Milo
So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things.
In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stopped a little lower. Oh, he's probably one of those liberal Catholics who aren't really Catholic, or he's just another one of those gay apologists. I was also wrong.
Contrary to what I supposed, his style does follow substance. As he said in his talk last night, "Even my mockery is backed up by the evidence." So, he seems like a smart guy, I'll give him that. I was expecting, really, just a shit talking anti-feminist, the other side of the SJWs. I had thought about going up to the mic during Q&A and ask him how he reconciled the two, but not knowing if he already answered this elsewhere since I'm fairly new to his material, I decided to keep quiet. But some brave soul did it for me. His answer was...interesting. And it won me over to him, for him.
He started off by spitting out the great line that he would be worse off if he were not a Catholic. Bishop Barron says something like this when he talks about Brideshead Revisited. So, good start. He then said that people don't go to church because they're good, but because they're sinners. Also very true. And what is implicit in this is his admission that his homosexuality is a sin. He said that he started off his theology with the acknowledgment that he himself was a sinner, and he also talked about the history, the very positive history, of how the Catholic church, protected and sheltered gay people, even if from their own homosexuality. What this did was destroy my assumption of his position on the relationship between the Church and homosexuals. And while it looked like Milo was building up to some great finale to his answer, he just kind of...stopped. Just with the acknowledgment, a very humble one, that he was a sinner. The ending left me disappointed. And I would have been left that way if it were not for two other comments that he made to two different questions later in the night.
Milo also said that many young people need fathers, and that the nuclear family was essential in lifting people out of poverty. Not news to me, but surprising to hear from him. He then turned playful, and hugged a cutout of Donald Trump, and called him, "Daddy." I might be reading into it, but I think it may be true of Milo. Milo had an absent father, or had a father ripped away from him, and the statistics show that many gay men have absent fathers in their lives (and so, feel the need for male affirmation, which, in the critical adolescent years, gets mixed with being erotic). And, it just fit Milo like a glove. And I was sad for Milo.
In another answer to a question, he told a lesbian woman at the mic that she would be happier if she were in a relationship with a man rather than a woman, and he didn't mean it in a joking way like he usually did, but he was oddly pleading with her to not be a lesbian and be in a hetero relationship. And maybe I'm reading into this too, but it seemed like he was projecting and pleading with himself. He knows that homosexual relationships aren't good, and they aren't healthy, for a vast number of reasons, and he was warning this lesbian about the dangers, the very real dangers backed up by statistics that he laid out, of being in that kind of relationship. And again, I felt bad for Milo.
I was driving home with my friends, and I told them, you know, Milo is a hurting Catholic. That guy is Catholic in a real, if insufficient, sense. To be Catholic is not like being a Protestant, where you are just loosely associated because you hold to a proposition. Being Catholic is like being in a family. It *is* a family. The wayward son is still a son, and Milo is the wayward son. My mind was brought back to Bishop Barron's words when I saw him two weeks ago, that sin is an addiction. And Milo is addicted to his sin, to his homosexuality. And my heart just kind of breaks for him. Last night, I resolved to pray for Milo on a regular basis for his repentance.
I no longer think lowly of Milo, even if his humor is a bit low brow. I feel sorry for him, but I also feel love for him. No homo.
It's very interesting to come across your comments here. I'd like to challenge your misconstrual of protestantism though. Protestants who are not catholic are not really protestants after all now are they? There is only one holy catholic and apostolic church and if you are not part of that then you are not part of the family of God right ? It disturbs me that people who claim to be a part of the body of Christ create divisions like homosexual, sinner, roman, etc. I think that is deeply troubling. If someone has been made new in Jesus then whether they are same sex attracted or not or whether they have a drug problem or not or whether they attend a protestant church or not really is of majorly secondary importance wouldn't you say. Protestants who love Jesus are in the same family as Roman Catholics who love Jesus. I think you will find Vatican 2 even says as much. Even if you think the protestant church is a wayward son he is still a son so best not say that protestants are just proposition holders. I think Bishop Barron is great by the way. It just saddens me to listen to you be so accepting of a difference in sexual orientation and then be so divisive over an assumed us and them distinction. It is contradictory if not hypocritical actually. Do you see that ?
ReplyDeleteHey Rich. Thanks for dropping by.
DeleteI would say that Protestants are not Catholics in a formal sense, but they are still Catholic in a material sense, and so still count as being in the Church, and are still, as V2 calls them I think, separated brethren.
To be clear, I don't think Protestants are just proposition holders. Mere propositions holders would be something like an unbelieving demon. What I meant there when I said, "being a Protestant, where you are just loosely associated because you hold to a proposition" wasn't that Protestant qua Protestants are mere proposition holders, but that *within* Protestantism, what unites a particular denomination is the holding of a proposition. So what associates an Anglican to other Anglicans is the holding of some proposition, a proposition incompatible with say a Baptist or Lutheran.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHi Adrian, (sorry a few typos in the deleted post)
ReplyDeleteYou make the same point i make actually. What i meant was what you did say that Protestants are catholic (one holy apostolic church) just not not "Roman" Catholic. So as i said protestants are catholic in that sense (only if they believe there is only one body of Christ). That i think is the primary issue which Catholics and Protestants need to get past. If you really are united to Christ then you are his. He only has one body.
I also understand what you have clarified and accept it . The problem is the previous post was not so clear really and could have led to misunderstanding i think - obviously because i did !
In respect of Protestant denominations holding themselves together via certain propositions. I think that is true generally. Roman Catholics also, i think, tend to define themselves and who is and who is not a Roman Catholic via a set of dogmas. The real church however is invisible to the natural eye.
Having said this, as long as there is a primary allegiance to Christ and there is an acknowledgement that there is only one church = the body of Christ then the secondary marker is, well, secondary. (not identical though and i think that is crucial to know whether you view it as primary or not actually). That is what i was getting at really. There is only One real family and that actually is not the Roman Catholic church. It is the body of Christ consisting of Roman Catholics and Protestants. That is the true family. What you have identified is an earthly allegiance in actual fact that i think is not biblical or fair which is why i raise it with you.
In addition to this i really dont think that Roman Catholicism is as theologically or dogmatically monolithic as you might think. There is considerable (yet not as visible) variation.
Regarding Milo... poor fellow. Milo may consent to a set of propositions that define him as Catholic but he denies Christ through his actions and life. That is the tragedy. Whether he really is a dysfunctional believer or a wolf in sheeps clothing and not one at all, God only knows. He certainly is a poor witness if the former. He can at the end of the day still be a Roman Catholic and not be a part of the body of Christ after all right? That's where i think most people have a problem they thing that the two are always synonymous - they are certainly not. Membership to the institution and being a member of the Body are not the same thing.
Interested to hear your thoughts.
Hey Rich,
DeleteYeah, since I created this post, Milo has fallen out of grace with much of the media that propped him up. He seems to have defended pedophila (some say pederasty, but I don't think there is much of a moral difference to salvage his reputation), and has entered into a same-sex "marriage" with another man. There seems to be no repentance on his part even after his reputation took a well deserved blow, and so while I wouldn't call him a Catholic anymore, I would say he is an apostate Catholic, or just an apostate Christian.
Jordan Peterson (whom you no doubt know of and i am not particular fan) made an insightful comment regarding Milo. He saw him as a kind of court jester / provocateur figure who can make outrageous statements about those in power and get away with it. He sees him as having been "called forth", in a sense, by our society and is therefore a product and reflection of it. Even the way he dresses is that way inclined. That was insightful.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure i understand what you mean by apostate. Does that mean you believe that it is possible to have been renewed by God's Spirit and then become unregenerate again? Milo is certainly apostate from the institution if that is his position on such matters.
I have a number of Roman Catholic friends. Some whom i would regard as sincere believers and love Jesus some who are clearly not. It always intrigues me as to how they conceive of themselves and how much they lean on the church for a kind of vicarious faith. There is such a strong allegiance to the institution of the RC church.
My mother and her family were brought up during the war in a Roman Catholic context and while my uncle still holds strongly and almost superstitiously onto a broad affiliation and tradition he also is very critical of the church. It's a sad kind of "can't live with them cant live without them" kind of relationship. There was much institutionalised abuse as well which has been very harmful to people and to the reputation of the RC church in our country (Australia).
Let me ask you the question. Roman Catholic first or Christian first?
I am guessing that you feel that these are inseparably synonymous.
I would challenge that.
It would be heartening to hear that it was Jesus first before institution but in my experience those who are deeply into Roman Catholicism can not conceive of themselves or give a primary allegiance because they see them as one and the same. Is this true for you?
Most protestants i know are Christ first protestant second though I should say.
Yeah, I think Milo is apostate in that way. This is one of those cases where you just gotta hand him over to Satan, unfortunately.
DeleteI don't know too much about Australian Catholicism and the culture down there. I'm acquainted with a few Australian Catholics, but they aren't savory characters. I don't know if I just happened to have a bad sample.
