Jason Stellman feels singled out by Peter Leithart’s post about the “tragedy” of conversion. Leithart wrote:
Apart from all the detailed historical arguments, this quest makes an assumption about the nature of time, an assumption that I have labeled “tragic.” It’s the assumption that the old is always purer and better, and that if we want to regain life and health we need to go back to the beginning.
Jason responds:
I would be curious to hear Leithart actually cite a convert who made a statement that betrayed an assumption like “old is always purer and better.” My guess is that the reason he makes no such appeal is that few, if any, of us have actually said something like that. I certainly didn’t.
Right, officer, I wasn’t “breaking the speed limit,” I was actually going 85 miles per hour. If Jason can’t find himself in all of those tendentious posts and comments about the early church fathers (still no mention of an early church pope, mind you), then he still has a strong dose of Calvary Chapel literalism in him. In other words, if he doesn’t think he gains traction in debates by citing the early church — the very church Christ founded, I’ve heard — then he should stick to Balthasar and de Lubac.
To add insult to injury, Stellman lauds the development of doctrine as precisely the vehicle which makes Rome the “conversion-destination” of choice:
I mean, if there’s an ancient expression of Christianity that refuses to grow up or adapt to the times, it’s certainly not the Catholic Church (I’ll leave you to figure out who it might be [*cough-EO-cough*]).
I’ll believe Stellman believes in development of doctrine when he wires his affirmation of high papalism to historic and contemporary efforts to make Rome more conciliar. So far, I have not seen his communion or its members wean themselves away from a version of papal supremacy that went hand in hand with opposition to Italian nationalism, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state.
Grow up? Indeed.
Old Life 
Their defense of Rome is much more akin to the Lutheran synod who amends their confession to legislate out ongoing sin. Not so much DoD, but Three wise monkeys.
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Sean – Curious. Which Lutheran synod? ELCA? And which parts did they amend?
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George, it’s a punch line to a joke told by Rosenblatt of WHI ‘fame’. Hypothetical Lutheran body, reality of the CtC polemic.
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Ah. Never listened to that. The local AM station (WYCC) stopped carrying the program years ago. Not sure why, but I can make a pretty good guess.
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Leithart is “Reformed” but not Protestant. As Mohler said to the Mormons recently, we are going to different heavens. Leithart is one good reason I am not Reformed. Like Billy Graham is a good reason for you all not to be baptist.
Leithart—”The choice is between secular liberalism and some version of Christendom”
mark: If that so, then there is no reason for Romanists to become Protestants. Also no reason for the “Reformed” to do any protest while they remain “Reformed”, The warrior children must fight the “secular” and not each other.
Ephraim Radner, Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Church—”Segregation of church and state is a kind of theodicy of abandonment–it says that evil does not penetrate the sanctuary, because the embodiment of evil lies in a world where faith cannot be said to determine actions.”
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Leithart—”The choice is between secular liberalism and some version of Christendom”
Exactly. The natural fact is that in the public square–our nation or our community–something will fill the void, hence Kuyper, w-w, The Manhattan Declaration, etc. Why, they’ve turned the streets of Zurich into a whorehouse.
No, really.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/safer-prostitution-zurich-drive-in-sex-boxes-hit-article-1.1494135
mark: If that so, then there is no reason for Romanists to become Protestants. Also no reason for the “Reformed” to do any protest while they remain “Reformed”, The warrior children must fight the “secular” and not each other.
I guess, but what happens–in every religion, every sect–is that a Leithart is declared no longer a “true” warrior child and so you fight him. And of course, you still have your existential battle with the papists both old [Pope Sixtus VI of 1186 or whoever] and new [Stellman].
You have such a busy day fighting Christendom that you never get around to the secular liberalism. And that’s how Zurich becomes a whorehouse.
________
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DGH: I’ll believe Stellman believes in development of doctrine when he wires his affirmation of high papalism to historic and contemporary efforts to make Rome more conciliar. So far, I have not seen his communion or its members wean themselves away from a version of papal supremacy that went hand in hand with opposition to Italian nationalism, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state.
Well, “development” need not be the ratcheting effect. As we all know, the magisterium isn’t just the pope, it’s the College O’Cardinals too, and they’re influenced by the lay theologians. That there may be pendulum swings between “high papism” and “conciliarity” is not necessarily a flaw, it may be a feature.
That the Church needed, in turn, a muscular theologian like Benedict and now a pastor like Francis might be necessary for development [or reform], as excellence in both qualities cannot likely be found in the same man. [Actually, “refinement” is a better sense of how the RCC views its theological development, that “progress” is not change as much as a gain in clarity.]
Neither is it to say the pope has never erred [“opposition to Italian nationalism, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state”], as Darryl keeps floating. The claim is not made by the RCC to my knowledge, therefore it’s a judgment by standards that nobody holds except the Church’s enemies. The hypocrisy game doesn’t even work on this point.
Further, I believe the various
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Ecumenical_Councils
are cited more often on dogma than the bulls of popes. “Conciliarity” is a full participant in the Magisterium. There’s really no problem or contradiction here.
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Love the question begging in Jason’s post:
AFAIK essentially all Conservative Presbyterians believed there were major corruptions of doctrine between the 1st century Christianity and the Catholic Christianity of the 5th, 10th and 16th century. So when discussing Leithart how can casually one grant this “for the sake of argument”?
I also found his reference to “all churches believing in apostolic succession for the first 1500 years” to be frankly dishonest at this point. There have been enough examples provided for him to know that simply is not true.
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Tom, you still don’t understand. Secular liberalism does not pretend to be Christian. Christendom does. That makes it a greater threat when it comes simply to defending the gospel. Would I rather live in Christendom than a secular liberal society? Hmmmm. I wouldn’t be able to worship in Christendom. I guess I choose Jefferson over Boniface VIII. Pretty easy. Seems to me you’d make the same choice since your general religious skepticism could get you in jail or worse in Christendom.
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It’s a tragedy when anyone relies upon any addition to the Cross of Christ (such as Popes, or ‘decisions for Christ’, or ‘their own seriousness’).
Jason is just one more tragic figure in the stream of those who place a bit of trust in what ‘they do’, over and above the finished work of Christ Jesus for the ungodly.
Not to say that he isn’t a Christian, or that any of these tragic cases aren’t. The Lord will settle that. But in the meantime they give up their hard won freedom and assurance for a thin soup of religion.
