn’t read Athanasius’ On the Incarnation (http://www.gty.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm) (well worth reading as it is probably the greatest work of the ancient world on the subject of the Atonement, all the more remarkable because it was written when Athanasius was about 22 and before he had become famous, and most especially because he is simply attempting to explain to a friend what Christians believe on the atonement rather than advocating any new ideas himself).

Given that Oration 45 was the last of Gregory’s sermons, and he learned from Athanasius before he taught himself, it seems the chances are minimal of his ever having changed his mind on the subject because it seems he would have had to change it twice. So I can only conclude that Schaff is incorrect in his statement about Gregory.

Similarly to anyone who has done a serious study of Irenaeus it is well known that he advocated the Recapitulation model, as you have granted. I started a thread on the Recapitulation model in Irenaeus a while ago see here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18454). Does Schaff even recognise Irenaeus’ recapitulation model, or did Schaff live prior to the Recapitulation model being understood in the West? (The Recapitulation model remains the standard view of the Atonement in the Eastern churches to this day, and it is only through increased contact between the Christian East and West that the Recapitulation model is now understood in the West – all knowledge of it seems to have (historically) disappeared utterly in the West. Even today, theological works that discuss the atonement in the West often do not list the Recapitulation theory when summarising the possibilities, and even where it is mentioned it is understood quite badly.)

Therefore, having established that Schaff is wrong about Gregory, knowing that there is a long history in the West of misunderstanding Recapitulation, and the unlikelihood of Irenaeus actually advocating (rather than simply using imagery from) both the Recapitulation and the Ransom models, it seems a reasonable conclusion that Schaff was also wrong about Irenaeus. But let’s ignore that, and look at the evidence:

To back up the translation of “apostasy” as “Satan”, you have referred me to a second passage in the book where again it would be possible to understand it as “Satan”. But as I have pointed out, it is by no means necessary in that passage to understand “apostasy” as “Satan”, and “unrighteousness” is an equally valid rendering in that passage. In short your evidence proves nothing.

I cited a passage where it is impossible to understand “apostasy” as “Satan”. If apostasy was read as Satan in that passage, it became nonsensical and ended up saying that Satan has power over transgression and Satan. You have not commented on this passage, hence am I to assume you accept my assessment of it? I concluded that in that passage “apostasy” must be understood as “sin” or “unrighteousness” or “death”, but not “satan”.

Then we have the disputed passage in V,1,1 where if you read it as “satan” then it’s Ransom and if you read it as “unrighteousness” or “death” then its Recapitulation.

Thus the state of the evidence is:
2 passages where apostasy could be interpreted equally either way.
1 passage where it definitely cannot be understood as “satan”, but can be understood as “unrighteousness”.

Hence in interpreting the unclear passages we should render it “unrighteousness” and not “satan”. Since this agrees with what we would expect Irenaeus to be saying in V,1,1, it seems to be that we have a clear solution: To read it as “Satan” is likely wrong.

That section of Irenaeus refers to a personal entity. Irenaeus refers to God persuading the apostasy.That could either be understood as a metaphorical term, or as referring to Jesus’ preaching of righteousness in order to get rid of unrighteousness.

Earlier, you said that I was wrong, and that I should consult sources more recent than Schaff. Now you're saying that my interpretation "makes equal sense" in this passage I've cited, and that citing sources more recent than Schaff isn't enough, since you claim that the recent sources I've cited must be repeating an error they received from another source.I thought sources more recent than Schaff might have it right. But your more recent sources apparently consists of an encyclopedia which it seems to me would be incredibly likely to borrow from an earlier source rather than doing a primary-source analysis themselves, and Kelly, who’s work I know nothing of. The main problem in using scholarly works on the subject, is that most Protestants are not familiar at all with the recapitulation model (and may only understand vaguely the Ransom-from-Satan model) and most Protestant works that explain the different theories of the atonement don’t include the recapitulation model. What you need –for an opinion I would take very seriously– is an Eastern Orthodox scholar to comment on the passage as the Recapitulation and Ransom models are the only two models ever seriously advocated in the history of the Eastern Church. Any Eastern writer could distinguish between the Recapitulation and Ransom models in the dark with their hands tied behind their back. Find me an EO commentator who says Irenaeus means “Satan” and I will believe you.

Either that or actually present some convincing evidence apart from “somebody who might or might not know what they’re talking about says so”. Given I am reasonably knowledgeable on the subject myself, I am not going be convinced by arguments from authority. Especially when I have good reason to think the authorities might be wrong.

But, just for the sake of my own peace of mind (and because I have several hours to spare): The following is a complete list of Irenaeus’ uses of the word “apostasy” in Against Heresies (as it occurs in the English translation on www.ccel.org). I strongly recommend readers skip to my summary at the end at this point – unless they are particularly interested in two pages of references quotes and interpretation of Irenaeus.

Book I:
3,3: “the apostasy of Judas” (referring to Judas’ betrayal)
10,3 “the apostasy of the angels” (referring to the fall of all the angels)
27,4 “the great author of apostasy” (referring to Satan, but as the author of apostasy, not as the apostasy)
30,9 “They were urged on to all kinds of wickedness by the inferior Hebdomad, and to apostasy, idolatry, and a general contempt for everything” (clearly regarding apostasy is some form of sin)

Book II:
20,3 “the leader of apostasy” (referring to Satan, but as the leader of apostasy, not as the apostasy)
27,7 “that He [the Creator] derived His substance from apostasy and ignorane” (critiquing the gnostic idea that the creator is the result of a series of emanations from the highest God, nothing to do with Satan)

Book III:
4,3 “But all these (the Marcosians) broke out into their apostasy much later, even during the intermediate period of the Church.” (here he is speaking of the “apostasy” of the heretics)
5,3 “Jesus Christ, who redeemed us from apostasy with His own blood, so that we should also be a sanctified people” (here apostasy could be read as “Satan”, but the conjunction of it with the term sanctification, suggests it means “unrighteousness” or something similar)
8,2 “Now we were the vessels and the house of this [person (Satan),] when we were in a state of apostasy; for he put us to whatever use he pleased, and the unclean spirit dwelt within us” (again here, to understand “apostasy” as “Satan” makes no sense, it must be understood as “unrighteousness”/ “disunion with God”)
23,3 “eternal fire was not originally prepared for man, but for him who beguiled man, and caused him to offend--for him, I say, who is chief of the apostasy, and for those angels who became apostates along with him” (Satan is the chief instrumenter and lord of apostasy, but not himself “apostasy”)
23,8 “the serpent also did not profit when persuading man [to sin], except to this effect, that he proved him a transgressor, obtaining man as the first-fruits of his own apostasy.” (Adam was the first to copy Satan in apostasy, or, alternatively that the devil gained power over Adam as a result of the devil’s (or Adam’s) apostasy)