I would say they're inseparable in practice but there is clearly a distinction. So, I would say I'm Catholic because Jesus wants me to be, and I'm sure Protestants would say they're Protestant because they think that's what Jesus would want them to be. I follow Truth, and it just happens that Truth led me into the Catholic Church. On a somewhat technical note, I would also say Jesus isn't Catholic, since to be Catholic means you have some attitudes about Jesus which isn't possible if you're Jesus Himself (if you're familiar with the logical rule that a set cannot include itself as a member of that set). Or put simply, if Christ is the head of the Church, he can't be a member of the Church. So there is a logical/conceptual distinction, but a practical inseparability.
And yeah, I have heard of Jordan Peterson, and like Milo, I hopped on that bandwagon, but after seeing the quasi cult that surrounds him, I've since distanced myself from him.
DeleteNo Jesus is not a Catholic - I agree. He's not a Protestant either! He is the head of the Church which is His body. Jesus is not the Church. That's kind of obvious right ? or not ?
ReplyDeleteHow is it you are made certain that Jesus wants you to be a Catholic? Its a strong statement which i would frame differently for myself. I don't really consider myself a protestant in a way. its not a label i really identify with. I belong to Jesus and the other label is very seldom considered frankly. My divergences with Catholics tend to be on things like the immaculate conception, veneration of Mary at the expense of Jesus, transubstantiation in the eucharist and the meaning of the mass itself as i understand it, the authority of the church to judge Truth, the limits of human knowledge and evidentialist / rationalist epistemological systems, things like that, then the place of meritorious works and purgatory which i find it impossible to argue are not diminishing the finished work of Christ, assurance of salvation, the place of human reason - just off the top of my head. These are troubling to me.
Again however this does in no way diminish my conviction that there are RC Christians who love Jesus and are members of Christ's body. Indeed you seem to be one! The key point of difference, for me I think, is the belief that in humanity there is something left of God that enables us to scaffold our way up to him in terms of our thinking and to conceive of him rightly in any other way than via his own direct revelation through Christ. That is independently through reason or any other method. This, as i understand it, is the major difficulty from which all others probably stem (although i have not thought that through as yet clearly). It also has relevance to the complete perfection and finished nature of the work of salvation by Jesus who is the head of his church.
I consider myself a person who wants to know what i believe is right. I do love Truth (which is incarnate in Jesus and propositional truth which points to him). When you say that protestants say they are so because that is what Jesus wants them to be i can honestly say that is the first time i have thought of this as an answer. My self conception does not begin with "I am a protestant" so that is a problem for the complement - "because Jesus wants me to be". If i begin "I am.." the complement would have to be "a child of God" (through the faith that he has given of course and through the finished work of Christ more specifically). So the self conception has a different starting point.
Here again though that is a different question / answer to which theological / ecclesiological system best images Christ or comports with the way things actually are and who God actually is, I suppose. That is the important question in deciding what is the better (albeit imperfect) way of conceptualising who God is. We need to adjust our epistemology to the nature of the object under investigation otherwise we will be controlled by externalities and not think rightly. This way of thinking i think is crucial to bow to or we are not going to be able to have a meaningful dialogue as we tend to camp on our positions rather than really let God speak about who He is.
ReplyDeleteAll this said, I certainly don't see Roman Catholics as the enemy (although i think you could argue that some of the positions held by the RC church are "enemies of the cross") . I think there are also beliefs held in the mainstream protestant church which also have the same relationship to God - that is opposing him, by the way. I wonder if you are as open to internal critique about RC dogmatics ? (I use this in the technical sense of the word by the way not as a derogatory terms).
I suppose i could say then that I have a problem with the way in which RC conceives of itself and its relationship to Truth (dogmatics) which i think would be worth exploring with you if you wanted to. It's something that is not fully developed in my thinking and might be done so in a dialogical context.
PART 2 -
What would you say is your main difficulty in your relationship to protestantism?
I wonder what would be your approach in trying to convince someone that R Catholicism is true? Where do you begin? Is it apostolic succession, papal infallibility ?
Just grab whatever you like from the above (or none of it) and I would be happy to follow along a train of thought for the purposes or refinement.
Yeah, I'm open to just about anything. I'll entertain any argument.
DeleteSo my main difficulty with protestantism is Sola Scriptura. There is a background as to why I find it difficult, and it stems from my conversion from atheism. I've been meaning to write about it, since people want to know the story. But briefly, this is the issue: when I converted to Christianity, I did it largely through an evidential route. I became a Christian because I was convinced that history could show that Jesus was a person who lived, died, and lived again demonstrating His deity, and that He made claims on my life that I needed to respond to. So, the historical critical method paved the way for me. When I joined the protestant group that I did, I didn't know much, but figured that I would learn along the way, which I did. I learned about the doctrine of the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, etc. But one thing I could never figure out that I thought I would was why did I believe the Bible was *inspired* and not just merely true historically. It was discomforting because when I would go out and evangelize and do bible studies with people, I would have to tell them that what we were reading wasn't just true but literally a message from God. And I could not justify that through an evidential route. So, I took the uncomfortable liberal-ish answer that it needn't be inspired to be a Christian. When I met a priest who challenged my presumption that I could have an infallible Bible without an infallible church, that lead me down a rabbit hole of arguments that I ultimately found persuasive. So, it seems like on the basis of Sola Scriptura, which is supposed to mean something like scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice, it was insufficient to justify itself, which is a big deal. And I think the consequences are empirically verifiable. Adherents of Sola Scriptura don't seem to know what counts as Scriptura. A good friend of mine who is Protestant believes that Enoch is inspired scripture. Other friends of mine are sympathetic to that view. So, the main difficulty is how one justifies Sola Scriptura.
I don't know that I have any one starting point in trying to show someone that Catholicism is true, and the reason for that is that not everyone is at the same place. So for example, I have an Anglican friend, and we try to convince one another of the our position, naturally. Because we have very similar views on the Eucharist, not the same but similar enough, we don't really talk about it, but I might make it a focus with an Evangelical non-denominational protestant about it. I have another friend who is an agnostic homosexual, and with him, I focus a lot on building a solid and secure friendship before I even talk about Catholicism, because I know that is usually a necessary atmosphere for him to be receptive about anything. And when I do, I don't usually talk about any Catholic doctrine in particular, but I have talked to him about the necessity of forgiveness in our lives, and knowing right and wrong and other virtues and fruits of the spirit. And with him, even if he were to become a non-Catholic Christian, I wouldn't be upset. I wouldn't even argue with him for a few years on the issue. If he left his lifestyle, and joined some generic non denominational church, I would leave him be and let him build his relationship with Christ, and I would feel like if I brought up some controversy early in his Christian life that would do more harm than good. Another example is with Mormons, who I talk to a lot. I don't talk about Catholicism right of the get go. I talk about whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, and I use their own information. That would be the first step in trying to get them won over. I haven't had any success yet on that front, no Mormon converts in my life, but I'll keep trying to adjust my approach as I go on.
So, I don't know that I have some cookie cutter approach to all people. Sorry if that was long winded.
Thanks for sharing that. Its very interesting to gain some insight into your own journey of faith.
ReplyDeleteIf we could take one issue at a time that would perhaps help.
Like you i have been an atheist and I too also until relatively recently considered myself something of an evidentialist. I believed (and still do) that a rational universe reflects the God who made that universe. Where i came unstuck was the problem arriving at a true knowledge of God via the human faculties and methods.
I came to be convinced biblically and existentially and also rationally that it is in fact impossible to know God apart from him revealing himself and that he has only revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ who is the exact image of his nature and bears his very imprint as the Scriptures teach. I think a key verse (and there are many) is John 1:1-18 "No one has ever seen God but the only begotten God the one who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made him known ". This is just a single scripture and it would be very simple to mount a sustained defense of the fact that we as human beings can not know the unknowable God unless he reveals himself (and would be ok to do that for and with you if needed). If we walk through this systematically however and rationally rather than initially biblically then i think that also can be helpful. I believe that we have made humanity and reason our gods and have made God in our own image as a result you might say. We can not define or determine God we are left only to repeat what He himself can tell us and has told us. This is an insistence on being dependent on God. If we think somehow we can rightly conceive of God without his revelation we are very sadly mistaken. The impossibility of the alternative is that we have to believe in an immediate and unmediated knowledge of God is possible, that is not miraculous but natural and not unique but generally given. Hunsinger (Christian theologian) says that this belief leads us to a king of independent and autonomous leverage with respect to God's grace and that it allows us to transform revelation from an "unnerving if liberating question into an answer that we ourselves control". He says rightly i believe that no concept of God arrived at independent of the reality of Jesus Christ may decide what is possible and impossible for God"
What you do when you make evidentialist claims is to try to build a kind of rational human scaffold into the heavens. This ultimately will not get very far because you seek to know the unknowable God. How do you expect to do that? You need a new epistemological system and you must adjust your own system to the nature of the object of inquiry like in any good science project. God has revealed himself exclusively in Jesus and reveals himself in himself. If we think we can know him otherwise we are deceiving ourselves.
There is a great quote i read recently "One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice" It's from Karl Barth. I love it. (continued in next post...)
(continued ..).
ReplyDeleteWhat i find particularly interesting about all this is that it gets back to salvation. We can not work ourselves up into salvation and so we can not in the sinful knowing of our fallen minds work up into the knowledge of God. God and God is the only one who saves and he alone is the only one who reveals Himself. If we think too much of our human capacity to rightly conceive of God then we are bound to fall back on a works righteousness ultimately (which i believe, at least dogmatically the RC church does although i think that this can be construed a little more delicately).
