Somewhere during the past few weeks I recall reading something about the origins of the episcopate and Ambrose’s contention that obedience to the bishop was of the essence of episcopacy. (That may generate titters from those in the Episcopal Church or the Reformed Episcopal Church, but it still goes with the territory of a universal bishop who has access to the relics of Peter.) Here is one account of the obedience that bishops require (though it might carry more weight actually coming from a bishop):
. . . most of us encounter bishops not only by instruction in the faith, but in practical judgments that have no assurance of divine guidance: appointment or removal of a priest, refusal of a legitimate request, closing of a church or school. Here obedience – along with charity and patience – is truly tested. This instance requires two further clarifications.
On the one hand, according the will of Christ the apostles and their successors the bishops have legitimate authority in all ecclesial matters down to the most mundane dealings. By virtue of the duties incurred by the great gift of our baptisms, we must obey the juridical decisions of bishops, even if we disagree.
On the other hand, our duty of obedience does not mean we cannot communicate our opinions, ideas, and reservations to our bishops, in private or public. But because of bishops’ ecclesial dignity, we must do so charitably and with deference. We can seek recourse to the Apostolic See if we believe a bishop has decided contrary to canon law, but we must never seek to embarrass or insult him in the process – doing so only further disturbs the whole flock.
“A bishop is bound to belong to all, to bear the burden of all,” writes Chrysostom. As members of the same Body of Christ, we must help our bishops bear the burden of souls by bearing our burden of obedience to them. Obedience never has been easy, and it never will be. But like all things truly Catholic, obedience is worth the sacrifice.
So far, so good (if you’re not a presbyterian or congregationalist).
Then along comes this diatribe that might have given Luther pause:
America’s bishops are confusing Catholics by using doublespeak, being indecisive, and being politically correct. Their posturing has, and is, causing great harm to the Church in America.
A case in point: In June 2012, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) unanimously stated that the contraception-sterilization-abortifacients regulation of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act was an “unjust and illegal mandate and a violation of personal civil rights.” Following the National Prayer Breakfast in May, Sean Cardinal O’Malley, OFM Cap., the archbishop of Boston and chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, was asked if this regulation violates God’s law. He responded, “The regulation that imposes abortion and sterilization, this is a violation of God’s law.”
So far, so good; here is the rest of the story. In a letter to Congress, the American bishops wrote, “Those who help provide health care, and those who need such care for themselves and their families, should not be forced to choose between preserving their religious and moral integrity and participating in our health-care system.”
However, when Cardinal O’Malley was asked whether American Catholics should obey laws that violate God’s law, he responded, “The question is complicated.” He went on to further confuse the issue: “This is a very complicated issue, and it’s something the Church is struggling with right now, and trying to come up with a moral analysis in order to be able to allow people to form their consciences and to go forward.”
As I Catholic, I do not wish to engage in calumny, particularly involving a cardinal or bishop of the Church I love. I do not believe my comments are such. I believe that the Catholic hierarchy is obligated to be clear and concise when it comes to defining God’s law. I believe that the hierarchy has a duty, as difficult as it may be, to “uncomplicate” the issues that Catholics face when it comes to their faith and how we should live as Catholics in our secular society. Cardinal O’Malley has failed to meet this obligation.
This is the sort of blast that might have actually led to excommunication and the start of a new church if bishops still expected obedience — enforcing it might be another matter. But episcopacy is not what it used to be and I don’t think Jason and the Callers have noticed.
Old Life 
Someone should ask Bryan cross which is more audacious in this day and age—holding to a traditional view of the papacy with all its power to bind and loose and the necessity of submission to the pope for salvation, or continuing to hold that obedience to the pope and the Magisterium is required for salvation and unity when even the Magisterium doesn’t really seem to believe that anymore.
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Here is a somewhat random observation/question arising from this post for you as a historian. The majority of former reformed converts to Rome appear to be those highly committed to the intellectual life. (And then there are politicians who convert to Rome who appear to be highly committed to the culture wars; but that is another matter.)
Now, obviously, history is important to Protestants. The ancient and medieval Church is our Church, which God reformed as the Scriptures were more widely rediscovered. Trent rejected these reforms, and hence the beginning of the Roman schismatics, c. 1555. So we need to study history.
But because we are Solo Christo and Sola Scriptura, we don’t have to understand and defend every jot and tittle of Christian history. The Church has screwed it up many times. We do want to avoid the errors of those who seek a “primitive” form of Christianity, as if we did not inherit 2,000 years of Christian history. But we have no obligation to understand or justify every move the Church has made. Thus, we have a simple faith, which does not particularly cater to intellectuals (cf. I Cor 1:18ff). For Protestants, the key battleground is always explicitly the fight between humility and pride, not knowledge and ignorance.
But it seems that for some with a large intellectual curiosity, the Byzantine world (to mix metaphors) of Roman Catholic history is appealing. There is so much to digest, so much to explore, a huge cornucopia of historical information that needs to be understood and embraced. And so Roman Catholicism has this appeal to intellectuals that we should not even try to compete with — because that is never the main battleground for our souls.
I’m trying to express a thought/question here, not very well. But whenever I see some essay on what some ancient bishop or saint thought precisely, I think, OK, but it is not Scripture. And they are not Christ. So, I will read them, but with moderated zeal, because if they get it all wrong, I don’t care very much — I still have the Bible and I still have Jesus. In part, I think that is what it means to be Protestant. Simplicity. Help me out here.
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Chris,
I’m not a professional historian, but I think you’re on to something. A lot of RCs I have dealt with play up the superiority of Rome because of brilliant men such as Aquinas (as if Protestants can’t claim him too, but I digress). Plus, a lot of the intellectual types want to make their mark on the world. What better way than to write 5,000 word dissertations on how Roman Catholic divisions aren’t real because Protestants are begging the question and don’t have a principled means of knowing anything anyway.
It gets tiresome.
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Maybe these Catholics should read more CtC?
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/clericalism-and-common-core/
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In the REC we vow obedience to our Bishops.
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REC as in the REC-APA (modern-day transmutation into Anglo-Papism with mitres and all that, the itch for recognition from the Continuum and Canterbury) or the authentic REC as in Protestant Episcopalian aka traditional REC?
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*crickets*
step up your game Daryl. I think at this point your arguments are so notoriously unimpressive that Jason and the Callers stopped paying attention a long time ago
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Kenneth – step up your game Daryl. I think at this point your arguments are so notoriously unimpressive that Jason and the Callers stopped paying attention a long time ago
Erik – Also a possibility that they have short attention spans.
Whichever it is, why look a gift horse in the mouth?
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Chris E., that about does it, even if your point can devolve into fundamentalism. But the more I look at Roman Catholicism, the more I say show me Jesus from the Bible.
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Chris,
Being a Roman Catholic intellectual isn’t all that.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/allitt-converts.html
“But the general trend bore the range of intellectually respectable ideas steadily away from religion in general and Catholicism in particular. This trend, often labeled “secularization,” appeared for decades to be unstoppable, so that many convert intellectuals, far from reversing its momentum, found their own views gradually moving outside the realm of what other intellectuals considered plausible. The consequence was marginalization, and convert intellectuals in general lost influence with the passing decades, so that none in the twentieth century could have an effect on his or her non-Catholic contemporaries to match that of Newman and Brownson in the mid-nineteenth. Certain writers, such as Chesterton or Christopher Dawson, could still find admirers, but neither created a major school of thought, and non-Catholic admirers saw their religion as a colorful aberration rather than a central element in their work. In that sense this book is the history of a momentous and protracted failure.”
Also note Bryan Cross’s usual MO – evasion and obfuscation vs. sincere communication. Not impressive in the least.
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Bill, and in the RCC they still take vows against modernism (and husbands still vow to be faithful).
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Ken loses, it could be that they along with you have no answers. I don’t exactly see what your comment says about laity showing disrespect for bishops. Then again, maybe apostolic succession is meaningless (except when it comes to RC self-righteousness).
Or maybe they finally made the wise choice to stop arguing at OL because they realize the koolaid doesn’t work here.
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You know, the whole argument that the episcopate was a necessary and inevitable theological development is a lot more honest and compelling than the complete disregard of the actual historical evidence that CtC shows.
The problem also is that Rome traditionally treated the episcopate as if it dropped out of the sky fully formed in the first century, and indeed they based their claims for superiority and truth on that fact. Now that we know for a fact that it didn’t happen that way, Rome wants to talk about development. Who cares if their arguments in the past had any substance, the important thing is that someone said it while wearing the infallibility hat, so the doctrine is right even if there’s no historical case for it any longer.
Do they realize how gullible that makes them sound?
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An odd subject for a week where American Presbyterianism just went gay.
Whose Calvinism is it anyway?
[As for Catholicism, its divisions and dissents pale.]
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Tom, Tommy-Tom Tommykins – – America-hating Presbyterians from your perspective. The shrinking, irrelevant social organization that Machen left 80 years ago also raved against Israel. Being terminally political they’re much more like you than us.
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By the way, Calvin’s description in The Institutes of the development of the early episcopacy is fascinating, if you have not read it in awhile. As I recall, he makes three fundamental points — 1) early bishops were elected by the whole Church; including the laity, so they only served by popular agreement; 2) they continued to be pastors of their own congregations, thus serving as the first among equals, responsible to call and moderate the assembly of elders in each city (very much like a presbytery’s moderator); 3) they had no political or temporal power whatsoever. Obviously, The Institutes is a polemical work; but his point is that he early episcopacy was much more Presbyterian in nature than Roman.
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Ken loses, and people leave Reformed churches for this?
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vd, t, at least Michael Sean Winters is honest:
And you defend an institution to which you don’t belong.
Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism is riven by two w-w’s:
So much for “good” Roman Catholics being good “Americans.”
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David Brat’s education punctuates what RC teaching allows: the wide application of the principles of charity and brotherhood. Libertarianism can deny these principles but it doesn’t have to. After all, when has the application of charity (along with other virtues that must be taught and honored in tandem) been made holy by forced extraction?
The blogger asking Mr. Brat to leave his understanding of the whole counsel of economics or to leave Catholicism is on some street but it ain’t Faith street. And did you see the collection of contributors: “churchy phrases that scare millennials.” We do deserve that kind of clap-trap because we’re not honestly asking the two kingdoms to marry we’re asking that they declare a domestic partnership and provide the certificate of proof.
My exposure to Aquinas is mainly via Eric Voegelin. And Voegelin says that Aquinas taught that the State’s responsibility is to take care of the inescapable wants of the citizen with the view towards allowing her to concentrate on her spiritual life and development. In contrast and for me agreement, Weber points to the Puritans advancing a view almost in reverse.
The biggest defect of the prelacy is that it refuses the calling to be tentmakers and that separates its members, including and foremost the Pope, from the common Catholic by exponential degree.
What the Pope’s version of economic well-being is, is strictly his own. And I think he errs in assuming that true charity, one that involves “getting your hands dirty” can be global. It has to be local for it to be able to include the full counsel of God. And libertarianism, as I understand it, advances no principle or argument that contradicts this. I wouldn’t classify myself as libertarian, more a practical liberal who has come to understand the decency, and humane capacity of decentralization. The poor need a fair judge, not an ideologian.
Forced community is possible in totalitarian systems, of which Christendom of centuries past was one. Our power of reason allows us to be able to recognize philosophical and psychological squalor and our power of observation allows us to recognize physical squalor so that we pray along with the Prophet of Proverbs, “Lord, make me neither rich or poor, but give me my daily bread.”
Another defect of the prelacy or shame I should say is that it has no way of drawing great exegetes into its sphere. The gift of the love of exegesis is almost strictly on the Protestant side.
Even JPII and BXIV while great philosophers were not great exegetes, I don’t think. And Pope Francis seems to be confusing Jesus and Mazzini which renders his writing aggressively lifeless.
Mustard seed? Where is the Mustard seed?
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Dear Friends,
I know I’m still in St. Louis, and the wagon train has moved on to Nebraska by now (Luther-Like), but I posted a blog under The Obedience Boys…Catechism section at/near the end that I thought you might like to read (note included to Dr. Hart, Mr. Miller, and I needed Erik’s help on Columbo’s famous one-liner to help round things out).
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Erik, when is your next concert?
Steely Dan Bethlehem, PA Bethlehem Musikfest – Sands Steel Stage Aug 06, 2014
Wed 7:00 PM
Hiroshima Day, for the war hawks who don’t remember
http://harmonyforpeace.org/content/free-film-showing-hiroshima-nagasaki-download
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Chortles weakly
Posted June 20, 2014 at 6:48 pm | Permalink
Tom, Tommy-Tom Tommykins – – America-hating Presbyterians from your perspective. The shrinking, irrelevant social organization that Machen left 80 years ago also raved against Israel. Being terminally political they’re much more like you than us.
Yes, I caught the anti-Israel thing. Via you. 😉
Presbyterianism going gay is a sea change in my view, though. I do have a serious admiration for Machen. I would not bother to Jiminy Cricket the PCUSA as I do you–there is no religious conscience to appeal to.
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Mark,
I plan to see them in Kansas City in July. That will actually be the first time.
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 21, 2014 at 3:35 am | Permalink
vd, t, at least Michael Sean Winters is honest:
“Ideological silos” are now common on both the left and right. People with down-the-line ideological positions – especially conservatives – are more likely than others to say that most of their close friends share their political views. Liberals and conservatives disagree over where they want to live, the kind of people they want to live around and even whom they would welcome into their families.
Sadly, this phenomenon is all-too present in the Church as well. I note that at this week’s mis-named “Acton University,” a four-day confab of Catholics dedicated to defending free market principles, they are offering Mass each morning in both the ordinary and extraordinary form. I am guessing that when the LCWR has its next meeting, there will not be much demand for the extraordinary form. And, I am guessing that very few people check out both our website here at NCR and that at EWTN on a daily basis, unless they are doing opposition research.
You see the divisions not only in rival parts of the Catholic blogosphere, but even where people attend Mass. It has been a long time since people felt bound to their territorial parish. Now, they shop around for a place that is congenial. One of my best friends drives 25 minutes each way on Sunday to attend a multi-cultural, progressive parish. I myself usually drive twenty-five minutes each way to attend the Latin Mass (novus ordo) at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, although I hasten to add that I attend that our Latin Mass attracts a broad cross section ideologically, from the leader of the parish’s pro-life efforts to the leader of the parishes LGBT outreach. I think we all like the music and the chance to brush up our Latin.
And you defend an institution to which you don’t belong.
Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism is riven by two w-w’s:
Libertarianism is an ideology that cannot be reconciled with Catholicism. Unfortunately, it has a relatively wide appeal in our society, including among some who identify as Catholic. But the very foundations of libertarianism directly and unavoidably conflict with the principles of Catholic moral and social thought.
Libertarianism is inseparable from individualism, self-interest, and autonomy. Property rights are sacrosanct. Government is viewed as a necessary evil and a constant threat to liberty. And the market is turned into an idol.
Conversely, Catholics are called to recognize themselves as persons who only reach their full development in community — or, better yet, communities, as we exist in crosscutting communities from our families to the global community. Catholics believe that real freedom is found through communion with God and others. Our desire for love, joy, and communion leads us to choose solidarity over autonomy.
For Catholics, government has a positive role to play. It exists to foster conditions that allow each person to reach their full emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual potential as human persons. National governments have the responsibility to create these conditions for their citizens, but they are also responsible for promoting the global common good — solidarity transcends national borders. The foundation of this understanding of government is the dignity of the human person, which is universal, giving all people equal worth as brothers and sisters, children of the same God.
So much for “good” Roman Catholics being good “Americans.”
VD? Please call me Tom, Dr. Dirty Mouth. Now that we have that ritual greeting out of the way—
Why you keep pumping the fatuous Michael Sean Winters, who hates his church and would be unwelcome in yours, I do not know. Why don’t you just quote Nancy Pelosi on Catholicism? Al Sharpton?
To the substance, your fellow Calvinist Jordan Ballor is quite involved with the Acton Institute, and could and can argue rings around the simplistic Beatitudist Michael Sean Winters. Acton’s argument for free markets is not for “libertarianism,” which becomes libertinism and moral anarchy, but for natural law.
Free economic systems provide material plenty for all. Natural law opens itself up to proof in the real world a posteriori. If free market capitalism’s result was more human suffering instead of less, it would be indefensible. Instead, it is anti-free marketism–Pelosism, leftism–that is indefensible, for it creates more people mot fewer.
I would think you’re familiar with Jordan Ballor although your followers may not be. He’s a terrific thinker and apologist for natural law theory
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/01/002-protestants-and-natural-law
To box Acton Institute into mere Republican politics is unfair [Bill Clinton and the now-defunct Democratic Leadership conference were pro-free markets], and to slime it by calling it “libertarian” is hurtful–because you and Sean Michael Winters are quite right that libertarianism is quite unCatholic.
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Tom,
Why you keep pumping the fatuous Michael Sean Winters, who hates his church and would be unwelcome in yours, I do not know. Why don’t you just quote Nancy Pelosi on Catholicism? Al Sharpton?
Maybe when the CTCers wake up to the fact that the RC has no more unity than Protestantism, as evidenced by people such as Winters and Pelosi being in good standing with the church, and that their claims of superiority are so much hot air we could stop going there.
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vd, t, Winters goes to church. Do you?
He’s got skin in the game. Yours is thin.
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 22, 2014 at 2:30 am | Permalink
vd, t, Winters goes to church. Do you?
He’s got skin in the game. Yours is thin.
Irrelevant. Nancy Pelosi goes to church too. The new Gay PCUSA goes to church also. I accept your surrender.
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Robert
Posted June 22, 2014 at 12:16 am | Permalink
Tom,
Why you keep pumping the fatuous Michael Sean Winters, who hates his church and would be unwelcome in yours, I do not know. Why don’t you just quote Nancy Pelosi on Catholicism? Al Sharpton?
Maybe when the CTCers wake up to the fact that the RC has no more unity than Protestantism, as evidenced by people such as Winters and Pelosi being in good standing with the church, and that their claims of superiority are so much hot air we could stop going there.
I dunno. If the Catholics tossed them, we’d be hearing Inquisition!, Inquisition!
As for Catholic unity, it’s not a democracy or a congress or a presbytery, whathaveyou. It’s an oligarchy, and the oligarchy is pretty unified.
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Maybe when the CTCers wake up to the fact that the RC has no more unity than Protestantism, as evidenced by people such as Winters and Pelosi being in good standing with the church, and that their claims of superiority are so much hot air we could stop going there.
But if we stop going there Robert, then yure avuhrej self uhpoynted Roman apaulogist would be hoam less and we kan’t have that. One and all must be convinced above and beyond Scripture, reason or history that the fraud they are fronting for is not only infallible and ineffable, but also an unreformable monolithic unity. Either that or all the elaborate intricacies and obtuse and abstruse longwinded articles on the 7th century bishop that was sainted by a 17th century pope, who himself was sainted . . . would come down around our haloed heads, like a house of cards for memorial masses.
On another note, it’s nice to see the The Veronian Disciple making about as much sense as he ever did. Which makes sense because contra Scripture and instead of tradition and the teaching magisterium, he substitutes his own opinion/reason. Hey, it’s worked for the CtC so far.
But if skepticism is not your cup of tea, how about nominalism? IOW a word like unity only means what Humpty Dumpty says it means.
ciao
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The obsession with Catholicism even while Presbyterianism circles the bowl is of the greater interest to this here disciple.
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I wouldn’t worry too much about Bryan and the callers. Bryan’s latest essay has this gem:
Now Bryan knows this is BS. There is a wealth of documentary evidence or objections to this breach from the early Christian community with many claiming that the doctrines of a unitary bishop, a hierarchical church… were innovations recently introduced. To not mention it is questionable. To assert it doesn’t exist is more than just questionable.
Jason and the Callers to use your term are willfully ignoring the evidence. They are claiming a historical case but the historical case is a gross distortion of the documentary record we do have. They know this. The origin of the episcopate was the desire of the bishops for obedience not the reverse.
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victor delta, tango, it’s not irrelevant to your OL “friends” who think you sure do spend a lot of time defending an institution of which you are not a disciple.
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vd, t, that’s odd. The German oligarchy wants to change on marriage, and they’re doing so like democrats.
Maybe you should stick to the American founding.
Isn’t it great to be back at OL?
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vd, t, for a guy who thinks he’s the smartest in the room, it’s hard to believe he’s so dumb on this one.
Find a PCUSA version of Called to Communion and you’ve made my blogging day. Find any mainline/liberal Presbyterian who defends the PCUSA as the conservative solution to Protestantism’s woes, and you’re living in Homer’s Land of Chocolate.
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CD-H, but they don’t seem to be aware that the rest of the U.S. Roman Catholic church doesn’t care — not even the trads.
This is Roman Catholicism for guys who build their own transistor radios (still).
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Dr. Hart,
You are quite wrong. I regularly read and enjoy this website and many traditional and orthodox Roman Catholic websites. Your arguments are well made and keep me thinking, though a Catholic I shall remain . There are a few of us who read both perspectives – EWTN (representing many sources) and yyours. Keep up the good work.
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@DgH
I’ve said this before when reading CtC… do these guys even know any Catholics? Catholics love the food, the sexuality, the art the continuity. They don’t believe the food, the sex, the art or the continuity. Trying to reframe Catholicism as primarily a belief system and not a culture centered on a religion which has some doctrinal statements does an injustice to the core of Catholicism. Catholics are Catholic the way I’m American not the way I’m a member of the NJ Tech Council.
Catholicism views itself as a living faith. The idea of some fixed deposit of faith as being at the core runs contrary to the entire view Catholicism has of itself. Sure Catholicism asserts a nebulous deposit and likes to say “the church has always believed”. But Catholics know that “the church has always believed” is code for “right now we want hierarchy to line up behind the belief” …. Americans will say the “first amendment guarantees” for things that came out of latter amendments (particularly the 14th), tradition and then court decisions the “original deposit” is a shorthand for the living culture. Catholicism is the same way.
Catholicism (unlike Reformed Christianity) is a religion / culture of balance. It attacks doctrines that “go too far” while often affirming their weaker forms as still acceptable and in the fold. In some sense their “lets start out own club with the Catholic space doing stuff about Catholicism we like” is very Catholic. What’s not so Catholic is the core focus on doctrine. But more importantly the emotional tone is off.
____
But OTOH if we are going to argue historical fact…. then they have no right to rewrite history. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions they aren’t entitled to their own facts.
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From CD’s quote of Bryan BigWords:
“…deconstruct…postulate an entirely undocumented rupture……fundamental mistake endemic…principle of proximate evidence. And once again, by striking contrast, the Catholic paradigm…principle of proximate evidence…posit such a breach…inferential value of silence highlight an evidential situation entailing that the most reasonable course…ecclesial witness of the Church Fathers.”
I’d like to see him take this crap to the Knights of Columbus pig roast. Someone would get an @ss whoopin’.
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CD,
One of the things that really grabbed my attention when I really started to explore the veracity of the claims made at CtC was that I couldn’t really find any Catholic scholars making their arguments…and they didn’t cite any of them either.
One of the large responses of the article was that anyone not affirming that the [historical–my word but their meaning] Jesus founded the RCC is a material heretic. The problem is that I’ve yet to find one Catholic Patristics scholar to affirm that the historical Jesus founded the RCC and men holding ecclesiastical offices or writing under the Imprimatur of their bishop are affirming things that Bryan (et al) identifies as material heresy. So who are we to believe, Bryan or the bishop?
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Brandon raises an excellent point.
As far as I know, there is not one RC patristics scholar who is going to say that Jesus founded the RC Church as we know it. They might argue that the episcopate was a necessary, legitimate, and inevitable development, but no one is going to say it was put in to practice fully formed during Jesus’ ministry. The CtC guys routinely speak as if this is the case.
It doesn’t make any sense to me. The more modern idea of the development of doctrine should allow for this. The problem, of course, is that past councils and thinkers often spoke as if the episcopate descended in a fully formed manner. That’s one reason why it is hard to take claims of continuity so seriously. You have doctrines in place but the theological and historical justification for them just changes completely. It’s a weird kind of liberalism that refuses to interpret documents according to their authorial intent but nevertheless maintains an air of conservatism.
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I don’t think a KofC pig roast can become violent. Where bocce ball is involved? I don’t think so.
But for this: inferential value of silence highlight an evidential situation entailing that the most reasonable course he would definitely be asked to leave the premises.
The dialogue would run something like this:
CD-Host,
I’d like to address a couple of your comments:
“The idea of some fixed deposit of faith as being at the core runs contrary to the entire view Catholicism has of itself. Sure Catholicism asserts a nebulous deposit and likes to say “the church has always believed”. ”
This isn’t right. Catholicism can’t be running around making up doctrines. If there is truth about some theological or moral aspect, Catholicism has the ability by virtue of being guided by the Holy Spirit( Religion believes such things) to state that truth in words, and then defending it dogmatically. So say you are seeking God and as far as you are concerned anything is possible, so you check into all the different world religions trying to find the diety or dieties that made the world( assuming you can even get to the idea of a diety), and when you start reading up on Christianity you find out that it believes that the diety is one godhead with three persons. You would never have come to that conclusion on your own, and you could never believe it, or put your trust in its truthfulness if there hadn’t been someone to teach it to you. That someone would be the witness of the Church.
“The origin of the episcopate was the desire of the bishops for obedience not the reverse”.
This I don’t understand. Are you saying that the bishops couldn’t get the lay people to submit to their authority? How would a bishopric without a hierachal order have hung together doctrinally with other bishoprics as one church without some way to solve disputed, but not unreasonable in the supernatural scheme, propositions?
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 23, 2014 at 1:15 am | Permalink
vd, t, for a guy who thinks he’s the smartest in the room, it’s hard to believe he’s so dumb on this one.
Find a PCUSA version of Called to Communion and you’ve made my blogging day. Find any mainline/liberal Presbyterian who defends the PCUSA as the conservative solution to Protestantism’s woes, and you’re living in Homer’s Land of Chocolate.
The pope excommunicates the Mafia; Presbyterianism goes gay. Catholicism had a much better week.
By this token, the “conservative” solution to Protestantism’s woes is clearly Catholicism, not creating yet another [!] denomination of Protestantism. Right in front of your nose. Thank me very much.
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Tom – And the oligarchy is pretty unified.
Erik – Behind Frank, the hippie Pope:
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Tom,
The pope excommunicates the Mafia
Maybe not:
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/23/5834038/no-pope-francis-did-not-officially-excommunicate-the-mafia
In any case, the real proof will be in the pudding will be when the Mafia are barred from the Eucharist in their parish. The pope can pontificate all he wants, its the actions that matter. Kind of like how shuffling abusive priests around and the continual refusal to take full responsibility for it makes the church’s statements against it hollow.
Presbyterians have seen this before—official pronouncements by the head office and toleration of the opposite. The liberals in the PCUSA did it for decades, and once they got the majority power, all pretense of restraint is thrown off. Just wait till it happens to Rome.
By this token, the “conservative” solution to Protestantism’s woes is clearly Catholicism, not creating yet another [!] denomination of Protestantism. Right in front of your nose. Thank me very much.
If Rome is so great, why aren’t you at mass every week?
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Tom – The obsession with Catholicism even while Presbyterianism circles the bowl is of the greater interest to this here disciple.
Erik – Since what is now the PCUSA changed it’s Confessional basis in the late 60s no one on the outside has been overly concerned with following their continuing march to extinction. The last I heard, membership had declined for the past 43 years.
Nice buildings, old people, liberals — nothing to see here, move along.
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Tom’s “retirement” made even mine look long.
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CD – But more importantly the emotional tone is off.
Erik – That’s from receiving too many playground beat downs during boyhood.
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CD-H, would you say this is true of post-Vat 2 RC’sm? It is hard to read Trent, Vatican 1, the Syllabus of Errors, the Oath against Modernism, the Index of Books as a faith you merely catch.
I agree with you that for most Roman Catholics in the pew, the faith is what you describe. But the Vatican sure did expend a lot of energy and resources on the mind for about 400 years. And that is what makes RC’sm such an odd faith. It’s gooey and anathematizes, one part SBL, one part Bellarmine.
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Robert,
The RCC doesn’t damn anyone to hell. If the bad boys will by God’s grace become sorrowful and stop their evil behavior than they can be forgiven. A contrite heart is a must for a good confession, because God judges the heart. If a person in the mafia goes to a parish where he is unknown and takes comunion there would be no way to barr him from receiving the blessed sacrament. So unless you know who is in the mafia and know their constant coming and going, you won’t be able to know if they are showing up for Mass, and you won’t know who has or hasn’t given up crime and returned to the Church. You see, since a person is truly receiving Jesus in the blessed sacrament, if he does so without first receiving sacrament of reconcilation which requires true repentence for the absolvement, he condemns himself.
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victor delta, tango, this is above your pay grade. Remember, theology is off limits to the historian and game show contestant.
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Susan, puh-leeze. They didn’t burn Hus at the stake? Face it, you joined Roman Catholicism when it turned wimpy and all it can do now is make saints (though why it only plays good cop seems a major p.r. move which you bought hook line and sinker).
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Tom’s “retirement” made even mine look long.
It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as yours, though. I can recite it word for word after reading it only once. 🙂
It seemed that when Tom thought he’d been banned, he began to see Old Life as a friend and maybe even a site he could learn something from by way of its emphases. The paranoia that made him conclude that he’d been banned humbled him. 😉 And so he had you at goodbye.
But when you’re on the hunt for any enemy of your enemy and when you admit that, as self-appointed referee, you confer victory on those who win debating points and not on those striving for truth and clarity, humility remains possible only as a heart-stricken aberration.
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Erik’s retirement had me scrambling for the dictionary to see what jackanapes and disanfractuous meant.
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I thought Erik’s retirement had something to do with paying $10 to the charity of our choice if he responded to TVD.
Erik, I have a robotics team that’s looking for sponsors …
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Susan,
The RCC doesn’t damn anyone to hell. If the bad boys will by God’s grace become sorrowful and stop their evil behavior than they can be forgiven. A contrite heart is a must for a good confession, because God judges the heart. If a person in the mafia goes to a parish where he is unknown and takes comunion there would be no way to barr him from receiving the blessed sacrament. So unless you know who is in the mafia and know their constant coming and going, you won’t be able to know if they are showing up for Mass, and you won’t know who has or hasn’t given up crime and returned to the Church. You see, since a person is truly receiving Jesus in the blessed sacrament, if he does so without first receiving sacrament of reconcilation which requires true repentence for the absolvement, he condemns himself.
All I can say is that a highly idealized view of the Roman church’s historical understanding of itself. If it possesses the keys to open and close the doors of heaven to people, when what is it doing when it closes the door but condemning people?
In any case, a visible church that won’t enforce its doctrine is pretty much useless as a visible church. When discipline is not enacted, by default any interpretation of the church’s teaching goes. Which means one could just as well interpret Francis’ words as allowing the Mafia in the church.
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Jeff, that reminds me to ask: How many butterflies can you get for ten bucks?
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 23, 2014 at 3:40 pm | Permalink
victor delta, tango, this is above your pay grade. Remember, theology is off limits to the historian and game show contestant.
MLD
Posted June 23, 2014 at 4:06 pm | Permalink
Tom’s “retirement” made even mine look long.
It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as yours, though. I can recite it word for word after reading it only once. 🙂
It seemed that when Tom thought he’d been banned, he began to see Old Life as a friend and maybe even a site he could learn something from by way of its emphases. The paranoia that made him conclude that he’d been banned humbled him. 😉 And so he had you at goodbye.
But when you’re on the hunt for any enemy of your enemy and when you admit that, as self-appointed referee, you confer victory on those who win debating points and not on those striving for truth and clarity, humility remains possible only as a heart-stricken aberration.
I’m the least of your problems, Uncle Screwtape. Your religion just went gay and you have nothing much left except nattering about justification and papism.
MLD, yes, I do have an affection for these folks despite themselves, and for JG Machen, the Last Protestant. From him I have indeed learned, and he had the guts to take own his own church instead of somebody else’s.
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It’s all well and good that Francis banned the mob. A lot late, but ok. I wanna see two things; 1) does he got shot for it. 2) Did the Vat bank get the notice.
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“and he had the guts to take own his own church instead of somebody else’s.”
DGH and those on this site that share his devotion to the Reformed faith take on those in their own church. I think they’re called the Neo-Cals.
The war between Rome and Geneva will never end because it revolves around issues of substance and the old saying that one is either headed towards Rome or Geneva will gain in acuity (I say it’s a word!) as Christianity whiters further in the US. And to demand unity or a cloying and mutual deference for the goal of re-establishing a civil theology is a demand to give up truth or one’s search for it and to reduce the Christian faith to market niches.
And you’re running from the more serious character defect that you display on this site: intellectual dishonesty. Or wrangling, if you prefer.
And until you drop the smug self-styling as referee you won’t be able to add anything to the conversation. Your contributions as it relates to deeply thought or felt theological issues will remain as it is, talk of “the greatest story every told,” “angels and S@#T” or whatever holy theme you combined with it. Plus the easy-peasey talk of how Jesus judges.
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MLD
Posted June 23, 2014 at 5:51 pm | Permalink
“and he had the guts to take own his own church instead of somebody else’s.”
DGH and those on this site that share his devotion to the Reformed faith take on those in their own church. I think they’re called the Neo-Cals.
The war between Rome and Geneva will never end because it revolves around issues of substance and the old saying that one is either headed towards Rome or Geneva will gain in acuity (I say it’s a word!) as Christianity whiters further in the US. And to demand unity or a cloying and mutual deference for the goal of re-establishing a civil theology is a demand to give up truth or one’s search for it and to reduce the Christian faith to market niches.
And you’re running from the more serious character defect that you display on this site: intellectual dishonesty. Or wrangling, if you prefer.
And until you drop the smug self-styling as referee you won’t be able to add anything to the conversation. Your contributions as it relates to deeply thought or felt theological issues will remain as it is, talk of “the greatest story every told,” “angels and S@#T” or whatever holy theme you combined with it. Plus the easy-peasey talk of how Jesus judges.
I don’t do theology. Or at least that’s what Uncle Screwtape says I said, although I didn’t. But that’s how Dear Uncle rolls.
As for lecturing me about my comportment, I let slip a mustard seed in between Darryl’s meadow muffins as often as possible and get out of the way before another one drops. Sincerity is not rewarded here–look at the superciliousness Sister Susan receives. The response is the same regardless of the approach.
But I appreciate your concern if it’s sincere–or if it’s not, what they call “concern trolling.”
As for Geneva, I understand. RC Sproul refused to sign the Manhattan Declaration along with the Catholics for just the reasons you give. And it’s even worse with
http://www.frame-poithress.org/machens-warrior-children/
who barely get along with anybody. Still, warring with the neo-Cals hardly takes much guts or gusto, since our liberal society hates that sort of Christianity-in-action anyway.
As for the future of Calvinism, or even the Reformation, I think you may have given away the prophetic game with “reduc[ing] the Christian faith to market niches,” for that is a possibility, and since the Orthodox Presbyterian Church numbers only 30,000-odd elected souls, is already rather a reality.
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………………… Your religion just went gay ” I’m sure the PCUSA figured if it was good enough for RC clergy and religious, who were they(PCUSA) to differ. It was their prot liberalism first, after all.
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@Susan
How are you using the word “can’t” here? What did you mean by it?
I’m not sure about that. There are trinities in all sorts of religions predating Christianity. For example in Hinduism you have the Trimurti consisting of 3 distinct persons Brahma (creation/birth), Vishnu (sustainer/life), Shiva (destroyer/death). But they are also one person Brahma is both one of them and all of them, Vishnu is both one of them and all of them…. I think you would agree that trinity didn’t come from the witness of the church yet it still exists. And that gets even broader if you allow for divine dualities (2 rather than 3) which are even more common, or allow for other numbers like 4, 5, 7, 12…
I’m saying Bishops in the sense you mean them were a later invention. If you read early Paul he quite explicitly declares the apostles (a class of itinerant preachers in his usage) get their authority from the message. Obedience to a (proto-)Christianity at this point means obedience to the message. When Christianity is cultic it is going to have acted like a cult and think like a cult.
Some sects of Christianity stabilize in a way that allows them to pull in family members, children, grandchildren… Suddenly you have people that are drawn to the rites, the rituals the community. That is Christianity becomes a sect. In sects it is obedience to the community to the expectations of the community (behaviors) and there is leadership. This is a big shift that you can see even the New Testament itself.
After that Christianity becomes a series of institutions. This is where you see the 2nd century church fathers fighting that their institution (i.e. their community) is the only legitimate one. The idea that Christianity is Catholic. Catholic Christianity preaches a universal single sect one god, one bishop, one doctrine.
And then from there you have one more change with institutional power as Christianity becomes a not just a religion but the dominant religion making exclusive enforceable claims. Late 3rd century on up the 1960s.
Politics. There were conflicts and differences, we have records of them. Those differences were worked those differences out through a series of debates usually ending in compromises. As the Catholic institution got state power of enforcement the politics became centralized where powerful factions fought behind closed doors and not in public. Again we have records of this. The creeds are explicitly and openly the creation of a political process. We still have fairly good records of which factions were arguing for which positions and how they were resolved.
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@ Zrim: If you want to be Prooofessional about it, you would seek out a supplier in your neck of the woods, then do your homework to make sure you don’t run afoul of USDA regulations. These folk seem to think that $90/dozen Monarchs is reasonable for memorial services, with bulk discounts. They also do weddings. Nuff said about that.
Now the Butterfly House philosophy is, “If you plant it, they will come.” So we get seed packets of Asclepius tuberosa for $2.50, start the seeds in March, set them out in May, and in two years, we get caterpillars for free.
Clearly, I need to quit teaching and sell these critters.
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Susan – The RCC doesn’t damn anyone to hell. If the bad boys will by God’s grace become sorrowful and stop their evil behavior than they can be forgiven. A contrite heart is a must for a good confession, because God judges the heart. If a person in the mafia goes to a parish where he is unknown and takes comunion there would be no way to barr him from receiving the blessed sacrament. So unless you know who is in the mafia and know their constant coming and going, you won’t be able to know if they are showing up for Mass, and you won’t know who has or hasn’t given up crime and returned to the Church. You see, since a person is truly receiving Jesus in the blessed sacrament, if he does so without first receiving sacrament of reconcilation which requires true repentence for the absolvement, he condemns himself.