Book IV:
Preface,3 “they represent that the Maker and Framer... was produced from a defect or apostasy.” x2 (Again referring to the Gnostic doctrine of emanations)
12,5 “the Mother, the enthymesis of the AEon, who existed in suffering and apostasy” (describing a Gnostic doctrine)
18,4 “Those, again, who maintain that the things around us originated from apostasy, ignorance, and passion, do, while offering unto Him the fruits of ignorance, passion, and apostasy, sin against their Father, rather subjecting Him to insult than giving Him thanks.” (here apostasy likely means some form of unrighteousness, though it is possible to read it as “Satan”)
33,3 “He who formed all things is the fruit of an apostasy or defect.” x2 (Gnostics again)
37,7 “For God has displayed long-suffering in the case of man's apostasy; while man has been instructed by means of it, as also the prophet says, "Thine own apostasy shall heal thee;" God thus determining all things beforehand for the bringing of man to perfection, for his edification, and for the revelation of His dispensations, that goodness may both be made apparent, and righteousness perfected, and that the Church may be fashioned after the image of His Son, and that man may finally be brought to maturity at some future time, becoming ripe through such privileges to see and comprehend God.” (“apostasy” here is man’s unrighteousness)
40,1 “[God made] the eternal fire for the ringleader of the apostasy [Satan]” (Satan is the leader in apostasy, but not simply “apostasy”)
41,1 “it must be affirmed that He [God] has ascribed all who are of the apostasy to him [Satan] who is the ringleader of this transgression.” (“all who are of the apostasy” = wicked men, not Satan)
41,2 “the devil has become the cause of apostasy to himself and others, justly does the Scripture always term those who remain in a state of apostasy "sons of the devil"” (The devil is the cause of apostasy, not the apostasy itself)
41,3 “to him [Satan] who first became the cause of apostasy to himself, and afterwards to others.” (ditto)

Book V:
1,1 “And since the apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and, though we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by violent means, as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own” (The disputed passage)
2,1 “As far as concerned the apostasy, indeed, He redeems us righteously from it by His own blood” (equally as unclear as the above)
18,2 “this world belongs to Him [The Word of God], and was made by Him, according to the Father's will, and not by angels; nor by apostasy, defect, and ignorance; nor by any power of Prunicus, whom certain of them also call "the Mother;" nor by any other maker of the world ignorant of the Father.” (another reference to the Gnostic beliefs)
21,3 “his [Satan’s] power consists in transgression and apostasy, and with these he bound man” (apostasy is some power that Satan wields over man, eg bondage to sin and death. Apostasy isn’t Satan himself)
22,1 “Then in the Gospel, casting down the apostasy by means of these expressions” (apostasy is either “Satan” or some form of unrighteousness)
24,4 “Just as if any one, being an apostate, and seizing in a hostile manner another man's territory, should harass the inhabitants of it, in order that he might claim for himself the glory of a king among those ignorant of his apostasy and robbery; so likewise also the devil, being one among those angels who are placed over the spirit of the air.... becoming envious of man, was rendered an apostate from the divine law: for envy is a thing foreign to God. And as his apostasy was exposed by man, and man became the [means of] searching out his thoughts, he has set himself to this with greater and greater determination, in opposition to man, envying his life, and wishing to involve him in his own apostate power. The Word of God, however, the Maker of all things, conquering him by means of human nature, and showing him to be an apostate, has, on the contrary, put him under the power of man... in order that, as he obtained dominion over man by apostasy, so again his apostasy might be deprived of power by means of man turning back again to God.” (“apostasy” = the breaching of the divine law through sin, not “Satan”)
25,1 “For he (Antichrist) being endued with all the power of the devil, shall come, not as a righteous king, nor as a legitimate king, in subjection to God, but an impious, unjust, and lawless one; as an apostate, iniquitous and murderous; as a robber, concentrating in himself [all] satanic apostasy, and setting aside idols to persuade [men] that he himself is God, raising up himself as the only idol, having in himself the multifarious errors of the other idols.... The apostle therefore clearly points out his apostasy” (“apostasy” = ungodliness, not “Satan”)
25,5 “From all these passages are revealed to us, not merely the particulars of the apostasy, and [the doings] of him who concentrates in himself every satanic error” (probably “apostasy” = the unrighteousness during the tribulation, possibly “apostasy” = “Satan” or “the antichrist”)
26,2 “Him [God] who has prepared eternal fire for every kind of apostasy.” (“apostasy” = unrighteousness, not Satan)
26,2 “[Hell is for Satan] and likewise for all who unrepentant continue in the apostasy... [Satan now blasphemes God by attributing] the guilt of his apostasy to his Maker. (ditto)
27,2 “But separation from God is death, and separation from light is darkness; and separation from God consists in the loss of all the benefits which He has in store. Those, therefore, who cast away by apostasy these forementioned things, being in fact destitute of all good, do experience every kind of punishment. God, however, does not punish them immediately of Himself, but that punishment falls upon them because they are destitute of all that is good.” (ditto. NB: this is the Recapitulation model)
28,2 “For when he (Antichrist) is come, and of his own accord concentrates in his own person the apostasy” (could be “unrighteousness”, or “Satan”)
28,2 “and the number is six hundred and sixty-six, that is, six times a hundred, six times ten, and six units. [He gives this] as a summing up of the whole of that apostasy which has taken place during six thousand years.” (definitely unrighteousness, not Satan)
28,4 “the chaff, indeed, which is the apostasy, being cast away; but the wheat, that is, those who bring forth fruit to God in faith, being gathered into the barn.” (“those who are unrighteous” is my best guess for “the apostasy” in this passage, though “unrighteousness” would work too. Certainly the devil is included in the first group, but it isn’t a specific reference to him, to read it as “Satan” here is clearly wrong)
29,2 “wickedness which took place... due to the apostasy of the angels” (referring to the interbreeding of the angels with man in early genesis, not to the Fall of the angels, and definitely not to Satan)
29,2 “Noah, in whose time the deluge occurred because of the apostasy” (rebellious men, not Satan)
29,2 “the number of the name of that man in whom is concentrated the whole apostasy of six thousand years” (apostasy = unrighteousness, not Satan)
30,1 “indicates the recapitulations of that apostasy” (he’s still taking about the antichrist, so: ditto)

SUMMARY

“Apostasy” occurs in 38 times in Against Heresies. (Sometimes I have counted multiple occurrences in a paragraph as “one” as sometimes individually, depending on whether they seemed to be part of the same thought.)