In terms of how this affects me, I can say that the effects are profound. I used to think that at least if i can get my friends and people in general to agree to logical rules of interpretation and be reasonable and look at the evidence then they would believe. This is sorely mistaken.
My witness is now not evidentially based (athough i still present evidence). I now begin with epistemology and how we might expect to come to know the unknowable God and the pedestal we have put reason and logic upon. I also begin with the fact that everyone actually knows that they don't know God and because of this it is He who must bridge the gap. The gospel liberates people because it is the power of God and therefore there is a reliance not on the evidence but upon God to bear witness to the Truth as I do. I am now a witness not a defender or a convincer in a sense. Its helpful and liberating.
There are a few inherent questions for you in the above which i will leave to you to address.
While I am largely an evidentialist, I am not completely one, and I tried to communicate that when I said an evidentialist method couldn't get one to the inspiration of scripture, which seems necessary for a more complete faith. As it so happens I believe we need a divinely established Church, but since the question posed to me was "what is a difficulty for me in Protestantism" I named how one could hold to Sola Scriptura if knowing what counts as scripture is a problem. I think you could answer that any way you can without any knowledge of what I presuppose. You could give an answer, and I could disagree with a premise and we could take it from there. So, how would you answer the problem?
DeleteNow, to be clear, evidentialists and particularly Thomists do not believe you can fully grasp the nature of God through reason alone. What we do claim is that we can know that God simply is, even if we do not know who He is, which I think is a modest claim and one supported by Romans 1.
Also, knowing God and knowing scripture are distinct. One could know God without knowing scripture (like much of history's illiterate people), and one could know scripture without knowing God. The problem I raised wasn't how does one know God, but rather how do we know what counts as scripture?
I think the two questions are very much related and dependent in a way which is why i linked them in the first place. That is, "How does one know God and how does one know what counts as Scripture" but if we leave the fist for now I will just address your reduced question to move forward a bit (if only to return).
ReplyDeleteI agree that, "how one could hold to Sola Scriptura if knowing what counts as scripture is a problem"
However since the Scriptures are "self-witnessing" or more particularly that God bears witness through the Scriptures to affirm them, their content, and their message we don't have a problem of needing a human authority to define them.
To draw this out a bit the Church (not RCC) may indeed recognise what they are but they do not define what they are. That is for God to do. Even if we were to grant that the Church has a kind of delegated yet dependent knowledge of this, it does not necessarily follow that the RC Church is the sole and final arbiter. That would end us up with Sola Ecclesia wouldn't it? It's a fraught logic no matter which way you turn.
God in Jesus by the Spirit is the one who leads us all into the knowledge of the Truth concerning himself. His Spirit opens up the Scriptures so that we should know Him. This does not leave us floating on a kind of subjective metaphysic but leaves us personally accountable and dependent upon Jesus and not on any person to tell us what is and what is not the Scripture.
This does however not preclude the need for us to be in communion with the Church who also gathers bearing witness to what God has given in my view.
If we say that it has to be the authority of the RC church or we run foul of all sorts of secondary arguments about papal authority and apostolic succession or conflicting dogmas, which i think will end up in human error sooner or later. ie it will be impossible to prove apostolic succession definitively or the papacy will fail at some point or there will be some form of contradiction in papal infallibility or knowledge claims that are not biblical because we accept extra-biblical authority or revelation. All of these i believe if we look back we will find. Why? Not as proof that the RCC is a failure but because it is a necessity if we look to humans to be our final authority.
(This is the first time i am having this discussion by the way and I'm thinking aloud so please bear with me)
I see the "self-attestation" response often given, but I don't know that I properly understand this. What does it mean for scripture to be self-attesting? When I read them, am I supposed to have some sense that God is speaking to me? And if so, what sense would that be exactly? And doesn't that mean I am in some way dependent on my senses to recognize God? That seems counter-intuitive. That's not to say it's false, but that it would need to be cashed out some way.
DeleteI've read the Bible when I was an unbeliever, and when I did, I didn't have a sense then that what I was reading was truly inspired by God. In fact, sometimes, when I read the Bible today, I still don't have that sense. I can't read some of the long genealogies in the Bible and have a sense that God is speaking through this long list of people. So, if I didn't have a sense of it then but I do now, then this sense (or some people have called a Divine Sense, a Sensus Divinitatis is what Calvin called it if I recall correctly) cannot be an adequate basis for recognizing what counts as scripture. As I mentioned earlier, some people have different competing senses of whether Enoch counts as scripture, and between Catholics and Protestants, we have disagreements over whether Tobit or Maccabees counts as scripture. How do we apply the self-attestation criteria to cases like Enoch and Maccabees?
I don't agree that this would lead to Sola Ecclesia, but suppose for the sake of argument that it did. Yes, the problem of how one determines Scripture is one that we both need to answer, but even if the Catholic answer still didn't answer the question completely, that it only pushed it back a step, well pushing it back a step is still progress, and would still count as a better explanation than Sola Scriptura.
Now, as a matter of fact, I don't think it does. Sola Scriptura says that scripture is the final infallible word on matters of faith and morals. Sola Ecclesia wouldn't be parallel because even if we only know through the Church what is true, it wouldn't be the final infallible word because it could say, as it does, that there are other sources out there that are infallible on matters of faith and morals.
To briefly sum up my position, we start off with the Bible being merely true. We don't know yet whether it is inspired or not. And in the true Bible, it would also be true that Jesus established a Church, and as you say, gives us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. The Church, with the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, then tells us that some books are inspired by God and demand our full obedience. So, as a matter of being with intrinsic authority, we have two: The Church and Sacred Scripture. But as a matter of epistemology, we take Jesus word who tells us to take the Church's word who tells us to take the Bible's word.
Take this as an analogy. Say I don't know who my father is. I know who my mother is because I literally came out of her body, and you can't really fake that. I ask my mother who my father is, and she tells me, it's Tony. So, my mother and my father both have equal authority over me, even though I know my father through my mother. It wouldn't be accurate to say that this is Sola Mother (or Sola Mater, if you wanna stay in Latin) even if there is an epistemic dependence on her.
And don't worry dude. You don't have to show off to me. I never get anyone on my blog, so this is a pretty chill convo.
Thanks. Chill convo sounds fine to me. I hope as a foundation we can work towards a catholic understanding of one another and view of the Church (in the Nicene sense!) and see this as an in family discussion knowing who the true enemy is. BTW I'm not trying to impress you just trying to be as accurate as possible and not misunderstand the way you / I use certain terms to be clear.
ReplyDeleteI'll just break things down so we can discuss each in isolation :
Self Attestation - this is not a phenomenological / sensory experience (although this may or may not accompany it). It is a certain knowledge, granted by God. This actually gets back to epistemology. The question asked underneath the question "how can you trust your "sense"?" is "How can you know anything is true?". Given we are subjective and limited beings and fallen to boot we can not rely on our senses or selves in fact to arrive at certainty with respect to anything. Certainty resides with God alone and this by definition must be given as a gift from outside of us. This is how it is when we come to believe = to come know the unknowable God. We do not arrive at certain knowledge of God and salvation via our human faculties. We are given this from God in such a way that we know it to be True. (We are given knowledge of Truth in fact personally in the person of Jesus who is a living Truth). That is faith.
Faith is the gift of God. Faith is certainty with respect to the mind of God. It is not a blind hope or a best guess with the available evidence. So i think you see that my original foundation discussion points were very relevant here. How can we know anything at all (epistemology) how can we know that what we believe about God is true (divine revelation vs human investigation via evidence),
So to answer the question how can you know the Scriptures are true ? You can only really know this by God's revelation. The evidence will support this given God is rational and logical and non contradictory but you can not know it thereby. It must be revealed.
When i first came to know the Lord Jesus I lived by myself in a motel owned by Jehovah's Witnesses. I had no idea they were not Christians. I had a bible and they had one that they gave me. I read both for some time and very quickly came to realise that their version of the bible was not God's Word. I did not go to Church at that time and actually went to their "kingdom hall". Now this is not proof of my proposition above, it is simply bearing witness anecdotally through my experience which comports with the reality of the way things really are.
So I would say "sense" is a very nebulous word and an unreliable measure. Certainty is what we require and our senses may or may not align with what is certain. Certainty and conviction stemming from that given certainty is what we also need.
OK I will cap that one here and move to your next point in the next post.
Mutual exclusivity in determining Truth
ReplyDeleteJust an additional note to the above regarding the senses that people have about what is and what is not Scripture. We have to accept that the views are mutually exclusive. Either Enoch and Macabees are the inspired Scripture or they are not. Whatever you or I may feel about them is completely irrelevant with respect to what they actually are. Which of us has an accurate knowledge and one that actually comports with reality is important. The question then becomes "how does one determine in the here and now which is true?". We can test our knowledge and ultimately arrive at certain logical or theological arguments. if you like. but at the end of the day someone is wrong. God is right. So that forces us back to God not back to a human authority to wrestle with. This is the same with any theological conviction or position arising from a study of the bible. We are dependent and accountable to God for our decisions we can not abdicate to a fallible human institution and base our faith on that. This is the wrong foundation even if it leaves us with some measure of uncomfortable dissonance which we have to resolve relationally with God and with his people (as we are doing now). If there are clear rational / logical reasons for rejecting extra canonical or intertestamental material or contradictory ideas then these bear witness to what is true and we can trust that these are evidences. Again the evidence is not the foundation it is the witness to what is already true. Proof and certainty can only come from God. We can not trust an institution to determine this for us ultimately.