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More fodder for the RC gristmill. If, and as you read this, keep in mind the setup Ratzinger procured for himself as pope emeritus and the comparatively ascetic Francis as Pope. Think of how this extends also to their difference of emphasis; Ratzinger’s attempt to turn back the clock to an aristocratic, if not monarchical church, replete with the resurrection of the latin-rite and all the pomp and circumstance one could muster, down to his ruby red shoes contrasted with Francis’ liberation theology and Jesuit training.
Think of the intent of Vat II to prepare the RCC for modernity and a growing religious egalitarianism and how from Jump, Ratzinger was greatly offended by the student uprisings in the mid 60’s in response to the freedom Vat II birthed and how Kung, contrarily, laughed and thought that the student revolts were what Vat II was all about. It again points to the reality of a culturally appraised understanding of Rome, that CtC rightly recognizes, but can’t sufficiently represent because they were in fact not there, nor were raised as a son.
If you’re a convert, you find all this surprising and new and unnerving, if you’re a cradle you laugh and
recognize what has always been.
http://ncronline.org/news/global/bishops-suspension-symptom-german-catholic-churchs-wealth
“The German Catholic Church is one of the country’s wealthiest and largest organizations and its top officials expect a certain lifestyle,” said Frerk, who has published two books on the German churches’ wealth and what he describes as their opaque financing. “But they are wary of the extent of their wealth becoming broadly known because it might lead to fewer donations.”
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Speaking of V2, over on Jason’s site there’s been a couple of RCs going back and forth over whether V2 was good. One accused liberals of sneaking in and putting in language that could be interpreted any which way. An astute observation notwithstanding, I pointed out that perhaps that should qualify one’s view of infallibility. He told me that it was a sign of God’s protection of the church that the liberals could only put in confusing language and were unable to change dogma. And besides, I was told, V2 was just a pastoral council.
Of course, some other RCs have leapt in to defend V2, in yet another stunning display of Roman dogmatic unity. The only answer to this continues to be “at least Rome has a way in principle to settle disputes.” I guess if settling disputes means everybody keeps going to mass while secretly hating one another and one another’s views on the inside you might have a point. Seems to me Jesus had something to say about that, though.
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Steve,
I am a recent convert to the RCC, and I’m sure I didn’t give up Christ to become Catholic. I had the person of Christ, or so I thought, before I had heard a single Reformed doctrine. This is one of the things that clued me in that there was a kind of rationalism in Reformed theology. I wondered how it could be that I had a spiritual awareness that I belonged to God, reached my heart up to him in prayer, loved Him, sought to do His will for all these years, but this didn’t matter anymore now that I was becoming Catholic. My salvation now hinged on getting the five sola down; I mean, wasn’t I going to be excommunicated for failing to believed to these Reformed dogmas? What did this say to my life all these years and the internal witness? Did I just think myself a true Christian all this time?
Then when a Reformed apologist told me that the bible was just a series of propositions on a page, my existential angst got severe. “So I am a thinking subject, and the bible is the recording of historical events that tell me about Jesus, but everybody interprets the scriptures differently; exactly how do I encounter this person Jesus when I go to church? Am I really getting the Jesus from the 1st century that the scriptures bear witness to when I cast my line out there into the universe? Mormons are trusting that they are getting the true God when they pray, so are Muslims. What if I’m being duped by the 16th century Reformers?”
If I met Jesus without the scriptures and when I did read I find that He promised through his word that he’d never leave me nor forsake me, then this truth was never dependent me finding the right church. I had had a real encounter with the true Lord before I ever set foot in any church.
But then again, the scriptures are what tells the reader to submit to the church, and that left me to try to figure out which church Jesus would have me submit to.
Starting from my adult conversion 29 yrs ago, I have gone to a Southern Baptist church, The Vineyard, a Calvary Chapel, and a United Reformed Church, and guess what, I still have the same Jesus who began a good work in me. Even though I have denounced those Reformed doctrines, I still have the Jesus that I started with. Or I should say, He still has me.
As you probably know Catholics don’t believe in imputation, but that doesn’t mean we don’t look to the sacrifice on the cross. Maybe this from Jonathon Prejean speaking to Eric at CCC will help you see the Catholic paradigm.
Eric to JP: “When you say that we also experience it, do you mean by virtue of being in union with Christ, by virtue of being under the aegis of the infallible apostolic church, or by virtue of an ongoing transmission of oral tradition?”
Yes, yes, and yes. Everything starts with this: Christ says “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Just as faith is not understood as a mental state, neither is union with Christ. When the Fathers talk about union with Christ, they mean it concretely. In other words, “union with Christ” means “doing the things that unite one to Christ.” So that when Christ says “I am … the life” and elsewhere says that the one who eats His flesh and blood has life in Him, this is taken both literally and concretely. Likewise, this is intimately tied with the healing of nature, so that just as human nature fell, it was supernaturally repaired by this new form of life. That was the revelation; the work that Christ has done for human nature never changes.
Given that Christ Himself is the relevation, all other authority is derivative, including Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Even the Spirit testifies to the truth that is in Christ Jesus. That goes for the Old Testament as well; it was authoritative only derivatively from Christ, even though Israel did not know this. So the principle is that Christ actually comes first. We don’t know Christ from Scripture; rather, we come to know Christ first and learn more about Him from Scripture.
In that paradigm, where Christ Himself is the revelation, the relevant inquiry then becomes “what parts of the Church are Christic?” What are the ways in which the Church acts as Christ and becomes Christ? In short, exactly how does the Church really unite us to Christ? The doing of these things is more important than knowledge about them or how they work.”
Please think more about what you say.
~Susan
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Susan,
Saying we come to know Christ before we know Scripture is pitting Christ against Scripture in a way that Christ never does. We can’t know Christ apart from Scripture. Scripture tells us about Him. Even the acts of the church and the preaching of the gospel are dependent on what we learn about Jesus from Scripture.
This may sound unkind, but you do not have the same Jesus you always had. If indeed you have left Protestantism for Rome fully and finally, you never had Jesus to begin with. A warm feeling of love is not the same thing as the biblical Christ.
And BTW, if you think salvation in the Reformed camp is about knowing the five solas, you never learned Reformed theology as well. The reason why RCs are not justified is not because they don’t believe in Jesus, it is because they don’t believe in Jesus alone.