Of those 38:

5 are references to the Gnostic belief that from the highest God there extends a series of emanations each of which is a being slightly less divine and less good, until finally we get to the evil creator-god. Irenaeus speaks of these as being “produced from defect and apostasy”, by which he seems to mean they are less good, ie more unrighteous. Hence I have classified the 5 occurrences of explanation of Gnostic beliefs as also being synonymous with “unrighteousness”.

38 could possibly simply mean “unrighteousness” or a similar word – eg sin, transgression, rebellion, disunion etc.

15 could simply not mean anything else than “unrighteousness” or similar.

6 could possibly be references to the person of Satan.

32 definitely cannot be direct references to the person of Satan.

2 could possibly mean “all the wicked”, which would include hence Satan.

9 connect unrighteousness with Satan. eg he is “the ringleader of apostasy”, he has power over “transgression and apostasy” etc.

CONCLUSION:
100% of the time it is possible to understand “apostasy” as meaning “unrighteousness”, and 39% of the time it [i]had to be understood in this way. The suggestion that the word “apostasy” in Irenaeus is a reference to “Satan” has been demonstrated to be incorrect – only 16% of the time is it possible that it might mean “Satan” and 84% of the time it definitely does not.

Hence given a passage such as V,1,1 where it is possible to read “apostasy” either as “Satan” or as “unrighteousness” I conclude that it should be read as “unrighteousness”. ...hmm, I feel like I just used a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

JasonTE

February 7th 2004, 12:43 AM

Tercel said:

The Recapitulation and Ransom models are, I believe, mutually exclusive

Why? Keep in mind that both Schaff and my series on the fathers refer to variations of the ransom view. I don't argue, nor do my sources argue, that there's only one ransom perspective and that Irenaeus agreed with everything believed by every other proponent of a ransom view.

Gregory Nazianzus and Irenaeus are two of my three favourite (Athanasius being the other) early Fathers. I am reasonably familiar with their ideas and writings, and indeed one of the reasons I like them so much is because I agree with them 99% of the time and believe what they believed.

I don't know how you arrive at the 99% figure. Do you agree with Irenaeus' highly literal view of scripture? How about his eschatology? Do you agree with his canon of scripture? Or his view of the atonement? His view of the eucharist?

To back up the translation of “apostasy” as “Satan”, you have referred me to a second passage in the book where again it would be possible to understand it as “Satan”.

No, I explained why the Satan interpretation is probable, not just possible.

I cited a passage where it is impossible to understand “apostasy” as “Satan”. If apostasy was read as Satan in that passage, it became nonsensical and ended up saying that Satan has power over transgression and Satan.

I never disputed the fact that the term has multiple meanings. But the passage I cited in my series refers to a personal being who is persuaded by God. Context helps us define a term that has multiple meanings, and the context of the section I quoted includes the use of highly personalized terminology. You've suggested that the personal terminology might be metaphorical, but my interpretation doesn't require assuming a metaphor and is thus more natural. We know from other passages, one of which I've cited, that Irenaeus viewed Satan as leading man into captivity and possessing mankind. In another passage, he refers to how Satan must be "fairly" conquered (5:21:1), which, again, suggests that Satan has some sort of legal right.

if you read it as “unrighteousness” or “death” then its Recapitulation

Why?

That could either be understood as a metaphorical term, or as referring to Jesus’ preaching of righteousness in order to get rid of unrighteousness.

Shortly before and shortly after referring to how God redeemed man from the apostasy, Irenaeus refers to Jesus "redeeming us by His own blood" and how "the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood" (5:1:1). He's discussing the atonement, not "preaching of righteousness".

Find me an EO commentator who says Irenaeus means “Satan” and I will believe you.

You originally objected that I wasn't citing sources that are more recent. Now that I've given more recent sources, you've changed your standard. Now you want me to limit the sources to Eastern Orthodoxy, as if non-Eastern-Orthodox scholars can't understand Irenaeus. Your request is unreasonable, so I'm not going to try to meet it. I don't know the religious affiliation of Frances Young, who wrote the article I cited in Everett Ferguson's work. He may be Eastern Orthodox. I don't know. And there may be Eastern Orthodox scholars I could cite who would agree with the other scholars I've cited. I don't know. If you want to research it, you can. I see no need for it.

The main problem in using scholarly works on the subject, is that most Protestants are not familiar at all with the recapitulation model (and may only understand vaguely the Ransom-from-Satan model) and most Protestant works that explain the different theories of the atonement don’t include the recapitulation model

All of the sources I cited know of the recapitulation view and discuss it. Thus, your characterization of Protestant sources isn't applicable to the sources I've cited. Why, then, should we dismiss those sources as unreliable?

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Tercel

February 7th 2004, 07:30 AM

Jason,

I think we're almost done here, I've got little further to add in answer to your post that I haven't already said.

But the passage I cited in my series refers to a personal being who is persuaded by God. Context helps us define a term that has multiple meanings, and the context of the section I quoted includes the use of highly personalized terminology.Highly personalized terminology such as "it"? The occurance of "persuaded" is hardly an indication of personalisation when an "it" is the thing that is the target of the persuasion.

In another passage, he refers to how Satan must be "fairly" conquered (5:21:1), which, again, suggests that Satan has some sort of legal right.Er, no. That's a very strained interpretation.

