Sophistry: Reflections on “Debating” Anti-Catholic Polemicists

Last updated on: January 12, 2018 at 1:38 pm By Dave Armstrong

A series of ruminations, from correspondence about this general topic . . .* * *Sophism: a clever and plausible but fallacious argument or form of reasoning, whether or not intended to deceive.

Sophistry: unsound or misleading or specious but clever, plausible, and subtle argument or reasoning.

Many (most?) anti-Catholics are sophists, pure and simple, and sophists ought not be granted the dignity of a public debate. Sure, we can always say that as a result, a few people will become convinced of the Catholic position (and that in itself is, of course, a good thing). But if many more anti-Catholics, after hearing anti-Catholic claptrap presented in debate, attain to a stronger — albeit illusory — self-confidence against the Catholic position and go out and mess up that many more ill-informed Catholics, isn’t it a “net loss” in a sense?

The Catholic position is not well-presented at such “debates” (i.e., public, oratorical ones) because it is complex, highly interrelated, and (in its complexity, spiritual profundity, and inner logic) much more a “thinking man’s religion” than Protestantism is. Presenting such an outlook can’t very easily be done in a time-limited debate where our opponent is playing the audience like a carnival barker or a dishonest politician. It can be done in a book or a lengthy article, or in a website which deals with all the interrelated topics (or at least links to them), so that the inquirer can learn how they are thoroughly biblical, coherent, and true to history (and development of doctrine is also another huge and crucial, necessary factor not easily summarized or even understood by many).

Again, it has to do with the complexity and interrelatedness of the Catholic position, and the difficulty in promulgating it in sound bites, as is the case in so many brands of evangelicalism. Websites are uniquely designed to teach the faith, if this complexity is granted (with the technology of links). I think the only near-equivalent to this in live debate would be a series of debates, one after the other, so that the faith can be seen in its many dimensions and in its marvelous cohesiveness: what I would call a “cumulative apologetic argument.”

In a debate about papal infallibility, for instance, it would be necessary to also have debates on apostolic succession, episcopacy, the nature of the Church, indefectibility, the nature of authority, New Testament teaching on Tradition, development of doctrine, the self-defeating nature of sola Scriptura, etc. I don’t think the average Protestant has any hope of understanding papal infallibility (and “problems” like the Honorius case) without some knowledge of these other presuppositional issues.

But we can’t say that live debates are more effective than websites (or books) simply by recounting how people were affected, since obviously people are also affected by books and websites as well. God will always bring fruit out of every sincere effort to evangelize (which is why I will never knock anyone personally for publicly debating). But that doesn’t necessarily mean we take absolutely every opportunity, for there are such things as prudence, timing, a multiplicity of competing opportunities and responsibilities, etc.

In short, then, I think that any number of Catholic apologists could and would win such a debate on content (because our argument is true, and many apologists could convincingly present it), yet “lose” it in terms of impact on the audience, and in terms of the difficulty of persuading even those fair-minded or predisposed to be convinced of our side. We should take before and after surveys of people who attend these “debates” to see whether what I suspect is true or not (and make it a condition of the debate).

If we must debate these sophists and cynically clever men, at least we need to make sure they have to also defend their position and not just run ours down with the standard, garden-variety anti-Catholic gibberish, bolstered with “quasi-facts” and half-truths presented in a warped, distorted fashion. Those who don’t know any better will always be taken in by those tactics (which is exactly why anti-Catholics continue to use them, consciously or not).

Most public debate formats will not allow a fair exchange to occur, due to complexity of subject matter, and the stacked deck which requires us to defend complex truths, while the anti-Catholic escapes his responsibility of defending the generally unexamined absurdities and self-contradictions of his own position. Many anti-Catholics are never, ever willing to defend their own view beyond the usual trivial, sloganistic, sarcastic jibes.

Anti-Catholics remind me of some strains of creationists in this regard: excellent at critiquing the flaws in evolutionary theory; not quite so good at presenting a cogent alternative or even articulating their own position. But at least such creationists can easily critique evolution by telling the truth about its manifest deficiencies. The anti-Catholic, on the other hand (like certain politicians), has to lie and distort to get his message across. Again, whether or not the lie is deliberate, I do not assert (and I think it is sinful to do so, short of the most compelling, undeniable sort of evidence). The effect is the same, either way

I’m all for serious, in-depth discussion about Catholic historical “difficulties” such as Pope Honorius et al, but with honest, non-intellectually-suicidal historians (including amateur ones) and scholars who don’t approach the subject the way a Nazi doctor approaches an unfortunate Jewish prisoner (i.e., as fodder for his own bigotry, and smug superiority syndrome).

I deny that what most professional anti-Catholics do is “debate” in the first place, in the deepest and most authentic sense of the word (as in, e.g., the many famous and substantive medieval disputations). These events are shams and three-ring circuses. One might call them a “one-way refutation” (assuming our proponent is able and worthy), but I do not give these events the dignity of the title “debate.” Maybe I am too nitpicky and philosophical, or overly idealistic, but I feel this very strongly.

As for facing critics head-on, I don’t think anyone familiar with my website and published writings would regard me as a person unwilling to do that! I have more debates on my website — on more diverse subjects — than anyone I know. My concern is with the format and the goals we are striving to achieve. I don’t deny that anti-Catholics should be dealt with in some fashion (though an argument for that can certainly be made — and from the Bible; see below). I just don’t think live “debate” is the way to do it.

I am not alone in this opinion. R.C. Sproul (a well-known Reformed Protestant apologist and theologian) feels that way about all Catholic apologists, as far as I can tell, so this is not an unheard-of or extreme point of view at all. We can disagree on method respectfully. I respect Catholic apologists who take on anti-Catholics in public debate even though I think it is inadvisable and counter-productive in the long run.

It was argued that Jesus silenced his critics and engaged them in debate (“no one dared ask him any more questions”: Matthew 22:46). In this instance, our Lord Jesus had asked a single question of the Pharisees (22:41-42). They answered, and He asked a follow-up question (22:43-45). Then they could not answer (22:46). This is hardly an evening-long debate, so I really don’t think it applies to the question at hand. We are not likely to “shut up” our anti-Catholic adversaries. They (unlike the Pharisees with God incarnate) will be provided a platform for unlimited sophistry, slander, and lying. We give them a forum by agreeing to debate them that they would otherwise not have.

Furthermore, after we are told that no one asked any more questions, we have recorded Jesus’ famous rebukes of the Pharisees, where He calls them blind guides (23:16, 24; RSV), blind fools (23:17), hypocrites (23:23, 25, 27, 29), whitewashed tombs . . . full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness (23:27), full of hypocrisy and iniquity (23:28), sons of those who murdered the prophets (23:31), you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? (23:33).

One might argue, then, that anti-Catholics ought to be rebuked in this way at “debates” (Jesus’ rebukes being oral and in a large crowd), since our Lord’s words just before He gave this rebuke, have been cited (rightly) as our example. We need to look at all that Jesus and St. Paul said and did in this regard. Of course they argued and disputed. That’s beside the point, and who would deny it? My concern is the determination of when such argumentation is futile and vain.

Jesus also said: Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine . . . (Mt 7:6). And: . . . if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town (Mt 10:14). And: . . . not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it has been given . . . He who is able to receive this, let him receive it (Mt 19:11-12, concerning celibacy and the indissolubility of marriage; implying to some extent, I think, that argument is futile due to obstinacy and lack of grace in some cases). My point is not that all anti-Catholics are swine (!!!!!). Rather, I am contending that public correction of error is not always an ethical requirement or a prudent thing to do (though I would never argue that it is a bad or wrong thing to do).

After His eucharistic discourse of John 6, we are informed that many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him (6:66). Yet Jesus didn’t try to run after them and argue them back into faith. He simply let them go and asked the twelve do you also wish to go away? (6:67). Obviously there are times when argumentation and debate are futile, even harmful. Jesus knew this full well, as He knew everything. Surely, many other similar examples could be cited.

It is said that we have the Holy Spirit to guide us in such debates. We certainly do, but I’m not sure we can claim that He guides all our words in such a situation as a “debate” with an anti-Catholic. One context in which this Spirit-guidance was taught is quite a different one, I think:

Luke 21:12-15 . . . .they will lay hands on you and persecute you . . . This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

“Debates” with anti-Catholics are not a matter of physical persecution. Nor are either party refusing to meditate beforehand how to answer. Debate is not testimony. They are two different entities. Even so, Jesus Himself didn’t argue or say very much when He was persecuted and led to His death. These things are clearly not absolutes: not black-and-white. Jesus and Paul argued and disputed when it was worthwhile to do so (which was most of the time). But they also refrained from arguing and disputing (and taught others to do so) when it was vain and futile, and when the hearers were obstinate and stubborn and hard-hearted. They even recommended shunning.

For exampe, in Matthew 18, the famous passage about disagreements and church discipline, Jesus enjoins reconciliation with someone who wrongs us (18:15). Failing that, we are to go get one or two others as witnesses (18:16), then to take it to the church if need be (18:17). If the person refuses that correction, Jesus tells us to let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector (18:17). Have not anti-Catholics lied about our faith and several of us apologists times without number? Are they not often slanderers?

Who will rebuke them out of concern for their souls, rather than grant them a respectability they don’t deserve by these “debates”? I consider anti-Catholics my brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter what they think of me (this is good Catholic theology; in fact, required belief, especially in light of Vatican II). But in certain instances of obstinacy I am told to shun and avoid them, by Jesus and Paul; how, then, could I debate them, in such a circumstance? This is another aspect of this whole thing, having to do with anti-Catholics’ refusal to be civil and charitable and conciliatory with so many of us. This is not a “personal” matter of possible over-sensitivity on our part; it is, rather, a matter of deep biblical and ethical principle, and ultimately concern for the souls of our opponents, as I am trying to show.

St. Paul is no different. Many times he advises an avoidance of “vain disputation”:

For men will be lovers of self, . . . proud, arrogant, abusive, . . . implacable, slanderers, . . . swollen with conceit . . . Avoid such people . . . (2 Timothy 3:2-5)

. . . nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith . . . vain discussion . . . (1 Tim 1:4, 6)

. . . avoid disputing about words [such as ex cathedra or “ordinary magisterium” in non-Catholic crowds?] which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. (2 Tim 2:14)

But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels over the law, for they are unprofitable and futile. As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:9-11)

Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine ye have learned; and avoid them. (Rom 16:17)

Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. (2 Tim 2:23)

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. (1 Tim 6:3-5)

One could go on and on with this strain of Paul’s thought, citing his (and that of others, such as James’) teaching on evil-speaking, etc. There are a host of verses condemning slander and lying, of course (e.g., Ps 34:13, Prov 4:24, 6:16-19, etc.), and fools (Prov 10:18, 14:7, 18:7, 26:5, 11, etc.).

I’m open to another interpretation of all this Scripture, if anyone can show me one. People can legitimately have different opinions on the matter, as it is one of strategy and prudence. I’ve said many times that I rejoice in any fruit that comes from such events. My main point, however, is that there is such a thing as refraining from a debate (whether real or sophistical and farcical) for legitimate reasons, which I am seeking to demonstrate from Scripture. But then again, perhaps it turns on whether or not a particular anti-Catholic opponent is deemed a “fool” or “slanderer” or what not.

It depends in large part on how one defines “debate” or being “good at it.” If by that is meant that a person is able to be quick on his feet and offer both objections and answers; sure, many anti-Catholics are (especially the more educated ones). If, however, one means by being a good debater, being honest with the facts and honestly dealing with one’s opponents best shots, most professional anti-Catholics are atrocious. Is there a middle ground here?

Such “debates,” in my opinion, even positively hinder an honest dialogue. A public debater can virtually never concede a point right on the stage. It’s almost the nature of the beast that that can never occur, and this does not encourage open-mindedness and willingness to change opinions where warranted. All of us converts know about changing our opinions!

My point is that anti-Catholic polemicists do not deserve the attention and notoriety. My argument does not hinge on whether one enjoys or is able to do a live debate.

Anti-Catholicism — objectively examined — is inherently intellectually dishonest, in my humble opinion. That’s behind much of my objection from the get-go. That doesn’t mean all anti-Catholics are deliberately being dishonest; only that their position is such, by its very nature. Therefore, by engaging it publicly, we give it far more credence than it deserves (like debating some fringe anarchist or radical Communist every political season).

Books and websites are a much better way to go, I think. I’ve engaged many of these people in writing (White, Webster, Engwer, Ankerberg, Svendsen, Vanezia, DeMar, Phillip Johnson, many lesser-known folks), so I am obviously not objecting to taking them on altogether. One might argue that writing involves the same dilemma, but my point is that live debate entails many propagandistic, “working the crowd” elements (on our opponents’ part) which writing does not have.

Also, we can take them on once or twice to fight the error, but not all the time, so as not to give them more of a platform and a respectability than they deserve. I do agree that it is a complex prudential matter, though: one for which much prayer is needed. I am not even advocating all cessation of public debate. I am saying that there are certain people we should not debate in public on certain topics, or at least not all the time. This is not even about “oral vs. written” debates per se. It is how best to proceed with certain anti-Catholic polemicists.

I am not judging any man’s soul, only unworthy tactics, and unwillingness to forgive and repent of certain ongoing sins (particularly slander and bearing false witness, and unwillingness to accept any correction, even of demonstrable fact) which are hardly debatable. St. Paul acted no differently. He was much more harsh than I have ever been.

In my opinion, most anti-Catholics have left the field of legitimate, scholarly, apologetic discourse by their slanderous behavior, both towards individuals and towards the Church. One can disagree with Catholicism without the hostility and the distortions. Norman Geisler does it. But he regards us as Christian. It is no coincidence that the approach and “mentality” widely differs according to one’s opinions on the Christian or non-Christian status of Catholicism. By debating slanderers and those who commit intellectual suicide by adopting radically self-defeating propositions, we in effect grant them a legitimacy that they in fact do not possess. But I am speaking more in terms of philosophical and scholarly discourse, than strictly biblical categories. One must mix the two somehow and be consistent: no small task.

Anti-Catholics ought to be rebuked (not debated) by those who are truly concerned for their spiritual welfare. We rebuke, precisely because (far from hating them) we regard these straying sheep as our brothers and sisters in Christ and desire what is best for them (which is what love is, after all).

The same exact standard ought to be applied to Catholic apologists as well. Many people — again, on all sides — seem to think that the ordinary requirements of courtesy and charity go out the window when they are looking at their computer window, let alone in a public debate scenario . . . I despise this in person and on the screen. Always have and always will . . . .

The very notion of a “debate” with a sophist, is, in my mind (as in that of Socrates/Plato) is no debate at all. I hasten to add that this doesn’t mean I disparage anyone who does it or deny that fruit takes place. Quite the contrary. But I would contend: everything works together for good, we know, yet it doesn’t follow from that that it is good (or, more accurately, prudential) to do everything that produces such good as a “secondary” effect. This is simply an opinion on apologetic tactics and strategy. I think principles do come into play in the discussion at some point, but I believe it is nevertheless (clearly) a prudential matter, not an absolute ethical question of right and wrong.

Concerning such “debates” when they do occur, the good part is that non-Catholics hear the truth in a way and to an extent many of them may never have previously. I love that aspect, but even so I think the negatives outweigh the positives, for the reasons I have presented here and elsewhere.

Two other Catholic apologists wrote:

I agree that, when speaking to them, we have to speak the truth in love . . . I remain dubious that it does more good than harm to provide [such men] with a platform in which [they] can use [their] perverted intellectual gifts to throw more mud than a Catholic can wipe off in an hour’s time.But who have you debated that does not try to throw as much mud on your face that you can’t wipe off in an hour’s time? That is the sole objective of your opponent in a debate.

This gets right to one of my original points. Debate is not about slandering one’s opponent and “throwing mud” but about biblical/Christian truth and logic and education and mutual understanding. We ought not to reduce discussion on the most important things in life down to the level of the silly, idiotic political or pop culture “debates” that vainly seek to pass for intelligent, informed discourse.

We in effect do this by agreeing to allow our opponents to engage in these unworthy tactics — to give them a forum and “legitimacy,” even though we may not engage in the questionable tactics. We are enablers and co-dependents in a sense (to use psychological lingo for a moment). Or to use more biblical language, we help to make our anti-Catholic friends “stumble.”

I’ve heard several true debates/discussion where this farcical mutual monologue and playing the crowd like an unscrupulous Madison Avenue ad man did not take place. I think of Rod Rosenbladt or Harold O.J. Brown on the Protestant side. I think Norman Geisler could do it, or R. C. Sproul, if he were willing. But then again, these men are not anti-Catholic (excepting Sproul, who is the most sophisticated and respectable type imaginable), which supports my long-held opinion that anti-Catholics are scarcely capable of true debate — their position being ludicrous and self-defeating from the outset, and their ethics (sadly) often not much better.

So part of our disagreement is concerning the very definition of “debate.” I deny that these farces are worthy of the name. Whatever good might be accomplished is another issue, but they are not debates, because our opponents are propagandists and sophists, not serious debaters or even what I would describe as “amateur philosophers/thinkers” of the Socratic/Thomistic model. This is a factor which even goes beyond the “complexity of Catholicism” vs. the “sound-byte and sloganistic nature of pop-Protestantism” sub-strain of my overall argument.

I have dealt with the issue of the superiority of written debates over oral, but others seem to dismiss that based on the fruit which apparently occurs during “successful” Catholic vs. anti-Catholic public debates, and biblical examples of oral debate. I don’t think that is as simple as it may seem at first. Of course Jesus and Paul debated, and oratorically (it being a much more oral society with neither widespread literacy nor the printing press) but they did not always, and they urged us to refrain from such discussions once they possessed particular characteristics. We are commanded not to engage in “stupid controversies” or to interact with fools and slanderers.

Another apologist wrote:

When we confront these perpetrators, we lessen their influence. One of the best ways to do that is in a public forum, as Jesus and Paul did. Jesus didn’t stop in the middle of a debate with the Pharisees and say, “Oh, wait a minute guys, I want to go home and write this all down so that there is no misunderstanding about what I am saying.” God forbid. There is a certain dynamic that occurs when the devil is confronted face-to-face. It you play your cards right, it can be the most convincing form of communication there is.

My desire is to acknowledge the best points outlined above. There is good fruit which occurs in these encounters, despite all. Again, I submit that there may be a middle ground where some Catholic apologists can debate if they wish, and therefore reach some Protestants who wouldn’t otherwise likely be reached (though the latter assumption itself is debatable, I think). At the same time, they can apply ethical pressure on our anti-Catholic brothers in Christ and uphold the other principles I have been emphasizing.

We are commanded to avoid slanderers, and the ill effects on many that anti-Catholics (given a public platform) will cause. So, say 40% (let’s say that is 400) of the audience goes away more anti-Catholic, more confirmed in their errors, and more zealous to persuade Catholics out of their Church; and say 10 people come away convinced of Catholicism. Sure, we rejoice for them, yet if 40 times their number take a downward slide spiritually, is this really a tactical gain for our side (or for the Kingdom, period)? We can rejoice in the one or ten conversions all we like (and we should, and I do), but we have to be realistic about the negative effects which also occur.

That’s why I have suggested a before-and-after survey at these “debates” to determine exactly what results were achieved. If such surveys repeatedly indicated an overwhelming victory for our side, I would happily concede the point and seriously re-examine my position. If indeed we are “successful” at these events then we ought to be able to prove it with some objective, measurable, verifiable criteria. Two or three letters from converts will not do. Even then, it wouldn’t be the end of the question at hand, because if anti-Catholics continue to be slanderers, we are commanded to avoid them (and by extension, not grant them notoriety and a public forum and a legitimacy they are not entitled to).

It doesn’t prove that we must do these debates, because 1 or 10 people become convinced. They are free agents; if they are able to be convinced at such an event, then they will also have the gumption to seek truth out on their own, on the Internet, through books (even EWTN these days), or via an informed Catholic friend or family member whom God puts in their life, or tragedy, or what not. Everyone chooses to either pursue or squash truth. God is bigger than all our efforts, no matter how noble and good in intention. If we start thinking we control the grand scheme of things, we are in trouble, and we minimize God’s sovereignty. This is the temptation of the apologist, as we apologists all well know, I’m sure.

If in fact, our anti-Catholic opponent in a public debate convinces far more percentage-wise for his cause (let’s assume for the sake of argument and dramatic exaggeration that they are ultimately damned), do we continue to say that this is a net gain? I don’t see how we can. And it is difficult to know what occurs at these farcical events, short of a comprehensive survey. That would bring objectivity into this, rather than the anecdotal evidence of a few wonderful letters, concerning which we all rejoice.

If God could use Balaam’s ass, I’m sure he could use (and does use) an unsavory anti-Catholic character for the salvation of souls. Does that mean we continue to debate such a one till the cows come home, no matter how he acts, no matter how much he lies and slanders and acts hypocritically and arrogantly? No . . . .

Another apologist argued:

I would also like to remind everyone that the Catholic Apologist is not there to be treated “with respect and dignity”. Sure, one would expect that, among Christians, we would hope that would be the case, but that’s a fringe benefit.

I agree in a broad sense; but even this is a more complex matter than I think many realize. On the other hand, Paul appealed to Caesar and the pagan Roman justice system when he was slandered. We are merely holding our opponents to their own ostensible standards of conduct if indeed we are of a mind to point out the moral correctness of such treatment (i.e., for principle’s sake, not personal dignity and suchlike). Cardinal Newman publicly made mincemeat of Kingsley when the latter accused him of special pleading and equivocation (in effect, sheer dishonesty). Should he (and St. Paul) have just “taken” the abuse? Not every situation is a “turn the other cheek” scenario. Prudence requires that we treat each situation on its own, exercising discernment and taking into account all of the biblical evidence, conscience, possible result, and so forth.

We’re not required to repeatedly debate slanderers and sophists, knowing full well what will occur beforehand. The same Lord told us to “shake the dust off our feet” and not to “cast your pearls before swine.” Many Catholic apologists seem to give one side of the biblical material along these lines and largely ignore or at least minimize the other strain, whereas I am straightforwardly dealing with both and trying to present a view which incorporates both harmoniously (as we are all duty-bound to do, it seems to me).

It would be entirely different with an ecumenical Protestant. That doesn’t involve lying and misrepresentation and unworthy rhetorical tactics. That is merely an honest and respectful difference of opinion. Why don’t we debate those folks instead of the fools, slanderers, and sophists? Arguably, we would reach many more people at a debate like that, because they would be of much more open mind from the outset.

Another Catholic apologist wrote:

Taking slander is part of the business. It’s the “movie” that we are in, and I hope we can act our part and not give up, for that’s exactly what they want us to do when they slander us.

This entirely misses the point (at least my point), if I do say so. I dealt with this above, but in a nutshell: it is not personal slander and an affront to my (or anyone else’s) “dignity” that I am talking about, but rather, slander (and sophistry) as the modus operandi of a fellow Christian, which we support and encourage by giving this person a forum to continue doing it. That is arguably making him stumble (in biblical language) or offering an occasion of sin (in Catholic moral theological terms) or enabling (in psychological / AA lingo). Romans 14:13, 19.

I have never been opposed to debates per se (as everyone who has visited my website must surely know), but rather, what I feel is the perversion of debates by engaging those who corrupt the very concept of what a debate should be all about.

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(originally posted on 11-27-00; abridged on 1-12-18)

Photo credit: poster for the 1928 film The Sideshow [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Dialogue on Development of Doctrine (Esp. the Papacy)

Last updated on: December 14, 2017 at 4:32 pm By Dave Armstrong

vs. Protestant apologist and anti-Catholic polemicist Jason Engwer

The following is a reply to Protestant [anti-Catholic] apologist and polemicist Jason Engwer’s paper, A Response to Roman Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong Regarding Development of Doctrine. His piece purports to be (I think?) a critique of my paper, “Refutation of William Webster’s Fundamental Misunderstanding of Development of Doctrine.” Mr. Engwer’s words shall be in blue. I have somewhat abridged the original exchange, which was extremely lengthy.

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I. Preliminaries

It is unclear whether Mr. Engwer intends for his paper to be a direct defense of Mr. Webster’s paper, which I critiqued. It is hardly even a response to mine, except in part, as it is devoted to development of doctrine in general and particularly with regard to the papacy. Mr. Webster’s article, on the other hand, set forth a thesis that Vatican I and Pope Leo XIII denied development of doctrine, at least insofar as it related to the papacy.

I believe that I thoroughly demolished that hypothesis, by proving that Vatican I cited the very passage from St. Vincent of Lerins which is the classic exposition of development of doctrine in the Fathers, and identical in its essence to Cardinal Newman’s “development of development” fourteen centuries later. Secondly, I showed how Leo XIII was quite fond of Newman, and that the great convert was the first person he appointed as Cardinal — exceedingly strange if he didn’t believe in development of doctrine himself.

So if Mr. Engwer’s goal was to bolster Mr. Webster’s thesis, he has not done so in the least — not having dealt at all with the facts of the matter, as I did (even seeming to concede some of them). Nor is it clear whether or not Mr. Engwer was asked by Mr. Webster to offer some sort of reply to my paper. Rather, Mr. Engwer has sought to cast doubt on the very notion of the papacy itself (whether one agrees or disagrees with it), by taking the view that it didn’t develop as an historical institution, and that it was not present even in kernel form in the ante-Nicene Church.

This is an entirely different argument. Mr. Webster sought to reveal an alleged serious inner contradiction in Catholic teaching: that in point of fact the papacy obviously developed historically, but that its development was officially denied by both Vatican I and Pope Leo XIII. Mr. Engwer takes a more radical view, and wishes to cast doubt on any development whatsoever of the papacy, and assert that it was never known at all in the first three centuries or so. At least that is his argument as far as I understand it. He is equally as mistaken and misinformed as Mr. Webster, and I will demonstrate this in due course.

II. The Curious Development of Protestant Polemics Against Development

Mr. Engwer approvingly cites George Salmon twice in his paper. Salmon was a prominent 19th-century Anglican polemicist against Catholicism, who vainly imagined that he had refuted Newman’s famous thesis of development of doctrine. But Salmon seemed to deny development of doctrine altogether (even Mr. Engwer didn’t take it that far), as the following citation indicates:

Romish advocates . . . are now content to exchange tradition, which their predecessors had made the basis of their system, for this new foundation of development . . . The theory of development is, in short, an attempt to enable men, beaten off the platform of history, to hang on to it by the eyelids . . . The old theory was that the teaching of the Church had never varied. (George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House (originally 1888), 31-33 [cf. also 35, 39] )

I dealt with the absurdity of this opinion in my paper contra Webster. Here it is sufficient to note that Salmon takes a far too radical view in opposition to development, and shows a complete miscomprehension of both development itself, and how it synthesizes with Tradition, within the Catholic system.

It will be shown that this concept of true developments being — in effect — the Protestant (i.e., supposedly always so “biblical”) doctrines, while the distinct Catholic ones are corruptions, is both circular and inconsistently and illogically applied, for the Protestant has no reason for accepting development of certain doctrines while denying the (legitimate) historical development of others, other than to baldly assert, “well, because we accept these doctrines!” This will become clearer as we proceed in our analysis.

III. Catholic Apostolic Development vs. Protestant Subjectivity and Circularity

Anybody who knows much about church history knows why Catholic apologists appeal so often to development of doctrine.

We appeal to it because it is an undeniable historical fact. If Protestants accept development of trinitarianism or the canon of the New Testament, then it is not improper for us to accept development of the papacy, or Marian doctrines, etc. Mr. White locates the difference of principle in alleged lack vs. abundance of biblical support. We assert that we have biblical (as well as patristic) support for our views. The Protestant disagrees. But the criterion for the Protestant — when their view is closely scrutinized — reduces to mere subjectivism according to Protestant preconceived notions (depending on denominational tradition, of course), whereas for the Catholic it is historically demonstrable unbroken apostolic Tradition, developed over 2000 years. In any event, the controversy cannot be settled by a disdain for the very concept of development (which seems implied above), as if it were improper to utilize it at all in the discussion of historical theology.