Erik – Why do you people tempt me?
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Jeff,
I probably do owe some people some money.
Actually, now I only respond to Tom in love, so the deal’s off.
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What’s with all these freaking comments of late? Is it not summer where you people live?
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CD-Host,
I’m not sure about that. There are trinities in all sorts of religions predating Christianity. For example in Hinduism you have the Trimurti consisting of 3 distinct persons Brahma (creation/birth), Vishnu (sustainer/life), Shiva (destroyer/death). But they are also one person Brahma is both one of them and all of them, Vishnu is both one of them and all of them…. I think you would agree that trinity didn’t come from the witness of the church yet it still exists. And that gets even broader if you allow for divine dualities (2 rather than 3) which are even more common, or allow for other numbers like 4, 5, 7, 12…”
Ok, I understad this, and believe me for a time I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up. I was moving towards agnosticism. No. I was agnostic for a short time. I had had a conversion experience when I was 18, but I was willing to admit that most of humanity claims experientially to make contact with a diety, and if I couldn’t know the noumenal and Christianity was merely series of propositions in the bible to be understood, and if apparetly there was no organization on the planet that could agree about what the bible said, then the coversion in my youth and my subsequent Christian expressio from 18 thereon, was my conceptualization of God bequeathed to me growing up in the United States. If I had bee raised in India I would have had another conception of God and how I was to worship.
But, what was I supposed to do with the historical Jesus? That was my next question.
How do you answer this?
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Erik Charter
Posted June 23, 2014 at 9:23 pm | Permalink
Jeff,
I probably do owe some people some money.
Actually, now I only respond to Tom in love, so the deal’s off.
I’m feeling it, Erik, from half a continent away, brother. I missed me too. 😉
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sean
Posted June 23, 2014 at 6:12 pm | Permalink
………………… Your religion just went gay ” I’m sure the PCUSA figured if it was good enough for RC clergy and religious, who were they(PCUSA) to differ. It was their prot liberalism first, after all.
Ah, that famously constipated Calvinist wit. Not sure it was a good trade for a real Irish sense of humor, though, Seaneen.
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The idea of The Last Protestant rather stuck with me. [I called JG Machen that, above.]
Lutheran James Nuechterlein went somewhere in the same direction, although not specifically at Machen.’
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1993/03/001-the-last-protestant
Still, although it might have seemed to the Reformers that “Protestantism” was the future of Christianity, time has demurred: Protestantism shrinks, splits, is subsumed by–does not transcend–its surrounding culture and politics.
This perhaps has never been as clear as it is lately, as the Protestant “mainline” folds. Protestantism built the modern West, and now it has been consumed by it.
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Tom,
I know you’re a skeptic of two kingdoms theology. Read Meredith Kline’s minority report to the 1964 General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church on the topic of “medical missions” when you have time. It is a primer for understanding at least some of what 2k is about. I think it’s fascinating.
http://literatecomments.com/2014/06/23/meredith-klines-brilliant-1964-minority-report-on-medical-missions-in-the-orthodox-presbyterian-church/
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One Kline zinger:
“A subsidiary question that is involved and requires serious study is whether there is biblical warrant for the church as church to possess proprietorship of any kind of cultural establishment or, for that matter, of any real estate whatsoever.”
Not owning real estate might do away with things like Driscoll’s Mars Hill not making new pastors sign non-compete agreements. Less financial pressure to protect the brand.
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Too many “nots” there. Mars Hill did reportedly make pastors sign non-compete agreements.
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Tom,
Protestant Pentecostalism eclipsing Catholicism in Latin America doesn’t fit your script.
http://literatecomments.com/2014/02/01/what-does-church-growth-tell-us/
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The biggest reason for the church to own real estate in the U.S. is property taxes. If the church owns the real estate, no taxes. If a landlord owns the real estate and leases it to a church, commercial property taxes. On a $1,000,000 building in our state that’s probably at least $30,000 per year.
But this may just be an example of the pragmatism that Kline argues against.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 23, 2014 at 10:36 pm | Permalink
Tom,
I know you’re a skeptic of two kingdoms theology. Read Meredith Kline’s minority report to the 1964 General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church on the topic of “medical missions” when you have time. It is a primer for understanding at least some of what 2k is about. I think it’s fascinating.
http://literatecomments.com/2014/06/23/meredith-klines-brilliant-1964-minority-report-on-medical-missions-in-the-orthodox-presbyterian-church/
Erik, what makes you think I don’t understand [Radical!?] Two Kingdoms theology? I’ve been reading Darryl G. Hart for quite some years now. I found it, and him interesting from the first, which is why I followed Darryl [and now his Warrior Children] rather than concern myself with the rotting corpse of “mainline” Protestantism.
Which continues to rot, as you see.
My questions/objections to [r]2k are based purely on its own assertions and merits. And lack of them: The liberals, the Beatitudists, reduce Mighty Jehovah to Barney the Christosaur. In the end, r2K is visibly no better.
Couple that with your theology of “election,” and there’s little point to any of this human coil. At least Nietzsche has some decent jokes.
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Ah, but CD-Host there was a message!Praise God there was a message!
Have you disregarded the content of the message?
“Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. “And so, because he was a prophet and knew that GOD HAD SWORN TO HIM WITH AN OATH TO SEAT one OF HIS DESCENDANTS ON HIS THRONE, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that HE WAS NEITHER ABANDONED TO HADES, NOR DID His flesh SUFFER DECAY. “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.
“For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says:
‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD,
“SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND,
UNTIL I MAKE YOUR ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR YOUR FEET.”’
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”
And further, there was a cult right away. Have you ever hear of the Liturgy of St. James?
Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew told Peter that he would build a “church”. A ragtag group of itinerant preachers? I don’t see how when part of the message was the institution of the Eucharist which entailed altars, priests,sacrifice, liturgy, symbols.
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Tom,
I’ve read David Van Drunen, and since I thought that Two-Kingdom theory was a recapitulation of St. Augustine’s City of God/ City of Man, I followed it for some time……until I saw that my denomination didn’t have an official stance about moral issues. Then I started leaning towards a Kuperian view. About the same time I was reading Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk and T.S. Eliot.
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My “n” key isn’t working! shoot! lol!
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victor delta, tango, and what happened to your religion (if mine went gay)? What happened to your American creation?
Where will you stand on that great day?
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vd, t, “meadow muffins”? Are you 75?
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vd, t, “Meadow muffin” and you disparage Calvinist wit?
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vd, t, and who consumed you? Do you go to church? Do you obey the bishop? Do you follow Jesus? And you blame Protestantism?
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ec, if the church owns the state (and the bank) — Vatican City and Vatican Bank — no taxes on billions of assets.
Poor church for the poor my arse!
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vd, t, here’s one example of your not understanding 2k. PCUSA is my religion.
Are you for real?
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Susan, “I saw that my denomination didn’t have an official stance about moral issues. Then I started leaning towards the Kuyperian view.”
Brilliant!
Have you heard of the Ten Commandments? Have you read the Shorter Catechism or Heidelberg on the Ten Commandments? (Be careful, we have four on the first table.)
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@Susan
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. Do you mean something like “Lord, Liar, Lunatic”? Or do you mean how you are supposed to understand Jesus teachings or …? Jesus is a religious symbol that began to be seen as an arch-angel type figure and then accreted roles of various other angels like the Son of Man angel, the heavenly Melchizedek, the suffering messiah… Alongside this process a midrash develops of messianic fulfillment. Encratite Christianity develops the theology of dual fulfillment (i.e. the apostles on earth mirror the heavenly acts of Jesus) so Jesus becomes in a meaningful sense quasi-historical. With Catholic Christianity Jesus accretes those apostolic earthly myths too and you end up with a full blown quasi-historical myth. That myth starts to believed as actual history between the mid 2nd and mid 3rd centuries and that belief becomes a requirement for Christianity as seen by the baptismal rites.
If you want to use Jesus as an analogy to the myth of the episcopate I’d say the episcopate has a less complex origin and went through fewer stages, but yes it was similar. Jesus and the episcopate are both historical mythos and products of Catholic theology. Neither one predates Catholicism. Just as we have a pretty timeline of how the episcopate developed we have an even better timeline of how the Jesus figure developed in Christian mythology.
Certainly the Trad-Catholic charge that Conservative Presbyterians are applying a higher bar to the episcopate than they are to other aspects of Christian theology is a fair charge. I recommend the opposite cure but…
You understand you are making a theological claim here. The bible says it therefore it must be true is what is underlying your position. I’m talking about what the historical record shows. There are historical claims and theological claims, they aren’t the same thing.
My the time of the authoring of the Gospel of Matthew the churches existed. The apostles were dead and themselves legends. The Gospel of Matthew’s theology on the role of the apostles is already quite Catholic. It has to be. The apostles are dead, the world didn’t end and we are dealing with the children or grandchildren of the people who were originally drawn to Christianity. Matthew is about institutionalization. You can see how the theology is developing as you go from Mark to Matthew. I’m not sure how you see Matthew as refuting the evolution of Christianity, it is a product of the evolution.
Now this argument is better. The Eucharist is unquestionably very early. The problem is factually you are wrong. The Eucharist originally doesn’t involve alters, priests and a complex rite. We have good references to a symbolic sacrifice and eating the god rites that go back to the beginnings of recorded history. We know that from the earliest days of Christian history we have debates on how to properly conduct the Eucharist, there isn’t a fixed rite or even a fixed meaning. In point of fact if you look at Gnostic then Encratite then Catholic writings on the Eucharist you can see a really good specific on how the episcopate developed. The Eucharist is an excellent example but it is an example that works to prove the opposite of what you want it to prove. The earliest reference could not possibly be coming from something like the 3rd century Catholic rituals.
We’ll start with Ignatius who is talking about a Bishop because I know you consider him Catholic. You have a problem. He uses a term of comparison (hos). The bishop on earth is doing something like the sacrifice. His role is to act in place of, a material shadow of the act of sacrificial act of God that occurs in the heavens. Which means that for Ignatius the bishop is not performing a sacrifice. More importantly the bishop not the eucharist itself is the proxy for God. Ignatius’ theology of the Eucharist is totally different than yours. Which means the understandings were still evolving during and after his life. And that can’t possibly be happening if there is a fully formed Catholic church at the time that understands what the Eucharist means.
Paul in 1Cor11 is instructed the general membership. Why would he be doing that if the Eucharist in 1Cor is fully Catholic in the sense you mean? Similarly the Didache is about the general membership. Pliny letter to Trajan is even more damning as we see a Eucharistic celebration happening regularly among a bunch of slaves, there is no priest at all.
I’m happy to work this example. Try and put together a timeline that fits all (or at least most) of the evidence about the origin of the Eucharist and that is consistent with Catholic claims. It can’t be done. Don’t believe anything I’ve written above but give it a shot for yourself. But keep asking “why” at every step. Why does the Gospel of Phillip associate the spirit in the wine with the Holy Spirit and not with Jesus? Why is associated with sex and not the crucifixion? How could Gospel of Phillip have built that association. As you go even further back and the wine isn’t symbolic blood but rather menstrual blood that’s cooked into the bread read those rites. Could those rites possibly have originated from a crucifixion or is Gospel of Phillip’s original sexual associations the original associations? Etc…
Use your own example. Open your eyes. Read what the writers actually say. Don’t assume they believe what you believe. Once you break the habit of assuming that Christianity was originally Catholic on any issue, it will quickly become impossible to see the blur on any issue. Among many other things you’ll see the doctrine of authority developing. The Eucharist is a terrific example. Work it.
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CD,
Have you read Larry Hurtado or Richard Bauckham? I’ll admit that I’m a Christian, but it seems to me that these men have pretty soundly refuted the sorts of things you are arguing regarding the role of Jesus in earliest Christianity. I’d be interested to hear your take if you have read these men.
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@Brandon
If by Larry Hurtado you mean his “How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?” he’s refuting the liberal Christian contention that Jesus was an earthly preacher who became deified. I’m not arguing that’s what happened. I’d agree with Hurtado that best earliest reference we have to Jesus have him being supernatural. The further back you go the less human the Jesus character becomes. So I mostly agree with Hurtado.
____
Bauckham I am disagreeing with. And frankly I think his argument is stupid. The anti-eyewitnesses side has always said there is a strong tradition of associating the gospels with 4 eyewitnesses. But
i) The internal structure is inconsistent with eyewitnesses writing
ii) There is obvious borrowing between these books
iii) There are obvious political responses
iv) The books themselves are too thematic for eyewitness writings.
v) The events described are unlikely
vi) There exist versions of these books which are earlier and more primitive
vii) Between manuscripts we see a non random flow of theological change (orthodox corruption of scripture)
etc..
Bauckham does a good job of presenting the case that there is a tradition of ascribing the 4 gospels to apostles. But that was never the point in question! He’s just not responding to the counter argument at all. Take borrowing because that’s the most obvious one:
94% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew much of it word for word. He has to address that and make a pretty strong case for independent. 1/4 of both Luke and Matthew is shared (the Q material). This material is more primitive and has more in common with sayings gospels we have from other religious teachers. Why would that be true if Luke and Matthew weren’t borrowing from one another and working from a sayings gospel?
Etc… He’s not addressing the evidence or the counter case at all.
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CD,
I wasn’t referring to Bauckham’s work on Jesus and the Eye Witnesses, but rather his work on early Christology and Jewish monotheism.
But is your agreement with Hurtado predicated on the fact that Jesus is a mythic figure and not a historical one? If that’s what you’re arguing that hypothesis has been severely undermined by people ranging from Daniel Wallace to Larry Hurtado and even Bart Ehrman.
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@Brandon
I’ll start with Ehrman’s book was bloody terrible. He outright misquoted the people he was addressing and missed their point. Shockingly bad scholarship all around from a guy I have a lot of respect for.
Wallace (for example Dethroning Jesus) is much better. His discussion of Gospel of Judas is mostly accurate. Where he fails is a huge assumption that anti-Yahweh theology (i.e. gnosticism) couldn’t emerge among Jews. Which we know is false because we have Jewish Gnosticisms which can often be quite hostile to the creator and go back as far as 100 BCE being both early and among Jews. So he’s just easily provably wrong on that crucial point in his argument.
As for Hurtado I’m not sure which you mean. If anything I’d say his difficulty in separating use of Christian abbreviations / expressions from non-Christian expressions in early Jewish religious literature supports my point
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heh? 🙂 Well, I must have been in one of those “You can’t legislate morality” groupthinks, because I definitely did read the catechism(s) and the Decalogue, but nothing was happening in my circle. As a homeschooling mom, I read good Christian classics to my children when they were young: The Pilgrim’s Progress,Uncle Eric books on economics and government, loads of Douglas Bond books, Peter Marshall… And I caught the American Christian Ethos…( Gen Washington’s being shot 17x’s without being hit during the French and Indian War was particularly intriguing and convincing). [Your classroom is probably largely made-up of homeschooled students taught the Principle Approach; that is, the Bible and American Christian heritage]
But I left-off this American Vision methodology for the classical Trivium. Christian Humanism made much more sense. It allowed that( Roman) pagan virtues, as long as they were truly virtuous, were in fact Christian virtues. Love of fatherland was a good….. In my old Reformed denominations it wasn’t just patriotism that was compartmentalized, it was justice too. I don’t know if I’m explaining it well enough but in my Reformed denomination it was our duty by God’s command to come to worship in order to hear the Word preached and we could “do” this act well enough, but once we got there since none of us could possibly love God with our hearts, souls and minds, true worship was futile. To try to love God more was playing with fire because we can’t and because we just daily increase our guilt. We weren’t spurred on to good works, or to increase our spiritual life at all.
Have you ever read The Abolition of Man? When you are taught that there is no way to love the good and hate the evil then you will become what Lewis called, ‘men without chests’. My old Covenanter Heritage died under the noetic effects of sin.
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Tom,
Your fundamental error remains thinking that Biblical preaching, sacraments, prayer, and the like have little value.
There will come a day when your physical body and the material things of this world that you value will pass away, including the people who are dear to you. What then?
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Susan, what do you mean “nothing was happening in my circle”? Is this in connection to “taking moral stands”? Christ URC practiced church discipline, I’m sure. How is that nothing in connection to taking moral stands?
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Tom,
The only beef you should really have with the PCUSA is that they are concerned about societal transformation and political activism from the left and not from the right.
This is the problem with the culture war — it’s mostly a fight over who is going to control the spoils in this world. No one on either side is that concerned about the life to come.
We’ll all spend a lot more time dead than alive, though. What we see is all temporary in the form we see it.
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Tom,
You don’t like the doctrine of election, but have you ever read through the Bible for yourself and tried to determine whether or not it is supported by the text?
At some point before you die you should read through Scripture and try to make up your mind for yourself on what it teaches. In the end, you are only responsible for you when you stand before God in judgment.
You seem to throw up your hands at the fact that a lot of groups believe a lot of different things and then retreat back to a nominal form of Catholicism, mostly based on a parent’s belief, some Catholic schooling, the fact that it’s old, the fact that it’s big, and the fact that it makes bold claims for itself. If you were ultimately satisfied with Catholicism, however, I think you would be a practicing Catholic.
In short, I think you’re still searching, which is not a bad thing.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 24, 2014 at 2:29 pm | Permalink
Tom,
The only beef you should really have with the PCUSA is that they are concerned about societal transformation and political activism from the left and not from the right.
Not true. I admire “social gospel” types if they’re not being generous with other people’s money. Further, I have quite a communitarian streak in me.
Erik Charter
Posted June 24, 2014 at 2:54 pm | Permalink
Tom,
You don’t like the doctrine of election, but have you ever read through the Bible for yourself and tried to determine whether or not it is supported by the text?
You guys are big on “by their fruits.” You warrior children are quite prickly, and not very evangelical per the Great Commission.
Indeed, with election, the Great Commission is largely unnecessary. Just keep your doors open and I suppose the Elect will stumble in, inshallah.
As for Catholicism, this still makes me laugh
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/how-john-calvin-made-me-a-catholic/
and your side got demolished in the comments in both substance and style.
As for most of my remarks, they’re either directed at misunderstandings/misrepresentations of Catholic theology [I look them up–somebody here says something that sounds bogus, and it usually turns out to be bogus]; or about how Protestantism appears to be cratering, exc for the fundies, pentecostals and neo-Cals, strangely enough [or not] the only ones y’all seem to punk besides the Catholics.
I do indeed wonder, whither [wither?] the Reformation in 100 years, yes I do. All that will be left is a Morally Therapeutic Beatitudism and The Scandalous Evangelical Mind.
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Susan
Posted June 24, 2014 at 12:58 am | Permalink
Tom,
I’ve read David Van Drunen, and since I thought that Two-Kingdom theory was a recapitulation of St. Augustine’s City of God/ City of Man, I followed it for some time……until I saw that my denomination didn’t have an official stance about moral issues. Then I started leaning towards a Kuperian view. About the same time I was reading Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk and T.S. Eliot.
Yes, these “radical” 2 kingdoms types decline to engage the idea that as citizens in a democratic republic, WE are Caesar.
Their answer is to become Pilate.
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CD-Host
You have me thinking. I don’t necessarily agree with you that historical claims and theological claims are different. I do think you’d classify things that way, but when I read the scriptures, I see that they are a linear record of historical claims.
Next, The Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew by the disciple of Jesus.
Polycarp who, according to history, was a student of John wrote a letter to the Philippians where he borrows from much of the NT books. The message is central to this group of people, and since Polycarp knew John and was willing to die for the gospel message, it’s hard not to exclude it from my data. These things along with good reason to believe in God; the Jewish hope for the Messiah( and not getting exactly what they wanted), makes the Christianity’s claims less incredible.
You will say that I am reading into it what I want to see, but I could turn that back on you.
“For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist; 1 John 4:3 and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan”
Are you claiming that Christianity has no historical man called Jesus who lived, spoke, taught righteousness, suffered, was crucified, and died? But towards him you will attach a cult of fetishes.
Have you ever read Rene Girard?
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CD-Host
I was given this excerpt from the writings of Bl. John Henry Newman and it helped innoculate me against some of your accusations concering the historicity of Catholic doctrines. I think I might have shared it with you before though.
“Now, the phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:—that great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth, is in its rudiments or in its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it,—”These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:” we, on the contrary, prefer to say, “these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.” That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;” claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.
“How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman, have thought that its existence told against Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sibyl was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner’s fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her Master’s image.
“The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious. The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, “at sundry times and in divers manners,” various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to appear, like the human frame, “fearfully and wonderfully made;” but they think it some one tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fulness, without gradual enlargement before Christ’s coming or elucidation afterwards. They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive that the Church, like Aaron’s rod, devours the serpents of the magicians. They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fulness.”
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Tom – You guys are big on “by their fruits.” You warrior children are quite prickly, and not very evangelical per the Great Commission.
Indeed, with election, the Great Commission is largely unnecessary. Just keep your doors open and I suppose the Elect will stumble in, inshallah.
Erik – I think you mean evangelistic (which is close to evangelical). Evangelical is a bit of a loaded term these days. Hard to know exactly what it means.
If the Great Commission consists of preaching the gospel to all nations and making disciples, that is what Presbyterian & Reformed Churches are all about. There are P&R missionaries and church planters all over the U.S. and in many parts of the world.
God uses preaching to make disciples, so it is a pleasure to be able to take part in that by supporting church planting & missionary efforts.
What P&R churches take pains to do (more so than most churches) is to ensure that men are prepared and qualified for the work when they do go out. This is one reason P&R churches did not spread as quickly as other churches on the American frontier — concern that ministers be learned.
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Tom,
The main mission of a Christian church is to preach the gospel. The gospel convicts men of their sin and points to the remedy — Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection. By faith in the gospel people are able to enter into a Christian church. At that point the secondary mission of a Christian church comes into play — caring for disciples spiritually and physically. Once these two missions are sustainable, then the Church also attempts to minister to the needs of those outside the church, but this comes after the first two priorities. Unfortunately, In this life time and money are finite.
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Tom,
As far as people being prickly goes, people have different levels of maturity and tolerance toward someone like you who is constantly trying to provoke a strong response.
You also have to take into account the fact that everyone has stresses and different life circumstances that they are dealing with. Everyone doesn’t put their best foot forward every day.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 24, 2014 at 11:32 pm | Permalink
Tom,
As far as people being prickly goes, people have different levels of maturity and tolerance toward someone like you who is constantly trying to provoke a strong response.
You also have to take into account the fact that everyone has stresses and different life circumstances that they are dealing with. Everyone doesn’t put their best foot forward every day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETC82KEplac
Actually, Erik, I’m challenging y’all to stop being Pharisees and/or Pilates. Machen was neither. I seriously dig the dude; his warrior children not so much. No Machen, no TVD around here.
You’re the Reformation’s last hope. Man up.
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Erik,
You said:”The main mission of a Christian church is to preach the gospel. The gospel convicts men of their sin and points to the remedy — Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection.”
I agree with you, but have you ever thought about who, or what expression of Christianity is bringing the gospel in the first place? If someone hears just what you have articulated above there are several camps that this could land them into. So this pretty much begs the question, “what is the church?”
” By faith in the gospel people are able to enter into a Christian church”
They have believed the true gospel but if say, it was a Mormon who brought them the simple message then they could be indefinately stuck in a cult.
“At that point the secondary mission of a Christian church comes into play — caring for disciples spiritually and physically.”
Again, I agree with you “if” the feet that carried the gospel were representative of the true church.
“Once these two missions are sustainable, then the Church also attempts to minister to the needs of those outside the church, but this comes after the first two priorities. Unfortunately, In this life time and money are finite”
This is correct. Locating “the church” is priority though because orthodoxy is huge.
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victor delta, tango, finally we agree. My posts about Roman Catholicism are to correct misunderstanding/misrepresentations of the church by Jason and the Callers. I even engage in history. You? Not so much.
Another difference: I go to church.
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@Susan
OK well even your church doesn’t believe that. That’s even a bit more than what Papais himself said. But let’s assume that’s true. Then you would have to explain:
1) how did it happen that huge chunks of it are word for word quotes from a Greek book? (Mark)
2) how did it happen that huge chunks of it are word for word reproduced in Luke (Q material)?
3) Why does the book contain 0 translations of Hebrew literary structures?
4) When Matthew quotes the bible he almost always agrees with the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Text when they vary. And mind you those disagreements are embedded in the text itself in key story lines so you couldn’t have a situation where the Greek translator just changed the bible quote to match the Septuagint.
Not according to history. According to Irenaeus. You are begging the question with that one by assuming that the Jesus -> John -> Polycarp -> Irenaeus (apostolic succession) is in place as part of your argument for apostolic succession. The fact you have is that
a) Irenaeus claimed to be a disciple of Polycarp in his writings
b) Irenaeus claimed that Polycarp was taught by John whom was instructed directly by Jesus
c) There is some weak supporting secondary evidence for (a).
Or he wrote a letter to the Phippioans from which NT authors borrowed. You don’t know the order. So it doesn’t prove what you are trying to prove.
I’m not asking you to exclude Polycarp from your data. Irenaeus is an incredibly rich source of data about the development of ancient Christianity. I’m not asking you to exclude him, far from it. I’m trying to get you to treat 2nd century political propaganda the same way you treat statements by modern politicians and start asking questions why they are saying what they are saying and not taking obviously false things (like Matthew was constructed in Hebrew) at face value.
OK let’s look at that one. First off your translation is terrible, the author of 1John doesn’t say “For whosover” but rather something like “Every spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God”
Now that’s very interesting. So we have this late 1st century epistle and the author (I’ll call him “John”) is advising that the test whether a Christian apostle was speaking the truth related to the spirit which God had sent him. This John seems completely unaware that’s there is a hierarchical church in place under its 4 or 5th pope at this point which is handing down dogmatic statements designed to clearly help believers determine what is or is not in a fixed deposit of faith. John is unaware that there is a written gospel containing the history of Jesus’ life that is well accepted by the community. How could John be so ignorant? 1John shows that for him one knows about Jesus through direct revelation from spirits. You have a theological debate about whether the central religious figure had ever come in the flesh and the people conducting the debate are on coequal footing having to rely on direct revelations there is no hierarchical church with a well accepted body of literature. This is totally, totally contradicting the version of history you would have us believe.
Worse for you, John here was told by his spirit that Jesus had come in the flesh and some in the community were disagreeing. Why would he need a spirit to tell him Jesus had come in the flesh if he had been an earthly apostle for years? What’s worse for you is that even the doctrine John is promoting is far far short of a whole doctrine of a Jesus of Nazareth who had a full on incarnation and earthly life. This is precisely what you would expect to see, an early intermediate form of the doctrine of the incarnation. Jesus has in some sense come in the flesh but it is still vague. We are a long long way off from a legend of him sitting down with John to bake some fish or directly via. human voice teach him various parables. I’m not sure how 1John is supposed to support rather than be another piece of evidence refuting your point.
1John 2 BTW is even worse for you. Because there you have a group of Christians who don’t believe that the Jesus is the Son and call John’s faction that does “liars”. Which means they believe in a Jesus who is a prominent angel and nothing more. Incidentally that’s normative Hellenistic Judaism. Philo himself flirted with the idea that the Angel of the Lord should be identified with the first high priest named Joshua (Jesus in Greek) based on Zachariah 6:12, “I have also heard of one of the companions of Moses having uttered such a speech as this: “Behold, a man whose name is the East!”{18}{#zec 6:12.} A very novel appellation indeed, if you consider it as spoken of a man who is compounded of body and soul; but if you look upon it as applied to that incorporeal being who in no respect differs from the divine image, you will then agree that the name of the east has been given to him with great felicity. (63) For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn; and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his father, has formed such and such species, looking to his archetypal patterns.”
i.e. so what you have in the very passage you picked is:
The enemy faction: consider themselves Christian because their religion has a high degree of focus on Jesus. This Jesus They are quite possibly not even yet heretical Hellenistic Jews though they likely are close to the line.
John’s faction: some form of docetic Christians who believe in a heavenly Jesus that is revealed through spirits and angels and is capable of earthly appearances. Something like the theology one sees in Revelation.
But getting back to the point: do either of those factions sound Catholic to you? I don’t know how it could be any clearer that the Catholic church doesn’t yet exists. Read what the authors actually write.
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@Susan
The John Henry Newman quote doesn’t seem to even address any of my points I’m making with you. The argument he’s having is with people who are opposed to things in Christianity with “heathen” origin. He’s arguing that it is perfectly OK because the church chooses truth from the world and God spread truth to the world…. So who invented what when doesn’t matter.
But it does matter a great deal if someone were to argue that doctrine X originated with Christianity when it originated earlier with another religion and migrated to Christianity. What Newman’s quote really is attacking though is Jason Stellman and Michael Liccione’s theology of an original fixed final deposit of faith. Because if at the end of Jesus’ incarnation there wasn’t an original fixed deposit of faith then the entire argument against the continuation of prophetic system (what the bible itself does outline as the system for resolving substantial theological disputes) is shot. You can have Newman’s cavalier attitude towards revelation. You can have, “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” a fixed final deposit. But you can’t have both. Either fixed or final has to go.
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Susan,
Ironically, if CD-Host was trying to argue you into being a teetotaller, the guys here would probably leap into the fray! But CD-H shrewdly presents his arguments as being anti-Catholic (rather than anti-Christian), so that must be OK, because Catholicism of course is the greatest enemy (the world, the flesh and the devil are sorted presumably…)
Darryl, one of the reasons I read your blog is your open policy towards commenters, which makes things interesting – thank you for your digital hospitality in that regard. (And no, I’m not a teetotaller myself, but then I’m cradle-Reformed…)
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Tom,
How would you say that “we” (I assume you mean the Old Life regulars) are being Pharisees? What Biblical passages on the Pharisees do you have in mind?
Same question for Pilate.
How do you think we are different than Machen?
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Susan,
The Mormon gospel is false because of the extrabiblical content that it contains. I believe the Roman Catholic gospel is false for the same reason.
Any time that men tell you that you must look to Jesus PLUS this or that, the gospel has been corrupted.
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Token Woman – Ironically, if CD-Host was trying to argue you into being a teetotaller, the guys here would probably leap into the fray!
Erik – Not many of the regulars here are teetotalers.
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Token,
CD is trying to argue Susan towards atheism since he is an atheist. My contention is that atheism is the logical next step for the Caller variety of Roman Catholic, due to the high degree of QIRC that their belief system involves. The Mormons caused Bryan Cross to abandon Presbyterianism. Who’s to say an argument won’t come along to cause him to abandon Catholicism. Then what?
I continue to scratch my head, however, over atheists and agnostics who want to spend their time raining on the religious parades of theists. If I’m an atheist or agnostic I wouldn’t bother. If we’re just matter in motion no one belief system is really any better than the next, so just live and let live. We’re all worm food soon.
It’s humorous to me how the former Christian who has become an atheist always seems to follow a similar script: They become sexually liberated (at least in theory), they become Democrats, they usually embrace homosexuality and abortion, they become amateur scientists with a special interest in evolution, and they take it upon themselves to argue with Christians whenever possible (not usually Muslims, though). This would not be my chosen path if I abandoned Christianity.
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Token Woman,
Indeed, I’ve felt the lack of support. I wondered if anyone else was seeing that CD is attacking Christianity ’cause I wasn’t even arguing for the papacy or apostolic succession. So thanks for pointing this out to the fellers!
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Sorry I didn’t follow that script much at all (and since you wrote it in reference to me…)
a) I was still a Republican for years. I like Gingrich and had no problem with the Republican party of the 1990s. I didn’t like George Bush and I guess I was an independent during his presidency though in 2004 I did vote for him. I only became a Democrat soon after the 2008 Democratic convention.
b) I was happily married when I became an atheists and remained so. Sexually liberated had much more to do with midlife crisis than atheism.
c) I was a professional scientist though mostly in training as a Christian. Nothing changed in my gradual drift away. No particular interest in evolution ever.
So no..
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Token woman, you know, Protestantism and unbelief go hand in hand, as Roman Catholicism goes with a big scoop of gullibility.
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@Token Women
Reformed Christianity doesn’t tend to make the strong neutral historical claims of Catholicism. Reformed Christianity doesn’t even believe there is such a thing as an accurate secular history. So there is no intellectual challenge that if I look at history secularly I arrive at secular conclusions. That’s evidence for Van Til’s idea that presuppositions are what drive the intellect.
Moreover Reformed Christianity also doesn’t make the same strong textual claims. For a Reformed Christian the idea that I as the reprobate am able to study scripture deeply and find all sorts of “heresies” preached by the authors of the very text of scripture is just confirmation of total depravity. It show how those predestined for hell, are unable to come to God on their own even if they choose to study scripture. I work as a good example of how the reprobate however much they study scripture are drawn by their sinful nature to just pull further away from God. Heart of stone, heart of flesh… How do the arguments present a theological problem for the Reformed?
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CD-Host
After I respond here, I don’t want to spend time long amounts of time on this because it’s keeping me away from other important things If we can narrow our discussion then I could chime in giving short responses.
Now, I took one class in the bible as literature so I’m very far from being any kind of scholar. I admit that that class was partially responsible for my becoming Catholic though, the reasons for which I can try to explain in my responses.
Well, let’s start with one: My class began with the question of whether or not Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. And during this class I discovered that I had been willing to believe the miracles that the scriptures themselves spoke about( accounts contained in the bible) but I was stumbled by the miraculous encounter that Moses must have had as the word was conveyed to him on Mt. Sinai. Moses hadn’t been around to see the universe’s beginning, Adam and Eve’s creation, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob… And according to some rabbinic sources God told Moses about his own death which he wrote Deut. 34 with his tears.
“OK well even your church doesn’t believe that.”
I got that info from New Advent:
“Let us now recall the testimony of the other ecclesiastical writers on the Gospel of St. Matthew. St. Irenæus (Adv. Haer., III, i, 2) affirms that Matthew published among the Hebrews a Gospel which he wrote in their own language. Eusebius (Church History V.10.3) says that, in India, Pantænus found the Gospel according to St. Matthew written in the Hebrew language, the Apostle Bartholomew having left it there. Again, in Church History VI.25.3-4, Eusebius tells us that Origen, in his first book on the Gospel of St. Matthew, states that he has learned from tradition that the First Gospel was written by Matthew, who, having composed it in Hebrew, published it for the converts from Judaism. According to Eusebius (Church History III.24.6), Matthew preached first to the Hebrews and, when obliged to go to other countries, gave them his Gospel written in his native tongue. St. Jerome has repeatedly declared that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew (“Ad Damasum”, xx; “Ad Hedib.”, iv), but says that it is not known with certainty who translated it into Greek. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, etc., and all the commentators of the Middle Ages repeat that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. Erasmus was the first to express doubts on this subject: “It does not seem probable to me that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, since no one testifies that he has seen any trace of such a volume.” This is not accurate, as St. Jerome uses Matthew’s Hebrew text several times to solve difficulties of interpretation, which proves that he had it at hand. Pantænus also had it, as, according to St. Jerome (“De Viris Ill.”, xxxvi), he brought it back to Alexandria. However, the testimony of Pantænus is only second-hand, and that of Jerome remains rather ambiguous, since in neither case is it positively known that the writer did not mistake the Gospel according to the Hebrews (written of course in Hebrew) for the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew. However all ecclesiastical writers assert that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, and, by quoting the Greek Gospel and ascribing it to Matthew, thereby affirm it to be a translation of the Hebrew Gospel. ”
“ That’s even a bit more than what Papais himself said. But let’s assume that’s true. Then you would have to explain:
1) how did it happen that huge chunks of it are word for word quotes from a Greek book? (Mark)
2) how did it happen that huge chunks of it are word for word reproduced in Luke (Q material)?
3) Why does the book contain 0 translations of Hebrew literary structures?”
Good questions, but I don’t have time right now. I will copy your questions down and deal with them later.
“4) When Matthew quotes the bible he almost always agrees with the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Text when they vary. And mind you those disagreements are embedded in the text itself in key story lines so you couldn’t have a situation where the Greek translator just changed the bible quote to match the Septuagint. “ “
I need to think about this further. I’m too tired right now to work this out. But, I will store it away and study later.
“Not according to history”[ was Polycarp a student of John’s]. According to Irenaeus. You are begging the question with that one by assuming that the Jesus -> John -> Polycarp -> Irenaeus (apostolic succession) is in place as part of your argument for apostolic succession. The fact you have is that
a) Irenaeus claimed to be a disciple of Polycarp in his writings
b) Irenaeus claimed that Polycarp was taught by John whom was instructed directly by Jesus
c) There is some weak supporting secondary evidence for (a).”
Irenaeus can’t be shoved to the side, sorry. It’s admissible evidence, and if it’s all we got to work with then that’s ok by me. I’m not begging the question though, I using the stated data. I don’t have a time machine to go back and see if he was lying. Anyways here, in this case, I’m not trying to prove apostolic succession, just that Polycarp knew someone who was an eye witness of the life of Jesus.
“Or he wrote a letter to the Phippioans from which NT authors borrowed. You don’t know the order. So it doesn’t prove what you are trying to prove. “
Wait a minute. He quoted and paraphrased the NT authors. The order is obvious.
“I’m not asking you to exclude Polycarp from your data. Irenaeus is an incredibly rich source of data about the development of ancient Christianity. I’m not asking you to exclude him, far from it. I’m trying to get you to treat 2nd century political propaganda the same way you treat statements by modern politicians and start asking questions why they are saying what they are saying and not taking obviously false things (like Matthew was constructed in Hebrew) at face value.”
First of all I have to be completely suspicious of the second century and I have no reason to be. I’m not harmed by it. I could also suggest to you that you be aware of your own naturalistic ideology.
I wrote: “For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist; 1 John 4:3 and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan”
“OK let’s look at that one. First off your translation is terrible, the author of 1John doesn’t say “For whosover” but rather something like “Every spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God”.”
Yes I know, this is a quote from St. Polycarp. John did a bad job quoting him
“Now that’s very interesting. So we have this late 1st century epistle and the author (I’ll call him “John”) is advising that the test whether a Christian apostle was speaking the truth related to the spirit which God had sent him. This John seems completely unaware that’s there is a hierarchical church in place under its 4 or 5th pope at this point which is handing down dogmatic statements designed to clearly help believers determine what is or is not in a fixed deposit of faith.”