He's discussing the atonement, not "preaching of righteousness".I presume you have heard of Peter Abelard. Similiar thinking is apparent in Athanasius' Incarnation of the Word and it would be unsurprising to see it also in Irenaeus as Athanasius borrowed very heavily from Irenaeus on the subject of the atonement.
In his Proof of Apostolic Preaching (http://www.geocities.com/mailtercel/christsworkinpap.html) for example, Irenaeus states that one of the reasons Christ became man was "that He should dwell with him and talk with him, and should be with men, teaching them righteousness" (para 12).

JasonTE

February 7th 2004, 10:35 AM

Tercel said:

Er, no. That's a very strained interpretation.

Would you explain what you think Irenaeus meant, then? He refers to Satan taking possession of mankind, mankind being his goods, his spoil, etc. And he refers to how God would have to fairly take back mankind from Satan. What do you think he means?

I presume you have heard of Peter Abelard. Similiar thinking is apparent in Athanasius' Incarnation of the Word and it would be unsurprising to see it also in Irenaeus as Athanasius borrowed very heavily from Irenaeus on the subject of the atonement.

I don't deny that there are some similarities between Irenaeus and Athanasius, and there are similarities between Irenaeus and other fathers. But they didn't agree about everything. I don't think many fathers agreed with Irenaeus that Jesus atoned for old men by living to be an old man of more than 40 years of age, for example.

In his Proof of Apostolic Preaching for example, Irenaeus states that one of the reasons Christ became man was "that He should dwell with him and talk with him, and should be with men, teaching them righteousness" (para 12).

I don't deny that Irenaeus believed that Jesus preached righteousness. I don't know of any professing Christian who would deny that fact. The issue is whether Irenaeus was discussing the preaching of righteousness in the comments I cited. As I documented, what Irenaeus was discussing in the most immediate context was the shedding of Christ's blood for atonement, not the preaching of righteousness.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Rdr. Arsenios

February 7th 2004, 11:22 AM

Tercel writes:

<<<"Athanasius’ On the Incarnation (well worth reading as it is probably the greatest work of the ancient world on the subject of the Atonement, all the more remarkable because it was written when Athanasius was about 22 and before he had become famous, and most especially because he is simply attempting to explain to a friend what Christians believe on the atonement rather than advocating any new ideas himself).">>>

This indeed is the very standard format of Orthodox exposition of matters of faith, for one's own opinions are only private matters, but citing the teaching of the Church is what is important, and we all understand but in part, for each of us is but a part of the whole, so that we look to others who are mature in the faith for our understanding... For we are not mature in the faith... And even from those who are mature in the faith, we find the same method, of only citing other's opinions before them, who were mature, and then seeking to address an issue that has arisen in those terms, thus but spreading a very little of the Light to a small area crying for understanding out of need... "Lest we boast..." [Paul]

I had no idea Athanasius was only 22 when he wrote On the Incarnation... What a wonderful saint!

[geo] Arsenios

JasonTE

February 7th 2004, 02:42 PM

George Blaisdell said:

This indeed is the very standard format of Orthodox exposition of matters of faith, for one's own opinions are only private matters, but citing the teaching of the Church is what is important

Your assertion that "the teaching of the Church is what is important" is itself a personal judgment. We all rely on personal judgment. It's unavoidable. Your beliefs that there is a God, that Jesus existed historically, that Jesus is God, that He founded a church, that the church is defined by Eastern Orthodoxy, etc. are all fallible personal opinions. And some of those opinions are contrary to the evidence. There's no good reason to think that we should believe only what Eastern Orthodoxy tells us to believe. We know that bishops and councils, including ecumenical councils, sometimes err. And we know that majority opinion is sometimes wrong. Appealing to Eastern Orthodox bishops and councils or what a majority of Eastern Orthodox believe doesn't prove that something is correct. In fact, we know that Eastern Orthodox bishops, councils, and popular opinion have sometimes contradicted what was believed by earlier sources. We're responsible for following the original revelation of God, not some later interpretation of it by later generations (2 Kings 22:8-13, Nehemiah 8:13-17).

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Tercel

February 7th 2004, 06:03 PM

Would you explain what you think Irenaeus meant, then? He refers to Satan taking possession of mankind, mankind being his goods, his spoil, etc. And he refers to how God would have to fairly take back mankind from Satan. What do you think he means?Sure. Here is the relevant passage:

Against Heresies, V, XXI, 1:
He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as thou canst perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for thy head, and thou on the watch for His heel." For from that time, He who should be born of a woman, [namely] from the Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent. This is the seed of which the apostle says in the Epistle to the Galatians, "that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made." This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same Epistle, where he thus speaks: "But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman." For indeed the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man of a woman who conquered him. For it was by means of a woman that he got the advantage over man at first, setting himself up as man's opponent. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm [of victory] against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death.

There is nothing to suggest "fairly" should be understood in a judicial sense of "preserving legal rights". The two sentences following "fairly" show that Irenaeus thinking is that the parallels between Adam and Christ should be perfect. It is in this sense that he uses "fairly", meaning by it "fittingly", "properly", or "in a way worthy of God". It was by means of a woman that Satan "got the advantage over man" therefore it is fitting that it was by means of a second woman that our salvation came. It was by a man's failure that man succumbed to death, therefore it is fitting that by a man's success we should conquer death. That's what this passage is saying: Nothing to do with legal rights whatsoever.

I don't deny that Irenaeus believed that Jesus preached righteousness. I don't know of any professing Christian who would deny that fact. The issue is whether Irenaeus was discussing the preaching of righteousness in the comments I cited. As I documented, what Irenaeus was discussing in the most immediate context was the shedding of Christ's blood for atonement, not the preaching of righteousness.Well we are talking about V, I, 1 which reads:

For in no other way could we have learned the things of God, unless our Master, existing as the Word, had become man. For no other being had the power of revealing to us the things of the Father, except His own proper Word. For what other person "knew the mind of the Lord," or who else "has become His counsellor?" Again, we could have learned in no other way than by seeing our Teacher, and hearing His voice with our own ears, that, having become imitators of His works as well as doers of His words, we may have communion with Him, receiving increase from the perfect One, and from Him who is prior to all creation. We--who were but lately created by the only best and good Being, by Him also who has the gift of immortality, having been formed after His likeness (predestinated, according to the prescience of the Father, that we, who had as yet no existence, might come into being), and made the first-fruits of creation --have received, in the times known beforehand, [the blessings of salvation] according to the ministration of the Word, who is perfect in all things, as the mighty Word, and very man, who, redeeming us by His own blood in a manner consonant to reason, gave Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity. And since the [B]apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and, though we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by violent means, as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own, but by means of persuasion, as became a God of counsel, who does not use violent means to obtain what He desires; so that neither should justice be infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction. Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the Spirit, and, on the other hand, attaching man to God by His own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God,--all the doctrines of the heretics fall to ruin.

