Further discussion of Protestant conversions to Rome and Jason Stellman’s views over at Green Baggins have set me thinking about a curious feature of the Called To Communion paradigm (how do you like them apples?). Jason is trying to give a biblical account for Bryan Cross’ understanding of agape and he has challenged Reformed Protestants to show where Calvinism’s idea of imputation is found in the gospels or Christ’s own teaching. His point is that if Paul’s teaching on justification were so basic, you’d expect to see it in the accounts of Christ’s teaching and ministry.
My counter to this is that if Paul’s teaching is consistent with Christ’s, then Paul’s views of justification may very well be what he learned from Christ. Doctrinal development being what it is, you surely wouldn’t want to imply that Paul was making this stuff up. Jason says he’s not positing a red-letter edition of the Bible, or Jesus against Paul, but the tensions are there in his view. He can read Jesus through the lens of Paul or he can read Paul through the lens of Jesus. (Or you try to harmonize.)
Either way, this discussion has made me wonder if CTCers are guilty of their own form of deism. According to Cross’ idea of ecclesiastical deism, Protestants have no way to explain convincingly how the true church popped up after 1,000 years. So to counter the Protestant and Mormon view of church history, he doubles down and insists that the church was there all along. And to do this, CTCers put great emphasis on the early church fathers as a body of teaching that reflects what the apostles handed down to the church from Christ. Hence the continuity, authority, and infallibility of Rome’s teaching in the CTC paradigm.
But there is a gap here that is quite startling when you think about it. Consider three important Roman Catholics beliefs, the primacy of Peter, the status of the virgin Mary, and the authority of the papacy. You may be able to find biblical support for these in the gospels. But where do you find in Acts or the epistles a stress upon Peter, belief in the import of Mary, or signs of the bishop of Rome? The New Testament after the gospels is virtually silent on these matters.
So how do CTCer’s account for the gap between Christ and the Early Church Fathers? Do they suffer from a deism of their own? Did the Early Church Fathers all of a sudden pop up with the teachings found in the gospels after the New Testament epistle writers neglected them? Of course, CTCers will deny any gap exists. But two can play this game.
Old Life 
JRC: It also means that you are immune to reason or evidence.
BC: No, it doesn’t.
OK. What hypothetical reason or evidence could convince you that the RC church does not have infallible teaching?
If there is none, then you are immune to reason or evidence. If there is some, then the force of my argument above holds, and your description of your own faith (“no possible reason or evidence could ever justify…”) does not apply to your belief in Church infallibility.
BC: Do you think the saints in heaven are “immune to reason” because they can no longer be tempted by evil, and no longer be deceived into denying the truth, and no possible evidence can convince them that Jesus is not God or that God does not exist?
I’m not prepared to speculate on the saints in heaven. It is possible that 1 Cor 13 indicates that they know propositions directly, and therefore have no need for reason. Or it is possible that their reasoning faculties are directly superintended by God so as to lead them always to truth and not error.
I do know that our situation is not like theirs; your situation, in fact, is not like theirs. You are capable of error (as am I), and they are not.
JRC: You’ve articulated perfectly what it means to be a fideist.
BC: I’ve written an article arguing against fideism.
Good. I read that article, and note that we agree that one “cannot bootstrap certainty.”
However, your approach to church authority is precisely the bootstrapping of certainty. You go from fallible judgments about history and tradition to somehow an infallible belief in the infallibility of RC teaching.
Philosopher, critique thyself!
But in any event, the SEP defines:
Correspondingly, Plantinga writes, a fideist is someone who “urges reliance on faith rather than reason, in matters philosophical and religious” and who “may go on to disparage and denigrate reason” Notice, first, that what the fideist seeks, according to this account, is truth. Fideism claims that truths of a certain kind can be grasped only by foregoing rational inquiry and relying solely on faith.
And you wrote,
But, in the Catholic paradigm, faith is more certain than any other possible knowledge, such that once one has come to faith in Christ no possible reason or evidence can ever justify denying Christ. Faith does not reduce to reason, nor Christianity into rationalism. Faith is a supernatural gift, its object seen by a supernatural light.