Concepts like the Immaculate Conception, private confession of all sins to a priest, and the existence of no less and no more than seven sacraments didn’t arise until long after the apostles died. To make such doctrines appear credible, Catholic apologists have to argue that these post-apostolic developments are approved by God.

This is strikingly illustrative of Mr. Engwer’s basic miscomprehension of development, just as his comrade-in-arms Mr. Webster misunderstood it. Briefly, doctrines remain the same in essence, while their complexities and nuances develop. Thus, in the above cases, the essence of the Immaculate Conception is the common patristic notion of Mary as the New Eve, which implied sinlessness (as the first Eve was originally sinless) — backed up by the “full of grace” clause of Luke 1:28, and many indirect biblical indications, as outlined in many papers on my Blessed Virgin Mary web page.

The essence of private confession to a priest is the biblical teaching of confession per se (“confess to one another”) combined with the explicit biblical teaching of the prerogative of priests to “bind and loose” and to forgive sins (Mt 16:19, 18:17-18, Jn 20:23). Likewise, sacramentalism is a thoroughly scriptural concept; the settling on seven sacraments is the development of the prior essence. So the core and foundation of all these beliefs are not only not “post-apostolic;” they are demonstrably biblical. To acquire a basic understanding of the basis for development of doctrine, readers unacquainted with the notion are strongly urged to consult the many papers and links on my Development of Doctrine web page.

They’ll argue for the acceptance of the papacy on philosophical and speculative grounds, then they’ll appeal to the authority of the papacy for the acceptance of other developments (the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption of Mary, etc.).

Hardly; the papacy is explicitly biblical as well, as I will show below. Mr Engwer doesn’t even trouble himself sufficiently to represent the Catholic apologetic fairly and accurately. Catholics certainly do ground the papacy in Scripture itself. One may disagree with our conclusion, but they may not falsify the facts as to where and how we derive the doctrine.

I’ve made three arguments against the Roman Catholic appeal to development of doctrine:

1) The appeals are speculative. They’re unverifiable.

That simply isn’t true. We can trace all the doctrines through history. We can determine whether or not they were held as consensus or as increasingly consensus opinions throughout Church history – particularly with regard to the Church Fathers. We can compare and contrast them to Holy Scripture (being harmonious with and being explicitly contained in Scripture are not identical concepts, nor is the former antithetical to the latter). Divergent Protestant opinions, on the other hand, are thoroughly unverifiable upon close scrutiny. They are only as good as the individual or denomination holding to them.

Mr. James White, e.g., believes in adult, believer’s baptism. He calls himself “Reformed.” Yet his Presbyterian comrades — people like R.C. Sproul (as well as John Calvin himself, and Luther) — believe in infant baptism (and Luther even holds rather strongly to baptismal regeneration). All appeal to Scripture Alone (as Tradition is rejected as any sort of norm or authority for doctrine). How does one choose? Well, it comes down to the atomistic individual in the end. Now, how “speculative” and “unveriable” is that?! Surely more than the Catholic apostolic and historical view, which takes seriously what the Holy Spirit has been saying through the centuries to believers en masse, and what He has taught the Church (what Catholics call the “mind of the Church”). In Catholicism, it is not the individual who reigns supreme, but the corporate Christianity and “accumulated wisdom” of the Church (itself grounded in Holy Scripture); Tradition passed down in its fullness through the centuries, just as St. Paul refers to in many places in his epistles.

2) The appeals to development contradict what the RCC has taught. For example, if the Council of Trent teaches that transubstantiation has always been the view of the eucharist held by the Christian church, Catholic apologists can’t rationally argue that transubstantiation is a later development of an earlier belief in a more vague “real presence”. To make such an argument would be a contradiction of the teachings of the institution Catholic apologists claim to be defending.

This is a false analysis. It rests upon the fallacy of the Tridentine use of the word “substance” as equivalent to the entire structure of Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophical analysis of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Trent stated that the “substance” of the bread and wine “converted” to the Body and Blood of Christ at consecration (Decree on the Eucharist, chapter 4). It didn’t (technically) say that transubstantiation — conceived as a philosophical construct — had always been held. But in developmental terms, the basis for the later view was clearly there in the notion of Real Presence, taught in Scripture and almost-unanimously held by the Fathers (while denied by virtually all Protestants).

The early Church believed that the Body and Blood of Christ were literally, truly present in the consecrated bread and wine. Utilizing the word “substance” is simply one way of thinking about such complex issues, just as homoousios was used with reference to Christ’s nature. It doesn’t imply that Christians always spoke in those terms, even though they had always believed Jesus was simultaneously God and Man. So one could say that the Church “always” believed in the Two Natures of Christ, while at the same time realizing that earlier Christians did not use the Chalcedonian terminology of 451. This was a development; so was transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, and other doctrines which Protestants detest.

3) What Catholic apologists call developments are sometimes contradictions instead. For example, if the most straightforward readings of passages like Luke 1:47 and John 2:3-4 are that Mary was a sinner, and church fathers teach for centuries that she was a sinner, it’s irrational to argue that a later belief in a sinless Mary is a development of the earlier belief. Such a change would be more accurately described as a contradiction, not a development.

Mary did need a Savior, as much as the rest of us. The Immaculate Conception was a pure act of grace on God’s part, saving Mary by preventing her from entering the pit of sin as she surely would have, but for that special grace. John 2:3-4 in no way supports some supposed sin on Mary’s part, except on prior Protestant presuppositions, making the argument circular (but I myself wouldn’t have thought when I was a Protestant that this verse is an unambiguous example of a sin committed by Mary). Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin writes:

The title “Woman” is not a sign of disrespect, it is the opposite – a title of dignity. It is a formal mode of speech equivalent to the English titles, “Lady” or “Madam.”

The Protestant commentator William Barclay writes:

The word Woman (gynai) is also misleading. It sounds to us very rough and abrupt. But it is the same word as Jesus used on the Cross to address Mary as he left her to the care of John (John 19:26). In Homer it is the title by which Odysseus addresses Penelope, his well-loved wife. It is the title by which Augustus, the Roman Emperor, addressed Cleopatara, the famous Egyptian queen. So far from being a rough and discourteous way of address, it was a title of respect. We have no way of speaking in English which exactly renders it; but it is better to translate it Lady which gives at least the courtesy in it. (The Gospel of John, revised edition, vol. 1, 98)

Similarly, the Protestant Expositor’s Bible Commentary, published by Zondervan, states:

Jesus’ reply to Mary was not so abrupt as it seems. ‘Woman’ (gynai) was a polite form of address. Jesus used it when he spoke to his mother from the cross (19:26) and also when he spoke to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection (20:15). (vol. 9, 42)

Even the Fundamentalist Wycliffe Bible Commentary put out by Moody Press acknowledges in its comment on this verse, “In his reply, the use of ‘Woman’ does not involve disrespect (cf. 19:26). (p. 1076).

So Mr. Engwer’s “straightforward” biblical interpretations of Mary’s alleged sins in Scripture are not quite so clear to many prominent Protestant commentators — no doubt much more learned in the arts of exegesis and hermeneutics and linguistics than he is, if I do say so.

As for the Fathers teaching “for centuries” that Mary was a sinner, this is absurdly simplistic. The consensus was that she was actually sinless. This was strongly implied by the New Eve motif, which goes back as far as St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus. Other Fathers who believed Mary was sinless included Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Gregory Nazianz, Gregory Nyssa, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Augustine, Ephraim of Syria, and Cyril of Alexandria. The exceptions are few: Tertullian (later a Montanist heretic), Origen, Basil the Great, and John Chrysostom thought Mary committed actual sin.

But Catholic teaching does not require literal unanimity of the Fathers; only significant agreement. Individual Fathers are not infallible. The Church Councils make the judgment as to orthodox doctrine. Catholics believe that even St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas got a few things wrong (just as Protestants believe that Calvin and Luther were not infallible).

IV. Protestant Logical Problems With Regard to Development of Doctrine

In explaining the difference between acceptable and unacceptable forms of development of doctrine, I have compared a Trinitarian doctrine that can be said to have developed in some way (the co-existence of the three Persons) with a Roman Catholic doctrine that’s said to have developed (the Immaculate Conception). As I explained in that earlier post, the co-existence of the three Persons is a necessary and non-speculative conclusion drawn from Matthew 3:16-17 and other passages of scripture. The Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, is an unnecessary and speculative conclusion drawn from Luke 1:28 and other passages of scripture.

To argue that this Trinitarian doctrine and this Roman Catholic doctrine developed in the same way is fallacious. The Trinitarian doctrine is a necessary and non-speculative development, something that’s already in scripture. The Roman Catholic doctrine (the Immaculate Conception), on the other hand, is an unnecessary and speculative attempt to give a scriptural foundation to a much later concept. In other words, there’s a difference between a) developing an understanding of something already in scripture and b) trying to read a post-scriptural concept into scripture in ways that are unnecessary and speculative.

First of all, Mr. Engwer’s judgment regarding what is overly “speculative” is itself ultimately “speculative” and “unverifiable,” precisely as he accuses Catholic developments of being. They rest — in the final analysis — upon himself and other Protestant scholars and commentators, not on Scripture itself, because the Bible never specifically informs us of which beliefs are “overly speculative.” Why should I accept the word of these Protestants, where they contradict the Church Fathers, who were much closer in time to the apostles? It is no coincidence or shock that the Protestant finds “overly-speculative” all doctrines held by the Catholic Church which have been discarded by Protestantism! Again, this is circular reasoning, and obviously so. But let’s accept this methodology (also espoused by James White) for a moment, for the sake of argument, and apply it as a reductio ad absurdum for the Protestant:

1. True developments must be explicitly grounded in Scripture, or else they are arbitrary and “unbiblical” or “antibiblical” – therefore false. Mr. James White (a la Confucius) says: “The text of Scripture provides the grounds, and most importantly, the limits for this development over time” (Roman Catholic Controversy, 83).

2. The Trinity and the Resurrection of Christ and the Virgin Birth, e.g., are thoroughly grounded in Scripture, and are therefore proper (but Catholics also hold to these beliefs).

3. The canon of the New Testament is (undeniably) not itself a “biblical doctrine.” The New Testament never gives a “text” for the authoritative listing of its books.

4. Therefore, the canon of the New Testament is not a legitimate development of doctrine (according to #1), and is, in fact, a corruption and a false teaching.

5. Therefore, in light of #4, the New Testament (i.e., in the 27-book form which has been passed down through the Catholic centuries to Luther and the Protestants as a received Tradition) cannot be used as a measuring-rod to judge the orthodoxy of other doctrines.

6. #5 being the case, the Engwer/White criterion for legitimate developments is radically self-defeating, and must be discarded (along with sola Scriptura itself).

This is an airtight argument, and there is no way out of it. It renders null and void Mr. Engwer’s and Mr. White’s arguments concerning development of doctrine. I don’t think White and Engwer will be willing to give up both sola Scriptura and the New Testament in order to maintain a fallacious, utterly nonsensical opinion (given the above conclusions) of what constitutes a true development! The only conceivable escape from the logical horns of the dilemma would be for Mr. Engwer to allow a tacit and altogether arbitrary exception for the canon of the NT, but then, of course, we immediately ask,

“On what basis can you absolutely bow to (Catholic) Church authority in that one instance, while you deny its binding nature in all others, and fall back to Scripture Alone, the very canon of which was proclaimed authoritatively by the Catholic Church?”

This entire system of interpretation of the Bible and Church history is absurd, as is — in the final analysis — the formal principle of sola Scriptura upon which it is built. Scripture does not teach sola Scriptura and it does teach about an authoritative Tradition and Church. Therefore, even the premise on which the intellectually-suicidal White/Engwer criterion for true vs. false developments rests (sola Scriptura), is itself self-defeating. Christian Tradition simply cannot be dismissed, for to do so is to discard the Bible itself, and with it, the entire Protestant epistemological foundation and formal principle. It is only possible to have Bible + Church + Apostolic Tradition, or to have none of the three. No other position can be rationally taken, whether the question is approached historically or biblically (as if Scripture can be totally divorced from history). It’s a matter of inescapable logic.

Clearly, then, I don’t object to all forms of development of doctrine. I object to the Roman Catholic version of development as it’s used to defend the early absence of doctrines like the papacy and the Immaculate Conception. In other words, if Catholic apologists want to argue that people’s understanding of the implications of a passage like Matthew 3:16-17 developed over time, I don’t object to that. But if these same Catholic apologists want to argue that the Immaculate Conception is a development of what the earliest Christians believed about Mary, I do object to that use of the development argument. As far as I know, the Protestant apologists mentioned by Dave Armstrong (William Webster, James White, etc.) agree with me on this.

Then they are subject to the same extreme difficulty I just mentioned. And beyond that, if I can show that there is plenty of biblical evidence for the papacy (as I intend to do, and have done in my papers already), then the papacy is on the same epistemological ground as something like, say, congregationalism or a symbolic Eucharist and baptism, which arguably rest on quite flimsy biblical grounds. The Protestants give their biblical arguments for doctrines; we give ours. Who is to say who is right? On what basis? We answer (just as the Fathers did) that this is determined by tracing back doctrines historically: what has the Church taught in the past? Can this particular doctrine x be traced back to the apostles, even if only in kernel or primitive form? The Protestant distinctives cannot be so traced. The Catholic distinctives certainly can, once development is rightly understood and consistently applied.

V. Development According to Protestant Polemicist William Webster

In his article on development of doctrine and the papacy, William Webster makes some comments that could be interpreted as opposition to all forms of development.

I didn’t contend that he denied all forms of development (as Salmon seems to do). What I argued was that — by his reasoning in the paper — Mr. Webster fundamentally misunderstood what Catholics believe development to be. As he was attempting to establish that our view was internally inconsistent, it was of the utmost importance that he get our views right, or else his thesis would hardly be forceful or compelling (indeed, it was not at all, in my opinion). That’s what is called a straw man.

Or, the comments could be interpreted as William Webster saying that the RCC has condemned all forms of development. But if you read William Webster’s article, it becomes clear that he’s addressing some specific arguments for development, not all forms of the concept. Namely, he specifically objects to Catholic apologists appealing to development on issues such as the primacy of Peter and the universal jurisdiction of the earliest Roman bishops. This doesn’t mean that William Webster is objecting to every appeal to development, nor does it mean that he thinks the RCC has condemned every form of development.

I don’t believe I stated otherwise. Again, I argued that Mr. Webster did not show that he understood how we view development, because he made some very foolish arguments. But his position is still subject to the severe internal logical difficulties outlined above.

I think Dave Armstrong’s response to William Webster is off the mark, in that he reads too much into what Webster has argued.

I seriously wonder whether Mr. Engwer even understood my argument, as evidenced by these remarks. If he did, he is not even arguing against it, let alone disproving it.

There are some comments Webster makes that could be interpreted as a condemnation of all forms of development. But you’d have to ignore what Webster argues elsewhere, in the same article. And I don’t think we should do that.

I didn’t. And I think Mr. Engwer should not largely ignore my reasoning in a paper mentioning my name and claiming to be a response to one of my works.

James White, in his most popular book on Roman Catholicism, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1996), specifically advocates development of doctrine. He also contrasts acceptable forms of development with unacceptable forms of development (pp. 80-85). White’s book has been out for a few years now, so he can’t be accused of just recently coming up with this argument.

Yet — curiously — he accuses Cardinal Newman of “coming up with” his analysis of development, which I have shown in several of my papers was taught in its basic form by St. Vincent of Lerins in the 5th century (!!!), and echoed by St. Augustine in the same period. This is no new concept.

Evangelicals are more specific in their arguments than Dave implies. William Webster in particular has produced hundreds of pages of documentation of specifically what he means when he says that the First Vatican Council is a contradiction of modern Catholic appeals to development.

Then why hasn’t he explained to all of us why Vatican I cited St. Vincent of Lerins?

Yes, the First Vatican Council believed in some forms of development of doctrine, as Dave argues in his article. But, at the same time, there are some specific cases, such as Vatican I’s claims about Matthew 16, where development just isn’t a valid argument.

Only wrongly interpreted, as I demonstrated, I think, in my paper contra Webster. Development of doctrine applies across the board in Catholic teaching.

VI. The Historical Development of the Ante-Nicene Papacy

This is Dave’s first argument, as I summarized it:

1) The papacy has existed since the time of Peter in at least a seed form, but it later developed into something more. The development isn’t a contradiction. It’s a progression. The seed we can see early on consists of concepts such as the universal jurisdiction of Peter. However, even this seed may not have been fully understood or universally recognized early on.

An accurate summary!

One of the problems with Dave’s argument is that it’s so speculative. Might the keys of Matthew 16 be a reference to papal authority? Yes. Might they also be something else, such as a reference to Peter’s authority in preaching the gospel at Pentecost? Yes. As we’ll see later, the evidence is against the papal interpretation. But even without knowing that, isn’t it problematic when people like Dave want to build an institution like the papacy, with all of its major implications, on something as speculative as the papal interpretation of Matthew 16? How much is this sort of speculation worth?

Elsewhere at his web site, Dave explains that the Biblical evidence for the papacy, aside from passages like Matthew 16 and Luke 22, consists of things like Jesus preaching from Peter’s boat and Peter being the first apostle to enter Jesus’ tomb after the resurrection. Again, do you see the role speculation is playing here? Does Peter say and do many things that are unique in one way or another? Yes. So do the other apostles. John is called “the beloved disciple”, is referred to as living until Christ’s return, and lived the longest among the apostles. Paul is called a “chosen vessel” who will bear Christ’s name before the world, he repeatedly refers to his authority over all the churches, and he’s the only apostle to publicly rebuke and correct another apostle (Peter).

Can you imagine what Catholic apologists would make of these things, if they had been said about Peter rather than about another person? What if Peter had been uniquely called “the beloved disciple”? What if Peter had uniquely been referred to as living until Christ’s return? (Catholic apologists would probably cite the passage as evidence that Peter was to have successors with papal authority until Christ returns.) What if it had been Peter rather than Paul who had repeatedly referred to his authority over all churches, and had publicly rebuked and corrected another apostle? If Catholic apologists are going to see papal implications in Jesus preaching from Peter’s boat or in Peter being given some keys, why don’t they see papal implications in these other passages involving other people? The passages involving Paul, for example, such as his references to having authority over all churches, are closer to a papacy than anything said about Peter.

This is much ado about nothing, because it is primarily the dismantling of a straw man. Mr. Engler picks a few examples and acts as if these are considered compelling in and of themselves. But the salient fact concerning Petrine primacy is the cumulative power of the evidence. This I summarized in my paper: 50 NT Proofs for Petrine Primacy & the Papacy. Mr. Engwer is welcome to refute the 50 NT Proofs one-by-one. They are not insignificant. No Protestant has yet done so, and my website has been online for nearly five years now. [Jason — to his credit — later attempted to do so and I replied in turn. He counter-replied, and I replied again] We shall soon examine two crucial aspects of this Petrine data in some depth.

Notice something Dave Armstrong says about the alleged early evidence for a papacy:

The primacy itself was given to him [Peter]; the duty and prerogatives of the papal office, and the keys of the kingdom, but none of that implies that a full understanding or application, or unanimous acknowledgement by others is therefore also present from the beginning.

It’s important to notice what Dave seems to be arguing here. Apparently, he’s saying that even the seed form of the papacy wasn’t necessarily understood or universally recognized early on.

Not fully understood, and not universally recognized. This is human reality; it is not unexpected, and it is not a disproof of Catholic development or self-understanding.

But think of the logical implications of this. If there was no oak tree early on, and even the existence of an acorn is questionable, isn’t that problematic for the claims of the RCC?

No, because the acorn was not “questionable.” The Roman church was preeminent from the beginning, and its bishops, the popes, exercised the primacy, albeit with much more confidence and self-understanding as time went on. As the Newman citation from my paper contra Webster illustrated, this is not unusual, and the development of creeds, trinitarianism, and the canon of Scripture likewise rapidly developed in the 4th century, after persecution had ceased. Likewise, the papacy, and things like Mariology. This was clearly primarily a cultural/historical phenomenon, rather than a “biblical” one.

If all Catholics have is a series of speculations about passages like Matthew 16 and John 21, followed by a later development of a papal office with all that it involves today, aren’t they basically admitting what Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, and others have been saying all along? As Peter de Rosa wrote in Vicars of Christ (New York, New York: Crown Publishing, 1988), “The gospels did not create the papacy; the papacy, once in being, leaned for support on the gospels” (p. 25).

But of course, again, this is a cardboard caricature of the biblical evidence for the papacy. Anyone reading this and not knowing anything further — especially if they are predisposed to reject the papacy due to nearly 500 years of incessant Protestant propaganda and disinformation –, would accept the Protestant view as self-evident, and the Catholic as fundamentally silly. But that is what happens as a result of one-sided (and thoroughly slanted and biased) presentations.

I think it would be helpful at this point to repost a citation I’ve used before from a Roman Catholic historian:

There appears at the present time to be increasing consensus among Catholic and non-Catholic exegetes regarding the Petrine office in the New Testament. The further question whether there was any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the negative. That is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the author of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably ‘no.’ If we ask in addition whether the primitive Church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer….Rome did not succeed in maintaining its position against the contrary opinion and praxis of a significant portion of the Church. The two most important controversies of this type were the disputes over the feast of Easter and heretical baptism. Each marks a stage in Rome’s sense of authority and at the same time reveals the initial resistance of other churches to the Roman claim. (Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996], pp. 1-2, 11)

Notice that this Catholic historian:

1) Acknowledges that he’s describing a consensus among Catholic and non-Catholic scholars.

2) Describes a consensus that contradicts what the RCC has taught at the First Vatican Council and elsewhere.

Schatz doesn’t just say that the papacy developed over time. He specifically refers to concepts such as Peter having universal jurisdiction and being succeeded to in that role exclusively by Roman bishops. And he says that there’s a consensus, even among Catholic scholars, that the earliest Christians had no such concepts. In other words, even the seed form of the papacy that people like Dave Armstrong try to defend didn’t exist early on.

I’ve never heard of this guy, and therefore I don’t know if he is an orthodox Catholic or not (one can’t assume that — sadly — these days). But I can offer counter-evidence. First, I will again cite Cardinal Newman, concerning the early papacy:

A partial fulfilment, or at least indications of what was to be, there certainly were in the first age. Faint one by one, at least they are various, and are found in writers of many times and countries, and thereby illustrative of each other, and forming a body of proof. Thus St. Clement, in the name of the Church of Rome, writes to the Corinthians, when they were without a bishop; St. Ignatius of Antioch addresses the Roman Church, out of the Churches to which he writes, as “the Church, which has in dignity the first seat, of the city of the Romans,” and implies that it was too high for his directing as being the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.

St. Polycarp of Smyrna has recourse to the Bishop of Rome on the question of Easter; the heretic Marcion, excommunicated in Pontus, betakes himself to Rome; Soter, Bishop of Rome, sends alms, according to the custom of his Church, to the Churches throughout the empire, and, in the words of Eusebius, “affectionately exhorted those who came to Rome, as a father his children;” the Montanists from Phrygia come to Rome to gain the countenance of its Bishop; Praxeas, from Asia, attempts the like, and for a while is successful; St. Victor, Bishop of Rome, threatens to excommunicate the Asian Churches; St. Irenaeus speaks of Rome as “the greatest Church, the most ancient, the most conspicuous, and founded and established by Peter and Paul,” appeals to its tradition, not in contrast indeed, but in preference to that of other Churches, and declares that “to this Church, every Church, that is, the faithful from every side must resort” or “must agree with it, propter potiorem principalitatem.”

“O Church, happy in its position,” says Tertullian, “into which the Apostles poured out, together with their blood, their whole doctrine;” and elsewhere, though in indignation and bitter mockery, he calls the Pope “the Pontifex Maximus, the Bishop of Bishops.” The presbyters of St. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, complain of his doctrine to St. Dionysius of Rome; the latter expostulates with him, and he explains.

The Emperor Aurelian leaves “to the Bishops of Italy and of Rome” the decision, whether or not Paul of Samosata shall be dispossessed of the see-house at Antioch; St. Cyprian speaks of Rome as “the See of Peter and the principal Church, whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise, whose faith has been commended by the Apostles, to whom faithlessness can have no access;” St. Stephen refuses to receive St. Cyprian’s deputation, and separates himself from various Churches of the East; Fortunatus and Felix, deposed by St. Cyprian, have recourse to Rome; Basilides, deposed in Spain, betakes himself to Rome, and gains the ear of St. Stephen. (Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878 ed., Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989, 157-158; Part 1, Chapter 4, Section 3)

In a less technical and historically dense fashion, I summarized in another paper some notable instances of papal authority, up through the 6th century:

There was no problem of authority in the early Church. Everyone knew how doctrinal controversies could be definitively resolved. Even as early as the 2nd century we observe the strong authority of Pope Victor (r. 189-98) with regard to the Quartodecimen controversy (over the dating of Easter). St. Clement of Rome exercised much authority in the late 1st century. In the 3rd c., Pope St. Stephen reverses the decision of St. Cyprian of Carthage and a council of African bishops regarding a question of baptism. St. Cyprian had appealed both to Popes Cornelius and Stephen to resolve this issue. Shortly thereafter, many appeals were made to popes for various reasons, which would lead one to believe that the pope had some special authority: at least primacy, if not supremacy:

1. St. Athanasius (4th c.) appeals to Pope Julius I, from an unjust decision rendered against him by Oriental Bishops, and the pope reverses the sentence.

2. St. Basil the Great (4th c.), Archbishop of Caesarea pleads for the protection of Pope Damasus.

3. St. John Chysostom, in the early 5th c., appeals to Pope Innocent I, for a redress of grievances inflicted upon him by several Eastern Prelates, and by Empress Eudoxia of Constantinople.

4. St. Cyril (5th c.) appeals to Pope Celestine against Nestorius; Nestorius also does so, but the Pope favors Cyril.

5. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, is condemned by the Robber-Council of 449, and appealed to Pope Leo the Great, who declared the deposition invalid; Theodoret was restored to his See.

6. John, Abbot of Constantinople (6th c.) appeals from the decision of the Patriarch of that city to Pope St. Gregory the Great, who reverses the sentence.

This strikes me as a great deal of “authority.” All these people were from the East — many of the most revered figures, I might add. They knew where the authority resided; they knew how to settle conflicts authoritatively in favor of orthodoxy. Do Orthodox [and Protestants] want to say that they were all deluded in this regard? That if they had been in their shoes, they wouldn’t have known where to go for redress against injustice or persecution? They wouldn’t have known who spoke for the Universal Church; the Catholic Church; or for orthodoxy?

VII. Does Catholicism Require a Unanimous Patristic Interpretation of Matthew 16?

This is Dave’s second argument, as I summarized it:

2) Even if some church fathers rejected the papal interpretation of a passage like Matthew 16 or John 21, that doesn’t change the fact that others accepted the papal interpretation. Or, they at least accepted a seed form of the papal interpretation, one that would later develop into the papal interpretation. And a church father could possibly believe in the doctrine of the papacy even if he didn’t see a papacy where Catholics see it today (Matthew 16, Luke 22, John 21, etc.). Dave’s argument is spurious. Here’s what the First Vatican Council claimed in chapter 1 of session 4, concerning the papal interpretation of Matthew 16:

To this absolutely manifest teaching of the sacred scriptures, as it has always been understood by the Catholic Church, are clearly opposed the distorted opinions of those who misrepresent the form of government which Christ the lord established in his church and deny that Peter, in preference to the rest of the apostles, taken singly or collectively, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction. The same may be said of those who assert that this primacy was not conferred immediately and directly on blessed Peter himself, but rather on the church, and that it was through the church that it was transmitted to him in his capacity as her minister. Therefore, if anyone says that blessed Peter the apostle was not appointed by Christ the lord as prince of all the apostles and visible head of the whole church militant; or that it was a primacy of honour only and not one of true and proper jurisdiction that he directly and immediately received from our Lord Jesus Christ himself: let him be anathema.