The best interpretation of that IMO, is as follows:
As I have highlighted, the first part of the verse speaks of Jesus teaching righteousness. The highlighted section ends with the conclusion that by learning righteousness from Christ "we may have communion with Him". Then the section on the apostasy opens by saying that the apostasy "alienated us [from God] contrary to nature". We have just been told the solution to this problem - Jesus teaching us righteousness allows us to have communion with God again. Thus, though the first ocurrance of unrighteousness forcibly introduced death into the world and rendered us in bondage to it, the occurance of righteousness into the world in the person of Jesus doesn't forcibly render us its own but attempts to persuade us instead. Through the recapitulation death has been forcibly destroyed but righteousness is up to us to respond on not to Christ's teaching.

JasonTE

February 7th 2004, 08:23 PM

Tercel said:

The two sentences following "fairly" show that Irenaeus thinking is that the parallels between Adam and Christ should be perfect. It is in this sense that he uses "fairly", meaning by it "fittingly", "properly", or "in a way worthy of God". It was by means of a woman that Satan "got the advantage over man" therefore it is fitting that it was by means of a second woman that our salvation came.

The issue isn't whether there are parallels. The issue is why there are parallels. The term "fairly" is not a synonym of "fittingly", unless you attach concepts to that word that aren't inherent in it. You don't have to do something fitting in order to be fair. When Jesus' life parallels David's life, for example, we wouldn't conclude that such a parallel is necessary in order for God to be fair.

As I have highlighted, the first part of the verse speaks of Jesus teaching righteousness.

As I said earlier, the more immediate context refers to how Jesus "thus has redeemed us through His own blood" (5:1:1). The blood atonement, not the preaching of righteousness, seems to be Irenaeus' explanation of how Jesus accomplishes what Irenaeus just described.

I agree with you that much of what Irenaeus says relevant to this subject is open to multiple interpretations, which is why I used the word "seems" in the segment on this topic in my series. But all of the references to Satan taking us captive and God acting in fairness, persuasion, etc. suggest some form of the ransom to Satan view. We know that variations of that view are found in other sources living close to the time of Irenaeus.

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Rdr. Arsenios

February 8th 2004, 11:31 PM

[geo]
This indeed is the very standard format of Orthodox exposition of matters of faith, for one's own opinions are only private matters, but citing the teaching of the Church is what is important...

[Jason]
Your assertion that "the teaching of the Church is what is important" is itself a personal judgment. We all rely on personal judgment. It's unavoidable.

You persuasively argue [antithetically to your belief, btw] for the Biblical affirmation that it is the Church that is the Ground and Pillar of Truth, and that truth is not what you call "unavoidable personal judgement." The fathers of the undivided Church of the first millennium were painfully aware of this weakness of the individual person and his inability on his own, with his fallen [Adamic] nous, to know the truth. Christ's great commission to the apostles was to go forth and disciple the nations... This is the way to knowledge of the truth, discipleship at the hands of the Church of the Apostles... And not reading the Bible and making scholarly inferences... It is the Apostolic Church that disciples the nations, and not the Bible being read outside that Church by heady intellectual types like you and me...

The following is a modern work by a living metropolitan, taken from:
http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.06.htm
The chapter title is, I believe, Orthodox Epistemology.

The process of discipling is one of changing the disciple, not of changing the Church... The disciple is in the process of acquiring the mind of the Church, the nous of Christ... No small matter... And he does NOT do so by reading the Bible, forming his very own conclusions based on the very latest research he has just discovered... It doesn't work that way... The Bible doesn't teach this at all...

Instead he enters into discipleship, obeying his elders, repenting, and being baptized into the Church... This is all quite Biblical... And it is only within this that he comes to knowledge of the truth, for God is Truth, and knowing God IS eternal Life, and that intimacy of knowledge is acquired in discipleship, not in academic study, and is a different kind of knowledge from that to which you cling... Hence the following, a modern work by a living metropolitan, taken from:
http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.06.htm
The chapter title is, I believe, Orthodox Epistemology. The whole on-line article is worth a careful read...]
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1. The three degrees of knowledge according to St. Isaac the Syrian

St. Isaac the Syrian develops the theme of the three degrees of knowledge in chapters fifty-two and fifty-three of his Ascetical Homilies.

He begins by contrasting knowledge and faith. Human knowledge is marked by the fact that it has no authority to do anything "without investigation and examination", but it must investigate whether that which it desires is possible (p.254). In human knowledge there is a great deal of intelligence, and it is mainly fallen intelligence which is at work, having overstepped its natural limits; that is to say, it is an intelligence which dominates the nous as well. Faith, however, has different limits, and herein seems to lie its great difference from human knowledge, as well as its great value. St. Isaac says that when we use the word `faith' we do not mean the handing down of the dogmatic truths about the Persons of the Holy Trinity and about Christ's becoming man and about the assumption of human nature by the Second Person of the Trinity, "although this faith is also very lofty", but the main meaning of what we call faith is "that light which by grace dawns in the soul and fortifies the heart by the testimony of the mind, making it undoubting through the assurance of hope". This spiritual faith does not learn the mysteries by aural tradition, "but with spiritual eyes it beholds the mysteries concealed in the soul, and the secret and divine riches that are hidden away from the eyes of the sons of the flesh, but are unveiled by the spirit to those who abide at Christ's table through their study of His laws" (p.262). That is to say that while human knowledge is acquired through activity of the intelligence and through human research, divine knowledge is acquired through faith. This faith is mainly that which dawns in the soul from the light of grace, and through this power one learns all the mysteries which are hidden from the eyes of the carnal men of this age. So "faith is more subtle than knowledge, just as knowledge is more subtle than palpable things" (p.262). Faith, which is divine knowledge, is more subtle than human knowledge.