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Robert,
In what way does the Jesus spoken of in the scriptures translate into the Jesus we meet in our internal subjectvity, except through the church? You know, that God in whom we live and move and have our being, is Jesus the image of the invisible God, or don’t you believe this?
When that Baptist minister told me in the parking lot of a steak house in Mobile, Alabama when I was 18 yrs old that Jesus died for my sins, and I believed then and there, turned from my sins and was thereby on the road toward the heaven,what happened to me next, Robert, how did I lose Jesus? Are you saying that if I would have stayed in the S. Baptist chuch and didn’t learn about the Reformed church, that I would not have gone to heaven? If I had him at the beginning why would I have lost him? You’re calling God a liar.
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@Susan —
Are you seriously not aware of doctrine of preservation of the saints. You and I are in the same boat from a Reformed perspective. We being the reprobate were only capable of playing church. God never choose us, so we never knew Jesus. You may have wanted to believe in Jesus at 18, I may have wanted to believe growing up; but so what? Robert isn’t calling God a liar, you just because God has not graced you, have no more ability to genuinely worship God than this computer I’m typing on does. This computer can say prayers 24 hours a day for a decade, but not one inch closer to salvation while doing it. Your prayers, my prayers and my computers prayers are all equally ignored.
You were a convert from a arminian church to reformed and the doctrine of preservation comes as a shock? At least I can honestly say I’ve gone though life without ever understanding the appeal of this doctrine. I never believed it. You converted to it.
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CD-Host,
Of course I believe that the elect will persevere. The elect though, are elect in the sense that they successfully ran the race, fought the fight, worked out their salvation with fear and trembling, kept the faith, and all that jazz on the other side of the eschaton, so it is the Reformed doctrine of double predestination that is wrong. I see that God calls us out of darkness and, if we continue to seek Him, eventually we will come into the church he gave us where there are the seven sacraments to help us. Remember he said that you will find me if your seek me with all your heart. Jer. 29:13
I adopted the Reformed view because I thought it was the only explanation that made sense. In fact, I thought I had discovered the true church. They were the ones who were always right. Everyone else was wrong. They are the ones who spend so much time countering this or that denomination that “they say” know nothing about grace. I couldn’t even be an evangelical, because evangelicals have the same “works” mentality as Catholics and are just as bad.
If it weren’t for the Refomed deficient doctrine of “the church”, I might not have ever discovered the true church that never did lose the gospel.
Think about it, if prior to the Reformation, the doctrine of sola scriptura and sola fide were not formally taught then many many morally upright people who loved God are, according the the Reformed, in hell. I don’t believe this because I don’t believe the true gospel was lost.
Were you baptised? Do you want the fulness of Christianity? Then come home to the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church.
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Think about it, if prior to the Reformation, the doctrine of sola scriptura and sola fide were not formally taught then many many morally upright people who loved God are, according the the Reformed, in hell. I don’t believe this because I don’t believe the true gospel was lost.
Think about what, Susan? Whether or not the deity of Christ or the Trinity was formally taught or no before the church formally confessed it?
FTM does the Bible say that morally upright people truly love God or their own morality when it comes to what they trust in for their salvation? How about in the locus classicus of total depravity Rom. 3:10-18?
Yes, the church grows into its understanding of the truth, but after the Reformation, Rome had no excuse. She responded with the Council of Trent and thereby sealed her sentence as an apostate assembly, a synagogue of Satan. After the Reformation and only because her power was broken, she responded with Vat2 in an attempt to whitewash and temper her anathemas, but some things never change.
IOW however her lies may change, Rome in the name of Christ continues to willfully, maliciously and despicably lie about Christ and that can be clearly seen in the confusion of her adherents, particularly those who’s claim to be fame is that they were once reformed, all the while they still can’t tell us what the reformed faith really teaches.
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Susan, when I promote my church to those outside, I do not tell them they will find the “fullness of Christianity” in my church and nowhere else. I don’t believe your approach with CD host is wise, and would advise you encourage one as him (an atheist, as understand), to read the Scriptures, pray, and yes, go to church. Unless I am understanding your meaning. I mean, CD host could find the “fullness of Christianity” as you are defining in a Presbyterian church, as I have done, right? Maybe I am confused ny your meaning of this term, is all. Welcome to oldlife and take care, Andrew
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Just FYI, for the general readership here at Oldlife (I hope you’ll all permit me this (insert emoticon here), I recently found the following statement here in my denomination’s monthly publication most helpful for understanding a proper view of how we as Reformed Christians view, what we call, the deficiencies of “Rome’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit” (emphasis added is mine), here, take a look:
I particularly found this helpful from Dr. Strange, just thought I’d share, since this article seems to be dealing with our “adventure in church history” whereby we find ourselves as Western Christians in a state of schism. Rome’s understanding of the above paragraph could go a long way in helping us in our state of schism. But don’t get me wrong, we still have a long way to go, in my humble opinion.
Regards,
Andrew
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CD Host, just cuirous, have you ever read 1 Corinthians 2:14-15? Thanks for hanging around oldlife here with us, I’m personally a fan of the blogger here. Highly recommend his latest book! Regards, Andrew
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Bob S,
To be fair, based off of the conversations I’ve read on Jasons blog, the REFORMED don’t even know what the reformed teach! So you can hardly blame Susan for not always guessing your particular flavor of Protestantism. BTW if you knowingly and formally teach or believe the heresy of your sect you are still anathema. Vatican 2 did not change that as so many of you hope. You have an obligation to return to the Church for the salvation of your soul. I will be praying for you all…. To Mary 😉
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CDH, not quite. The Reformed do not speculate on the election or reprobation of specific persons. We only work with what we see. And if what we see is someone deny the faith, all we can say is that he is no longer a member of the visible church. What his status may be with regard to the invisible church is left to divine knowledge. Of course, at the same time we say that invisible membership and visible are tied, which is why the pious soul is encouraged and disciplined to contemplate in order that he may be restored to visible fellowship.
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Ken, you missed the point.
The forte of Bryan, Jase CtC et al is the claim to know what the reformed believe to the point of being able to expose the inconsistencies and therefore the necessity of submitting to the little papa.
Yet we’re still waiting and continue to wait for anything near the truth on SS or JBFA.
Susan’s comments were all over the page and ultimately appealed to what? Coming to know the Word of God become flesh by something other than the Word of God.
