The late\u00a0<\/span>Steve Hays<\/a> (1959-2020) was a Calvinist (and anti-Catholic) apologist, who was very active on his blog, called<\/span> Triablogue<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>(now continued by Jason Engwer). His 695-page self-published book,<\/span>\u00a0Catholicism<\/em><\/a> \u2014 a collection of articles from his site \u2014 has graciously been made available for free. On 9 September 2006, knowing full well my history of being condemned and vilified by other anti-Catholics (and his buddies) like James White, Eric Svendsen, and James Swan, Hays was quite \u2014 almost extraordinarily \u2014 charitable towards me.<\/span> He wrote then<\/a>:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel. . . . I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable. I also don\u2019t dislike him. . . . I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything malicious about Armstrong\u2014unlike some people who come to mind. In addition, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever said he was unintelligent. For the record, it\u2019s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind. . . . The term \u201capostasy\u201d carries with it a heavy presumption that the apostate is a hell-bound reprobate. I think it\u2019s unwarranted to assume that all Catholics or converts to Catholicism are damned.<\/span><\/p>\n Two-and-a-half years later, starting in April 2009 and up through December 2011 (in the following quotations) his opinion radically changed, and he claimed that I have \u201can evil character,\u201d<\/span> am<\/span> \u201cactually evil,\u201d <\/span>\u201cego-maniac, narcissist,\u201d \u201cidolater,\u201d<\/span> \u201cself-idolater,\u201d \u201chack who pretends to be a professional apologist,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0given to <\/span>\u201cchicanery,\u201d<\/span> one who doesn\u2019t<\/span> \u201cdo any real research,\u201d \u201ca stalwart enemy of the faith . . .\u00a0 no better than [the atheists]<\/span> Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens,\u201d<\/span> with an intent to<\/span> \u201cdestroy faith in God\u2019s word,\u201d \u201cschizophrenic,\u201d \u201cemotionally unhinged,\u201d<\/span> one who<\/span> \u201cdoesn\u2019t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation,\u201d<\/span> \u201chas no peace of mind,\u201d \u201ca bipolar solipsist,\u201d \u201csplit-personality,\u201d<\/span> and a<\/span> \u201cbad\u201d<\/span> man. He wasn\u2019t one to mince words! See<\/span> more gory details<\/a>.<\/p>\n I feel no need whatsoever to reciprocate these silly and sinful insults. I just wanted the record to be known. I\u2019ve always maintained that Hays was a very intelligent man, but habitually a sophist<\/a> in methodology; sincere and well-meaning, but tragically and systematically wrong and misguided regarding Catholicism. That\u2019s what I\u2019m addressing, not the state of his heart and soul (let alone his eternal destiny). It\u2019s a theological discussion. This is one of many<\/em> planned critiques of his book (see<\/span> my reasons why<\/a> I decided to do this). Rather than list them all here, interested readers are directed to the \u201cSteve Hays\u201d section of my<\/span> Anti-Catholicism web page<\/a>, where they will all be listed. My Bible citations are from the RSV. Steve\u2019s words will be in\u00a0<\/span>blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n *****<\/p>\n [Chapter 2: Exposition<\/strong>]<\/span><\/p>\n Catholicism in the dock, part 2<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Why . . .\u00a0 even bother with the text of Scripture when the Catholic distinctive[s] derive, not from Scripture, but from church fathers, church councils, &c? Scripture doesn\u2019t contain the specific claims of developed Catholic theology. [p. 74]<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s assuming what he needs to prove: \u201cbegging the question\u201d or\u00a0petitio principii<\/i><\/span><\/i> fallacy.\u00a0 On the other hand, I deny his false premise: why does he think everything has to come from Scripture, or perhaps (qualifying a bit) explicitly<\/em> therefrom? Where in the Bible does it teach that this is a requirement<\/em>? If it\u2019s not taught in Scripture, it\u2019s merely a Protestant extrabiblical tradition. And if that is the case, by Protestant criteria it can\u2019t be infallible; therefore no one is bound to accept it. But Hays is freed from all of this consideration of reason. He simply accepts with blind faith and a complete arbitrariness the notion that \u201cevery Christian truth must be laid out in the Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a truism that Scripture doesn\u2019t lay out claims of a theology that has undergone up to 1950 years of development. How could<\/em> it? It can, however, contain the more primitive versions and the essence of doctrines that later came to be more or less fully understood. Even the Holy Trinity and divinity of Jesus, which are very well expressed in the Bible, nevertheless took 500 years to fully develop (as most Protestant Church historians would agree).