St. Isaac explains the difference between human knowledge and faith. Human knowledge cannot learn without examination, while faith "requires a mode of thinking that is single, limpidly pure and simple, far removed from any deviousness or invention of methods...The home of faith is a childlike thought and a simple heart" (254). While human knowledge has intelligence at its centre, faith has the simple and guileless heart. Human knowledge "keeps within the boundaries of nature" while faith "makes its journey above nature" (254). That is to say, human knowledge is a purely natural condition, working within natural limits, while faith is a supranatural condition. Likewise human knowledge is unable to do anything without matter; it moves in a material world, while faith has authority, after the likeness of God, to make a new creation (p.254). Human knowledge does not dare nor wish to overstep the boundaries of nature, while faith "transgresses them with authority" (p.255). This is demonstrated by the lives of all the saints who, by the power of faith "have entered into flames and bridled the burning power of the fire, walking unharmed through the midst of it, and they have trodden upon the back of the sea as upon dry land" (p.255). And all these things which faith does are above nature and contrary to the ways of human knowledge. Human knowledge "keeps within the limits of nature", while faith "passes above nature" (p.255). Human knowledge always seeks means "to safeguard those who have acquired it", that is, it always takes protective measures and seeks to protect man by human means. But faith leaves it entirely to God. "The man who prays in faith never employs, or is engaged in, ways and means" (p.255). Human knowledge does not begin a piece of work without having examined how it will end, while faith says: "All things are possible to him that believes. For to God nothing is impossible" (p.256).

It is true, according to St. Isaac, that human knowledge is not faulty, but faith is higher (p.256). Knowledge is perfected by faith, since "knowledge is a step whereby a man can climb up to the lofty height of faith" (p.257). When faith comes, what is in part is abolished. Then "it is by our faith that we learn those things that cannot be comprehended by the investigation and power of knowledge" (p.257). All the works of righteousness which are the virtues, that is, fasting, alms, vigil, holiness and all the "rest of such works performed with the body" and all those which are performed in the soul, that is, love for one's neighbor, humility of heart, forgiving "those who have sinned", recollection of good things, investigation of the mysteries concealed in the Scriptures, the mind's occupation with good works, the bridling of the soul's passions, and the rest of such virtues, "all these require knowledge". Knowledge "guards them and teaches their order". And all these things are steps by which the soul ascends "to the more lofty height of faith". However, "faith's way of life is more exalted than virtue's labour, and it is not labour but perfect rest, consolation, and is accomplished in the heart and within the soul" (p.256-7).

All these things indicate that, according to the teaching of St. Isaac and the other holy Fathers, faith is higher than human knowledge, higher even than knowledge acquired through the practice of virtue. For faith is a charismatic condition, communion with God; it is "the heart's understanding and vision"; it is the life which develops in the soul with the coming of the light of divine grace. In the next section, in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, we shall look at this knowledge of God, which is really "communion in being", man's communion and union with God. Thus it is a knowledge higher than any human knowledge, even than knowledge acquired through the practice of virtues, for with it we find Christ Himself, who is hidden in the depths of the commandments.

St. Isaac the Syrian speaks of three kinds of knowledge. Let us examine how they differ, for I think that this will show us how the Orthodox tradition differs from the human cultural tradition, how divine knowledge differs from human knowledge.

There are three conceivable ways in which knowledge ascends and descends. These ways are body, soul and spirit (p.258). Indeed when the Fathers speak of body, soul and spirit they do not mean the three parts of man, but by the word `spirit' they mean the gift of grace, that divine grace with which man is blessed. Without the grace of God a man is said to be a man of soul or flesh, while with the presence of grace he is called spiritual. While the nature of knowledge is one, it is refined and changes its modes according to these intelligible and sensible realms (p.258). Thus just as there are three sentient and intelligible modes: body, soul and spirit, so there are three kinds of knowledge related to them. According to the kind of knowledge which a man possesses, he shows his spiritual progress and his spiritual condition. Moreover, the kind of knowledge which someone has is an indication of his purification and healing. One whose soul is unhealthy has bodily knowledge, while one who is being healed has soul knowledge, and one who has been healed has spiritual knowledge. The latter knows the mysteries of the Spirit, which are unknown and incomprehensible to the man of flesh.

The first knowledge is acquired by constant study and diligence in learning, the second knowledge comes from a pure and good manner of life and from the mind's faith, and the third knowledge "is allotted to faith alone. For by faith knowledge is abolished, works come to an end, and the employment of the senses becomes superfluous" (p.264).

Let us look more analytically, on the basis of St. Isaac's teaching, at these three kinds of knowledge which indicate the sickness or health of a man's soul.

First, bodily knowledge. Some characteristic elements of human knowledge which are connected with the desires of the flesh are wealth, vainglory, adornment, bodily rest, and assiduity in rational wisdom, such as is suitable for the governance of the world and which devises the novelties of inventions and arts and sciences (p.258). This knowledge is opposed to faith, as we have explained before, because it thinks that "all things are by its own providence" (p.258). Wisdom and knowledge of things of this world without the other two kinds of knowledge are useless and create many problems for man. This knowledge is shallow and rude, for it is "naked of all concern for God" (p.258). Its concern is only for this world, and because it is controlled by the body, "it introduces into the mind an irrational impotence" (p.258).

Most men of our time, unhealed in soul, possess this knowledge and cultivate it continually. The whole of contemporary civilisation, which creates many anomalies of soul and body, is in this state. Hence this one-sidedness of knowledge creates many problems. Here is how St. Isaac describes them. The man of this bodily knowledge is a prey to faint-heartedness, sorrow, despair, fear of the demons, trepidation before men, the rumour of thieves and the report of murders, anxiety over illnesses, concern over want and the lack of necessities, fear of death, fear of sufferings, of wild beasts and of other similar things that make up the sea of the present life (p.258). The man who possesses this human and bodily knowledge does not know how to abandon himself to God's mercy but tries in his own ways to solve the various problems. But when he cannot give solutions, for different reasons, then he "strives with men as though they hindered and opposed" this knowledge (p.258). He comes to blows with men because they hinder the possession of the goods of bodily knowledge.