I don’t see how it shows that John is unaware of a cohesive church. The church(We, declare to you what was from the beginning….) is dealing with schism(They went out from us ,but they did not belong to us… 1 John 2:19).
“ John is unaware that there is a written gospel containing the history of Jesus’ life that is well accepted by the community. How could John be so ignorant? 1John shows that for him one knows about Jesus through direct revelation from spirits. You have a theological debate about whether the central religious figure had ever come in the flesh and the people conducting the debate are on coequal footing having to rely on direct revelations there is no hierarchical church with a well accepted body of literature. This is totally, totally contradicting the version of history you would have us believe.”
The Church isn’t constantly trying to ascertain a history of itself. It is just a community, that is struggling to live in the world when it’s attacked for its beliefs and, as individuals are concerned, tempted by sin and heresy.
“Worse for you, John here was told by his spirit that Jesus had come in the flesh and some in the community were disagreeing.”
People can and do fall away from the truth.
“What’s worse for you is that even the doctrine John is promoting is far far short of a whole doctrine of a Jesus of Nazareth who had a full on incarnation and earthly life.”
I don’t expect it to be exhaustive, because a church exists. If it covered every single issue I would ask why it needed to cover all its bases in a single writing.
“This is precisely what you would expect to see, an early intermediate form of the doctrine of the incarnation. Jesus has in some sense come in the flesh but it is still vague.”
It is a doctrine on the incarnation but in respect to people who who falling away from this doctrine and from fellowship with the faithful of the church.
“We are a long long way off from a legend of him sitting down with John to bake some fish or directly via. human voice teach him various parables. I’m not sure how 1John is supposed to support rather than be another piece of evidence refuting your point.”
Because of what is going on; that is, departure from the doctrine of the incarnation and the significance of Christ’s death, it makes 1 John later than the Gospel of John. Why does John have to mention the baked fish in the first letter of John? Maybe I’m confused about what you’re asking….
“But getting back to the point: do either of those factions sound Catholic to you? “
Sorry, I deleted those “factions”. Could you describe them again?
“I don’t know how it could be any clearer that the Catholic church doesn’t yet exists. Read what the authors actually write.”
I do read what the authors actually wrote( and you scoff at me for my religious credulity when I do), but I don’t expect Christianity to be the sum of scripture. It can’t be less than what scripture denotes but scripture is compilation of the church’s thought as men were inspired to write. St. Augustine said, “He Who is Mature in Faith, Hope and Love, Needs Scripture No Longer”
Now this is more of a problem for the sola scriptura professing Protestant.
But, you are an atheist, so what are your “political” reasons for trying to debunk the scriptures?
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 25, 2014 at 2:29 am | Permalink
victor delta, tango, finally we agree. My posts about Roman Catholicism are to correct misunderstanding/misrepresentations of the church by Jason and the Callers. I even engage in history. You? Not so much.
Another difference: I go to church.
So did the Pharisees, In fact, they ran the place.
As for your mastery of Catholic theology, Bryan Cross gives you a spanking every time he stops by. And constantly quoting liberal dissident Michael Sean Winters as your authority shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Catholicism itself, thus your attacks are DOA. On the globe of Catholicism, he’s not even a molehill.
Indeed, on the globe of Presbyterianism, you’re not. As Machen’s disciple-epigone, I sure wish you were, believe me. But the answer to “Whose Calvinism is It Anyway” is, unfortunately, “not Machen’s.” Or yours.
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vd, t, and now you’re telling me that Bryan Cross has more standing among Roman Catholics than Michael Sean Winters? Who are you, who doesn’t go to church, to judge? Bryan and Michael go to church? You? Not even.
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Just think, the closest Tom gets to legit means of grace is his interaction with DGH on here.
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Thanks Erik, I know you guys aren’t teetotallers. I was just wondering if maybe there would be more people taking Susan’s side on a relatively trivial issue like that.
CD-Host, your life script isn’t over yet, Don’t be too trusting though with NT scholarship – a lot can change in a decade. Matthew is a very fascinating Gospel and I’m sure you’ll find there are some Aramaic idioms in there (this is one of the arguments for the Shem Tob Hebrew version as you probably know). Of course, if there were none, that would not disqualify Greek Matthew from being a translated document, because whether to retain a first language ‘flavour’ is a stylistic choice (or sometimes a reflection of level of competence) on the part of the translator. One of my phrases in this comment I composed in another language before writing it in English. You can’t pick it.
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Token Woman,
“One of my phrases in this comment I composed in another language before writing it in English. You can’t pick it.”
ok, that’s great!
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 25, 2014 at 5:25 pm | Permalink
vd, t, and now you’re telling me that Bryan Cross has more standing among Roman Catholics than Michael Sean Winters? Who are you, who doesn’t go to church, to judge? Bryan and Michael go to church? You? Not even.
kent
Posted June 25, 2014 at 5:37 pm | Permalink
Just think, the closest Tom gets to legit means of grace is his interaction with DGH on here.
Yes, I can smell his warrior child grace from here. He positively reeks with the love of Jesus. But seriously, folks, resorting to personal attacks means you can’t play it straight. Bad show for your religion. As for Bryan Cross, I said he gives you a spanking when you misrepresent Catholic teaching, not that he’s any more an ecclesiastical figure than the liberal dissident Michael Sean Winters.
Anyone who quoted Bryan Cross as his source on Catholicism would be making the same error as you do with Winters. Precisely my point.
As for whether or not I attend a church, that’s your guess. Regardless, it’s not relevant at a “theological society” and is a disingenuous tactic. WWMD? He didn’t play dirty like that, did he?
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@Susan
OK. You asked for a small topic. That’s a small topic. And it is a nice testable one. My claim is rather strong. You in 2014 can verify that Matthew was not originally composed in Hebrew without any need to presuppose anything at all church fathers. Now if they are wrong about that…. that gives some very serious reason to question that Matthew was part of the Catholic church when it was written.
So the rest we won’t worry about so much.. I’ll just respond briefly
True but you didn’t show that. You show that someone else claimed that Polycarp knew someone who was a direct disciple of Jesus. That’s a much much weaker statement. And one I’m not disagreeing with. I’m not disagreeing that Irenaeus wrote frequently about apostolic succession. I’m not arguing he didn’t. It is even quite plausible to me that Irenaeus believed in it and didn’t think he was exaggerating as much as he was. The same way I believe that when Scooter Libby was helping to falsify the intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq he thought he was clarifying true things not lying. To prove that John is a real single person, knew a physical earthly Jesus and then passed on his ministry to Polycarp is quite a bit stronger than saying that Irenaeus said that was true. I happen to think that Irenaeus’ writings prove that false if you read them carefully but we’ll focus on the Matthew above rather than opening up a new point.
How is John solving an argument about doctrine? In a cohesive church arguments are settled by appeals to bodies. Think about how Peter Leithart’s issues are discussed the rulings of various PCA bodies are constantly injected. The author(s) of 1John isn’t able to do that. He has to make a direct appeal to spirits. His claim is that his spirits are better than the other guy’s spirits not that he has the weight of an institutional bureaucracy behind him. The “my revelation is better than your revelation” means that the religious community is one where doctrine is determine not the basis of authority but direct personal revelation.
When I disagreed with you about what the Catholic church teaches regarding the authorship of Matthew did you tell me that your spirit guide revealed this truth to you, and that your spirit guide is better than my spirit guide? No! You picked an authoritative source and quoted it. That’s what people in established religions do. Appeals to direct revelation happen in the first generation or two. 1John’s author(s) and their opponents are part of sect or a cult as they develop mechanisms to resolve these disputes by institutional power they will become an institutional sect and then they’ll evolve towards a religion. Take Irenaeus’ arguments: he doesn’t say his spirit guide is better than Valentinus’ he says that his institution support is better than Valentinus’. The form of the argument in 1John is the evidence that the institutions you are presupposing don’t exist yet.
Really? How many people who have fallen away from Catholicism that you know did so because they received a personal supernatural revelation that Jesus had never come in the flesh? How often does that happen in your church? The fact that this is what the schism is over proves that even if the gospels existed they aren’t universally accepted as part of what it means to be Christian.
Let me ask another question though. How many people in your church that have fallen away from Catholicism did so because they received a moral revelation that the church’s position on birth control was wrong. Nancy Pelosi may think the church’s position on birth control is stupid and a violation of tradition but she doesn’t think she’s on coequal footing with the magisterium about determining what are the officials positions of the Catholic church. She understands that she’s rebelling against an authority that is wrong, she doesn’t believe the authority doesn’t exist. It is a very different kind of argument than the one we encounter in 1John.
Muslims believe that Jesus had come in the flesh. Marcion believes that Jesus had come in the flesh. Is there understanding of Christology acceptable to you? What modern day Catholic would even bother to try and prove something so limited as Jesus came in the flesh?
Absolutely! Be skeptical about what I’m saying. Check it then double check it. Verify for yourself. Quite literally everyplace you look carefully you’ll see a veneer of bad propaganda needed to presuppose a Catholic origin fall apart. The story isn’t remotely true.
Lampe keeps getting brought up on CtC because the Christian graves in 2nd century aren’t what you would get form a uniform Catholic Christianity. Read Lampe. I’m not going to write hundreds of pages about 2nd Century Roman Christian graves but he did. The graves show theological divisions along class lines and other divisions like quartodecimanism (if you don’t want to consider that theological) along national lines among the poor. Bryan, Sean… like to do a lot hand waiving on the issue but in the end the Christian graves still aren’t mostly Catholic. And that simple fact by itself is incredibly damning to the whole CtC apologetic.
And if on issue after issue after issue after issue after issue you keep hitting this wall that what you find in the ancient world is totally inconsistent with the Catholic myth at some point you have to decide either you don’t care about what really happened and your faith just isn’t historical or you start doing an honest assessment of what is really true.
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CD,
Help me out. Why do you make a dichonomy between Christianity and Catholicism?
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@Token
Answer the 4 question I asked Susan. We aren’t talking linguistic flavor we are talking long word for word quotes from Greek sources. We are talking story lines that only make sense when used against a Greek bible.
Sure there are Aramaic idioms in Matthew, though surprising few. The same way that modern English speaking American Jews throw in a few Yiddish idioms. That doesn’t mean that America speak Yiddish or that the Moment magazine is translated from the Yiddish. Luke, is unquestionably in excellent Greek and thus not a translation has Aramaic idioms. For example “it came to pass” (egeneto de) is an Aramaic yet Luke 2:1, 2:6, 2:15, 3:21, 5:1, 5:12, 5:17, 6:1, 6:6, 6:12, 7:11, 8:1, 8:22, 9:18, 9:28,9:37, 9:51, 11:1, 11:27, 14:1, 17:11, 18:35, 20:1, 22:24, 24:4. Another is the order of words in Luke 1:51-55 is Semitic not Greek. He’s likely translating / quoting. So when Matthew 6:9-13 does the same word order he to is also likely quoting. If it happened regularly throughout the text of Matthew then we’d be plausibly looking at a book originally constructed in Hebrew (though why it would be in Hebrew and not Aramaic in the first place is beyond me). But that’s not what we see so you can’t make that argument.
The argument against Matthew being in Hebrew was lost in the 18th century the moment people started using linguistic analysis. The text has been analyzed and it totally inconsistent with a Hebrew origin. You may be able to construct sentences that are natural in English you likely can’t construct a book that is both an accurate translation and natural English.
And no New Testament scholarship doesn’t change every decade. There has been a solid progression. Where people hypothesize, learn more, test their hypothesis verify some falsify others and then move on. New Testament scholarship has been gradually building decade after decade. The work that Bultmann et. al did around the 2nd world war I can still freely quote from today. The hard textual work starting in the 1880s that took a century is what allowed Ehrman to write Orthodox Corruption 20 years ago. Orthodox corruption today is what has allowed for a new generation of higher criticism to have bearings directly on the biblical text. Friedlander in the early 20th century wrote an essay hypothesizing that Gnosticism had originated from Judaism not Christianity contrary to early church father’s claims. A century of work has allowed us to reconstruct a timeline for Gnosticism (most specifically the Sethians) that couldn’t possibly be consistent with Irenaeus’ claims or their origins.
Don’t get me wrong most of the SBL is crap. But most of the SBL’s scholarship isn’t scholarship at all but bad apologetics.
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Consider the scholarship of pope Benedict—“Is it not an unworthy concept of God to imagine for oneself a God who demands the slaughter of his son to pacify his wrath? Such a concept of God has nothing to do with the idea of God to be found in the New Testament and it is an unworthy concept of God…..the divine-cum-human legal system erected by Anselm with its rigid logic
can make the image of God appear in a sinister light.”
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, St. Ignatius Press, 2005, p 291
Click to access 4-6-15.pdf
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Tom – As for your mastery of Catholic theology, Bryan Cross gives you a spanking every time he stops by.
Erik – If only. Bryan rarely makes an affirmative case for anything here when he stops by, which he apparently is no longer even doing.
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Token,
Regulars here know both CD & Susan. When they square off it’s best to take the Mississippi Leg Hound perspective and just let em finish…
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CD-Host,
God never leaves us. This made me cry.
There remains then the test by which it is to be proved to be the Spirit of God. He has indeed set down a sign, and this, belike, difficult: let us see, however. We are to recur to that charity; it is that which teaches us, because it is the unction. However, what says he here? “Prove the spirits, whether they be from God: because many false prophets have gone out into this world.” Now there are all heretics and all schismatics. How then am I to prove the spirit? He goes on: “In this is known the Spirit of God.” Wake up the ears of your heart. We were at a loss; we were saying, Who knows? Who discerns? Behold, he is about to tell the sign. “Hereby is known the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God: and this is the antichrist, of whom you have heard that he should come; and even now already is he in this world.” 1 John 4:2-3 Our ears, so to say, are on the alert for discerning of the spirits; and we have been told something, such that thereby we discern not a whit the more. For what says he? “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, is of God.” Then is the spirit that is among the heretics, of God, seeing they “confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh”? Aye, here perchance they lift themselves up against us, and say: You have not the Spirit from God; but we confess “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh:” but the apostle here has said that those have not the Spirit of God, who confess not “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.” Ask the Arians: they confess “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh:” ask the Eunomians; they confess “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh:” ask the Macedonians; they confess “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh:” put the question to the Cataphryges; they confess “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh:” put it to the Novatians; they confess “that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.” Then have all these heresies the Spirit of God? Are they then no false prophets? Is there then no deception there, no seduction there? Assuredly they are antichrists; for “they went out from us, but were not of us.”
13. What are we to do then? By what to discern them? Be very attentive; let us go together in heart, and knock. Charity herself keeps watch; for it is none other than she that shall knock, she also that shall open: anon you shall understand in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Already you have heard that it was said above, “Whoso denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, the same is an antichrist.” There also we asked, Who denies? Because neither do we deny, nor do those deny. And we found that some do in their deeds deny; and we brought testimony from the apostle, who says, “For they confess that they know God, but in their deeds deny Him.” Titus 1:16 Thus then let us now also make the enquiry in the deeds not in the tongue. What is the spirit that is not from God? That “which denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” And what is the spirit that is from God? That “which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” Who is he that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Now, brethren, to the mark! let us look to the works, not stop at the noise of the tongue. Let us ask why Christ came in the flesh, so we get at the persons who deny that He has come in the flesh. If you stop at tongues, why, you shall hear many a heresy confessing that Christ has come in the flesh: but the truth convicts those men. Wherefore came Christ in the flesh? Was He not God? Is it not written of Him, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God?” John 1:1 Was it not He that did feed angels, is it not He that does feed angels? Did He not in such sort come hither, that He departed not thence? Did He not in such sort ascend, that He forsook not us? Wherefore then came He in the flesh? Because it behooved us to have the hope of resurrection shown unto us. God He was, and in flesh He came; for God could not die, flesh could die; He came then in the flesh, that He might die for us. But how died He for us? “Greater charity than this has no man, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 Charity therefore brought Him to the flesh. Whoever therefore has not charity denies that Christ has come in the flesh. Here then do you now question all heretics. Did Christ come in the flesh? “He did come; this I believe, this I confess.” Nay, this you deny. “How do I deny? You hear that I say it!” Nay, I convict you of denying it. You say with the voice, deniest with the heart; sayest in words, deniest in deeds. “How,” do you say, “do I deny in deeds?” Because the end for which Christ came in the flesh, was, that He might die for us. He died for us, because therein He taught much charity. “Greater charity than this has no man, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” You have not charity, seeing you for your own honor dividest unity. Therefore by this understand ye the spirit that is from God. Give the earthen vessels a tap, put them to the proof, whether haply they be cracked and give a dull sound: see whether they ring full and clear, see whether charity be there. You take yourself away from the unity of the whole earth, you divide the Church by schisms, you rend the Body of Christ. He came in the flesh, to gather in one, you make an outcry to scatter abroad. This then is the Spirit of God, which says that Jesus has come in the flesh, which says, not in tongue but in deeds, which says, not by making a noise but by loving. And that spirit is not of God, which denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; denies, here also, not in tongue but in life; not in words but in deeds. It is manifest therefore by what we may know the brethren. Many within are in a sort within; but none without except he be indeed without.
14. Nay, and that you may know that he has referred the matter to deeds, he says, “And every spirit, qui solvit Christum, which does away with Christ that He came in the flesh, is not of God.” A doing away in deeds is meant. What has he shown you? “That denies:” in that he says, “does away” (or, “unmakes”). He came to gather in one, you come to unmake. You would pull Christ’s members asunder. How can it be said that you deny not that Christ has come in the flesh, who rendest assunder the Church of God which He has gathered together? Therefore you go against Christ; you are an antichrist. Be thou within, or be thou without, you are an antichrist: only, when you are within, you are hidden; when you are without, you are made manifest. Thou unmakest Jesus and deniest that He came in the flesh; you are not of God. Therefore He says in the Gospel: “Whoso shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:19 What is this breaking? What this teaching? A breaking in the deeds and a teaching as it were in words. “Thou that preachest men should not steal, do you steal?” Romans 2:21 Therefore he that steals breaks or undoes the commandment in his deed, and as it were teaches so: “he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” i.e. in the Church of this present time. Of him it is said, “What they say do ye; but what they do, that do not ye. Matthew 23:3 But he that shall do, and shall teach so, shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” From this, that He has here said, fecerit, “shall do,” while in opposition to this He has th
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CD,
In case you don’t read it all: “Whoever therefore has not charity denies that Christ has come in the flesh”
I’m curious, have you been watching over at CtC? The dialogue between Brandon and some of those who write is very interesting. Paul Owen addressed Brandon today, and said the following. I think it might be helpful to you. You’re in my prayers!
, I think you are ultimately skeptical of the Patristic model of episcopal government in the Catholic Church, including a functional primacy of the Roman see, which is of apostolic origin, because you are enamored with the reigning paradigm of modern critical consensus, as reflected in the mass of secondary literature to which you appeal from the outset. Your deference to modern consensus is typical of a young man who has just finished a graduate degree program. I think it would be very healthy for you to undergo the rigor of a doctoral program in biblical studies. It would possibly make you more conscious of the extent to which academia is disposed to demonstrate scientific objectivity at the expense of the theological consensus of “less enlightened” eras from the church’s deeply rooted body of Tradition. These same subtle pressures are most certainly at work in the study of the Fathers and their churchly convictions.
The model you are employing, in terms of its basic method, is precisely the same as that which would lead you to conclude that the boundaries between heresy and orthodoxy were fluid in the first few centuries of the Christian Era, so that we see the Christology of the Fathers as having some fundamental privilege, and apostolic pedigree, in comparison with the view of Gnostic Christians and other sects which we now exclude due to (supposedly) anachronistic reading of the evidence through the lens of post-Nicene orthodoxy. If you read Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities, you may discover that you are using his exact same method. The Catholic model, consistently, privileges the memory and consensus of the same Fathers in adjudicating church government and structure, as is the case with defining the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the meaning of baptism and Eucharistic celebration, the contents of the canon, and the authorship of the various New Testament books whose origins are now disputed in the academy.
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The reason no one else is engaging CD-Host on the finer points of scholarly biblical criticism is that most of us have day jobs.
You really can’t hash out these issues in comboxes.
On most any important point there are scholars on at least two sides who can write pages and pages on their positions.
Staying at a Holiday Inn Express last night doesn’t qualify a layman to show up here and try to come off like an expert.
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@Susan
I wouldn’t call it a dichotomy. I’d call it part vs. whole distinction. There are many Christian sects then and now. Catholicism is one of those sects. But it isn’t the whole thing. There are many ancient Christianities and in the 1st century Catholicism isn’t one of them. proto-Catholicism / Catholicism evolves in the mid 2nd century and quickly becomes the dominant form of Christianity.
Let’s take a simple example. What do you want to call Marcionic Christianity if not Christianity? It certainly isn’t Catholic but it is still part of the history of Christianity and part of Christian evolution. Encratite Christianity of which Marcion is one brand is an even bigger group. What do you want to call that whole style? Encratites Christianity among other things evolves into Collyridian Christianity which becomes Islam. In any history of Christianity you can’t ignore Islam and pretend it never happened (much as the Jason and the Callers would like to). Or take the Montanists your buddy Irenaeus considers them to be Christian but not Catholic. What do you call them?
Part of the Catholic apologetic is to acknowledge the diversity of Christianity but then pretend it doesn’t matter. They want a line when the reality is a web of interconnecting sects brushing against one another and reacting to one another.
This comes up the same way in the history of Protestantism. Jason and the Callers want Protestants to have fallen out of the sky. Up until 1517 everyone is a happy Catholic living in perfect unity then all the sudden Luther comes along…. Sure they’ll acknowledge that the Cathari, the Pateria, the Beguine, the Monastic Theurgy movement, the Brethern of the Free Spirit, the Hussite, the Waldensians, existed but that certainly shouldn’t try and focus on the centuries of dissent that led up to the Reformation. You certainly shouldn’t try and trace ideas back.
Christians are anyone for whom Jesus is a central religious figure.
Catholics are Christians which are also part of a particular collection of institutions.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 25, 2014 at 9:29 pm | Permalink
Tom – As for your mastery of Catholic theology, Bryan Cross gives you a spanking every time he stops by.
Erik – If only. Bryan rarely makes an affirmative case for anything here when he stops by, which he apparently is no longer even doing.
That’s your story, perhaps true. Cross saves his time and effort of affirmative case-building for the more appreciative audience and more coherent discussion threads at his own blog. You can hardly blame him. As for him no longer stopping by, usually to challenge Darryl’s premise as straw mannish—the host apparently hasn’t issued forth any great howlers lately requiring Bryan’s pontifical intervention.
😉
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Tom – requiring Bryan’s pontifical intervention.
Erik – Now we’re getting somewhere…
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Having spent my whole life in and around university towns I’ve known a lot of Ph.D’s. CD reminds me of a local atheist professor whom I consider a casual friend. Before I knew him, I asked another Ph.D. friend who happens to be a Christian what he thought about the atheist professor. He said, “Well, I think (atheist professor) is in a fight with God, and (atheist professor) thinks he’s winning.”
Exactly.
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Tom,
What’s your impression of atheism?
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@Susan
I agree with Paul’s analogy though draw the opposite conclusion. Paul is absolutely right that you can’t simultaneously argue that there is an intrinsic reason to privilege the Catholic position in the 2nd-4th centuries while then turning around and use secular scholarship when it fits. We are probably criss crossing a bit but you’ll see the post I just wrote you I make that point explicitly.
But you have to remember that even when I was a Christian I wasn’t Reformed I was Baptist. A lot of Baptists still half believe in Landmarkism, the idea that the Baptist church is ancient. I I call this Landmarkism-lite . Many Baptists consider the ancient “heretics” more their ancient forebears than they do the Catholics. The difference between me and most evangelicals who were raised that way is that I started to read the ancient “heretics”.
I like to present this menu of attitudes about creeds in general:
1-Restorationist: An abomination in God’s sight. A corruption of the bible that has the form of godliness while denying the gospel. The first step of apostasy
2-Pentecostal/Adventist: A summary that can be helpful for instruction. But it should be used with care since since dogmatic summaries often undermines the bible and the gifts of the spirit.
3-Evangelical: Statements of belief and summaries of scripture that are reversible in light of new discoveries from scripture.
4-Confessional: Creeds are statements of belief by churches binding on their members.
5-Creedal: Creeds are statements of belief which are absolutely true statements about God, and thus binding on all humankind.
I was raised as a 2.5 on that scale. I’ve never had an instinctual horror towards the idea that the creeds could be wrong. For my whole life the church that wrote the creeds was already deeply corrupted. From when I was young 311 CE was when the Catholic church answered “yes” to the temptation of Matthew 4:8-9. So yes I agree with Paul’s argument but even as a Christian I would have had no problem agreeing with Paul’s argument.
____
Anyway I think Brandon is a pretty weak debater. Bryan et al are mopping the floor with him. Brandon frankly doesn’t understand the thesis he’s defending.
For example Bryan makes this point in the context of universal agreement with Protestants: That would imply either that (a) the historical Jesus did not found a universal Church while on earth, or (b) that God founded two universal Churches, one by the historical Jesus, and another later by the Holy Spirit. Both of those are heretical positions
The standard Protestant position is that Jesus did not found a universal church he founded local churches. The one church that might by its association with earthly Jesus and James have grown into a universal church he made sure to destroy to preserve the local church. Local churches are founded by the Holy Spirit constantly. It was Satan not Jesus who founded the later universal church. Brandon continues to allow Bryan to just casually treat this as a point of agreement i.e. that most Protestants believe Jesus founded a universal church. Brandon walks right into that because he’s only ever read Reformed ecclesiology and so his whole doctrine of the church is a confusing mess.
Or for example Ray makes this statement: For instance, I acknowledge that the mere fact that the explicit patristic testimony concerning episcopal governance in the sub-apostolic Church exists and is widespread from the end of the second century and beyond, does not amount to a slam dunk for the Catholic position. If you presented explicit documentary evidence from the first or second century which ran contrary to the widespread testimony of the patristic writers falling just outside that time frame, then your position might be rationally preferable
Which of course is easy to do. You can find of wealth of 2nd century literature objecting to the imposition of a hierarchy. You can even find arguments from Catholic Bishops that agree that other non-Catholic churches were in particular locations first.
When I read that thread what I see is bad arguments working against even worse arguments. Definitely I’ll score this debate for the CtC guys. But if you are asking if it refutes the good version of arguments that Brandon is making… no it doesn’t.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 25, 2014 at 10:25 pm | Permalink
Tom – requiring Bryan’s pontifical intervention.
Erik – Now we’re getting somewhere…
Heh heh, EC. That one was for you.
Erik Charter
Posted June 25, 2014 at 10:43 pm | Permalink
Tom,
What’s your impression of atheism?
It’s of great concern to me. Not only is it the death of religion, it’s the death of metaphysics, and thereby of natural law.
And IMO, Brother Barth’s defense of revealed religion by assaulting “natural theology” helped “scientism,” materialism, atheism achieve its current ascendancy. I ran across this today, and thought of you.
Click to access Gifford_Lecture_6_-_lecture_text.pdf
I acknowledge, as did Aquinas, that reason has its limits. But fideism has not been a sword or a shield, it’s been a millstone, the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
And just because you “theological society” types are slicker about your assertions than the fundies are doesn’t mean you can hold your own in the public square as the apostle Paul did. I find JG Machen did, what I’ve read of him. [Even that heinous atheist Mencken thought so, yes?]
Machen’s epigones not so much, hence my Jiminy Cricketism. Annoying, admittedly, but unsquishable.
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CD-H, I didn’t understand a couple of your points above. Forgive me if I misunderstood.
You said, Matthew contains zero instances of translations of Hebrew literary structures. What counts as a “literary structure” in your statement?
And on Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians, you said, “Or the NT authors quoted it.”
I count a pretty large number of phrases in Polycarp to Philippians that show up scattered across various NT books, including some that are of uncontested Pauline authorship.
What are you suggesting with regard to Polycarp and NT epistles?
Finally, your paragraph “The standard Protestant position is that Jesus did not found a universal church he founded local churches … Satan not Jesus founded the universal church.”
Which “standard” are we talking here?
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vd, t, whether you go to church is irrelevant when talking theology? Yes, you really do understand 2k.
NOT.
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vd, t, word has it that the Callers finally convened and decided there is no fresh meat for conversion at OL. Obviously, they don’t care about you or where you go to church — or NOT.
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@Jeff
When a work is translated for one linguistic community to another there are structures common in the a community. So for example in English poetry you often have rhyme. In Hebrew poetry similar thoughts are repeated with minor variation for emphasis… So for example a metaphor is carried through in a line pair or triple which works for both emphasis and they use meter to tie the ideas together. We don’t see Hebrew structures in Matthew.
In the other direction Matthew uses a lot of references to classic Greek literature mixing classic greek in the koine greek. The English equivalent would be suddenly quoting the Shakespeare, the Constitution or the KJV. If he were writing in Hebrew we’d expect that sort of literary play against Hebrew not Greek literature.
Etc… I’m waiting for Susan to come back on this one.
Polycarp is a likely candidate for the redactor of Gospel of the Lord into Luke/Acts (Ritschl hypthosis). As has been pointed out the word choice in the Pastorals epistles is totally unlike the style in the rest of Paul but it is quite distinctive which is why these are so heavily contested. But as C.F.D. Moule, A. Strobel, Stephen G. Wilson, and Jerome D. Quinn have all pointed out they bear a lot of similarity to the redactions of GoL that formed Luke and Acts. There are characters that appear in the Pastorals that appear in Polycarp. He’s been considered a likely redactor for Marcionite John to Catholic John (Bultmann for example). There are associations of Polycarp with 2Peter. Etc…
The Pauline corpus mostly predates Polycarp even under the worst case. What we were talking about in context were the gospels. And here we do have problems. I suspect Matthew predates Polycarp so for example Koester has talked about an example where Polycarp 2 quotes 1Clement 13 regarding the Lord and his teachings but the language matches Matthew not Clement. Now Polycarp isn’t aware this is in Matthew which creates a couple possibilities:
a) Matthew was altered to match Polycarp.
b) Matthew didn’t exist yet and was written based on Polycarp
c) Polycarps letter was changed to match Matthew after Polycarp
d) Polycarp got who wrote what confused
No one really knows. And that’s the point. We don’t know who is quoting whom. And then after Polycarp there is another 100 years of minor redactions on most of these NT books we might have picked up a few reverse quotes via. orthodox corruption.
I don’t have a problem with saying that the New Testament books are in more or less their final form by the end of Polycarp’s life. I think there is excellent evidence though that that was not true prior to Polycarp’s life. Too many arrows point to Polycarp to just assume he wasn’t involved.
As an aside, nothing is of uncontested Pauline authorship. Uncontested Pauline authorship is stuff that is not 100% not Pauline i.e. that liberal Christians are willing to attribute to Paul. We’ve reconstructed Marcion’s Galatians, we don’t know who added the extra material. Paul if he wrote Galatians is dead by the time of Marcion so he didn’t update the letter which means someone else did. Within the other “uncontested” Pauline books (Romans being a great example) we see redactions by widely different theologies. Not one author. That’s a different argument though.
Whether Paul or Basilides or someone else wrote Colossians whoever did believed all sorts of non-Catholic theologies which is enough for my minor point that Catholicism wasn’t the original Christianity.
Greatest number of believers. Baptists + Pentecostals are the vast majority of Protestants. Throw in Adventists (and offshoot sects like JW), Stone-Campbell … and you pick up another 30m+.
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CD Host, if NT scholarship doesn’t change, why would anyone bother doing it? In any discipline you get big shifts over a couple of decades. The controversial gets accepted; accepted wisdom gets debunked. You assert that all the apostles were dead when Matthew’s gospel was authored. How can you know that? I seem to remember not too long ago that Daniel Wallace announced the discovery of a first century fragment of Mark’s gospel. I understand that a commitment to the elimination of the supernatural compels you to date NT documents late because the documents can’t be allowed to predict future events, but are there better reasons?
As far as Matthew’s concerned, I don’t particularly care whether it was written in Hebrew (although of course it’s interesting). I just picked up on that because you were dismissing it with an imperious wave of the hand, and I know that Matthew scholars (not fundies) are still debating it. (I’m not an NT scholar but I have stuff lying around the house).
So you said it has no Hebrew structures, and I said I think it has Aramaic idioms, and you said well maybe a few. And then you said again it has no Hebrew structures, and gave one example, which is poetry. So what are the other examples of the Hebrew structures which it could potentially have but doesn’t, just out of interest? Poetry doesn’t tend to be a characteristic of gospels. It certainly has a Hebrew style pre-occupation with genealogy.
As I say, it doesn’t really matter whether Matthew was written in Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew. It’s just that you’re giving the impression that a whole lot of stuff is settled and some people might think that the side you present is all there is to it (I’m sure you genuinely believe it is). But when you’re inviting other people to come sail with you on the good ship Skeptica you’ve got to expect them to study the brochure pretty closely.
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CD-H: Thanks. So you’re looking for clause-level and above, such as chiasms, synonymous parallelisms, etc, when you talk about literary structures.
One of the arguments you make above is that “John is unaware” or “Polycarp is unaware.”
I don’t understand how you get from “John does not mention” to “John is unaware.” It would seem that you would have to handle alternate hypotheses such as “John is aware of other bishops (sub: the bishop of Rome), but does not mention it because he knows that his eyewitness testimony will be more credible to his audience”
Etc. When I teach Newton, I don’t mention Lorentz transformations, nor quantum uncertainty . That’s not because I’m unaware.
Could you explain your reasoning?
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@Token
I didn’t say it didnt’ change I said it developed, that it doesn’t go back and forth. If Physics doesn’t change but rather develops why would anyone bother doing it?
The short answer is the role of the actual apostles of Christianity doesn’t match the role they play in the Matthew story, which means Matthew is considerably later than the apostles. The apostles are theological figures for Matthew not current entities.
For the longer answer let me start off my saying this is a tangent as far as Susan. We’ve centered on the issue of Matthew in Hebrew as a simple point. Dating Matthew is more complex. The most obvious way to date a book is when we start seeing dateable references to it. There is Christian literature that can be dated, that would likely contain references to Matthew (or the gospels) if the gospels existed and were widely circulated. So we know that up till the 130s CE Matthew either doesn’t exist or isn’t circulating heavily.
Now not circulating heavily is possible. So Matthew could be earlier but when we ask how early we start to run into problems pushing it back more than a few decades. There is the apostles problem above, where Matthew has apostles as foils to an earthly Jesus. That’s a big problem for an early dating.
But there are also other problems. The Jesus in Matthew is teaching at length. We know that proto-Catholic Christians (I’ll assume Encratite) start encounter the Sethians in the period 100 – 125 CE. When they encounter the Sethians they don’t yet have a doctrine that Jesus taught. In fact it is probably (not certain) that Jesus accretes a doctrine of a teaching ministry from Seth since Seth had always taught and prior to this encounter we have writings where people receive revelations about Jesus but they don’t generally receive teachings from Jesus.
The contents of the teachings indicate late. We have a lot of mainstream moral teachings. So Jesus advocates no divorce but he doesn’t advocate universal celibacy. That’s going to come from a later stage of the religion where the primary figures become support for earthly authorities trying to rein in the membership and in the same time a place where the extreme moral views of an early cult/sect have weakened. So to date Matthew we would be looking for a Christianity where the datable literature is focused on that sort of morality which happens around the early 2nd century.
Of course you have to have a fully developed doctrine of the incarnation. The earliest mention of anything close to that is 106 CE “Jesus was really and truly crucified under Pontius Pilate”. That still far short of the whole Jesus crucifixion myth.
etc… If you try and date Matthew early you have a lot of problem with the silences of the church fathers who should have been quoting Matthew, but seem completely unaware of it.
That may sound circular i.e. I’m assuming that Christianity wasn’t Catholic originally to argue that Matthew is late but the reason it isn’t circular is the other material which demonstrates ignorance of Matthew. If Matthew is authored where is it?
There is nothing Hebrew about that. You’ll see genealogies in Egyptian tombs that are quite detailed for even lower upper class families. If you mean Jewish, then yes Matthew has lots of Jewish preoccupations. I think the author or Matthew is a Jewish Hellenist but that doesn’t mean early and it doesn’t mean originally written in Hebrew.
Word play. People in all languages use similar words (what’s similar is language dependent). So for example in the creation story Adam and Eve discover that they are naked. They also discover they are cunning. In Hebrew it is possible to be ambiguous about naked/cunning. Matthew conversely when he as wordplay (16:18 being the most well known example — petros / petra) is doing it from the Greek. How could that have originated in Hebrew? Similarly 24:20 ‘kopsontai’ and ‘opsontai’. More critically why is the Jesus character born of a virgin if the book is originally in Hebrew?
To pick a more serious problem the Hebrew Isaiah 7:14 uses a word for “young woman” (almah) with no connotation of virginity at all. There is another term in Hebrew for a woman who hasn’t had intercourse (betulah) and that isn’t used. The Septuagint translates this as virgin (parthenos). The whole episode only makes sense in Greek. An entire major plot line is not the sort of thing a translator would introduce.
Of course it matters for this debate about apostolic succession and the existence of the episcopate. The church fathers made this claim about authorship over and over (as Susan showed). I think the claim is provably false. This leaves one of three possibilities:
a) They were right and I’m wrong — and thus a good deal of modern scholarship about Matthew is disproven.
b) The Church fathers were lying — in which case there is less reason to trust them on other issues
c) The Church fathers were mistaken — Which means they didn’t know the truth. But that implies that Matthew is not a product of the Catholic church, it predates the kinds of hierarchical structures that allow for accurately tracking important document flow. It also implies they were confused about the legends of early Christianity and thus less reason to trust them on other issues.
I want them to study the brochure closely.
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@Jeff
Yes. Though if Susan pointed to other specific stuff I could look it up. I’m not a linguist (though I’m married to one) so this is not my strong suit by any means. It was just a way of simplifying a complex debate. Matthew in Hebrew gives us a simple checkable fact that Susan and I both agreed would be an important piece of evidence.