Do you seek truth? Check.
Do you urge reliance on faith rather than reason in matters religious? Check — you place religious beliefs above justification or critique of reason in the cited para.
Do you go on to disparage and denigrate reason? Check — You categorize any reasoning that is not subordinate to the Deposit of Faith as “rationalistic” and “individualistic.”
You’re there, Bryan. And I say this in charity and with a desire to bring you to repentance. Despite your great feeling of certitude, the actual certainty of your belief in Church infallibility can be no greater than the strength of the reasons that led to that belief in the first place. Despite your conviction that the Church represents Christ, so that loyalty to Jesus entails loyalty to His representative, it is nevertheless the case that you have become one who says, “I am of Peter.”
Our five-year (and ticking!) conversation is aimed, on my end, at helping you to see this. Just as yours is, I hope, aimed at opposite ends.
Even Paul said that if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. It is hypothetically possible that someone could produce the body of Jesus tomorrow and show in a manner that is overwhelmingly certain that it is in fact the body of Jesus.
In which case, we would all need to go home and rethink our lives.
Conversely, Jesus himself produced many evidences that He was in fact the Messiah of promise. Those evidences have value because they presented sufficient ground for faith. Not an overwhelmingly inescapable ground, but sufficient. If this were not so, then our epistemic position would be identical to the Muslims, the Mormons, and Harold Camping’s followers: we would ground our beliefs in our “burning in the bosom.”
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By the way, further in the linked article we find:
The term “fideism” appears to have entered the philosophical lexicon by way of theology in the late nineteenth century. It was originally used in reference to a movement within Roman Catholic thought, also known as traditionalism, which emphasized, over against rationalism, the role of tradition as the medium by means of which divine revelation is communicated, and which was sometimes conjoined with a conservative social and political agenda.
Wow.
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So what alternative to either rationalism or fideism am I putting forward?
First, I am not rationalistic in the sense of Continental Rationalism, not at all. Reason of the deductive sort (see Clark, G. and Sean, G., the “brothers G.”) is a tool with limitations. To be sure, I am a fan deductive reasoning; in fact, it is my occupation. But it is only a tool and is limited by its axioms (as well as theoretical questions about the certainty of the laws of logic).
Even less am I an empiricist. The situation in science is actually very interesting and alarming. It turns out that people have discovered how to “game” the scientific method, so that the old notion of consensus-built-on-hypothesis-testing is starting to show cracks.
Rather, I would put myself in this box: I am a presuppositionalist who holds that Gnosticism is wrong. Therefore, reason and evidence are incomplete but very useful guides. We cannot use either reason or evidence to get to Pure Truth; but we can use them to weed out many bad candidates for truth.
In other words, I focus more on falsifying untrue beliefs than on proving true beliefs absolutely.
In this framework, what is faith and the role of faith? Faith is trust, specifically, trust in the person and work of Christ and in the promises of God. Faith lays hold of what is unseen.
Faith does not and cannot make uncertainties into certainties. It is not a new ground for truths, but a confidence in things not proven with certainty.
Over against Kierkegaard, I hold that faith is not a leap into the dark, but a leap into things that God has demonstrated: The resurrection, for example.
Over against “evidentialists”, I hold that the evidence for the resurrection is not so compelling that one must believe it or else admit irrationality.
Rather, God has provided the evidence for the resurrection. From an intellectual point of view, one may either accept or reject it. From a moral point of view, accepting and rejecting have consequences.
Faith is reasonably grounded trust in that which cannot be perfectly seen or known. When the perfect comes — in heaven — faith will be no more.
And that’s one reason of many that I reject the RC view of infallibility. It is sight, not faith, that is offered by the doctrine of infallibility.
But in our conversations, I reject RC infallibility because I am persuaded that it sets the Church as a higher authority than Scripture. Mathison is right: Tradition II slides into Tradition III.
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Bryan says;
“Of course I never said that the papacy “is personal, as opposed to official.” What I actually said is “The pope never ceases to be personal, because he is always a person. So long as he retains his physical health and rational capacity, he retains his capacity to explain and clarify the faith.”