Go figure.
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@Susan —
Reformed theology doesn’t really tie salvation to morally uprightness nor does it believe that the unelected are capable of actually loving god. Rather they (in their view) are only capable of pretending, possibly fooling themselves. If you saying the doctrine is nuts, I won’t argue. But that is the doctrine. Steve does in fact actually believe in Preservation of the Saints.
Well they waffle on the whole “true gospel was lost”. That’s how you CtC apologetic scores any points at all, because they don’t want to walk away from the whole Christian history prior to the reformation. They want the creeds for example.
Me… I don’t believe there ever was a true gospel to lose. I also believe that the mid 2nd century Christian sects had little in common with the 1st century Christian sects, and that the evidence supports this. So even if there had been a “true gospel” it no longer fit as Christianity moved from movement to cult to sect to religion.
That view incidentally is not far from the majority Protestant view. My view on this hasn’t had to change too much from what it was when I was young. So for example I was raised on an explicit teaching of the fall of the church. Matthew 4:8-9 was prophecy and in 311 CE when the church was confronted with that offer they accepted. There was sin and heresy before that but what came after was the almost complete annihilation of the true faith.
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@Andrew B
Yes. Love 2:6-15. I’ve read the bible. Anyway There is a lot in that passage. I suspect you are going for the foolishness / wisdom out of context. A lot that wouldn’t fit with Paul/the author being a proto-Calvin. I’m not sure what in the above you are responding too but.. that passage ain’t gonna help your case. Notice the verse before that that the wisdom which the natural man cannot understand is something untaught but learned from the spirit through a shared mind of Christ.
Anyway I don’t want to hijack the thread. But I’d read the context.
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Cdhost, not sure myself, either, what I’m responding to(insert sticky-out -tongue emoticon here), perhaps an emotional response to how I’ve been treated by atheists in internet chatrooms. Anywho, your viewpoints, I hope you feel, are welcome in this community. It’s kind of you to respond to me and my random comments now and then. Take care, and enjoy the opportunities for learning here, the best blog I’ve yet found…..
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CD,
I’d like to know if you start with the idea that God does exist? I can understand your confusion after this, but to figure out the next step you have to first of all believe in God. You do know that the RCC defines the gospel as the historical event of the incarnation, the death, and resurrection of Jesus believed on by faith? These miraculous, supernatural events are what the materialist has a hard time swallowing. Before the incarnation, the world would not have known that God loves us. I’d really like to know what you do with the person of Jesus. I just presented you with the gospel. Excercise a little faith would ya 🙂 Srsly, I wish you the best and will pray for you. I don’t mean that as being uppity either. If I have faith it is because of God’s grace. I could not believe on my own; it’s beyond natural man to do so.
Steve,
“The Reformed do not speculate on the election or reprobation of specific persons. We only work with what we see. And if what we see is someone deny the faith, all we can say is that he is no longer a member of the visible church.”
But doesn’t doctrine that makes or breaks us, so to speak? If I deny the faith as it is understood by the Reformed then I am not a member of the invisible church. I could never know myself if I were safely among the elect, if I deny sola fide. I would think( and did think), ” The Catholic church denies sola fide as it is understood by the Reformed. The Reformed say to be saved, I have to hold to the doctrine of sola fide to have Christ and belong to the invisible church. But I want to belong to the visible church that has persisted through time. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church as the creed says.” I think that it makes sense to search for the church that fits this criteria.
Bob,
My church doesn’t teach total depravity. I believe that people actually are able to do good works, out of a free will, as motivated by love. I don’t believe that moralism, that leaves out religion, as aiding our salvation( in the sanctification sense).
Sometimes I think we are talking past each other, because I know that the Reformed believe that the elect will produce good works. I don’t for a minute think I can deal with God as in, ” See the good things I’ve done Lord, you have to accept me on that or you wouldn’t be fair.” Faith is necessary as a starting point, but it is never fiduciary. That is more like a Kantian kind of morality. Love is necessary. If you say, “Well who loves God enough?” I could ask you, “Who has faith enough?”
The bible does speak of people who were just or righteous; I’m thinking, Simeon, Elizabeth and Zechariah. The scriptures praise their moral virtue in those cases. And then there is the litany of saints in Hebrews “of whom the world was not worthy”. If these people had faith alone and yet morally degenerate, do you think the bible would laud them so?
I have also come to believe that there are seven sacraments in the church that are supported biblically. And also believe that the RCC and the EO are correct on there exegesis of Rev. 11:19 and 12: 1. How could I come back to the Reformed faith with this intellectual knowledge? Where would I put this illumination and still submit to my local “visible” Reformed consistory?
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Andrew B,
Thank you for your kind hospitality. I appreciate your kindness very much.
My desire is to talk about what divides us without getting into arguments, so I will work hard not to offend anyone personally or misrepresent the Reformed view.
But, I am definately not a theologian and so I can only speak of what I gleaned from ten years in a URC community. If I am wrong, I hope that I will be corrected kindly. So far, people just say, “you never knew Reformed theology”, while I could give them a defintion of sola fide. Honestly, it came down not so much on the differences between Rome and Geneva, but the philosophy undergirding those doctrines. I could see very clearly that the doctrine of sola scriptura was not only practically false, but theoretically bad without having to read Mathison, King & Webster. I read them, but it was unconvincing because it is simply untenable.
Also, I know very little of Reformation history, but even if I did, it wouldn’t have helped my make sense of the doctrinall differences within the Reformed world, when all I have been asking is “where is the church were *everything* taught is orthodox?”
To get to what you asked: “Susan, when I promote my church to those outside, I do not tell them they will find the “fullness of Christianity” in my church and nowhere else.
Before I was Catholic, I had people calling my beliefs heterodox. I didn’t like that, and it made me angry. I believed that I had everything essential to Christiality because I had the true gospel, but there was the nagging question about other things that the chuch had for long swaths of time that we no longer had in our churches. I couldn’t figure out what principled approach the Reformers were using to adopt this doctrine or practice while omitting that doctrine or practice. The doctrine of angles, prayers to the dead, feast days… Where had these things disappeared to. Even if they were adiaphora, I also saw that both Rome and the EO had a higher view of the real presence then did the Reformed even if the Reformed were correct about what the doctrine is. It seemed to me that a high view would manifest itself in an equally high practice.