Good example. Let me give you three possible constructions:
a) Newton taught that Force = mass*velocity. So you measure the mass at rest, measure the speed… You could say that with a clear conscience because of the “Newton taught”.
b) “If A measures his own speed as S and B is D away from A then the time B will perceive A as taking will be D/S”. That implies you are unaware of Newton. You would want to qualify this in some way (i.e. speeds are low, approximate…) That kind of statement you might make but in the back of your mind you would see the problem and want to hedge a bit.
c) “Velocities are always additive. If X is moving at speed T and X accelerates by A then you’ll observe X’s speed as T+A”. That you wouldn’t say. It is simply too strong given what you know. Saying that implies you are unaware of Lorentz.
I think you can see the differences. Now let me quote my comment to Susan (there is more context above):
How is John solving an argument about doctrine? In a cohesive church arguments are settled by appeals to bodies. Think about how Peter Leithart’s issues are discussed the rulings of various PCA bodies are constantly injected. The author(s) of 1John isn’t able to do that. He has to make a direct appeal to spirits. His claim is that his spirits are better than the other guy’s spirits not that he has the weight of an institutional bureaucracy behind him. The “my revelation is better than your revelation” means that the religious community is one where doctrine is determine not the basis of authority but direct personal revelation.
When I disagreed with you about what the Catholic church teaches regarding the authorship of Matthew did you tell me that your spirit guide revealed this truth to you, and that your spirit guide is better than my spirit guide? No! You picked an authoritative source and quoted it. That’s what people in established religions do. Appeals to direct revelation happen in the first generation or two. 1John’s author(s) and their opponents are part of sect or a cult as they develop mechanisms to resolve these disputes by institutional power they will become an institutional sect and then they’ll evolve towards a religion. Take Irenaeus’ arguments: he doesn’t say his spirit guide is better than Valentinus’ he says that his institutional support is better than Valentinus’. The form of the argument in 1John is the evidence that the institutions you are presupposing don’t exist yet.
The author of 1John doesn’t ever quote or even hint that he has eyewitness testimony about Jesus. He keeps saying over and over how he knows about Jesus: from spiritual revelations, by the power of God/Jesus’ love, by faith, by his conscience, by the testimony of God (i.e. scripture) and by a scriptural parallelism. All during that long list of ways that he knows about Jesus he never gives the slightly hint at all of having met the guy ever. Nor does he ever claim to have met someone who met the guy and learned about him from that secondary source. Nor does he advise his audience to talk to people who have met Jesus.
There is a very good example of another negative inference you can draw. No one is going to rattle off a list like that who had hung out with Jesus for years. I’m not going to say you can be 100% certain from that that the author of 1John doesn’t know of anyone who has ever encountered Jesus, but I am going to say it is vastly improbable. It just isn’t the sort of thing a personal companion would write. Your church doesn’t advise people to learn about Jesus using that system, they advise them to read the stories about Jesus life in the gospels. If you were talking about how to learn things about a close friend of yours would you pick that list of methods or tell anecdotes?
Moreover anyone who believed that Jesus and John had hung out together obviously believes that Jesus had come in the flesh. Even if we didn’t have a copy of 1John and didn’t see 1John’s list of how to learn about Jesus logically you would know that you wouldn’t construct an argument that not mentioning the hierarchy to appeal to his his eyewitness testimony because obviously the people in question don’t believe his eyewitness (even if we assume John has any eyewitness testimony).
That’s why I said pretty explicitly to Susan neither of the two factions is Catholic. A Catholic would never write something like 1John.
(BTW Token Women this argument is an example where you see me arguing for an early date for a NT book. But I can date this early because the theology of 1John is much much more primitive than the theology we see in Matthew).
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That’s enough heresy for one thread. Unless you can point to chapter and verse in the Principia where Newton confused force with momentum you need to repent.
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@Sdb
Good catch. I meant acceleration. Ouch. Way, way too out of practice. I do fully repent.
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@CDH
You wrote,
and then
Here is the opening to 1 John:
The author goes to great lengths to say that the stuff he is talking about is stuff he heard with his own ears, saw with his own eyes, and touched with his own hands (brings to mind Thomas). The author is decidedly not relying on a spirit guide here. This is the context for everything else that happens. The authority of the letter writer rests upon his earthly experience with a physical person.
Skepticism is not a neutral stance and has a lousy track record nurturing healthy relationships. Fantasies about happening upon (T)ruth by skeptical inquiry go along way toward puffing up mediocre minds, but leave a wake of personal destruction. It is curious to me how little skepticism is directed towards the analysis of skeptical (critical) inquiry. But them I’m just a Feyerabend fanboy.
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@CDH
Ha! It’s just my physics OCD coming out. I have a few deadlines to meet, so I have to drop out of the discussion now. I’ll check back in next and see if things are still rolling here.
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Tom – Heh heh, EC. That one was for you
Erik – Thanks for throwing me a bone, man.
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CD-H: Thanks. Let’s call your scenarios (a) – (c) as follows:
(a) Deferred ignorance: I fail to mention Lorentz because I am specifically teaching Newton, and Newton was ignorant of Lorentz.
(b) Failure to qualify: I fail to mention necessary qualifications to what I am teaching. You posit that this implies ignorance. It more precisely implies sloppiness or incompleteness on my part.
(c) Overstatement: I make a statement clearly false in light of relativity. You posit again that this implies ignorance. It more precisely implies considerable sloppiness.
My point so far is that people do not express themselves in absolutely precise ways — they don’t always say what they know. In fact, having graded many a student essay, I would say that the human condition is often to fail to say what is really known.
Let’s take with the “force = mass*acceleration” example, as amended.
The year is 2114. World War III has occurred. It was precipitated in 2042 over a diplomatic slight from the United Republics of Viet Nam towards the North Koreans, and culminated in a nuclear exchange in 2048 between Russia and West United States (‘Murica). Most of the world’s libraries were destroyed.
The WordPress Waster virus of 2036 had already taken out most blogging sites, and G00gle G0bb1er in 2041 trashed DNS services worldwide. The War put a long-term halt to recovery efforts.
As a result, OldLife is one of the few servers still in existence. Offline, but with data mostly intact, it has been recovered by an archaeological team. The team has also in its possession a few fragments of a 19th century edition of Principia, and a treasured 1965 Halliday and Resnik, Vol 1.
Now, this is a somewhat imaginative scenario, but it gets at the spirit of our textual situation wrt 1st century Christianity. As I understand it, we have the p-manuscripts (mostly 2-5th cent), Nag Hammaddi, some non-canonical epistles, and the Didache. I’m probably missing some things; feel free to add to the list.
The salient features of our textual situation are
(1) We are drastically undersampled,
(2) We have no sense of which documents are data and which are noise UNLESS we accept the guidance of the patristics.
Agree?
Anyways, coming back to our scenario, our archaeologist now looks at your statement F = ma and says “A-ha! CD-Host makes no mention of the fact that Newton clearly thought of force in this way:
F = dp/dt
He must then have been unaware of this fact.”
The actual case doesn’t really fall into (a)-(c). You are NOT in fact unaware. The omission of the calculus was not because Newton didn’t know the calculus. (!!). You did not say anything that needed qualification. You did not say anything that was false (relative to Newton’s knowledge) (again, as amended).
Instead, you simply left out a huge chunk of Newton’s thought BECAUSE … I don’t know why, but I would speculate that it was because F = ma was the first thing that came to mind, as the popular modern version of Newton’s Second Law. Or maybe, because you thought it would be more accessible to your audience.
(Now I’m curious: Why *did* you go with F = ma instead of F = dp/dt?)
But here’s the thing — you made no error. It would be unreasonable for me to argue that the omission of F = dp/dt implies that you are ignorant of that aspect of Newton’s thought.
In other words, we need more cases than (a)-(c) to explain omissions.
(d) Audience knowledge: You omit dp/dt because the audience does not know calculus.
(e) Editorial choice: You omit dp/dt because you have to choose one form or the other, and F = ma is closer to the tips of your fingers
(f) … ?
Now let’s go back to 1 John
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Tom – And just because you “theological society” types are slicker about your assertions than the fundies are doesn’t mean you can hold your own in the public square as the apostle Paul did. I find JG Machen did, what I’ve read of him. [Even that heinous atheist Mencken thought so, yes?]
Erik – The notions of Paul and Machen holding their own in the public square is an interesting one. In general, faithful Christians do not, indeed can not, cast a widely favorable impression in the public square. Why? Because the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing and because it can not be seen as true by those to whom the Holy Spirit has not given the ability.
What Mencken approved of in Machen was the fact that he was straightforward about what Christianity was. Machen was not a theological liberal and Mencken respected that. As far as Mencken admitting what Machen believed to be true goes, Mencken didn’t. He thought that Machen’s Christian beliefs were hogwash.
I think CD-Host rejects what Calvinists believe, as do you, but our system fully accounts for your rejection and unbelief. This doesn’t preclude us from continuing to dialogue with you, though, because there is still time for you to believe the gospel, embrace Christ, and join the church up until the point that you die. We don’t know if you are elect or not and we don’t know what God’s timetable may be in either saving you or allowing you to remain unsaved until the time of your death. We are just the messengers (as frail as we are).
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Tom,
As far as Barth goes, I don’t believe he is widely considered to be orthodox in Reformed circles. Van Til clearly believed that he was not.
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Sdb beat me to it. The opening to 1 John clearly appeals to first-hand knowledge. You omitted this fact in your discussion, and it would be uncharitable of me to assume that this implies ignorance on your part. I would guess that you omitted it either
(f) Perspectival difference: Because you don’t think that 1 John 1.1 – 4 is actually referring to eyewitness testimony.
(g) Discounted evidence: Because you don’t take John’s say-so as actual evidence.
(h) ???
In other words, your omission, which I think was clearly an error unlike the F = ma v. F = dp/dt discussion, does not imply ignorance under several reasonable circumstances.
So much for our discussion of the discussion of 1 John. Now to the text itself.
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@Sdb
No need to apologize for the physics correction that was bad on my part, your correction was gracious.
Slow down. Again read what is on the page. He most certainly does not say that. Much the opposite.
We declare to you what was from the beginning
beginning here is ambiguous. It could mean beginning of the world / universe / aeon… It could also mean beginning of the sect, or beginning of something else. The author later does explicate what he means in 1John 2:24, “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father.” beginning here means from the beginning of the sect.
what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us
OK now that we know what beginning means what was declared from the beginning? Well again John says the eternal life that was with the father was the revelation. Jesus is not what’s pointed to eternal life is. For example the pronoun for what was revealed is neuter not male. If the revelation were Jesus, do you want the author of 1John to believe in a genderless Jesus or does it make more sense that he believes in a genderless eternal life? Also clearly the eternal life is what is dwelling with the father. 1John’s author’s revelation is of a doctrine not a person. That’s what was revealed from the beginning.
The entire sect can now “see” a doctrine. They most likely see this doctrine from scripture, but possibly from direct spiritual contact induced by exercises. What this can’t mean is a reference to the author of 1John having seen the son.
Sorry the grammar in the passage doesn’t allow for the interpretation you are trying to force on it.
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CD-H, you say:
How is John solving an argument about doctrine? In a cohesive church arguments are settled by appeals to bodies. Think about how Peter Leithart’s issues are discussed the rulings of various PCA bodies are constantly injected. The author(s) of 1John isn’t able to do that. He has to make a direct appeal to spirits.
Sure. It is clear that John is not operating within a highly structured environment in which he can simply point to the CCC. But this isn’t the Catholic claim. Rather, the Catholic claim is that the locus of the church was in the Roman episcopate, and that fact became more widely recognized over time.
Now, I’m not Catholic, so I don’t actually agree with the Catholic claim. However, I think we all have something at stake in getting at a method of peering into the 1st century fog accurately.
And in this case, a very reasonable alternate hypothesis is that John’s audience recognized and knew his apostleship, but did not know or did not recognize the authority of other bishops.
A second very reasonable hypothesis is that John did not want to pit authority against authority, since the proto-gnostics claimed authority of their own. Instead, he wanted to give them a meta-test or a kind of screening test: Anyone that claims that Jesus did not come in the flesh is automatically wrong.
This hypothesis makes sense of 1 John 4.1-3 in the context of the opening four verses.
And other hypotheses could be floated. The point is that I think you may have over-read John’s silence on the papacy.
Being a good Protestant, I would substitute this argument: “John encourages his audience to test claims of authority against objective truths.” Agree? Disagree?
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CD-Host:
I’m with sdb on the reading of 1 John. Literal translation (mine, so not guaranteed!):
1 What was from the beginning, what we heard, what we saw with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the word of life.
2 And the life was manifested, and we beheld and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and was manifested to us
3 What we beheld and heard, we proclaim to you in order that you might have fellowship with us. And the fellowship, and ours (the “kai…de…” construction is a little odd) is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ
Clearly, there are some questions, and you give some of those above: Who is “we”? When is “the beginning”? What is the “what” of verse 1?
But it seems very clear that John wants to emphasize that “we” actually saw, heard, and beheld this “what.” The wording of verse 1 is unambiguous, and the same point is made in different language in v. 2. That was sdb’s point, and I’m very much on board.
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@Jeff
What’s devastating about 1John 4 is not just the alternatives he omits but what he says explicitly. Let me ask you the same question I asked Susan. You go to a church with a hierarchy and a fixed set of doctrines. When was the last time someone in your church said the best way to resolve a theological dispute was pick who had the best personal spirit guide and listen to them on the issue? That’s not an omission that’s a pretty explicitly stated statement. Sure its possible that he believes what you do and recommends that approach but it is unlikely. Your 6 possibilities are not all equal probability. Were there counter evidence where 1John’s author mentioned the apostles and the fixed body of teaching and the gospels and… then of course some other explanation would make sense for this omission in 1John 4. But he doesn’t do that. Rather time and time again he keeps saying the opposite raising the probability of the: he doesn’t believe in an incarnation, doesn’t know of any teachings, doesn’t know of a episcopate…
1John 3:16 the command to lay down your life for your brother does not come from Jesus’ authority (John 10:11/15:13-4) but 1John’s author. Certainly it is possible that 1John’s author would use his own authority but most preacher’s most of the time if they can attribute a teaching to the religion’s central figure rather than themselves do so. So the most likely reason 1John’s author doesn’t is he can’t.
1 John 3:21-24 the command to one another comes from God. Again kinda weird if we are talking about Jesus’ central command.
Let’s get more explicit. 1John 2:6 “ekeinos” (that one) which is clearly ambiguous between the Creator and the Son. Meaning the author doesn’t distinguish (i.e. he’s preaching monarchianism at best). Wouldn’t be a huge problem for incarnation except for in 1 John 4:12 he explicitly states that no one has seen God, so in particular he hasn’t. 2:20 the knowledge doesn’t come from author telling stories but directly from the Father. 1John 3:5-8 the revelation of Jesus is from God. Worse it is in the passive there is no sense that the revelation involves an act of the Son like becoming incarnate. 1 John 5:13 are those who “believe in the name of the Son of God” which is a phrase used for calling down the power of a deity in heaven not for believing in a series of earthly events.
On and on and on. Overwhelmingly the most likely reason 1John’s author keeps using phrasing you never would is that he doesn’t believe what you believe. Individually each of these verses is not definitive, were they contradicted. Collectively… this epistle is incredibly damning. Then compound this by the fact that we have many examples of this theology about a heavenly Son explicitly spelled out in the Christian literature.
Then compound this by the fact that John is clear about the continuous doctrines. For example 1 John 5:6-11 you have members of the community who don’t think blood rites are associated with Jesus because blood has no association with Jesus. How could that happen in a community for which the crucifixion is the cardinal event in their god’s history? Now finally compound this by the fact that what I just did with 1John I can do with all the rest of the NT books. Maybe there is some probability left for the CtC version of history, but is it higher than 10^(-100)?
Conversely we have another theory that just says we take authors at face value. Assume that the NT authors are capable of expressing their beliefs effectually., In that theory we assume the authors believe the theologies they are self evidently preaching. The alternative theory gets positively compounded by the external literature because it allows the NT books to be contiguous with the other Christian literature from the same time period. I’d say the probability for that theory is at least 90%.
So even if I grant you a non-zero probability for CtC why would I choose to believe that option?
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@Jeff
Your translation agrees with my comment. I’m not sure where you are even disagreeing.
I agree with you. The what is the doctrine though not the incarnation. Your translation has it explicitly “what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the word of life”. You can keep going to verses 6-12 where God (not 1John’s author) is the witness to the son. God is preaching a doctrine (likely through scripture) that they can now see.
I agree with your translation. Your translation does not have John as witness to Jesus whose ministry brings eternal life. 1John’s author could have said that if he meant that, but he didn’t.
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CD,
Do you think 1 John is written by the same writer as GJohn, from the same community that composed the GJohn, or is completely unrelated to GJohn?
If you believe that it is related in one way or another, then it would seem rather odd if the Johannine community addressed in 1 John doesn’t hold to a corporeal Christ as GJohn does. Of course, that may then beg the question about whether or not you believe GJohn teaches that Jesus was a historical person, but you can feel free to address one issue at a time. I don’t want to open the floodgates.
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@CD-H:
There’s a lot of meat to this conversation, which is a mixed blessing. Let me get our points of agreement on the table first.
(1) We agree that John 1.1 “ον” refers to a what, not a who.
(2) We agree that silence can mean something. In this case, we even agree that John’s silence about formalized government or established doctrine means that, at minimum, his audience was not accustomed to settling doctrinal matters by referring to Rome or to catechism.
But then our détente collapses. Here are the points of disagreement.
(3) The “what” of 1 John 1 refers clearly to the teaching they are about to read. The purpose of the preamble is to give weight to what he is writing. Among his teachings that he wishes to give weight to are
* That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all
* That the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin …
* … “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
Now, as a matter of absolute technicality, John does not say the words “we saw Jesus.”
But if he did not, then his preamble makes no sense. Imagine:
A: I’m going to tell you what I saw. A man came walking down the street, pulled out a pie, and hit the clown.
B: So you saw the pie?
A: No, I saw those words written in a book. I touched the words myself, and heard them.
Unless John is saying “we saw in person that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh from God”, then the force of his preamble is absolutely vitiated. No-one would write like that. If what he really means is, “We’ve seen it written somewhere that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh from God”, then he would use the usual formula: “As it is written:”
And here’s where I fear that our conversation might hit the shoals. I’m guessing that, in Beyesian terms, your priors are pretty different from mine. You have probably considered and are not bothered by my falsifier. Ah well.
(4) While I have agreed with you above that John’s audience has no sense of appealing to Rome, I’m not sure that this proves anything about John’s knowledge, or even the state of affairs on the ground in Rome.
I just had to deal with a contractor. Something went slightly askew. I mentioned the problem to him, he offered to fix it, done. There was no discussion of small-claims court or tort law, even though that was in the distant background.
In other words, the silence gets you half-way there: John had no habit with them of appealing to Rome. The other half is to establish *why* there was no such habit. After all, John mentions no council either, and we know that councils were used to establish doctrine.
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 26, 2014 at 1:50 am | Permalink
vd, t, whether you go to church is irrelevant when talking theology? Yes, you really do understand 2k.
NOT.
D. G. Hart
Posted June 26, 2014 at 1:54 am | Permalink
vd, t, word has it that the Callers finally convened and decided there is no fresh meat for conversion at OL. Obviously, they don’t care about you or where you go to church — or NOT.
You keep playing the same losing hand about going to church, as if it’s going to get you–or not me–to heaven. It doesn’t even work in your theology, let alone a coherent one.
And we understand your version of 2K just fine, you’re quite the master communicator. It just doesn’t hold up to the test.
Thanks for the driveby.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 26, 2014 at 1:28 pm | Permalink
Tom,
As far as Barth goes, I don’t believe he is widely considered to be orthodox in Reformed circles. Van Til clearly believed that he was not.
What’s “orthodox” in “Reformed circles” is quite a slipper slope, if you’ve been following the papers.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 26, 2014 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
Tom – And just because you “theological society” types are slicker about your assertions than the fundies are doesn’t mean you can hold your own in the public square as the apostle Paul did. I find JG Machen did, what I’ve read of him. [Even that heinous atheist Mencken thought so, yes?]
Erik – The notions of Paul and Machen holding their own in the public square is an interesting one. In general, faithful Christians do not, indeed can not, cast a widely favorable impression in the public square. Why? Because the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing and because it can not be seen as true by those to whom the Holy Spirit has not given the ability.
What Mencken approved of in Machen was the fact that he was straightforward about what Christianity was. Machen was not a theological liberal and Mencken respected that. As far as Mencken admitting what Machen believed to be true goes, Mencken didn’t. He thought that Machen’s Christian beliefs were hogwash.
I think CD-Host rejects what Calvinists believe, as do you, but our system fully accounts for your rejection and unbelief. This doesn’t preclude us from continuing to dialogue with you, though, because there is still time for you to believe the gospel, embrace Christ, and join the church up until the point that you die. We don’t know if you are elect or not and we don’t know what God’s timetable may be in either saving you or allowing you to remain unsaved until the time of your death.
Which letter of TULIP is that last bit?
As for the public square, it’s true Christians have been doing a crummy job of it, except those who are conversant in natural law, which as you know is God’s “general revelation,” available to right reason, and not “special revelation,” which requires faith in the scriptures [or the apostolic Church].
Which is why I linked to Barth’s part in warring against Thomistic natural law and theology in favor of fideism, i.e., “special revelation.
As you note, the Bible is nonsense to those who do not accept its authority.
And as you know, Protestantism is lately re-embracing natural law and Thomism [vanDrunen, Mueller, Jordan Ballor for that matter]. I blame Barthian fideism–and in a way you radical 2K types–for leaving the heavy lifting to the fundamentalist idiots like Falwell or Mark Driscoll or Sarah Palin and all of the other objects of your supercilious ridicule.
And not just you, but millions of other moral cowards who don’t stand up and speak the truths of “general revelation,” of natural law, which are in the end still God’s law. And I will also count myself. We are all to blame for leaving the dirty work to the incompetents, who at least had enough faith and courage to speak God’s truth.
As you’ve seen, I have a special contempt for Pontius Pilate. Machen’s virtue was that he was no mealy-mouth. He did his own dirty work.
http://blog.acton.org/archives/1019-protestants-and-natural-law-part-3.html
Thx for asking.
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@Jeff
Actually it is the CtC claim. I think it is self evidently ridiculous. But no their claim is that the highly structured environment existed from the beginning and apostolic authority was understood throughout all of Christian history to be definitive and that it resided in the Catholic church. This despite the fact that we have literature unquestionably contradicting both of those points. If your point is that claim is stupid, I don’t disagree with you. But that is the thesis being debated.
And for very good reason. Because if we coequal churches in the 1st century with alternative means of determining authority then we have no way of knowing that the Catholic system is in some sense originated by Jesus. The Catholics are just one sect making an authority claim, while other sects have their own authority claims and there is no non-adhoc way of distinguishing between them.
I don’t even disagree with that claim.
When you say “his audience” I’m assuming you mean the groups that are disagreeing with him? In which case if they
a) Accept that John is an apostle
b) Agree with the CtCers and you that apostle means a direct select group of people who personally knew Jesus
how could they reject that Jesus came in the flesh?
Very reasonable hypothesis. But that leads to the apostle John having rejecting the doctrine of apostolic authority that truth is determined by the hierarchy which in their theology is one of the most important doctrines from Jesus. Do you actually want to propose this as a counter theory that 1John author is orthodox and just doesn’t want to get into an authority contest? Then under this hypothesis you have to explain away the rest of the verses we’ve been discussing.
As an aside I don’t see any evidence that 1John’s author’s opponents are proto-Gnostics. If anything 1John’s author telling people to consult spirits to find secret teachings embedded in scripture about the nature of the heavens and salvation sounds like the proto-Gnostic. The opponents might just be normal Hellenistic Jews.
Possibly. But again there is a tons of places in this epistle where he could inject a papacy if he wanted. Take for example 1John 5:13 “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God” rather than, “I write these things to our church” or ” I write these things to the faithful” or….
Not quite because the method is subjective i.e.personal revelations from spirits. That being said, all the NT authors subscribe to the prophetic system where prophetic revelations are tested against scripture as outlined in the OT. That’s a system which most Reformed Protestants are perfectly OK with it, in theory. In practice they believe that revelation is closed. I don’t know your personal opinion on the issue. But I would say that this is another serious flaw in the CtC case: essentially all the NT authors support a system that contradicts at its core the idea of the Catholic authority system .
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CD-Host,
No time right now. I’ll be back! http://the-american-catholic.com/2014/04/16/father-barron-v-bart-ehrman-no-contest/
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Tom – What’s “orthodox” in “Reformed circles” is quite a slipper slope, if you’ve been following the papers.
Erik – Claiming to be “Reformed” is pretty low on the PCUSA’s list these days. Probably not finding that in their marketing materials.
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CD-Host
“I think it is self evidently ridiculous”
ok, well what’s the use in arguing, if goodwill and an open mind are gone? I give up.
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Tom – Which letter of TULIP is that last bit?
Erik – U & I
If God has elected you for salvation it’s unconditional and you could come around at any time.
If God has elected you for salvation His grace is irresistible and if you’re elect you will eventually come around.
Until you’ve assumed room temperature there’s still time.
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Tom – As for the public square, it’s true Christians have been doing a crummy job of it,
Erik – Not necessarily. The public square in a sense consists of no more than neighbors talking to neighbors. This still happens and people become Christians as a result of it every day.
My wife and her sister became Christians at Iowa State University because they were looking to meet people who didn’t drink and they found them in some Baptist students who lived in their dorm. Shortly thereafter they heard the gospel for the first time and became Christians.
If you limit the “public square” to people writing op-eds and getting on their soapboxes in front of TV cameras, that’s another matter. The gospel has never spread that way, though. It’s small ball that changes the world.
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Tom – except those who are conversant in natural law, which as you know is God’s “general revelation,” available to right reason, and not “special revelation,” which requires faith in the scriptures [or the apostolic Church].
Erik – I think the thing you miss is the “T” in TULIP – Total Depravity
If people are totally depraved they are not just going to hear a Natural Law argument and conclude that it is unreasonable for them to commit adultery, disrespect their parents, have an abortion, practice homosexuality, or argue for confiscatory tax rates (covet). People don’t change because they hear a plausible argument for being a better, more reasonable person. They change because the Holy Spirit changes them — they embrace Christ and the gospel.
This gets to the heart of our disagreement — We disagree on what the message is that changes the hearts of men.
This is Hart’s point to you when he chides you for not going to church — your heart needs to be changed. Not for our sake, but for yours. You have some good intentions, but on the inside you are lost so you have your priorities jumbled.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 26, 2014 at 9:46 pm | Permalink
Tom – Which letter of TULIP is that last bit?
Erik – U & I
If God has elected you for salvation it’s unconditional and you could come around at any time.
If God has elected you for salvation His grace is irresistible and if you’re elect you will eventually come around.
Until you’ve assumed room temperature there’s still time.
Yeah, but this bit
there is still time for you to believe the gospel, embrace Christ, and join the church up until the point that you die.
is pretty much indistinguishable from Arminianism. And this one
If God has elected you for salvation His grace is irresistible and if you’re elect you will eventually come around.
Until you’ve assumed room temperature there’s still time
even leaves the door open to universalism, that is, “universal reconciliation,” apokastasis, whathaveyou.
[Oh look, here’s this damn guy again]
http://theologyofgcberkouwer.blogspot.com/2012/12/karl-barth-and-universalism-comments.html
Erik Charter
Posted June 26, 2014 at 10:06 pm | Permalink
We disagree on what the message is that changes the hearts of men.
This is Hart’s point to you when he chides you for not going to church — your heart needs to be changed.
You are kidding, right? I’m already too much like Darryl. In fact, I’m better at it. Mebbe ’tis I showing him the way, eh? The Lord workth mythteriothly.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 26, 2014 at 9:42 pm | Permalink
Tom – What’s “orthodox” in “Reformed circles” is quite a slippery slope, if you’ve been following the papers.
Erik – Claiming to be “Reformed” is pretty low on the PCUSA’s list these days. Probably not finding that in their marketing materials.
Heh heh.
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Tom,
No, it has nothing to do with Arminianism or Universalism. It has to do with the fact that we don’t know at this time about what God is doing or may do in your life at some point. People change, which is one of the more interesting aspects of being human. The man you are now is not the man you were 20 years ago or the man you may be 20 years from now.
We don’t give up on you or anyone else. I certainly hope God’s not done with me. At age 44 I have a long ways to go in terms of growth and maturity. I make mistakes I regret every day.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 26, 2014 at 10:24 pm | Permalink
Tom,
No, it has nothing to do with Arminianism or Universalism. It has to do with the fact that we don’t know at this time about what God is doing or may do in your life at some point. People change, which is one of the more interesting aspects of being human. The man you are now is not the man you were 20 years ago or the man you may be 20 years from now.
We don’t give up on you or anyone else. I certainly hope God’s not done with me. At age 44 I have a long ways to go in terms of growth and maturity. I make mistakes I regret every day.
You still have free will in there accepting Jesus, “embrace Christ.” Stinks of Arminianism. Excellent.
Your argument is a bit based on the premise that I’m unhappy or I don’t know the joy of loving God [although I speak of the Psalms often] as though attending church has some soteriological significance—even as you insist on TULIP.
Leaving me out of it–as I decline to discuss what church I attend–Sister Susan seems a lot happier and centered than your crew of theological litigants, orphans in your own “Reformed faith.” No offense, just sayin’.
As for not giving up on people, I appreciate you not doing so, EC. I don’t either. Peace. Not a bad discussion atall.
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@Brandon
I think GJohn came from the same or a theologically related community but is at least a generation later than 1John. Revelation IMHO gives a pretty good picture of the family of churches in Asia minor from which both 1John and GJohn emerged.
1John could be very early. As I’ve mentioned before, based on 1John’s author’s description of the debate his opponents may very well be mainstream Hellenistic Jews. There are only some vague hints of Jewish Gnosticism in 1John a few passages which contain Gnostic theology and even then only in a weak form.
Conversely Gospel of John shows knowledge of the mainstream passion narratives which means he has Mark, Luke or both. There whole passages which are Marcionic. There is familiarity with at least mid development Mandaean revealer literature. As Elaine Pagels has noted there may be familiarity with Gospel of Thomas. This is a second century book.
It is theoretically possible that 1John’s author is much later and there is as little as 20 years between them but that’s doubtful. At the other extreme 200 isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. More likely than either extreme is something like 80 years.
Is it odd that the Americans of the Prohibition era didn’t hold to a generalized belief in net neutrality? Communities evolve in their thinking about all sorts of issues. In the case of the Johanne community we have a pretty good record of their evolution.
Well first off I don’t think GJohn has a single author. I mostly agree with the mainstream scholarship (Bultmann) that we have an author and a redactor. So for example picking figures from Smyrna of around the right time: Cerinthus might have been the author and Polycarp the redactor. I’m fairly sure that GJohn’s author doesn’t view his story of Jesus as historical. He is far too freely creating events for thematic purpose to see himself as retelling history. That doesn’t mean the author doesn’t view some of these events as having occurred in material history but the ideas are possibly quite loose. Similarly the redactor wholesale added things, though if the redactor were working from another gospel it is possible he saw these redactions as fully historical. Regardless by the 3rd century there is no question that the story is viewed as mostly historical. But that doesn’t mean the 1st century (or potentially a bit earlier) community of 1John sees Jesus as historical.
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Well first off I don’t think GJohn has a single author. I mostly agree with the mainstream scholarship (Bultmann) that we have an author and a redactor. So for example picking figures from Smyrna of around the right time: Cerinthus might have been the author and Polycarp the redactor. I’m fairly sure that GJohn’s author doesn’t view his story of Jesus as historical. He is far too freely creating events for thematic purpose to see himself as retelling history. That doesn’t mean the author doesn’t view some of these events as having occurred in material history but the ideas are possibly quite loose. Similarly the redactor wholesale added things, though if the redactor were working from another gospel it is possible he saw these redactions as fully historical. Regardless by the 3rd century there is no question that the story is viewed as mostly historical. But that doesn’t mean the 1st century (or potentially a bit earlier) community of 1John sees Jesus as historical.
Don’t lie to us, CD. You’re smokin drugs. You think this and you think that, but what do you know? Ah, that’s a difficult and unanswerable question. Fair enough, but we aren’t in your shoes or puffin on the same, never mind any, bong.
cheers
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vd, t, if you love Jesus, you’d go to worship him.
Love Jesus.
Worship Jesus.
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vd, t, “as though attending church has some soteriological significance.”
That’s not what the Roman Catholic Church you defend teaches.
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Hello CD-Host
How can you know there is no word-play when you don’t have the words? If indeed there is a Hebrew version, you don’t have it. You only have a translation of it. Suppose you took a passage from a newspaper, asked a translator to make you a Spanish version, then took this Spanish version to someone else to turn back into English for you. Do you think this final version would be identical to what you started with? Of course not. Words between languages don’t match in that simple one-to-one kind of way.
Suppose you have a phrase like ‘I was hauled over the coals’ in English. That’s probably not going to work in any other language, so a translator will say something like ‘I got into lots of trouble’. Then if the original version has any surrounding pun, or double meaning, revolving around the word or concept of coal, the person reading a translated version will not get it, and will not even know that it was ever there for him to not get. Get it? (Sorry if that example doesn’t work in American English).
On the big one that you mention, I understand from my commentaries that Jesus would probably have used the word ‘Kephas’, Aramaic for ‘rock’. It doesn’t only work in Greek.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying that the apostles as characters in Matthew don’t correspond to the real individuals. Again, how can you know? What other contemporary profound treatment of them as characters and influences can you rely on in order to spot the discrepancy?
I understand what you’re saying about ‘parthenos’ but don’t see why that negates the possibility of a Hebrew Matthew. You’re not assuming that he was unfamiliar with the Septuagint, right?
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@ CD-H:
Well, yes. If the CtC claim is in fact that the church everywhere was highly structured from Go, then 1 John undermines that claim.
In particular, we agree that John’s audience was not in the habit of referring doctrinal issues to the church hierarchy.
Not being a CtC-er, it would be best for me not to represent their thesis, since I’m uncertain about its extent.
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@Jeff
Good summary. Well there is one point where you are stating a disagreement where I actually agree and one place you assumed agreement that we disagree on.
First let’s hit the unexpected agreement:
I do agree that this is 1John’s author’s message.
I’m not objecting to the technicality I’ve listed a whole bunch of things 1John’s author says that are inconsistent with him having seen Jesus. For example in your theme above it is all about stuff “we” (i.e. is including the audience of the letters) saw. Under your theory they never saw Jesus or miracles they just heard some guy tell them about Jesus and miracles. The use of “see” for your theory is more metaphorical than in mine because of the we.
But it isn’t written. There is no simple explicit statement about the doctrine regarding God’s son Jesus. Rather this is derived from Scripture via. a complex process of understanding. We see this idea now “we” (the Christian community) see how the scriptures spoke of Jesus when before we couldn’t in Paul as well. The community “sees” this now the same way that someone might “see” how to solve a difficult math problem or to use your analogy may come to “see’ how contraction of space from motion must imply that time is not absolute.
This analogy is faulty. Solving a disagreement via. mutual consent is fully consistent with American contract law. It is how the courts prefer disagreements are settled. That’s different than if you were to use a process totally contrary to contract law like resolving disputes based on social station i.e. you come from a better class so he is obligated to defer.
And here is the point of disagreement … I don’t know that the author of 1John is aware of Christian councils used to establish doctrine. Certainly he’d be aware of the Sanhedrin and Jewish courts but that doesn’t mean he’s ever seen or heard of a Christian council playing a similar role. I suspect you are thinking Acts and the Jerusalem council. But
1) I don’t know if the council in James actually happened (though on balance I think it likely based on an actual event around the time Luke has it)
2) I don’t know if there has been any or much contact ever between the 1John community and the Essene Jerusalem community. 1John’s author seems to have absolutely no knowledge of James or concern about a global movement. His focus is local.
3) Even if there contact I don’t know if timeline wise 1John is before or after that council.
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CD-Host,
Is there anywhere you’ve laid out your thinking on dating the New Testament? I’d be interested to see your chronology.
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@Token
Let me take your points in reverse order.
Remember that the Hebrew Matthew hypothesis is Susan’s affirmative case. She’s the one who has to lay out the relationship between Matthew and the Septuagint in her theory. That’s not part of the negative case. And it is important to answer why in her theory Matthew was written in Hebrew at all, what would be the point of Hebrew rather than Aramaic or Greek? Think of a modern day American Catholic (not a pope) writing a book in Latin. That kind of person is almost always a Catholic traditionalist. Similarly we do have 1st century authors who write in Hebrew they are Jewish conservatives. Jewish traditionalists rejected the legitimacy of the Hellenistic denomination including their bible (the Septuagint), their ethical systems (Cynical philosophy of the type that Matthew has Jesus preaching), the theology of heavens (that has a need for a chain of intermediaries like a Logos / Great Angel between God and man), etc…
Why is Matthew in Hebrew is one of the key questions she has to answer. Not provide evidence for, since I’ve accepted the burden of proof (or disproof if you will) but at the very least she needs to come up a plausible theory.
For example we know there were in the mid 1st century Christians that are part of the forced circumcision party. In the first century there were a large number of non-Jews who had light to moderate involvement in Judaism called God Fearers. The Forced Circumcisers were Jews who objected to God Fearer movement believing that followers of Yahweh in any sense needed to be circumcised. So they grabbed up God Fearers and circumcised them, making them in their minds Jewish. The circumcision issue in Paul and Acts are likely reflections of how important the debate was over forced circumcision to mid 1st century Christians.
So for example if Susan wants to have Matthew associated with forced circumcisers then his choosing to write a religious book in Hebrew becomes plausible. The problem is the contents of the book are completely at odds with Matthew being a political zealot. It is of course also completely at odds with her major theme that Matthew is a Catholic.
So familiar with the Septuagint absolutely. Non-hostile to the Septuagint very unlikely if he is writing in Hebrew.
Yes in Aramaic cepha works. But remember that Susan’s hypothesis is Hebrew not Aramaic. There is no back and forth loaning between Greek and Hebrew like there is between Greek and Aramaic. Hebrew is a dead language when the Jews encounter the Greeks, Aramaic is still alive and so the two languages are loaning words to one another.
I should also mention that cepha indicates a small stone so the entire imagery that Catholics want to apply to Matt 16:18 falls apart if you want that theory.