Notice, first of all, that Vatican I claims that the papal interpretation of Matthew 16 is clear, that only distorters would deny it, and that it’s always been accepted by the Christian church. Catholics may appeal to development of doctrine on other issues, but these claims of Vatican I don’t allow for any appeals to development with regard to the papal interpretation of Matthew 16.

Yet, what do we see when we examine the history of the interpretation of this passage of scripture? As William Webster documents in his books and at his web site, the earliest interpretations of Matthew 16 are either non-papal or anti-papal. Even among the later church fathers, there’s widespread ignorance of, and even contradiction of, the papal interpretation. Even in some cases where a papal interpretation might be in view, the papal interpretation is at best a minority viewpoint. Augustine, writing as late as the fifth century, specifically denies that Peter is “this rock”, and he gives no indication that he’s thereby doing something revolutionary or something that would be perceived as “distorting”, as Vatican I would put it.

What we see in the history of the interpretation of Matthew 16 is just what William Webster has described. Catholic apologists are forced, by the facts of history, to argue for a gradual development of the papal understanding of Matthew 16. Yet, the First Vatican Council claimed that the papal interpretation had always been accepted by the Christian church. According to the First Vatican Council, the papacy is clear in Matthew 16, and only perverse distorters would deny that. But the papal interpretation of Matthew 16 is actually absent and contradicted early on. The facts of history fly directly in the face of what the RCC has taught.

Mr. Engwer makes the same logical mistake which Mr. Webster committed (one grows weary of repeating the same points): he imagines that the bishops of the First Vatican Council believed that all Catholics at all times accepted the interpretations of the classic biblical papal proofs. But the Council does not speak specifically of Matthew 16 when it sums up the Catholic teaching. My translation of the Council (New York: 1912; reprinted by TAN, 1977), reads: “At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, as it has ever been understood by the Catholic Church . . .”

In other words, it is the teaching, the doctrine about the papacy and Petrine primacy which was always understood (i.e., in its essence), not the interpretation of Matthew 16. It is indeed somewhat of a subtle distinction, but it is there, nonetheless. What was “clear” was Jesus’ bestowal of the “jurisdiction of Chief Pastor and Ruler over all His fold” upon Peter, which the Council states right before Mr. Engwer’s lengthy citation, followed by John 21:15, 17. So one might argue that that passage is being referred to, rather than Matthew 16 — if one insists on arguing that passages, rather than doctrines are the primary intended reference. The Catholic Church, however, is much more concerned with true doctrine, rather than required readings of biblical texts.

Furthermore, contending that a certain belief “has ever been understood by the Catholic Church” is not the same as believing that all the Fathers believed it. There will always be anomalies in the Fathers. But the authority of the Catholic Church ultimately resides in Councils and popes. Furthermore, if we, e.g., assume for a moment that St. Augustine disbelieved the papal interpretation of Matthew 16 (which is questionable), does it therefore follow that he rejected the papacy? Hardly. He assuredly did not. And that is what is being referred to at Vatican I, not particularistic knowledge of patristic interpretations of every “papal” passage. But Protestant polemicists often cannot see the forest for the trees. As we shall see below, there was, nevertheless, an extraordinary patristic testimony that Peter was the Rock and foundation of the Church.

Elsewhere, this same council refers to the papacy as described above as something “known to all ages”, something that “none can doubt”. What are we to make of Dave Armstrong’s argument, in light of what the First Vatican Council taught?

We are to make of it that it is consistent, whereas Mr. Engwer’s argument is not. We are to understand that these passages presuppose a certain development of all doctrines, but that that doesn’t preclude referring to early adherence in terms of “known to all ages” any more than it would preclude the statement: “early Christians knew what books constituted the New Testament.” Protestants such as Mr. Engwer do not deny that statement, despite a host of anomalies I could point out, where prominent Church Fathers thought books not now in the NT were biblical books, and where many others denied the canonicity of Revelation and James well into the 4th century. Likewise, one can find divergent interpretations of Matthew 16, but that does not establish that the papacy was therefore unknown and unacknowledged (Mr. Engwer writes near the end of his paper — astoundingly — “perhaps . . . there just wasn’t a papacy at the time?”). One could “get some papal texts wrong” in the early centuries and still accept the primacy of Peter and papal supremacy, just as one could “get some biblical books wrong” and accept the inspiration of Holy Scripture (whatever it actually is).

VIII. St. Peter as the Rock and Foundation (Head, Pope) of the Church

This is the third argument made by Dave Armstrong, as I summarized it earlier:

3) The prominence of the Roman church early on is evidence of a papacy. Even if there are other explanations for the prominence of the Roman church, such as Peter and Paul having been martyred there and the city’s prominence within the Empire, the papacy could also be a factor.

The problem with Dave’s argument is that all of the earliest references to the Roman church’s prominence are non-papal. The apostle Paul, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others give non-papal reasons for commending the Roman church. They mention things like the Roman church’s faith, its love, its generosity, its location in the capital of the Empire, Paul and Peter having been there and having been martyred there, etc. Rather than the prominence of the early Roman church being an argument for the papacy existing at the time, it’s an argument against it. When one source after another commends the Roman church, and all sorts of reasons are given for commending it, and those reasons never include a papacy, that speaks volumes.

If it were only true, it would indeed speak volumes, but I think the historical examples given above suggest otherwise. And in the 4th and 5th centuries, the patristic evidence gets very common and explicit, as the many papers and links in my Papacy web page abundantly make clear.

It’s a confirmation of what Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, and others have been saying for centuries. The Roman church rose in influence for various practical reasons. Once the bishop of Rome had attained a wide influence, that influence was increasingly attributed to Divine appointment. As Peter de Rosa said in my earlier citation, the gospels didn’t create the papacy; the papacy, once in being, leaned for support on the gospels.

To admit that there were practical factors involved in the rise of the Roman church’s influence, then suggest that a papacy may have been a factor as well, is just a begging of the question. The practical factors are specifically mentioned by the early writers (Paul mentions the Roman church’s faith, Ignatius mentions its love and generosity, Irenaeus mentions that Paul and Peter were there, etc.). A Divinely appointed papacy, on the other hand, is not mentioned by the early writers. So it’s just more question begging on the part of Catholic apologists for them to ask us to assume that the papacy was a factor at a time when it’s never mentioned. Could documents like First Clement and Irenaeus’ letter to Victor be interpreted in a papal way? Yes. Could they also be interpreted in non-papal and even anti-papal ways? Yes.

Alright; it’s now time to delve deeply into Scripture itself, for historical testimony — no matter how voluminous or widespread — is never sufficient for the Protestant who has a built-in hostility against the papacy, episcopacy, the Catholic Church; indeed, oftentimes against the notion of any binding spiritual and ecclesiastical authority whatsoever (and also, far too often, to historical analysis per se). Holy Scripture gives us the common ground and the jointly acknowledged authority which both parties wholeheartedly accept. Here we have a divinely-inspired Revelation and Word of God. Therefore, if we can show that in this Revelation the papacy is clearly ordained by Jesus (not simply a result of historical happenstance or pure chance), then we shall have gone a long way towards accomplishing our purpose.

Mr. Engwer, like his comrades Salmon and Webster, makes great play of the fact that the “papal”interpretation of Matthew 16 was supposedly not very widely held. But this is not the case. There were exceptions (as there always are), but there was also great consensus (just as, e.g., was true with regard to the NT canon). The following Fathers (and an Ecumenical Council) held that it was Peter, not his faith or confession, who was the Rock:

Tertullian
Hippolytus
Origen
Cyprian
Firmilian
Aphraates the Persian
Ephraim the Syrian
Hilary of Poitiers
Zeno of Africa
Gregory of Nazianzen
Gregory of Nyssa
Basil the Great
Didymus the Blind
Epiphanius
Ambrose
John Chrysostom
Jerome
Augustine
Cyril of Alexandria
Peter Chrysologus
Proclus of Constantinople
Secundinus (disciple and assistant of St. Patrick)
Theodoret
Council of Chalcedon

(all of the above are prior to 451 A.D.)

Maximus the Confessor (650 A.D.)
John Damascene (d.c. 749 A.D.)
Theodore the Studite (d. 826 A.D.)

[For 65 pages of documentation of these facts, see Jesus, Peter, and the Keys, by Scott Butler, Norman Dahlgren, and David Hess, Santa Barbara: Queenship Pub. Co., 1996, pp. 215-279]

Thus, it is beyond silly for Mr. Engwer to state: “But the papal interpretation of Matthew 16 is actually absent and contradicted early on. The facts of history fly directly in the face of what the RCC has taught.” He might, I suppose, emphasize the fact that most of the solid sources are from the 3rd or 4th century on, but of course that brings him right back into the insurmountable problem of the canon of the New Testament for the Protestant, and the similarly relatively late flowering of explicit trinitarianism and Christology and the doctrine of original sin as well. The Protestant distinctives of extrinsic justification and symbolic baptism and Eucharist are virtually unknown among the Fathers, as we noted above (the same holds for sola Scriptura, though this is very difficult to prove to Protestants for various reasons).

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(originally posted in 2000)
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Photo credit: Portrait of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-90) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-96) [public domain]

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Did I Take St. Irenaeus Out of Context (Rule of Faith)?

Last updated on: November 30, 2017 at 2:28 pm By Dave Armstrong

(Book and purchase information)

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Ken Temple is an anti-Catholic polemicist, whom I have debated many times in the past. He knows full well that I don’t waste my time wrangling with anti-Catholic zealots in debates about theology. This has been my policy since 2007, with very few exceptions (for special reasons; in fact, the very paper he critiqued was one such exception). This reply is not arguing theology. It’s merely setting certain facts straight about what I have defended and argued about as regards St. Irenaeus; facts that Ken Temple seems to be blissfully unaware of.

His latest blast against me is “Dave Armstrong: Taking Irenaeus out of Context” (10-25-17). He quotes an Irenaeus citation of mine (his words will be in blue below):

“And then shall every word also seem consistent to him, if he for his part diligently read the Scriptures in company with those who are presbyters in the Church, among whom is the apostolic doctrine, as I have pointed out.”

(Against Heresies, IV, 32, 1) [only the last sentence]

He provides a defunct URL of a paper of mine, from Blogspot, which I left in August 2015 (my blog is now hosted on Patheos). But I did manage to locate the currently archived version of the paper, listed on my current blog. I cited St. Irenaeus many times in this paper, often at some length. I cited Protestant historians Philip Schaff and J. N. D. Kelly talking about St. Irenaeus’ rule of faith (which is quite Catholic and not even remotely approaching anything resembling Protestantism).

But all we get is one selected citation of Irenaeus, which Ken claims is taken out of context. He proceeds to provide more context, where Irenaeus talks a lot about Scripture. I didn’t cite it because that wasn’t at issue: both Catholics and Protestants agree that Scripture is inspired, God-breathed revelation, and that’s mainly what he is talking about (e.g., “one God was the author of both Testaments”). Since there is no disagreement whatever on that score, that portion is irrelevant to the usual Catholic-Protestant debates on the rule of faith. And that’s why I didn’t cite it in that context.

Ken falls into the same old same old fallacies of Protestants defending sola Scriptura, that I’ve seen a hundred times. I described it in the introductory portion of a huge debate on sola Scriptura that I engaged in with the referenced fellow anti-Catholic apologist, Ken’s buddy, Jason Engwer, on 8-1-03. In the first portion of that debate, I wrote:

Entire books are written about the Fathers’ supposed belief in sola Scriptura, when in fact they are merely expressing their belief in material sufficiency of Scripture, and its inspiration and sufficiency to refute heretics and false doctrine generally. It is easy to misleadingly present them as sola Scripturists if their statements elsewhere about apostolic Tradition or succession and the binding authority of the Church (especially in council) are ignored. But a half-truth is almost as bad as an untruth (arguably worse, because in most instances the one committing it should know better).

True to form, Ken completely ignores that. He blows off the relevant portion (i.e., to Catholic-Protestant debate) of the long quote he gives from Irenaeus: that refers to apostolic tradition and the Church’s guidance, and pretends as if all Irenaeus is talking about is Scripture Alone. This won’t do. It’s a “half-truth” as I noted (almost as bad as a lie). All Ken can see is Scripture Scripture Scripture, while ignoring the Church father’s express statement that Christians ought to “diligently read the Scriptures in company with those who are presbyters in the Church, among whom is the apostolic doctrine.” He thinks that because I didn’t also cite the long praises of Scripture, that somehow this utterance loses its force and obvious meaning, and is reputedly “out of context.” It’s not.

Ken writes:

Every time Irenaeus spells out the content of the “rule of faith”, it is a doctrinal summary in simple form of the main doctrines of the ecumenical creeds of the first 5 centuries. (see Against Heresies, 1:10:1-2 and 3:4:2) Protestants agree with this.

I looked up the linked Against Heresies 1:10:1-2 and again and again it teaches things that are consistent with Catholic (and very unProtestant) notions of tradition (highlighted in purple below), apostolic succession (highlighted in green), and a refutation of faith alone (in red):

1. The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one,” and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess” to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send “spiritual wickednesses,” and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.

2. As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world. But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shineth everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition. For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it.

Yes; Irenaeus provides a Nicene Creed-like summary of the Catholic faith; just as Catholics and many Protestants cite every Sunday. It doesn’t follow, however, that both Catholics and Protestants don’t also believe many things that are not mentioned in the Nicene Creed: like original sin or TULIP (Calvinists) or absolute assurance of instant salvation, or purgatory, or Mary. And the Nicene Creed includes baptismal regeneration: a biblical and historic Christian doctrine that many Protestants including Ken, reject. We see the same in 3:4:2. I shall also cite 3:4:1 (references to oral tradition in brown):

1. Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?

2. To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendour, shall come in glory, the Saviour of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise His Father and His advent. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed; and they do please God, ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity, and wisdom. If any one were to preach to these men the inventions of the heretics, speaking to them in their own language, they would at once stop their ears, and flee as far off as possible, not enduring even to listen to the blasphemous address. Thus, by means of that ancient tradition of the apostles, they do not suffer their mind to conceive anything of the [doctrines suggested by the] portentous language of these teachers, among whom neither Church nor doctrine has ever been established.

Section 3 is precisely a refutation of the heretics by virtue of (not the Bible but) apostolic succession: the notion that the Catholics could trace their doctrines back in unbroken succession to the apostles, whereas the heretics could not, and were traced back to one man, some time after the apostolic age. Hence Irenaeus concludes by saying, “each one of them appeared to be both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been initiated. But all these (the Marcosians) broke out into their apostasy much later, even during the intermediate period of the Church.”

The title of the section (I’m not sure if it is from Irenaeus or the editors) confirms what I am contending: “The truth is to be found nowhere else but in the Catholic Church, the sole depository of apostolical doctrine. Heresies are of recent formation, and cannot trace their origin up to the apostles.” This is apostolic succession: a doctrine that is rejected by Protestantism, is inconsistent with sola Scriptura, and is accepted by Catholicism and Orthodoxy and Anglicanism (and to some extent by the Methodists who derived from Anglicanism). Thus, at every turn, we see Irenaeus either expressing things that all Christians hold in common, or things that Catholics and Orthodox (and only a few Protestants, not including Ken and almost all of his anti-Catholic buddies) believe. What he doesn’t do is express Protestant distinctives.

Readers might also have noted that both of these writings of St. Irenaeus never mentioned the word or notion of Scripture (though the first one cites Bible passages — without identifying them — several times), while tradition and apostolic succession and the implied binding authority of the Church are mentioned repeatedly. This is scarcely any argument for Protestantism over against Catholicism. The two statements never contradict the latter, while they frequently contradict the former.

But Irenaeus also says that the Presbyters follow the Scriptures as their final authority, because the apostles doctrine was written down, and he just quotes from the writings to prove his point.

He does not say that Scripture is the only binding (“final”) authority; rather, he teaches precisely what we do: the “three-legged stool” of Bible-Church-Tradition [the latter passed down in apostolic succession] as the rule of faith. Ken merely reads his bias into the words. Irenaeus even (as a bonus) takes a “swipe” at the false doctrine of faith alone (sola fide: words in red above). Ken should be embarrassed to pretend that these citations support his contentions. The fact that he doesn’t know that they don’t, and is out to sea, is very telling.

What Ken also doesn’t notice (or chooses to ignore) is the fact that Irenaeus goes so far as to argue that had writing not been available, Christians still would possess the apostolic deposit:

For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches? (3:4:1)

Oh, I forgot. Ken didn’t cite this portion. It was right before what he did cite. Thus, the accusation of quoting out of context would seem to apply far more to him than to myself.

I hope Jason Engwer keeps it up and stays in the battle and responds fully to all of the significant issues . . .

Yeah, that was my hope, too, back in 2003, when we engaged in a much-advertised debate on sola Scriptura and the Church fathers at the large and popular anti-Catholic CARM discussion forum. I was defending Catholic views about four of the ten Church fathers I addressed, based on earlier writings of his. Jason decided to split at that point. He left the debate right in the middle (which I’ve had happen also with James White and another contra-Catholic polemicist). But that’s what anti-Catholics usually do when Catholics come up with things they have no answer for. I’ve observed that over and over now for 27 years.

I proved in 2010 that Jason Engwer ignored an average of 80% of opponents’ arguments, whom he claimed to be refuting (including fellow apologist Bryan Cross). I documented this by showing exactly what he cited from my writing, and how small of a percentage it was of the whole (the rest of which he ignored). This is hardly impressive in a would-be “debater.”

Ken complains at the end of the paper how I haven’t responded to this and that, that some anti-Catholic has written. He knows my policy of no debate on theology with anti-Catholics. I have informed him of it many times. As for St. Irenaeus and his rule of faith, I have dealt with that at least four times now:

Irenaeus (d. c. 200) vs. Sola Scriptura (vs. Jason Engwer) [8-1-03]

Chrysostom & Irenaeus: Sola Scripturists? (vs. David T. King) [4-20-07]

Critique of Martin Chemnitz’ Examination of Trent: The Rule of Faith According to St. Irenaeus and Tertullian [8-29-07] (currently on Internet Archive)

Antidote to William Whitaker’s Sola Scriptura Arguments: Church Councils, St. Irenaeus’ Rule of Faith, and St. John Chrysostom on St. Peter and His Successors [9-26-11] (currently on Internet Archive)

All of these efforts were in response to anti-Catholic counter-claims: two historic Protestant apologists / theologians (Chemnitz and Whitaker) and two apologists from our present day (Jason Engwer and David T. King).

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Grace, Faith, Works, & Judgment: A Scriptural Exposition

Last updated on: November 14, 2017 at 12:04 pm By Dave Armstrong

(12-16-09; reformulated and abridged on 3-15-17)

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Catholics believe in sola gratia, but reject sola fide as an unbiblical innovation. The fact remains that works are profoundly involved in the salvation (ultimately by grace) in some sense:

St. Paul’s Teaching on the Organic Relationship of Grace / Faith and Works / Action / Obedience (Collection of 50 Pauline Passages)

More “Catholic Verses” and Biblical Defenses of Catholicism: On Sanctification as Part of Salvation, and Merit and “Doing Something for Salvation”

Works are even central to the criteria of how God will decide who is saved and who isn’t, as I have proven from no less than 50 Bible passages:

Final Judgment in Scripture is Always Associated With Works And Never With Faith Alone

I was asked in debate with Matt Slick (the big cheese at CARM) what I would say if I got to heaven and God asked me why I should be let in. I replied that we had biblical data as to what God would actually say at such a time, and it was all about works, not faith alone at all. And I found that quite striking (after studying it in greater depth), though it never surprises me to find profound biblical support for Catholicism. I always do whenever I study the Bible.

Works are always central in every discussion of the final judgment that I could find in Scripture. Why is this the case if God supposedly wants to completely separate any notion of works or acts from salvation itself? Why is the aspect of faith (let alone faith alone) so glaringly absent in these 50 accounts of judgment, if in fact it is the central, fundamental consideration, according to Protestantism?

We interpret all of this scriptural data in a non-Pelagian fashion (Pelagians believed in salvation by works). We incorporate all of Scripture, not just our favorite pet verses. Protestants believe that works are only in the realm of sanctification and have nothing whatever directly to do with justification and salvation.

I agree with what C. S. Lewis said: asking one to choose between faith and works is as senseless as saying which blade of a pair of scissors is more important.

It’s an organic relationship. Actually, Catholics and Protestants, rightly understood, are not far apart on this in the final analysis. It’s mostly mutual misunderstandings and unfortunate semantic confusion.

The Bible doesn’t at all read as it should, were Protestant soteriology true, and Catholic soteriology false. I contend that it would read much differently indeed. As it is, it appears to overwhelmingly favor the Catholic positions.

The Catholic position is not one that ignores faith or grace. Our position is that salvation is by grace alone, through faith, which is not alone, and includes works by its very nature.

We also are falsely accused of believing in sola ecclesia when in fact our position on authority is the “three-legged stool” of Scripture-Tradition-Church. It’s simply Protestant either/or thinking applied to us.

John 11:25-26 (RSV) Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
[26] and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

The Greek for “believe” is pistuo, which is considered the counterpart of “does not obey” (apitheo) in John 3:36. 1 Peter 2:7 also opposes the two same Greek words. In other words, “believe” in the biblical sense already includes within it the concept of obedience (i.e., works). Hence, “little Kittel” observes:

pisteuo as “to obey.” Heb. 11 stresses that to believe is to obey, as in the OT. Paul in Rom. 1:8; 1 Th. 1:8 (cf. Rom. 15:18; 16:19) shows, too, that believing means obeying. He speaks about the obedience of faith in Rom. 1:5, and cf. 10:3; 2 Cor. 9:13.” (p. 854)

Jesus joins faith (“belief” / pistuo) and works together, too, when He states:

John 14:12 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.

The “belief” mentioned in these passages is (through cross-referencing) seen to include obeying and works, and we’re back to the Catholic organic relationship between the two, rather than the Protestant ultra-abstraction of the two into the justification and sanctification categories.

“Faith alone” is tough to verify from Scripture once everything is taken into account and not just the garden-variety Protestant passages that are always utilized.

In classic Protestantism, works are relegated to post-justification status, as part of a separate sanctification and the realm of differential rewards of those already saved. I used to believe the exact same thing, so I’m very familiar with it.

The problem is that Scripture doesn’t teach such a view. The disproofs are already in my papers linked above, in many passages that directly connect or associate salvation with the works that one does: therefore, works are not unrelated to either justification or eschatological salvation:

Matthew 25:34-36 Then the King will say to those at his right hand, `Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

The “for” shows the causal relationship: “you are saved because you did all these works.” That’s what the text actually asserts, before false Protestant presuppositions and eisegesis are applied to it in the effort to make sure works never have to do directly with salvation (no matter how much faith and grace is there with them, so that we’re not talking about Pelagianism).

If Protestantism were true, the Bible should have had a passage something like this (Revised Protestant Version [RPV] ):

But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Then He will also say to those on His left, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for you did not believe in Me with Faith Alone.” These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous who believed with Faith Alone into eternal life.

But alas, it doesn’t read like that, does it?

John 5:28-29 . . . the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.

A direct correlation: the ones who do good works are saved; the ones who do evil are damned.

Romans 2:6-8, 13 For he will render to every man according to his works: To those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. . . . For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

Again, works are directly tied to eternal life and justification; they are not portrayed as merely acts of gratefulness that will lead to differential rewards for the saved; no, the differential reward is either salvation or damnation. Paul totally agrees with Jesus.

2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 . . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,

Note that simply believing the gospel and knowing God is not enough for salvation. One has to also “obey the gospel” (and that involves works).

Revelation 2:5 Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

If we don’t do the works, we can lose our salvation; therefore works have to do with salvation; they are not separated from that by abstracting them into a separate category of sanctification, that is always distinguished from justification. That ain’t biblical teaching. That is the eisegesis and false premises of Melanchthon and Calvin and Zwingli.

Revelation 20:11-13 Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.

Same thing again. Obviously, St. John, St. Paul, and our Lord Jesus need to attend a good Calvinist or evangelical seminary and get up to speed on their soteriology. They don’t get it. The passage should have been written something like the following:

“. . . and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to whether they had Faith Alone. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to whether they had Faith Alone.”

Perhaps we should get together a council and rewrite the Bible so that it doesn’t have so many “Romish” errors throughout its pages . . . The King James White version or sumpin’ . . .

Part of the problem with Protestant soteriology is that not only do so many of the relevant passages mention works without mentioning faith (and especially not faith alone), but also the surrounding context gives us further reason to believe that faith alone isn’t involved.

Since the Catholic believes in the triumvirate of grace —> faith —> works as the criteria for salvation, passages dealing with faith pose no problem. The more the merrier. We are saying that faith alone is the unbiblical doctrine, not faith. We’re not against faith at all, but rather, a false definition of faith, that restricts and confines it in a way that the Bible doesn’t do.

But since the Protestant position is faith alone (in terms of salvation itself), they have to explain away or rationalize all passages suggesting an important place of works in the equation, in a way that we’re not required to do (given our position) with all the passages about faith that Protestants produce. Bringing out ten, twenty, fifty passages that mention faith does nothing against our position, because we don’t reject faith as part of the whole thing.

The problem for Protestants remains: how to interpret the centrality of works in the judgment / salvation passages, in a way that preserves the “faith alone” doctrine.

I contend that it is impossible. To do so does violence to the Bible and what it teaches. We must base our teaching squarely on biblical theology and not the arbitrary, self-contradictory traditions of men (folks like Calvin), who eisegete Holy Scripture and substitute for biblical thought, their own traditions.

Sometimes it’s easy to confuse those traditions with biblical teaching itself. But by examining Holy Scripture more deeply and over time, I think anyone can eventually see that it supports the Catholic positions every time.

Using John 5 as an example, we see that the usual Protestant dichotomies don’t apply. 5:21-22 mentions resurrection and judgment. But what it doesn’t do is give the criteria for these judgments and who is resurrected. That has to come by reading on (further context).

John 5:24 . . . he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

This is a generalized statement: one could perhaps paraphrase it as “Christian believers have eternal life” or (to bring it down to a Sunday School nursery level): “all good Christians go to heaven.”

It doesn’t follow from a general statement like this that no Christian can ever fall away (though Calvinism requires this, over against many biblical passages to the contrary), or that works have nothing to do with it. We need to look at the deeper meaning of “believe” (as I have already done).

As we read on (the same discourse from Jesus) we get to 5:29: “. . . those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”

Now, Protestants would tend to highlight 5:24 and de-emphasize 5:29. I can gladly consider both of them in the entire equation. It’s once again the Catholic (Hebraic) “both/and” vs. the Protestant (and more Greek) “either/or”. Scripture is asserting two truths:

5:24 “he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life”

5:29 “those who have done good, to the resurrection of life,”

Faith and works. For us, the two passages are entirely compatible and in harmony with our Catholic theology: one is saved by grace through faith, in believing in Jesus, and this belief entails and inherently includes good works.

But Protestants can’t do that, because they wrongly conclude that any presence of good works in the equation of both justification and salvation itself is somehow “anti-faith” or antithetical to grace alone; and is Pelagianism. This doesn’t follow.

