Eye of the Tiber: My Journey To Catholicism Pt. 4

I began to wrap up the intellectual fight. When I realized that what I had learned must turn into actions, I asked one of the shepherds of my Church to sit down with me. He wanted to know what our talk was going to be about, and I told him it was going to be about authority. 

This must not have been good for him. I have, for a relatively long time, been a critic of the ICOC and their leadership. I still am. What my Catholic learning showed me was that I needed a greater authority than what the ICOC could provide, or any other church than the Catholic Church really. So, I asked him, how do you justify inspiration? He didn't give an answer worth remembering. When I put out the case as to why we need an authority to know what scripture is, he took the conversation in the direction it should have been going. "Where is all this going?" he asked. I raised my eyebrows and took a deep breath. He was going to be the first person I would tell face to face. 

He said he wasn't sure he could deal with what I had told him on the level that I needed him to be on. But Gordon Ferguson had just moved into the general area and he would see him the next week. He asked me if it was okay that he tell him about the conversation. I said it was. I was looking forward to meeting him. 

I went home and found a copy of his book Prepared to Answer. Ariana had let me borrow it a few times before, but I wanted it for myself so I could spend as much time as I needed to be prepared to answer Ferguson. So I started typing out detailed replies to what he had written in his book about Catholicism. I even put it up here on my blog. 

Time had passed, and when I asked my elder/sheppard about the meeting, he said he didn't remember he ever said anything about a meeting with Ferguson. So, we had two more meetings, and we included my best friend, Devin. I wish I could report what happened in detail, but really, nothing worth remembering was discussed. I heard nothing new and we didn't focus on what I wanted to focus on, which was the necessity for authority to know scripture. Instead, we quarreled about the Pope and Matthew 16. I still wonder why so many people want to focus on the Papacy. Is it a scandal to say such a man is a worldwide leader? I wonder if questions of psychology might be involved. 

One thing did happen which struck me as odd, and it was this, a refusal to engage me head on. The shepherds were quite explicit about their desire to not debate me. But if you know how I work, then you will know that I need a debate. I need an argument. There is such a taboo on arguing. But why? I suspect a culture of political correctness and the tyrannical relativism has crept in. It is commonly cited to me that godly people don't argue, but the same scripture being cited qualifies it by saying you ought not argue over stupid things. But what is stupid about salvation issues with which I was wrestling with? This must be argued. And they didn't want to argue with me. One possibility I now consider to be more plausible which I didn't consider at the time was that many people thought of me as a sophist. 

The sophist were the people during Socrates' day who would argue in court and debate many trivial issues. The sophists, they boasted, could win a losing argument. That is to say, they were so good at their rhetoric yet intuitively lacking in their logic, that they could persuade an audience even if they were not on the side of truth. This may have been the perception of me at the time, and probably is still held today (for example, I was debating a friend and he was frank when he said he would not consider the possibility that I was right and he was wrong). So, I don't think was a fear of debating me because I was right. I think there was a fear of debating me because when the dust would settle, it would turn out to be the case that I would win the debate even though at the end of the day, I was ultimately wrong about Catholicism. I think this is more plausible, but is admittedly speculation. 

However, if my shepherds were, as Biblically mandated, prepared to answer me and refute my alleged false doctrine, my experience in debate would not have been a substantial edge. Their refusal to argue with me is, I think, telling of how inadequate they were in their teaching and knowledge. It's ironic. I would preach and preach about how badly we need teaching, and would be shot down with the objection that it wasn't practical. When I need someone's help to prevent me from joining a Church I didn't want to join, there was nobody to help me. Certainly, they will have no more of my preaching! I am living counter-example. 

I was advised not to take what I had been learning on to Facebook. I agreed to this at first, but regretted it and thought it was a terrible idea. If I need help, and they're not going to help me, why am I not allowed to fish for help? So I did, and even now, I have a few new things to consider (thanks particularly to David Toft, not an ICOC member), though I believe they're still erroneous, though not as obvious as was from Ferguson's book. 

I never finished my critical review of Ferguson's book. I still have a draft of part four saved on my blogger (or was it five? I don't remember). My friends Devin and Brian deny Sola Scriptura, and they're my peers (though Brian would say he does not deny it, but I say he's wrong). Devin does affirm you need an authority to affirm the Scriptures, but believes that authority is the ICOC. That was my initial escape route as I explained in my email to Sirico. Brian believes in apostolic authority, but simply believes such authority was not passed on. Catholics will agree with this to an extent. How he defends the cannon, I do not know. I say all this to make it clear that, intellectually, my journey was over. Those who could present me with a challenge seemed to be wrestling with the idea themselves and so were in no place to confidently defy the Catholic argument. So why was I staying? In a word, Ariana. She was the last dragon I had to slay that was in my way of accomplishing my mission. And it was not an easy thing to overcome.