This BTW is why I want her to start with an affirmative case. I’m willing to accept the burden of proof (or disproof) but I’m not willing to debate all possible theories. Because she has to lock down whether in Hebrew Matthew what name does Peter go by? Is he a Hellenist who goes by Petros, does he go by Šimʻōn Kêpâ (the Syriac form) does he go simply by Cephas… The parts all have to work together in an affirmative case.
What you are trying to do is say that on each negative point you get to construct an entirely separate affirmative case without having to worry about whether thee affirmative cases contradict one another or not. It is entirely possible that Hebrew Matthew is so contradicted by the facts that I can still win the argument with both the burden of proof and having to defend against a constantly changing affirmative but given that you aren’t even Catholic I don’t see any reason to put that much work in.
Susan’s just posted a “I can’t possibly defend my theory if you aren’t willing to hold an open mind that something completely contradicted by all available facts and making no sense logically could be true”. I think that indicates she’s probably doing the background reading and saw why Hebrew Matthew was completely rejected two centuries ago. The whole point of Hebrew Matthew was to have a simple testable thesis that proves (at least for her) that the church fathers are unreliable on matters of Christian history.
You are a Protestant. Your religion depends on the church fathers being somewhat unreliable.
I’ll hit the rest in the next post.
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@Token
I’m not sure that dragged over the coals wouldn’t translate. But “call it a day” I think would likely fall into a lexical gap. How the translator handled those is again part of the affirmative case. In her theory is Greek Matthew a dynamic translation from the Hebrew or a formal translation from Hebrew? If dynamic then the theology of the translator and the author might diverge and we need to take both into account. For example when Saint Jerome translated from Greek to Latin he injected a lot of Catholic theology into the text. Most modern English translations are loaded with Protestant theology being injected write into the text. And there is a lot of passionate discussion about what is or is not acceptable in bible translation in the English language community because of this.
Assuming that Matthew in Greek is a formal translation it would leave behind signs of original wordplay. If you look at the KJV or ESV (unlike the NT their OT is rather accurate) the Hebrew idioms are left mostly intact. You can see the original author’s structures including wordplay in those formal translations. And in those translations they wouldn’t change metaphors so “hauled over the coals” would be left alone in that kind of translation. So I disagree that a pun or double meaning wouldn’t be evident.
For example “archons” in Greek is rulers or powers. Take 1Cor 2:8 which is ambiguous between the demons and the earthly leadership
NLT: But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.
The ambiguity is preserved.
KJV: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Princes here is removing the ambiguity, this is just bad translation.
I’ll do one example in detail. We know a lot about the term apostle. It is a seafairing term for someone who delivers a document. The Cynics and the Stoics adopt it for their missionaries (remember how much Cynical content is in Matthew, so Matthew’s dependency of Cynicism is clear). Paul, Didache, Pseudo-Clementine all use the term in the Cynical sense. Jewish Gnostic (including Christian Gnostic) use it that way. So we have a pretty good first century understanding of the role of the apostles what the term meant to at least some Christians. And this is what we see in.
It is not at all what we see in Matthew. In Matthew the apostles have an actual historic bond with Jesus as well as a calling (in the Gnostic sense) which is different than the just other disciples. They become both proxies for Jesus and teachers of Jesus. So in the New Testament we have is two theologies of apostles existing side by side:
Christian Epistles: One who hears the call of the heavenly redeemer and tells other about it.
Synoptic Gospels: A historical envoy of the earthly redeemer
Now I’m going to build an affirmative case. Which came first? Did they arrive at the same time and just exist side by side or did one come from the other? For Susan’s theory to be true they can’t be ordered historically or the Epistle theology had to come later.
We have tons of Greek literature for the Epistle Theology of Apostles. So in particular we know it didn’t derive from the Gospel Theology of Apostles. As I mentioned above Matthew knows about Cynics since his Jesus figure acts like a Cynical sage so they aren’t existing at the same time side by side in ignorance of one another. Susan would need to answer the question if the epistles came out of the apostles who are living what’s described in Matthew why do they keep using “apostle” in the normative primitive Christianity sense and not in the way that Matthew uses it?
I think the only possible order is the Epistle Theology of the Apostles came first and then the Gospel Theology of the Apostles. There is one problem: the theologies are rather far apart. So if they are ordered historically then we would expect to see an intermediate form in the Christian literature somewhere in-between the two theologies. And that intermediate form would have to happen fairly early for it to come before Matthew and Luke. And sure enough this hypothesis is both testable and confirmed:
Encratite Theology of the Apostles: A quasi-mythic figure who acts as a primordial messenger for the heavenly redeemer.
And if you think about it a lot of the Catholic theology of the apostles is a weakened form of the Encratite theology from which it came.
Apostolic succession: well of course they are the primordial source. The doctrine of Apostolic Succession is Encratitism it isn’t in the New Testament but we know where it came from.
Pick another Catholic apostolic doctrine. Why are the apostles mostly all considered martyrs in Catholic “history”? Makes no sense in Catholic theology at all. Catholicism acknowledges that people die for stupid causes and bad ideas all the time. You’ve read Paul, what theological importance would Paul have attached to his own death? But for the Encratites the apostles on earth are what Jesus is in heaven. They mirror Jesus so for example as Jesus is crucified in heaven, Peter is crucified on earth. You see this dual fulfillment in Acts where Paul mirrors many of the miracles that the Gospel of Luke attributes to the Jesus figure.
So we have these weird remnants in the stories that don’t make any sense theologically. If Catholicism comes before Encratite Christianity how did Encratite Christianity get mixed in? If Matthew’s view of apostles came first why don’t the Epistle’s share Matthew’s theology of apostles? That’s a very very big problem that she needs to answer in a theory of Matthew being early chronologically and moreover Catholicism being the first Christianity.
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@JC
I’m curious why you concede that. It isn’t obvious to me at all. For John, truth is a person – the divine logos has become incarnate. Jesus is the “word of life”. It is this word of life that they heard with their own ears, saw with their own eyes, and touched with their own hands. And it is this experience with the word of life that is the basis of apostolic authority (whom I believe the we refers to rather than John and his readers).
@CDH I’m not sure how you conclude that the writer of 1 John doesn’t believe in the incarnation when he writes things like “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God”. Further the authority for the command in 1John 3:16 is the example of Christ (of whom he claims to be a personal witness). There is nothing there about his own authority other than that to point to the example of Jesus.
Re: 1Jn3:21-24 that wasn’t Jesus’ central command, it was him telling his listeners what God’s central command is.
Re: 1Jn2:6, I don’t get the ambiguity – clearly he is referring to the one who walked (i.e. the one who became flesh). Your reference to 1J4:12 undermines your point in that he clearly distinguished between God who no one has seen and the Son who has come in the flesh.
Your exegesis is a mess. I understand the data is sparse and data is always necessarily underdetermined, so it is impossible to “prove” anything by referring to it. I certainly don’t claim to be able to prove that the more orthodox readings of the NT, authorship, etc… (though I do find Wright, Witherington, etc… mostly convincing). Now arguing for apostolic authorship/contribution/origin of 1Jn (witherington argues that Lazarus wrote the gospel of John, 1Jn, and revelation interestingly enough), the gospels, the Pauline epistles, etc… doesn’t mean that the development of those texts wasn’t messy, that there wasn’t cross fertilization, that scribes didn’t contribute or collate, etc… I’m not sure any of that undermines inspiration or apostolic authority. This is a far cry from the Ctc apologetic, but then I don’t buy their claims either.
I will say that your reliance on Pagels, Ehrman, etc… is dangerous. These folks have a definite point of view they bring to the table. Skepticism isn’t neutrality. Of course guys like Wright have a definite point of view as well. But it seems to me that skepticism and criticality can be an impediment to finding truth (if such a thing can be known…I’m skeptical (ahem) ). The adversarial stance from critical scholars leads to tendentious readings as they seek to undermine rather than understand. To be fair this is what we reward in the academy (in the science and elsewhere). I remain unconvinced that this is healthy.
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Tom – You still have free will in there accepting Jesus, “embrace Christ.” Stinks of Arminianism. Excellent.
Erik – Not really.
God uses means in working out election. Real, physical men preach the gospel in real, physical churches. Real men hear the gospel and are either transformed by it or further hardened by it. God is working out his eternal plans in time and space and we are participants in that, willing or unwilling. It all furthers His glory whether men are being saved or remaining unsaved.
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@ sdb: Conceptually, I’m with you. I think John is writing about the word made flesh, and the purpose of the letter is to teach about the word of life whom he saw. Grammatically, I would point to three things.
(1) The neuter gender is suggestive but not dispositive. By itself, grammar is often flexibilized (see what I did there?) either on purpose or through sloppiness. So the repeated neuter gender may or may not be a flag of intent. But …
(2) … “περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς” puts the referent of “ho” to be NOT the word of life himself, but that which is concerning the word of life. Which interpretation is confirmed by
(3) verse 5, “Καὶ ἔστιν αὕτη ἡ ἀγγελία ἣν ἀκηκόαμεν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀναγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν, ὅτι ὁ θεὸς φῶς …” , “And the truth itself is, which we heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light…”
In other words, what is heard and proclaimed and heard is the truth, is that truth concerning the Word of Life. John is claiming to be a μαρτυρος, one who was an eyewitness to that truth.
Now, I think you’re pointing out that there is a flattening or ambiguity in John’s mind between “truth concerning the Word of Life” and the Word of Life himself. That ambiguity comes out in verse 2, where John says, “καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ μαρτυροῦμεν καὶ ἀπαγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα καὶ ἐφανερώθη ἡμῖν—”
Here, the life itself is manifested and beheld and witnessed and proclaimed.
Putting vv 1 and 2 together, I think the simplest explanation is that there are two different sources for 1 John, one from Egypt and one from Asia Minor, and a redactor spliced them together between verses 1 and 2 without noticing the grammatical errors.
Just kidding. I think the simplest explanation is that there is a thin line in John’s mind between the Word of Life and the teachings about the Word of Life. Grammatically, I think v 1 and v 5 are technically speaking about the teachings about the Word of Life.
Thoughts?
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Tom – Your argument is a bit based on the premise that I’m unhappy or I don’t know the joy of loving God [although I speak of the Psalms often] as though attending church has some soteriological significance—even as you insist on TULIP.
Erik – Whether you’re happy or not is irrelevant, although if you’re not in Christ I hope you’re unhappy or at least unsettled.
Those who hate God and love sin are often pretty pleased by sin. They’re having a good time and may have a good time throughout their lives. Life is short, though, and consequences await after death.
Those Christ has called He has also called to be joined into churches in which the law and gospel are faithfully preached. Churches aren’t perfect, but those who are in Christ should be attracted to them as they are the primary place that those people will hear the Word preached, receive the sacraments, and hopefully help and be helped by fellow believers. If someone has no attraction to these things whatsoever and believe they are in Christ we should be concerned about them. They may be self-deceived.
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Tom – Sister Susan seems a lot happier and centered than your crew of theological litigants, orphans in your own “Reformed faith.” No offense, just sayin’.
Erik – I like Susan, but I think she’s pretty unsettled and is trying desperately hard to believe she has found the truth in Catholicism. We’re all sad for her because we think she has left a more faithful church for a far less faithful church. It’s very dangerous to have been in the truth and to have wandered far from it.
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Tom,
Since you’re reading the Psalms, go back and read Genesis & Exodus.
See if you can see election in how God dealt with the Patriarchs. Ask yourself If God was faithful to them because they were inherently good people or if He was faithful to them merely because He chose to be.
Also look at how God dealt with Pharaoh. Maybe the textbook Scriptural example of how God hardens some and is gracious to others.
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CD-H: For example in your theme above it is all about stuff “we” (i.e. is including the audience of the letters) saw. Under your theory they never saw Jesus or miracles they just heard some guy tell them about Jesus and miracles.
I wonder whether the “we” referent is the ursprung for our disagreement. Here’s my translation key:
There is an audience whom John calls “you”, υμεις
There is the author, εγω
There are the antiChrists
And there is “we.”
It is my contention that John uses “we” in two different and clearly discernible senses. First, he uses it in 1.1 – 6 to refer to the community from which he is writing. This is clearly discernible by his contrast of “we” with “you”: We are writing to you. This usage occurs again in 4.4 – 6. You are from God; They are not from God; We are from God. Here’s how you know the difference: whoever is from God listens to us.
But overall within the letter, John appears to use “we” as the generic “anyone” — that is, encompassing both his community and theirs.
This is actually explicit in 2.1: καὶ ἐάν τις ἁμάρτῃ, παράκλητον ἔχομεν “If anyone sins, we have an advocate…” where John uses 1st plural as the match for τις.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see any places within the letter where John uses “we” to mean “you and I” in the sense of his audience plus himself.
Instead, we is used for “any one of us over here or you over there”, and in the generic sense of English one or German man.
So it might like seem like this is a complicated scheme. But I think it is the simplest scheme that allows us to make sense of 1.5 and 2.1 at the same time.
It is absolutely clear in 1.5 that “we” does not include “you”, his audience; and it is absolutely clear in 2.1 that 1st plural is used to correspond to τις.
So then the question is, which usages are which? And I would suggest the test that if John is contrasting “we” and “you”, then the first; otherwise, generic.
How does this affect the reading? I think it greatly impacts the understanding of ch 4.
The “we” in 4.6 is contrasted with both “you”, who are not to believe every spirit, and also with the “they”, whom the world listens to. In other words, this is an instance in which “we” refers to John’s community, the same ones who heard and beheld and are writing to “you.”
And here, “you” are to listen to “us” and not “them” because they do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. We do. And we beheld, and heard, and handled, and we bear witness to you.
In other words, 4.6 occurs in the context of the opening of the letter.
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Tom,
Another fascinating passage is the Parable of the Sower (or the Parable of the Soils) in Matthew 13. The gospel is compared to seed that is sown. Some of the seed lands on the path and the birds eat it. Some of the seed lands on rocky soil and the plants come up, but because they have very little root they wither and die when the sun becomes hot. Some seed falls among thorns and the thorns come up and choke the young plants. Finally, some seed falls on good soil and produces a healthy crop.
The fascinating thing about the parable is that there is no suggestion that the condition of the soil (the receptivity of the hearers of the gospel) has anything to do with their own cultivation of themselves. It’s all God leaving some unreceptive to the gospel while making others highly receptive.
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@DanH
No I haven’t done a complete timeline for the New Testament.
I do have a post that lists some of them (along with a lot of non-New Testament literature). http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2012/09/sects-to-evangelicals.html
I have thought about it probably I should put together as much as I can. Right now I could do most of them but not all of them so I can’t put together a full timeline yet. I need help form scholarship and if I live long enough I’ll just have to wait to see what they say. For example the tie between Ephesians and Colossians. There are huge blocks of text copied word for word from one another like Luke and Mark. But we don’t have the equivalent of Matthew so ripping out the Q material is harder. So what we are left with is a puzzle on their dependency. The theme of Colossians is that in Jesus Christ the Plemoria of the Godhead resides bodily. This contrasted with say Valentinian Gnostics where Christ is one in a long chain of the Aions. Valentinus has the more primitive theology (i.e. we see it in 1st century works) but Valentinus knows Colossians. I don’t know how to resolve that. They are alive at the same time and the sects are influencing one another but to get this to work I’ve got to be speculating very rapid migration of ideas between sects and that sounds like fudging the evidence to fit the hypotheses. Godspeed has done a great job on this but I don’t think we are there yet and I’m not smart enough to figure it, at least not yet. I can order parts of the documents or I can order the sects but I can’t get a consistent order for both which means I don’t even have a workable hypothesis.
I’m sort of on a long term project:
a) Get clear on sect dependencies on one another intellectually
b) Get clear on geographical / national dependancies how different sects responded in different areas
c) Get clear on how the New Testament flowed through and was changed by those geographies.
I’m doing pretty good on (a) though I have some major holes around the Elkasaites. I’m going to have to read more Manichaeism to try and reverse engineer what is Manichean and what is earlier. (b) I’m working through now. The CD-Host of 2018 will be much more geographically knowledgeable than the one of 2014 is.
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You keep playing the same losing hand about going to church, as if it’s going to get you–or not me–to heaven. It doesn’t even work in your theology, let alone a coherent one.
Tom, this is silly. The point about adhering to a church isn’t that it is a work that earns heaven–your protest is juvenile, the sort an adolescent uses on his regular church going folks who can see right through it. The point is that just as anybody who wants to have an adult relationship with a member of the opposite sex makes a solemn, public and institutional vow, he who wants to claim Christian must similarly cleave to the church. Until those respective vows are made, one is just playing patty cake.
You’re speaking with institutional Christians here, not glorified moralists. I’m quite sure you don’t know the difference, but your sophomoric rant is for the latter who count church going as meritorious. The former see it as responsive and natural for those who would that God is their Father take the church as their mother.
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@JC “Thoughts?”
You’ve left my amateur attempts at exegesis in the dust. I don’t know any greek at all (apart from using the letters as symbols in equations), so I’m left trusting the translation. I think I follow your argument though. Thanks!
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@Sdb
Taking on flesh means venturing to the lower realms of material and taking on a form in those realms.
An incarnation is living an entire life fully material on earth. Those aren’t remotely the same concepts. For example Hellenistic Jews believe in a Logos that is an interface between the higher realms and the lower realms. The Logos creates an image in the realm of flesh a point of contact . Paul for example holds to the doctrine of Adam Kadmon (the higher Adam 1 Cor 15:45-50). So you have a chain: God -> Logos -> Adam Kadmon -> material Adam / mythic Adam. 1John is so far only asserting something like that about Jesus. That’s far short of what doctrine of the incarnation means in Christianity.
Exactly! The author of 1John is pointing to the example about Jesus rather than quoting Jesus’ explicit statements on those matters (John 10:11/15:13-4). Preachers generally try and draw the narrowest conclusion they can. If Jesus explicitly says “do Y’ ” that’s better than “Jesus did X so you should do Y ” . There is a negative inference to be made. Not with certainty, but that’s important information about what the author of 1John knows about Jesus.
Exactly. John is saying it is God’s central command. John isn’t quoting he is giving an opinion. If John could quote Jesus he most likely would.
Didn’t you just say you don’t do any Greek? So how you would you know what’s grammatically ambiguous and what’s not? If you don’t agree with me, look it up. If the author of 1John wanted to be clear and point to the Son he would have used a different grammatical construction than he did. You might think the idea is clear but the author didn’t and his opinion is the one we are talking about.
Or he doesn’t believe anyone has seen the Son either.
Not really. You just aren’t really reading the thread. You just assume you know what the author of 1John thinks and when I quote him saying stuff that disagrees with your assumptions then you assume I’m exegeting improperly rather than checking the text. Exegesis is reading what the author said not what you wish he said or you would have liked him to have said. Get into the habit of reading what the author says stripping away your opinion as much as possible so that you can distinguishing what he said from what you think the author meant.
Wright, Witherington, etc.. don’t answer basic questions about the structure of John. Their explanation explains nothing. Basic questions like why does canonical John have Jesus coming into a place he just left? Why are there two endings? Lazarus is a person we know nothing about I don’t see how it changes things much if their theory is John ben Zebedee, John of Patmos, Lazarus or Joe the Plumber. If they are going to disagree with Bultmann in the name of scholarship they need to step up the plate and explain the evidence we have in a way that makes more sense than Bultmann did. Otherwise Bultmann wrote a devastating critique of the single author theory in his commentary. Any scholarship since Bultmann needs to be building on his work and using it as a starting point. Not going back to 18th century arguments as if the last 200 years of scholarship never happened.
I don’t agree at all. There aren’t two parties here doing the same thing. One party is trying to reconstruct the timeline for how Christianity evolved from the existent human societies. The other party is trying to muddy the waters, desperately trying to pretend it didn’t evolve and that a man-god came down to earth to found a religion.
I think the best period of biblical scholarship was the History of Religions school where you had a group of people who consider Jesus no more real than Zeus and analyzed the evidence of Christianity with exactly the same detachment (skepticism) as a modern Archeologist would show towards the cult of Athena. If you have conflicting stories about Athena and know for certain that none of these originated from a genuine supernatural being on Mount Olympus and thus all of them originated in human communities it speeds things up considerably.
Since you mentioned Witherington and we are talking about John let’s pick him. Witherington writes a good commentary on John. He knows who Bultmann is. Witherington often contrasts his work with Dodd. He does a minor modification of Fortnana based on the numbering. I don’t agree with him but so far off to a good start. But then while having just argued that the author of John is using collections of secondary sources he then tries to incorporate the tradition view and gives the traditional weight so as to make his author an eye witness! A complete break with his own discussion 10 pages earlier. He knows those traditional views have been disproven in the very books he’s quoting 10 pages earlier. It is frankly dishonest.
If he disagreed and wanted to argue for the traditional view then he needs to present good quality counter argument to why those traditional views are simply rejected today the same way spontaneous generation is rejected in biology. What he shouldn’t do is try to pretend that there was never a Charles Cagniard de la Tour, Theodor Schwann or Louis Pasteur and that traditional arguments for John’s authorship haven’t been answered.
Just after that Witherington provides a normal introduction that John’s Jesus is personified Wisdom (Sophia). Not bad. Again I don’t agree but a reasonable position. He writes his analysis based on Wisdom. For a 1st century author? There is a ton of great material on Sophia cults and the development of Sophia theology in Judaism? If John is a Sophia cultist he has far more distinctive theology than stuff from centuries earlier. It would be like quoting Charles Babbage in doing an analysis of IBM’s recent SoftLayer initiative and pretending there was nothing else in-between. Witherington knows this. If he wanted to write a good book he’d be contrasting Gospel of John with the existent Sophia literature and we’d see a lot of contrasts with for example the Apocryphon of John which is contemporary Sophia literature from the same community as Gospel of John. The problem is that his audience would be completely offended by 1st century Jewish Sophia cults, so he lies and pretends they don’t exist.
Frankly I have a tough time even calling what those are going scholarship at all. What he’s doing in my mind is apologetics. He’s not trying to advance the state of knowledge he’s trying to defend Christianity against the state of knowledge by inoculating people who read his books. Oh Bultmann “yeah there was something in Witherington about that its refuted”. Brandon earlier in the third kept name dropping these books which “refuted” the points I was making. As soon as I pointed out the problems he moved on.
What people in the Walter Bauer school are doing is bring back the History of Religions approach. They are studying Christianity, in particular right now the wealth of Coptic Christian literature we’ve discovered / compiled in the last century, with the assumption that none of the revelations are genuine divine revelation. They treat Jesus the same as Athena. All miracles attributed to Athena were not induced by a god who lived on Mount Olympus. All miracles attributed to Jesus were not induced by a god who lives on the right hand of the Father.
I don’t want to be neutral between truth and nonsense when we are talking history. I don’t have the same strong opinions when we are talking theology because that is inside the system. The reason I believe in people like John Turner is because John Turner has added crucial information to the body of knowledge about the origins of Christianity. When has Witherington ever done anything remotely like that?
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CD,
You said,
Hey CD, I haven’t moved on, I’ve just been busy, and I’m really not looking to get into two lengthy dialogues. I was just trying to get a sense of where you were coming from. I find you interesting and knowledgeable so I was just curious about what you were saying and how you would respond to some of the conservative literature. My questions are truly nothing more than inquisitive. I don’t want to get into a debate with someone like you, particularly considering that I’ve been labelled a “bad debater” 🙂
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CD-H: Taking on flesh means venturing to the lower realms of material and taking on a form in those realms. An incarnation is living an entire life fully material on earth. Those aren’t remotely the same concepts.
OK, so let’s grant that John does not lay out the doctrine of the incarnation. But would you agree that
(1) John insists that Jesus is God’s Messiah (Christ)?
(2) John insists that affirmation that “the Messiah has come in the flesh” (whatever that means) is a test of orthodoxy?
(3) That “coming in the flesh” is substantial enough that John can say that we beheld, heard, and handled the fact that Jesus came in the flesh?
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Zrim
Posted June 27, 2014 at 2:44 pm | Permalink
You keep playing the same losing hand about going to church, as if it’s going to get you–or not me–to heaven. It doesn’t even work in your theology, let alone a coherent one.
Tom, this is silly. The point about adhering to a church isn’t that it is a work that earns heaven–your protest is juvenile, the sort an adolescent uses on his regular church going folks who can see right through it.
No, Darryl’s tactic is juvenile. It has nothing to do with discussing theology. I decline to state anything about my church attendance, and I continue to submit that even by your Calvinist theology, it’s not probative.
You’re speaking with institutional Christians here, not glorified moralists.
That’s is not a fact in evidence.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 27, 2014 at 1:16 pm | Permalink
Tom – You still have free will in there accepting Jesus, “embrace Christ.” Stinks of Arminianism. Excellent.
Erik – Not really.
Yes, really.
God uses means in working out election. Real, physical men preach the gospel in real, physical churches. Real men hear the gospel and are either transformed by it or further hardened by it. God is working out his eternal plans in time and space and we are participants in that, willing or unwilling. It all furthers His glory whether men are being saved or remaining unsaved.
Election is a completion backwards principle. Those attending churches YOU agree with are obviously “saved.” Self-fulfilling prophesy.
What makes you think your little theolgical society here is living the Gospel? Just because you debate the fine points of your theology, and condemn those who don’t hold to it? So did the Pharisees.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 27, 2014 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
Tom – Sister Susan seems a lot happier and centered than your crew of theological litigants, orphans in your own “Reformed faith.” No offense, just sayin’.
Erik – I like Susan, but I think she’s pretty unsettled and is trying desperately hard to believe she has found the truth in Catholicism. We’re all sad for her because we think she has left a more faithful church for a far less faithful church. It’s very dangerous to have been in the truth and to have wandered far from it.
I’m happy for her. Not as happy for you, because y’all don’t seem as happy.
Erik Charter
Posted June 27, 2014 at 1:55 pm | Permalink
Tom,
Tom,
Since you’re reading the Psalms, go back and read Genesis & Exodus.
See if you can see election in how God dealt with the Patriarchs. Ask yourself If God was faithful to them because they were inherently good people or if He was faithful to them merely because He chose to be.
Also look at how God dealt with Pharaoh. Maybe the textbook Scriptural example of how God hardens some and is gracious to others.
…
Another fascinating passage is the Parable of the Sower (or the Parable of the Soils) in Matthew 13. The gospel is compared to seed that is sown. Some of the seed lands on the path and the birds eat it. Some of the seed lands on rocky soil and the plants come up, but because they have very little root they wither and die when the sun becomes hot. Some seed falls among thorns and the thorns come up and choke the young plants. Finally, some seed falls on good soil and produces a healthy crop.
The fascinating thing about the parable is that there is no suggestion that the condition of the soil (the receptivity of the hearers of the gospel) has anything to do with their own cultivation of themselves. It’s all God leaving some unreceptive to the gospel while making others highly receptive.
Very good. However, that’s hardly the last scriptural word on the subject.
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/calvinism.html
Neither can I find sola scriptura in the Bible, so there’s that too. And that Christ made His Church wait 1500 years for John Calvin and his TULIP is a little tough to swallow.
Good stuff, tho, EC. Thx.
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@Jeff
First off good to know that Greek is working on this website when I tried it before it didn’t. So what’s in parenthesis is a test so whatever happens just ignore ( Ὂ ἦν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς )
Second in reading to see whether I bought your theory about we/you… I was struck by what a terrific source 1John is for the Reformed vs. Arminian debate. Good ammo for your side for that debate.
Let me make a quick point about the anti-Christs. I think 1John’s author (I’m going to use 1JA for that since I’m tired of typing this in my responses and don’t want to use John because it is too misleading to lurkers) is using that in a very traditional more literal way of those who oppose the Messiah. If Jesus is fully heavenly he cannot be the messiah. Hence someone who denies Jesus has come in the flesh is denying he can be the messiah and thus is opposing the messiah. I suspect this is a tautology 1JA.
My first comment is I don’t think this dichotomy is needed (so maybe you are right this is the heart of the disagreement). For me 1John 1:5 could be group affiliation
We (collectively have heard) and we collectively proclaim to all…. Clearly the “you” in verse 6 also say they have fellowship.
And that’s how I read Chapter 4: We are from God, you are from God. They are from the world. So yes I think he’s including his audience in the “we”. For example 1Jo 4:21 I think 1JA also believes the audience has the command from God to love. Most of chapter 5 seems to be directed the audience.
5:2 we know we love God when we …
5:3 we love God when we..
5:9 if we accept the testimony of God
In 2:24 obviously the 1JA is including himself in those who must remain in Son and the Father even though this one is phrased in terms of “you”.
In verse 2:28 he makes that explicit where you conflates the you and the we.
etc… So I am definitely including the audience in the we.
____
There also is a bit of a question what makes you think the “them” is outside the sect (community)? Obviously “they” are influencing the “you”. Why couldn’t they be part of the sect and offering a rival theology within the sect? Take the early 1John scenario. This sect is mostly normative Hellenistic Judaism that accepts Jesus as the name of the Great Angel, but won’t associate the Great Angel with the Christ. 1JA and friends are arguing for Jesus is the Christ and “they” are calling him a liar.
___
Anyway I’ll hit your questions from the next post as well:
1) Yes
2) Yes with an asterisk. I think he believes it is absolutely true. I think it is possible that his opponents believe that too i.e. they reject Jesus as Christ because they do not believe he came in the flesh. I’m not entirely sure that 1JA has what you would think of as a concept of orthodoxy so I’m also objecting to that word a bit.
3) No with an asterisk. I don’t think 1JA believes he knows of that Jesus came in the flesh directly be beholding, hearing or handling him. He testifies again and again and again that the spirits testify to Jesus having come in the flesh. 1Jo 5:9 God (I’d assume scripture) is testifying to Jesus having come in the flesh.
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Hello CD-H,
My take on this question is that you initially dismissed the existence of Hebrew Matthew as a possibility and selected that as an issue which would, if she pursued it, shake Susan’s faith in the church fathers and consequently in the Catholic church. All that the church fathers had asserted was that Matthew had written a gospel in Hebrew. If that turns out to be the case, her faith in them is justified (on that point). I don’t think she or anyone else needs to also produce an account of Matthew’s motivation in using Hebrew or how his language choice would have been significant at the time. Those are extra questions which you are now tossing in.
We will have to disagree on the word play in translation issue. Take this sentence: CD, I take it that you’re taking it upon yourself to take down the church fathers. OK, so this is a hideous sentence, because in English we don’t like this kind of repetition. I wrote it to demonstrate the range of meanings of the word ‘take’ (and there are heaps more). If you translated it into another language you would end up saying things like ‘consider this sentence’ ‘I assume’ ‘you have decided to’ ‘prove the CF to be wrong’. And a person reading your translation would have no idea of that weird feature of my original sentence, because even if you wanted to, it’s so unlikely that you’d find a verb in the second language with precisely the same semantic range as ‘take’ in English. So I still say the ‘word play’ objection doesn’t make sense. And poetry would not be expected in this sort of narrative (plenty of OT Hebrew is not poetic). So, what are the other Hebrew structures that we should be able to see?
Remember, I’m not claiming that Matthew was written in Hebrew (though I honestly think it could have been). I am objecting to your dismissal of the very possibility.
No, I’m not Catholic, but I have a lot of respect for the church fathers. Also I have a commitment to the supernatural element in Christianity (remember CS Lewis’ ‘Deep Church’)?
So, we’ve established that the ‘stone/rock’ word play is not limited only to Greek. Why can’t Hebrew Matthew have this utterance in Aramaic (as of course the Gospels have other Aramaic sprinklings) and his Greek translator with a sigh of relief realises he can keep going in Greek for this bit, as it will work just was well?
When I said NT textual scholarship changes, of course I don’t mean that overnight it suddenly turns into marine biology, but that ‘established’ facts can be called into question with the passage of time. If you are relying on late dating of certain documents to reinforce certain positions, you have to be ready for these datings to be refined and possibly substantially altered. As time goes by more (not less) manuscripts come to light, so by the nature of the case you are more likely to encounter earlier versions. Just be prepared for your faith to be shaken, for science is a most unreliable friend to atheism.
BTW before I finish up, a sentence like ‘Matthew knows about the Cynics because his Jesus acts like a Cynical sage’ is extremely revealing about your presuppositions! I think even the most skeptical would agree that the man Jesus, whoever he was, had a powerful personality. Are you assuming that his biographers needed to scratch around for other models of speech and behaviour which they could use for their regrettably colourless and ethically vacuous subject?
Also, do you know Howarde’s book about the Shem Tob version of Hebrew Matthew? You might find it interesting. (Again, I’m not making claims for it! But who knows, maybe the Church Fathers had a clue…)
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Tom – You still have free will in there accepting Jesus, “embrace Christ.” Stinks of Arminianism. Excellent.
Erik – Not really.
Tom – Yes, really.
Erik – Expound. Are you saying that people don’t need to somehow profess faith in Christ (i.e. “accept Jesus” or “embrace Christ”)? What about:
Romans 10:9-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
9 “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
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Tom – Election is a completion backwards principle. Those attending churches YOU agree with are obviously “saved.” Self-fulfilling prophesy.
Erik – I would say those who have faith in Christ are saved. There are many such people who are in churches that my church has no affiliation with whatsoever. There are certainly Christians outside of churches, but they should be in churches if they are able:
Hebrews 10:25 ESV
English Standard Version
“Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
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Tom – What makes you think your little theolgical society here is living the Gospel? Just because you debate the fine points of your theology, and condemn those who don’t hold to it? So did the Pharisees.
Erik – First off, a technical point. I don’t think people “live the gospel”. I don’t blame you for making that mistake, because a lot of Christians make it, too. If the gospel (“good news”) is Christ dying on the Cross to satisfy God’s wrath against sin, no mere man can pull that off.
I think your question is, do the people here live faithfully as Christians?
First off, I don’t know everyone. Of the regulars I do know I would say yes, they are. Do they always treat you as they should? Probably not, but you provoke them more than you should. We can all work on treating other people better, even when we feel like they don’t deserve it. We shouldn’t repay evil for evil, but it’s human nature to do so.
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Tom,
As far as condemning others go, I have no power to condemn anyone. I can read Scripture in a straightforward way and try to tell people who God says will be condemned:
For example, Galatians 5:
16 “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy,4 drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
If people are headed for an awful judgment after they die, isn’t it our duty to try and warn them? Maybe God will use that warning to turn them around. Once again, he uses ordinary means to save people.
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@Brandon
Oh didn’t know until that post that the Brandon posting with me on this thread and the Brandon debating on CtC are the same guy. Don’t know if it makes it any better morally for me that my intent was to insult you behind your back rather than to your face but… I’m sorry if I had known you were reading what I wrote I would have been less rude. You got a more unfiltered version of my opinion than I would have liked.
Anyway I fully accept your explanation. Being the primary on CtC is exhausting. A very good excuse to ignore me. I’ll be around after.
Anyway since you are here:
Bryan is an excellent debater. He’s going to play false dichotomies to try and put you in a corner. Every single time he gives you a list of possible alternatives think carefully if those are the only alternatives. The one he is skipping is often the way out of the trap he’s laying. To pick an example I gave an answer today to Sdb to the “Deconstructing the Fathers” restricted choice showing how the error could have arose independently multiple times in multiple place: another sect being absorbed into Catholicism which had this view.
There are tons of factual errors and distortions in Bryan’s article. Look more carefully for holes.
Post #5 was a good punch.
Post #16 by Bryan is the argument you need to focus your head around. I can’t advise you on what position to take on Ecclesiastic Deism since you have to be defending your actual faith here. But you are going to get pushed into a corner here. Think about where you want to go on whether Jesus founded a church, what church it was… This is one of his favorite plays. Just remember in the back of your mind: There was a unique type of Christian church as long as you exclude all the other ones. This church taught a unique theology, as long as you exclude all but one of the theologies it taught. The leaders within it were subject to a binding leadership, as long as they didn’t suffer from “personal failings” and do something this leadership didn’t approve. And the fact that they are all acting as if this binding structure teaching a unique theology to a unified church doesn’t exist, and in fact frequently indicate the opposite shouldn’t be counted as any evidence against this position because in context there is some good reason.
They keep hitting you on this like the proximate method
#34
They keep pushing this nonsense about a “silence” may I suggest the answer I gave them 5 years ago:
Gospel of Mark — where the apostles are constantly denigrated as being essentially idiots. They reject the savior as he dies. There is no appointment of the apostles.
Marcion- arguably the most influential early 2nd century Christian leader. He argued that none of the other apostles besides Paul had understood Jesus at all. He collected Paul’s letters along with a Gospel into a single book (a primitive form of the New Testament) and this not the church was the ultimate authority.
Gospel of Mary Magdalene — Mary presents pages of the actual teachings of Jesus while Andrew and Peter (representing the Catholic church) reject the real teachings because they only accept the things the savior said to them. This theme gets developed even further in Pistis Sophia again apostolic succession rather than revelation is attacked as being contrary to the instruction of Jesus.
Pistis Sophia — Peter’s rejectionism is expanded to the whole doctrine of hyclic, psychic and pneumatic Christians.
Dialogue of the Savior — likely authored about 120 where the Jesus himself attacks the notion of spiritual authorities of any sort.
Gospel of the Ebonites somewhere between 140-200 rejects the supposed apostolic church (pre-Catholic Church) as being the church founded by the apostles is falsifying their bible.
The Gospel of Thomas rejects that there are a distinguished group of people called “apostles” everyone is a disciple.
In the Book of John the Baptizer is essentially a counter to Luke/Acts which builds the case for the construction of the church as John -> Jesus -> Peter -> Paul -> Church.
The Great Declaration of Simon Magus argues that just as thought and soul are invisible the true church equally invisible, the visible church, apostolic church, is corrupted like the body.
The Apocryphon of John argues against those who claim you need to follow their rites to be saved.
The Sayings of Jesus (Sufi) attacks the apostolic church as a financial scam designed to rip people off by selling them a false message of Jesus.
And I could do another 50-100 examples easy just from what survived. This war they say never left any evidence occurred and left tons of evidence.
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Tom – Neither can I find sola scriptura in the Bible, so there’s that too. And that Christ made His Church wait 1500 years for John Calvin and his TULIP is a little tough to swallow.
Erik – How about 2 Timothy 3:16?:
New International Version (NIV)
16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”
To be fair, if we’re comparing “paradigms”, the Roman Catholic system is not clearly spelled out in the Bible, either.