Because of these false, unbiblical premises, Protestants have to explain 5:29 as merely differential rewards for the saved (who are saved by faith alone); whereas the actual text does not teach that. It teaches a direct correlation between good works and eternal life. It explains 5:24 in greater depth; just as I noted earlier that Jesus Himself places works and faith in direct relationship:

John 14:12 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do . . .

Baptism is also equated with regeneration and entrance into the kingdom, so this is hardly an example amenable overall to the Protestant position:

Acts 2:38, 41 And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” . . . So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

The order is not:

1) faith
2) forgiveness
3) indwelling Holy Spirit
4) baptism

but rather,

1) faith
2) baptism
3) forgiveness (directly because of baptism)
4) indwelling Holy Spirit (directly because of baptism)

Because of the baptism, souls were added to the kingdom. They weren’t already in the kingdom, and then decided to be baptized out of obedience. Therefore, the work of baptism directly ties into both justification and final salvation.

Galatians 3:26-27 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Colossians 2:12 and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Faith and baptism are virtually equivalent in their importance. One is “in” Jesus both through faith and through baptism. Both/and.

Baptism is not a separate, optional work. It is part and parcel of the process. Insofar as it, too, is regarded as a “work” then here we have again the Catholic grace-faith-works (and efficacious sacraments) paradigm.

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Photo credit: St Paul (c. 1468), by Marco Zoppo (1433-1478) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Jack Chick’s Lies: The Real Alberto Rivera Exposed

Last updated on: November 10, 2017 at 12:59 pm By Dave Armstrong

(7-9-03)

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—— “The most godly man I ever met” ———- Jack T. Chick

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Alberto Rivera, the alleged former Catholic priest, bishop, and anti-Catholic hero of Jack Chick comic strips, was exposed as a total fraud by non-Catholic (evangelical Protestant) Gary Metz, in two articles appearing in evangelical magazines:

1) “The Alberto Story,” Cornerstone, vol. 9, no. 53, 1981, pp. 29-31.
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2) Christianity Today, March 13, 1981.

I have heard that the Christian Research Institute (CRI), founded by the late Dr. Walter Martin, widely regarded as the foremost evangelical counter-cult specialist, has also done an exposé of Rivera. Here are some excerpts from the first article above:

. . . the Christian Reformed Church, Zondervan Publishers, and the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board have banned it from their bookstores.

Jack Chick states that Christian bookstores are being infiltrated by undercover Catholic propaganda teams who pressure the owner until he ‘compromises with Rome and pulls Alberto out of the store.’

Is Alberto’s story true? No! Our intensive investigation reveals his police record, his investment schemes, his bad check-writing, his contradictory testimony, his fabricated educational record, and his reported family abuse . . . Alberto Rivera, also known as Alberto Romero, has a history of legal entanglements. He is currently involved in a court action in Southern California, accused of fraud.

In 1965, a warrant for his arrest was issued in Hoboken, New Jersey, for writing bad checks. He also left debts in excess of $3,000.

In 1969 two warrants were issued against him in DeLand and Ormond Beach, Florida. The first was for the theft of a Bank-Americard. The criminal investigation division of the Bank of America reports he charged over $2,000 on the credit card. The second warrant was for the ‘unauthorized use of an automobile.’ Alberto abandoned the vehicle in Seattle, Washington. From there he moved to Southern California.

Alberto’s account of his conversion is contradictory. In 1964 while working for the Christian Reformed Church, he said he was converted from Catholicism in July of 1952. Now he maintains it was in 1967 . . . 3:00 in the morning on March 20, 1967. He says he immediately defected from the Catholic church. However, five months later, in August of 1967, he was still promoting Catholicism and the ecumenical movement in a newspaper interview in his hometown of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

Alberto commands great respect from many with his alleged numerous degrees including an N.D., a D.D., a Th.D., a Ph.D., and a master’s in psychology. However, he is ambiguous when asked where he received these degrees. Alberto attended a seminary in Costa Rica (the Seminario Biblio Latinamericano) with a friend from Las Palmas, but he did not graduate. That friend, Rev. Plutarco Bonilla (a respected Christian leader in Central America), said that Alberto never finished high school in Las Palmas and that he was in the seminary program for non-high school graduates. The school in a letter said they were forced to expel Alberto for his ‘continual lying and defiance of seminary authority.’ The known chronology of his life does not allow time for him to have achieved the academic status he claims. When Rev. Wishart [former associate of Alberto, and once a pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Fernando] pressed Alberto concerning his degrees, Alberto admitted receiving them from a diploma mill in Colorado. This ended their relationship. Pastor Rasmussen (Faith Baptist Church in Canoga Park, California) also asked Alberto to substantiate some of his claims by submitting to a lie detector test. Alberto said he would: three times apoointments were made for him, three times he failed to appear.

He met his first ‘wife’ in Costa Rica while working with the Methodist church. Rev. Bonilla says that Alberto was living there with a woman in the late 1950s but they weren’t legally married: Alberto said God ordained their marriage. Alberto later claimed in an employment form that he and Carmen Lydia Torres were married on November 25, 1963. Their son Juan was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in September, 1964 . . . A supervisor at the time, Rev. Edson Lewis, said that Alberto physically abused both Carmen Lydia and Juan. Less than a year after his birth, in July, 1965, Juan died in El Paso, Texas, where his parents had fled, after they wrote bad checks in New Jersey.

[a new son, Alberto, was born in 1967 or 1968] It is difficult to determine the whereabouts of the child Alberto today, but Rev. Abrego [former associate and roommate] claims he was placed in a welfare home in Tennessee . . . Alberto and Carmen Lydia had still another son, Luis Marx, early in 1969. While they were still in Florida, their hosts said Luis Marx was mistreated. What happened to Luis Marx is unknown, but when Alberto left Florida for Seattle with the car and credit card, they no longer had the child with them. What happened to Carmen Lydia after Seattle is also unknown, but Alberto remarried in 1977 to Nury Frias, a woman from the Dominican Republic. Whether he was ever legally married to and/or divorced from the other woman is unknown. At any rate, it is extremely damaging to Rivera’s credibility to discover that he had two children (Juan and Alberto) in America during the time he was supposed to be a celibate priest in Europe!

What does Jack Chick think about this? . . . When he was finally reached by phone at his home, he said that he had never met a more godly man than Alberto, and that he knows Alberto’s story is true because he ‘prayed about it.’ Jack says he expects his own life to be taken by Jesuit assassins [he is still kicking 17 years later]. When we reached Alberto by phone, he also refused to meet with us . . . He claims that any wrongdoings prior to his conversion in 1967 were done under the orders of the Catholic church, and any wrongdoings since his conversion are fabrications by the conspirators.

As we have seen, Alberto’s story is fraudulent, as was the story of John Todd, another Jack Chick protégé, who said the witches are taking over the world (see Issue #48 of Cornerstone). Alberto has skillfully created a closed, paranoid defense system which makes it difficult to corner him on specific issues. He can always dismiss any accusation as part of the Jesuit plot.

Alberto Rivera’s fraudulent claims underscore a sad fact: many Protestants have as distorted a view of Catholics as whites earlier in the century had of blacks. The black man was caricatured as having ‘lotsa rhythm and little-a brains,’ while the Catholic is portrayed as an automaton who is in unquestioning bondage to church authorities.

In a later issue of Cornerstone (Vol. 10, Issue no. 54), is an article, “Cornerstone Responds to Chick”:

Jack T. Chick has issued a three-page reply to Gary Metz’s expose of Alberto Rivera . . . In his letter of March 25, 1981, co-signed by Rivera, Chick alleges that ‘the systematic destruction of John Todd’s ministry’ is being repeated by the Vatican to destroy Alberto. (Todd claimed to have been one of the leaders of an international conspiracy of witches to set up Jimmy Carter as the Antichrist; Chick promoted Todd’s story in earlier comic books.) Chick accuses Christianity Today and Cornerstone, both of whom ran exposes on John Todd, of furthering the cause of the ‘antichrist in the Vatican.’

A typical example of Chick’s defense of Alberto: the evidence for Alberto’s degrees disappeared because the Vatican ‘erased Dr. Rivera’s name from all directories in schools, seminaries, and colleges’; Rivera’s former associates and acquaintances contradict his story because they are Vatican spies; the women he was involved with were from ‘the Legion of Mary or Catholic Youth.’ So with the magic wand of Vatican conspiracy, Rivera is exonerated from any evidence that can possibly be adduced against him.

We feel that if Jack Chick really has a burden for Catholics, he needs to steer clear of fabrications and find a more reliable source of information.

Rivera’s third Chick comic book, The Godfathers, contains the following claims, presented seriously as solemn truth (my descriptions):

The Vatican plans to exterminate the Jews and set up the seat of the papacy in the Temple of Jerusalem, where the pope will reign as God, literally fulfilling the prophecies concerning the “man of sin” in 2 Thess 2:3-4;

The Vatican financed the Moslem-Jewish wars in the 10th century;

The Jesuits assassinated Abraham Lincoln;

Communist Founders Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were coached and directed by Jesuit agents;

The Jesuits also trained Trotsky, Lenin, and Josef Stalin;

Adolf Hitler was a pawn of the Catholics, while his book Mein Kampf was really written by a Jesuit priest;

The Vatican was behind World War I and II, and the Russian revolution of 1917;

The Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, and the Masons are all secretly being directed by Jesuit agents;

All the other so-called international conspiracies (the Illuminati, the Communists, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, etc.) were actually created by the Catholic Church as a smokescreen to direct attention away from the Vatican.

Cornerstone magazine observes:

Rivera’s claim to be a former priest, bishop, and intelligence agent for the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been discussed in previous issues . . . we found this claim to be a complete falsehood . . . I am amazed that Jack Chick can have such a paranoiac view of history; the word ‘Catholicaphobia’ immediately forms itself in my mind. It was because of such propaganda that two previous Chick comic books were banned by the Canadian government last October. They refer to it as being in the category of ‘obscene literature.’

Actually, if I did believe there was a secret Jesuit conspiracy, I would say that Alberto Rivera is still a part of it. His ludicrous accusations have damaged the cause of legitimate Protestant/Catholic relations.

* * * * *I received a forward of the following letter from Fr. Phil Bloom, who runs a website called Simple Catholicism. Since this person (who will remain anonymous unless he informs me otherwise) has issued such a vigorous challenge, I have decided to post his mail. He is free to reply again if he so wishes. In the meantime, I have offered my answers. His words are in blue:Mr. Bloom, this is my first encounter with your site and I read the response you gave Peter concerning the popes. Also I read the answer you gave to [name] where he is concerned with a lot of anti-Catholic web sites. He also states that when a Catholic becomes a Protestant, they become anti-Catholic.

Oftentimes, yes, but not always. My wife didn’t do that.

First of all, I have a question for that guy: What he means by anti-Catholic?

If he is using my definition, which is fairly standard, he means someone who denies that the Catholic Church is a Christian institution and who denies that anyone who fully accepts its teachings (i.e., an orthodox Catholic) can be a Christian.

Does he mean that nobody can question the false teachings of Rome?

People can disagree vigorously with teachings (just as Protestants do amongst themselves; e.g., on the Calvinist vs. Arminian controversies), but to read an entire group out of Christianity altogether (when it is in fact Christian) is an entirely different thing. This is bearing false witness, and it is also (in my opinion) intellectual suicide. If Protestantism is Christian (as it certainly is), Catholicism must also be, given the history of Christianity.

Is doing that what makes someone anti-Catholic?

No. See my second comment back.

What about those Catholics who speak against evangelical Christians? Can we call them also anti-evangelicals?

Only if they say they are not Christians. And no Catholic who knows his faith will do that. Only fringe groups like Feeneyites and so-called “traditionalists” (who question the authority of Vatican II and the pope) ever do that. We critique teachings all the time, of course. I do that, but I am not “anti-evangelical.” I admire them quite a bit, in fact (having been one for 13 years I know what they are about).

How about those catholics who bitterly criticize and oppose evangelical Christians? Can we label them also as anti-evangelicals? I ask you.

Isn’t this saying basically the same thing that the last question said?

Worse yet, is the response you gave to this uninformed man. In fact, you assert that “there is a tremendous amount of anti-Catholic propaganda out there”. So, the question concerns you too, What do you mean by anti-Catholic?

Answered above. I’m sure Fr. Bloom would agree with this.

Do you mean that nobody has the right to question the false teachings of the roman catholic church? Is that what you mean?

Apparently, you think repetition makes your argument stronger, since you keep repeating yourself. Note, too, that this is a loaded question, much like saying, “Do you mean that nobody has the right to question the fact that Protestants beat their wives?”

Not only that, but you implied that such amount of information is not true or relevant, when you say that “one is tempted to simply ignore it except for the fact that so much of it is directed to our young people”.

I know how he feels. Much of it is sheer nonsense and not worth reading at all. But priests and apologists such as myself have a responsibility to speak out against lies, slander, and disinformation.

In other words, you say that almost all the information against catholicism is too false and full of errors, that you will probably waste your time trying to refute it. But because much of that information goes to young people, you are really concerned.

Precisely. The priest must protect his flock, and the apologist’s task is to defend Catholicism and reveal the errors and falsehoods of its opponents and their critiques.

After that, you mentioned Richard Bennett about his vicious attacks against the roman catholic church. We can talk about Bennett in other occasion, but something that really got my attention was your statement that “…there have been some notorious fake priests like “Dr. Alberto Rivera” who pulled the wool over Jack Chick’s eyes”. Of course you cannot substantiate your claims, because you did not know Alberto Rivera, much less, the efforts the Vatican made to kill him.

See the material above.

I met Alberto Rivera. In fact, I was very close to his ministry. I know first hand what you and other catholics call “a lie”. I know his story was true.

Then I’m sure you can refute the information in the article (above). Best wishes.

He had the proofs and the catholic church wanted him dead. Why? Because he knew too much. But most important, because he was preaching the true gospel that saves. He was proclaiming with boldness and without fear the biblical gospel that sets people free from the bondage of Roman Catholicism. You guys did not find another way to refute his testimony, because he was telling the truth.

It’s not “us guys” — the person who did the research was a Protestant evangelical named Gary Metz. The article appeared in Christianity Today (founded by Billy Graham and not exactly a Catholic magazine), on March 13, 1981.

The only choice you had, was trying to discredit him, even using the so called “evangelical apologists” such as Walter Martin and Hank Hannegraaf.

How do you define “evangelical”? Anyone who is a fundamentalist or a Calvinist or an anti-Catholic, or all three? That can easily be shown to be absurd and self-contradictory.

Everybody knows that Vatican always plays dirty. And in this case was not the exception.

Bigots always “know” everything about their opponents, and think everyone else “knows” too.

You say David Armstrong does a “good expose” of Alberto Rivera. Can you e-mail it to me to check it out?

Your wish has been granted. I will shortly post the article again. As a special bonus, I will even include our little dialogue, and you can respond if you like and I will post your reply. You can’t ask for more than that, can you? Here’s your big chance to expose all the Catholic lies and murderous tactics “everybody knows” about on a large Catholic website!

Please send me that expose, maybe he is right. Who knows?

I commend your open-mindedness.

But, let say for a moment that Alberto Rivera was not for real and that he was a liar. Does that change the verifiable data against roman catholicism? No!! How about Dave Hunt, Mike Gendron, Timothy McCarthy, Roger Oakland and a host of others which were not catholic priests, but present the naked truth against the roman catholic church? Are they also anti-catholics?

Yes. And they have been refuted time and again on websites such as Fr. Bloom’s and my own.

Are they not for real?

They’re for real alright. But they are wrong.

Come on!! Give me something more logical. You are a Catholic priest and you know the Scriptures, but the Word of God is not enough for you. What a tragedy!! Having the light you prefer to be in darkness. Having the bread of life you are starving to death. Am I an anti-Catholic?

Yes.

Of course not!! I love Catholics.

Of course you are. It is not about loving Catholics or not. It is about speaking falsehoods about brothers in Christ. The sin is in the lie. We are not reading your heart; only objecting to your false statements.

I know they need desperately to trust Jesus Christ as their only and solely SAVIOUR.

Amen! We have taught no differently. Last I checked Catholics believed in one Saviour just as Protestants do.

Apostle Peter, the one you say was the first Pope answered Jesus: “…Lord to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Only Him is the One who can forgive your sins!!

Amen! This only goes to prove that every falsehood contains some truth, so that more people can be fooled.

In case you may wonder if I know for sure the teachings of the roman catholic church,

I don’t have to wonder. It is obvious that you do not, from what you write.

I want to let you know that I lived in Mexico with my parents for almost thirty years.

So what? Everyone has to learn their faith as an individual.

Do I know what [the] Roman Catholic church teaches? Of course!

Of course not!

And I know that almost every Roman Catholic do not know Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour.

I’m amazed by your God-like ability to read into the hearts of men.

And those who by the mercy of God are saved, they can not remain in the catholic church,

Exactly as I stated above. This is classic anti-Catholicism.

such as Alberto Rivera, Richard Bennett, et.al. You say you are amazed of how an ex-Catholic priest can give such a distorted presentation of Catholic teaching. Believe me, is not distorted. Probably you are the one who don’t know Catholic teaching very well, or perhaps, you are totally deceived.

Oh, I see. So a priest with a seminary education does not know his own Church’s teachings, while the former Catholic with an axe to grind, does (simply because he lived in Mexico for thirty years). I find this hilariously funny (but, of course, tragic at the same time).

I urge you to watch a video of a debate between Dave Hunt and Karl Keating:

I saw them debate in person. It may be the same one you refer to.

Can Roman Catholicism be identified with early Christianity? If you haven’t watch it yet, you are missing something that can give you a clear perspective of what is the true and biblical Christianity.

If it is the one I attended, Hunt did no such thing. Here is what I wrote about it elsewhere:

. . . Dave Hunt . . . “debated” Karl Keating in the Detroit area on the historical proposition, “Was the Early Church Catholic?” without citing a single Church Father all night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When I pointed out the absurdity of this to him by mail, he retorted:

You missed the whole point of my debate — that I do not go to the church fathers to find out what the early church was like or what it should have been like, but I quoted the Bible. The Bible is what tells us about the early church . . . What’s the point of looking to the early church fathers? They could have departed from the truth as well! Our only sure knowledge of the early church was and should have been the scriptures.(Personal letter of April 24, 1995)

Such a view is embarrassing, to say the least (with great restraint) and is self-refuting. Thus I will not waste my time “answering” it. Articulate Protestants tell me that sola Scriptura does not cancel out Tradition or Church History, yet with statements like this and the nonexistence of any substantial recourse to the history of Christianity before 1517 . . . I become that much more hostile to sola Scriptura.I see all around me the “fruit” it produces — Christians . . . who can’t see past their own nose and couldn’t care less about even the most brilliant Fathers such as St. Augustine (who is often inexplicably claimed by the rare history-minded Protestant as one of their own), or even the heritage of their own forerunners, the “Reformers,” quite often eschewing the very title “Protestant.” I must say I’ve never understood or comprehended the a-historical mindset, and I never possessed it as a Protestant. Since, as Newman says, “to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant,” I was destined to become a Catholic eventually.

I sincerely hope you may ponder what I write to you, and in so doing, you arrive at the same conclusion than me: Roman Catholicism is totally contrary to the Word of God.

I have arrived at precisely the opposite conclusion, and have debated or refuted (in writing) most of the leading anti-Catholics today: James White, John Ankerberg, William Webster, David King, Eric Svendsen, Jason Engwer, and others.

Almost all of them (the only exception was Engwer) split after my first reply, never counter-responding. That doesn’t appear to me as the confidence of one who possesses the truth and “knows” about the “falsehood” of Catholicism, particularly since in every case I offered to post their words on my website just as I am doing with you. I continue to support Catholicism from the Bible in articles and books. You are welcome to try and answer any of my papers. I will counter-respond to any such attempt (unlike my anti-Catholic buddies who always run for the hills as soon as they are decisively answered).

* * *Brought to you by Dave Armstrong, 2nd Lieutenant Colonel (Y2K Division) of the Jesuit / Jewish Banker / Nazi / Communist / Illuminati / Pan-African / Masonic / Trilateral Commission / New Age World Conspiracy; uploaded on 1 January 1999 (if you flip “999” upside down, do you know what it becomes???!!!!). Reply and counter-reply added on 9 July 2003. If you add all the numbers up of this date, plus four for the four letters of July, you get 18. 18 is the sum of three 6’s (666)!!! Oh No!!!!!***

Photo credit: Image by “geralt” [Pixabay / public domain / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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Sola Scriptura, Cyril of Jerusalem, Logic, & Anti-Catholics

Last updated on: November 9, 2017 at 7:18 pm By Dave Armstrong

This comes from a vigorous combox on the great site Shameless Popery, under the post, “Reformation Day Ironies, 500th Anniversary Edition” (by Joe Heschmeyer). Anti-Catholic Barry Baritone’s words will be in blue. Words of “Irked” will be in green.

I had written two papers about this general topic before. The first was raised by someone in the discussion; I cited the second:

Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) vs. Sola Scriptura as the Rule of Faith [8-1-03]

David T. King & William Webster Misinterpret the Fathers on Authority: Part I: St. Cyril of Jerusalem [11-9-13]

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St. Cyril wrote:

For concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the Faith, not even a casual statement must be delivered without the Holy Scriptures; nor must we be drawn aside by mere plausibility and artifices of speech. Even to me, who tell thee these things, give not absolute credence, unless thou receive the proof of the things which I announce from the Divine Scriptures. For this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning, but on demonstration of the Holy Scriptures. (Catechetical Lectures 4:17)

That’s… pretty darn close to what Luther would eventually say.

You are absolutely correct. There could be no clearer statement of the principle of S.S. than what we read in Cyril. He says that all he teaches must be verified by S and nothing is to be accepted without it. He does not say one word about an oral tradition independent of Scripture, much to the dismay of the RC community. Catholics are desperate to minimize the impact of Cyril, so they seek to get around it by way of Dave Armstrong quoting Patrick Madrid as saying, “Hey, Cyril believed in the Mass, etc…and so Sola Scripture fails”

WHO CARES if Mr. C believed in the Mass! S.S. most certainly does NOT fail by Mr. C’s example because he was attempting to derive his doctrine from Scripture, PERIOD.

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I could give you a whole list of names and their quotes which they extol Holy Writ above all else. But I would like to know that if I did that, will you admit you were wrong? Experience has shown that when Catholics find out they’ve been duped, they NEVER admit they were wrong, and usually get on their high horse and disappear into the sunset. So I ask you: do you have any intention whatsoever to change your mode of thinking when you find out your master, Dave Armstrong, is so full of baloney he could open up a delicatessen? If your answer is no, then why should anyone waste their time answering you?

At the end of the day, you can find the principle of S.S. very clearly laid out in all 176 verses of Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible.

Baritone brought up Psalm 119 as an alleged prooftext of sola Scriptura. I dealt with a portion of that in my book, 100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura:

88. Psalms 119:159-160: “Thy Word is Truth”

Consider how I love thy precepts! Preserve my life according to thy steadfast love. The sum of thy word is truth; and every one of thy righteous ordinances endures forever.”

Again, we see an exercise common in such alleged “evidence”: assuming what one is trying to prove, sometimes called circular reasoning or “begging the question.” This passage simply doesn’t rule out other authorities. No Christian would argue against what the text says: God’s word is truth. Of course it is! But this is no proof of the Protestant novelty that is sola scriptura. The notion supposedly being supported isn’t even present in the text. It is merely read into it, or super-imposed onto it. Protestants think sola scriptura is “obvious” and “unquestionable” in the way that a fish in an aquarium thinks it is “obvious” that the entire world consists of water and that all creatures live in it.

If sola scriptura is all one knows or hears about, then of course one will come away with that viewpoint. But remove the Protestant’s set of presumptions (which must be argued for, not used as evidence), and the plain meaning of this passage does nothing to support sola scriptura. (pp. 118-119)

Getting back to the man and the S.S. principle, his was not that we should be conformed to what the CHURCH says, but rather, conformity to Scripture was the pancake batter that oozed into THAT man’s frying pan.

“Even to me, who tell thee these things, give not absolute credence, unless thou receive the proof of the things which I announce from the Divine Scriptures. For this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning, but on demonstration of the Holy Scriptures.”

Catholics can knock their heads up against the wailing wall as much as they like in trying to deny it, but there is simply no way to subsume Cyril’s understanding of the authority of Scripture into the Roman Catholic paradigm! NO WAY. . . .

Let me put this in big letters: EVERY DOCTRINE MR. C PROCLAIMED, HE DECLARED TO BE BASED ON PROOF FURNISHED FROM HOLY WRIT. We certainly don’t agree with everything he said, but so what? No one has a monopoly on truth and nowhere are promised to know it all. Nonetheless, the underlying presupposition of S.S. is right there before your eyes, crystal clear, like it or not. And like it or not, Mr. C does NOT agree with the authority structure and underlying presuppositions of the RCC!

A given Church father’s views has to be determined by his entire body of teaching, not isolated prooftexts. Cyril clearly held to a very strong version of material sufficiency (Catholics also accept material sufficiency of Scripture, but deny formal sufficiency; i.e., sola Scriptura), but he did not hold to sola Scriptura. How do we know that? We know by the passages from his writings that I have already produced: that have been mostly ignored or rationalized away.

In my book, 100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura, I cited the most zealous Protestant defenders of sola Scriptura in my Introduction, in order to define it as these defenders do. Norman Geisler stated that “the Bible alone is the infallible written authority for faith and morals” and “the sufficient and final written authority of God.” He explains that “the Fathers and early councils . . . Christian tradition” have their “usefulness” but that they are “of secondary importance.”

Keith A. Mathison teaches that only Scripture is “inherently infallible” and “the supreme normative standard” and the “final standard” and “only final authoritative norm.” Any other “authorities” are “subordinate and derivative in nature.”

I cite James White for almost a page. He contends for the same notions. Scripture contains “all God intends for us to have that is infallible, binding, and authoritative.” Neither Church nor tradition possess this authority. Hence, any tradition “must be tested by a higher authority, and that authority is the Bible.” So White concludes that “the Scriptures alone are sufficient to function as the regulafidei, the infallible rule of faith for the Church.”

That is the definition of sola Scriptura, and it precludes by inescapable logic, these propositions:

1) The Church is infallible and has binding authority.

2) Sacred / apostolic tradition / apostolic succession are infallible and has binding authority.

Therefore, if a Church father asserts #1 or #2 he does not teach sola Scriptura. It’s as simple as that. I’ve already proven this in my two papers about St. Cyril, but I will offer more here. In Catechetical Lecture 18:23, Cyril informs us that the Catholic Church has a sublime (infallible) teaching authority: “it teaches universally and completely one and all the doctrines which ought to come to men’s knowledge, concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly.” He also wrote about this Church in 18:25:

the Saviour built out of the Gentiles a second Holy Church, the Church of us Christians, concerning which he said to Peter, ‘And upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ [Matthew 16:18] . . . Concerning this Holy Catholic Church Paul writes to Timothy, ‘That you may know how you ought to behave yourself in the House of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth’ [1 Timothy 3:15].

I wrote a post in which I gave three biblical arguments for an infallible, authoritative Church. Two of them are above (and I hadn’t read the above before I wrote my post). The third is the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

In 18:26 he decries “the heretics, the Marcionists and Manichees, and the rest,” and provides the solution to falling into their errors: “for this cause the Faith has securely delivered to you now the Article, And in one Holy Catholic Church; that you may avoid their wretched meetings, and ever abide with the Holy Church Catholic in which you were regenerated.” He makes the Church necessary for salvation in 18:28: “In this Holy Catholic Church receiving instruction and behaving ourselves virtuously, we shall attain the kingdom of heaven, and inherit eternal life; for which also we endure all toils, that we may be made partakers thereof from the Lord.” He refers to sacred tradition and apostolic succession in 18:32 (“the Holy and Apostolic Faith delivered to you to profess”).

