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The Gateway

I've said eleventy thousand times that the claim of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded rests on The Three Things. If you're going to doubt it, it'll be about these things. Fair enough.

But what is much more sporting fun is to ask your friendly neighborhood papist and convert, "Just what in blazes made you consider it in the first place?" I'm so glad you asked! We could talk for hours about the unworkability of Sola Scriptura, and the attendant Noltie Conundrum, but it doesn't quite make it plain. What does is this: I realized that so-called "derivative authority" was a sham, that its logical system makes a distinction without a difference. I'm saying that everyone who has placed all their eggs in the basket of drawing a distinction between "Solo" and Sola Scriptura are playing mind-games with themselves, because it isn't there. If Sola Scriptura is unworkable, AND the ecclesiastical authorities set up subsequently have no real power, you're almost Catholic by default.

Christianity must be a faith received. It has been, and always will be. I now define Sola Scriptura as, "the rejection of ecclesiastical authority based on an individual interpretation of Scripture." I will grant you that the protestant leaders may not, as we say, want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But, in the immortal words of Spock, "What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand!" I do not envy those who remain in such communities as the principle continues making a mockery of a principled theological-dogmatic continuity with traditional doctrine and morality. In one sense, authority is like a binary switch: you either have it, or you don't. If you've conceded that you do not, you can clothe it in the fine-sounding words of submitting to "God's holy word," but somebody is calling that bluff. Bet on it.

The only remaining question is whether the Catholic claim is writing checks you can't cash. But this is where it gets truly amazing: you cannot account in a principled way for the faith of the ancient Church without the Catholic Church! We're not wishing in vain for certitude, or jumping at high-sounding promises; we can see the truth of them in the faith of our heroes. It's either a true claim, or Jesus didn't come at all. It gets that stark. It's good to get there, because a Christian knows what to do. If I gotta choose between the barque of Peter, and unbelief, then bring me that popish Mass without delay!

Comments

Perhaps I agree with the idea of three things. My contention, having read a lot of the Eastern Fathers, is that they didn't care about "Petrine primacy" (at least how a Catholic means it). Thus, one of the tent poles never gets off the ground for me.

I think the problem with your definition of "sola scriptura," though, is that it is a straw man. It simply isn't what Reformational theology ever taught. Lots of people have taught it, but debunking pop Evangelical garbage and calling it the Protestant doctrine is like debunking Catholicism by attacking liberation theology or something like that. As I've noted before, Luther and Calvin belonged to Oberman's Tradition I, a pre-existing stream of thought prior to the Reformation. The individualistic "me and Jesus" approach only hatched with the Radical Reformation and was antithetical to both the Reformational and Catholic camps.
Jason said…
I appreciate the desire to make the distinction; the claim is that the distinction isn't real. I am not making a straw-man, if that isn't a meaningful distinction. You have to additionally show that those Eastern fathers of which you speak are not in a schism, in order to make their challenge to the primacy a live one. I don't think it's possible, given the fact that the Successor of Peter in general has made every possible concession to collegiality short of denying his own jurisdiction. It ends up about jurisdiction, and Rome is going to win that every time, because a "primacy of honor" is nonsense.

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