As far as Calvin goes, he was building on many of the Church Fathers, especially on Augustine.
I have no doubt that many Christians have been looking to Christ and his righteousness throughout Christian history, in spite of the superstition and distractions offered by the Roman Catholic system.
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Tom,
What Roman Catholic doctrines do you believe are superior to Reformed doctrines and what would you point to as greater evidence for their truth?
You’ve mentioned Natural Law, but as Van Drunen has pointed out, you don’t have to be Roman Catholic to embrace Natural Law.
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Tom,
You linked to:
Calvinism Critiqued by a Former Calvinist
by Steve Jones
What arguments did you find compelling there?
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Back to this one:
Tom – Election is a completion backwards principle. Those attending churches YOU agree with are obviously “saved.” Self-fulfilling prophesy.
Erik – As far as our church members being “obviously saved”, I don’t think we would say that. If someone makes a credible profession of faith we would admit them to membership based on that profession. We don’t claim to be able to “peer into their heart” or anything like that.
They are treated as a Christian and admitted to The Lord’s Supper. If someone commits acts that are not in line with their profession of faith, however, church discipline may take place and eventually that member may be denied The Lord’s Supper and even excommunicated from the church.
The goal is always the person’s repentance, however, not punishment. At the point the person repents they are welcomed back and restored to membership and The Lord’s Supper.
One reason we criticize both the RCC and much of the Protestant world is that church discipline appears to be almost totally absent in those churches.
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@Token
To be fair she selected it. She’s the one who made strong claims they supported this nonsense. I originally said that her church rejects Hebrew for the original Matthew (a position I still hold). She picked the ground on which to debate apostolic succession I just accepted the glove once thrown down.
I felt pretty confident since a 1/2 dozen good German scholars had destroyed this argument 200 years ago that this would be easy. Susan is going to find that many of the claims of her church are easily refuted. It is going to be up her own conscience how she handles that.
Now the question for you is whether given that Susan has bowed out you are stepping forward. I asked specific questions. If you are taking the affirmative case then answer them. Those most certainly were part of the original discussion.
My original claim was By the time of the authoring of the Gospel of Matthew the churches existed. The apostles were dead and themselves legends. The Gospel of Matthew’s theology on the role of the apostles is already quite Catholic. It has to be. The apostles are dead, the world didn’t end and we are dealing with the children or grandchildren of the people who were originally drawn to Christianity. Matthew is about institutionalization. You can see how the theology is developing as you go from Mark to Matthew. I’m not sure how you see Matthew as refuting the evolution of Christianity, it is a product of the evolution.
We go back and forth a bit and the questions she needed to answer were:
But let’s assume that’s true. Then you would have to explain:
1) how did it happen that huge chunks of it are word for word quotes from a Greek book? (Mark)
2) how did it happen that huge chunks of it are word for word reproduced in Luke (Q material)?
3) Why does the book contain 0 translations of Hebrew literary structures?
4) When Matthew quotes the bible he almost always agrees with the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Text when they vary. And mind you those disagreements are embedded in the text itself in key story lines so you couldn’t have a situation where the Greek translator just changed the bible quote to match the Septuagint.
Those questions are absolutely about how Greek Matthew got constructed from Hebrew Matthew. They aren’t extra questions I am throwing in those are the original 4. The 4th question is pretty explicitly about why he is using the Septuagint in a Hebrew text. I know about the Qu’ran that doesn’t mean I’m going to quote it when discussing 1John on a OPC discussion board. You don’t have answers because these questions don’t answers and you just don’t like the fact that Polycarp either lied or exaggerated. Take it up with him.
Nope not true at all. That’s not even all that Susan asserted (read her very long and quite detailed assertion). The church fathers said quite a bit more about it. When she started to do her homework she’d run into contradictions between Cyril and Polycarp. Cyril in the debate with Pelagius where he quotes Nazoreans gives us enough material to make it clear that Nazoreans was a translation from Greek into Aramaic. Cyril also quotes the Hebrew Matthew which is also in Aramaic (not Hebrew) and has all sorts of theology that Susan would hate (like no Joseph) and in fact no genealogy. So she’s not going to want that to be the original Matthew either. Jerome spends a long time discussing the differences in the baptismal theology between Hebrew Matthew and the original Greek dismissing the version he had as not being the original (admitting he was wrong). Those guys all read Greek. They wouldn’t believe a bunch of hooey about an obviously Greek book was written in a vastly different language originally.
And then even more damning if is the Syriac translation. Why would the Syriac fathers have done the complex work of translating the Greek Matthew into Syriac if there was a Hebrew Matthew?
Hebraic proverbs rather than Greek ones.
Grammer shifts for masculine vs. feminine subjects
Conflation between abbreviation and numerology
Rules of grammar shift dramatically between spoken and written so there would need to be mood shifts when Matthew has characters speaking (which happens a lot)
Dialectical features convey attitudes in Hebrew but not in Koine (interestingly English has this too so) which the Greek translator would handle with parentheticals or some other such device.
Shifts between vernacular Hebrew and standard Hebrew not present in the Greek.
Babylonian words and how to handle them.
Conjunctional structures are totally different so we’d expect Matthew to be using weird conjunctions
Iconic phrases
We would expect numerology. And that Matthew does have. But his numerology is Greek not Hebrew:
forgiving “seventy-seven times” (18:22)
99: “ninety-nine sheep” (18:12-13)
3:8; 13:23 seeds go 30, 60, 100 or thirty pieces of silver for Judas 26:15; 27:3, 9
Well then stop objecting and put up an affirmative case that makes this theory make some sense. So far you have yet to address a single objection that I have. If you want to object in any way that’s going to be convincing you are going to need to put together a plausible argument for what this Hebrew Matthew was and how the Greek structures got into Greek Matthew we have now.
Finding the same pun in Matthew that’s present in Greek that would also work in Chinese doesn’t prove the original was in Hebrew. You are trying to present arguments for Hebrew not for Aramaic. If the book is in Hebrew most of the expressions needed to come from Hebrew, not French not Chinese and not Aramaic. Sure there can be quotes and those will have different structures.
Let me posit that given any objection there exists some theoretical Hebrew Matthew that overcomes that one objection. The problem is there is no Hebrew Matthew that overcomes even a substantial fraction of them all. This is why I keep demanding an affirmative case first about what this book is. We aren’t going to play a game where I object get to keep constructing an entire different Hebrew Matthew every-time there is an objection. And if that doesn’t work just say that verse is a quote in another language entirely.
Me thinks you need to spend more time with the skeptical if you think they would all agree that Gospel of Matthew reflects a historical Jesus’ personality.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 27, 2014 at 9:47 pm | Permalink
Tom – You still have free will in there accepting Jesus, “embrace Christ.” Stinks of Arminianism. Excellent.
Erik – Not really.
Tom – Yes, really.
Erik – Expound. Are you saying that people don’t need to somehow profess faith in Christ (i.e. “accept Jesus” or “embrace Christ”)? What about:
Romans 10:9-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
9 “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Calvinists and Arminians seem to be battling for possession of Rom 10:9-10. I watch with interest, esp per the Baptists, where C’s and A’s sit cheek by jowl.
http://vintage.aomin.org/DoctrinesLead.html
Personally, I think it’s a lot of sound and fury over a doctrine that may or may not be true, one we have no control over, and one that many people have gone to heaven regardless of believing pro or con or indifferent. But I listen, although the Estrep fellow in the link above has the exact same reservations I do, and I’ve never read him until now. Neither am I moved by James White’s replies, the most effective of which still elide the problems.
Here, sadly, we encounter blatant misrepresentation of the Calvinistic position. And it is this very shallow, very inaccurate representation of the Reformed doctrines of grace that call forth this response. Nothing is accomplished when one misrepresents the opposition. “Straw man” argumentation only confuses, it does not help.
Yeah, well, that’s why I don’t get too deep into it. Who needs that noise? I express my reservations and give you a chance to respond. I certainly understand that if God’s omniscient and all-powerful, Election works on some level. But if it makes you a bunch of supercilious pricks, perhaps you haven’t got it all exactly right. The fruits thing, eh?
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Erik Charter
Posted June 27, 2014 at 10:11 pm | Permalink
Tom – Neither can I find sola scriptura in the Bible, so there’s that too. And that Christ made His Church wait 1500 years for John Calvin and his TULIP is a little tough to swallow.
Erik – How about 2 Timothy 3:16?:
New International Version (NIV)
16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”
To be fair, if we’re comparing “paradigms”, the Roman Catholic system is not clearly spelled out in the Bible, either.
As far as Calvin goes, he was building on many of the Church Fathers, especially on Augustine.
I have no doubt that many Christians have been looking to Christ and his righteousness throughout Christian history, in spite of the superstition and distractions offered by the Roman Catholic system.
Well, you used Paul’s epistle, which when he wrote it, wasn’t “Scripture” yet. Nor is it clear Paul thinks he’s writing scripture.
Nor Augustine, for that matter. Why he’s accorded any theological authority, I dunno. I like Aquinas a lot, but he’s wrong sometimes.
Neither does 2 Tim 3 explicitly or implicitly [!] back SOLA scriptura, let alone the hoops some people make the Bible jump through [as, no offense, you just did here].
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Erik Charter
Posted June 27, 2014 at 10:25 pm | Permalink
Back to this one:
Tom – Election is a completion backwards principle. Those attending churches YOU agree with are obviously “saved.” Self-fulfilling prophesy.
Erik – As far as our church members being “obviously saved”, I don’t think we would say that. If someone makes a credible profession of faith we would admit them to membership based on that profession. We don’t claim to be able to “peer into their heart” or anything like that.
They are treated as a Christian and admitted to The Lord’s Supper. If someone commits acts that are not in line with their profession of faith, however, church discipline may take place and eventually that member may be denied The Lord’s Supper and even excommunicated from the church.
The goal is always the person’s repentance, however, not punishment. At the point the person repents they are welcomed back and restored to membership and The Lord’s Supper.
One reason we criticize both the RCC and much of the Protestant world is that church discipline appears to be almost totally absent in those churches.
I understand and respect all that. My point is that the “Tom doesn’t go to church” is a BS tactic. And not very nice or honest. Church attendance is only a footnote, not a necessity, in your own theology. Bad representation for your religion. There should be discipline for that too. ;-P
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vd, t, and people here are still wanting know what you are besides a gnat. If you go to church, then we might understand what your point is. Otherwise it seems to be “you guys are jackasses.” That’s not history. It might qualify as theology if it were your pay grade.
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vd, t, do you live the gospel? Just because you accuse here of people not living the gospel doesn’t mean you’re doing history. It’s theology, but which one? You keep hiding behind some nonsense about theological societies or history or followers of dg. Why not simply argue like a real jackass?
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vd, t, “Yeah, well, that’s why I don’t get too deep into it.”
Duh.
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ec, notice how obscure and inactive (nothing since 2007) vd, t’s links are:
I guess vd, t’s clients are low right now.
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CD-H: Some answers and questions.
There also is a bit of a question what makes you think the “them” is outside the sect (community)? Obviously “they” are influencing the “you”. Why couldn’t they be part of the sect and offering a rival theology within the sect?
2.19 seems to indicate that “they” began as a part of the community – or a part of John’s community – but are no longer a part of it.
But even if not, it seems clear to me that John wishes the community to draw a line and “other” them. He wants his audience to see the antichrists as “them” and not “we.”
In 2:24 obviously the 1JA is including himself in those who must remain in Son and the Father even though this one is phrased in terms of “you”.
Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us —eternal life.
I’m not sure that this is entirely obvious. The “too” or “even” (καὶ ὑμεῖς …) makes it seem that “you” will be included into a larger group, of which John is a part.
In verse 2:28 he makes that explicit where you conflates the you and the we.
Yes, agreed. I think this is a good example of the “generic” use.
My basic hypothesis is that 1 John is sloppy in its Greek. He has an idiosyncrasy of using “we” in two different ways, and he slips back and forth between them.
I recognize that this is complex, but (a) I think 1.3-5 requires it, and (b) it’s not all that unusual in the world of informal language.
Now the question: I’m a little confused about what your theory is for 1.3-5. We have
“that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us”
“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you”
The “you” is clearly his audience. You claim that the “we” is he together with his audience. Are you saying that in 1.3 – 5, the audience is writing to itself so that they will have fellowship with itself?
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Ravings of a Madman, with editor’s notes: “My point is that the “Tom doesn’t go to church” is a BS tactic. And not very nice (ed. – how liberal) or honest (ed. – so he goes to church?). Church attendance is only a footnote, not a necessity, in your own theology (ed. – has he suffered a head injury and would his wife even notice?). Bad representation for your religion (ed. – admirable fundie piety. There should be discipline for that too. ;-P (ed. – fire up the stake, remember to use that tongue emoticon some time)”
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Tom – one that many people have gone to heaven regardless of believing pro or con or indifferent
Erik – I agree with that. Confessing the doctrine of election is not the same thing as confessing faith in Christ. We would not say that someone needs to believe everything we believe in order to be saved.
Look at the Heidelberg Catechism. The heart of it deals with the grace of God and Christ’s work. Some Reformed doctrines are more essential than others.
Tom – But if it makes you a bunch of supercilious pricks, perhaps you haven’t got it all exactly right. The fruits thing, eh?
Erik – If we are that, it might be in spite of Reformed theology, not because of it. One thing we (Old Lifers) talk about is that sin continues to abide in Christians to some degree throughout their earthly lives. We’re not perfectionists.
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Tom – Well, you used Paul’s epistle, which when he wrote it, wasn’t “Scripture” yet. Nor is it clear Paul thinks he’s writing scripture.
Nor Augustine, for that matter. Why he’s accorded any theological authority, I dunno. I like Aquinas a lot, but he’s wrong sometimes.
Neither does 2 Tim 3 explicitly or implicitly [!] back SOLA scriptura, let alone the hoops some people make the Bible jump through [as, no offense, you just did here].
Erik – Is your low view of Paul’s epistles and of Augustine in accord with what the Roman Catholic Church teaches?
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Tom – I understand and respect all that. My point is that the “Tom doesn’t go to church” is a BS tactic. And not very nice or honest. Church attendance is only a footnote, not a necessity, in your own theology. Bad representation for your religion. There should be discipline for that too. ;-P
Erik – The reason this is used against you is because you argue for Roman Catholicism. Attending Mass is a critically important part of Roman Catholicism.
Church attendance is also more than a footnote in Reformed theology.
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@Jeff
I agree with you on the line. Let me the bottom of your post.
I think he is pretty explicit in verse 1.3 “3 What we have seen and heard we announce to you too, so that you may have fellowship with us (and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ).” What is he saying is that enter into the fellowship of God, the Son and the faithful is contained in the announcement. This is the theme that 1John that belief in Son is not going to be sufficient rather than belief that the Son has come in the flesh is going to be mandatory now. He is absolutely drawing that line. That’s the point of the letter.
The fact he is having to say it explicitly means that some of them disagree. Let’s take a recent example involving your community. Two-thirds of evangelicals believe that Mormonism is part of Christianity. 75% of all Protestant pastors (and I assume the number is much higher for evangelical pastors) don’t believe that. There were many speeches during the 2012 campaign where evangelical pastors explained that even while supporting Romney politically that Mormonism was not just another Christian denomination rather it was another religion.
You had made a comment yesterday, “John insists that affirmation that ‘the Messiah has come in the flesh’ (whatever that means) is a test of orthodoxy?” Let me rephrase that: “John insists on an affirmation that Jesus is the messiah and thus has come in the flesh”. That’s the point of contention. Both sides believe (or at least consider the belief acceptable) in Jesus as a spiritual being, both sides believe the messiah most come in the flesh. The argument is whether Jesus is the messiah and whether he has come in the flesh. 1JA learned from scripture he has, the opponents consider him a liar. He’s trying to get his community into an “us vs. them frame” or to accept being excommunicated from the broader community. We have all seen the truth, they rejected the truth. Their fellowship doesn’t have the real Jesus therefore it doesn’t have God. Their fellowship is a fake fellowship. So you want to be in my fellowship with the real Jesus and the God.
Now in terms of my theory on 1:3-5 I’m going to speculate a bit here. This is stuff I can’t say for certain but at least it communicates the context I’m picturing that I think fits this text. This may be the moment that the founder (the real John of Zebedee perhaps?) declared “we are forming our own sect” or at least “we are going to form our own clique and cut ourselves off emotionally”. Even if the liberal scholars are right, temporally the order the books were written in was 3John, 2John 1John and what started as a personal dispute gets reframed theologically in this book, this is the key moment when 1JA’s community starts thinking of themselves as not just people people with a different opinion in the community but a different community. This is near the moment in time when the movement inside the synagogues becomes churches. I don’t think the break has already happened, I do think 1JA is trying to make it happen. But even if I’m wrong has happened, it seems like it is only a few years after and the membership in those two communities still consider themselves connected even if the leadership doesn’t. And if the context that gives great reason this book made it through the centuries. 1John is their declaration of independence. 1John may have been been preserved because it was the founding document for a Christian church in Asia-Minor (ex. Smyrna) as distinct from the proto-Christianity that lived in the synagogues and it might have set the pattern for all of them. This is the moment “we” started thinking of ourselves as Christians and not Jews who had a hobby of Jesus speculation.
The reason I believe that is possible is there is a lot in this book that sounds very early. For an example consider the issue of Jesus as the paraclete (παράκλητον) of God in verse 2:1. That’s likely going to be early because we know that the community goes through a series of steps on the paraclete doctrine getting successively more specific. Parts of this community are going to successively hold to the Holy Spirit as the paraclete of Jesus, to John as the paraclete of Jesus (example Revelation), to Paul as the paraclete of Jesus, to Montanus as the paraclete of Jesus, to Marcion as the paraclete of Paul, to Priscilla as the paraclete of Montanus… to Ibn Arabi as the paraclete of Mohammad (maybe it kept going, I don’t know my Sufism). 1JA is throwing out the very first step in that chain and doesn’t expect the community to understand the context. The context is so brief and natural, 1John 2:1 may the moment the doctrine was invented!
Another place is 1JA’s doctrine of justification (I’m using this word with a heavy asterisk). He has a doctrine of a sinless perfect through Jesus (proto-Gnostic perhaps). But note in (2:12) they are sinless because of Jesus name — διὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ (i.e. sinless comes from being able to pull down the power of Jesus). No one yet has asked the question of how Jesus grants sinless perfection to the congregation: the crucifixion, the revelation of the man of light, the transfiguration of the soul, the heavenly temple…. the name doctrine reads to me like 1JA doesn’t even know the question is going to arise. There is an innocence here about Christian history that’s hard to believe if he come in contact with much other Christianity.
Anyway, enough with my only semi-textually supported speculation. But that’s the sort of situation I’m picturing and things like declarations make a lot of sense in those contexts: we have all seen the truth, they rejected the truth.
Finally on 2.24 we are disagreeing on the interpretation and I think this is coming from you using the ESV:
D. G. Hart
Posted June 28, 2014 at 7:14 am | Permalink
vd, t, and people here are still wanting know what you are besides a gnat. If you go to church, then we might understand what your point is. Otherwise it seems to be “you guys are jackasses.” That’s not history. It might qualify as theology if it were your pay grade.
D. G. Hart
Posted June 28, 2014 at 7:17 am | Permalink
vd, t, do you live the gospel? Just because you accuse here of people not living the gospel doesn’t mean you’re doing history. It’s theology, but which one? You keep hiding behind some nonsense about theological societies or history or followers of dg. Why not simply argue like a real jackass?
D. G. Hart
Posted June 28, 2014 at 7:24 am | Permalink
vd, t, “Yeah, well, that’s why I don’t get too deep into it.”
Duh.
Still calling me “VD?” Hi, Dr. Dirty Mouth. Not feeling the love of Jesus here.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 28, 2014 at 11:00 am | Permalink
Tom – one that many people have gone to heaven regardless of believing pro or con or indifferent
Erik – I agree with that. Confessing the doctrine of election is not the same thing as confessing faith in Christ. We would not say that someone needs to believe everything we believe in order to be saved.
Look at the Heidelberg Catechism. The heart of it deals with the grace of God and Christ’s work. Some Reformed doctrines are more essential than others.
Erik Charter
Posted June 28, 2014 at 11:02 am | Permalink
Tom – Well, you used Paul’s epistle, which when he wrote it, wasn’t “Scripture” yet. Nor is it clear Paul thinks he’s writing scripture.
Nor Augustine, for that matter. Why he’s accorded any theological authority, I dunno. I like Aquinas a lot, but he’s wrong sometimes.
Neither does 2 Tim 3 explicitly or implicitly [!] back SOLA scriptura, let alone the hoops some people make the Bible jump through [as, no offense, you just did here].
Erik – Is your low view of Paul’s epistles and of Augustine in accord with what the Roman Catholic Church teaches?
Erik Charter
Posted June 28, 2014 at 11:05 am | Permalink
Tom – I understand and respect all that. My point is that the “Tom doesn’t go to church” is a BS tactic. And not very nice or honest. Church attendance is only a footnote, not a necessity, in your own theology. Bad representation for your religion. There should be discipline for that too. ;-P
Erik – The reason this is used against you is because you argue for Roman Catholicism. Attending Mass is a critically important part of Roman Catholicism.
Church attendance is also more than a footnote in Reformed theology.
Following Dr. Dirty Mouth’s lead in trying to box me in as Catholic? You’ve been better than that, EC. I do like Aquinas, admittedly.
Many or most defenses of Calvinism against the Arminians depend on minimizing the differences [and of course accusing the other of “not understanding” Calvin], as you saw in the James White post linked above. By the time they’re done, they never heard of John Calvin.
I’d bookmarked this a long time ago, a rather sola scriptura argument for Aquinas over Calvin, and even a seeking of common ground, a “Thomistic TULIP.”
http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/tulip.htm
All of which is why I said “don’t get into it deeply”–I mean the arguing. [As usual, Darryl reads me opportunistically and uncharitably.] There’s an endless supply without me adding to a point that I think amounts to little. But I read up on it and watch the sparks fly. If Baptists can’t discuss it fruitfully within their own church, the rest of us have little hope.
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CD-Host,
I’ve decided not to continue discussing with you. If you were a theist I could at least stand a chance, but since you start from materialism, you will only ever view divine oracles as man-made. So if you show redaction and bleed-over between writings, ( which Protestant and Catholic scholars are aware of)while it’s interesting, it is not really important to my trust in the Church. Thank God we have writings from very early-on, but as far as Christianity is concerned it doesn’t depend on it. Let’s face it, I believe that when councils were called to hashout some doctrine or another, that those involved were actually given divine knowledge about what is true concerning the Holy Trinity, nature of Christ, soteriology… Otherwise there is no way to verifiably differentiate error from truth. Orthodoxy becomes meaningless.
I understand that you do’t have a problem with this because you are an atheist, but the domain that you are investigating( “Christianities”) is incarnational to its core. It doesn’t begin with the Apostles being martyred because they believe that Jesus is a sage, and then later developing and vigorously defending Christ’s Divinity. Besides being anachronistic, it completely ignores the Christology of the OT.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html
http://www.newmanreader.org/Works/development/chapter6-1.html#section1
I wish you well, but debating is a waste of time.
Susan
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The general incomprehensibility combined with the niche nature of this discussion is stretching the bounds of the medium. Bultmann always provided an interpretation, what was lacking was historical viability of that interpretation. But, carry on. I never read Bultmann as it specifically regarded 1 John. Speculative is a good word.
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Tom – Following Dr. Dirty Mouth’s lead in trying to box me in as Catholic? You’ve been better than that, EC. I do like Aquinas, admittedly.
Erik – If you’re not a Catholic, that’s fine. You tend to think highly of them, though, at least compared to the Reformed. You do realize you stand condemned under their theology, though, don’t you? Especially if you were born into the church, experienced Catholic schooling, and have now wandered from the faith.
I would think you would be more sore at them than you are at us.
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Tom – Many or most defenses of Calvinism against the Arminians depend on minimizing the differences [and of course accusing the other of “not understanding” Calvin], as you saw in the James White post linked above. By the time they’re done, they never heard of John Calvin.
Erik – The classic defense of TULIP is the Canons of Dort, one the the three standards (along with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession) of the Continental Reformed Churches. The United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA) is a contemporary representative of that tradition.
It might be better to confine your arguments to the beliefs of churches vs. scattered individuals and “ministries” that you find on the internet. You can find just about any weird theological position you want if you look long enough. It doesn’t prove anything.
One thing you might want to consider is that as a “lone ranger” you might be in a dangerous place. You could stumble on beliefs that are true completely on your own, but mathematically it’s highly improbable. You’re just one, fallible man, after all (as am I).
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Tom,
What do you honestly believe will happen to you after you die?
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vd, t, you mean the love Jesus showed to the Pharisees? That’s history. Your Jesus love is liberal theology.
Worship Jesus.
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@ CD-H: I’m sorry, I got lost. Who do you think the “we” and “you” are in vv 1.3 – 5?
On 2.24, my focus is on the extra και, which is rendered as “also” or “too” in the various translations (excepting the more paraphrastic NLT, etc). While I think John’s Greek is sloppy, I do think that throwing in extra words is likely intentional, and this word seems to indicate something like “not only us, but you also.”
I agree with you about the conditional nature of 2.24.
Here’s my understanding of the situation.
(1) John is geographically removed from his audience. Writing inter-community memos is too costly and cumbersome; he doesn’t quote any specific teachings or name any names; and I still perceive a distinction between “we” and “you”
(2) John writes in order to cut out “they” and to bring “you” into fellowship with “we.”
(3) John appeals to things that “we” have “seen, heard, and handled” as the ground for his credibility.
(4) Thus, in order to be in fellowship with “we”, “you” should believe these things.
(5) One of those things is that Jesus, the Messiah, has come in the flesh.
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@Jeff
We = the sect or that subset of the sect listening to 1JA. 1JA is including the audience in the writing to create a shared proclamation. Just like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” Or fans saying “next week we are going beat San Francisco” when of course literally the fans have nothing to do with the team from San Francisco.
you = the audience for the letter. Those people listening to 1JA.
they = those people who aren’t listening to 1JA i.e. those who don’t believe Jesus has come in the flesh.
Raymond Brown has a pretty long discussion of καὶ ὑμεῖς rendering it “you in turn”. So his fully exaggerated translation is “As for you, what you heard from the beginning must abide in you. If you have abiding in you what you heard from the beginning then will you yourself abide in the Son and in the Father”
Which I think in context means the you isn’t distinct. This is clearly an abstract principle. If you don’t stop at red lights then καὶ ὑμεῖς will get into a lot of traffic accidents. There is no clear distinction here. Part of the assertion is that if I didn’t stop at red lights I’d also get into traffic accidents.
I don’t see anything in the text indicating that kind of distance. In 4:7 he talks about loving one another. I don’t know how that would make sense if he has no close contact with this community.
It comes down to the we vs. you distinction he time and time again violates it. To pick key examples 2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate. The logic completely falls apart if the distinction is presents. If Jay sins then Lucy has an advocate? Why does Lucy need an advocate if Jay sins.
I think my treatment is more natural and fits every verse in the entire letter. I get away from two distinct senses of we in the letter and I don’t have to assume sloppy pronouns. 1JA
Agreed.
Agreed. But be careful here remember the things about Jesus are things that God testified to (i.e. he saw in scripture or through the use of spirits). 1JA and the community have seen the testimony not the thing being testified about.
Not quite. Those in fellowship do believe those things. He’s saying something that is on ongoing act including the present (he uses the aorist). So rephrase as: Those in fellowship with us do believe those things.
___
Anyway if you go back to the original point of disagreement:
John talks about what “we saw”. I’ve been arguing that what he means is that the community collectively saw how scripture testifies to Jesus as Messiah. My interpretation allows you take to 1JA at his word everywhere. What 1JA means throughout the text is what he says. When he says that God testifies he literally means he learned it from scripture. When he says his knowledge of Jesus comes from the Father he doesn’t mean his knowledge of the Father comes from having spent time with Jesus. When he says that revelation was that eternal life was with the Father he means eternal life is with the Father. I don’t have to posit changing pronoun usage (which you agree you are having to do). When the combination of 2:6/4:12 that he has never seen Jesus he means that. When he uses language about the power of the name of the Son of God he believes in the power of the name. When he says that he learned about the association between blood and Jesus through a spirt he doesn’t mean he was present for a crucifixion.
I think I’ve shown that my interpretation gets to take 1JA at his word everywhere in the text. If you were arguing with a Mormon who was having words change meaning, and taking parts of verses to be allegorical and other parts in the same verse literally what you would say to them? I think you know the kind of exegeses you are proposing here is getting tortured. Using the method you are applying where you start with a viewpoint and then rewrite the author until he agrees, what theological position couldn’t be proven? I think you have to admit that the reading I’m proposing, at least if the book were isolated is the more natural read.
I get the why you are reading it the way you are. Because to read it the way I’m reading it means for you that John of Zebedee / Apostle John or whomever you mean by “John” when you talk about the author doesn’t believe in an earthly incarnation and that’s a very very big pill to swallow. I can get you not being willing to swallow that. Certainly not based on one epistle. But what if virtually all of them have the same problem? What if every single epistle (except the really short ones) show the same devastating ignorance of the gospel story that 1John did? What if all the authors say when read plainly they learned about Jesus through scripture not by 3 years of hanging out together? At what your point is your trying to read the gospels into the epistles no different than Mormons trying to read eternal progression (as man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be) into the epistles?
______
Pulling back even one more level to the discussion with Susan… you had agreed that the CtC claim of a hierarchy being the means of deciding doctrine is refuted by 1John which was the original point for her. 1JA doesn’t know he is supposedly a Bishop working for Pope Clement I / Evaristus. He and his opponents have no hierarchy to appeal to. It didn’t exist yet. So he gives his test for which spirits to believe.
Now that I know Brandon is lurking … virtually every single book of the NT refutes the existence of the episcopate in much the same way. Pick a book and you’ll immediate be struck by how the theological debates are debates between equals. The 1st century literature proves the authors hadn’t even considered the idea. The 2nd century literature proves that once the idea was introduced huge swaths of Christianity rejected it, explicitly considering it an apostasy or at least an innovation. The 3rd century literature proves this rejection continued though the Catholics by then were the most populous sect of Christians. And then in the 4th century you get huge chunks of the planet ruled by sects which came out of Catholicism and still reject it. By the 7th century you get another huge chunk of the planet ruled by a Christian offshoot which in their history shouldn’t even exist. The CtC history is contradictory by every fact we know about the history of Christianity.
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@Susan
I’m sorry what miracle is required for Greek Matthew to be a translation from a Hebrew original? My attack on CtC has never been that their supernatural councils cannot be empirically verified. My attack on CtC has been that their pure secular statements about history are directly and easily falsified. This isn’t a theological debate, they are just making up a history that never happened. If I were debating a Buddhist who believed that George Washington conquered Africa in 1242 I could grant Buddhism and still prove that Washington’s Africa campaign never occurred.
I think you started to do your homework on Hebrew Matthew and started to notice the problems. I suspect that you are going to continue to talk about Polycarp and Irenaeus in much the same way as being trustable regardless of how many times they are proven to be lying propagandist by easily verifiable current day facts. At some point maybe you’ll decide that you’ve had enough of trying to defend the indefensible. Maybe not.
Our host here has probably pointed out something like 200 major flaws in the CtC apologetic over the last 2 years? He’s not an atheist. But hey keep on trucking with your infallible means for differentiating between truth and error.
That’s OK. I need to get back to focusing on my work anyway. This was meant to be a one day break on Wednesday.
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CD-H: I think you have to admit that the reading I’m proposing, at least if the book were isolated is the more natural read.
I get the why you are reading it the way you are. Because to read it the way I’m reading it means for you that John of Zebedee / Apostle John or whomever you mean by “John” when you talk about the author doesn’t believe in an earthly incarnation and that’s a very very big pill to swallow.
Slow down. It *is* true that I’m defending a reading I’ve had for many, many years. But it is also true that I’m defending it because I see a large logical problem with your identification of “you” and “we.” In other words, I find your reading of the text, as a text, to be tortured.
It may not be possible to resolve the impasse, but I’ll give it one more push and then let you have the last word.
Draw sets. On my read, there are three sets: A = “we”, the writer’s community; B = “you”, the readers, whom John hopes to bring into “we”; C = “they.”
At times, John blurs the distinction between “you” and “we” — in fact, as I was reading your post, I was thinking about 2.1, and then you cited it. In other words, he sometimes uses “we” to mean A U B. Let’s denote that as “We.”
The problem with my read is that it has John using “we” inconsistently. In fact, without a control, it runs the risk of having enough parameters (one) to make the elephant’s trunk wiggle. OK, so what would be the alternative? Your reading, which has
“we” = those people listening to 1JA
“you” = those people listening to 1JA
“they” = those people not listening to 1JA
The advantage of this reading is that “we” is now consistent. The disadvantage is that it is logically impossible to make sense of (a) 1.3 – 5, and (b) the purpose of writing a letter to begin with. Further, (c) why should John use two different pronouns to refer to the same set of people?
(a) If “we” refers to the same set as “you”, then John is saying that “we” are writing to ourselves, about the things that we ourselves have seen, so that we may have fellowship with ourselves. At the sentence level, this is nonsense. No-one writes like this. A doesn’t write to A, saying that it’s writing to A, so that A can be in fellowship with A.
(b) If “you” already listen to 1JA, then there is no point in writing the letter. The intent of the letter is clearly to persuade; on your reading, everyone is already persuaded.
(c) If “we” and “you” refer to the same set, 1JA is writing in a horribly unnatural way:
“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
Why does he use two different pronouns within the same paragraph to refer to the same set of people?
So we must reject identifying both “we” and “you” as “those people listening to 1JA.” There are clearly some members of “you” who are not yet members of “we.”
I would suggest, again, that “we” are “those people already siding with John”, and “you” are “those people John wishes to persuade”, and that he elides the two into “We” at points (such as 2.1). This is a move that includes “you” into “we.” That seems the simplest solution to fit all the data.
—
Let me back up and observe something about our conversation, which has been generally positive and very efficient: We both have posed clear questions and received direct substantive answers.
Until I asked who “we” and “you” are. Then, you found it difficult to articulate in a clear, logical, concise way who “we” and “you” are, in a way that accounts for using two different pronouns to refer to the same group. I got long answers and had to repeat questions. Very uncharacteristic of you.
Is it possible that your solution is having a square peg/round hole problem?
—
It’s not necessary for us to agree in the end. I do appreciate your time and expertise.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 28, 2014 at 4:44 pm | Permalink
Tom – Following Dr. Dirty Mouth’s lead in trying to box me in as Catholic? You’ve been better than that, EC. I do like Aquinas, admittedly.
Erik – If you’re not a Catholic, that’s fine. You tend to think highly of them, though, at least compared to the Reformed. You do realize you stand condemned under their theology, though, don’t you? Especially if you were born into the church, experienced Catholic schooling, and have now wandered from the faith.
I would think you would be more sore at them than you are at us.
I’m not sore at anyone. Except Dr. Dirty Mouth, who pollutes his own blog sometimes. Weird.
Erik Charter
Posted June 28, 2014 at 4:53 pm | Permalink
Tom – Many or most defenses of Calvinism against the Arminians depend on minimizing the differences [and of course accusing the other of “not understanding” Calvin], as you saw in the James White post linked above. By the time they’re done, they never heard of John Calvin.
Erik – The classic defense of TULIP is the Canons of Dort, one the the three standards (along with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession) of the Continental Reformed Churches. The United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA) is a contemporary representative of that tradition.
It might be better to confine your arguments to the beliefs of churches vs. scattered individuals and “ministries” that you find on the internet. You can find just about any weird theological position you want if you look long enough. It doesn’t prove anything.
Well, here’s the thing. I watch these sola scriptura battles between you and the Arminians, and everybody’s got a bushelful of scriptural arguments for their side. Some are good; others depend on tortuous translations and interpretations. I think the Arminians get the better of it; the best Calvinist arguments are like whites, that minimize the differences to conceptual and semantic ones.
Sure there’s free will! Sure we evangelize!
One thing you might want to consider is that as a “lone ranger” you might be in a dangerous place. You could stumble on beliefs that are true completely on your own, but mathematically it’s highly improbable. You’re just one, fallible man, after all (as am I).
I suppose most of us have that fantasy when we’re teenagers, that we alone were going to come up with the perfect synthesis of all human and divine truth.
I grew out of that. But it makes me give the fish-eye to Luther and Calvin sometimes. Who the hell are they?
Erik Charter
Posted June 28, 2014 at 5:03 pm | Permalink
Tom,
What do you honestly believe will happen to you after you die?
I think you know I hope and pray that all are saved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_reconciliation
Even me. Even Darryl. 😉
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Hi CD-Host,
You said you ‘felt pretty confident since a 1/2 dozen good German scholars had destroyed this argument 200 years ago that this would be easy’. The moral is I guess that you shouldn’t trust 200 year old Germans.
However you are right that the church fathers had more to say about Hebrew Matthew than simply that it existed. And I knew that. I oversimplified – sorry for the distortion.
Also, on the sceptics, I quite understand that they wouldn’t consider they find a reliable portrait of Jesus in Matthew. My point was that surely any sceptic nowadays would concede that Jesus existed, and that he probably had some noteworthy characteristics / personality which would make him a good candidate as a figurehead for a group who felt like starting a new religion. (Are there still really fundie sceptics who deny he ever existed at all?) So when you say, well obviously Matthew was written late because the writer had to hang around for Cynical sages to pop up so that he could have this Cynical-sage-framework to use for his Jesus character, can you see that could appear as a rather unfounded assumption? Like if a biographer wrote about some earlier British Prime Minister like Disraeli and readers say, well, he’s presenting him as if he was an orator but of course Churchill was the one who exemplified that particular characteristic so that means accounts of Disraeli couldn’t pre-date Churchill.