Sola ?
Sola Eclesia a better explanation that Sola Scriptura? I dont see how this is so and perhaps you could explain. Maybe it depends on how you view a definition of Sola Scriptura?
Extra biblical Revelation
ReplyDelete" there are other sources out there that are infallible on matters of faith and morals."
Can you please explain to me where you get this idea.It does not seem to be biblical. If it is biblical perhaps you could point me to where you get that?
God has made himself known in Christ I accept that.
The Spirit illuminates the Scripture so that we see Christ. So the bible is useless unless God illuminates it.
The bible is a human product but God uses it to point to Jesus.
I'm getting a bit confused as to how you arrive at a novel position for extra biblical authority. I will try to unpack and follow your next thought in the next post.
I don't follow your logic being the following (please clarify) :
ReplyDelete1. We start with a thought that the bible is true from our perspective = merely true?
2. Jesus established a Church = the RC church or the body of all believers ?
3. Gives us (each of us and us collectively ?) the HS to lead us into Truth.
4. The Church (define) with the "power" (can you define power?) do you mean delegated authority to a hierarchy or council of some kind or do you mean individuals and collective at once or what ? If "we" are the church how does the church tell itself ?
5. You then introduce the matter of obedience.
6. Intrinsic Authority - I don't follow how you think that the Church (and you have not really defined it here) has an intrinsic authority. Surely it is not intrinsic and so independent with the power to define Truth. This must reside only in God. True Authority only resides in Christ who has, i affirm, given the apostles the authority to interpret the life of Jesus. (We dont have our interpretation we have theirs so to speak) - This is for us in the sacred Scriptures. But this does not follow that the authority is intrinsic to the apostles or that this succeeds them into the Church age for all time. It is Christ in the Apostles bearing witness to what is true so the authority is not intrinsic.
I think it is better and more accurate to say that there is only ONE authority. That is Jesus who images God to us. The Scriptures and the church bear witness to this reality - im comfortable with that i think.
Jesus does not tell us to take the Church's word does he ? Can you point out to me where you think that is in the bible?
He says that He is the Word and that the Scriptures and Church bear witness to him.
This may sound like splitting hairs but i think this is maybe where the distinction becomes important because in your movement you move from Christ to the Church to the individual as a chain in such a way as to try to establish the a delegated authority of interpretation being vested in the RC Church. You say .
" as a matter of being with intrinsic authority, we have two: The Church and Sacred Scripture."
AND
But as a matter of epistemology, we take Jesus word who tells us to take the Church's word who tells us to take the Bible's word.
I don;t see where you get this idea or that you have established it in your argument or where in the Scriptures you might be referring to. Please clarify.
Your analogy
ReplyDeleteThis is obviously a limited illustration but i will try to unpack its logic.
1. You don't know your father
2. You do know your mother with certainty (lets grant that)
3. You trust your mother to reveal who your Father is
4. She tells you who it is
5, Given now (you assume) that both have equal authority over you
6. You then have a kind of mediated knowledge of your Father through your Mother's witness but
7. You can't say Sola Mater just because she mediates your knowledge
8. both have authority
HAve i understood it correctly?
If so is it right to say you are trying to establish that both mother and father have authority over the child. That the mother is a truthful witness as to who the father is and that the child once introduced to the father still trusts the mother but that the mother is not the final authority?
As far as this analogy goes I would agree but i think there is a problem if we try to transpose it to the reality of God's witness :
The Son is the exact representation of the Father.
That is the Father mediates the knowledge of himself through the Son. They are one.
The Scriptures and the Church bear witness to this reality.
The Scriptures are given/ defined and inspired and infallible / God breathed lets say.
The Church made alive by God but it is not equivalent in the Scriptures it is subordinate to them.
So the analogy breaks down.
A question might be -
If then the Church is your mother and Scriptures are the last will and testament of your Father, let's say, which do you believe when they differ? Which has the authority ?
Anyway I think this analogy is flawed or not precise enough to be helpful for me to understand what you are saying i think ultimately sorry. You could try to clarify it. Illustrations seek to explain, validate or apply generally speaking they do not prove anything really but, such as they are, i am prepared to entertain them if they do in fact help elucidate a truth. In your case i really do not accept of follow the logic or the correspondence you try to draw.
Hey sorry for the delay. Got hit with a gnarly cold.
ReplyDeleteSo self attestation is knowledge imparted by God. And you believe scripture is self-attesting. Scripture being self-attesting is how you answered what is inspired by God. It sounds like you're saying that we know these books come from God because God gave us knowledge that they did. Well, that's exactly what I am contesting. God has not imparted this knowledge to me. So how would I know? The fact that there is disagreement about what is scripture shows that God has not imparted knowledge to everyone, if your view is correct. And if God has not imparted that knowledge to me, then I am simply not able to believe it. (And since knowledge is, classically anyways, defined as True, Justified, Belief, and God has not imparted any of those 3 parts in me, I could either say God just hasn't graced me with this knowledge while he has for others, or that they aren't self-attesting at all).
And while I don't know how one could be certain of anything, I do deny that certainty is necessary for knowledge. So while certainty is nice, and perhaps only a gift from God, it will take less than a God given proof to persuade me. My standard is lower than that. Just give me a more plausible than not argument and I'll change my mind.
And to clarify, I do not want to know whether what the Bible says is true. I am already convinced it is. What I want to know is, apart from an infallible church, how does know the books we call the Bible are inspired? Being true and being inspired are distinct. Two plus two is four is true, but not divinely inspired.
And good on you for leaving the JW's. I know they can be a hard group to get away from. I come from a protestant cult that had similar social structures and methods of control. I know how hard that can be. I have friends who have left the Watchtower as well. It can really scar you. Praise be to God you got out, man!
I agree with your point about truth being exclusive.
So, how is, if Sola Ecclesia is true (which I only grant for the sake of argument) better than Sola Scriptura? Earlier you said that Sola Ecclesia still suffered from the problem of determining inspiration. I said if that were true, it would still at least be better than Sola Scriptura because it would at least provide an explanation for scripture, even if it couldn't provide an explanation for anything else for the same reason. Because it has greater explanatory power, it could count as a better theory, even if not by much. It was a minor point.
What I mean when I say there are sources out there that are infallible in matters of faith and morals is the magisterium of the Church, Church being the Catholic Church here. I have my own independent reasons for this, but that's another topic. The point here was just to give a sketch of how a Catholic approach this and come to an answer. I'll unpack this as I continue in the next post.
So, we do start with a collection of books being true. Whether they are more than that has yet to be determined. This book tells us that God established a Church. Whether this merely a body of believers or not isn't important. I will add now though to clarify that we do know that there can be representatives of the church. We see this in Acts at the Council of Jerusalem where certain people were sent to represent their region or congregation or whatever. And they had the power to declare and bind doctrine on the whole of the church. Power here just means to bring some potential to actuality. And this power is delegated by God since God is the head of the Church and all power is given to him. Whatever man has has been delegated to him by God. Did I say the Church had intrinsic authority? That sounds sloppy of me. I apologize. So, if it has intrinsic authority it has it because it is the body of Christ and Christ has intrinsic authority, just like the Bible is the word of God and God is intrinsically authoritative. But, within that body, it does grant some extrinsic the power to bind and to loose, as demonstrated in the Council of Jerusalem.
DeleteI think you're correct when you say the Church and the Scriptures bear witness to Christ. That is why I take them both as authoritative. The Bible itself says the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim 3:15) and Paul, a minister of Christ, commands us to obey what he has said, either by word of mouth or by written word (2 Thess 2:15). And the Church bore witness, presumably infallibly, in the council of Jerusalem. So, I do think Scripture does tell us to take the Church's word for things.
I think you understood the Sola Mater analogy correctly. So you say it doesn't transpose to reality because reality says that instead of the Church and Scriptures being equal, it really says the Church is subordinate to Scripture. Of course, I don't believe that is correct. I believe the reality of case is that both are equal in authority. And so you ask, what about when they contradict? In that case, I don't know who would be correct, they might both be false, but no matter what, in that case, I'd cease being Catholic. I just happen to think that no such case exists. If it did, sure, that'd be a good reason to not be Catholic, but I just haven't seen any of those good reasons. You're welcome to try though.
So, the point with the Sola Mater is also a minor one. It was just a response to your point about my position leading to something called Sola Ecclesia. When you said my position is reduced to Sola Ecclesia, I took that to be a kind of parallel or replacement of Sola Scriptura. Maybe this confusion would be cleared up with you defined what you meant by Sola Ecclesia. But if that were the case, then the point about Sola Mater is to show that they aren't really parallel at all. Sola Scriptura says that the Bible is the sole infallible source on matters of faith. If Sola Ecclesia is supposed to be a replacement, then it would have to say that we believe the church is the sole infallible source on matters of faith. But that's not what our position would be reducible to. It may reduce to an epistemic dependence on the church, but not the declaration that the church is the sole authority. So, it's not a parallel at all, if that is even what you were trying to do.