“I don’t believe your approach with CD host is wise, and would advise you encourage one as him (an atheist, as understand), to read the Scriptures, pray, and yes, go to church. Unless I am understanding your meaning. I mean, CD host could find the “fullness of Christianity” as you are defining in a Presbyterian church, as I have done, right? Maybe I am confused ny your meaning of this term, is all.
Thank you, Andrew. I would not say that you have the fullness of Christianity outside the church. Yes, God can use extraordinary means to save us, and he does….I’m thinking of the thief on the cross, but his ordinary means are through the word and sacraments. The Reformed don’t have vlaid orders, so they are a heterodox sect. Now, I do not presume to speak of anyone’s eternal state ( even my own), but this seems to be the way it works. The church is our mother.
Bless you for your gentleness
Susan
Welcome to oldlife and take care, Andrew
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@Susan —
Mostly I stick to arguments where that point is irrelevant. That is generally I stick to: group X asserts / asserted doctrine Y. I try and stay away from whether Y is true. So I can talk about the Reformed doctrine of Preservation of the Saints, but all I’m talking about is a doctrine.
How does my believing in God change what various sect’s beliefs are?
No. The CCC seems to take a somewhat different opinion. For example CCC 2761-2776 defines the Lord’s prayer which is fully a historical (and other than Jesus liked it, not even particularly Christian) “is truly the summary of the whole gospel.” I’ve seen Catholics use your definition of Jesus’s entire life, death, life after death, and future return. Mostly I’d say the CCC doesn’t define the term “gospel” at all and rather uses it loosely as a term of faith.
Huh? Most Jews and God Fearers (Yahweh worshippers) believed he was a loving God prior to 30 CE. The world did “know it”.
I don’t understand the question. I’m being serious here not snarky, I really don’t know what you are asking me.
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Susan,
The doctrine of angles, prayers to the dead, feast days… Where had these things disappeared to.
The better question is, where did these things come from?
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Susan, sinners are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone–not their doctrine. If you deny the gospel (as it is confessed by the Reformed), you are no longer a member of the visible church. What it means for your invisible membership is more tenuous, as in your visible membership reflects in some sense your invisible, but while your visible membership can be known, no man can have have divine knowledge of your invisible membership.
The point is that while we can speak of true and false visible churches, we cannot speak as boldly about true and false members. There are hypocrites within true churches and sheep without. But there should be restraint in speculating on who they are specifically, with more emphasis on clarifying what are true churches and bidding pious souls to cleave thereunto.
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Susan, thanks for your reply. I hope you’ll stick around at old life to interact with the people here who are not as limited in their free time as I am. If it bothers you for someone to use words against your beliefs, such as “heterodox,” I would defiately recommend staying off of theology blogs. That kind of language is defnately “par for the course,” out here in a place oldlife. The kind of person who posts comments seems by nature very opinionated, and perhaps only argumentative. I appreciate meeting people who have strong convictions about my faith as I do. Take care, and thanks for the “welcome” (insert emoticon here (because we are an “emoticon free zone,” you can go to the pca blogs if emoticons are more your thing)).
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Andrew B.
Thank you for the welcome. Are you making fun of me? Make no mistake, I have strong convictions about the faith. ( That is why I left the Reformed for the Catholic) but I am trying to be ecumenical. The reason that the term “heterodox” bothered me is not because I was personally offended( I’m not “that” sensitive) but because I began to see they had a point. I take note to the emoticon free zone. Don’t want to upset the feng shui. ( Why do I feel that I just entered a support group??) You are very accomodating …..no, I have no reason to be partial to emoticons. Thanks. This is definately your kinder, gentler Reformed blog.
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ZRIM,
“But there should be restraint in speculating on who they are specifically”
Thanks for the restraint. I’ll pay you back 🙂 ( oops, forgot the emoticon rule) shhhh.
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Susan, making fun of you? If I was, I was not meaning to. Regards, Andrew
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Andrew,
Thank you. When there seemed to be confusion over my dislike of the term “hererodox” as if I thought it derogatory and contentless, when in fact my point was that I feared that the charge was true, I noticed that you didn’t want to know more, and so I thought maybe you are the moderator and only wanted to welcome me.
But when you followed up with :” (insert emoticon here (because we are an “emoticon free zone,” you can go to the pca blogs if emoticons are more your thing)).” I thought you were making fun of me. Sorry for being so touchy.
I don’t have time to spend on blogs either, so I will just peek in just to read as time permits.
I enjoy Dr. Hart’s humor.
~Susan
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Susan, no worries, religious discussions are by their very nature touchy subjects because these are very personal matters. I’m indeed no moderator, I just hadn’t seen you around this blog, which I have followed regularly for over 6 months now,I found it for the first time a year ago. I should cool the “welcome” business because I’m certainly not on Darryl’s staff, here. I have rubbed shoulders at a church function, as we a part of the same group, which you call heterodox. I’ve talked with enough Catholics online now to know where that idea of yours comes from, so yeah, no need to discuss that with me. Regards, Andrew
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Susan,
Believe me I already know what your church teaches on a lot of things. So what? This discussion has been going on since before yesterday here, much more since the Reformation. And as you should know – after all you claim to be an ex protestant- the only thing that ultimately makes a difference to a protestant is what saith the Scripture? IOW SS. Yes, we all have our opinions, but that is no matter, much more Rome claims to believe the Scripture even as she twists it, if not disregards it. Prayers for the dead, worship of Mary etc.
Two, while I haven’t had the opportunity to have a Roman seminary education like sean, I was born and raised in the Roman communion and attended Roman schools through high school. And like it or not, on the ground, in the trenches, for many cradle catholics the operative/performative principle was: ignorance is the mother of devotion. IOW implicit faith is what it is, an official and conscience binding doctrine of the infallible magisterium. As a convert with a lot of left-over protestant missionary zeal you may not have figured that out yet, but trust me, you will if you hang around long enough. Just make sure the buyer’s remorse doesn’t compel you to overcompensate in explaining away/ignoring the Roman ahem, inconsistencies regarding Scripture, history and reason.
Yes, the Bible does speak of those who are just or righteous, but it refers to those who are righteous by faith in Christ. How else does one explain David the adulterer and murderer being blessed, because the Lord has not imputed to him his sin Rom. 4:8?