This bodily knowledge, worldly care, completely eradicates love. It makes one examine other people's small sins and errors and their causes, and their weaknesses, it makes one dogmatise and oppose the words of others, become sly in all one's doings and devise ways to dishonour people. This knowledge contains presumption and pride (p.259).

We see clearly that bodily knowledge is characteristic of contemporary civilisation. With prophetic insight St. Isaac presents the causes and pursuits of this carnal man, describes his struggle and anguish, and also presents the frightful results of this bodily knowledge. Disturbance of personal relationships, lack of love, obstinacy and cunning in all actions are the things which define the contemporary man who is sick in soul, far from God.

The second knowledge, that of the soul. When a man renounces the first, bodily, fleshly knowledge and turns to the desires and conversations of the soul, then all the good deeds of the soul's knowledge follow. These are fasting, prayer, mercy, reading of the Scriptures, the modes of virtue, battle with the passions, and so forth (p.258). All these deeds are made perfect by the Holy Spirit. They do not happen by the power of man but by the working together of man and the Holy Spirit. There are stages in the acquisition of knowledge. The second degree of knowledge is made perfect "when it has laid the foundation of its action on seclusion from men, reading the Scriptures, and prayer" (p.260). That is to say, the possessor of this knowledge of the soul lives in stillness, with all that implies, as we described in the preceding chapter. He prays to God unceasingly and studies the Scriptures in this holy atmosphere of stillness in order to nourish his soul, not in order to learn the words of God out of curiosity. This category includes those people who are being cured of psychic ulcers and the wounds of their soul. This cure offers a knowledge which can be called the preliminary stage and anteroom of that other, spiritual knowledge, which the coming of the grace of God will provide in the heart of man.

The third, spiritual knowledge. When man's knowledge is raised above worldly concerns and begins to see inwardly "what is hidden from the eyes" and when it scorns the things "from which the perverseness of the passions arises" and stretches itself upward in its desire for the promises of the age to come and in its searching into hidden mysteries, "then faith itself swallows up knowledge, converts it, and begets it anew, so that it becomes wholly and completely spirit" (p.261).

Then it can fly to the places of the bodiless angels; it knows the spiritual mysteries, the governings of the spiritual and the corporeal. That is to say, it knows the inner principles of beings. Then the inner senses awaken and the soul receives the resurrection which gives assurance of the future resurrection of men. St. Isaac, who possessed this spiritual knowledge which is the life of faith, wrote: "Then it can soar in the realms of the bodiless and touch the depths of the unfathomable sea, musing upon the wondrous and divine workings of God's governance of intelligible and corporeal creatures. It searches out spiritual mysteries that are perceived by the simple and subtle nous. Then the inner senses awaken for spiritual doing, according to the order that will be in the immortal and incorruptible life. For even from now it has received, as it were in a mystery, the intelligible resurrection as a true witness of the universal renewal of all things" (p,261).

This knowledge was possessed by all the saints of God, such as Moses, David, Isaiah, the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul and all the saints who were accounted worthy of this perfect knowledge, "to the degree possible for human nature" (p.259). In reality this knowledge comes from vision of God and of the uncreated light, from divine revelations or, as St. Isaac puts it, "by diverse contemplations and divine revelations, by the lofty vision of spiritual things and by ineffable mysteries..." (p.259). Then knowledge is swallowed up by these visions of God and the person feels that he is dust and ashes (p.259). He acquires the blessed state of humility and simplicity. Thus spiritual knowledge, that is, knowledge of God, is the fruit of theoria. It is received by the person who has progressed from carnal knowledge to that of the soul and thence to spiritual knowledge.

Briefly one can say that the first knowledge "renders the soul cold to works that go in pursuit of God". The second knowledge warms the soul to the swift course "on the level of faith". The third knowledge is rest from labour, "which is the type of the age to come, for the soul takes delight solely in the mind's meditation upon the mysteries of the good things to come" (p.262).

This teaching of St. Isaac is very relevant to the subject which we are treating, for the following reason. In the beginning of the book we mentioned that the members of the Church are not divided into good and bad or moral and immoral, making human ethics the criterion, but into the sick in soul, those being cured, and those cured. Precisely these three categories correspond to the three degrees of knowledge. Those whose soul is sick are people of bodily, worldly knowledge, those being cured are the ones who in different degrees are acquiring the soul's wisdom and knowledge, and those cured are the saints of God, who possess spiritual knowledge, true knowledge of God. Most people of our time, who are sick in soul because they know nothing of the nous and the heart, are in the first bodily, fleshly knowledge. Others belong to the second knowledge, because they are struggling to be cured by means of the whole ascetic method available in the Orthodox Church. And the saints, who exist even today, belong to the third knowledge, since they have been cured of their sicknesses and so have acquired knowledge of God.
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[geo] Arsenios

JasonTE

February 9th 2004, 08:28 AM

George Blaisdell said:

You persuasively argue [antithetically to your belief, btw] for the Biblical affirmation that it is the Church that is the Ground and Pillar of Truth, and that truth is not what you call "unavoidable personal judgement."

I didn't say that truth is unavoidable personal judgment. I said that we have to use personal judgment to arrive at the truth. You claim that 1 Timothy 3:15 supports your view, yet you must personally interpret 1 Timothy 3:15 in order to arrive at that conclusion. You cite Eastern Orthodox leaders agreeing with you, but you arrive at the conclusion that Eastern Orthodoxy is correct through personal judgment. All of us rely on personal judgment. It's unavoidable. There's nothing wrong with it. Your personal judgment that Eastern Orthodoxy is correct is an incorrect personal judgment. If you don't want to argue for Eastern Orthodoxy with logic and evidence, then why are you participating in this forum, attempting to reason with us about Eastern Orthodoxy and what we should believe about it?

Jason Engwer
http://members.aol.com/jasonte
New Testament Research Ministries
http://www.ntrmin.org

Rdr. Arsenios

February 9th 2004, 01:46 PM

George Blaisdell had said:
"You persuasively argue [antithetically to your belief, btw] for the Biblical affirmation that it is the Church that is the Ground and Pillar of Truth, and that truth is not what you call "unavoidable personal judgement."