You’ve asserted a few times now that Matthew has no (zero) Hebrew structures. Can I ask you, politely, and you don’t have to answer – do you actually know Koine Greek extremely well, and biblical Hebrew extremely well, and feel entirely equipped to make that judgement? When I think of languages I know well, say English and French, I would have to be extremely careful and take a long long time to read any lengthy narrative in one of these languages and make that assessment. From what you’ve said in this thread already, I gather that your background is in science rather than languages/humanities. Which might mean that you know quite a lot about the biblical languages but defer to experts on some questions (nobody can be a real expert in everything). (For myself, I’m interested in languages, poetry and translation in general; for biblical languages, I can read the easier NT books in Greek but appreciate resources for more challenging ones. I’ve haven’t made an attempt as an adult to learn Hebrew but learned some as a kid. As I’ve already mentioned I’m not an NT scholar or a clergyperson. Just interested.)
So I’m wondering if you would like to refer me to any other sources that assert that Matthew has zero Hebrew structures?
I’ve just been looking at some work by David Alan Black on Hebrew / Aramaic features of NT writing. The list is pretty lengthy. For Matthew, and for specific Hebrew structures, it includes word order, use of pronouns, use of direct speech, redundant use of ‘apokrinomai’, parallelism (which of course is poetic, I should have picked up on that) and others.
Why don’t you take a look and see what you think?
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Tom Van Duke, right-wing, flag-waving, Hollywood universalist. Wow.
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vd, t, saved from what?
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@Jeff
I still have difficulty articulating it in a clear way because ultimately I think the pronouns are being used for rhetorical effect to create affinity and draw distinctions. I don’t think people tend to use pronouns when you have complex overlapping groups as cleanly as you would like.
Let’s take our president’s example from his most famous speech in 2004 where he does precisely what you say no one does:
His use of “we” to mean Americans: That is the true genius of America, a faith…… a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution; and that our votes will be counted — or at least, most of the time.
or
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they are going
His use of you to also mean Americans: because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
or even more explicitly
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, independents, I say to you, tonight, we have more work to do
Explicitly intermixing the two: I say to you, tonight, we have more work to do…
Yet a 3rd pronoun if effect (people/they):
People don’t expect — people don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.
So you can see Obama doing exactly what you were saying no one does in a speech. The use of the pronouns isn’t for logic it is for affinity. And moreover this speech was distributed in writing a few hours before it was given verbally.
Pronouns are used that way to create affinity. The opponents have called 1JA a liar and 1JA is clearly offended and keeps so “no they are the real liars”. He is trying to create the we/they distinction in the minds of his audience. The audience might be quite ambivalent about the doctrine of whether Jesus came in the flesh or not. He wants to remove that ambiguity. It isn’t a logical argument it is an emotional one. He’s drawing them in with a shared source of loyalty, with a vision of a shared promise.
1JA pretty explicitly ties the we and you several places. Let me remove the pronouns from 1.3-5 to show how easily this fits. The language will be a bit awkward because no one talks without any pronouns but it isn’t logically incoherent at all:
What our sect has seen and heard we together announce to everyone so that you listeners may have fellowship with my side in this debate (and indeed this shared fellowship is with the Father and with God’s Son Jesus Christ). Thus I John, on behalf of our side, is writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Now this is the gospel message our sect has heard from God and announce to the whole sect: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
I don’t disagree with you here. But this happens in most speeches. Is the audience in Obama’s speech the people in the DNC hall (clearly all members of his faction), Democrats or the entire American people? He has to constantly shift logically. And he does that so as to try and create affinity. The message is: join me in voting for Kerry and you too will be the kind of person who wants an America of opportunity and not one that sends soldiers to Iraq on false pretenses. The use of “you” is used to convince, it creates affinity and makes the individual listener understand that they are being directly spoken to. Emotionally they fell the speech is aimed at them personally. The effect of “we/you” used this way is to present a big group (Kerry’s side) that you (the individual watching television) is being asked to join. Humans are social creatures. They instinctually want to join friendly groups. Their beliefs generally mold to be consistent with their social network. Getting them to identify, gets them to change their opinion. This is precisely the same thing 1JA is doing.
Its not clear. I suspect this is a circulated letter meant to be read by his supporters as the debate heats up. Which is not too different from your view of the letter. If we assume the communities are something like those in Revelation then there is a lot of geographical distance:
letters allow him in a limited way to be everywhere at once. Or alternatively this letter was originally given as a speech, copied/reconstructed and then distributed again with the supporters likely having read it. The anti-flesh arguments are probably pretty generic they would have come up in multiple places.
But I do think 1JA is known to the audience they do have a close affiliation with him. The fact that he doesn’t identify himself is telling.
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@Token
I’ve lost you here. Yeah I am trusting them. You have yet again to be able to answer those 4 questions which I think means my trust was well placed.
That’s not what I said. What I said was that Matthew author’s rebuttals that he has the Jesus character say were from the Cynics. His Jesus character acts like a Cynical sage. Cynicism starts in the late 5th century BCE there is no question it comes before the Matthew. The use of their devices and ideas shows that Matthew’s author is familiar with the Cynics and fond of them. Recasting Greek philosophical ideas into Judaism is the core concept of Hellenistic Judaism. A person writing a 1st century book in Hebrew isn’t a Hellenist he is a conservative anti-Hellenistic. The people writing in Hebrew in the 1st century are xenophobic Jewish extremist who hate Greek culture. The people who want to create a syncretic Jewish-Greek faith love Greek culture. Matthew’s author self evidently falls into the 2nd group.
Let me recast this in American terms. I find a book that has the hero repeat themes from Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Atwood and Mary Daly approvingly. I know that book wasn’t written by a conservative in America. If someone claims that it was written originally in Latin it is nonsense. The only people who write in Latin are Catholic Traditionalist and Catholic Traditionalists don’t like feminism.
This whole thing isn’t about the historicity of Jesus it is about the author of Matthew. The sort of person who would write in Hebrew in the 1st century is not the sort of person who would have been fond of the Cynics. Even if you assume the historical Jesus existed, and the Jesus really said those things the fact that Matthew author is writing in Hebrew indicates he would have hated him if he met him. I should also mention the sort of person who would write in Hebrew would never have been a Roman tax collector either.
You are writing with one who wouldn’t concede that he existed thus has no personality at all. Heck read the other posts in this thread regarding 1John.
Nope I’m far from expert at Koine and I have to rely entire on tools for Hebrew. And yes I feel equipped to make that judgement because I’m very familiar with the complexity of translating Hebrew from another language I’m very fluent in, English. I’ve had countless discussions of how best to express Hebrew ideas in English and how complex the bleed through is. I know what shows up when you try and translate out of Hebrew not because I’m an expert in Hebrew but because even as a non-expert the problems are so obvious. Similarly I don’t need to be an expert in astronomy to know that our solar system doesn’t have three suns. A toddler can easily make that judgement. The Hebrew Matthew hypothesis is ridiculous, it isn’t subtly in error.
We have an excellent example of what Greek translation of Hebrew documents look like in the Septuagint. We also have other examples. And any good commentary documents clearly the sort issues they face.
On the other hand Ann Nyland is an expert. She dismisses Papias statements in Greek that he attributes to Hebrew Matthew could have come from Matthew even an earlier non-canonical version. So you want an expert, there you go. The very first verse after the genealogy 1:18 she says has a Latin structure, Matthew is writing in the style of a Roman proclamation. How does that make it across a translation from Hebrew? The very next verse Matthew’s author uses a euphemism that doesn’t exist in Hebrew. First two verses both are clear evidence from an expert that Matthew is not a translation it is an original.
David Alan Black himself agrees BTW that Hebrew Matthew is ridiculous. Which is why he is so careful to soften it and defends the patristic witness with, ” The statement of Papias has been largely misunderstood by New Testament scholars. Origen, mistakenly thinking that Papias was referring to the language in which Matthew was written, stated that Matthew “was composed in Hebrew characters.” This error was perpetuated by later authors. J. Kürzinger has shown that the words hebraidi dialekto almost certainly means “in a Hebrew style” rather than “in [the] Hebrew language.” ” I wouldn’t call Black and expert but even if you did I’d say your own expert agrees with me. He wants to defend a weaker hypothesis.
His idea about the gospels starts with the fathers, “The protestant church culture in America, of which I am a part, often overlooks the immense contribution that the science of patristics makes to the way we understand the Scriptures. Now I certainly do not wish to replace a text-centered hermeneutic with an approach that is enslaved to the dogmata of councils and creeds. My claim in this book is not that the fathers of the church solve the synoptic problem. It is that any approach that rejects their testimony is, by definition, illegitimate ”
That being said, I’m actually not to opposed to the Griesbach Hypothesis which Black favors. I think the majority of weight is on the other side but I don’t dismiss it out of hand. But even Black because he wants Griesbach has the problem of where word for word quotes would come from and so doesn’t believe in Hebrew Matthew.
Do me one better. Pick 3 verses from Black that you believe couldn’t possibly originate from Greek. Just 3 clear cut verses which had to arise from translation, places where Greek Matthew botches the translation from Hebrew and the verse in the gospel only really make sense in the original Hebrew.
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@Token
Just want to emphasize one point on my 3 verses. From the Hebrew not the Aramaic you keep trying to conflate the two. I’m not denying Aramaic. Q:10-3 (Matt 11:21-4) there is Aramaic bleed in Matthew. (And again you want an expert Koestler talks about this example). We are looking for things that would be distinctive to Hebrew. Signs of Hebrew in Matthew is what we are looking for so Aramaic bleed would disqualify an example not qualify it.
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@ CD-H: OK, new topic.
What is the extent of John’s doctrine of Christ’s incarnation?
You have contended that 1JA does not exhibit a doctrine of the incarnation per se. I would agree with that. The doctrine of the incarnation was developed via counsels with an eye towards “what are the interconnections between Christ’s incarnation and our salvation?”
That is to say, I don’t see any of the NT authors explicitly exhibiting the Nicene creed or Athanasian creed in complete and worked-out form.
But that still leaves the question, what does John believe about Jesus the Christ? I have these features:
(1) That Jesus the Christ came in the flesh.
(2) That Jesus’ blood cleanses us from our sins.
(3) That Jesus was the atoning sacrifice for our sins
(4) That Jesus was sent from the Father
(5) Jesus came by water and blood
(6) That Jesus laid down his life for us.
(7) That Jesus was manifested to “us” and that “we” beheld him.
Reasons and exegesis
(1) This phrase is explicitly used as a test of “orthodoxy” by John in 4.2. You have suggested that this does not necessarily mean that Jesus had a body, but that he came to the lower regions from the upper.
I don’t see a way to establish or disprove this hypothesis based on the word choice alone, but the points below are relevant.
(2) Taught in 1.7. John clearly has a picture of Jesus bleeding, which points to a physical interpretation of “came in the flesh.”
(3) Taught in 2.2 and 4.10. The term ιλασμος indicates that the writer is at least casually familiar with the OT sacrificial system. Jesus did not bleed in the abstract, but in the context of being a sacrifice. This indicates that He was sacrificed by someone, for the sins of John’s hearers (“and not only ours, but those of the whole world”), before God.
In other words, this strongly suggests that Jesus’ flesh was handled and killed by others.
(4) Taught in 4.9, 10, 14. The key point here is that the “lower realm” under discussion is the world, the same world that is subject to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
This locates Jesus’ “flesh” concretely within our world as a diametric opposite to the features of the world in which we live.
(5) 5.6 – 8. This is a notoriously difficult phrase, and the hardest word is “water.” A synonym for Spirit? Baptism? Birth? I have no concrete proof for any of these.
But it is important to John to emphasize, Not water only, but also blood. I take this to refer to the same blood that cleanses us from our sins. It emphasizes Jesus’ physicality.
Nonetheless, this would be a following point, not a supporting point, for John’s doctrine of “coming in the flesh.” That is, if the other points above are established, it sheds light on this one.
(6) Taught in 3.16. In vv 3.16 – 17, laying down one’s life does not necessarily mean “death”, but does mean giving of one’s physical goods for the benefit of another. Of course, the physical good that Jesus gave was … and this brings us back to (1)-(4).
(7) This point is the most powerful, but needs connecting tissue. The heart of it is sdb’s insight that there is a thin line between the “what” of 1.1 and the “who” of 1.2.
In 1.1, the “what” is manifested: What was from the beginning, what we saw, heard, handled. In 1.2, the “life” is manifested. That life was (a) with the Father, and (b) was manifested to us.
As John closes the letter, he reiterates this point but states it like this:
“And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”
“οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ἥκει, καὶ δέδωκεν ἡμῖν διάνοιαν ἵνα γινώσκωμεν τὸν ἀληθινόν· καὶ ἐσμὲν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεὸς καὶ ζωὴ αἰώνιος.”
Jesus Christ is the eternal life of which he has been speaking (And also the true God, in contrast to the idols presented by “them”).
So when John says in 1.2 that the eternal life was with the Father and was manifested to us, he means that Jesus was with the Father and was manifested to us. And John has seen him, bears witness to him, and proclaims him.
—
Putting all this together, I would say that John’s theology of Jesus the Christ includes having a physical body that is able to be seen and is capable of being sacrificed and bleeding.
Thoughts?
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Tom – I think you know I hope and pray that all are saved.
Erik – Who would you say that you pray to?
I know the obvious answer is “God”, but from where do you get your conception of God?
What are the arguments of the Arminians that you find compelling?
Do you think true religion is revealed by God? If so, how is it revealed?
Do you think election and evangelism are incompatible?
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Tom,
Would you say that universalism is generally more compatible with a “liberal” worldview or a “conservative” worldview?
If God were to save everyone, why would he not also favor “universalism” in terms of the distribution of wealth, “sexual equality”, gender equality, and so forth?
You seem to be inconsistent on these points.
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CD,
Why does it have to be pure Hebrew? NT authors wrote in Semitic style. Jesus spoke Aramaic.
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CD,
“I think you started to do your homework on Hebrew Matthew and started to notice the problems.”
At my last writing when I threw in the towel, no, I had not done any more homework. At that time I was only reading from an online catholic encyclopedia, and it says that there was a Hebrew original of St Matthew’s Gospel.
The reason I brought up your naturalist materialism is that you believe that Matthew’s Gospel is redacted from source material Q which only materialists believe leaves out any supernatural talk or miraculous doings of Jesus. Isn’t this the contention; that Jesus was a moral teacher and follower in John the Baptist’s movement?
I think it’s really ironic that you critique the credibility of Matthew on the supposition that” Jesus appears to be like a Cynical Sage” and from that material dialectic based on the historical fact that a philosophical movement arose 400 yrs before the 1st century AD( well duh?) you therein construct Jesus into a Brahmin, which if it were true the author of Matthew went through great pains to make sure Jesus wasn’t reduced to. So you aren’t working with the text at all when you posit a strict materialism to a historical work that is about supernatural idea and happenings. These kind of imaginings are the consequence of not letting Church tradition help you and/or attacking ecclesial orthodoxy and someone like St. Iranesus, as Elaine Pagles did, can rob one of her credibility as a serious scholar. Just because a NT book has some pagan aspect in it doesn’t mean that it is driven by pagan concepts. It makes sense that there is cross-over going on inside the text. For instance St. Paul quotes Greek poets several times yet the NT is still considered divinely inspired:
“God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”69
CD-Host, Matthew is all about Jesus as Messias and His Messianic Kingdom.
“For Catholics, the interpretation of the deposit of faith belongs to those whom Christ authorized and entrusted with it, i.e. the Apostles and their successors, referred to as the Church’s Magisterium. The meaning of Scripture is not merely a matter for the outsider to determine by lexical analysis, but first and foremost involves coming to Sacred Scripture within the living Tradition of the Church, as unveiled and unfolded to us by those to whom the deposit of faith was entrusted, and to whom interpretive authority was given. The lexical approach is fine when used under the guidance and auspices of the Church’s Magisterium, because then its insights can be interpreted and understood within the context of the Tradition. Understanding the contemporary sense of terms as used by the human authors of Scripture can help us deepen our understanding of Scripture and its meaning. But when the lexical method is used as though there is no Church, or as though ecclesial deism is true, or as though the concepts of the deposit of faith must be limited to concepts found in pagan speech and culture, or even to concepts found in ancient Hebrew speech and culture, the method implicitly denies that Christ founded a Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail even to the end of the age, and deposited within her a divine revelation that surpassed all previous revelation. In this way, the lexical approach to Scripture fails to apprehend its true context, which is the life and liturgy of the Church.
The context of Scripture is not merely within its pages, but is the living organism which is the Body of Christ, i.e. the Church. Since the gospel teaches us that Christ founded a Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, we should expect to approach Scripture through the view-from-within of that Church. Insofar as the lexical approach methodologically denies the Church, the lexical approach implicitly denies the gospel. To find and follow the gospel, we should come to Scripture through the Tradition of the Church. This is why Sacred Scripture can be rightly understood only in the bosom of holy Mother Church. Both Protestants and Catholics need to understand this fundamental difference in their respective approach to Scripture, in order to make progress in resolving their long-standing schism”
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@ Susan: What is at stake for you in denying that there was a Q? You accept already that there was a Greek redactor who translated a Hebrew/Aramaic gospel.
To be clear, I don’t accept a “Q” as a settled issue. But I can easily imagine Matthew, writing to Hellenistic Jews, sitting down with someone’s diary and writing his recollections of Jesus. Luke borrows the same diary and … There’s Q.
Now, that’s just hypothetical, but with the purpose of showing that a Q theory need not be anti-Christian or anti-Catholic.
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<iErik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 3:45 pm | Permalink
Tom,
Would you say that universalism is generally more compatible with a “liberal” worldview or a “conservative” worldview?
If God were to save everyone, why would he not also favor “universalism” in terms of the distribution of wealth, “sexual equality”, gender equality, and so forth?
You seem to be inconsistent on these points.
Not atall. Universalism is a concern of the next world, “sexual equality” and all that left-wing noise is a concern of this one.
Still, the latter is addressed by natural law [hint: men and women are different] and Aquinas gets it just right
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
Natural law is “conservative,” yes?
As for the concerns of the next world, unfortunately there are dozens of denominations of Christianity who all share the same Bible, but not what it means. Universalism is one possibility, but admittedly not the only one.
If only there were an ecclesiastic authority somewhere that could decide once and for all!
http://www.medaille.com/hope.htm
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Erik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 3:42 pm | Permalink
Tom – I think you know I hope and pray that all are saved.
Erik – Who would you say that you pray to?
I know the obvious answer is “God”, but from where do you get your conception of God?
What are the arguments of the Arminians that you find compelling?
Do you think true religion is revealed by God? If so, how is it revealed?
Do you think election and evangelism are incompatible?
I dunno. Some of you election types seem to be doing your damned best to chase people away.
As for the arguments of Calvinism vs. Arminianism, the internet is full of dueling Bible verses. And since you’re a strict sola scripturist, any non-Biblical theological arguments are DOA in your eyes, so the potential common ground is limited.
So for me to offer a Bible verse is to give you something to shoot skeet at. I’ve seen that game too many times here at Darryl’s House of Machen Whoopie–one side does all the shooting.
PULL!
John 12:32 seems nice. The comments section of the post below, not really.
http://conversationsincalvinism.blogspot.com/2006/06/calvinism-and-john-1232.html
I see no need to rehearse that well-worn script yet again, and neither does it have a salutary effect on its participants.
Thx for asking.
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Tom – Not atall. Universalism is a concern of the next world, “sexual equality” and all that left-wing noise is a concern of this one.
Erik- Whoa, by differentiating between this world and the next you are venturing into Two Kingdoms territory. We do that, and you call us Pilate, Pharisees, and say that kind of thinking is responsible for Hitler.
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Tom – And since you’re a strict sola scripturist, any non-Biblical theological arguments are DOA in your eyes, so the potential common ground is limited.
Erik – I’m pretty open to logical arguments, whatever their source. My problem with your arguments of late is they seem to be kind of an odd mix and match, as Chortles pointed out.
Are there any allies you would point to who are touting a similar philosophical/theological system?
If you’re just a gadfly, that’s o.k., but as I’ve tried to point out in the past, to just throw stones without offering a viable, coherent alternative is a bit nihilistic. I would think you would have more fun ways to occupy yourself.
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Tom,
Do you think the Old & New Testaments are consistent with Universalism? Make your case.
Do you think Satan and demons will be saved?
John Wayne Gacy? Adolf Hitler? Joseph Stalin? The 9/11 Terrorists? Joseph Stalin? Mao? The Kim Family?
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Erik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 7:27 pm | Permalink
Tom – Not atall. Universalism is a concern of the next world, “sexual equality” and all that left-wing noise is a concern of this one.
Erik- Whoa, by differentiating between this world and the next you are venturing into Two Kingdoms territory. We do that, and you call us Pilate, Pharisees, and say that kind of thinking is responsible for Hitler.
Radical Two Kingdoms theology.
You also take me out of context. Modern egalitarianism seeks to replace natural law a priori that if men are not equal in endowments, law must make them equal.
And a bit of [hopefully unintentional] sophistry on your part, using “universalism” equivocally, first in terms of salvation then in terms of left-wing politics.
And why do you act as though this is the first time I’ve mentioned Aquinas’s thinking–natural law, general and special revelation? My argument against R2K is partly based on its militant separation of general and special revelation, when they are sides of the same coin. I submit that of course the Church has a duty to the natural law!
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Erik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 7:37 pm | Permalink
Tom,
Do you think the Old & New Testaments are consistent with Universalism? Make your case.
Do you think Satan and demons will be saved?
John Wayne Gacy? Adolf Hitler? Joseph Stalin? The 9/11 Terrorists? Joseph Stalin? Mao? The Kim Family?
It’s not my call.
And I’m sure thankful that MY salvation isn’t Darryl’s!
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Erik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 7:34 pm | Permalink
Tom – And since you’re a strict sola scripturist, any non-Biblical theological arguments are DOA in your eyes, so the potential common ground is limited.
Erik – I’m pretty open to logical arguments, whatever their source. My problem with your arguments of late is they seem to be kind of an odd mix and match, as Chortles pointed out.
Are there any allies you would point to who are touting a similar philosophical/theological system?
If you’re just a gadfly, that’s o.k., but as I’ve tried to point out in the past, to just throw stones without offering a viable, coherent alternative is a bit nihilistic. I would think you would have more fun ways to occupy yourself.
Now let’s not get rude, since we were doing so well: Your “problem with my arguments of late” is that you can’t handle them. Your religious commitment to your “Confessions” leaves you very little room to entertain foreign ideas, let alone engage them. This becomes some Calvinist Turing Test.
As for who shares my belief system, again, the tactic of trying to box me in. But to answer, I linked to
http://www.medaille.com/hope.htm
which asked the same questions about Josef Mengele and the like.
So if I’m entertaining the thoughts of Von Balthasaar, well, I’m hardly being idiosyncratic. Perhaps it’s the members of this theological society who need to come out from their idiosyncratic bubble.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”—Mill
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vd, t, if everyone will be saved, from what will they be saved?
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vd, t, you still don’t understand Roman Catholicism or Reformed Protestantism. Natural law does not reveal Christ, nor does general revelation. And try obeying natural law by admitting your own militance about a truth that you don’t really believe. If natural law is true, then you need a savior because you have broken the law (not just at OL).
Where will you stand in that great telos?
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vd, t, yes, Balthasar and Beza would have gotten along perfectly.
You just pick and choose like Paris Hilton dressing for a night out.
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@Jeff
I figure this is going to be wrong so I started a new set of responses: https://oldlife.org/2014/06/penn-state-penn-state-snacks/comment-page-1/#comment-141975
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Tom – You also take me out of context. Modern egalitarianism seeks to replace natural law a priori that if men are not equal in endowments, law must make them equal.
Erik – Can you cite any other natural law advocates who were also universalists? Was Aquinas a universalist?
If universalism is true, would God not be treating everyone equally in terms of outcomes? Why should a benevolent government not mirror God?
I
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Tom – My argument against R2K is partly based on its militant separation of general and special revelation, when they are sides of the same coin. I submit that of course the Church has a duty to the natural law!
Erik – What do you mean by “militant separation”?
Are you a believer in special revelation? Wouldn’t you say that since everyone disagrees on what it means it is pointless to point to it?
What is the church’s duty to the natural law? How are they failing at that duty?
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Tom – Your “problem with my arguments of late” is that you can’t handle them. Your religious commitment to your “Confessions” leaves you very little room to entertain foreign ideas, let alone engage them.
Erik – Which ones do you think I can’t handle?
What exactly do you mean by “handle” in this case?
Which ones am I not entertaining or engaging?
I’m trying to hear you out, I’m just seeing some inconsistencies and not seeing how these aren’t just your idiosyncratic opinions. Why should those necessarily carry any weight with me or anyone else?
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Tom,
I don’t think all Catholics agree that Balthasar was a universalist:
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2735/did_hans_urs_von_balthasar_teach_that_everyone_will_certainly_be_saved.aspx
Does your universalism have anything to do with your minimizing the importance of church membership?
If you’re going to heaven anyway, why bother joining a church if you don’t feel like it?
Why be concerned about Natural law if universalism is true? It doesn’t really matter how I live, I’m going to heaven just like a pious man. Why sacrifice, suffer or inconvenience myself? I can have a hedonistic heaven on earth and a literal heaven after I die. Talk about an idea that promotes antinomianism.
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Hello CD-Host
3 examples from Greek Matthew which only make sense if considered as originating from Hebrew with no Aramaic bleed whatsoever? Haha, sounds like a good project for a rainy afternoon. Thank you, but because I know something about languages (not because I don’t!) I decline to take it on. I have too much respect for Matthew, Hebrew and Aramaic. And given the numerous similarities in grammar and lexis between Hebrew and Aramaic, it might be quite a tricky project, don’t you think?
As I’ve mentioned, whether the writer of Matthew’s gospel wrote in Hebrew (or Aramaic) and /or Koine Greek, is not terribly material to my own faith (in fact not material at all). But I’m glad to have encouraged to look again at a question which you had previously believed to be entirely settled. I hope you will consider keeping an open mind in other directions as well.
Does your last post, by the way, suggest that you don’t believe Jesus existed as a historical individual at all? I mean the bare bones of the story, with no supernatural elements: that a person known by that name, with a reputation as a teacher and healer, was crucified under Roman rule in Jerusalem? I don’t require, to save you time, a very detailed account of your position. Just a summary. Thanks.
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@Token
Well it is tricky because it is nonsense that Matthew is a translation from Hebrew were it not it wouldn’t be hard at all. Let’s take a book in Greek that really is a translation.
2nd verse has Hebrew bleed:
ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος(unready), καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου(abyss), καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο(bore) ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος(water).
1) Why the tie between water and the abyss? Why would the abyss be wet in Greek? That doesn’t make any sense in Greek. It is bleed from Hebrew
2) How can land be unready? What does that mean? It is nonsense in Greek. Is it an abyss or does have land and water. What has to happen to land to make it ready?
Then I get to the 4th verse
καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς(light) ὅτι καλόν(it was good). καὶ διεχώρισεν ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ σκότους.
3) As contrasted with what bad light? What is bad light and what is good light. Or is it good that there is light? If so why doesn’t the author say that? Doesn’t make any sense in Greek.
4) And if we have an up and light why isn’t αἰθήρ in there? There is a negative problem here of word choice. The entire philosophy of earth vs. sky isn’t Greek…. It sounds like something entirely foreight to Greek thought, you know like it came from another language.
OK first 4 verses, 2 of those verses have problems (bleed) and between them 4 instances of bleed. Took 30 seconds to find. So no it wouldn’t be hard to find if there was a Hebrew Matthew. It is certainly hard to find bleed from the Chinese in the English version of Harry Potter because Harry Potter wasn’t constructed in Chinese. It isn’t hard to find bleed from the Chinese in English translations of the iChing because it was originally in Chinese.
The fact that you can’t find any bleed means you know there is no bleed. There is no bleed because there is no Hebrew Matthew. The Greek in the LXX screams translation. The English Matthew screams translation. It isn’t some subtle hard to find problem. Translations between languages are a complete mess, “translation is treason”. Jews and Muslims don’t consider translations of holy books to be the holy books at all but only commentaries on them because all translation are so terrible.
What? I considered it entirely settled and every piece of evidence I looked at showed it was entirely settled. The fact that CtCers would continue to preach this nonsense is more reason to consider CtC absurd. Earth doesn’t have 3 suns and Matthew is not a translation from Hebrew. They are both immediately verifiable. Your pontificating about how this is hard, doesn’t change that. I gave you a long list of bleed and you couldn’t find any. You don’t want to admit that the church fathers had no clue about the history of the church they were supposedly running and made stuff for political effect.
I have to be a little hesitant since you are conflating things. But I believe that the religion around Jesus formed a being that the proto-Christians viewed as wholly heavenly and as this being being to accrete more theology the doctrine of a human Jesus slowly was written in. I believe that the New Testament books themselves are excellent examples of this accretion in various intermediate stages though non-canonical books about Jesus both before and after help even more in understanding how the process occurred.
Some of the material about Jesus may have a historical basis. I’ll pick an example from Matthew since we are talking about that book. Matthew has a lot of material where Jesus is preaching an apocalyptic doctrine with an undo degree focus on John the Baptist. That may very well be a light rewrite of selections from the historical preaching of a real historical John the Baptist. So those statements are based in history. But that doesn’t make Matthew a historically based book about a historical figure.
Mickey Mouse as he exists today is derived from the lead character mouse in Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie is a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr. Steamboat Bill Jr. is based on the song Steamboat Bill and the Mississippi River Flood. The flood is a real historical event and many of the facts in Steamboat Bill Jr. are true. Some of those facts did bleed over into Steamboat Willie. Yet nobody talks about the historical Mickey Mouse. Talking giant mice with pet dogs don’t exist. That counts for a lot more then a few little details being right. Historical content used in the creation doesn’t make Mickey Mouse a historical figure. But if I were to apply the standards Liberal Christians often apply to Jesus then I could write books about the “historical Mickey Mouse” which focus heavily on turn of the century steamboats.
If I say something that there is a lot of bleed in Matthew which is authentic historical 1st century proto-Christianity I’m not saying something as strong as you are picturing. In this thread I’m coming down pretty strongly on 1John being even earlier authentic Christianity. I’m coming down on a high likelihood that 1John’s preservation makes very good sense it is not an occasional letter but may very well have been a key turning point, in Christian history. 1John is a likely candidate for the moment Christianity in Asia minor stops being Hellenistic Judaism with a bit of undo focus on one particular angel and breaks away; when a synagogue movement become churches. AFAICT I’m taking a stronger position than most of Christians who are also discussing 1John about how important that book is. But the fact that I consider 1John to be a genuine historical document doesn’t mean that I consider the author to have particularly knowledgeable about the supernatural world. And that’s because just like there are no talking giant mice there is no supernatural world.
That’s my position.
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@Susan
Because the point being debated, your original claim, was that Matthew was a translation from Hebrew. Julius Caesar spoke Latin. But if I’m trying to determine if The Constitution of the Roman Republic was written in English or Chinese I’m going to be looking for bleed from Chinese not bleed from Latin.
What difference would it make who the character in the story “really was” when trying to determine what language the book was constructed in?
Most of the rest of your post is on how best to interpret the bible not facts about it, an intrinsic rather than an extrinsic examination. Which of course isn’t the point in dispute.
The point in dispute is that Jesus didn’t found the Catholic church. If the Church fathers knew more about 1st century Christianity they wouldn’t be saying easily falsifiable things about it. You keep wanting to not looking at the evidence for how easily falsifiable their claims are by turning this into a matter of faith, “we know Jesus founded the Catholic church, because the Catholic church says so and we know they are right because they were the church Jesus founded”. Its hard to find a better example of a circular argument than that.
Hebrew Matthew was an excellent example because it sounded like a few days ago you were willing to break out of the circle and actually start looking at some real evidence.
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CD-Host,
“If the Church fathers knew more about 1st century Christianity they wouldn’t be saying easily falsifiable things about it.”
You haven’t proved anything as being false.
Your “lost Christianities” narrative ignores the internal witness of a “church”. You also don’t seem to take into account the OT prophecies nor the Acts of the Apostles were Christ’s prophecies are fulfilled, or that Paul met the risen Lord and so on. It seems you fixate on particulars that you believe prove what you want and miss the whole show. You’re attempting to demythologize the scriptures themselves!
Even when I was Reformed I believed that Christianity had rhyme and reason for why it allowed in “this, and rejected “that”. You’re a( very friendly) historical positivist, but you’re very dangerous.
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CD,
I should have said that your “ideas” are dangerous, not that you are dangerous. I apologize.
Did you read the Catholic encyclopedia on Q?
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@Susan —
Yes I have. On hundreds of issues over the years. The Hebrew Matthew thing being the latest. Our host has falsified even more. I honestly thought the patristic witness was weaker to it until you present your list a few days back and that was your quirky opinion (though
It doesn’t ignore it. It explains it. Rather than worshipping the fathers it allows them to speak in their historical and political context. It treats them like it would treat any other group of religious leaders taking their organization through a shift in focus.
The internal witness of the Catholic Church on the other Christianities is propaganda designed to consolidated Christian sects into a religion. The theological aspects as areas of Christian doctrine needed to be changed so that they could appeal intergenerationally. Earlier the Encratities to dejudaize it so that it could appeal outside people of Jewish descent There are class aspects as major early Christian doctrines had to be changed so that they could cross appeal to different socio-economic classes. There were political aspects which delegitimized earlier statua the way you generally see in post-revoluation situations.
It isn’t ignored at all. Rather the fathers can be read in their historical context in a natural way. Since there is no problem with ideas having evolved the constant levels of distortion required by reading later ideas back into historical figures can be skipped. The same way we shouldn’t try and read the Obamacare website into George Washington we shouldn’t try and read 5th century Christology into the scriptures.
I don’t have any problem believing that Paul in so far as he existed believes he met the risen Lord. You’ve seen me say the same thing about the author of 1John.
I think the Acts of the Apostles is an enormously rich source of information about early Christianity. A detailed 2nd century book with an author having to explain away and harmonize facts that his audience is well aware of. Without the seams still being visible in Acts 8:18-24; 11:27-30, 15, 21, 24 higher criticism might never have been invented. Or to take another example that he casually drops the fact that Governor Felix and more revealing that Drusilla know Paul.
Yes I am.
I’m going to use the bounces off me and sticks to you defense from childhood. I don’t deny there were reasons for why Christianity developed the way it did. You have a much harder problem in that you not I have a very tough time explaining what’s going on at any given time. You can’t explain how various Gnostic sects developed or where variants came from. You can’t explain Manichaeism. You can’t explain Islam. You can’t explain the Reformation. You can’t even explain theological movements within your own church like Christian Theurgy.
None of this timeline makes any sense to you. You just have to keep denying the obvious facts. Which is the reason anytime we try and talk about Christianity you start preaching. If I were to ask you questions about the War of 1812 you wouldn’t preach the gospel of Napoleon or talk about how one needs faith in the British Navy to really understand the war.
I get to have a sensible Christian theological development that is fully compatible with the evidence where the actors have good reasons for their actions.
Yes. Obviously focused primarily on issues for Conservative Catholics Catholic, dated (understandably) but mostly accurate. Why?
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Wow! Step away for a weekend and fall a year behind. I’m enjoying the exchange between CDH and JC. I don’t find CDH’s method or assertions convincing at all, but I do appreciate the give and take. I’ll try to keep up, in the other threads…
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 29, 2014 at 10:22 pm | Permalink
vd, t, you still don’t understand Roman Catholicism or Reformed Protestantism. Natural law does not reveal Christ, nor does general revelation.
D’oh! Thanks for the tip.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 11:07 pm | Permalink
Tom,
I don’t think all Catholics agree that Balthasar was a universalist:
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2735/did_hans_urs_von_balthasar_teach_that_everyone_will_certainly_be_saved.aspx
Does your universalism have anything to do with your minimizing the importance of church membership?
If you’re going to heaven anyway, why bother joining a church if you don’t feel like it?
Why bother to go to church if you’re already Elect? That one cuts both ways.
Why be concerned about Natural law if universalism is true? It doesn’t really matter how I live, I’m going to heaven just like a pious man. Why sacrifice, suffer or inconvenience myself? I can have a hedonistic heaven on earth and a literal heaven after I die. Talk about an idea that promotes antinomianism.
Why be concerned with murder if we’re all going to die anyway? Etc.
Natural law offers itself as its own proof. Live right, be happy.
“What we have been saying would have a degree of validity even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God.”—Grotius
See, the non-Calvinist uses natural law, general revelation, as a first step to show the unconverted that there is a natural order to things, that good exists objectively, not just subjectively or is different depending on the time and place.
Yes, it is the Thomistic approach, but reason is a gift from God, not an obstacle to him.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 29, 2014 at 10:46 pm | Permalink
Tom – You also take me out of context. Modern egalitarianism seeks to replace natural law a priori that if men are not equal in endowments, law must make them equal.
Erik – Can you cite any other natural law advocates who were also universalists? Was Aquinas a universalist?
If universalism is true, would God not be treating everyone equally in terms of outcomes? Why should a benevolent government not mirror God?
That last bit, again is using “universalism” equivocally. Asked and answered.
Erik – Can you cite any other natural law advocates who were also universalists? Was Aquinas a universalist?
The universalism argument is separate from the natural law one. Natural law cannot tell us how to get to heaven; indeed we both agree that our “works” cannot save us, so I guess our sins don’t necessarily damn us either–indeed one of the links I posted said that even Catholics agree with “Unconditional Election,” that God can save whomever he wants.
I suppose you could tease that out into universalism–or at least the possibility of it–come to think of it. I think I’ll leave off here. Thx again. Avery Cardinal Dulles sums up what I’ve been trying to say, since I’ve spent most of my time avoiding the box that’s been prepared for me. 😉
Tom – Why bother to go to church if you’re already Elect? That one cuts both ways.
Erik – Good question. Who are the elect? Those who have faith in Christ who persevere until the end. What is part of persevering until the end? Worshipping as a church member, hearing the Word preached, partaking of the sacraments. In short, hanging in there as a Christian until you die.
Turn it around. If I had no interest in Christ, the Church, the Bible, or other Christians why in the world would I think I was elect?
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Tom,
You seem to admit that universalism is highly speculative. I would be highly uneasy adopting that position in light of all that the Bible has to say about judgment and hell. Make sure you’re not falling prey to wishful thinking or self-deception. The price is to high if you are wrong. Not only would you be lost if you are not in Christ, you would also be guilty of having led others astray.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 30, 2014 at 6:34 pm | Permalink
Tom – Why bother to go to church if you’re already Elect? That one cuts both ways.