He also mentions the centrality of Scriptures in determining doctrine (e.g., 18:30, 18:33), but not in a way that precludes or excludes Church and tradition. This is what is not understood by those who claim that Cyril is teaching sola Scriptura. He does not. He teaches precisely what Catholics believe today, as the rule of faith: the “three-legged stool” of “Bible-Church-Tradition.”

The sola Scriptura advocate could never say the things that Cyril said above about both Church and tradition, because he denies that they are infallible, and that they are a final authority alongside Scripture. Thus, Luther at the Diet of Worms specifically places Scripture higher than the Church and tradition by saying, “councils and can and do err. Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, here I stand, I can do not other, etc.” He couldn’t and didn’t argue like Cyril does above because that is the Catholic Mind and Rule of Faith, which he was rejecting, by introducing the unscriptural novelty of sola Scriptura.

Cyril talks about the inspired authority of Scripture, as he should, and as we do, but he places it within the authoritative interpretation of Holy Mother Church. Hence, he wrote:

But in learning the Faith and in professing it, acquire and keep that only, which is now delivered to thee by the Church, and which has been built up strongly out of all the Scriptures. For since all cannot read the Scriptures, some being hindered as to the knowledge of them by want of learning, and others by a want of leisure, in order that the soul may not perish from ignorance, we comprise the whole doctrine of the Faith in a few lines. . . . So for the present listen while I simply say the Creed , and commit it to memory; but at the proper season expect the confirmation out of Holy Scripture of each part of the contents. . . . Take heed then, brethren, and hold fast the traditions which ye now receive, and write them on the table of your heart. Guard them with reverence, lest per chance the enemy despoil any who have grown slack; or lest some heretic pervert any of the truths delivered to you. (Catechetical Lectures 5:12-13)

He refers to “the tradition of the Church’s interpreters” (Catechetical Lectures 15:13)

When Cyril refers to “proof” and “demonstration” from the Scriptures in 4:17, it depends what he means. If he means by that, “all doctrines to be believed are harmonious with Scripture, and must not contradict it,” this is simply material sufficiency and exactly what Catholics believe. If he means, “all doctrines to be believed must be explicitly explained and taught by Scripture and not derived primarily or in a binding fashion from the Church or tradition” then he would be espousing sola Scriptura.

But it’s not at all established that this is what he meant. It is established, on the other hand, that he accepted the binding authority of Church, tradition, and apostolic succession (“that apostolic and evangelic faith, which our fathers ever preserved and handed down to us as a pearl of great price”: To Celestine, Epistle 9).

The notion that all doctrines must be explicit in Scripture in order to be believed (and only binding if so), is simply not taught in the Bible; i.e., sola Scriptura is not taught in the Bible. An authoritative, binding Church and tradition certainly are taught in Scripture, and those two things expressly contradict sola Scriptura.

Conclusion: neither the Bible nor St. Cyril of Jerusalem teach sola Scriptura.

The only way anyone could read and understand what I just wrote above and still claim that St. Cyril of Jerusalem believed in sola Scriptura would be to:

1) not understand the definition of sola Scriptura, as explained by credentialed, informed Protestant apologists and theologians,

or

2) insufficiently understand classical logic; i.e., how Cyril’s statements elsewhere logically prove that he can’t possibly have held to sola Scriptura, as defined by its most vocal and able Protestant defenders: folks like Geisler, Mathison, and White.

An advocate of sola Scriptura cannot possibly state, “x is true because the Church teaches it” or “x is true because sacred tradition passed down, teaches it”. They cannot because those sentences presuppose an authoritative, binding Church or tradition (which sola Scriptura expressly denies). The advocate of sola Scriptura has to say, rather, “x is true because the Bible teaches it” or “x is true because the Bible — corroborated also by non-binding Church and/or traditional teaching — teaches it”. The Church or tradition can never be central in providing the basis for a belief, in a sola Scriptura understanding. They can be secondary and optional, but never primary, sole, or binding.

This is why, again, there is no way in any conceivable universe, that St. Cyril held to sola Scriptura. And I have found this to be the case with any and every Church father, insofar as I have studied them or looked over supposed prooftexts from them, produced by anti-Catholic apologists and historical revisionists like Jason Engwer, David T. King, William Webster, or James White, or Martin Chemnitz or William Whitaker (see the “Bible / Tradition / Church . . . section of my Church Fathers web page). It fails every time, and it is almost always the same logical fallacy and tunnel vision involved.

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As we have been saying, a given Church father’s views have to be determined by his entire body of teaching, not isolated prooftexts.

That is true to a POINT, but not to the exclusion of the similar truth that isolated texts may very WELL, and often do, stand on their own (e.g., being told, “thou shalt not steal” is clear enough). The fact that Cyril said not even to believe HIM, but to check things out with Holy Writ, WE SAY, can stand on its own. I have read your quotes which supposedly prove the contrary and I am not convinced.

Now to everything else in you said in your post here, there is a reply that can stand head and shoulders over your assertions. I had to decide if it was worthwhile to go through all your dicta in light of the fact that your foundation is cracked at the get-go. I decided it was NOT worth the time, because if your foundation is cracked, then it follows that everything else you submit has splinters also. Here’s your crack… [he then proceeds to do an off-topic analysis of the material vs. formal sufficiency of Scripture issue, including charges that I am “dishonest” regarding Catholic teaching in this respect]

Yeah, I check everything with Scripture, too (as does the Catholic Church). It’s my specialty: my website is called “Biblical Evidence for Catholicism”. So what? That determines nothing one way or another with regard to sola Scriptura. The sooner you figure that out, the better for the logic of your analyses. I think you understand the definition of sola Scriptura (but maybe not); so you must not understand the logic of the various propositions being discussed and how they relate to each other.

I had to decide if it was worthwhile to go through all your dicta in light of the fact that your foundation is cracked at the get-go. I decided it was NOT worth the time, . . .

Yes, of course! This is what folks always do when faced with matters of verifiable historical fact that don’t go along with their preconceived notions, for which they want to special plead: play logical games, rationalize why the relevant data ought not be reckoned with and refuted (if indeed that is able to be done).

You have written enough words in this combox to make War and Peace look like a comic strip on a bubble gum wrapper, yet you can’t bring yourself to refute a few passages from St. Cyril that demolish your pretentious claims about him.

It’s classic anti-Catholicism. I’ve encountered it again and again in the current crop of anti-Catholic polemicists (White, Webster, Engwer, King, Ken Temple, Turretinfan, James Swan, Eric Svendsen, Steve Hays) and in the historic ones as well (Whitaker, Goode, Chemnitz, Luther, Calvin).

However you try to distract unsuspecting readers, the fact remains, and has been demonstrated, that St. Cyril of Jerusalem could not possibly have believed in sola Scriptura, as defined by the most able Protestant defenders of the past (Whitaker and Goode: against whom I wrote an entire book) or present (Geisler, Mathison, White).

I’m not gonna play your sophistical games and ring-around-the-rosey. You may think that impresses people. I don’t think it’s impressive at all. It’s merely a subterfuge and sophistry to avoid the point at hand (and the only one I am addressing):

+++++ Did St. Cyril of Jerusalem espouse sola Scriptura? +++++

He did not, and I proved that. You obviously haven’t disproven my contentions because by your own words you have chosen not to engage them at all. You make a bald denial (“I am not convinced”), which is, of course, no rational argument. Then you “decided it was NOT worth the time” to address my actual arguments (which are simply citations of Cyril and drawing the rather obvious conclusions from them), and that you would be “dismissing the rest of [my] post.”

Having done that, you attempt to move the discussion to the finer points of material and formal sufficiency. Nice try, but that’s not the topic at hand, and you fool no one by cynically switching horses in mid-stream.

Again, I don’t play those games, and I’m interested in true dialogue and debate and arriving at the fullness of truth and the historical facts (the present discussion being of the nature of historical determination of what a certain person believed in theology), as can best be ascertained.

If your case is indeed so superior, you would dismantle my claims and prove them wrong. It would and should be easy. But since you can’t do that, you chose sophistry, obfuscation, obscurantism, and evasion instead.

At least you give some sort of reply (though it’s pitiful). Webster and King never do so. I refuted Webster at length twice, regarding development of doctrine and tradition (in 2000 and 2003), informed him of it, and never heard a word back. He is massively ignorant of both things.

David T. King claimed (loudly and condescendingly, on Eric Svendsen’s old discussion forum) that Cardinal Newman was a modernist, and that Pope St. Pius X thought so, too. He mocked people who started disagreeing with him. I proved from a personal letter of that pope that this was the exact opposite of the truth. That was in March 2002. King then shut up and has never attempted to interact with an argument of mine ever since (now 15 1/2 years, with no end in sight): though he has called me lots and lots of names. And I have refuted contentions of his several times since (examples: one / two / three / four / five). He never replies. He’s simply (along with Webster) a [solely] self-published blowhard.

So you keep up the same pattern, with which I am quite (and sadly) familiar. It’s pathetic. I don’t know how you can look yourself (“intellectually”) in the mirror.

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My Conversion: Apathy, Occult, Evangelicalism, & Catholicism (Pt. 4)

Last updated on: November 5, 2017 at 4:36 pm By Dave Armstrong

Part Four: Apologetics, Abundant Evangelical Blessings, and Protestant Evangelistic Campus Ministry (1983-1989)

This is the ten-part story of my complete religious history, from nominal Methodism (1958-1967), to the occult and practical atheism (1968-1976), through evangelical Protestantism, counter-cult, pro-life, evangelistic, and apologetics work (1977-1990), and finally on to the fullness of the Catholic faith in 1991. It is found complete (75 pages) in my 2013 book, Catholic Converts and Conversion.

See All Ten Parts:

Part One: Nominal Methodism, Occult, and the Seeds of a Serious Christian Commitment (1958 – early 1970s)

Part Two: Nature Mysticism, Romanticism, Bible Movies, and the “Great Depression” (1968-1977)

Part Three: Evangelical “Born-Again” (?) Experience, More Lukewarmness, and Personal Revival (1977-1982)

Part Four: Apologetics, Abundant Evangelical Blessings, and Protestant Evangelistic Campus Ministry (1983-1989)

Part Five: Collapse of My Protestant Ministry: Disillusionment and the End of One Chapter of My Life, But with Faith Intact (1985-1989)

Part Six: Pro-Life Rescue Movement, Letter to Karl Keating, My Ecumenical Gatherings, & the First “Domino”: Contraception (1988-1990)

Part Seven: Ecclesiology (the Church), the “Protestant Myth” of Church History, and My Vehement Opposition to Catholic Infallibility (1990)

Part Eight: Bombshell and Paradigm Shift: Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1990)

Part Nine: The Slow But Inevitable Paradigm Shift, Fr. John A. Hardon, and Another View of the “Reformation” (1990)

Part Ten: Thomas Howard & Liturgy, My New Catholic Apologetics Career, and the Long-Awaited Fulfillment of My Calling (1990-1991)

* * * * *

“Mrs. Right” and Influential Christian Assemblies

Despite all these wonderful positive changes in my life at Shalom, I decided to try a different church. The reason was an all-too-typical one. In 1982, I was intensely lonely (not having had a steady girlfriend for six years: since high school), and I wasn’t meeting anyone at Shalom who seemed to be a “prospect.” I was almost 24 and quite ready to become romantically serious with someone.

Although not the most serious reason to choose a congregation (if one at all), nevertheless, finding the right mate is a hugely important factor in a young man or woman’s life. I was trying to be sensible and meet a “nice Christian girl” and “Mrs. Right” in a church setting.

From 1982 to 1986 I attended an Assembly of God church and the young adult singles group there, where I met my wife Judy in November 1982 (we married in October 1984), made many friends (many of whom we still keep in contact with) and began a full-time campus apologetics / evangelism ministry.

I met one of my very best friends, and kindred spirit, Dan Grajek, there. He and I collaborated, starting in 1985, on evangelistic “cartoon tracts” and did a great deal of street evangelism. Dan later returned to the Catholic Church a few years after I did, and his wife Lori converted to Catholicism.

Also, during this period, I had some significant contact with Trinity Baptist Church, in Livonia, Michigan: a Reformed Baptist congregation that placed a great deal of emphasis on the typically Reformed, Schaefferian theme of “Jesus as Lord of all of life,” and “Christ and culture” issues: a “thinking man’s Christianity.” This was another big influence on my Christian life, tying in with my intellectual and apologetics emphasis.

My own theology – though I was influenced by many different strands of Protestantism – was as much Baptist as anything else (and I had gotten “baptized” in 1982 as a reflection of this belief; my real baptism having occurred as a baby in the Methodist church).

I was further blessed and “convicted” in the early 1980s by the fiery, charismatic-style preaching of Rev. George Bogle in Detroit. He is an immensely respected and influential pastor and valiant prayer warrior, who is still active today. This was the more experiential, heartfelt aspect of evangelicalism, that was important to me alongside my apologetics leanings. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. They complement each other. As the Bible says: “Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.” We’re not to pick and choose among those four things.

I did a radio talk on Jehovah’s Witnesses on the largest Protestant radio station in Detroit: WMUZ (103.5 FM): a show associated with his ministry, on 3 November 1989. The same program remains on the air to this day.

I attended Shalom House again from 1986-1989. By this time, Al Kresta was the pastor. His emphasis was also strongly on “Christ and culture” and a thinking man’s Christianity.

Thankfulness and Gratefulness for My Evangelical Past

I can’t imagine (in terms of my own life and development) not having had these wonderful experiences or not having learned all these great things as an evangelical. It’s an important, crucial part of who I am, and always will be. This is why I frequently stress that becoming a Catholic is not at all an utter rejection of Protestantism.

The Catholic convert from Protestantism takes with himself or herself a huge amount of true teaching and practice and zeal for God, in the move from Protestantism to Catholicism. The Catholic Church joyfully acknowledges this (most notably in the Decree on Ecumenism from Vatican II).

It’s not so much a matter of going from “bad” to “good” but rather, from “very good” to “the best.” I thank God for my evangelical background, and that is why I have again “paid homage” to it in the course of this chapter. I feel a deep, sincere gratitude and thankfulness to God and the people involved, for having had all these manifest blessings and great teachers and friends in my Christian background.

Many of the things I hold very dear now (love of the Bible, interest in Christian worldview, pro-life, opposing cults and atheists, evangelism, fighting cultural sexual immorality, apologetics in general, strong family values, political conservatism, concern for the poor, love for great Christian authors and thinkers) were cultivated during those days. That’s where I initially learned all those things. It was the air I breathed.

I’ll always be thankful for that and remember those times with the utmost fondness. I loved my time as an evangelical, and most conversion stories that I’m aware of, from Catholics who came from the same sector of Protestantism, don’t run down the evangelical experience. The general sentiment is the same as mine: fondness and appreciation. They see it as kind of a stepping-stone.

I have great and fond memories. I learned all about the Bible when I was there, and good moral teaching. But I think there was more to Christianity, that the Catholic Church can offer, along the lines of sacramentalism and tradition and matters of Church and authority.

What I “Knew” as a Protestant: Myth vs. Fact

Converts to Catholicism often are accused of being ignorant of Protestantism, or of never having been “truly” Protestant at all. For those, like Calvinists, who believe that no one can ever truly fall away from salvation or justification, the latter opinion is often expressed: to leave Protestantism is proof positive (so they think) of never having been “saved” or regenerated or justified: in their definition. I was not only a committed Protestant (broadly Arminian or Wesleyan), but also an apologist as a Protestant.

Just for the record, here are some of the authors (apart from others mentioned in this account) that I read as a Protestant: Bernard Ramm, John Walvoord, R. C. Sproul, A. W. Tozer, Harold Lindsell, Merrill Tenney, James Montgomery Boice, Oswald Allis, George Marsden, J. Gresham Machen, Kierkegaard, John MacArthur, J. I. Packer, Billy Graham, Walter Martin, G. C. Berkouwer, F. F. Bruce, D. A. Carson, Norman Geisler, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Gerhard Maier, Augustus Strong, Charles Hodge, Gleason Archer, John Gerstner, A. A. Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, Dunn, Alford, Westcott, J. B. Lightfoot, Peter Berger, Os Guinness, Thomas Oden, John Ankerberg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jonathan Edwards, Ronald Nash, Carl F. H. Henry, Charles Colson, Dorothy Sayers, James Davison Hunter, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Howard Snyder, Michael Green, Ron Sider, Ryken, Edersheim, Wenham, Arndt, Ladd, Albright (biblical archaeologist), D. Guthrie, Woodbridge, Jack Rodgers, Richard Foster, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Goodspeed, Paul Maier, James Dobson, Chuck Swindoll, Yancey, Richard John Neuhaus (when Lutheran), Cornelius Van Til, J. P. Moreland, Gary Habermas, Carnell, J. N. D. Anderson, Lee Strobel, John Warwick Montgomery, among many others.

Of Church historians alone, I read, or at least had in my library: J. N. D. Kelly, Roland Bainton, Jaroslav Pelikan (when Lutheran), Philip Schaff, Kenneth Scott Latourette, Dillenberger, Martin Marty, Oberman, McGrath, A. G. Dickens, Hillerbrand, Harbison, Pauck, Spitz, Henry Chadwick, Steinmetz, Rupp, Althaus, Owen Chadwick, and Perry Miller.

I was also a regular reader of Christianity Today, Cornerstone, and Last Days Newsletter (Keith Green), and listened to many many Protestant radio shows.

Anti-Catholic Baptist apologist James White had made the ridiculous claim on his website (December 2004) that I had “given very little evidence . . . of having done a lot of serious reading in better non-Catholic literature.” I then produced the above list of my reading, and more. Likewise, anti-Catholic webmaster Steve Hays claimed in September 2006 that I “had a rather brief and superficial experience with Evangelicalism — reading popularizers.”

After “Dr.” White read my list, he didn’t miss a beat and shot back with his utterly predictable reply: “instead of blaming ignorance for his very shallow misrepresentations of non-Catholic theology and exegesis, we must now assert knowing deception.” Thus, in one second I went from being an ignoramus to being a “knowing” liar and deceiver. So it goes in trying to reason with anti-Catholics. I just wanted to set the record straight as to how much I did know as an evangelical.

My conversion to Catholicism wasn’t due to supposedly being ignorant of evangelical Protestantism (as my critics above want to foolishly believe). It wasn’t because I despised or hated same or came to regard it as worthless, or because I was disenchanted with it and looking to split. My journey began out of simple intellectual curiosity about why Catholics believed certain things that I thought were exceedingly strange and puzzling (particularly, the ban on contraception, and infallibility).

Respect for Catholicism, While Very “Pro-Protestant”

Many of my friends during my evangelical years were former Catholics. I knew little of Catholicism until the mid-80s. I regarded it as an exotic, stern, and unnecessarily ritualistic “denomination” that held little appeal for me. I wasn’t by nature attracted to liturgy, and didn’t believe in sacraments at all, although I always had great reverence for the “Lord’s Supper” and believed something real was imparted in it.

On the other hand, I was never overtly anti-Catholic. Having been active in apologetics and counter-cult work, I quickly realized that Catholicism was entirely different from the heretical sects, in that it had correct “central doctrines,” such as the Trinity and the bodily resurrection of Christ, as well as an admirable historical legitimacy; fully Christian, albeit vastly inferior to evangelicalism.

But I had always loved Church history too, and was somewhat of a medievalist. It’s difficult to be anti-Catholic when one so greatly admires the cathedrals, knightly chivalry, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, and so forth.

“True Truth Ministries” Apologetic Outreach (1985-1989)

The story within a story of this evangelical period (1977-1990) was my campus ministry, or evangelistic / apologetic outreach on college campuses (1985-1989): what I called “True Truth Ministries,” after Francis Schaeffer‘s phrase. I had a job when I got married, as a quality control lab technician: inspecting plastic moldings for cars (my only one that ever had anything to do with the Detroit automobile industry).

It was good enough as far as it went, with benefits and future prospects for advancement, and I had planned to stay there, but God had other plans for me. I describe how I felt God specifically called me to evangelistic ministry in February 1985, in a sort of “spiritual resume” that I presented to my church, dated 10 April 1989:

Some people think all talk of a “call” is mere metaphysical mush, to be discouraged and discounted, to say the least. I am anything but the type of person who “lives for experiences and highs” and goes from one “trip” to another. The only times God has directly communicated to me in a profound, undeniable way were with regard to my marriage (March-August 1984) and my ministry, in 1985. . . .

God spoke to me in an undeniable way, not audibly, but within my spirit. He simply told me that he wanted me to pursue occupationally what I had been doing as opportunity arose, for nearly five years. The content of what God said to me was extremely simple. It’s the intensity and definitiveness of the experience that is hard to express . . . J. I. Packer describes something of what I experienced:

Those whom God wants in . . . specialized ministry, are ordinarily made to realize they will never find job-satisfaction doing anything else. (Hot Tub Religion, Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale, 1987, 109)

. . . On the other hand, being naturally of an analytical bent, I immediately sought to apply wisdom to the situation . . . I sought confirmation from my pastor and my friends, all of whom were enthusiastic, as far as I could tell. So, after three months of prayer and confirmation, I took the leap.

. . . nothing short of a direct message from God would have been sufficient motivation to continue despite anything and everything. I’ve never regretted my decision, and am every bit as excited and zealous today as I was four years ago.

Also, during this period I had a very distinct and terrifying vision of hell. I don’t remember specific details about it, other than that it was chilling to the bone. My wife Judy was with me at the time and she reports (with vivid memory) how I was very agitated and upset and turned white as a ghost, and how I told her what I saw and that God was calling me to help rescue people from going to hell. She agreed (as she always does), and believed that it made perfect sense for God to call me in this way.

The idea was simple: go to college campuses and share (evangelical) Christian truth, in ways that were accessible to those of that age and educational attainment. My models were the Ann Arbor Art Fair and Inter-Varsity. I started writing short tracts (about 58 of them over the next four years) and photo-copying a great amount of Christian literature, to provide answers for a broad range of questions. It was the pre-Internet version of my trying to provide comprehensive apologetic answers on a large scale (now I have more than 2400 posts on my blog). Over the next four years I evangelized and defended Christianity in countless ways, to all sorts of people. Here is a sampling of some of the things that happened, from my “monthly reports” that I sent to my supporters:

9 October 1985: Talked to Eric and many others (listening) at the Science Fiction Club [at the University of Michigan – Dearborn campus] about the resurrection, the Christian view of sex, inspiration of the Bible, and the free will vs. foreknowledge issue for three hours. The latter discussion was then continued with Eric, five others, and a philosophy professor for two more hours!

1 April 1986: I’ve passed out thousands of tracts and have witnessed to hundreds of people. This semester (at UM-Dearborn) I’m regularly conversing with twenty or so students and professors; some of whom I know fairly well and dialogue with at great length. . . . many of these unbelievers tell me that I’m the first Christian who has ever even attempted to offer answers to their sincere questions about Christianity.

12 June 1986: I first went out on the streets [of inner-city Detroit] on May 8^th, and it was a very exciting and rewarding experience. The people are very open (a nice switch from school!). I was able to talk to a young man, Dennis, at great length, and he acknowledged Jesus as his Savior the following night at a street rally.

18 August 1986: [Ann Arbor Art Fair] I had a great talk with two very intelligent young men for ten hours (yes, 10!). One was a philosophy major and the other was Jewish. Many bases were covered.

3 March 1987: . . . in just two days of passing out 105 questionnaires, I had 41 people willing to talk . . . of those I’ve met with, nearly every one stated that they benefited from the talk, and almost all wanted to meet again.

14 June 1987: after the meeting [of the Wayne State Graduate Philosophy Club], I was able to talk more informally with eight people at once; seven of them were atheists. . . . A week later, I talked for an hour with one of the graduate students who is an atheist, and a very nice guy! He said he enjoyed our talk and wanted to have more discussions in the future. I’ve since given him several of my tracts, which he has readily accepted.

13 October 1987: The Ann Arbor Art Fair (my 7^th annual) was another thrilling experience. I was there all four days, witnessing to, among others, a Tarot card reader, several Mormons, many socialists, eastern religionists (especially one Buddhist for 1 ½ hours), 2 ACLU lawyers at length, members of Bahai, Eckankar, and Scientology, women’s libbers, a Palestinian nationalist, animal rights advocates, and an agnostic, for 5-6 hours or so.

21 November 1987: On Nov. 5^th I went down to Wayne State University to hear Prof. William Alston, a prominent philosopher who is a Christian. After he read his paper, I found myself with Alston and nearly the whole Dept. of Philosophy of WSU and its Philosophy Club, at a restaurant downtown (I was the only other Christian there). I managed to discuss God and religious experience as much as was possible.

20 May 1988: [I attended] three MENSA philosophy club meetings. MENSA is a group for people with very high IQ. . . . I spoke a lot, mostly about morality and relativism, the cosmological argument for God, and experience as a criterion for truth. The group was composed of six atheists and a pantheist, but I was received well (thanks for those prayers!) . . . to my surprise and glee, three people were willing to read anything I could give them.

19 November 1988: I went with a friend of ours to a pro-choice rally downtown. We were the only identifiable pro-lifers out of about 75 people. Consequently, despite the vociferous opposition of the crowd, I was interviewed by channel 7 [ABC] and appeared on the news that night. . . . I participated in the Rescue on Nov. 12^th and was arrested for blocking access to an abortion mill. One baby was saved for sure; possibly two. It was the most deeply spiritual experience I’ve ever had. I was interviewed on Monday on the Christian radio show, Love Talks for about ten minutes.

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Photo credit: very happily married to the beautiful Judy: our fifth anniversary portrait in October 1989. But this was also the very agonizing month that my Protestant evangelistic ministry collapsed.

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Apostolic [Quasi-] Protestantism?: Dialogue with Eric Svendsen

Last updated on: September 5, 2017 at 2:14 pm By Dave Armstrong

The Death of Ananias (1515), by Raphael (1483-1520) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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[Eric Svendsen’s words will be in blue; another anonymous Protestant’s in green]

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The following series of dialogues took place on James White’s Sola Scriptura discussion list, from 21 May to 26 June 1996. As such they are some of my very first debates / dialogues online: I went online in March 1996.

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See the highly related Dialogue on “Perspicuous Apostolic Teaching” (vs. Bishop “Dr.” [???] James White), which took place at the same time.***Eric Svendsen: 30 May 1996

Dave A. wrote:

But what of, say, contraception? Luther and Calvin thought it murder, and all Christians opposed it until 1930, but now it is a perfectly moral “choice” in the opinion of the vast majority of Protestant sects. Thus, “orthodoxy” changed, and on the flimsiest of grounds (faddism and moral compromise).

What year did contraception become a sin, Dave?

It never did “become” a sin, since sin is sin, in God’s eyes. God is eternal; therefore contraception has been a sin for eternity (unless, as the Anglicans would have it, God — and hence Christianity — changed His mind in 1930).

At this point, I’d accept any interpretation. Again, I reiterate: at least Luther and Calvin had the strength of their convictions to excommunicate other Protestants for dissidence, because they truly believed in their own brand of Christianity. There is something to be said for that.

So now, Dave, you would like us to have the courage of conviction to anathematize our brothers who disagree with us on all points of dogma. And once we do that, we will have earned your respect and praise for acting upon our conviction?!

I’m saying, have the courage to take a stand. You’re courageous enough to bash the Catholic Church with impunity, but won’t even say that your fellow Protestants are wrong on something or other?! Your fathers Luther and Calvin did it; why not you? Or is it the case, rather, that God doesn’t care about truth when it comes to baptism, the Eucharist, ecclesiology, etc.?