” it does not follow that one remains in the same epistemic position after one submits to that higher authority.”
There is one higher, to whom one submits, even when one does not understand why He says what He says.
Gal 1:8-9;
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
Sean says:
Interesting that for one with uncontested apostolic authority and gifting, Paul neither abides final authority in his person or his office, but in the apostolic message. Christian fealty is misplaced when placed in the office or person of the pope and not in the apostolic message which is preeminent even to those who had legitimate claim to apostolic authority. This also obviates the necessity to locate epistemic authority, as regards the faith, in a divinely appointed magisterium and not in the message promulgated by that authority. The quest for epistemic authority has led the CTC folk to find assurance in what they can see(sensual experience) as opposed to walking by faith. At best, they are in the position of doubting Thomas;
John 20:27
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God
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Let’s go with sensuous not sensual
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But what causes the hearing to make the call effectual? That is where the major debates have been in Protestant theological circles lately. Is it God placing the elect in the death of Christ and transferring Christ’s alien righteousness to the elect (the forensic union) which in turn causes the Spirit to regenerate (the spiritual union) which in turn causes faith in the work of Christ (the Gospel)? Or, is it the Spirit regenerating the elect first (spiritual union with Christ) which causes faith in the work of Christ (the Gospel) which then causes the placing in the death of Christ and the transfer of Christ’s alien righteousness to the elect (the forensic union)? Which has logical priority, the forensic union or the spiritual union if they both happen simultaneously temporally? And what implications does this have for other soteriological issues such as covenants and sacraments? What about sanctification? Does it matter if the imputation and forensic has priority over regeneration and spiritual renewal?
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There are many pieces of evidence that both sides recognize as evidence. There are also basic rational, logical, argumentative and ethical standards recognized by both sides, to which we can each appeal in a non-question-begging way. This is how we can compare the two paradigms, and how well they explain all the available and mutually recognized data. Comparing paradigms does not require presupposing the truth or superiority of one of them.
The chief piece of evidence is Scripture, which I thought – stupidly no doubt – that both sides recognize. Moreover when that revelation plainly says something, much more says something plainly about itself, it might behoove us to take it at face value, unless we are talking about something that is plainly and literally figurative. But neither is Scripture perspicuous or the CtC for that matter. Enter stage right the magisterium/tradition/deposit of faith. I know, you had high hopes, but guess what.
IOW what we have here is a very fine statement in itself, but one out of character for its author. Further it is only under duress, that Bryan will confess anything like the above. But once the pressure’s off? To ask is to answer.
After all, it’s OK to lie to heretics which is what Trent infallibly declares protestants to be, whatever Vatican II said. Connect the dots/harmonize the inconsistencies.
JRC: This means that you accept
(1) The Church says X
(2) The Church is the highest authority
(3) Therefore X
as a logically valid argument.
BC: No, that is obviously an invalid argument.
Huh? there is nothing wrong with the form of the argument. That Bryan might care to deny that one of the premises is true, is a different matter. Nakedly considered, it would be a tad too brazen to say the church is the highest authority.
Which by implication, is exactly what he says when he claims infallibility for the little papa/magisterium/deposit of faith/tradition.
How he justifies or proves the truth of the proposition is another story.
He cannot/will not appeal to Scripture for that is, as Bryan has told us, to presuppose/question beg regarding the truth of the Protestant position.
Next up would be a nominal appeal to the unanimous consent of the fathers, which consent was rather unanimous in its diversity other than – arguably – on the doctrine of scripture as infallible, sufficient and perspicuous if DT King’s collection of the ECFs is competent.
Ultimately though, the circular appeal to tradition and the deposit of faith wins out, It infallibly tells us that Roman church is infallible because it is the one Jesus established and infused with that virtue.
At which point, protestantism asks, what happened to the Bible?
Answer, start at the top again: we know the church is the highest authority because the church tells us so in the tradition/ magisterium/deposit.