Gesundheit !! No worries.
ReplyDeleteI will try to block each piece out with a heading to keep track...
WHAT IS SCRIPTURE :
I think we are getting somewhere.
I think it is more accurate to say that "self attestation" is a kind of quality that the Scriptures have and that is one which is affirmed and borne witness to by God. ultimately i suppose we could say that the God breathed quality of the Scripture is unique. This is different from "self evident" which i think you might be confusing with "self attesting". Does that help at all?
In the end however we are forced back to God for him to help us hear his Word and to determine in relationship what that Word is. If the RCC is wrong on what is the Scripture where does that leave you ? It leaves you relying on an errant authority to determine it. If you are wrong personally you will trust not in an institution to lead you into the Truth but you will trust that God will do this himself. The mediatorial aspect of your conception of what is true is an interesting one and one i have observed in many of my RCC friends. Almost all of them actually. Just an observation there.
If you are willing to admit (not just hypothetically) that you do not have the knowledge of what is and what is not Scripture that you can confidently say has been given to you from God then the solution is not to deny that this certainty is possible but to seek it from the Lord himself.
The solution you pose to throw your hands up and say "Well God has not given me this knowledge so its his fault that i don't believe it" is really not a good one is it ? One might make that same case with respect to the truth about the risen Christ. If you seek the answer then you will get one from God. If you don't you just keep pressing into God to depend on him for everything anyway so the solution is the same. If you cant get clarity about the intertestamental literature or the extra canonical literature why don't you just stick to the literature that you can get certainty or comfort about ? Maybe this is oversimplifying it but its more of a practical outcome of your failure to get clarity on the disputed texts really in this instance.
I'll try to keep responses to subject in it's own thread for simplicity sake.
DeleteYeah, if you want to say they're not self evident, that's fine. So it's a quality that scripture has, but how does one determine whether a certain book has that quality? I do admit that I cannot discern this quality, and it would as you say leave me to rely on an errant authority (and is an errant authority an authority at all in this case?) to determine it. Sure, I could claim to rely on God, and be very sincere in my prayers in asking God to determine for me and reveal to me what does and does not count as scripture, but there just seems to be an insurmountable empirical problem that He just hasn't yet.
Where it sounds like you're getting is that I should be comfortable, for the time being at least, with having a fallible set of infallible books. Guys like R.C. Sproul advocate for this. But as I said at the beginning of the discussion of this topic, wouldn't that lead to a kind of relativism where some friends would accept Enoch as scripture while others don't? And wouldn't that make it difficult to define who is a Christian and who is not? If I have a set of books that some other guy has none of, it'd be hard to figure out if conversation is even possible.
I would not worry about an apparent "insurmountable empirical problem" unless you are an empiricist and not a Christian. What seems a problem or a paradox to you is not to God. THis problem is the real problem for everyone in reality actually. We must trust God to reveal truth ultimately and personally and be connected to Him directly. Whether we are a member of the CC or not has no bearing on this ontological reality. Would you agree ?
DeleteWhat I am trying to say here is that you ALREADY have "a kind of relativism where some friends would accept Enoch as scripture while others don't?" This is the actual state of the body of Christ is it not ?
And yes it does make it very difficult to define who is a Christian and who is not" if our standard is whether we accept Enoch as inspired or not.
That is not a defining category. In fact i accept that you are a brother even though i hold that you are wrong with respect to Enoch and vice versa right ?
It does define CC but not C.
Ironically when i first joined this conversation you were saying that Protestants divide themselves according to these kinds of things but here you are saying that it is a trait common to CC as well right ?
Being a Christian is defined by whether or not one is united in the Spirit to Jesus Christ is it not ?
And if so what measure are you going to apply to discern or know this with a probabilistic certainty because i would assert this is not knowable to certainty in this life except by the person themselves.
Hey, it might be a while before I return. I have finals coming up next week and then graduation. Feel free to add me on Facebook.
DeleteSure no problem.
DeleteI pray that all will go well for you in your exams and that you will know God's strength through them.
CERTAINTY
ReplyDeleteThis is really critical and i would be prepared to suspend the conversation regarding what is and what is not inspired Scripture to explore this but they are very much linked together.
Where you are very much mistaken is in the area of arriving at certainty with respect to knowledge. If you believe however that God can not confer certainty upon a fallible and imperfect being who is by very nature subjective then you have a problem. A huge problem.
To know God is an essential element of the Christian faith. If we have uncertain knowledge then this is not true knowledge of God.
I totally agree that we can NEVER arrive at certainty in and of ourselves with respect to anything at all. That is precisely why certainty must be given to us by God himself which he most certainly does! This might be why so many RC people never have an assurance of their own salvation. Is it because the RCC teaches that one can not have this?
It is taught in the Scriptures. Luke's gospel and John's gospel for example in their authorial intrusions into their purpose are that we might have certainty (Luke's prologue) and John's epilogue (these things are written so that you may know). This is the certainty of faith. Faith is certainty regarding the revealed will of and mind of God. It is a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul (Heb 6:19). This i feel is critically important for you to come to terms with.
God has acted certainly and definitively in the person of Christ for the salvation of the world. If we deny this it does not change it. If we doubt it, it does not change the objective fact that he has certainly acted. What we must do is repent of our doubt and accept the revealed action of God in human history. This leads to certainty.
I don't want to leave this point just yet as i think its very important. There is a contradiction to say you know something (that is make a truth claim that you do in fact know something) and then in the same breath say that you cant know anything for certain (even the very claim that you can know anything or nothing). It leaves you with no basis at all upon which to decide what is a truth that you think you know and what is something that you really do know. It's a huge intellectual problem that most people never acknowledge. You must get to the point to realise that to know anything at all with certainty, it must be given by God. This is fundamental. If you can not admit that God is the author and giver of certainty then there is no point in trying to persuade you because you will never know whether you believe something which is true or not by your own admission. It's an intellectual black hole.
I do agree that God can give a person some infallible and certain knowledge. In fact, I think it's implied in our Dogma. I still contend that faith is certainty. Yes, Luke and John start off by telling us that they have written what they have so that we may know, but I'm not seeing certainty there. From what I understand, faith is a trust, an act, not a state of knowing. For more on this point, I would just refer to a talk given by Tim McGrew and Peter Boghossian on YouTube where they discuss the definition of faith.
DeleteYou argue that knowing something without certainty is a contradiction in terms. This isn't obvious. The classical definition is that knowledge is True, Justified, Belief. If you don't agree, do say so. So, whether something is true or not is totally independent of what I do or say. It's just an objective fact about the world. Then I need to have justification for it. So, having a 99.9% probability of being correct would seem to be a proper justification for something. If there 999 red marbles out of 1000 in a jar, it is safe to say I will pull out a red marble. And then belief is just adherence to that proposition. It seems like nowhere there is certainty required. So, where in these terms is certainty required that would result in a contradiction?
EPISTEMOLOGY
DeleteThere is a fatal error in your argument that truth is subjective. ie "whether something is true or not is totally independent of what I do or say."
This is frankly humanistic and where i had a huge adjustment myself only fairly recently.
Truth is defined not by us but by God. This is independent from us in the sense that it is objective. The knowledge of God is a case in fundamental point. God is who he is regardless of what i do or say. This should be plain and if it is not then there is a very serious error that we have to address before we can go forward because otherwise you will have to say that truth is Truth because we define it to be which is precisely what you do when you say that the CC is the definer of what is true. This is a great and fundamental irony and important point for us to get past.
We must if we are truly scientific (and i use this word carefully) adjust our method of knowing about something to th the manner in which that something reveals itself. If i do not do so then i am forcing my subjectivity onto the subject. This is fundamental as well.
As a simple (explanatory ) illustration If you speak italian for example then there is no point in me trying to make sense of your language as English. I must realise that you are communicating in Italian first then i can understand what you are saying.
Ontology MUST determine epistemology not the other way around. I hope you agree because this again is a fundamental for me.
God in fact hides facts from those who insist that he prove himself to them. (Read Luke 11). It is, in one sense, evil to try to prove God by human reason and logic if those things are primary and not subordinate to God who is above these constructs. (Again not to say that the created order expresses something other than a rationality which is evidence for the Creator - it is just not a way to know God and can not be used by those who insist that it is human wisdom that determines or proves whether God exists. In fact I would say that, when someone even asks, "does God exist" they have already denied that God has revealed himself in Jesus and they suppress this truth in un-right-eousness.
So I think you might want to re read what I wrote. I do not argue that truth is subjective. You quoted me correctly, "whether something is true or not is totally independent of what I do or say." That is exactly what it means for something to be objective. 2+2=4 is true or not independent of what I do or say. It is NOT DEPENDENT on what I do or say. So you've misread me there.
DeleteOK thanks for that clarification. You seemed to assert that you could not know with 100% certainty that you belong to Christ. Do you admit then that God gives this with certainty or not ? Please show me where you get a contrary belief as i hope i've shown you how Luke and John (as examples) conceive of this certainty. And we currently agree that these writings are inspired.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWHAT IS FAITH?