Erik – Good question. Who are the elect? Those who have faith in Christ who persevere until the end. What is part of persevering until the end? Worshipping as a church member, hearing the Word preached, partaking of the sacraments. In short, hanging in there as a Christian until you die.
Turn it around. If I had no interest in Christ, the Church, the Bible, or other Christians why in the world would I think I was elect?
Why would anyone seek out a group of narcissistic, self-regarding, judgmental Pharisees who think they’re the cat’s ass and everybody else is cosmically screwed? Who think God’s church is too high to be concerned with the evil that men do in the natural world? What sort of man is attracted to such a debased, inhumane religion?
Theoretically, of course. Not you, not your religion. Not Darryl, of course. Theoretically. 😉
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Erik Charter
Posted June 30, 2014 at 6:41 pm | Permalink
Tom,
You seem to admit that universalism is highly speculative. I would be highly uneasy adopting that position in light of all that the Bible has to say about judgment and hell. Make sure you’re not falling prey to wishful thinking or self-deception. The price is too high if you are wrong. Not only would you be lost if you are not in Christ, you would also be guilty of having led others astray.
Oh, I quite agree: universalism is only a hope. For other men, but venally, also for ourselves, since there’s nothing we can do to “earn” heaven. [We’ll skip the judgment part, esp the Sheep and the Goats, for the moment.]
But N.B., universal reconciliation, in the Christian fashion, is only possible because of Christ’s atoning death on the cross. In the end, the mechanism is the same as Election, no? It’s just a question of how many or few [or all] make it to heaven.
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you bet, vd, t.
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vd, t, “Why would anyone seek out a group of narcissistic, self-regarding, judgmental Pharisees who think they’re the cat’s ass and everybody else is cosmically screwed? Who think God’s church is too high to be concerned with the evil that men do in the natural world? What sort of man is attracted to such a debased, inhumane religion?”
Boy, vd, t, you really are conflicted about Roman Catholicism. Most of Rome’s history (pre Vat 2) fails by your standard. I guess we now know where you stand. You’re a liberal who thinks he’s Christian in some way. Say hello to Barack Obama — he’s your kind of Christian.
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D. G. Hart
Posted June 30, 2014 at 8:37 pm | Permalink
vd, t, “Why would anyone seek out a group of narcissistic, self-regarding, judgmental Pharisees who think they’re the cat’s ass and everybody else is cosmically screwed? Who think God’s church is too high to be concerned with the evil that men do in the natural world? What sort of man is attracted to such a debased, inhumane religion?”
Boy, vd, t, you really are conflicted about Roman Catholicism. Most of Rome’s history (pre Vat 2) fails by your standard.
Hm. I’d always heard the Catholic complaint was the guilt trip, always being terrorized by the Church with threats of hell.
Must be some different Catholic Church.
Still calling me “VD,” Dr. Dirty Mouth? Shame, shame. The Catholics I know don’t do that, probably afraid of going to hell or something. I guess you Elect don’t have to worry about that. Must be nice.
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@DgH
I hate to break it to you but Obama is Reformed. He considers himself theologically to be in the same camp as Reinhold Niebuhr and regularly cites him. I have no idea what the 2Kers think of Christian Realism so your next response is likely a real surprise.
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Tom – Why would anyone seek out a group of narcissistic, self-regarding, judgmental Pharisees who think they’re the cat’s ass and everybody else is cosmically screwed? Who think God’s church is too high to be concerned with the evil that men do in the natural world? What sort of man is attracted to such a debased, inhumane religion?
Erik – That’s an awfully cynical view. I’m sad for you that you feel that way.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 30, 2014 at 10:13 pm | Permalink
Tom – Why would anyone seek out a group of narcissistic, self-regarding, judgmental Pharisees who think they’re the cat’s ass and everybody else is cosmically screwed? Who think God’s church is too high to be concerned with the evil that men do in the natural world? What sort of man is attracted to such a debased, inhumane religion?
Erik – That’s an awfully cynical view. I’m sad for you that you feel that way.
Dude, do you guys ever read to the end of anything?
Tom-Why would anyone seek out a group of narcissistic, self-regarding, judgmental Pharisees who think they’re the cat’s ass and everybody else is cosmically screwed? Who think God’s church is too high to be concerned with the evil that men do in the natural world? What sort of man is attracted to such a debased, inhumane religion?
Tom-Theoretically, of course. Not you, not your religion. Not Darryl, of course. Theoretically.
😉
You Calvinists gotta loosen up a little–and if it’s a “theological society” and not pre-programmed Rock’em Sock’em Religion Robots, give it a little play. I’m not the first one to notice all this about you warrior children, you know.
[I wasn’t even gonna post it, since we’ve been getting along so well plus Darryl’s threatening to send me to internet perdition, but it was too true and too damn funny not to.]
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Tom – But N.B., universal reconciliation, in the Christian fashion, is only possible because of Christ’s atoning death on the cross.
Erik – If you reject most traditional Christian doctrine and the authority of Scripture, why do you still hold to the notion of Christ’s atoning death on the cross?
Most of what we know about the atonement we know from Paul, and you’ve expressed that you have quite a bit of doubt about Paul’s writings, no?
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Tom,
I really don’t want to mess around with you any more (make fun of you or try to get a rise out of you) because I sincerely believe you are in a dangerous spot spiritually. You have a lot of potential. You’re a smart guy and could have a really positive impact on others’ lives if you were a Christian. You also have a nice family that is counting on you. The stakes are high for you, both in this life and the life to come.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 30, 2014 at 10:31 pm | Permalink
Tom – But N.B., universal reconciliation, in the Christian fashion, is only possible because of Christ’s atoning death on the cross.
Erik – If you reject most traditional Christian doctrine and the authority of Scripture, why do you still hold to the notion of Christ’s atoning death on the cross?
Most of what we know about the atonement we know from Paul, and you’ve expressed that you have quite a bit of doubt about Paul’s writings, no?
It’s not necessary to personalize this, EC, esp in the sour. Hard as it may be to believe, although I’m being provocative, I’m not debating. That implies I have a position that defeats yours. I’m being a good sport, trying to speak your theological language without conceding in advance all your [Calvinist/ confessional] presuppositions.
As you know, modern Christianity has been accused of being more Paulism than Jesusism. An interesting vein, since canonicity–what is Biblical?–is quite the argument against Protestantism, and the early unitarians were so “Protestant” they questioned not just the Trinity, but who decided the Epistles are just as good as the Gospels?
Where is that written? Paul has the same divine authority as Jesus?
Mebbe I’m more Protestant than you. Once Martin Luther brought down the “Catholic” Magisterium, rejected the deutero-canonicals, he put everything back up for grabs, you know. Even the Trinity, which may or may not be Biblical. Luther’s right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon, admitted as much.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Michael Servetus. Not rubbing your nose in his execution–Calvin’s Geneva may have burned him, but they didn’t create him. The Reformation put everything back up for grabs. Luther and Calvin would be appalled at what they have wrought. IMO, they would probably find a better home in Rome than in the denominations they spawned.
Now that’s an interesting thought, esp here in our 21st century. Probably even more prophetic come the 22nd.
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Erik Charter
Posted June 30, 2014 at 10:38 pm | Permalink
Tom,
I really don’t want to mess around with you any more (make fun of you or try to get a rise out of you)
Good. I’m not messing around, EC. If I need insincerity and making fun of the serious things, I always have Darryl. Make fun of me if you need to. But at least some get better jokes.
…because I sincerely believe you are in a dangerous spot spiritually.
I appreciate your concern, Erik. But even if I wanted to go about getting myself condemned to hell, it’s all too much work at this point.
You have a lot of potential. You’re a smart guy and could have a really positive impact on others’ lives if you were a Christian. You also have a nice family that is counting on you. The stakes are high for you, both in this life and the life to come.
Do you think God wants to sit around for all eternity listening to that dreadful noise Darryl thinks is proper “worship?” God created David, and Jimi Hendrix.
If I were God and Darryl G were the DJ, I’d dive out the window of my own heaven. Most of the talk around here too. Makes you pray for death sometimes and get this double predestination blab the hell over with.
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Hi cd-host,
The reason I’m not prepared to take on your suggested project is that as I mentioned I don’t know Aramaic and don’t feel that a quick read of Aramaic Lite plus half a day of Googling is adequate to equip anyone to say that traces of any ancient language are absent from any document, while traces of a closely related ancient language do exist. I respect the languages and I respect the document. However you have not convinced me that there is no foundation to the tradition that there was a Hebrew Matthew and I’ll keep thinking about it. Thanks for describing your position on the existence of Jesus.
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CD-H, you think Niebuhr Reformed? Wow. He’s right there with Jeremiah Wright in the U.C.C. pantheon.
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vd, t, if you describe yourself as a contrarian, then why do you have a problem with warrior children?
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vd, t, again too good to be true. “If I were God and Darryl G were the DJ, I’d dive out the window of my own heaven.”
So your wife is holding you down, making you read and comment at OL? You’re every bit a warrior child. You just don’t worship Jesus.
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vd, t, you really sell Winters short. You guys seen the American creation in similar terms:
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Do you think God wants to sit around for all eternity listening to that dreadful noise Darryl thinks is proper “worship?” God created David, and Jimi Hendrix.
Witness ye all: form of worship is more important than we know. The simple, unadorned, biblically-governed worship of God is offensive. Be it Roman converts or Romanesque non-participants, worship often drives the doctrinal and devotional bus. And, Tom, there is where 2K can help — unlike the fundies we say, fine, listen to Hendrix six days if you want, sing the Psalms with us on one day. Then you may find you want to hear them more often.
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Tom – I appreciate your concern, Erik. But even if I wanted to go about getting myself condemned to hell, it’s all too much work at this point.
Erik – Your assumption is that people have to do very bad things (worse than Dr. Josef Mengele) to go to hell?
At the same time you accuse us of not being concerned about people doing evil things.
Can you reconcile these two?
What is your definition of very bad things? You seem to say that blasphemy (a la Servetus) is no big deal, but that homosexuality is a big deal.
Would you say that blasphemy is not against Natural Law but homosexuality is, therefore your selective outrage?
I’m just trying to find a thread of consistency through all of this.
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Tom,
Back to Servetus. Sevetus was punished by the civil authorities, not by Calvin. If he had been caught in a Roman Catholic city he presumably would have met the same fate.
You accuse 2K men of being Pharisees, Pilate, etc. because they may not take part in political activism that demands that the civil authorities punish evil things.
If Calvin encouraged the Civil authorites to punish Servetus I would think you would applaud that.
Is the First Table of the Law not Natural Law as well as the second? Would Aquinas have separated them?
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Tom,
If I could challenge you to do anything it would be to either get into a church or get completely out of religion altogether. Right now you mix-and-match and the result is something that is largely inconsistent, incoherent, unhelpful, and unpersuasive.
If you are completely out of religion, you might find some like-minded people to commune with (like a CD-Host). As it stands you are kind of on an island and not really able to influence anyone because of your idiosyncrasy. You’ll scare off serious theists (whether Jewish, Protestant, or Catholic) with your heterodoxy and you’ll scare off serious secularists with your half-hearted Natural Law and universalism. If you go to a Unitarian/Universalist church they won’t embrace your political conservatism and will pretty quickly see that you have no valid philosophical or theological basis for it.
Your remaining years will probably consist of going from website to website, irritating whoever you try to engage. That’s not a very worthwhile existence. Hopefully you’re doing some things in the real world that are more satisfying.
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Dear Chortles and Zrim – would either of you care to comment on the latest update from your bro’ Michael Horton at his parachurch organization that presumably is siphoning resources out of the church? Following is an excerpt from his email blast today…….(may be his upcoming Vail Colorado weekend conference has unmet expenses?…)
—–
Dear xxxxxxx
Donations fund the production of the White Horse Inn radio show and Modern Reformation magazine, and your response is crucial to our ongoing work. Over the last eight weeks we have raised 50% of the support we need. If 7% of the people receiving this email would take advantage of our special offer by midnight tonight, we would be able to continue on pace the rest of the year. EVERY gift is important. Please donate!
We’ve put together a great gift for you. With your donation of $100 dollars or more, we will be pleased to send you any MP3 CD in our collection.
Michael Horton
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Sincere question: can someone explain the difference (other than size) between Horton’s parachurch ministry and the stuff at the Gospel Coalition which garners so much disdain here?
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Petros,
Who have you seen touting The White Horse Inn here?
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Ditto — appreciative of some of Horton’s work but no fan of the parachurch model or the attendant money begging and the (seemingly) de rigueur cruise planning.
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Erik – I just want to be sure that P&R parachurch ministries like Horton’s White Horse Inn, get the same love from Old Lifer’s that the eeeeevangelicals at the Gospel Coalition gets.
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And if there’s ever an Old Life cruise it will probably be on a rusted, listing pontoon boat on some burning midwestern river or some southern malarial swamp. You won’t want to be there.
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Petros, as I’ve said before, one difference is that WHI aims to point folks to the local church, where TGC seems more interested in calling attention to their ranks of personalities. But I thought kudos were already handed out for pointing out the parachuch downsides to which both are vulnerable? Are you trying to equalize or make a point?
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Petros, the last thing OL is, is egalitarian. Well, relatively, this is the internet and the moderator is generous in accommodating all sorts. Still, I regularly extend the benefit of the doubt to some and not others. I don’t particularly appreciate some of the ways WHI has changed and evolved, but I also am eager to look over the inconsistencies for past and current contributions. TGC has no such credibility.
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Zrim, make sure you throw away the bottle top and bring your own beer next time. Some people…………….
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Guys – count me as a benefactor of both the GC and of Horton’s stuff. (As a minor factoid, the GC does (or used to) have a link to a directory of churches on its site to help those who may need a starting point in finding a local church fellowship.)
More kudos to you, Zrim, and to Chortles, for being equal-opportunity-critics of Horton’s WHI stuff. Yes, I suppose I was only trying to “equalize” or balance the conversation that the P&R world has it’s own parachurch stuff. It’s not limited to those of us in the evangelical world.
Neither the GC nor Horton’s WHI are perfect, and I’m well aware of the potential issues inherent in ‘parachurch’ organizations. But they contribute resources that edify the body of Christ, and I’m personally glad they both exist, along with a host of other ministries.
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“Sincere question: can someone explain the difference (other than size) between Horton’s parachurch ministry and the stuff at the Gospel Coalition which garners so much disdain here?”
Fair question, and one that could also be asked of Ligonier Ministries.
My answer with respect to Horton and WHI is that they do seem much more oriented towards the local church. They also don’t seem to take themselves too seriously and don’t appear to believe their own hype. That said, the fundraising letters, retreats, conferences, and cruises are a little too much for my taste.
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Mboss, please. Horton and the WHI certainly take themselves seriously enough, and believe enough about themselves to hype their own cruises and Colorado conferences, and to send out their needy fund-raising appeals. The GC sponsors conferences, to be sure, but I’m not aware of any fund-raising appeals they make (perhaps I can be corrected on that). In any event, any principled distinction between the WHI and the GC appears to be miniscule.
Presumably, one of the benefits in the P&R (vis-a-vis evangelicals) world is that there is robust church discipline. If parachurch orgs are de facto ‘bad’ to OL’ers, why isn’t there a P&R presbytery somewhere giving Horton some discipline/coaching about his parachurch? (I guess you could add to the list all the P&R folks — Keller, deYoung, et al — at the GC)
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Petros,
Why no discipline of Horton?Because he’s done nothing wrong. Even if one would determine that setting up a parachurch ministry is unwise, lacking wisdom is not something people are disciplined for.
I believe R. Scott Clark was asked to back away from The Heidelblog for a time for some specific actions that took place there. He did. After a time he came back, presumably with the approval of his consistory.
If Horton or Riddlebarger did something wrong on WHI, they could be disciplined. Having WHI is not a disciplinable offense.
Since your church presumably disciplines no one for anything, why the concern about church discipline?
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Petros,
I think you’re confused about the nature of the critique of TGC. It’s not a critique of the right to exist, it’s a critique of the lameness of some of the content. I’m thinking of the theology of baking, of buying groceries, and the like. It’s a lot of urban metrosexualism meets watered down Reformed theology.
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Hi Tom,
Maybe you have listened to this already, but I thought I’d still bring it to you attention just in case. 🙂
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/11/lawrence-feingold-the-motives-of-credibility-for-faith/
Susan
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Susan,
On Feingold & The Motives.
http://literatecomments.com/?s=motives+of+credibility&submit=Search
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@DgH
I didn’t how you all would see him. But yes I consider him a Reformed moderate. He attacked social gospel talking frequently about original sin (reinterpreted) and the necessity for personal salvation. He supported the unique virtues of Christianity. He wrote a lot about Augustine.. He called for a synthesis between on Grace taking a middle position (a liberal version of Lordship Salvation?). Yeah I say he is where the PCUSA is.
But again I have no insight into how the OPC views him.
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Erik, okay, but I’m thinking many at OL would much prefer that the GC (if not the WHI) not exist, inasmuch as they deem parachurch ministries to be ‘bad’ because they detract from local church ministry.
If the heartburn is only with occasional content (eg, GC articles about sanctified cupcake-baking), I share the heartburn, and truly wonder how/why an accomplished scholar like Carson would be absentia about that fluff.
I’ve no concerns per se about church discipline, and was only curious about it to the extent that discipline is trumpeted as a virtue of P&R polity. Apparently I was wrong in presuming that running a parachurch ministry (in presumed competition with local church ministry) might be deemed (by P&R folks) worthy of discipline in the P&R world. Church discipline in evangelical circles, as you may know, is limited, as a practical matter, if only because the person who merits the discipline typically leaves the church.
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Petros, it may not be so much the very existence of parachurch orgs as it is the regard given them. They might be more palatable if there were much less hype and a realization that the church is where the action is. That’s not an endorsement of hype (even for the church), just a plea for propriety.
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Petros – Church discipline in evangelical circles, as you may know, is limited, as a practical matter, if only because the person who merits the discipline typically leaves the church.
Erik – It’s also very ad hoc, in my experience, which is a recipe for disaster.
If you have a biblical framework you can still go through the steps of church discipline, even if someone has left the church. The offending (former) member does not have to be present if and when they are excommunicated (the final step). I’ve seen it done first hand.
Another problem evangelicals have is, who do they go to for approval on moving from step to step? Who is that group of elders (if they even have elders) accountable to as a check on their power? No classis or presbytery to look to for advice.
Yet another reason to not be an evangelical.
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Petros, Mike Horton is right. The Allies, not so much. But it must be said, WHI is a parachurch agency that sponsors cruises.
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Petros, does that apply to OL?
Please say no.
OL is not a ministry.
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EC, if WHI is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Kidding.
If WHI is wrong, so is every single Reformed seminary (except for Covenant and Calvin).
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cd-h, I don’t speak for the OPC (if only).
I see plenty of social gospel in Niebuhr, especially the way he continues to think about America in Christian categories. He’s got civil religion going on everywhere. It may not be as optimistic as Josiah Strong. But it’s in the ballpark.
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C’mon, D — don’t you call this little low-rent study hall/detention room your “blog ministry”?
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Zrim, amen on the need for “propriety”.
Guess that OL cruise on a “rusted, listing pontoon boat on some burning midwestern river or some southern malarial swamp” (ha!) will have to wait?
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Hey Erik,
Wow, you’ve blogged a lot about the MOC. I wish I could be of more help ‘splaining things because I can’t see where the misunderstanding is, but I’d do a lousy job trying to show it to you. I’m trying to tie-up loose ends here at OT so that I can move on. Here’s hoping I really have the wherewithal to stay away. It’s gonna be hard, but I think I can do this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncFCdCjBqcE
Thank you for interacting with me over the past year or so. Sometimes I’ve been stung by you, Darryl, Sean, and ZRIM( ok, less so by Steve), but for the most part I’ve come to really like you all. I You have a lovely family, Erik( remember I saw pics on B’s FB?) and I wish you all the best!
Susan
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Thanks, Susan. Good clip, too.
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For the record, I like The White Horse Inn. I was just saying that I’ve never seen it promoted here. The flip side of that is that I don’t feel a need to defend it either.
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Susan,
Maybe you can’t stay away because God is calling you back to a Reformed church.
I have little trouble staying away from Catholic blogs.
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Susan, I’m sailing, I’M SAILING!
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Erik Charter
Posted July 1, 2014 at 10:30 am | Permalink
Tom – I appreciate your concern, Erik. But even if I wanted to go about getting myself condemned to hell, it’s all too much work at this point.
Erik – Your assumption is that people have to do very bad things (worse than Dr. Josef Mengele) to go to hell?
At the same time you accuse us of not being concerned about people doing evil things.
Can you reconcile these two?
What is your definition of very bad things? You seem to say that blasphemy (a la Servetus) is no big deal, but that homosexuality is a big deal.
Would you say that blasphemy is not against Natural Law but homosexuality is, therefore your selective outrage?
I’m just trying to find a thread of consistency through all of this.
It was a joke, Erik. Geez. I’m too old and tired to sin anymore. It’s a joke.
And I don’t hold Servetus against you. My point was that once Luther blew up the Catholic Church’s magisterial authority [and Melanchthon admitted as such], it was inevitable that heresies would proliferate like rabbits.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 1, 2014 at 7:17 am | Permalink
vd, t, again too good to be true. “If I were God and Darryl G were the DJ, I’d dive out the window of my own heaven.”
So your wife is holding you down, making you read and comment at OL? You’re every bit a warrior child. You just don’t worship Jesus.
It was a joke, Darryl, about all your bleating about what music god finds acceptable in church. I actually read and consider what you write, a love that’s apparently unrequited.
As for discussing my personal relations with Jesus, you illustrate the wisdom of Mt 7:6 every time you address me as “VD,” for you turn and rend equally–Susan in her sincerity, or me at my drop of a bon mot.
I’m flattered you looked me up on the internet, though. Yes, I do self-describe as a contrarian. My admiration there is more for Machen than his epigones, his “warrior children.” In fact, my main complaint is you only tend to hit those who won’t hit you back. Keller, the Kuyperians, Sarah Palin, moi. Susan, Bryan Cross. The pope. Whathaveyou.
WWMD? Just line up his ducks in a row, then shoot them? How unsporting.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 1, 2014 at 7:48 am | Permalink
vd, t, you really sell Winters short. You guys seen the American creation in similar terms:
Black told a tale of horribles about religious persecution pre-1776, and how a group of enlightened secularists, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, put an end to all that by placing a “wall of separation” between the spiritual and temporal realms and by enshrining liberty of conscience in the nation’s founding documents.
Sadly, in his arguments (and in his footnotes), Smith gives no indication of any real familiarity with the vast historiography of the American founding. Anyone who writes about the religious history of the American founding and does not cite the work of Patricia Bonomi is not being serious.
Any account that, like Black’s, fails to take note of the antecedents in Christian thought to Enlightenment ideas about church-state relations and the rights of conscience becomes a kind of caricature. And, of course, the American founding occurred at a time when American culture was dripping in religion, albeit a viciously anti-Catholic Protestantism. But the way to correct one caricature is not to provide another.
In Smith’s telling, even Jefferson was a “providentialist,” the founders were aware of the Christian pedigree of their Enlightenment ideas, and their decision to adopt the First Amendment was no big deal.
I would contrast this conclusion with that of noted evangelical historian Mark Noll, a man who is not allergic to noticing and analyzing religious influences in American history. Noll wrote that it is “very difficult to see explicit biblical influences on the founding documents of the United States or in the political thinking of even the evangelical founders like John Witherspoon.”
I’m sure Mr Winters & I would have much in common outside his debasement of his own religion. He should really join some sort of synodic or presbyter religion where God’s truth is put up periodically for a vote.
I’d hoped we could enlist you–as a putative historian–on some of this needed rectification of the Enlightenment myth, though. I had specifically hoped to enlist a genuine scholar on Calvinism–and Calvinist Resistance Theory–with the scholarly chops and the requisite balls to stand up against the [Noll?] forces who whitewash the American Founding of its religious origins. Unfortunately, your religious [Two Kingdoms] commitments forbid you from speaking honestly as a historian in what may be taken as support for a position that you, as a churchman, theologically oppose.
If it had been up to you, the American Revolution would never have happened, per Romans 13.
I have come to understand and respect your conundrum. Dr. Dirty Mouth.
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Chortles weakly
Posted July 1, 2014 at 8:27 am | Permalink
Do you think God wants to sit around for all eternity listening to that dreadful noise Darryl thinks is proper “worship?” God created David, and Jimi Hendrix.
Witness ye all: form of worship is more important than we know. The simple, unadorned, biblically-governed worship of God is offensive. Be it Roman converts or Romanesque non-participants, worship often drives the doctrinal and devotional bus. And, Tom, there is where 2K can help — unlike the fundies we say, fine, listen to Hendrix six days if you want, sing the Psalms with us on one day. Then you may find you want to hear them more often.
Have previously expressed my love of the Psalms, bro.
But Jimi Hendrix is on God’s iPod.
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Erik Charter
Posted July 1, 2014 at 10:36 am | Permalink
Tom,
Is the First Table of the Law not Natural Law as well as the second? Would Aquinas have separated them?
The First Table of the 10 Commandments is not Natural Law. The Second is.
Aquinas, like Calvin’s Geneva, got it wrong about exterminating heretics. I adore Thomas, but he was sometimes wrong. And for the same reason, I give Calvin a pass on Servetus.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, and the reasoning was that persuasive heretics lead the innocent into soul-damning theological error.
However, as Locke elegantly pointed out, the government can’t save your soul. But “Radical” Two Kingdoms theory takes that to a ridiculous extreme.
So Erik, you’ve sure tapped the right vein [!]–there is indeed a necessary distinction to be made between the First Table [no other gods before me] and the Second [don’t murder]. I’ve chafed when this blog has slobbed it all together, making it an all-or-nothing deal.
(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.)
Even the Gentiles can get the Second one.
And why I argue the Church has an obligation to the Second Tablet, to the natural law, and cannot just restrict itself to the First. That’s an artificial bifurcation of the Ten Commandments, and theologically unsupportable. IMO.
[I was going to say “Biblically” unsupportable, but that duelling Bible verses thing is a sucker’s game. Pass.]
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Susan
Posted July 1, 2014 at 1:15 pm | Permalink
Hi Tom,
Maybe you have listened to this already, but I thought I’d still bring it to you attention just in case. 🙂
Susan
Thank you kindly, Susan. I’ll hit it!
BTW, have you been following OLTS semi-irregular John Bugay’s passably respectful exchange with one Bryan Cross over at the Evil Romish Ex-Calvinist Empire?
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/06/the-bishops-of-history-and-the-catholic-faith-a-reply-to-brandon-addison/#comment-103517
Instructive–if not probative–in both style and substance.
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Tom – And I don’t hold Servetus against you. My point was that once Luther blew up the Catholic Church’s magisterial authority [and Melanchthon admitted as such], it was inevitable that heresies would proliferate like rabbits.
Erik – The Catholic church executed plenty of “heretics” before Luther.
Some “heresies” are worth dying for, others are not.
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Tom – The First Table of the 10 Commandments is not Natural Law. The Second is.
Erik – Aquinas disagrees with you. Why should I take your word over his?
Tom – And why I argue the Church has an obligation to the Second Tablet, to the natural law, and cannot just restrict itself to the First. That’s an artificial bifurcation of the Ten Commandments, and theologically unsupportable. IMO.
Erik – Who says the church doesn’t have an obligation to the second table? They do, and that’s why they will discipline church members who violate the second table (as well as the first).
The fact that you want the church to somehow have an obligation to enforce the second table against non-church members is a bit ironic since you are not a church member,
How much heed are you going to give to what the churches in your area tell Tom Van Dyke to do?
Another glaring inconsistency in what you peddle here.
Oh yeah, you want the church to tell the government to make you obey.
But, why should the government listen to the church if you won’t?
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BTW, have you been following OLTS semi-irregular John Bugay’s passably respectful exchange with one Bryan Cross over at the Evil Romish Ex-Calvinist Empire?
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/06/the-bishops-of-history-and-the-catholic-faith-a-reply-to-brandon-addison/#comment-103517
Instructive–if not probative–in both style and substance.
I trust our very own resident skeptic is referring to John, not Bryan.
The latter is up to the same old same old.
In the light of Scripture, reason and history, Bryan and his ex reformed epigones have yet to be able to give us a sound exposition of the reformed doctrine of Scripture. Further, that Scripture prepares the man of God for every good work of 2 Tim. 3:17 might as well be garlic, a crucifix or a rosary to a vampire for all Bry, Jase and the boys care to substantially interact with it.
BC further touts the epistemological ability of the Roman church, if not the Romanist, to respectively declare and recognize infallible divine truths. Prots not so much. They’re stuck in the fallible opinion paradigm like a bird in a cage or a dog in a burning house.
Nevertheless Bry appeals to the private judgement of Prots to recognize the divine and infallible truth that Rome is the church Jesus founded/established.
But if Prots can recognize one divine and infallible truth unaided and outside the one true church and all its superstitious paraphernalia, they can recognize others. Which they do on the basis of Scripture alone and not Bry or Francis’s opinion. So sorry, Charley. Scripture only speaks to those who have ears for it.
History? Well Brandon has made an excellent start and Bryan is to be commended for letting it see the light of day at CTC. From there on out his replies to Brandon and John are largely sophistry and evasion if his last is any indication.
FTM Kaufman’s recent The Rise of Roman Catholicism ought to be of interest to anybody paying attention to the question of Rome vis a vis history.
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vd, t, and maybe you whine and kvetch so much here because I don’t blog about you. If you actually stood for something, I might. But why blog about gnats.
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vd, t, but I’m with the historical forces who want to tell the truth about the founding against those zealots who use the founding as some piece in culture war chess. Have secularists misread the founding? Sure. And they pay no attention to Noll. But to counter with a Christian founding for America like your friend David Barton or Mark David Hall doesn’t do justice how different (exceptional?) America was from what went before. Sheesh, your view turns America simply into the western version of Christian England.
Oh, btw, if America was founded as a Christian country, it didn’t have room for you — either in your secular or Roman Catholic version.
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Erik Charter
Posted July 1, 2014 at 11:50 pm | Permalink
Tom – The First Table of the 10 Commandments is not Natural Law. The Second is.
Erik – Aquinas disagrees with you. Why should I take your word over his?
Um, no. Aquinas quite agrees with me, or rather, I with him. There’s really no point in continuing since this is Square One, general and special revelation. I don’t believe I’m the one confused here.
What I said was that Aquinas, like Calvin, approved of executing heretics. But not under natural law.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 2, 2014 at 7:06 am | Permalink
vd, t, and maybe you whine and kvetch so much here because I don’t blog about you. If you actually stood for something, I might. But why blog about gnats.
Actually you spend all your time straining at gnats. Then you swallow camels.
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Tom,
What’s your source on Aquinas not considering the first table to be Natural Law?
What are your qualifications as an Aquinas scholar?
http://books.google.com/books?id=bXbE38tcNHAC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=did+aquinas+believe+that+the+ten+commandments+were+natural+law&source=bl&ots=oggxi9ChVd&sig=_JEzf_Cxon8HySG8F1BU4QDweNE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=E4i0U-ejDNS2yASyxIHwBA&ved=0CBwQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=did%20aquinas%20believe%20that%20the%20ten%20commandments%20were%20natural%20law&f=false
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Tom – There’s really no point in continuing
Erik – That day you stop continuing is the day monkeys fly out of my butt.
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vd, t, you left out tilting at windmills. Are you just one big cliche?
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Erik Charter
Posted July 2, 2014 at 6:37 pm | Permalink
Tom,
What’s your source on Aquinas not considering the first table to be Natural Law?
What are your qualifications as an Aquinas scholar?
You are correct. My apologies. The monkeys shall remain in your butt for the time being. 😉
As you can see, whereas the Second Tablet is obvious as natural law, the First Tablet remains problematic, and requires Thomas to do a bit of philosophizing to arrive at the “higher levels.” Although I’m going to hit the books on this–I like it, and I sincerely thank you for straightening me out–does this point affect our overall discussion? Indeed, per Aquinas
Erik – Who says the church doesn’t have an obligation to the second table? They do, and that’s why they will discipline church members who violate the second table (as well as the first).
The fact that you want the church to somehow have an obligation to enforce the second table against non-church members is a bit ironic since you are not a church member,
The thing is, since according to Aquinas, “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is avoided,” we must pursue a community where this is the case. Now, you r2Kers can separate like the Amish, or you can work for the common good.
So yes, you can punish offenders within your church, but this yields little if the “common good” is more than your tiny circle of co-religionists.
Certainly there’s the problem of coercion: branding adulterers, burning heretics. Messy business. But to say it’s to be either Calvin’s Geneva or Sodom is a false choice.
Again, my apologies and thanks for your correction on Thomas.
http://www.nlnrac.org/contemporary
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 2, 2014 at 9:35 pm | Permalink
vd, t, you left out tilting at windmills. Are you just one big cliche?
Yeah, the Bible’s just one big cliche but it’s all we got.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 2, 2014 at 7:13 am | Permalink
vd, t, but I’m with the historical forces who want to tell the truth about the founding against those zealots who use the founding as some piece in culture war chess. Have secularists misread the founding? Sure. And they pay no attention to Noll. But to counter with a Christian founding for America like your friend David Barton or Mark David Hall doesn’t do justice how different (exceptional?) America was from what went before. Sheesh, your view turns America simply into the western version of Christian England.
Oh, btw, if America was founded as a Christian country, it didn’t have room for you — either in your secular or Roman Catholic version.
Barton’s “Christian America” thesis itself is pretty tame. You could look it up. Mine is even tamer.
As for Mark Noll, he’s exactly what I mean about fouling history with one’s theology.
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2011/05/mark-noll-when-historians-attack.html
Not sloppy like Barton, but no less ideological.
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vd, t, so how is it you get this theology-free vantage to judge Noll but then go all theological to judge Michael Sean Winters?
I get it. The world is Joker’s Wild where vd, t always wins.
But I do love this:
A secular liberal could not have said it better.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 3, 2014 at 6:52 am | Permalink
vd, t, so how is it you get this theology-free vantage to judge Noll but then go all theological to judge Michael Sean Winters?
I get it. The world is Joker’s Wild where vd, t always wins.
But I do love this:
As for Mark Noll’s personal “moral evaluations”; theological evaluations about “what exactly is Christian about the Christian right” or whether “[i]t would have done much more good, and also drawn nearer to the Christianity by which it is named”; or his political evaluation of whether it “manifested comparable wisdom, honesty, self-criticism, and discernment,” frankly, my dear, these things are above his pay grade as an historian: We shall make up our own minds, thank you, sir, and we all wear our own hats on religion and politics with equal authority. That’s the American way.
A secular liberal could not have said it better.
Better than Pope Noll’s pontifications on Christianity. At least Michael Sean Winters wears his “Catholic” uniform. Since he enters the battlefield in false colors, Noll should be shot as a spy.
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Tom,
The day we live like the Amish even more monkeys will fly out of my butt.
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Tom,
Thanks for your graciousness on Aquinas. I was actually taking a flyer on his saying the first table was Natural Law. I was just lucky enough to find a source. You could probably find a competing source. This stuff is not always clear cut. Ha, ha.
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Erik Charter
Posted July 3, 2014 at 11:11 pm | Permalink
Tom,
Thanks for your graciousness on Aquinas. I was actually taking a flyer on his saying the first table was Natural Law. I was just lucky enough to find a source. You could probably find a competing source. This stuff is not always clear cut. Ha, ha.
Erik, I know you well enough to know you were just looking to prove me wrong on something, anything, and started googling. That’s the tragedy of theology when played as a duel instead of a cooperative enterprise. A joint inquiry.
Still, a lot came out of it for me, because you actally did hit the books [!] instead of just dogging me. You hit the difference between Thomism and neo-Thomism that’s been confusing me, because the current neo-Thomism of [even of Hugo Grotius!] attempts to argue natural law without Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, IOW even without God.
Which, let’s face it, is pretty much all we have left.
But the funny thing is, as the link you sent me illustrates, Aquinas argues the First Commandment via Aristotle [reason dictates there’s a God] as well as via Scripture [via Abram/Abraham who sacrifices to God even before God reveals himself to Abram!].
Aquinas even argue–via logic for the Sabbath, your Fourth Commandment–that such a God should/must be worshipped, so the Sabbath is a [theo-]philosophical principle, not just ritual law!
So thanks, man.
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vd, t, I love YOU.
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vd, t, “That’s the tragedy of theology when played as a duel instead of a cooperative enterprise. A joint inquiry.”
You’re sounding like Obama and the secular left again. Oh, but wait, the culture wars were never about religion (neither was the American
rebellioncreation of its debates). vd, t, you gotta mebbe do theology is you’re going to argue for a Christian founding.Like I say, when you do theology it’s good, when others do it who disagree with you it’s bad.
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Tom – Erik, I know you well enough to know you were just looking to prove me wrong on something, anything, and started googling. That’s the tragedy of theology when played as a duel instead of a cooperative enterprise. A joint inquiry.
Still, a lot came out of it for me, because you actally did hit the books [!] instead of just dogging me.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 4, 2014 at 9:05 am | Permalink
vd, t, I love YOU.
D. G. Hart
Posted July 4, 2014 at 9:15 am | Permalink
vd, t, “That’s the tragedy of theology when played as a duel instead of a cooperative enterprise. A joint inquiry.”
You’re sounding like Obama and the secular left again. Oh, but wait, the culture wars were never about religion (neither was the American rebellion creation of its debates). vd, t, you gotta mebbe do theology is you’re going to argue for a Christian founding.
Like I say, when you do theology it’s good, when others do it who disagree with you it’s bad.
If you loved me, you’d call me Tom. When you call me “VD,” you dishonor us both.
As for the rest, let’s try to get this straight between us once and for all—or at least set the record straight in front of witnesses. You may recall a scene in “The Quiet Man” when Maureen O’Hara serves Barry Fitzgerald a drink.
“Could you use a little water in your whiskey?”
—“When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey and when I drink water, I drink water.”
So it is with me, with history and theology. So should it be with the rest of you putative scholars. I have zero problem with disagreement. I have a big problem with changing the game in the middle of the game.
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vd, t, what changed in the middle of the game at Old Life not HISTORICAL but THEOLOGICAL Society?
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Except when the church was telling him where to go to school and paying for it.
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