At bottom it is both circular and fideistic, faith in faith, if not faith in Rome, no matter what Scripture, reason or history says.
No?
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From how I understand Catholic soteriology the calling does not become effectual until the spiritual renewal has fulfilled the law with enough infused agape for God to declare someone justified. And that is how the magisterium has interpreted the Gospel from either the scriptures or their direct access to the Holy Spirit.
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Darryl,
I am grateful for the conversation, but with that I will withdraw.
In the peace of Christ,
– Bryan
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Bryan – You can go, but you need to send another CTC rep for us to argue with. If you don’t all I will have to do at work is work…
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Jeff,
You are misrepresenting my position (unintentionally, I assume). If you wish to continue the conversation on fideism/rationalism, I’d be glad to do so in the combox at the Wilson vs. Hitchens article.
In the peace of Christ,
– Bryan
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Bryan, you may withdraw but you cannot hide. CTC will be an object of future posts.
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Since Bryan has stepped aside let me jump in and just point out that when the ecclesial deism thread first started I challenged it on the basic historical claims which have never been answered effectively. Everything we know about the development of Christianity 200 BCE – 200 CE contradicts their claims of a single unified hierarchy preaching a single unified message that was universally seen as authoritative Christianity. This idea is most developed in the “branches or schism” article: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/branches-or-schisms/
Those diagrams would constitute an impressive argument if they were true to history. But they are not, this view is not what history shows. What history shows is a bunch of diverse sects with some proto-Christian ideas pulling together overtime and by around 200 CE stabilizing into something we can meaningfully call the Catholic church. There was no original “principium unitatis” there never was and never has been a single Christian church. Catholocism’s dominance of Christianity never happened. By time Arianism was dying out, Islam (a form of Collyridian Christianity) was taking its place. By the time Islam was contained, the Cathari (a reborn form of Manichaeism) had emerged. And the same is even more true if we step backwards.
It is absolutely true that Lutheranism came out of movements within the Order of Saint Augustine which emerged from the Benedictine movement. It also true that ideas in Lutheranism emerged from Christian Humanism which came from a mainstreaming of Esoteric Christianity which came from Cathari and NeoPlatonism. Cathari had Christian ideas from Manichaeism as well as from Catholic reformers like the Pataria. NeoPlatonism’s understand of Christianity seems to derive much more from Sethian Christianity than Catholic Christianity. As Luther progressed the Reformation has moved more in the direction of Pentecostal Christianity on many areas where the Catholics disagreed with these other Christianities their positions have been examined and found wanting.
People on this blog have argued quite effectively about how late the episcopal form of church governance came into being. They argued how late the position on justification have come into being. They have rejected doctrines like Mary as a Christian demigod (I know Catholics would reject that formulation, but I don’t think this crowd will) even though they were substantially formed by the 2nd century.
I’m not sure how it advances the argument about the reformation to pretend the reformers were not interested in the political issues they heavily focused on like the battle for supremacy between the Spanish / German emperors and France; or for Catholics to pretend that the history of the ancient world was something that simple wasn’t.
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Brian is withdrawing? Who is he, Bobby Fischer to our Boris Spassky? And we can meet him on some post he did in 2009? Is this like when someone wanted to fight at my junior high and told the opponent to meet in the arboretum across the street after school? This is getting strange…
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I am going to read that post on Wilson & Hitchens, though, because it looks kind of interesting.
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CD – That is a lot of big words in one post. I for one attended public school. I think you’re giving Bryan a hard time, though, so I’m good with it…
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Somebody clicked through to my blog today from a link on Called to Communion!? I’m sure some Catholic hacker will have me shut down soon.
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Bryan, I understand your time is limited, and for that very reason I am withdrawing also.
I don’t believe that I’ve misrepresented your position.
I encourage you to consider my two questions,
“How could one defend the doctrine of PV without appealing to the authority of the church as a premise?”,
and
“What hypothetical evidence could persuade you that Church teaching is not infallible?”
I would be happy and honored to engage on those two questions in the future when life spins down.