<\/p>\n That\u2019s why he must supplement the sacred text with extrabiblical texts that do. [p. 74]<\/span><\/p>\n Just as Protestants accept many extrabiblical tenets and doctrines. I just explained one of them above. Sola Scriptura<\/em>, sola fide<\/em>, and the canon of the New Testament are other ones.<\/p>\n But in that event it\u2019s the extrabiblical texts that actually teach Catholic distinctive. [p. 74]<\/span><\/p>\n In my 33 years of Catholic apologetics, I have been able to find, fairly easily, biblical justification for every single Catholic doctrine. It\u2019s one of the major themes of my apostolate, and probably what I am most known for. In those same 33 years, I have yet to see biblical justification for Sola Scriptura<\/em>\u00a0and sola fide<\/em>: the two \u201cpillars\u201d of the so-called Protestant Reformation. In those instances, Protestants simply accept an unbiblical tradition and labor under the illusion that they are taught in the Bible (\u201csomewhere,\u201d as it were). The usual falsehoods employed are equating material and formal sufficiency of the Bible, and equating salvation by grace alone with salvation by faith alone. Lately, I\u2019ve noticed Protestant apologists refreshingly conceding that sola Scriptura<\/em> is not taught in the Bible itself:<\/p>\n I think the question that we have is: do we have to find a particular Scripture that says Scripture is the only authority? And I just don\u2019t think we have<\/em> to. We don\u2019t<\/em>. There\u2019s nothing in \u2014 you can\u2019t find \u2014 in any of Paul\u2019s letters, for example, . . . \u201cby the way, Scripture is the only authority and traditions are not an authority and there is no magisterium that is given some kind of infallible authority to pass on infallible teachings.\u201d (Jordan Cooper, \u201cA Defense of\u00a0Sola Scriptura<\/em>\u201c<\/a>, 3-12-19; from 1:39 to 2:14 on the video)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At best, the biblical texts are merely consistent with subsequent developments, without affirming or entailing subsequent developments. [p. 74]<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s perfectly consistent with the nature of development of doctrine. Once again, Hays shows that he doesn\u2019t understand the basic definition of development of doctrine. He thinks it is evolution of dogma: a false belief that the Catholic Church has roundly condemned.<\/p>\n But that means they\u2019re consistent with disaffirming subsequent developments. They\u2019re consistent with more than one theological trajectory. [p. 74]<\/span><\/p>\n Theoretically, before the fact, yes. But in actuality, after the fact and in retrospect, no.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a sense in which you could say Mary is the new Eve. By the same token, there\u2019s a sense in which you could say Noah\u2019s wife is the new Eve. [p. 75]<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t see how. Noah\u2019s wife didn\u2019t say \u201cyes\u201d in a way that Mary\u2019s \u201cyes\u201d reversed the \u201cno\u201d of Eve. There is simply no analogy there. Nor did Noah\u2019s wife bear the incarnate God, which is the whole point<\/em> of why Mary was greeted by an angel, who said, \u201cHail, full of grace\u201d and informed Mary that she would bear God the Son. No one claims that Noah\u2019s wife was sinless, either, which was \u201cfitting\u201d for the Mother of God the Son.<\/p>\n A sense in which Noah is the new Adam . . . [p. 75]<\/span><\/p>\n There is no<\/em> such sense, seeing in this case that Holy Scripture itself calls Jesus Christ the \u201clast Adam\u201d (1 Cor 15:45; cf. the parallelism of 15:22). That\u2019s not even deductive. It flat-out states<\/em> it.<\/p>\n [T]hat illustrates the risks and limitations of these facile parallels. [p. 75]<\/span><\/p>\n His example of Noah as the second Adam certainly is quite \u201cfacile.\u201d<\/span> Even if it was an intended reductio ad absurdum<\/em>, it was dumb ,because it completely overlooked the refuting passages of 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45. But the \u201cnew Eve\u201d motif goes back to at least St. Irenaeus in the second century.<\/p>\n [Pious Catholics are intoxicated by the idea<\/em> of Catholicism. Swept away by appealing ideas. (Appealing to them<\/em>.) [p. 75]<\/span><\/p>\n As if zealous Protestants<\/em> are not<\/em> intoxicated with the \u201cidea\u201d of Protestantism? Well-known Protestant historian Alister McGrath wrote a book entitled, Christianity\u2019s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution<\/em><\/a> (2007). The blurb on the Google Books page gushes: \u201cThe radical idea that individuals could interpret the Bible for themselves spawned a revolution that is still being played out on the world stage today.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing in the Gospels about Mary interceding for sinners. [p. 76]<\/span><\/p>\n She intervened, on behalf of the hosts of the wedding reception, for Jesus to miraculously make wine. That\u2019s fairly analogous to intercession. Even Hays state on page 77, half-conceding this very point, that Mary\u2019s intervention \u201cprecipitated a public miracle, thereby initiating his ministry, . . .