Is Protestantism thus reduced to an Orwellian “some doctrines are more true than others”? Besides, you can disagree but still be brothers in Christ. I’m doing that in this group. My Church does it officially with regard both to the Orthodox and Protestantism. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.

I take it you finally see the force of my point that John 17 does not refer to doctrinal disagreement, but to oneness in love.

Guess again. I say it is primarily referring to love, but also secondarily to doctrine, because Scripture doesn’t separate the two, but holds them in unity (no pun intended).

No Dave, I am not going to anathematize a brother in Christ for believing wrongly on the issue of baptism or the Lord’s Supper. I will certainly disagree with him, and point out his error.

Maybe we’re not that far apart after all, then. But you miss the fact that I was asking for James White’s answer as to what the apostles believed on my 18 points. The original context of my challenge was for James to define his own terms. His reluctance (and everyones’) is heartening to me at least to the extent that Protestants are squeamish about their own disunity, chaos, and relativism, as evidenced by the fear of dealing with it straight-on in answering a friendly Catholic critic.

One tries to avoid dilemmas that might possibly be fatal to one’s position. Understandable. But I will not cease my probing, especially as long as you guys accuse or misunderstand my Church. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

It occurs to me that it is exceedingly strange for Protestants to relegate the Eucharist to relativism and relative insignificance, when our Lord (yes, ours, despite John MacArthur’s insistence that I worship a different one) made it a point of division Himself. John 6:66 tells us of “many of his disciples” forsaking Him. Now, if the Eucharist were just minutiae on the grand scale of matters theological, why didn’t Jesus beg and plead with these people to stay?

If your view is correct, it seems reasonable that Jesus should then have said, “Hey, don’t go: this isn’t a matter which should divide us — we agree that I am God. Who cares about what happens in the central act of Christian worship!” And we know also that Jesus said “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). But that’s “secondary,” “non-essential”? I’m sorry, but I can’t give my assent to such an incoherent and unbiblical viewpoint. Call me obtuse if you like.

And of course, Scripture intimately relates baptism with both repentance and salvation (for the latter, see e.g., Acts 2:38, 1 Pet 3:21, Mk 16:16, Rom 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Cor 6:11, Titus 3:5). But no matter, “us Protestants value a false, pick-and-choose unity rather than biblical truth.” Or so it seems to this observer, one who has lived a committed Christian life in both worlds. Now I will give you a multiple choice test. Please mark an “x” in the appropriate boxes (Protestants can have more than one right answer, Catholics only one):

YOU…..BIBLE …..APOSTLES…….CHURCH HISTORY

Belief in the Real Presence
Belief in the Eucharist
Belief in infant, regenerative baptismNow, for your homework tonight, I’m asking you to explain why (if you differ from either the Bible, the apostles, or the vast majority of Christians for 2000 years), your belief diverges from that of the others. In 500 words or less. Thank you. Protestants will be graded on a scale, so that most of them will get an “A” no matter what their answers are . . .NOTE: I want all of you Protestants out there to take this test, not just Eric. You’ve ignored my questions long enough, and it is getting downright rude! [none answered]

But love covers over a multitude of sins, it does not quickly condemn (contra the historic practice of the Roman church).

What do you call Lutherans or Calvinists drowning and torturing Anabaptists – a quibble among family? How do you view the multitude of capital offenses for heresy in Protestant countries in the 16th and 17th centuries (is that “coercion”?). What about the thousands of “witches” who were put to death by Protestants (the Spanish Inquisition having condemned witch hunts as mass delusion)? Need I offer any more examples? But the wicked Catholic Church and its anathemas . . .

How do we regard Protestants now (however one regards our views in days past when men still cared enough for religion to fight over it)? And how do many of you regard us (e.g., James White and Phillip Johnson, and you)? A bit hypocritical of you, wouldn’t you say, Eric? You ought to spread your moral outrage around a little more – shall we say indiscriminately.

Thus, you guys went from one extreme to the other: baptism once meant everything; now it means virtually nothing.

Gee, I wonder if the Catholic “old man” has its share of these? Let’s see, at one time Catholics were killing and condemning to hell all Protestants who opposed Rome’s authority, denying them salvation. Now, suddenly, we are “means of salvation.”

Is this not a fine example of bigoted, foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Catholicism? “killing . . . all Protestants who opposed . . .”? We don’t condemn anybody to hell, not even Luther. This is not what “anathema” means, any more than it was when Paul used it. The Catholic Church doesn’t claim the authority to sentence people to hell. Last time I checked, that was God’s sole prerogative.

(how could it, since you are divided into five camps?). So your sinful divisions lead to compromise on doctrine.

Who has compromised doctrine? Not I.

Good, then please give me your list of my 18 points, since you’re a good, “uncompromised” Protestant. That will be a wonderful start for the man on the street to ascertain apostolic and Christian truth. Real progress . . .

But if your suggestion is that I join the Catholic church for the sake of unity

We’re working on that. Rome wasn’t built in a day. :-)

– then, indeed, I would be compromising doctrine.

Certainly no more than you and yours are now! It’ll be a giant step up!

There certainly is virtue in unity of belief.

Now that is a true statement, provided the beliefs are true, of course.

But what you don’t seem to be grasping here is that it is no virtue to hold to uncompromised unity of belief if that belief is in error!

I agree 100%. Thus the question boils down to (as always): is what the Catholic Church teaches true or false? (and the same for Protestantism). But you (and James White) try to caricature my position as calling for a blind, absolute, clone-like unity (hence the Jehovah’s Witnesses comparison). Of course not, as this is clearly lunacy. My whole point in critiquing Protestant disunity is that that is clearly, unarguably against the biblical injunctions to be unified, of “one mind,” etc.

Try as you may, neither you nor any Protestant can overcome the strength and validity of this objection to your position. That’s why I asked someone “what would convince you that your view is wrong: 240,000 sects?” (rather than 24,000). What does it take? How absurd and chaotic must things become before you start to question your first principles? As the old pop song goes, “There, I’ve said it again.”

Anonymous Protestant on the List: 6 June 1996:

Or is there a consistent double standard being played here? It seems as long as there is disagreement among Protestants, then sola Scriptura is a failure, but if there is disagreement among Catholics, there are only dissenters. The same standard you apply against the Protestant is even more so applied to you…with a 4×4. Sorry Dave, I can only see your argument as valid as long as it does not apply to you. If it is true, then your own argument condemns you.

I respectfully disagree. This is one where we will have to just agree to disagree. You guys don’t think my “perspicuity” argument applies to you, and us Catholics return the favor when you say liberals in our ranks cast doubt on our general position on authority/Tradition, etc. So what can you do? I’ve seen nothing to cause me to change my mind on this particular point thus far.

You place an infallible interpreter to explain an infallible authority (whichever you believe-partim-partim or material – I can never tell from one post to the next) and still end up with differing interpretations over what the infallible interpreter meant.

I stated that if one had a Bible on a desert isle, and that’s all he had, sure, he could be saved. But I also said that some Church or authority will be ordinarily necessary, so that, in the final analysis it is a moot point. I believe that all Catholic doctrines can be found in Scripture, either explicitly or implicitly or indirectly. If that is material sufficiency, then I am in that camp.

But if it means that somehow the Church and Tradition are thereby taken out of the picture as not intrinsically necessary to Christianity, then I must dissent, because I don’t see that in Scripture (I believe sola Scriptura is self-defeating, in other words). Catholics regard Scripture as central, but not exclusive, with regard to authority and Tradition. Thus, to critique sola Scriptura does not at all imply a lessening of respect for the Bible, as has been implied in this group and elsewhere.

All in all, personally I see this “partim-partim” debate as boring and irrelevant (that’s not to say that others can legitimately think differently). I think we need to determine what Tradition(s) were in fact believed by Christians through history, and whether these can be found to possess a scriptural basis, and I consider Church history as evidence of God’s hand, working to sustain and protect His Church (however that is defined) from error.

I approach these things (i.e., the sola Scriptura / tradition debate) from an historical and pragmatic perspective (and of course, biblically, as do we all), rather than more philosophically. I’m all for philosophy, but since the nature of authority is a very practical matter, I think it is better to stick to a pragmatic method in this case.

Now when James White says that Arminians are not true Protestants (and hence, by deduction from his own premises, not true Christians, either), who am I (or any inquirer) to believe, and why? What “Catechism” or “papal figure” would I appeal to in that case?

Karl Keating.

Ha ha ha. I meant Protestant figure, of course. In any event, we can determine what our Church teaches by looking in the Church’s official documents. That’s the point I was making.

Eric Svendsen: 26 June 1996

The obvious retort is: of what use is “one” written “tradition” when it produces doctrinal chaos? What is gained by that? It’s as if you have one ruler, but everyone has different systems of measuring with it!

But, ironically, you have succinctly and, no doubt, inadvertently described the Roman system in your very last sentence. Admittedly then, the Roman system has just as much chaos as does Protestantism (but this theme is perhaps more appropriately covered further down the road).

Aaargghhhh! :-( (exercising much self-restraint). I merely make one mini-argument in reply: if this is true, how is it that people in this group assume without question that Catholics believe certain things: e.g. (just recently), a very high regard for apostolic tradition, apostolic succession, the immaculate conception, assumption, and perpetual virginity of Mary, infused justification, baptismal regeneration, an ex opere operato notion of sacramentalism, papal infallibility, papal supremacy, etc.?

On the other hand, there is no identifiable Protestant “position” other than C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity,” which takes in Catholic and Orthodox theology anyhow, and so is not even distinctively Protestant. About all that “orthodox” evangelical Protestants agree on is sola Scriptura and an agreement that Catholicism must be wrong (and even a strict sola Scriptura view is questionable among Anglicans and many Lutherans).

They were in conflict with what mom actually said, in spite of the leprechaun in big brothers pocket that interpreted moms words otherwise.

According to which tradition: the Lutheran, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Anabaptist, Church of Christ, independent pentecostal, non-denom, Baptist, Church of God, Mennonite, Quaker, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Assembly of God, Copelandites, self-described “Bible Christian,” or some other group of your choice, from among the multiple thousands, or simply your own “biblical” view?

If Paul teaches it directly from his mouth then, yes, that teaching is authoritative. If Paul verifies someone else who also teaches the same thing then, yes, that teaching is authoritative. But this is not to say that the oral tradition of that message is authoritative.

Do you positively assert that such a scenario is a priori impossible? If not, what would constitute adequate proof for you?

I teach communication skills to corporations for a living. One of the exercises I love to do to illustrate the ineffectiveness of a message that has gone through many hands is this: I whisper a sentence to one of the participants in the seminar, and then have that person whisper the same message to the person next to him, and that person in turn whispers the same message to the next person, and so on until the message has made its way around the room (approx. 30 people). Then I have the last person to receive the message stand and recite it – invariably to the roaring laughter of the rest of the class who cannot believe how much the sentence has changed in the process! (try it sometime). The simple fact is, we will botch up the message every time. That, my friends, is why God chose to commit the essential teachings to writing in the first place.

Yes, I’ve heard this. But using it to shore up sola Scriptura is a classic example of the fallacy behind Protestant presuppositional objections to Tradition: they assume that (Catholic) Tradition is merely human, and therefore subject to all the foibles of that weak vessel, whereas we assert that it is guided by the Holy Spirit and hand of God, in order to preserve it from error (by means of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church).

You assert that God could produce an infallible Bible by means of fallible, sinful (mostly Jewish) men (such as David, Matthew, Peter & Paul), and confirmed in its parameters also by fallible, sinful (Jewish and Catholic) men, and translated by fallible, sinful (mostly Catholic) men, and preserved for 1500 years before Protestantism was born by fallible, sinful (mostly Catholic and therefore apostate, according to James White) men, too. We contend that God can and does likewise create and sustain an infallible Church and Tradition, which is not a whit less credible or plausible.

As I’ve stated many times, we are discussing Christianity (which requires faith and a belief in the supernatural, God’s Providence, etc.), not epistemological philosophy. Ours is a faith position, but no more than yours (I would say less so). James argues like an atheist when he tries to pretend that our view is largely irrational blind “faith in Rome,” whereas Protestantism is altogether scriptural, reasonable, and not requiring faith in any institution outside one’s own radically individualistic, subjective, existential “certainty” (perhaps also, in his case, Calvin).

One must examine premises, and their relative merits. That’s why I like to dwell on the foundations of belief-systems, knowing that if they are found weak and crumbling, the superstructure resting upon them will necessarily collapse. The two pillars of Protestantism are sola Scriptura and sola fide. Like Samson, I pushed the two pillars down, and the house of Protestantism collapsed upon my head, killing me as a Protestant, but luckily, a coherent Christian alternative existed, so I was resurrected. :-)

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William Webster’s Misunderstanding of Development of Doctrine

Last updated on: June 9, 2017 at 7:33 pm By Dave Armstrong

(with particular reference to the papacy, Vatican I, Pope Leo XIII, St. Vincent of Lerins, and Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman)

Photograph Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), by Herbert Rose Barraud (1845-1896) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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(2000)

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The following is a direct reply to Protestant polemicist William Webster’s article: The Repudiation of the Doctrine of Development as it Relates to the Papacy by Vatican I and Pope Leo XIII. His article was largely in response to certain assertions in Steve Ray’s book Upon This Rock. I break up his paragraphs in order to create a more readable back-and-forth dialogue (as is my custom), but readers can easily link to Mr. Webster’s original to check for context, if that is desired. Webster’s words will be in blue.

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Ray of Light Concerning Papal Development

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One of the claims being made by present day Roman Catholic apologists is that, as an institution, the papacy was something that developed over time.

As indeed every other doctrine held by Catholics and Protestants has, whether in understanding and/or in application.

In his book, Upon This Rock, Steve Ray represents this position. He uses the metaphor of the acorn and the oak. In critiquing my book, The Matthew 16 Controversy, Peter and the Rock, Ray states:

Webster’s section on St. Cyprian also demonstrates his unwillingness to represent fairly the process and necessity of doctrinal development within the Church. As we have demonstrated earlier in this book: the oak tree has grown and looks perceptibly different from the fragile sprout that cracked the original acorn, yet the organic essence and identity remain the same. Do the words of the very first Christians contain the full-blown understanding of the Papacy as expressed in Vatican I? No, they do not, as Webster correctly observes. (Steve Ray, Upon This Rock, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999, p. 184).

My good friend Steve Ray (we have known each other since 1983 — many of those years as Protestant evangelicals) is exactly right, and presently I endeavor to show why he is, and why William Webster is wrong, by means of many different avenues of historical and theological arguments and analogies.

Now, there is an implicit admission in these statements. Steve Ray is admitting to the fact that the papacy was not there from the very beginning. It was subject to a process of development and growth over time. This is a simple historical fact recognized by historians of nearly every persuasion.

Indeed, all the elements which flow from the essential aspects of the papacy took time to develop fully. Thus the papacy as we know it today (i.e., post-Vatican I, when papal infallibility was defined) was not present “full-blown” in the first century. This should neither surprise nor scandalize Catholics, as if it were a “difficulty.” The essence of the papacy has been there all along, and that is precisely what Catholic apologists and any others who understand the true nature of Newmanian, Vincentian development of doctrine refer to, when they speak of doctrines having been “present from the beginning,” or as “part of the apostolic deposit passed on from Jesus to the Apostles.” Nor is this at all contrary to the teaching of the First Vatican Council or Leo XIII, as I will demonstrate. Mr. Webster simply has no case.

The essence of the papacy is Petrine primacy and divinely-granted jurisdiction over the Church universal. I have recounted many biblical and historical arguments in this regard in the following paper: 50 NT Proofs for Petrine Primacy & the Papacy. Since my analysis in that paper is entirely grounded in the Bible (the sole formal principle of authority for Mr. Webster – assuming he espouses sola Scriptura), therefore the only development these essential, presuppositional aspects of the papacy have undergone – in a remote, somewhat tongue-in-cheek sense – would be the development entailed in the process of determining the canon of the New Testament.

But I find it interesting that Mr. Webster cuts out the second half of Steve Ray’s paragraph, which he cites. I believe that the reader will be able to understand why:

But then, neither do the words of the first Christians present the fully developed understanding of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ (or the canon of the New Testament, for that matter) as expounded and practiced by later generations of the Church. One must be careful not to read too much into the early centuries — but one must also be careful not to ignore the obvious doctrinal substance contained and practiced by our forebears, which was simply developed and implemented as the need arose throughout subsequent centuries. (Ray, ibid., p. 184; emphasis added)

This shows that Mr. Webster’s reasoning would also apply to doctrines he himself also holds (as indeed Newman argued in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine), therefore causing his case to more or less collapse, thus it was better that this was not revealed in a paper such as his present one – it makes for too much extra work, and we are all very busy . . .

Vatican I and Authoritative Biblical Interpretation

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The problem for Roman Catholics is not whether there was development. The problem lies in the fact that Vatican I says there was no development.

Of course the Council claims no such thing. It asserts that the papacy was present from the beginning, and Mr. Webster falsely assumes that therefore the papacy as understood and practiced post-1870 is being referred to as having been present all along (i.e., the “oak tree” rather than the “acorn”). It is easy to “win” an argument with a straw man of one’s own making (whether it is intentional or not).

In other words there was no acorn. It was a full blown oak from the very beginning and was therefore the practice of the Church from the very beginnning.

Again, this is a gratuitous and false assumption. Such a thing is never stated by Vatican I. And what is stated is wrongly interpreted by Mr. Webster, as I will demonstrate in due course. It so happens that I have previously “anticipated” Mr. Webster’s argument here (in exchanges with others) and have — I believe — (by means of Newman himself) satisfactorily “answered” his contentions already, in a paper: “The Development of the Papacy (Newman).”

Vatican I reaffirmed the decree of the Council of Trent on the Unanimous Consent of the Fathers which has to do specifically with the interpretation of Scripture. It states that it is unlawful to interpret Scripture in any way contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

I assume Mr. Webster makes reference to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, chapter II, “Of Revelation” (ending):

Now since the decree on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, profitably made by the Council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine, that meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which holy Mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture. In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

This passage does not — strictly speaking — deal with mandatory interpretations of particular Scripture verses. The Church — in this instance, as always — is much more concerned with true doctrines, as opposed to absolute requirements of belief with regard to any given biblical passage. That’s why the Council speaks of “the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture” (i.e., as a whole; as a set of doctrinal beliefs, or the crystallization of Holy Tradition), rather than of “the true meaning and interpretation of every individual passage of Holy Scripture.” The Church would, therefore, contend that Holy Scripture teaches the doctrine of the papacy, and that anyone who would deny that is in the wrong, and is opposed to the “unanimous consent” of the Fathers.

Mr. Webster, therefore (inadvertently, I assume) sets up false premises, upon which he bases his argument, which he apparently considers compelling and clear-cut. It rests upon a supposed conciliar requirement to interpret individual biblical passages in the way it itself interprets them, and an alleged claim that all the Fathers indeed interpreted them in this fashion. But these demands and claims simply do not occur in the Council’s decrees. Like many non-Catholic controversialists, Mr. Webster falls prey to the temptation of attributing to the Catholic Church an objectionable and excessive “dogmatism” which goes beyond what the Church claims for itself.

Vatican I then proceeds to set forth its teachings on papal primacy and infallibility with the interpretation of Matthew 16:18, John 21:15-17 and Luke 22:32 as the basis for its teachings.

So far, Mr. Webster is correct. Like any good Protestant, the Catholic Church seeks to offer biblical rationale for its beliefs.

And then it states that the interpretations that it gives and the conclusions it draws from these interpretations, in terms of the practice of the Church, has been that which has ever been taught in the Church and practiced by it.

In terms of the essence of the papacy, and the kernels contained in these passages, yes. But as we will shortly see, Mr. Webster falsely charges that the Church is making an untrue claim about historical exegesis – a contention which I cannot find in the texts he cites (perhaps I missed it, and Mr. Webster can point this out to me).

Here is what Vatican I says:

Chapter I: Of the Institution of the Apostolic Primacy in blessed Peter.

We therefore teach and declare that, according to the testimony of the Gospel, the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed Peter the Apostle by Christ the Lord. For it was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said: “Thou shalt be called Cephas,” that the Lord after the confession made by him, saying: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” addressed these solemn words: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” And it was upon Simon alone that Jesus after his resurrection bestowed the jurisdiction of chief pastor and ruler over all his fold in the words: “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep.” At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture as it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his Church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all the other Apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction; or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through the Church on Peter as her minister.

If any one, therefore, shall say that blessed Peter the Apostle was not appointed the Prince of all the Apostles and the visible Head of the whole Church militant; or that the same directly and immediately received from the same our Lord Jesus Christ a primacy of honor only, and not of true and proper jurisdiction: let him be anathema.

(Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom [New York: Harper, 1877], Dogmatic Decrees of the Vatican Council, Ch. 4, pp. 266-71).

[remainder of lengthy citation from Vatican I deleted — the reader may read it on the link provided on top]

Notice here that Vatican I states that its interpretation of Matthew 16 and John 21 has been the interpretation that has ever been understood in the Church. That is, from them very beginning.

If by this, Mr. Webster is implying that the Council claimed all the Fathers interpreted these particular passages in the same fashion, it simply did not do so. A crucial distinction must be made at this point. The Council (and Catholic apologists today) can and may use various biblical texts in order to support some particular Catholic doctrine. Vatican I, then, is in effect arguing:

“These are some of the biblical reasons why we accept these beliefs (about the papacy), beliefs which have always been held (in their essence – with development over time) by the Church.”

Note that this is quite different (vastly different, in terms of logic) from arguing the following, which — if I am not mistaken — Mr. Webster falsely claims that Vatican I is doing:

“These are some of the biblical reasons which have always been used by the Church — with the unanimous consent of the Fathers — to justify these beliefs (about the papacy), beliefs which have always been held (in their essence — with development over time) by the Church.”

In other words, the beliefs themselves and the particular biblical rationale and proof texts for those beliefs are not one and the same. Thus, even if not all Fathers accepted the interpretations of certain “papal” passages which are frequently used in Catholic apologetics today, that does not mean that they therefore rejected the doctrine of the papacy. Mr. Webster has subtly altered the sense of Vatican I and “smuggled in” notions which are not actually present in the documents themselves, in order to bolster his anti-papal case. Again, I don’t contend that he is being deliberately deceitful. The logic is sufficiently subtle to have been botched in its application, a faux pas all proponents of a particular viewpoint are prone to commit, in their zeal and passion for the ideas they hold. But now that this logical fallacy has been pointed out and exposed, Mr. Webster must honestly face it.

Furthermore, one must precisely understand what is meant by the “unanimous consent” of the Fathers. Steve Ray has written about this as well. In a nutshell, it doesn’t mean in this context (ancient Latin usage), “absolutely every.” It means “very broad / widespread consensus.”

Vatican I, Cardinal Newman, & the Papacy vs. William Webster
***It further states that Peter was given a primacy of jurisdiction from the very beginning by Christ himself and that this primacy was passed on to Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome. This, it says, has been known to all ages.

Indeed, jurisdiction was present from the beginning, and recognized by the Fathers, as fully evidenced in my 50 NT Proofs for Petrine Primacy & the Papacy and in great depth in Steve Ray’s book Upon This Rock. It was present when Jesus gave to St. Peter the “keys of the kingdom,” and renamed him “Rock,” with strongly implied (and soon-exercised) ecclesiological preeminence, as shown in the many passages I detail. The successors are a matter of historical fact. Rome became the center of the Church by God’s design: Sts. Peter and Paul were martyred there, after all. American Christians have scarcely any notion of the place and function of martyrdom in the Christian life. Rome was also obviously key in terms of influencing the Roman Empire. But I digress . . .

In other words, there was no acorn. According to Vatican I, the papacy was a full blown oak from the very beginning because it was established by Christ himself.

The Council never asserts that it was a “full-blown oak from the very beginning” (because that would be clearly untrue). Nothing in the documents contradicts development of doctrine – rightly understood – in the least. The fact that the papacy was established by Christ Himself does not mean that it would initially look and operate in the same manner as it does today, after nearly 2000 years of development. Cardinal Newman writes very eloquently (as always) about this notion:

Let us see how, on the principles which I have been laying down and defending, the evidence lies for the Pope’s supremacy.

As to this doctrine the question is this, whether there was not from the first a certain element at work, or in existence, divinely sanctioned, which, for certain reasons, did not at once show itself upon the surface of ecclesiastical affairs, and of which events in the fourth century are the development; and whether the evidence of its existence and operation, which does occur in the earlier centuries, be it much or little, is not just such as ought to occur upon such an hypothesis.

. . . While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope; their power had no prominence, as being exercised by Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope . . .

When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops,and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred. It is not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century, than that there was no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doctrine is defined till it is violated . . .

Moreover, an international bond and a common authority could not be consolidated, were it ever so certainly provided, while persecutions lasted. If the Imperial Power checked the development of Councils, it availed also for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined. The Creed, the Canon, the Papacy, Ecumenical Councils, all began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church. And as it was natural that her monarchical power should display itself when the Empire became Christian, so was it natural also that further developments of that power should take place when that Empire fell . . .

On the whole, supposing the power to be divinely bestowed, yet in the first instance more or less dormant, a history could not be traced out more probable, more suitable to that hypothesis, than the actual course of the controversy which took place age after age upon the Papal supremacy.

It will be said that all this is a theory. Certainly it is: it is a theory to account for facts as they lie in the history, to account for so much being told us about the Papal authority in early times, and not more; a theory to reconcile what is and what is not recorded about it; and, which is the principal point, a theory to connect the words and acts of the Ante-nicene Church with that antecedent probability of a monarchical principle in the Divine Scheme, and that actual exemplification of it in the fourth century, which forms their presumptive interpretation. All depends on the strength of that presumption. Supposing there be otherwise good reason for saying that the Papal Supremacy is part of Christianity, there is nothing in the early history of the Church to contradict it . . .

Moreover, all this must be viewed in the light of the general probability, so much insisted on above, that doctrine cannot but develop as time proceeds and need arises, and that its developments are parts of the Divine system, and that therefore it is lawful, or rather necessary, to interpret the words and deeds of the earlier Church by the determinate teaching of the later.

(Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878 edition, Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989, pp. 148-155; Part 1, Chapter 4, Section 3)

And then it states that this teaching is part of the content of saving faith. To deviate from this teaching is to incur the loss of salvation. This is an explicit affirmation that outside the Church of Rome there is no salvation.

This is true, but of course it must be understood how this teaching is applied (a task beyond our immediate purview). There are many “loopholes” which allow for ignorance and lessened culpability due to a variety of factors in which a given individual may not be at fault for his unbelief. Catholic teaching in this regard is very biblical, nuanced, and complex, unlike, e.g., Calvinist and other fundamentalist Protestant views which consign whole classes of people to damnation and hell due to double predestination and their never having heard the gospel. I have many links about this topic on my Ecumenism and Christian Unity page.

Later on, in its teaching on papal infallibility, Vatican I states:

For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by his revelation they might make known new doctrine; but that by his assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles. And, indeed, all the venerable Fathers have embraced, and the holy orthodox doctors have venerated and followed, their Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy Peter remains ever free from all blemish of error according to the divine promise of the Lord our Saviour made to the Prince of his disciples: “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren.” This gift, then, of truth and never failing faith was conferred by heaven upon Peter and his successors in his chair, that they might perform their high office for the salvation of all . . . [omitted second portion of the citation]

Vatican I is basing its teaching of papal infallibility on the interpretation of Luke 22:32. A teaching or tradition which it says was received from the very beginning of the Christian faith. The Council asserts that the doctrine of papal infallibility is a divinely revealed dogma and all who refuse to embrace it are placed under anathema.