Delete(You "contest" not contend im pretty sure you mean.)
This is good i think this is a difference worth discussing because i think this lies at the heart of CC dogma. That is if one can not know that Christ is risen with certainty then one can not be certain of his finished work of salvation which leads to a kind of "works righteousness". ie faith then actually becomes a "work" at a fundamental level which i hope to demonstrate for you.
I will try to show that faith as it is defined by God is certainty. NOT as you and human culture define it today = hope or steadfast belief despite the possibility of error.
To unpack this and please step through it one step at a time :
1. Faith is the gift of God. This is beyond dispute i think by you but it is also a logical necessity which i hope to demonstrate as well to buttress the fact that it must of itself entail certainty.
2. God gives something that actually resides with and is expressed in and by Himself.
It is the "Faith OF God" not "faith IN God" - ie genitive not accusative
I should rest the case here and say 3. Therefore since God gives it as a gift and it is (by its own inherent nature of God) certain, faith must be = certainty with respect to the mind of God.
Nonetheless to press this necessity forward...
God gives something from himself that is FAITH. ( You might even say that more accurately He gives us his HIMSELF and with himself, faith. (anyway notwithstanding this if you just say "faith") That is the faith that Jesus exercised on our behalf when he offered himself to God. A faith that we could not offer. Jesus own faith is complete and certain it is not sinfully uncertain. Jesus believes for us and gives us the kind of faith that can only come from God because we can not exercise the kind of faith necessary to save us in and of ourselves. We could only, by evidence, try to posit something with a kind of probabilistic "certainty" which is NOT acceptable to God because its origin is in the heart of men not from the heart of Christ who is the only truly human human offering to God what we can not and receiving from God what he does not deserve on our behalf.
This is a beautiful and liberating truth and has much existential application - in fact it invades every part of life.
For example in particular - this construal / admission also avoids your probabilistic method of gaining certainty.
I would, having said this, continue to argue (whether you yet see it or not) that the "knowing" (ginosko) of God in John and the "certainty" (a-kribos) without doubt - that Luke offers in the prologue are both one in the same certainty which deliver saving faith which they purport to do.
Anyway - Let's not get hung up on exegetical matters just yet (we can revisit and i suggest you do independently) let's just stay at the theo-logical for now. I assert that the previous argument as to the origin and nature of faith are determinative and that one would be foolish (i would say i think impossible) to contest it.
Sure, faith is a gift from God, but faith is not purely an intellectual activity, but also an activity of the will. I wrote about this recently in my recent post about Calvinism. The greek lexicon does have the word for faith, pistis, as conviction and trust. So, I think it makes sense to say that we assess some proposition about God and God gives us a conviction about it and gives us the power to make an act of the will about it.
DeleteThis evinces a clear difference between us :
DeleteI believe that faith is purely a gift and an ontological reality that is conferred by God.
You define it as something we arrive at through a process of assessment.
The Greek lexicon ? Which are you using?
The definition of the word needs to be in a literary context for it to be understood properly. You can't simply transfer a single meaning across all the contexts and neither can you make an assertion simply based on a Greek lexicon.
I'd appreciate if you could follow the logic through of the source and result of FAITH.
God gives it as a gift. It is not an intellectual activity. The engagement of the will is after the reception of FAITH as a gift in the form of the person of Christ. You are, i believe, confusing the sequence and substance of FAITH. Hebrews 11.1 tells us that "FAITH is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen" which is conferred by God as a gift to us. It is a "sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" Hebs 6. It does not exist at the level of propositional uncertainty. It is certainty conferred by God. (BTW I've never read any of what Calvin wrote but if he says the same then i would agree).
So the question is " On what basis do you "assess some proposition about God"?
I believe the answer you have shown is that you are in fact making your own epistemological reason and human rationality and probabilistic reasoning your god.
I hold that True knowledge of God cannot be gained by this means. If you assert this i would like to know how you arrive at this conclusion please.
I believe i have demonstrated that we are unable to think rightly about God unless he confers that knowledge in a relationally immanent way by revelation not via investigation. This is a fundamental difference between us i think at present that i would like to resolve because i think it can be transformative and revolutionary as it has been to me personally.
INSPIRATION
ReplyDeleteAs above how can you be convinced of something if it is not a revealed truth?
Are you sure you are convinced or do you just think you are convinced? And how can you tell?
It's not a trick. It's a metaphysically subjective world without God as introducer of Truth.
As for inspiration it is written, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" 2 Tim 3:16
That is just one verse in isolation and i am a bit reticent to use it but it is very clear that Scripture is "God breathed" (lit.).
Yeah, as seen in my reply both sections above, I can be convinced of something if it isn't revealed.
DeletePlease clarify the difference between "being convinced" and "knowing it with certainty absolutely."
DeleteWith respect to knowing God how does this work? Are you suggesting you are convinced without him revealing himself?
Are you just convinced or are you certain in the sense i have expressed it?
As i said if it is the former then you are without God by definition of the knowledge not being revealed but somehow ascertained (without certainty).
There is a real intellectual problem here that i think you may not have grasped yet.
Maybe if i ask it another way ...
Do you believe absolute knowledge is possible without God ?
If you say no - on what basis do you make this claim.
If you say yes then how is this possible if it not given by the absolute source given human fallibility?
Even 2+2=4. If you think this is an absolute that you think you know, how is it that you have absolute certainty that this is true. Do you know it intuitively ? How can you trust your senses and cognition to comport with reality? It's a morass.
I believe in absolute knowledge and certainty and that this is revealed. I think you actually do to but have not realised it yet.
What is underlying it all however is that CERTAINTY and CONVICTION are not the same thing. Conviction about GOD if it comes independently of God can not be ultimately and unequivocally true conviction because its basis is a knowledge source outside of God.
This kind of faith conviction is ultimately a work. That really is i think where we differ and i think the CC differs from the rest of the C but individual believers are still saved by God's faith regardless of whether they misunderstand what that is. Hence i can feel free to call you brother even though the CC might conceive of faith as a work as we have defined it.
I would be happy from here to discuss meritocratic works or the mediatrix functions of persons other than Christ as they stem from this source.
I believe this is the fundamental reason for the protestant reformation so in plumbing this we are really getting to what divides us apart from Christ.
SOURCES OUTSIDE THE BIBLE BEING INFALLIBLE
ReplyDeleteNotwithstanding your intellectual conundrum (which i am not sure you have actually but if i take literally what you have written) that we can not know anything for certain, can you please explain to me where you get the idea that "sources out there that are infallible in matters of faith and morals is the magisterium of the Church"
This should be supported by Scripture and History if it were true.
It is very clear from history that the RCC has made errors so what do the Scriptures really teach on this subject?
I will try to deal with your exegetical conclusions before going further:
1Tim 3:16 - The Church does not equal the RCC in Timothy. While it is a true statement that God resides in this Church and that the Church is the place where God is because it is his body and by virtue of that it is the ground of Truth BUT more importantly and contextually it speaks of the gospel in particular. That is verse 16 "He was manifest in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world and taken up into glory" This is clearly the Truth that Timothy is the custodian of together with all who have faith. There is no other source of this Truth. It is not being fair to the text to try to press this into saying that the RCC makes infallible statements about God. That is not really what is being taught to Timothy.
2 Thess 2:15 is not a proof that the Church is the infallible determiner and custodian of the Truth either. Its an exhortation to the Thessalonians to not be duped by false teaching about the second coming of the Lord and to hold fast to what they had been taught. "stand firm and hold to the things which have been given (traditions) which you were taught". It is not really about command or infallibility. That goes beyond what the text is teaching.
It's not really good to use these texts out of their context as you have to attempt to support your points. I think you do better to use your original systematic approach and we could just stick with that to begin with maybe. This idea that the Church bore witness presumably infallibly is already a presumption that you have made and forced onto the historical context. We better set that aside unless you would like to revise your exegesis and then present it in a different way with a more fleshed out defense otherwise it is proof texting.
You may accuse me of that with 2Tim3:16 i guess ! But if you look at that verse Paul is making a summary statement about the nature of the Scriptures and it is this nature which can be relied upon. In this sense it differs markedly from your two proof texts.
So grant for the moment that 1Tim 3:15 is not the RCC. That wasn't really the claim. The claim was simply that the grounding of truth is the Church, whatever you conceive the church to be. It is later that we can determine which church that is, and so long as the Church is the custodian of the infallible truth, so too the church, whatever you think that is, has to be in some sense also infallible. If it fallibly guards the truth, then it failed to guard the truth, and the statement in 1 Tim would be false. So, we can be modest here and say, whatever the Church is, whether it be Catholic, Orthodox, or whatever, we know at that the Church is infallible. We would just have to figure out where that church is.
DeleteI do think 2 Thess 2:15 does show that the church is infallible. I take Paul to mean that to bey what he has written by letter is to obey even what is in 2 Thess. But the reason we obey 2 Thess and the other letters of Paul is that they are God inspired. If these aren't infallible, then it isn't true that we have to obey Paul. But if we don't have to obey Paul, it wouldn't be in scripture to begin with. And is Paul says obedience is necessary for his written commands, the same must be true of the oral commands as well.