But again, as an ex prot, you should know these things and at least be able to mount a refutation to the prot positions. That you and a lot of CtCers can’t/won’t doesn’t speak well of your credibility or expertise as even lay Roman apologists evangelizing da separated brothren.
cheers
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Susan,
You can’t build an entire theology of righteousness upon narrative passages such as Luke 1 that describes the fact that Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous. I realize that Jason thinks he can, but when you start reading that passage in a way that contradicts what Paul and other say explicitly about how we are righteous before God, you’ve got serious problems.
Nobody but nobody in the first century church thought Peter sat above all the apostles in Rome, prayed to Mary and the saints, or anything else that makes RC doctrine what it is. This is the problem.
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Robert,
Susan is not reading passages in a way that is contrary to Paul. She is reading them in a way that is contrary to reformed interpretation of Paul. Did anyone in the 1st century have a book called “the bible” that was comprised of 73 (or 66) books that was considered to be the sole infallible rule of faith? LOL come on. We hardly have ANY information about what was going on in the small underground heavily persecuted religion known as Christianity in the 1st century! The earliest recorded Marian prayer, the “Sub Tuum Praesidium” was found on a piece of papyrus from the early 200s:
“WE fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.”
Close enough.
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Kenneth,
The early church had apostolic tradition. The question is, where do we find this apostolic tradition today. If it is not Scripture alone, where? Why Rome’s definition of what is apostolic tradition and not any other ecclesiastical body’s?
Michael Kruger has demonstrated that from the earliest days, the church had a core canon of the Gospels, the Pauline epistles, and books such as Acts and 1 Peter. That is enough for every major Christian doctrine, and it certainly precludes Romanism.
Susan, like Jason, thinks that you can ignore Paul’s extended discussion on justification and interpret it in light of some offhand remarks by Luke that Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous before God. I realize that is fine for RC exegetes, but nobody would accuse traditional RC exegesis of being remotely close to the intent of the ones who actually wrote the New Testament. Yes, you all are reading Luke in a way that contradicts Paul because you all don’t get Paul and have developed a whole scheme of sacramentalism to deny the simple Apostolic point that we are saved by grace through faith and not our works. I can very simply show that Luke and Paul do not contradict one another. Rome has to write a catechism of thousands of pages and questions, develop a distinction between moral and venial sin, talk about re-justification, hold several councils that first anathematize me and then open heaven’s doors to me, and so forth, and still nobody agrees on how to read Luke in light of Paul and vice versa.
As far as the hymn to Mary, yes error crept into the church at a very early age. Even the Apostles themselves couldn’t keep some of their students from becoming heretics. If age is the marker of truth, the pope ain’t infallible and docetism is orthodoxy.
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Kenneth,
The date of the prayer you offered is 250 according to that font of all wisdom we know as Wikipedia. Even if it is earlier, it certainly is not from the first century, and even if so, it isn’t from the apostles.
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Robert,
it is not “Romes” definition of Apostolic succession. It is the definition given to us by all the successors of the apostles throughout history. You trace AS by the laying on of hands back to the apostles themselves. This is firmly rooted in Tradition. Your sect can not do this. You will just have to come to grips with that reality the best you can.
Krugers response to people like Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, and Helmut Koester is as good as it gets for you all… Which is not very good. He wants to argue that there was always a “core canon” and so its fine that everything outside this core was very debatable. Never mind that people were doubting the gospel of John all the way through the 4th century… Nevermind that the people who were promoting this “core canon” also had a “core theology” that looks pretty darn catholic to anyone not willing to play semantics. As you said so beautifully ” error crept into the church at a very early age. Even the Apostles themselves couldn’t keep some of their students from becoming heretics.” Why then trust the canon? It would appear that sola scriptura can’t even get off the ground!
The vast majority of Christianity for the vast majority of history subscribes to the RC/EO “super complicated version” of read Luke and Paul in harmony. I didn’t realize we were looking for “theology for dummies” and all explanations had to be exceedingly simple minded. Whenever scripture appears to contradict it self SOMEONE has to tell us how to read the passages in harmony. Your “someone” is calvin. My “someone” is 2000 years of Church teaching and Tradition.
You don’t like prayer to Mary because I can’t prove the apostles did too? Let me ask you then… Did an apostle write Luke? What about Mark? If the friends of apostles can qualify for authoritative teaching certainly their successors can?
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Kenneth,
Really? The EO believe in condign merit, congruent merit, purgatory, and all the other stuff you need to make the Roman doctrine of justification work. The East barely has a doctrine of justification.
The Early Church looks very catholic. What it doesn’t look like is Roman Catholic. That is so obvious to church historians that I’ve even had people from your own communion tell me that history cannot give them anything normative. That’s an admission that you only find RC in the early church if the Magisterium tells you it is there.
I said nothing about apostolic succession. I said apostolic tradition. I want you to tell me where apostolic tradition is. I say Scripture alone can give us authentic infallible tradition. Rome says it is whatever Rome says. You told me that we need Rome to tell us what the early church meant. I know you object to it, but you’re sola ecclesia credentials are shining through.
Even under Rome’s definition of Apostolic Succession, you’ve got big problems. I have no way of knowing if the Avignon papacy settlement was true except to believe Rome, the same Rome who agreed to hold councils regularly thereafter and never did. Some might call that lying. Papal and ecclesiastical infallibility weren’t there early on either.
I don’t want a theology for dummies. I want a theology that is consistent and in line with Scripture. I don’t have that with Rome. I have an amalgamation of gnosticism, medieval scholasticism, pagan idolatry, sacerdotalism, and high papalism that the vast majority of laity snubs its nose at anyway.
And the idea that John was debated well into the fourth century is simply laughable. The only books that there was any serious discussion over, (and that’s if we are extremely generous with “serious discussion”) were books like Revelation and 2 Peter.
And no, successors of the Apostles who worship and pray to Mary disqualify themselves as successors to the Apostles. As do those who claim that salvation is available outside of faith in Christ, which is what modern Rome does. Depending on the Protestant communion, I can trace doctrinal and/or visible bishop succession back to the beginning. Rome I can only if I ignore the multitude of dogmatic changes the Vatican has promulgated over the years.