Jason replied:
I didn't say that truth is unavoidable personal judgment. I said that we have to use personal judgment to arrive at the truth.

Well, suspending all the issues that arise from this understanding of human apprehension of truth - and they are legion - And just taking your understanding at a very superficial face value [and I know it goes much deeper for you], I would contrast the Christian view with your view as being one of "unavoidable personal judgement" vs discipleship within the Apostolic Church... And I know that you want to retort that entry into discipleship is a matter of "unavoidable personal judgement", indeed that personal judgement is part and parcel of even blinking our eyes to wake up in the morning...

And I would suggest to you that the presence of personal judgement is not much of a standard, for personal judgement is the judgement done by one's self, and the only proper referent for its exercise is the material and fleshy world, and that it is this very "self" that Apostolic discipleship in Christ calls us to deny, for did not Christ tell us in scripture: "If anyone is willing to be My follower, let him *deny himself*, take up his own cross, and follow Me."

Now you want to argue that the IF in this statement of our Lord is "unavoidable personal judgement"... And following Christ is indeed intensely personal... Yet for those who do so, it is the self that is in charge of personally judging everything that must needs be denied IF one is going to follow Christ...

And that the success of this effort of self denial is an epistemological prerequisite for theological knowledge. [But by no means the only one!]

You claim that 1 Timothy 3:15 supports your view, yet you must personally interpret 1 Timothy 3:15 in order to arrive at that conclusion.

A part of the process of discipleship is the appropriation of the teachings that are a part of the discipling of the Church into one's very personal being - That means displacing whatever understanding I might have had outside the Church with the teaching of the Church, which is the pillar and ground of truth... That's how it works... And if I have a problem doing that, then I bring that problem to the Church, and get it handled, by hook or by crook! [The Church's handling of my 'unbeliefs' is called discipling, you see...]

But it is the Church, the Body of Christ Who is Her Head, that is the Pillar and ground of Truth, and within Her, the Holy Spirit of Pentecost guides us into all truth, and the undivided Church of the first millennium had 7 ecumenical councils that have been received universally by the whole Church - And you will find no Church within the communion of Churches that IS the Church that denies anything in the first 7 councils... If any Church does not submit itself to these, it is not a part of the Church...

You cite Eastern Orthodox leaders agreeing with you, but you arrive at the conclusion that Eastern Orthodoxy is correct through personal judgment.

I cite the ongoing Church extablished at Pentecost by the Holy Spirit and the Apostles and disciples... I do not cite myself... I look to the Church for Truth... I do not look to 'unavoidable personal judgement'...

All of us rely on personal judgment. It's unavoidable.

Then you have to say that faith in Christ is merely unavoidable personal judgement...

There's nothing wrong with it.

Personal judgements are fickle - New facts enter into consideration - Things we forgot are remembered - A friend of mine used to think he could talk his way around anything - Until he had a stroke and couldn't talk at all... Now he places less reliance on talking...

And on and on...

The issue is centered on knowledge of the Truth, and where will it be found, and you seem fixated on this idea that because we all have intellects that process data by which we are making decisions in our lives, that our faith unto salvation is a matter of unavoidable personal judgement...

Orthodoxy reveals that such faith is a matter of discipleship within the Chuch of Pentecost... The Mystery of the Faith is entered and revealed in discipleship, and not unavoidably figured out and personally judged by scholastic Bible debating societies...

Your personal judgment that Eastern Orthodoxy is correct is an incorrect personal judgment.

That is true. My personal judgement is no standard to judge the Truth, and the Apostolic Church is the Body of Christ, Who IS the Truth, Who is its Head... The Church is itself a Mystery, Jason... The faith is a Mystery, as is Communion, and Confession, and Repentance... These are not matters for faithless intellective and contentious blathering... But are for discipleship, under the discipling of the Apostolic Church... Nowhere in the Bible do you find people outside the Apostles and Christ correcting either the Apostles or Christ by their own 'unavoidable personal judgements'...

The faith doesn't live there...

If you don't want to argue for Eastern Orthodoxy with logic and evidence, then why are you participating in this forum, attempting to reason with us about Eastern Orthodoxy and what we should believe about it?

I am but a really lousy witness of the Holiness of Christ's Apostolic Church... We have solidly agreed on that, yes? So that if anyone wants to know about this Church, I am a poor witness and not to be relied upon at all...

The way to knowledge of Her is revelation, as Christ said in response to the first disciples who asked Him where He abided: "Be ye coming and [then] behold!" [present ongoing imperative contrasted with the aorist imperative.]

"Come and see/know..."

And if you don't come, you won't behold... You can only look in with the fallen lens of the intellect exercising its "unavoidable personal judgement", and you will see only in terms of divisions and contradictions, which are but necessarily merely reflective of personal judgement...

"Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God..."

This is the way of knowledge, for it is revelation to a purified heart, and purity of heart comes only by discipleship, and that by the teaching of the Church, unto repentance and baptism and askesis unto the completion of the measure of one's God given faith...

The rest is but words, and when it comes to words, who are you going to believe? The Church? Or your own unavoidable personal judgements? Or someone else's judgements?

Christ is calling, and He is not calling us to unavoidable personal judgements, but to faith, to repentance, to Himself, where we leave behind our personal judgements, and take upon ourselves the whole armor of God... That is why the Apostles were sent out to disciple and to baptize the nations... And certainly not to affirm each fallen soul's unavoidable personal judgements... But to show them the way to turn from those utterly, and to turn unto God, to call on the Name of the Lord, to repent, be baptized into Christ's Body, to deny oneself and to follow Christ...

And yes, we can talk about your other matters, and others are far better equipped to address the issues you would raise than I am, for I keep my eyes upon the personally more pressing issues of faith and knowledge, for sinful as I am, I tend to be greatly allured by the vanity of intellect and personal judgements, and only by keeping my repentance from these firmly in front of my eyeballs can I stand at all...

And I fall frequently...

Jason, would you please pray for me?

Thank-you...

[geo] Arsenios

[a recovering athiest, recovering as well from a myriad of other sins...]