Peace,
Jeff
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The rules are simple. By means of simple apprehension, composition, division and discursive reasoning the case is to be made for either Scripture alone or that Scripture includes extra biblical oral traditions/deposit/magisterium. May the best argument win
Bryan can either take it or leave it and he lumped it.
End of story.
But what else is new?
Unfortunately not much.
But as I have encouraged the faint at heart before, the CtC fanatics will be back, like a moth to a flame. As Sean Gerety at GB noted, they are earning their salvation and enduring persecution is a good work that atones for many a slip now later in purgatory.
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CD-H, which is why Bryan is not interested in history. He’s only interested in cherry-picking to vindicate his conversion.
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CD-H, which is why Bryan is not interested in history. He’s only interested in cherry-picking to vindicate his conversion.
DG Hart Let me just point out in you agreeing with the history that Catholicism emerged from a consolidation of proto-Christian sects and was not the “original sect” you’ve already overthrown the entire CtC argument (which is basically classic Catholic apologetics). Once there is no perpetual succession of bishops the rest of the case (which I do think is rather interesting and very well presented on CtC), collapses. This BTW has always been my frustration when I see Reformed people on CtC who don’t lose their barrings. They raise this point time and again, point to good quality historical materials, i.e. not just conservative Protestant ones, and the point is brushed aside.
My opinion is that Bryan’s much more knowledgeable than most. His problem is what to do when the facts of history contradict his theory of what happens in practice. For him the big issue is not so much the secular literature on the development of Christianity but that the Catholic church is a political organization that through most of its history was run by people who had to make all sorts of compromises to achieve political / financial objectives. This reality completely contradicts the model of a perfect magisterium handing down some collection of teachings from the apostles and the political nature because obvious the moment you examine them. I ran into this with the Vulgate debate when we were arguing the canon. By any reasonable definition, there were at least two contradictory canons through the 16th century and Protestantism with its moves towards a reduced canon forced a debate. The magisterium picked one of those two, met huge popular resistance from the membership and then compromised. The church having finished their “adjustment” during our lifetime. This act of compromise though completely contradicts the authority model that is supposed to happen, where the magisterium is infallible and uncheckable.
For me personally the counter argument that made me certain in non-Catholicism has always been Innocent III. He committed systematic genocide with the full support of the Catholic hierarchy at the time and the support of multiple Popes thereafter to continue his “work”. Believing in the inerrancy of the Pope is believing in the righteousness of genocide as a way to resolve theological disagreements. This view of the church fundamentally contradicts the morality of God. And this is not an uncommon objection, I’ve heard people raise the Crusades, the support for the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Inquisition… before. The church’s history is not an abstraction but a reality and it can be judged by its fruits, both good and bad.
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Pope Innocent III on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Innocent_III
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@Bob S
The rules are simple. By means of simple apprehension, composition, division and discursive reasoning the case is to be made for either Scripture alone or that Scripture includes extra biblical oral traditions/deposit/magisterium. May the best argument win Bryan can either take it or leave it and he lumped it.
Are you sure that Bryan ever agreed to that? That’s not his theology AFAIK? He mostly seems to deny that scriptural is perspicuous enough to draw these sorts of conclusions. There are other people on CtC who attack sola scriptura more directly, but Bryan to the best of my knowledge focuses heavily on the philosophical debate. I think he would likely argue that a Conservative Reformed reading scripture with Presbyterian presuppositions would through a faithful read arrive at Presbyterian conclusions. And then turn around say that a Liberal Baptist reading scripture with Liberal Baptists presuppositions would through a faithful read arrive at Liberal Baptist conclusions. Again I hate to put words in his mouth, but my understanding of his position is that the bible is permanently incapable of ever producing a rich orthodoxy. That the bible naked is a defense mechanism that allows people to pretend they are in submission God when they are merely reaffirming their own prejudices [my choice of language].
I’d be surprised he’d ever agree to reasoning via. scripture rather than immediately asking the question how to reason via. scripture.