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It is clear from the opening of Rev. that churches fell into pretty serious error very early. I don’t need to believe that those passing on the “data” were infallible to believe the data itself is reliable. There is no reason to expect that the guardians of the revelation of the new covenant would be any more infallible than the guardians of the old covenant. The reliability of the NT for Christians is no more questionable than the reliability of the Pentateuch would have been for a first century Pharisee. No infallible magisterium was necessary – indeed the traditions that the successors of Moses had built up were quite errant. Jesus showed that these man-made traditions were faulty by appealing to scriptures. It is an interesting thought experiment to apply your “epistemological paradigm” to Jesus’s critic of his traditionalist opponents (why wouldn’t his appeal to the scriptures be undermined by his rejection of sacred tradition?).
To be sure, tradition is a useful teacher, but the individual believer has the responsibility to weigh what the teachers say against apostolic testimony – even if the teacher is an apostle himself. This is clearly Paul’s instructions to the Galatians. When a fallible church (such as those referenced by John) starts piling up requirements that the apostles explicitly forbade believers from saddling one another with (say declaring it sinful to eat certain kinds of food on certain days), the church needs to be reformed. I’m happy to learn from Ignatius, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Br. Lawrence, Pascal, Erasmus, Barth, Wright, and maybe even John Piper (Ok, I’m stretching it now), but none of these guys are infallible. It is simply wrong to say that the reformed just have Calvin. Calvin himself references Aquinas and the ECFs. The fact that we believe they (and the magisterium in particular) is fallible does not mean that we think they were wrong about everything. The local expression of the church will always be mixed with error – sometimes more, sometimes less – but ultimately, the individual believer has the responsibility to test things for himself.
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Robert,
1. EO don’t need to have a formal belief in purgatory to make since of the verses in Luke and Paul the same way that RCs do. All that it takes is a denial of sola fide and the acceptance of meritorious spirit wrought works.
2.I found the early Church to be catholic as a Lutheran…. So much for that.
3. I misread the part about apostolic tradition. How do you find apostolic Tradition? The first place any of us look is to the traditions of early Christendom. These traditions give us 1. The canon and 2. Apostolic succession. These taken together give us the rule of faith for any Christian. Tradition, Church, scripture.
4. Apostolic succession on its own doesn’t solve all problems…. Only all three legs of authority taken together will do that.
5. Whether you want to admit it or not what you want is a Church that is in line with YOUR INTERPRETATION of scripture.
6. Hahneman rejects the existence of the fourfold gospel canon by appealing to the third-century orthodox theologian Gaius of Rome who supposedly rejected the gospel of John as a work of Cerinthus. Also, Origen’s comments on 2&3 John that “not all say that these are genuine.”Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.10.
7.do you consider Augustine to be a valid successor of the apostles? Even though he wrote Marian prayers that will make your skin crawl? If not… How then DO you trace succession back to the beginning
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Because He rejects traditions of MEN not all God given traditions. Remember the Chair of Moses? Example of Christ tipping His hat to Jewish oral tradition as authoritative. You say the mail carrier doesn’t need to be infallible in order to deliver infallible mail? What if there were 100 mailmen and they all had different ideas on what mail was infallible and which were not? Would you still be confident in its message?
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D. G. Hart
Posted October 24, 2013 at 7:09 am | Permalink
Tom, you still don’t understand. Secular liberalism does not pretend to be Christian. Christendom does. That makes it a greater threat when it comes simply to defending the gospel. Would I rather live in Christendom than a secular liberal society? Hmmmm. I wouldn’t be able to worship in Christendom. I guess I choose Jefferson over Boniface VIII. Pretty easy. Seems to me you’d make the same choice since your general religious skepticism could get you in jail or worse in Christendom.
Boniface VIII, d. 1303. I guess you missed my previous joke at your expense over your obsession with Pope Sixtus VI of the year 1200. I was exaggerating for effect, at least I tried.
DGH, since your clock on “Christendom” seems to stop in the 1500s and a lot has happened since then, you and Kuyper [or I] are not really speaking of the same things.
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Kenneth,
5. Whether you want to admit it or not what you want is a Church that is in line with YOUR INTERPRETATION of scripture.
And you want a church in line with your interpretation of Scripture and history, so we’re even.
7.do you consider Augustine to be a valid successor of the apostles? Even though he wrote Marian prayers that will make your skin crawl? If not… How then DO you trace succession back to the beginning
Succession is chiefly doctrinal. Augustine was correct where he read Scripture correctly and wrong where he read it incorrectly. He was not RC or Protestant, he was Augustine.
If the church defines the meaning of Scripture and the meaning of the fathers, you have a one legged stool, whether you want to admit it or not. That really should not be objectionable. RCs are quite fond of telling us that we need an infallible interpreter to know what is divine truth. Own the sola ecclesia man! If the church truly is infallible, you should be proud of it!
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Some thoughts on apostolic succession and Protestantism:
http://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=341
PS there’s a lot of topics discussed in those q&a’s, just FYI for all y’alls…….
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Andrew,
thanks for that link! Food for thought.
Robert,
I’ll admit to sola ecclesia when you can explain away my tradition alone argument. Since you can’t, I feel like I’m on solid ground looking to three legs and not just one.
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Because He rejects traditions of MEN not all God given traditions.
When you can learn the difference between an assertion and an argument you might get some traction and an answer, K but so far it’s looking pretty lame.
Jesus the Son of the living God appealed to Scripture, when challenged numerous times in the gospels, but that’s not good enough for the papists.
Enough said.
Oh, that’s right, they’re God given traditions – according to fallible men who appeal to the lost apostolic oral traditions of which they can’t even come up with table of contents for. Just like the infallible pronouncements of the pope of which there is no infallible record, which you are conscience bound to believe. Implicitly (i.e stupidly).
IOW get up to speed and don’t come back until you do.
We’ve already been over this repeatedly, which is one reason Bryan and Jase don’t come round anymore. It’s much more comforting to blather on their own sites and continue to delude themselves that they have “answered” the objections to their beloved paradigm.
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Bob s,
You are such a charmer! Robert has better arguments but you are far more skilled with the rhetoric and hand waving. So you say that I need to learn the difference between an assertion and an argument…. And then you produce for us a litany of assertions that are unsupported and do nothing to advance the conversation. I have answered all of those ridiculous assertions on Jasons blog. Why don’t you let the grownups talk until you have something interesting to add to the conversation.
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Tom, apparently you haven’t read Hilaire Belloc, Brad Gregory, or Charles Taylor.