It does not assert that the entire teaching is based on Luke 22:32. It merely gives that passage as a proof text, not for papal infallibility per se, but rather, for the indefectibility of the Church, as centered and grounded in the orthodoxy of the popes. Again, this does not mean that absolutely every Father took this interpretation of Luke 22:32, if that is what is being implied. What was received from the beginning was papal primacy and universal jurisdiction, which is the essence and “seed” of papal infallibility, just as the biblical statement “Jesus is Lord” is the “seed” of the exceedingly complex and highly-philosophical Chalcedonian Christology of 451 A.D.

If Christology itself – the very doctrine of God – took over 400 years to “sort itself out,” so to speak (actually, even longer, as the Monothelite heresy was yet to appear), why not the papacy? In 451, Pope St. Leo the Great was reigning, and was a key figure in determining orthodox Christology (accepted to this day by all three branches of Christianity). The papacy was quite robust and “full-blown” by then, as most historians would agree. See my paper: “Pope Leo the Great & Papal Supremacy.” As for papal infallibility: true Christian authority must have a divinely-ordained means to protect it from error. We serve a God of truth, not of relativism and confusion. Ultimately, this “protector” is the Holy Spirit Himself, according to such passages as John 14:26 and 16:13.

Vatican I, Vincent of Lerins, Verities, & Verbal Gymnastics

***

Before moving on to Mr. Webster’s misguided accusations concerning the teaching of Pope Leo XIII vis-a-vis Vatican I and development, let us briefly note the fact that Vatican I – far from rejecting it – embraced development of doctrine. There can be no question of this whatsoever, as I will now prove.

Here is a portion of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, ch. 4, “Of Faith and Reason,” from Dogmatic Canons and Decrees (Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1977; reprint of 1912 ed. of authorized translations of the Councils of Trent and Vatican I, Imprimatur by John Cardinal Farley of New York, pp. 232-233):

Hence, also, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our holy Mother the Church has once declared; nor is that meaning ever to be departed from, under the pretence or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them (can. iii). Let then the intelligence, science and wisdom of each and all, of individuals and of the whole Church, in all ages and all times, increase and flourish in abundance and vigour; but simply in its own proper kind, that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one and the same judgment. (29)

29. Vincent of Lerins, Common. n. 28.

This expresses precisely the Vincentian and Newmanian (and Catholic) understanding of the development of doctrines which remain essentially unchanged. Development is emphatically not evolution per se, which is the transformation or change of one thing into something else. The two concepts are entirely distinct philosophically and linguistically. Shortly I shall cite Pope St. Pius X, who makes precisely this distinction in a papal encyclical.Here is a second translation of the passage, from The Christian Faith: Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, edited by J. Neuner and J. Dupuis, New York: Alba House, 5th revised and enlarged ed., 1990, p. 47:

Hence also that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother Church has once declared, and there must never be a deviation from that meaning on the specious ground and title of a more profound understanding. ‘Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only within the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment.’ (1)

(1) Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium primum, 23.

Perhaps, in the words of the prison guard in Cool Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” There is no conflict whatever between Cardinal Newman’s thesis in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine and the above infallible pronouncement of an Ecumenical Council (during his own lifetime, in fact).

Vatican I cites St. Vincent of Lerins as a precedent, just as Newman himself had 25 years earlier. It cites the very passage which is — from all accounts – the classic exposition of dogmatic development in the Fathers — the very inspiration of Newman to expand upon the notion further. St. Vincent even draws the analogy of the organic growth of bodies, using a metaphor (“seed”) which is the same notion as the “acorn and the oak tree” which Mr. Webster so disdains.

And here is the excerpt from St. Vincent of Lerins which Vatican I cited (Notebooks, 23:28-30), from yet another translation (William A. Jurgens, editor and translator, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 volumes, Collegeville, Minesota: Liturgical Press, vol. 3, 1979, p.265). I will provide the context, with the portion utilized by Vatican I in-between ***’s. Note that by citing this passage – given the explicit context – Vatican I is implicitly and beyond doubt giving sanction to the notion of doctrinal development. It is expressly denying (contra Webster) that Catholic doctrine (including, by extension, the papacy) starts as an “oak tree” rather than as a seed or acorn:

[28] But perhaps someone is saying: ‘ Will there, then, be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ? ‘ Certainly there is, and the greatest. For who is there so envious toward men and so exceedingly hateful toward God, that he would try to prohibit progress? But it is truly progress and not a change of faith. What is meant by progress is that something is brought to an advancement within itself; by change, something is transformed from one thing into another. *** It is necessary, therefore, that understanding, knowledge and wisdom grow and advance strongly and mightily as much in individuals as in the group, as much in one man as in the whole Church, and this gradually according to age and the times; and this must take place precisely within its own kind, that is, in the same teaching, in the same meaning, and in the same opinion.*** [29] The progress of religion in souls is like the growth of bodies, which, in the course of years, evolve and develop, but still remain what they were . . . [30] . . . Although in the course of time something evolved from those first seeds and has now expanded under careful cultivation, nothing of the characteristics of the seeds is changed. Granted that appearance, beauty and distinction has been added, still, the same nature of each kind remains.

[the first ellipses (. . . ) are in Jurgens’ version; the second set is my own]

If this weren’t a striking enough disproof of Mr. Webster’s claim that Vatican I opposes doctrinal development, in the same work, St. Vincent expresses his famous dictum (often cited by Protestant polemicists against development):

In the Catholic Church herself every care must be taken that we may hold fast to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. For this is, then truly and properly Catholic . . . (Notebooks, 2, 3. Jurgens, ibid., vol. 3, p. 263)

Obviously, unchanging essence and developing, progressing non-essential elements are compatible, according to St. Vincent, Newman, and Vatican I. Here we have almost all the elements outlined by Newman fourteen centuries later, yet Protestant controversialists such as George Salmon and William Webster continue to claim that Newman’s views were a radical departure from Catholic precedent! How silly; how sad!

To establish the fact that St. Vincent of Lerins is a key figure in the “development of development of doctrine,” I shall now cite Pope St. Pius X, and four specialists on the history of Christian doctrine: two Catholic and two Protestant scholars, respectively:

28. It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: “These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.”[14] On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ”Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason”;[15] and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ”The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.”[16] Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: “Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries–but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.”[17] (Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, “On the Doctrine of the Modernists,” 8 September 1907, section 28)

Note how the pope who is known for his opposition to theological modernism, or liberalism — in his famous encyclical on that very subject –, cites the same passage from Vatican I which I have noted, including the citation from St. Vincent (which is at the very end). He contends that development of doctrine is neither “evolution” (which he contrasts to it) nor modernism. By extension, then, he is verifying that Vatican I upheld development of doctrine (as explicated by St. Vincent and more recently in the same sense by Cardinal Newman) as entirely orthodox and Catholic.

He states this outright: “Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained.” Nothing could be more clear. This is another nail in the coffin of Mr. Webster’s claims. The papacy is one of many doctrines contained in “the faith” and the apostolic deposit. It develops like all the other dogmas, and like all the beliefs in Protestantism as well — including the canon of Scripture itself (much as many Protestants would seek to deny this).

Vincent’s doctrinal principle does not exclude progress and development; but it does exclude change. For Vincent, progress is a developmental growth of doctrine in its own sphere; change, however, implies a transformation into something different. In his encyclical Pascendi gregis against modernism, Pope Saint Pius X refers favorably to St. Vincent; and so does the Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith. (The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. III, Jurgens, ibid., p. 262)

[Describing St. Vincent’s thought] The criteria of tradition does not lead to immobility, given that it is joined with a second criterion, both essential and complementary, of dogmatic progress which operates according to the laws of organic growth.

‘This progress truly constitutes a progress and not an alteration of the faith, for it is characteristic of progress that a thing grows while remaining the same thing, and characteristic of alteration that one thing is changed into another. Therefore intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom grow and increase considerably both of the individual as of all, of the single man as well as of the entire church, according to ages and times. The particular nature of each is to be respected, however; that is, it remains exactly the same dogma, has the same meaning and expresses the same thought’ (c.23).

Vatican I adopted this well-known formula as its own . . . There is thus a three-fold progress: a progress in formulation which the church, having been challenged by the heretics, accomplishes by means of conciliar decrees to enlighten the understanding with new and appropriate terms and transmit them to those who will come later; progress in the organic life which takes place in dogmatic truths and always exceeds the language which expresses it, much in the same way that a human life grows from infancy to old age while always remaining the same person; progress in the final acquisition of truth without alteration or mutilation . . .

Paradoxically, this teacher of the immutability is revealed as the theologian of the laws of the development of dogma . . . The Commonitorium, as Bossuet noted, also drew its inspiration from the writings of Augustine . . .

Even though Vincent was concerned primarily with the innovations of the heresies, the West has drawn inspiration from his teaching on the progress of dogma developed in several chapters of the Commonitorium (c. 23-24). He recognized this development both in the understanding and in the formulation of dogmatic truth. Without changing the deposit of faith in any way, the church explores its richness more deeply and expresses its content more clearly . . . .

It is certain that . . . the influence of the Commonitorium has not ceased to increase since the sixteenth century . . . Bellarmine described it as the libellus plane aureus, while Bossuet makes constant reference to it in his Defense de la tradition des saints Peres. Catholics and Protestants regarded it with equal admiration at first. Newman found an “ecumenical” norm in the Commonitorium and procured a new importance for the work . . . the First Vatican Council . . . took the last word from Vincent of Lerins in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Faith. (Patrology, Johannes Quasten, vol. IV, ed. Angelo di Berardino, translated by Placid Solari, Allen, Texas: Christian Classics, 1977, from ch. 8, by Adalbert Hamman, pp. 548-550)

Augustine . . . manifestly acknowledges a gradual advancement of the church doctrine, which reaches its corresponding expression from time to time through the general councils; but a progress within the truth, without positive error . . . In like manner Vincentius Lerinensis teaches, that the church doctrine passes indeed through various stages of growth in knowledge, and becomes more and more clearly defined in opposition to ever-rising errors, but can never become altered or dismembered. (History of the Christian Church, vol. 3: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity, Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1974 [orig. 1910], p. 344)

. . . Not that Vincent is a conservative who excludes the possibility of all progress in doctrine. In the first place, he admits that it has been the business of councils to perfact and polish the traditional formulae, and even concepts, in which the great truths contained in the original deposit are expressed, thereby declaring ‘not new doctrines, but old ones in new terms’ (non nova, sed nove). Secondly, however, he would seem to allow for an organic development of doctrine analogous to the growth of the human body from infancy to age. But this development, he is careful to explain, while real, must not result in the least alteration to the original significance of the doctrine concerned. Thus in the end the Christian must, like Timothy, [1 Tim 6:20] ‘guard the deposit’, i.e., the revelation enshrined in its completeness in Holy Scripture and correctly interpreted in the Church’s unerring tradition. (Early Christian Doctrines, J. N. D. Kelly, San Francisco: HarperCollins, revised edition, 1978, pp. 50-51)

Salmon and Dead Horses (Being Beaten)

***

The Anglican George Salmon’s The Infallibility of the Church (originally 1890) apparently remains an inspiration for the anti-infallibility, anti-development polemics of the current generation of anti-Catholic crusaders, such as William Webster and James White. Yet it has been refuted decisively twice, by B.C. Butler, in his The Church and Infallibility: A Reply to the Abridged “Salmon”‘ and also in a series of articles in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, in 1901 and 1902. (1)

Nevertheless, even the more ecumenical Protestant apologists Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie claimed in 1995, in a major critique of Catholicism, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, (2) that Salmon’s book has “never really been answered by the Catholic Church.” Geisler and MacKenzie cite Salmon as a “witness” for their case (3).

George Salmon revealed in his book his profoundly biased ignorance not only concerning papal infallibility, but also with regard to even the basics of the development of doctrine:

Romish advocates . . . are now content to exchange tradition, which their predecessors had made the basis of their system, for this new foundation of development . . . The theory of development is, in short, an attempt to enable men, beaten off the platform of history, to hang on to it by the eyelids . . . The old theory was that the teaching of the Church had never varied. (4)

1. Butler: New York, Sheed & Ward, 1954, 230 pages. A friend was recently able to obtain the articles from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in the library of a well-known evangelical seminary in the Chicago area.

2. Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1995, p. 206, which calls it the “classic refutation of papal infallibility.” See also p. 459.

3. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., pp. 206-207.

4. Salmon, George, The Infallibility of the Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House (originally 1888), pp. 31-33 (cf. also pp. 35, 39).

Here Salmon (like Webster) is quixotically fighting a straw man of his own making and seeking to sophistically force his readers into the acceptance of a false and altogether logically unnecessary dichotomy: that development of doctrine implies change in the essence or substance of a doctrine and therefore is utterly contrary to the claims of the Church to be the Guardian and Custodian of an authoritative tradition of never-changing dogma. But this is emphatically not the Catholic belief, nor that of Newman, to whom Salmon was largely responding. Nor is it true that development was a “new” theory introduced by Cardinal Newman into Catholicism, while the “old theory” was otherwise. This is unanswerably proven by the writing of St. Vincent of Lerins, above (themselves paralleled by St. Augustine and other Fathers well familiar with the orthodox notion of development).

Pope Leo XIII: Foe of Development of Doctrine and Newman?

***

The papal encyclical, Satis Cognitum, written by Pope Leo XIII in 1896, is a commentary on and papal confirmation of the teachings of Vatican I. As to the issue of doctrinal development, Leo makes it quite clear that Vatican I leaves no room for such a concept in its teachings.

If indeed this were true (it assuredly is not), then I would find it exceedingly odd that Pope Leo XIII would name John Henry Newman a Cardinal in 1879, soon after becoming pope (1878). Why would he do that for the famous exponent of the classic treatment of development of doctrine, if he himself rejected that same notion? No; as before, Mr. Webster is (consciously or not) subtly switching definitions and statements of a pope and a Council in order to make it appear that there is a glaring contradiction, when in fact there is none. Such a mythical state of affairs is beyond absurd:

“Il mio cardinale“, Pope Leo called Newman, “my cardinal”. There was much resistance to the appointment. “It was not easy”, the Pope recalled later, “It was not easy. They said he was too liberal.” (Marvin R. O’Connell, “Newman and Liberalism,” in Newman Today, edited by Stanley L. Jaki, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989, p. 87)

And the very fact that Newman was now a member of the sacred college had put to rest, as he expressed it, ‘all the stories which have gone about of my being a half Catholic, a Liberal Catholic, not to be trusted . . . The cloud is lifted from me forever.” (Ibid., p. 87; Letter of Newman to R. W. Church, 11 March 1879, Letters and Diaries, vol. XXIX, p. 72)

Ian Ker, author of the massive 764-page biography John Henry Newman (Oxford University Press, 1988) expands upon Pope Leo XIII in relation to Newman:

The Duke of Norfolk had himself personally submitted the suggestion to the Pope. The Duke’s explicit object was to secure Rome’s recognition of Newman’s loyalty and orthodoxy. Such a vindication was not only personally due to Newman, but was important for removing among non-Catholics the suspicion that his immensely persuasive and popular apologetic writings were not really properly Catholic. It looks in fact as if Leo XIII had already had the idea himself, as Newman was later given to believe . . . After being elected Pope, he is supposed to have said that the policy of his pontificate would be revealed by the name of the first Cardinal he created. Several years later he told an English visitor: . . .

‘I had determined to honour the Church in honouring Newman. I always had a cult for him. I am proud that I was able to honour such a man.’ (p. 715)

Newman wrote:

For 20 or 30 years ignorant or hot-headed Catholics had said almost that I was a heretic . . . I knew and felt that it was a miserable evil that the One True Apostolic Religion should be so slandered as to cause men to suppose that my portrait of it was not the true — and I knew that many would become Catholics, as they ought to be, if only I was pronounced by Authority to be a good Catholic. On the other hand it had long riled me, that Protestants should condescendingly say that I was only half a Catholic, and too good to be what they were at Rome. (in Ker, ibid., pp. 716-717; Letters and Diaries, vol. XXIX, p. 160)

Such is the lot of great men; geniuses; those ahead of their time. Now Mr. Webster joins this miserable, deluded company of those who pretend that Newman was a heterodox Catholic, and that his theory of development is somehow un-Catholic, or — even worse — a deliberately cynical method of rationalization intended to whitewash so-called “contradictions” of Catholic doctrinal history.

Leo states over and over again that the papacy was fully established by Christ from the very beginning and that it has been the foundation of the constitution of the Church and recognized as such from the very start and throughout all ages.

True enough, in the sense which I have repeatedly stressed.

He further affirms that Vatican I’s teaching has been the constant belief of every age and and is therefore not a novel doctrine:

Merciful heavens! A “novel doctrine” is something like sola Scriptura, or sola fide, the latter of which Protestant apologist Norman Geisler states that no one believed it from the time of St. Paul to Luther (and Catholics would also strongly deny that Paul taught it). Likewise, noted Protestant scholar Alister McGrath confesses:

The essential feature of the Reformation doctrines of justification is that a deliberate and systematic distinction is made between justification and regeneration. Although it must be emphasised that this distinction is purely notional, in that it is impossible to separate the two within the context of the ordo salutis, the essential point is that a notional distinction is made where none had been acknowledged before in the history of Christian doctrine. A fundamental discontinuity was introduced into western theological tradition where none had ever existed, or ever been contemplated, before. The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification as opposed to its mode must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum. (Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, the Beginnings to the Reformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 186-187)

Many other innovations of Protestantism- – established against all contrary Church precedent — amply qualify as true “novelties.” The papacy (even considered as explicitly infallible)- – whatever one thinks of it – is surely not in the same league as all the brand-new Protestant inventions. But let us see what Mr. Webster selects from Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, to supposedly bolster his tenuous claims:

Wherefore, as appears from what has been said, Christ instituted in the Church a living, authoritative and permanent Magisterium, which by His own power He strengthened, by the Spirit of truth He taught, and by miracles confirmed. He willed and ordered, under the gravest penalties, that its teachings should be received as if they were His own…Jesus Christ, therefore, appointed Peter to be that head of the Church; and He also determined that the authority instituted in perpetuity for the salvation of all should be inherited by His successors, in whom the same permanent authority of Peter himself should continue. And so He made that remarkable promise to Peter and to no one else: “Thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church” (Matt. xvi., 18)…It was necessary that a government of this kind, since it belongs to the constitution and formation of the Church, as its principal element – that is as the principle of unity and the foundation of lasting stability – should in no wise come to an end with St. Peter, but should pass to his successors from one to another…When the Divine founder decreed that the Church should be one in faith, in government, and in communion, He chose Peter and his successors as the principle and centre, as it were, of this unity…Indeed, Holy Writ attests that the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven were given to Peter alone, and that the power of binding and loosening was granted to the Apostles and to Peter; but there is nothing to show that the Apostles received supreme power without Peter, and against Peter. Such power they certainly did not receive from Jesus Christ. Wherefore, in the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth, but the venerable and constant belief of every age (Sess. iv., cap. 3).

Again, this is not at all inconsistent with the idea of a primitive version of the papacy consistently developing into the institution we see today. Mr. Webster simply begs the question by assuming that Pope Leo refers throughout to a full-fledged papacy, and not to the essential, unchanging seed of the later developed papacy, in the person of St. Peter. Leo XIII never makes any statement explicitly denouncing development (which is Mr. Webster’s thesis, after all).

And when he refers to the papacy as the “constant belief,” he is expressing himself no differently than a Protestant who states that “the divinity of Christ has always been believed,” or “the Trinity was always believed,” or the New Testament was always accepted by 1st-century Christians, when they know full well (if they know their Church history at all) that the doctrines of God (trinitarian theology) and especially Christ (Christology) also underwent much development (Two Natures, Athanasian Creed, Theotokos, battles with heretics such as the Monothelites, Arians, and Sabellians) while at the same time remaining the same in essence.

Likewise, there wasn’t total consensus about the New Testament until the canon was finalized in the late 4th century. Yet Scripture was what it was all along: inspired and God-breathed. The Church did not make it so (as Vatican I itself explicitly affirms). Protestants, in speaking of the broad consensus of the early Fathers with regard to the canon of Scripture, are basically asserting the “unanimous consent of the Fathers” in the way a Catholic would argue. Likewise, the papacy was what it was, all along, even if not all recognized it. Not all recognized Jesus as the Messiah and Lord, either. That is no disproof.

Conclusion: Folly, False “Facts,” and Fallacies

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The Roman Catholic Church, itself, has officially stated that there was no development of this doctrine in the early Church.

Where? This certainly hasn’t been shown by Mr. Webster. He has to make false deductions and redefine words and phrases to make his nonexistent case, whereas I have clearly demonstrated the opposite, right from the explicit text of Vatican I.

After all, if the fullness of the definition of papal primacy as defined by Vatican I was instituted by Christ immediately upon Peter, as both Vatican I and Leo XIII affirm, then there is no room for development.

This is a classic case of Mr. Webster’s fallacious logic and curious rhetorical method. Where is it stated that the “fullness of definition of papal primacy” was conferred upon Peter? The primacy itself was given to him; the duty and prerogatives of the papal office, and the keys of the kingdom, but none of that implies that a full understanding or application, or unanimous acknowledgement by others is therefore also present from the beginning. The thing itself – in its essential aspects, or nature, is present. And that is what develops, without inner contradiction or change of principle, as Newman ably pointed out in the long citation above.

It was instituted by Christ himself and was therefore present from the very beginning and would have been recognized as such by the Church as Vatican I states: “Whence, whosoever succeeds to Peter in this See, does by the institution of Christ himself obtain the Primacy of Peter over the whole Church –, a fact which Vatican I says has been known to all ages leading to the practice “that it has at all times been necessary that every particular Church — that is to say, the faithful throughout the world — should agree with the Roman Church, on account of the greater authority of the princedom which this has received.” This documentation completely demolishes present day Roman Catholic apologists’ theory of development. They are at odds with the magisterium of their own Church. Indeed, these apologists must set forth a theory of development because of the historical reality, but such a theory is at open variance with the clear teaching of Vatican I and Leo XIII.

Hardly. As shown, Vatican I explicitly accepted development of doctrine, citing the very passage from St. Vincent Lerins which is the classic exposition in the Fathers – essentially identical to Newman’s analysis. Pope Leo XIII made Newman a Cardinal – his very first appointment, meant to send a message, yet Mr. Webster would have us believe that he was diametrically opposed to the thought for which Newman was most famous (and notorious, in some circles): development of doctrine. So we are to believe that Leo XIII made a Cardinal someone he regarded as a rank heretic? I suppose any absurd, surreal scenario within the Catholic Church is possible in the minds of many of her more – shall we say – zealous critics. Likewise, the very next pope, and vigorous condemner of modernism, Pope St. Pius X, also supported not only St. Vincent of Lerins, as we saw above, but also John Henry Newman (see below).

Thus, there is quite positive evidence that development of doctrine was (and is) indeed accepted by the Catholic Church. Mr. Webster, on the other hand, in order to put forth his thesis, must rely on distortions of what development means, and improbable deductions from indirect suggestions in conciliar and papal documents, which he interprets as hostile to development. It’s a wrongheaded enterprise from the get-go. Newman was orthodox, despite what Webster, Salmon, and other Protestant polemicists would have us believe:

To make matters worse, and to deepen Newman’s disappointment, the Essay had been eagerly seized by American Unitarians as a first-rate demonstration that the Trinitarian doctrine was not primitive but was a development of the third century. In the midst of the consequent excitement, the militant American convert, Orestes Brownson, made a series of attacks on the Essay, beginning with a review of it in Brownson’s Quarterly Review in July, 1846. Brownson called Newman’s work “essentially anticatholic and Protestant”; he objected to Christianity being treated as an “idea”; and he also objected to Newman’s third mark of a true development, the “power of assimilation” . . .

It is not surprising, therefore, that the edition of 1878 is in so many ways, both large and small, different from that of 1845. Yet in the thirty-three years between the two editions, the Essay made its way with the Church, and was accepted in its original form as, in the words of Dr. Benard, “simply an original and highly ingenious manner of presenting a strictly traditional Catholic doctrine.” But the vicissitudes of Newman’s Essay were not over. During the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, there arose the Modernist Movement, in which Newman’s volume was made an instrument of heresy . . .

It may be observed that when Pope Pius X issued the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis in July, 1907, condemning the Movement, many of Newman’s readers at once feared that the Essay on Developent had been condemned, too . . . But at the very height of the excitement occasioned by the encyclical Pascendi, the Most Reverend Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, bishop of Limerick, published his pamphlet on Cardinal Newman and the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), which showed clearly that the Modernists could not legitimately depend on Newman for their teaching. The final, authoritative answer to the Modernists, however, appeared when Pope Pius X sent a letter to Bishop O’Dwyer, confirming the latter’s defense of Newman. (Preface to Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by Charles Fredrick Harrold, New York: Longmans, 1949 pp. vii-ix)

So when we analyze these papal teachings in the light of history it is perfectly legitimate to ask the question on two levels. As to the actual institution of the papacy, do we find the teachings of Vatican I expressed by the fathers of the Church in their practice?

Not in its fullness, but this is not required in order for both unchanging essence and developing secondary aspects to harmoniously coexist.

And secondly, as to the issue of interpretation, do we find a unanimous consent of the fathers regarding Vatican I’s interpretation of Matthew 16:18, John 21:15-17 and Luke 22:32 that supports papal primacy and infallibility? In both cases the answer is a decided no.

As already shown, consensus on individual Scripture verses is not required by the Church, and Mr. Webster has not documented that Vatican I taught otherwise. What is required is assent to the essential premises and characteristics of the doctrine, which were indeed there from the beginning, from the time of Christ’s commissioning of St. Peter. Mr. Webster’s case therefore collapses, having been shown to be woefully insufficient or outright contradicted in all of its main points of contention.

I close with a quote from the Protestant apologist C. S. Lewis, which confirms the Newmanian and Catholic understanding of development of doctrine:

How can an unchanging system survive the continual increase of knowledge? . . . Change is not progress unless the core remains unchanged. A small oak grows into a big oak; if it became a beech, that would not be growth, but mere change . . . There is a great difference between counting apples and arriving at the mathematical formulae of modern physics. But the multiplication table is used in both and does not grow out of date. In other words, whenever there is real progress in knowledge, there is some knowledge that is not superseded. Indeed, the very possibility of progress demands that there should be an unchanging element . . . I take it we should all agree to find this . . . in the simple rules of mathematics. I would also add to these the primary principles of morality. And I would also add the fundamental doctrines of Christianity . . . I claim that the positive historical statements made by Christianity have the power, elsewhere found chiefly in formal principles, of receiving, without intrinsic change, the increasing complexity of meaning which increasing knowledge puts into them . . . Like mathematics, religion can grow from within, or decay . . . But, like mathematics, it remains simply itself, capable of being applied to any new theory.

(God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1970, pp.44-47. From “Dogma and the Universe,” The Guardian, March 19, 1943, p.96 / March 26, 1943, pp. 104 ,107)

*****

Dialogue with a Protestant: Authority of the Jerusalem Council

Last updated on: May 27, 2017 at 11:15 am By Dave Armstrong

The Conversion of St. Paul (1600), by Caravaggio (1571-1610) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Joshua Scott is a Protestant who responded to my challenge to interact point-by-point with one of my articles. He chose to wrangle with the section on the Jerusalem council from my book, The Catholic Verses (2004), and some additional material in an older paper on this topic. His words will be in blue. My words from the book will be in green, and my present counter-replies in regular black.