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I keep looking in on the debate at GB and I agree that the syllogistic route parses this stuff down to ‘wafer thin’ sizes, though certainly not more intelligible or much less readily digestible. But, I’m both disappointed and relieved to report, the issues are the same as they’ve always been;
Roman Paradigm- God does not declare the ungodly godly, unless they become or are made so, Justification is initial and ongoing. The perfect standard of law-keeping is incongruent with God’s fatherly love for his creation. Ongoing infused grace is via the sacraments, and scripture is but another source besides the tradition superintended by the magisterium, and the community of faith itself. And Jason’s dialogue exegeting certain texts(his training and most recent experience) has now been shelved for paradigm analysis, because both sides can exegete and make the scriptures say what fits their paradigm and that’s not fair. In the meantime, poor perspicuity has been left in a cloud of Thomistic dust.
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sb; ‘and much less readily digestible’
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Sean- And it took them 500 comments to do that…
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CD
I could care less what Bryan agrees to per se or up front. With guys/liars/obscurantists like him, you have to tell them where to go and forcibly lead them or else they will take you on a epistemological merry go round that ends up guess where? At the foot of the petrine throne only in order to kiss the pope’s dainty silver slippers, if not suck his big toe. Bryan finally did though, make some noise about reason, evidence and rules of argumentation toward the last – not that his replies ever exemplified what he at last begrudgingly recognized. Fine, we’ll take it and continue to pound on it.
IOW Bryan and Rome only confess under duress the truth about Scripture, reason or history. As soon as you take your eye or the pressure off, they’re off doing their own thing. And they don’t particularly don’t do clarity or brevity. Because Romanism is but a vicious and subtle, yet in the end stupefying, drivel compared to Scripture, reason or history.
Nobody reads the Bible in a vacuum, yet objectivity and truth are still attainable, much more a genuine saving faith in Christ. While the reformers to a man acknowledged the clarity of Scripture regarding salvation, i.e justification by faith alone, they did not minimize the need of learning and study to interpret the rest of what Scripture taught, nor did they ignore what those who had gone before them taught.
Byran on the other hand, likes to deal with nice neat philosophical paradigms such as “the unanimous consent of the fathers” which when plugged into a syllogism works just fine. But as any sophomore ought to know a valid argument is not a true one. Which is to say Scripture, reason and history dynamite Bryan’s presuppositions and premises. Don’t tell him that though, he’s busy with the fanboys and truly faithful over at CtC and there’s no point acknowledging the snarky ad homs by embittered question begging prots.
cheers
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Bob S – You’re just “a child of the enlightenment”. I had one of Doug Wilson’s followers (actually the lady who subscribed to his sermons for me) throw that insult at me once I got off his postmillennial bandwagon. Some people don’t like it when you use reason and logic to try to poke holes in their little worlds.
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Erik,
Clinton’s asking what ‘is’ is, was less incredulous. And then when it’s all said and done, most likely all that MIGHT have been accomplished is one person ‘bested’ or outlasted the other person, probably the latter, with no CERTAINTY that the side that ‘won’ or ‘lost’ actually accurately represented the position of their side. It’s a good refresher though, I haven’t heard Baltimore catechism arguments since ever. My mother’s disdain for protestants and feel-good evangellyfish reflects that training however, and what she lacks in the intellectual rigor of the Thomist’s she makes up for in disdain and expediency.
It’s just not rocket science.
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Erik,
Well Doug is pretty much a child of the same. If you ever read Robbins and Gerety’s Not Reformed At All they basically nail him for having a materialist empirical version of the covenant of grace, all the while he’s claiming to escape hellenistic reason and return to a pre-modern medieval outlook. Oops.
Maybe what gets printed in Moscow, Id. ought to stay in Moscow, Id.
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Bob S. – When I was a Wilson enthusiast (I still like the man, I’m just more wary of him) I was running a convenience store (still am, but that’s not important). I thought it would be cool to buy about 10 copies of several of his books and stock them in the store. A few copies sold, but he never really took off in rural Marshall County Iowa.
There is a CREC church in Pella, though. I used to interact with the pastor, Brian Nolder, on Facebook quite a bit. I might try to get him to enter in here from time to time. He would bring some interesting perspectives.
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