And yes, I agree with 2Tim 3:16 that all scripture is God breathed, and therefore can be relied upon, but then I have the same problem as given above, which is, how do we determine what is God breathed to begin with. Fortunately, we trust Paul and other Apostles to tell us. They told us at the time, and I think that authority has been passed on, and so it is the same authority I trust.
I think this post is where we might get somewhere.
DeleteI only see that the Church is a kind of "ground" in the sense that it is "in Christ" and in the qualified sense in this particular context as i have clearly shown from the contextual evidence in 2 Tim3. I've shown that so it's best that you mount an exegetical argument contrary but that i think is not really possible. You would have to try to do that from an external theological system which is what you do in fact.
Anyway - if we just grant your interpretation for a moment (which i am not sure we should do for fear of muddying the waters ) i will try to explore it however even based on its own internal logic which i think is in error.
There is no other foundation of Truth except the person of Jesus Christ and only in that sense is the Church able to say that it is the pillar and bulwark of the truth. This is because the C is the ONLY place on earth where Christ resides. You have turned the logic upside down. One may NOT deduce that, because Christ resides in the C, the CC (or even the C) has infallible authority to interpret what is true. That is a jump that you make it is not what the Scripture teaches. Ironically -if this be the case it gets down to a reliance on a human structure when you do this and not on Christ. Which is precisely what you argue we should do so in that sense it is a logical move from human infallibility to obedience to humans rather than to Christ. (although you argue "synonymity" / identity).
So when we speak of infallibility and the church's (C) dogmas I agree the two are congruent at points but not synonymous and so it's not really that helpful to describe them as such. This is essentially the difference it think between your conception of authority and mine. I agree there can be propositional congruence but not independent authority (as i have defined independent) or even truth only Truth which is found only in the personal communication of Jesus himself which is not the same as a true statement from Scripture even.
That is because in propositions there can only be a kind of approximation of (propositional dogmatics) lets call it truth (t) and the (T)Truth which must be spoken out and expressed / communicated and confirmed and judged by Christ in himself alone - which He does.
I hope i am not going in circles with the above because the main point is that people are not infallible only Jesus is.
I'll deal with OBEDIENCE separately i think below.
Right, so I think at this point we can just discuss whether or not the Church really does have the charism of infallibility or not. Would you agree?
DeleteOK sure, where do you get that idea?
DeleteBASIS FOR BELIEF IN CHURCH AND SCRIPTURE BEING EQUAL
ReplyDeleteI think this is where we are really getting down to. It may however need some definition. When you say the Church you really mean the RC leadership in dogmatic statements of faith and practice (I think )and not really the Church as defined by the New Testament. Can you please clarify this because this is what it appears you are saying.
This is an incredible claim anyway to me that the Church (as the NT defines as anyone who knows and loves Jesus) is equal in authority and infallibility to the Scriptures.
See how our definitions are very far from one another?
Anyway, if you are looking at apostles being the church then it is very hard for you substitute apostles and transfer the NT meaning to Church. This would be an illegitimate transfer of the meaning to the totality of the contexts equating the two terms. Which is clearly not right and we could easily establish this. You are in fact using it in a very different way than the NT or the OT (LXX) uses the word ekklesia.
Notwithstanding that difficulty (or impossibility) you are also transferring further the reach of Apostolic authority beyond the formation of the Scriptures into the present age. (which we could also unpack). But regardless you are then claiming infallibility of these present day apostles. Which i think actually is what you are doing come to think of it !
It's clear that Peter the apostle got things wrong and was corrected by Paul in Acts. We also know that Paul expressed his opinion on certain things not really knowing if they were the Lord.
These are two small examples but nowhere would the apostles have claimed that they were not subject to and subordinate to the Scriptures. This is just flat out false.
This is a really BIG bad claim that is not supported by the Scriptures themselves. If you would care to try to do that in a clearer manner i would be pleased to walk through your exegesis.
That's right, when I say the Church, I do mean the Catholic Church (and I don't insist on using Roman Catholic btw, since there are Eastern Catholics that we are in full communion with, but just have a different liturgy). I do think that the marks of the Church are to be found in the NT, and that our only task is to find it. I think that one of those marks are the claim to infallibility, and so far as I know, only the Catholic Church makes that claim. So, it's easy at that point to figure out. If you don't think the NT describes the Church in those terms we can talk about it.
DeleteJust for a point of clarification, where in Acts in Peter corrected by Paul? I know there's a scene described in Galatians to a similar effect, but I don't recall it being in Acts. We can start there.
Ooops - Yes Galatians i think - you are right. ("Acts" time period - he he (blush))
DeleteTo get you your statement the logic that the CC claim to infallibility is a mark of what is the true Church is not really the foundation i think you would agree? Anyone could claim that.
I think it would be fair to push the edge of this statement to to say that "we Christians are infallible only when we agree with Christ" That is infallibility is not resident apart from Jesus. (Which is not really an innate infallibility now is it? So its not a good term.)
You could argue that all Christians make this claim. What you are claiming is something else however i know that but this is precisely the difference between us.
I see infallibility as residing only in Jesus as pointed to by the humanly crafted divinely inspired Scriptures.
Where in the Scriptures do you get the belief that the Church should claim to be infallible - i think you mentioned the two places but I cant see how they prove what you argue as i will try to show further in the place where you dealt with your interp.
Yes, anyone could claim that, but if someone who makes that claim is correct, I think that'd be worth exploring. And it isn't like anyone and everyone is claiming that. It is indeed only a very select group of people, so it's not too difficult to invest some time and explore the claim, I think.
DeleteAnd I don't think being infallible is merely saying something that Christ has said. I think in this context we are talking about whether God himself has declared something and protected it from error. I am certain that 2+2=4 is what God would say and so I am in agreement with God, but no Christian would say our math professors are infallible. No, there is a theological context here. We don't believe that when Peter wrote his epistles that he was infallible because he wrote something that was merely correct, but Peter is infallible because Peter is writing a message from God. This is why earlier I distinguished between being merely true and being inspired. Everything that is inspired is true, but not everything that is true is inspired.
So, if we are going to discuss whether the Church is infallible or not, I think we can move the discussion to another post where I discuss that specifically, because there's a lot of comments here on this post already, and if it's going to boil down to that (and the issue of Sola Scriptura) it'd be easier to focus on another post.
If you can just point to where you get the belief that the Church and the Scriptures are equally infallible and show that from the Scriptures that would be fine and move it to another post is also fine. I am not sure in what way you are using "Church" here but i assume you mean the CC hierarchy in some sort of limited agreed sense. Please show that from the Scriptures as well in that case. I can't see it at all. Maybe this gets to how you determine someone is correct and in this case you would me making some sort of knowledge claim and that knowledge claim would need a foundation. I'd like to know what that is for you.
DeletePROOF OF CONTRADICTION
ReplyDeleteAre you really saying that if someone can point out a single instance in which the RC hierarchy differs from the Scripture that you will renounce your membership of the RCC ?
I think this is a very rash thing to say of course (given that i have just showed you where Peter differed from Paul in acts and Paul and Timothy obviously differed). But i suspect you would wish to qualify this in some way before i take on the task.
It's a concern to me the way you talk about the Church as something outside yourself. ie something the Church teaches you.
That being said i really don't feel as though i would want to do such a thing since i would in a way want you to remain in the Church rather than drift or split from it because you had based your conviction and faith on a foundation other than on Christ.
Human infallibility is a myth. Only Jesus is infallible and anyone who claims otherwise is a liar.
This is a brutal but fundamental truth that is borne out by the Scriptures.
I would like to think that if and when you lose faith in the Church that you will still have your faith in Jesus left to carry you through. A friend of mine gave me a bible, my first one actually. In the front it says "People will always let you down but Jesus never will". This dear Adrian is true.
Yeah, if it could be shown that the Catholic Church has taught something contrary to scripture, that would be sufficient to show that the Catholic Church is not infallible, which it claims to be. That's just a logical conclusion of the claims of the Church. That doesn't mean I'd cease to be a Christian. I might be Orthodox, or heaven forbid a sedevacantist, but it is a simple way to falsify the church. I have protestant friends who believe that Lutheranism is the closest thing we have to the original historical Church, and I have a friend who is an Anglican priest who believes the same thing about his own church. So, there are other options. I just think the Catholic Church is the right one.
DeleteThat is a great relief to hear. It shows really that your foundation is not actually the CC and that in fact it is Jesus Christ himself.
DeleteI will leave this one for now and not address some exegetical problems and contradictions because i think that our systematic discussion will be more helpful than an exegetical one given that the CC has ways of rationalising / explaining / harmonising what i see to be glaring contradictions regarding a number of things like the immaculate conception, brothers and sisters of Jesus, and the list goes on. Let's just keep going on the other stuff for now ?
Yeah that's fine.
DeleteDEFINING THE CHURCH
ReplyDeleteI would indeed like you to provide me with your definition of the Church and help me understand where that differs from the usage in the Bible so i can understand where you are coming from a bit. You seem to use the word in a different way and it is confusing at times to me to tell which one you mean. Please let me understand your view and let me know whether as a believer in Jesus (the true and living Christ and head of his body that is the Church) you regard me as a brother in Christ or not. That would be a good start for me i guess even though we are quite a way down the track.