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In the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:6-30), we see Peter and James speaking with authority. This Council makes an authoritative pronouncement (citing the Holy Spirit) which was binding on all Christians:

Acts 15:28-29: For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. In the next chapter, we read that Paul, Timothy, and Silas were traveling around “through the cities,” and Scripture says that:

. . . they delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem. (Acts 16:4)

This is Church authority. They simply proclaimed the decree as true and binding — with the sanction of the Holy Spirit Himself! Thus we see in the Bible an instance of the gift of infallibility that the Catholic Church claims for itself when it assembles in a council.

Well, it’s Apostolic authority certainly, but to conflate Apostolic authority with conciliar/church authority requires more than an ipse dixit. The Apostles were, by any Biblical standard, prophets, and thus had the same authority prophets always had in the OT, namely, the authority of God Himself, Who spoke by/through them. But they had to provide evidence of that authority to differentiate themselves from false prophets, since anyone could claim to be a prophet. So the question is, who is a prophet? How do we know they have prophetic authority? This question has to be answered in such a way that we can say church councils are full of prophets for this point, as argued here, to be more than a non sequitur. Alternatively, you would have to show that what made the Acts 15 decision authoritative was not that it was prophetic/Apostolic, but rather because it was done in council. Since this is just the broad outline of the argument, I’ll reserve discussion of those questions for later as they arise.

It was a council, not just of apostles, but also “elders.” I made an argument along these lines in an article of mine. Here is a good chunk of it:

The Jerusalem council presents “apostles” and “elders” in conjunction six times:

Acts 15:2 (RSV). . . Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

Acts 15:4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, . . .

Acts 15:6 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

Acts 15:22 Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, . . .

Acts 15:23. . . “The brethren, both the apostles and the elders, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cili’cia, . . .

Acts 16:4 . . . they delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem.

“Elders” here is the Greek presbuteros, which referred to a leader of a local congregation, so that Protestants think of it primarily as a “pastor”, whereas Catholics, Orthodox, and some Anglicans regard it as the equivalent of “priest.” In any event, all agree that it is a lower office in the scheme of things than an apostle: even arguably lower than a bishop (which is mentioned several times in the New Testament).

What is striking, then, is that the two offices in the Jerusalem council are presented as if there is little or no distinction between them, at least in terms of their practical authority. It’s not an airtight argument, I concede. We could, for example, say that “bishops and the pope gathered together at the Second Vatican Council.” We know that the pope had a higher authority. It may be that apostles here had greater authority.

But we don’t know that with certainty, from Bible passages that mention them. They seem to be presented as having in effect, “one man one vote.” They “consider” the issue “together” (15:6). It’s the same for the “decisions which had been reached” (16:4).

Therefore, if such a momentous, binding decision was arrived at by apostles and elders, it sure seems to suggest what Catholics believe: that bishops are successors of the apostles. We already see the two offices working together in Jerusalem and making a joint decision. It’s a concrete example of precisely what the Catholic Church claims about apostolic succession and the sublime authority conveyed therein. . . .

The subject at hand is “whether sola Scriptura is the true rule of faith, and what the Bible can inform us about that.” I made a biblical argument that does not support sola Scriptura at all (quite the contrary).

Before going any further, I should describe what I mean by “sola Scriptura,” since my view is probably different than that of the average Protestant. My approach to the issue starts with the basic position that claims to authority require evidence. I think everyone would assent to this (if not, I’ll make my claim to authority now and ask you to hand over all your money, thank you very much!). With that as a given, once I accept Christianity I have to ascertain what sources (be they men or writings or what-have-you) are authoritative based on the best evidence available. My review of the evidence (and I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, but I’ve studied this more than the average Christian) leads me to conclude that Scripture has met the burden of proof required to be considered authoritative. Thus far, I have not found any other claims to have met this burden of proof. Thus, my view of sola Scriptura is not a doctrinal position that Scripture is the only authority so much as an epistemological conclusion (and a tentative one at that) that Scripture has met the requisite burden of proof, while other people/things claiming authority have not met that burden. If a person came along and started doing things like Jesus and the Apostles did, and did not contradict Scripture or otherwise teach me to abandon God, I would probably consider that person an authority because he would be a prophet.

Everyone agrees that Scripture is an authority, and indeed is inspired. The question is whether it is the only final infallible authority in Christianity. Our argument is that inspired Scripture itself refers to an authoritative Church and tradition (both of which can bind Christians to their teachings); therefore, they are authorities, too, and part of the rule of faith. The Jerusalem council is an example of the biblical teaching on an authoritative Church.

This argument concerning the Jerusalem Council was used in expanded form in my book, The Catholic Verses: 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants. Here is that portion of the book, in its entirety (indented):

THE BINDING AUTHORITY OF COUNCILS, LED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT

Acts 15:28-29: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

Acts 16:4: “As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem.”

These passages offer a proof that the early Church held to a notion of the infallibility of Church councils, and to a belief that they were especially guided by the Holy Spirit (precisely as in Catholic Church doctrine concerning ecumenical councils). Accordingly, Paul takes the message of the conciliar decree with him on his evangelistic journeys and preaches it to the people. The Church had real authority; it was binding and infallible.

This is a far cry from the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura — which presumes that councils and popes can err, and thus need to be corrected by Scripture. Popular writer and radio expositor R.C. Sproul expresses the standard evangelical Protestant viewpoint on Christian authority:

For the Reformers no church council, synod, classical theologian, or early church father is regarded as infallible. All are open to correction and critique . . .

(in Boice, 109)

This doesn’t really add anything new to the basic argument above, so my comments there hold.

This is the very topic I understood we were debating: my argument about the Jerusalem council! I proposed just the portion from my book for you to respond to, but you went and replied to the entire paper, and have dismissed this (a key part of the argument) without reply.

One Protestant reply to these biblical passages might be to say that since this Council of Jerusalem referred to in Acts consisted of apostles, and since an apostle proclaimed the decree, both possessed a binding authority which was later lost (as Protestants accept apostolic authority as much as Catholics do). Furthermore, the incidents were recorded in inspired, infallible Scripture. They could argue that none of this is true of later Catholic councils; therefore, the attempted analogy is null and void.

But this is a bit simplistic, since Scripture is our model for everything, including Church government, and all parties appeal to it for their own views. If Scripture teaches that a council of the Church is authoritative and binding, then it is implausible and unreasonable to assert that no future council can be so simply because it is not conducted by apostles.

Here you respond to an argument (similar to mine above) that the council is not binding qua council with an assumption that Scripture teaches that councils are authoritative qua councils. This begs the question without answering it.

I haven’t begged any question. The council is obviously authoritative (as a council): having been led by apostles (with elders), with the direct assistance of the Holy Spirit, and as indicated in the way that the Apostle Paul proclaimed its binding decision to all and sundry (Acts 16:4 above, that you ignored).

Scripture is our model for doctrine and practice (nearly all Christians agree on this). The Bible doesn’t exist in an historical vacuum, but has import for the day-to-day life of the Church and Christians for all time. St. Paul told us to imitate him (see, e.g., 2 Thess. 3:9). And he went around proclaiming decrees of the Church. No one was at liberty to disobey these decrees on the grounds of “conscience,” or to declare by “private judgment” that they were in error (per Luther).

It would be foolish to argue that how the apostles conducted the governance of the Church has no relation whatsoever to how later Christians engage in the same task. It would seem rather obvious that Holy Scripture assumes that the model of holy people (patriarchs, prophets, and apostles alike) is to be followed by Christians. This is the point behind entire chapters, such as (notably) Hebrews 11.

Besides the fact that you’ve so far not addressed the key distinction of Apostles having authority vs. a council qua council having authority,

Now I have (lengthy citation of my own article above): mere elders seemed to have equal practical authority in the council. It wasn’t just a matter of apostles, but men just like you and I, who are non-apostles.

I would also point out here that admonitions to imitate holy people (Apostles included) are about private behavior. We have explicit passages on how to handle church governance, such as Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 18 to take your quarrel to your brother alone, then to 2-3 witnesses, then to the church (congregation is how I would take that), and some material in the pastoral epistles on offices and whatnot, but to say that because Apostles (who no longer walk among us) held a council to address a particular question is hardly an explicit directive that all such disputes would be handled thus by later councils not composed of Apostles/prophets.

See my previous reply. Yours is the usual Protestant response (insofar as the council is dealt with at all). The elders being involved jointly in the decision-making process, overcomes the objection.

When the biblical model agrees with their theology, Protestants are all too enthusiastic to press their case by using Scriptural examples. The binding authority of the Church was present here, and there is no indication whatever that anyone was ever allowed to dissent from it. That is the fundamental question. Catholics wholeheartedly agree that no new Christian doctrines were handed down after the apostles. Christian doctrine was present in full from the beginning; it has only organically developed since.

John Calvin has a field day running down the Catholic Church in his commentary for Acts 15:28. It is clear that he is uncomfortable with this verse and must somehow explain it in Protestant terms. But he is not at all unanswerable. The fact remains that the decree was made, and it was binding. It will not do (in an attempt to undercut ecclesial authority) to proclaim that this particular instance was isolated. For such a judgment rests on Calvin’s own completely arbitrary authority (which he claims but cannot prove). Calvin merely states his position (rather than argue it) in the following passage:

. . . in vain do they go about out of the same to prove that the Church had power given to decree anything contrary to the word of God. The Pope hath made such laws as seemed best to him, contrary to the word of God, whereby he meant to govern the Church;

This strikes me as somewhat desperate argumentation. First of all, Catholics never have argued that the pope has any power to make decrees contrary to the Bible (making Calvin’s slanderous charge a straw man). Calvin goes on to use vivid language, intended to resonate with already strong emotions and ignorance of Catholic theology. It’s an old lawyer’s tactic: when one has no case, attempt to caricature the opponent, obfuscate, and appeal to emotions rather than reason.

I’m not here to defend Calvin, but I will point out that another possible way to read his remark that doesn’t make it a straw man is to read him as saying that Catholics believe the Church has power to decree X, which happens to be contrary to Scripture, and thus Catholics are wrong on that point but don’t realize it because of their mistaken view of Scripture. Granted, I’m not seeing the full context here, but on its face that seems like a plausible reading.

You’re still not addressing the central issue here: the binding nature of the conciliar decree.

Far more sensible and objective are the comments on Acts 15:28 and 16:4 from the Presbyterian scholar, Albert Barnes, in his famous Barnes’ Notes commentary:

For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost. This is a strong and undoubted claim to inspiration. It was with special reference to the organization of the church that the Holy Spirit had been promised to them by the Lord Jesus, Matthew 18:18-20; John 14:26.

In this instance it was the decision of the council in a case submitted to it; and implied an obligation on the Christians to submit to that decision.

Fortunately, I don’t have to believe Barnes. Matthew 18:18-20 deals with 2-3 witnesses, then a full congregation, by my reading, not a hierarchy. John 14:26 has Jesus speaking to his disciples personally without any reference to those who follow them in some visible institution, so there’s no particular reason to believe what he says has application beyond those he was directly speaking to (the Apostles).

You continue to ignore the issue at hand: the council and its authority. I suppose you can skirt around it and avoid it if you like, but then we’re not discussing it. I lose patience with that very quickly.

Barnes actually acknowledges that the passage has some implication for ecclesiology in general. It is remarkable, on the other hand, that Calvin seems concerned about the possibility of a group of Christians (in this case, a council) being led by the Holy Spirit to achieve a true doctrinal decree, whereas he has no problem with the idea that individuals can achieve such certainty:

. . . of the promises which they are wont to allege, many were given not less to private believers than to the whole Church [cites Mt 28:20, Jn 14:16-17] . . . we are not to give permission to the adversaries of Christ to defend a bad cause, by wresting Scripture from its proper meaning. (Institutes, IV, 8, 11)

But it will be objected, that whatever is attributed in part to any of the saints, belongs in complete fulness to the Church. Although there is some semblance of truth in this, I deny that it is true. (Institutes, IV, 8, 12)

Calvin believes that Scripture is self-authenticating. I appeal, then, to the reader to judge the above passages. Do they seem to support the notion of an infallible Church council (apart from the question of whether the Catholic Church, headed by the pope, is that Church)? Do Calvin’s arguments succeed? For Catholics, the import of Acts 15:28 is clear and undeniable.

For reasons I’ve already adduced, the import of Acts 15 is not so clear. Whether Calvin’s own view is correct is not really pertinent to my argument, and since the quote seems to be lacking some significant context I’ll forego comment.

See my previous reply.

Are not apostles models for us? Of course, they are. St. Paul tells us repeatedly to imitate him (1 Cor 4:16, Phil 3:17, 2 Thess 3:7-9). [James] White would have us believe that since this is the apostolic period and so forth, it is completely unique, and any application of the known events of that time to our own is “irrelevant.” He acts as if the record of the Book of Acts has no historical, pedagogical import other than as a specimen of early Christian history, as if it is a piece of mere archaeology, rather than the living Word of God, which is (to use one of Protestants’ favorite verses) “profitable for teaching . . . and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16-17). So now the historical passages of the New Testament are “irrelevant”? Only the straight-out doctrinal teaching can be used to ascertain correct doctrine? If so, then where is that taught in Scripture itself, etc.? Passages like Hebrews 11, which recount the deeds of great saints and biblical heroes, imply that they are a model for us.

That depends on what you mean by “models.” I can’t model Peter and Paul entirely because I don’t have the signs and wonders they had to back me up. Neither does the Pope, nor the bishops (even in council). That’s a relevant difference. To pretend it isn’t is to ignore basically all Biblical teaching about how to handle prophets. Which, by the way, is why it’s a straw man to say White’s argument makes the Apostolic period unique–it actually makes that period just like every other period during which a prophet lived. As to the pedagogical import of Acts, you don’t believe the prohibition of blood and strangled things still applies today, I presume, so even you don’t think everything in Acts has direct application for all Christian history. Any time you want to discuss relevance, you have to determine why something is relevant. The Mosaic Law isn’t terribly relevant to us today in some ways, but it is in others. I would say the same as to the Jerusalem council–it doesn’t necessarily tell us how we should handle doctrinal disputes, but it does tell us important things that are useful to know for other reasons (more on that at the end).

Why does Paul consider it binding for all Christians?

White’s viewpoint as to the implications of the Jerusalem Council is theologically and spiritually naive or simplistic because it would force us to accept recorded, inspired apostolic teaching about the Church and ecclesiology (whatever it is), yet overlook and ignore the very application of that doctrine to real life, that the apostles lived out in that real life. We would have to believe that this council in Jerusalem had nothing whatsoever to do with later governance of the Church, even though apostles were involved in it. That, in effect, would be to believe that we are smarter and more knowledgeable about Christian theology than the apostles were. They set out and governed the Church, yet they were dead-wrong, or else what they did has no bearing whatsoever on later Christian ecclesiology. Since this is clearly absurd, White’s view that goes along with it, collapses.

Force us to accept what recorded teaching about ecclesiology? The application of what doctrine? Nowhere in the Bible does it record the Apostles or Jesus as saying as a matter of doctrine that disputes should be handled by a council.

That’s what the Jerusalem council provides: a model for just that. You referred above to: “Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 18 to take your quarrel to your brother alone, then to 2-3 witnesses, then to the church (congregation is how I would take that)”. That’s already some sort of collective. It’s the church; it’s authorities.

Thus, all we are left with, again, is the bare fact that in this case a council convened and a decision was handed down by Apostles who had signs and wonders.

And by elders, as I have pointed out . . .

Absent a clear teaching that the authority they had would be passed to others, I have no obligation to believe such a thing, and in fact to argue from Acts 15 for such passing on of authority is simple non sequitur.

Apostolic succession is that argument, which I have made in many articles.

Where much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48), and by implication if little is given, little is required. If I’m not given reason to believe in the passing down of authority, I’m not required to believe it, and thus I would fall back on the default position that prophets have authority, and non-prophets don’t.

Okay. You would have to familiarize yourself with the many arguments for apostolic succession. Check out my papers on the topic on my Church web page.

Moreover, this is a foolish approach because it would require us to believe that Paul and other apostles were in error with regard to how Christian or Church authority works. The preached a certain thing in this instance. If they believed in sola Scriptura (as models for us), then they would have taught what they knew to be Scripture (in those days, the Old Testament), and that alone, as binding and authoritative (for this is what sola Scriptura holds). If they didn’t understand authority in the way that God desired, how could they be our models? And if the very apostles who wrote Scripture didn’t understand it, and applied it incorrectly in such an important matter, how can we be expected to, from that same Scripture? A stream can’t rise above its source.

It seems pretty clear that this is a straw man of even White’s view of sola Scriptura. Neither he nor I argue that sola Scriptura is always the rule. Clearly, when you have prophets (as the Apostles were) walking in your midst, you heed them. Thus, when a prophet tells you something, you treat it as God’s word even if it isn’t yet written in Scripture. Although interestingly, in this particular case, I think it’s fair to say that part of the decree was, in fact, merely application of OT Scriptures, but I’ll explain that at the end.

Once again, you ignore the fact that elders co-presided at the council. We’re just going around in circles. Nothing is being accomplished.

Joshua at this point keeps replying to parts of my paper that I didn’t propose debating in the first place . . .

there’s not much for me to say here except to refer back to my point about prophets. Either we need reasons to believe current councils are composed of prophets, or we need evidence that councils qua councils are meant to have essentially the same teaching authority as prophets. So far that’s merely an assumption on your part.

I also wrote in my paper on the Jerusalem council, cited at length above:

The council, by joint authority of apostles and elders, sent off Judas and Silas as its messengers, even though they “were themselves prophets” (15:32). Prophets were the highest authorities in the old covenant (with direct messages from God), and here mere “elders” are commissioning them.

You keep referring to the “example” set by the Apostles. I’ve mentioned before that their example, to the extent we are explicitly told to follow it, seems to be more about personal character than church governance (the contexts of I Corinthians 4:16 and 11:1 seem to pretty clearly indicate this, in my opinion). But let’s assume for a minute that we can’t really know Paul meant it that narrowly. What other examples are the Apostles setting? Assuming the Jerusalem Council is an example, is it an example of a council qua council making infallible decisions, or an example of a council of prophets making infallible decisions? How could you know which of the two is the case?

By the fact that elders participate, and instruct those who call themselves “prophets.”

Everyone who speaks at the Council is an acknowledged leader. Even James, who was not one of the Twelve Apostles, presumably had the gifts of the Spirit to back up his own claims to authority or he wouldn’t have been considered a pillar of the church. So even if the Council is an example, it’s unclear that any old council, whether it had prophets or not, would be following the “example.”

Paul said that we ought to imitate him, and he proclaimed the conciliar decisions as binding upon all Christians.

In wrapping up my direct response, I would point out that your argument here seems entirely based on the unwarranted, unsupported assumption that because prophets (the Apostles) met in a council to decide a matter, future councils (without prophets) would have similar authority. And even that assumption begs several questions about what a proper “church council” is, how to know when you have properly constituted one, what kind of majority or quorum one needs, etc. Rather than substantively supporting these arguments, you simply try to show that White’s counterargument is not provable from Scripture. While that might be true, neither is yours, based on my comments above, so you’re both in the same position, best I can tell. In fairness, maybe this is because the article is in the nature of a response rather than stand-alone argument, but the point remains that this article doesn’t substantiate your view, in light of my responses above regarding verses about oral tradition, unrecorded teachings, etc.

My position is that claims to authority require proof, as stated above. If you’re going to claim church councils have authority over me, you have to give me evidence of that.

Acts 16:4 is that evidence.

For the reasons stated above, I don’t think you’ve provided such evidence. You can’t show that the Apostles or Christ intended for all disputes to be handled by councils (indeed, it’s not clear the issue couldn’t have been settled in a private discussion between Paul, Peter, and James, since they’re the only ones we know spoke), and you can’t even prove Christ and the Apostles taught anything that wasn’t at some point recorded in Scripture.

Paul and Barnabas did not settle the question themselves, and so they went to the council to settle it:

Acts 15:2 And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

Note how apostles went to a council with apostles and elders, to settle the question. This shows that a council was the way to go about it.

So, in my view, your case remains to be made. That’s all well and good, but one needs a good explanation as an alternative. If I have no alternative to your theory, then yours still wins by default as having no competitors. So now I’m going to set forth my basic theory of what’s going on in Acts 15.

The background, of course, is that Jews were telling Gentile converts they had to be circumcised. That was the question they were all there to discuss. The answer, I submit, was already known. Peter had already told the believers in Jerusalem about Cornelius’ conversion, and how he had received the Holy Spirit without being circumcised, and even before he was baptized. At that point, the believers rejoiced that the gospel was given to the nations (Acts 11:18). There was no indication that anyone question whether uncircumcised Gentiles could be saved–indeed that was basically the whole point of the episode in Acts 10-11, starting with Peter’s vision.

So when the “decision” of the council comes down, it’s not new to the extent it says Gentiles don’t need to be circumcised. The other half of the decree is the four-item list of things Gentiles do need to observe from the Law–No blood, no strangled things, no pollutions of idols, and fornication/unchastity.

It may not be totally new, but what was new then, and most unProtestant now, is the fact (confirmed by Paul) that it is binding upon all.

The question is, why those four? My answer would be that those four things are immoral, but not obvious if you weren’t already a Jew who knew the history contained in Genesis and the precepts of the Law. This is why James says in Acts 15:21, after listing the four things, “for Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him….” So for blood and strangled animals (essentially the same prohibition, since a strangled animal still has the blood in it), the basis for that goes all the way back to Noah, when God first gives humans permission to eat animals but forbids consumption of blood because that is for atonement (see Genesis 9:3-4 and compare Leviticus 17:10-11).

A Gentile wouldn’t understand that consuming blood was problematic because they wouldn’t know that God from the beginning set that aside for atonement purposes. Similarly, it wouldn’t be obvious to a Gentile that idols were something that represented actual demonic forces or fallen angels, and that being associated with them in certain ways had more import than the merely surface level. Finally, a Gentile would also not necessarily understand why any given kind of sex would be wrong, since it seems like a natural thing to do even outside the marriage context.

So what the decree is getting at is that Gentiles don’t need to keep the whole Law, but there are aspects of it they do need to keep. Some of those are obvious (don’t murder), but some aren’t. The ones that aren’t obvious are the ones listed in the decree. So when it says “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” I think there’s a two-fold meaning there: 1) We already knew from the Holy Spirit, through Peter, that you Gentiles didn’t have to keep the whole Law; 2) But the Spirit also guided us to know which things you should be made aware of as moral precepts which wouldn’t be clear to you since you don’t have a background in Judaism.

Even though point #2 implies some divine guidance in the council itself, the decision is still based on the OT Scriptures, which if studied carefully enough would have revealed the same thing without divine guidance, though it would have taken much longer and required a fairly astute mind to figure out.

That’s just it: there was no tradition in the old covenant saying that circumcision was not required to enter into the covenant. You have it exactly backwards.

Does this imply that councils after the Apostles would receive the same guidance?

Yes.

I don’t see how it does.

You have not seen a lot of things, so it doesn’t surprise me at all. What people see is guided by (almost determined by) their prior presuppositions.

Bear in mind the central question already had an answer for anyone paying attention. Paul and Barnabas went to dispute this with the elders in Jerusalem not so much to get new information, then, but to have Peter and the other elders set the renegade Judaizers straight, which explains Peter’s remarks in Acts 15:7-10, where he refers back to his meeting with Cornelius as something they all know and which showed God counted Gentiles as pure. He’s literally pointing out that everyone already ought to know this, just not in those words.

Also, these were the Apostles, with signs and wonders to back up their authority. I’ve harped on this point quite a bit, but it bears repeating: Absent solid evidence that a council is made up of prophets, or that councils were intended to be infallible, we have no reason to believe a given council is infallible just because it’s a council. We don’t have the former, and for reasons I’ve given above I don’t think we have the latter either.

And I have repeated over and over that elders participated in a seemingly equal status with apostles. These elders even send or appoint apostles, as we see in Acts 15:2-3 and again in 15:25, and they send and appoint prophets as well, as seen in 15:27, 32.

You don’t think it’s just a tad unfair that after I explicitly asked you if you thought I missed something, to let me know so I could clarify, that you then publish it and say that I just ignored a bunch of stuff? Also, your response to my comment about James, the one non-Apostle named as a participant, is utterly non-responsive, and you fail to realize it’s implications for the other parts of my argument (where admittedly I sloppily referred only to Apostles, which I meant to edit but forgot).

And relatedly, your reliance on the presence of “mere” elders is misplaced. Peter was an elder (I Peter 5:1), so there’s no reason to think the elders in the Council were necessarily less weighty than James, at worst. Other than, of course, your own presupposition. And in any event it’s you, not me, who ignored key points of argument–you repeat in your response the same question-begging argument that because the issue was debated in a council, it was the conciliar nature that made the decree binding. It’s like you don’t even grasp the distinction I’m making between Council qua Council and Council as lead by prophets with signs and wonders.

This is untrue. You wrote: “Assuming the Jerusalem Council is an example, is it an example of a council qua council making infallible decisions, or an example of a council of prophets making infallible decisions? How could you know which of the two is the case?”

I replied: “By the fact that elders participate, and instruct those who call themselves ‘prophets.’ . . . These elders even send or appoint apostles, as we see in Acts 15:2-3 and again in 15:25, and they send and appoint prophets as well, as seen in 15:27, 32.”

You never even address the issue of signs and wonders at all. Which means you ignored the crux of my entire response.

I didn’t, because it was completely irrelevant to the discussion (why discuss elementary things that are obvious in Scripture?). There were no signs and wonders at the council. And there weren’t because they weren’t necessary in a Church council of all Christian elders and apostles. Signs and wonders are for nonbelievers, not believers:

Acts 4:29-31, 33 (RSV) And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, [30] while thou stretchest out thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of thy holy servant Jesus.” [31] And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness. . . . [33] And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

Acts 5:12 Now many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles . . .

Acts 14:1-3 Now at Ico’nium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue, and so spoke that a great company believed, both of Jews and of Greeks. [2] But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren. [3] So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.

Acts 15:12 [during the council] . . . and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

Romans 15:18-19 For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, [19] by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyr’icum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ,

2 Corinthians 12:12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you in all patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

Hebrews 2:3-4 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, [4] while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.

Of what use are signs and wonders, designed to cause people to believe, for those who already believe? Therefore, it’s irrelevant with regard to the council and its import and significance. So why do you seek to make it a factor in this discussion?

*****

I wrote on Facebook about Joshua’s last response above: “I’ll add this snotty, snide “reply” to the dialogue. I wouldn’t want anyone to miss it.”

Snotty and snide, eh? Because you’re just the paragon of fairness. This is rich. I don’t even see how my response is snotty to begin with. Those are substantive (and accurate) points.

And incidentally, in your article you say that I chose this topic, when in fact you chose it and stuck by it when I questioned your choice. You offered to let me skip your back and forth with White “if I liked,” but in the article you say I continue to argue about things you didn’t propose to debate in the first place. You chose the article, so the presumption was that your preference was that I handle the entire thing. If you didn’t, you could have left the additional remarks out of the article. Not to mention you could have been honest about who chose this topic to begin with. Instead, you twist it to make it look like I picked a topic, ignored selective bits of it, and irrationally added comments that were irrelevant.

And on the topic of ignoring parts, if you can explain to me why the additional verses you cited from Acts 15 and 16 are relevant to showing that the Jerusalem Council’s decree was binding because it was a council, please do so, because as far as I can tell they don’t add one iota of evidence that wasn’t already addressed in my first long paragraph on the topic.

Jeremiah 13:23 (KJV): Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

I think you just proved they can’t. If you can’t even admit you were at best inaccurate about who chose this topic, we have nothing more to say to each other.

I agree:

2 Timothy 2:23 (RSV) Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.

Titus 3:9 But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels over the law, for they are unprofitable and futile.

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