\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s we see the process of legendary embellishment right before our eyes. Notice that [the Catholic] argument [regarding Luke 1:28 and \u201cfull of grace\u201d is explicitly dependent on the wording, not of the original text of Luke, but the Vulgate. He\u2019s not even conscious of the problem when he departs from the Greek text to draw his inference from a nuance in the Latin translation that can\u2019t be traced back to the text that Luke actually wrote. That\u2019s not what it means in the Greek\u2013or even the Latin. [p. 76]<\/span><\/p>\n I already dealt with this at considerable length in Reply #7<\/a> (Hays is dead wrong) but here\u2019s a little more. I cited the linguistic scholars Blass and DeBrunner (Greek Grammar of the New Testament<\/i>)<\/a> [pp. 166, 175], and H. W. Smyth (Greek Grammar<\/i> \u2014 Harvard Univ. Press, 1968) in footnote number 188 in my book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\u00a0<\/i><\/a>(2003, Sophia Institute Press, page 178). I wrote on the latter page: \u201cIt is permissible, on Greek grammatical and linguistic grounds [footnote], to paraphrase\u00a0kecharitomene<\/em> as completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace.\u201d That\u2019s based on Smyth describing kecharitomene<\/em> as a perfect passive participle, that shows a \u201ccompleted action with permanent result\u201d and denotes continuance of a completed action (pp. 108-109, section 1852:b).<\/p>\n If you identify Mary as the referent in Rev 12 because she\u2019s the biological mother of Jesus, then you can\u2019t suddenly drop that principle and say she\u2019s the metaphorical mother of Christians, or a symbol of the church. For if the depiction is metaphorical, then you can\u2019t infer that the referent is the mother of Jesus because Mary is his biological mother. The interpretation needs to be consistently literal or consistently figurative on the same plane. The referents must operate on the same level of literality or figurality. If the woman is figuratively the Church, then the manchild can\u2019t literally be Jesus. In this passage, Mary doesn\u2019t personify the church. Rather, the church\/Israel is personified by a woman. In the OT, Israel is personified as a mother in labor. [pp. 77-78]<\/span><\/p>\n There is no inviolable hermeneutical rule, let alone scriptural prohibition of possible multiple meanings or applications of prophetic-type biblical literature, as I have written about. I explained it to an atheist<\/a>. I wouldn\u2019t have thought it would be necessary to have to point this out to an educated Calvinist apologist. As for the exegesis of Revelation 12, I have dealt with it many times:<\/p>\n Virgin Mary: Woman of Revelation 12?<\/a>\u00a0[4-1-09]<\/p>\n Dialogue on the Woman of Revelation 12 (Mary?)<\/a>\u00a0[8-16-11]<\/p>\n Blessed Virgin Mary & Revelation 12: Debate with a Protestant\u00a0<\/a>[5-28-12]<\/p>\n Vs. James White #12: Mary the Woman of Revelation 12<\/a>\u00a0[11-7-19]<\/p>\n The Queen Mother & the Bible (vs. James White)<\/a>\u00a0[10-8-21]<\/p>\n Although the passage alludes in part to Gen 3, the serpentine\/dragonesque imagery also derives from passages in Isaiah and the Psalter regarding the Red Sea crossing (e.g. Ps 74:13-14; Isa 27:1). So that\u2019s not just about Eve, but Israel and the Exodus. [p. 78]<\/span><\/p>\n No one denied that it did. It has multiple applications, like many \u2014 if not most \u2014 prophecies do.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Practical Matters<\/em><\/strong>: Perhaps some of my 4,200+ free online articles (the most comprehensive \u201cone-stop\u201d Catholic apologetics site) or\u00a0fifty-one books<\/a>\u00a0have helped you (by God\u2019s grace) to decide to\u00a0become Catholic<\/a>\u00a0or to\u00a0return to the Church<\/a>,\u00a0or better understand some doctrines and\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0we believe them<\/a>.<\/p>\n Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I\u2019m always in need of more funds: especially\u00a0monthly<\/em>\u00a0support. \u201cThe laborer is worthy of his wages\u201d (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a\u00a0full-time Catholic apologist<\/a>,\u00a0and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.<\/p>\n PayPal donations<\/a>\u00a0are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You\u2019ll see the term \u201cCatholic Used Book Service\u201d, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page:\u00a0About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong \/ Donation Information<\/a>.\u00a0Thanks a million<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0from the bottom of my heart!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n ***<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/572\/2023\/05\/WhoreOfBabylon2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\n