So my definition of the Church is those who are part of the family of God, the called out ones if you want to use the greek. I also believe that being part of the family has certain powers, as mentioned earlier. And yeah, I totally think you're a member of the family. You might not believe as the rest of the family does, but that's okay for now. Being mistaken in who you believe your parents are or who your siblings are doesn't mean they cease to be your parents or your siblings. Like I have said earlier, I have tons of Protestant friends, and we all see each other as Christians, genuine brothers, and well hope to be fully united some day. :-) We pray for each other, help one another in our ministries, hang out together, combat secularism together. There's much more that unites us than divides us.
DeleteThanks .... BROTHER ;) !!
DeleteGreek Word :
The semantic range of that word "ekklesia" is not limited to the way you are using it. That is in its NT or OT usage as the called out ones but its a good start i think. That is surely one of them but it is also a casual gathering of people (1 Macc 3:13 !) Acts 19:32,40 or even people with a shared belief ie of OT Israelites assembly or of Christians in a specific place or area Heb 2:12, Acts 7:38 for example. Dt 31:30. That's just a few references but there are so many. I would point you to A Greek English Lexicon of the NT and other Early Christian literature - BDAG. But we could just stick to a less technical discussion and look at this systematically / theo-logically as i think is better in some ways. The above really demonstrates that your definition of the "Catholic Church" (which i will hereafter just say your view of Church as CC (since you don't like RCC) and for what I hold as the Church (which i believe to be the Catholic Church (meaning all who are in the body of Christ) by the way lets just use C). I do believe my definition can be shown to be biblical and that the way you are using it is a kind of post biblical assimilation.
Yeah ok so as you define the rest of the family i could also say the same ie - you might not believe as the rest of the family does but i still count you as a brother in Christ - which is TOTALLY my point and demonstrates where you have an inconsistency in your definition of the Church !!
I've above shown you in the Scriptures (and in the inter-testamental lit even and there are others by the way inside and outside the agreed Scriptures) what defines the Church.
The Church is His Body. That's it. I really object any other definition which denies this. It seems to me that your definition does deny this (although you might assert that you think it includes it).
Give your authority is the Scriptures i cant see how you support your view and in fact have shown you pretty simply that it is not the view of Scripture so we are at an impasse on this one.
Unless you modify your definition of the Church or you somehow demonstrate from our shared authority (after which your greater authority would agree) how you get to your view.
I think you are defining the Church very differently when you speak about it.
I believe the Church is the body of all believers despite some errant teaching that some hold. Those believers are defined by being "in Christ". Every person that has been united in and participates in the life of Jesus ontologically is a Christian. Even if you believe some other whacky stuff that the Lord in his mercy over time will reveal.
Eg When i came to first know Christ (and this is crucial because the word "know" in the biblical sense is foundational and we get to that a bit later) i went to a JW group who professed that they were the Church. Now they were not because the Jesus they worshipped was not the Jesus i had come to know and be united to. The Real Jesus if you will. So even if i had been in that gathering lets call it, for the rest of my life my salvation would have been complete because i had really and truly in the Spirit been united to Christ and saved by his vicarious life. There may well have been other misguided souls in that gathering in that very same condition who were I insist, members of the body of Christ = the Church despite their membership to a body of people who were not the Church. This was true also of Paul in his addressing the "church" in various places. He used is as a gathering of people in the name of Christ but it was clear that people in that gathering were not Christians at all. So even though he used the word Church it is not for us to illegitimately transfer the single meaning across the totality of the contexts in which it is used.
We have to be really careful when we use the word "Church" which is why i want to create a definition that is biblical between us so that we know who we are talking about. (cont below)
(from above)
DeleteI accept that I am not CC but you are.
I accept that you are in the C.
You accept that i am in the C.
(as i have defined it above).
to put it in an us and them way - I believe that people can be Christians despite the fact that they are part of the Roman Catholic church.
And this is PRECISELY what I am trying to get at.
It is not for you and me to define, other than to agree that it is in Christ, who the Church really is as an identifiable structure in space and time. The true Church is defined by God (and his Word ;) ). Only God defines those who are his and not a set of dogmas or propositions.
Therefore the final definition of the Church are those truly in Christ no matter what they look like from the outside and no matter what church they go to. We can not look into the heart and define the body of Christ. We must accept one another despite the lack of certainty / assurance of this and even call one another "brother" on the basis of our confession of faith. The judgement day will decide who the wheat and tares are and bring that completely to light.
One final word "Catholic" - in the Nicene conception of the word is as i have defined it = C not as you have done as CC. That i think you (might) be able to concede despite all the other differences ?? Catholic = one universal and single body of believers. There is only one faith, one baptism one Lord Jesus Christ after all. He only has one body which is his Church in that sense and so i would view myself in these terms as a Catholic Christian !
Right, there's nothing here I don't really disagree with. Not all Christians are Catholic in the sense that I use it. I think V2 is clear on that. :-)
DeleteOK that's good to know thanks.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSOLA ECCLESIA
DeleteBy Sola Ecclesia i mean that you have made the Church the definer of the Scripture not God himself as the definer. I do accept that you see these two things as synonymous.
What i was trying to point out is that if your epistemological system must rely on a human evidentialist proof and identification of what is true, rather than have it revealed, ultimately you are placing a human authority above the Scriptures.
The Scriptures define the Church not the other way around is where i was trying to point you to.
If God is the definer then we are not in need of a mediated authority to define the Scripture we are just those in the body of Christ who recognise and accept what has been revealed. This gets back to the idea of the self attestation / quality of the Scripture being God breathed we started with . They are the Scriptures not because we say so but because they objectively are. What we subjectively think is irrelevant to their innate property. In order to properly know this however we must give up the throne of human rationality and give that over to God himself. God's wisdom is ultimately foolishness to the human mind and he is ultimately supra-rational. (And no i do not claim that God is not rational. I am merely saying that he is greater and so where we might see logical paradox (for example the gift of faith and responsibility) we must bow the knees of our limited human capacity to his). So when i say the position you arrive at is Sola Ecclesia i mean that by placing the RCC on par with the Scriptures you have exalted human beings a throne where they have no right to sit and are not given that right in the Scriptures.
Right, so, I do believe that the Church has the power to define what is scripture, and they do this through their God given power. But as my analogy tries to show, it doesn't place man over the Scriptures.
DeleteI think it is impossible to say that the scriptures define the church for the simple reason that when the Church came fully into being (be it at Pentecost or whenever, but sometime described in Acts) there literally was no NT in existence. The Church in Jerusalem when they had the council has no NT to rely upon, and instead relied on the authority of the Apostles, which I still claim to do. So how can it be that the NT can determine what the Church is when the Church precedes the NT?
Thanks for all the replies by the way. It's something to look forward to when i wake up since i am in Australia. !
DeleteYour question -
I see how you got to your question but it was not really what i was getting at.
Proposition 1 : The Scriptures are the God breathed and inspired they bear witness to the Truth which is not a proposition but a person = Jesus.
Proposition 2: The NT Scriptures bear witness as do the OT Scriptures to what the Church really is. ( The body of Christ - will deal with that in another post)
Proposition 3: Just because the NT was not a closed set in time at the time that the Church came into existence does not preclude them bearing witness now to what is true later in history.
It's not really and either or here nor is it really getting at what i was saying. I will try to put it another way.
Jesus defines who the Church is not human beings. The Scriptures being breathed out by God affirm what God says and therefore, in this sense, they affirm and are authoritative in determining who the Church is.
The Church in the NT time (consisting of all those who trust in Jesus despite their diverging beliefs on various matters of secondary importance) did rely on the Apostolic witness to Jesus. This was not for a set of propositions or a set of rulers in an ordered hierarchy to determine who the Church is. The Church belongs to God and you have already admitted that you believe that the Church is bigger than (what you define as) the Catholic Church (if i understand that correctly although it would really help if we could just stick to biblical ideas rather than use the word Church in a way that it is not in the NT or OT - oops i am getting into your definition of the church but don't answer that here ok do it under another post).
JW
ReplyDeleteI never considered myself a JW by the way. I just went to their meetings and knew a few sincere but deceived people. God was indeed gracious to reveal himself to me in his Word such that i knew it was true and their translation was false. They do not know or serve our Lord Jesus and walk in terrible darkness.
:-)
DeleteHey Adrian,
ReplyDeleteHave you finished your exams / papers ?? Hope you did ok?
I was wondering if you we could complete the conversation above which we have begun.
Having read the things above i think we start with your claim that the RCC magisterium is infallible in dogmas and that there are sources outside of the Scriptures which are infallible.
Could you please point me to where you get that idea.
Also regarding the challenge to non-contradiction between RCC and Scripture,
From my own study i would point to one passage alone where Jesus' natural brothers are referred to and yet the RCC holds that Mary was a perpetual virgin?
Also the idea that Mary was born without original sin. This also is contrary to Scripture.
or that there is more than one mediator between God and human kind ie Mary is a mediatrix (which seems to be a semantic splitting of hairs to avoid the mediatorial function that she has).
I'm concerned that the differences we have are worth working through to resolve,
Hope to hear from you soon as you can...
R