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Kenneth, you’re welcome, there’s plenty more where that came from. Take care.
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Bob S may be rude but he’s certainly right. The Catholic paradigm falls apart the second you press on it in any direction: logic, philosophy, history, ethics, consistency with the bible… Jason and Bryan don’t have any answers to the litany of easy questions.
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D. G. Hart
Posted October 29, 2013 at 6:15 am | Permalink
Tom, apparently you haven’t read Hilaire Belloc, Brad Gregory, or Charles Taylor.
I cannot answer for them. The subject was you and Abraham Kuyper, and I understand you wanting to change the subject.
Your 2k thesis is built on the distinction between the Kingdom/City of God and the Kingdom/City of Man, but that’s a distinction you deny to everyone else. You say they must swallow both tablets of the 10 Commandments all or nothing–however, natural law can apply only to the second tablet and the concerns of this world, the City of Man, for there is no stealing or killing or adultery in the Kingdom of God.
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Tom, whatever you say.
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Well, mostly, Darryl, I’ve been checking to see if you have a principled rebuttal and to clarify my own reservations about your particular jihad. Certainly one does not “win” a debate here in front of your fans–the purpose has always been to give you a fair chance to answer objections to your thesis and theology. So sure, whatever.
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Tom, thanks for giving me a fair chance a “my” blog. But you have not before nor have you now represented the 2k view, even after all the times you have visited to discuss (and judge). In this case, you say: “Your 2k thesis is built on the distinction between the Kingdom/City of God and the Kingdom/City of Man, but that’s a distinction you deny to everyone else. You say they must swallow both tablets of the 10 Commandments all or nothing–however, natural law can apply only to the second tablet and the concerns of this world, the City of Man, for there is no stealing or killing or adultery in the Kingdom of God.”
I really don’t know what you mean. I don’t deny this distinction to others but actually wish they would use it. If I say they must swallow both tablets it is because they say the magistrate must enforce God’s law (you can’t pick and choose God’s revealed law — Moses and your favorite, Beza, did not). And I have never said that the natural law applies only to the second table.
What I have said is that the church is a spiritual institution with spiritual means for spiritual ends. This is different from the state. That assertion is Western Christian 101.
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Right K.
That Jesus appealed to the
lost apostolic oral traditionScripture is just an assertion that grownups who have actually read the Bible would automatically know was not true.And I noticed you bailed on sean’s arguments, never mind Robert’s which are pretty good also. You don’t have a clue to what your church really teaches and switch back and forth as it suits you.
But then again implict stupidity is what it is.
But hey, those who worship a piece of bread, generally muster an argument about the consistency of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. You’ve answered all these objections over at Jason’s bwog.
Give me a break. You’re late to the party. 2 Tim 3:17 ain’t in Jase’s bible, if he even has one any more these days.
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Sean,
I don’t have a clue what argument from sean that I bailed on?
“’The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice’” (Mt 23:2-3).
According to Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees occupy “Moses’ seat” (Matt. 23:2), having the authority and ability to interpret the law of Moses correctly; here “seat” is both a metaphor for judicial authority and also a reference to a literal stone seat in the front of many synagogues that would be occupied by an authoritative teacher of the law (Myers, 919-920).
The New Bible Dictionary describes their beliefs in this respect, in its article, “Pharisees”:
. . . the Torah was not merely ‘law’ but also ‘instruction’, i.e., it consisted not merely of fixed commandments but was adaptable to changing conditions . . . This adaptation or inference was the task of those who had made a special study of the Torah, and a majority decision was binding on all . . .
The commandments were further applied by analogy to situations not directly covered by the Torah. All these developments together with thirty-one customs of ‘immemorial usage’ formed the ‘oral law’ . . . the full development of which is later than the New Testament. Being convinced that they had the right interpretation of the Torah, they claimed that these ‘traditions of the elders’ (Mk 7:3) came from Moses on Sinai (Douglas, 981-982).
Likewise, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church notes in its article on the Pharisees:
Unlike the Sadducees, who tried to apply Mosaic Law precisely as it was given, the Pharisees allowed some interpretation of it to make it more applicable to different situations, and they regarded these oral interpretations as of the same level of importance as the Law itself (Cross, 1077).
This perspective is quite interesting, seeing that what Jesus did in that verse was to encourage submission to the teaching of the Pharisees (not the Old Testament), and on the basis of their sitting on Moses’ seat: a phrase not even found in the Old Testament. If Jesus condemned all “tradition” why then Moses seat?
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above comment is addressed to obnoxious Bob ^
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Kenneth,
Except Jesus also condemned the Pharisees for being critical of his disciples picking wheat on the Sabbath because that tradition of there’s violated Scripture. So no, we aren’t supposed to follow all oral traditions. This is an elementary error, and not something even modern RC biblical scholars would endorse as being what the historical Jesus taught—namely, the binding nature of extrabiblical Pharisaic tradition.
And if you want to interpret that passage the way you have, you need to get rid of the Apocrypha, since the Pharisees didn’t read that as Scripture.
Jesus didn’t condemn all tradition. He condemned traditions that violate Scripture. We have record of Jesus celebrating Hanukkah or at least going up to Jerusalem for the feast. Hanukkah is a tradition not found in Scripture—the first century Jews did not receive Maccabees as Scripture—but it doesn’t violate Scripture.
Going from that passage about Moses’ seat to praying to dead people and papal infallibility can’t be done. Try again.
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Kenneth,
Like I said, tradition is not intrinsically bad. It is a useful teacher, but it must be tested. We see Jesus judging tradition against scripture. Your mailman analogy simply doesn’t take you where you think it does. We do have lots of different mail carriers – UPS, FedEx, DHL, various courier services, etc… who cares? The better analogy is science – we believe the data is infallible, though scientists and the scientific community is very fallible. Theories are always tested against the data even as they guide how we interpret data. The scriptures are the data. Its just an analogy, so this breaks down eventually as well.
Maybe we are (or were) mistaken about which letters should be included in the cannon, and it may have taken awhile for that to shake out. But once it was determined, it became the gold standard against which all traditions must be weighed. It may be messy, but so what? How is it different than what the 1st century Jew had to work with? It is a useful exercise to apply the RC critique of sola scripture to Jesus’s (and John the Baptist’s for that matter) use of scripture – it won’t take you where you want to go I expect.
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