5 Saucy Thoughts for Today
5. If the 'historic Christian church' to which you are referring didn't or doesn't physically exist, it isn't historic, and it's not a Church.
4. Kinda hard to follow the bishop as though following Christ if you don't have one.
3. You can't 'rediscover' your apostolic succession if you started out your existence as an ecclesial community denying its necessity. (Doug Wilson, looking in your direction.)
2. You don't tolerate a great variation of views on the Lord's Supper in your communities; why do you think the early Fathers would? (Keith Mathison, looking in your direction.)
1. The Protestant insistence that we are all "united in the essentials" reminds me of the crafting of the Universal Declaration On Human Rights. The representatives of various nations agreed they could sign the document together, so long as no one asked what each person intended by doing so.
5. If the 'historic Christian church' to which you are referring didn't or doesn't physically exist, it isn't historic, and it's not a Church.
4. Kinda hard to follow the bishop as though following Christ if you don't have one.
3. You can't 'rediscover' your apostolic succession if you started out your existence as an ecclesial community denying its necessity. (Doug Wilson, looking in your direction.)
2. You don't tolerate a great variation of views on the Lord's Supper in your communities; why do you think the early Fathers would? (Keith Mathison, looking in your direction.)
1. The Protestant insistence that we are all "united in the essentials" reminds me of the crafting of the Universal Declaration On Human Rights. The representatives of various nations agreed they could sign the document together, so long as no one asked what each person intended by doing so.
Comments
5.) On what basis may it not be an invisible church? (And no, not on the basis of what the Catholic Church says, because that's circular logic.) Given that Protestants are said to be members of the Church in imperfect communion, I think the invisible church is more Catholic than one might think...
4.) I don't aspire to follow any bishop -- hopefully most Protestants don't (unless you are in an episcopal denomination)...
3.) Good, critique away at Doug Wilson.
2.) Because history bears out that they did and that transubstantiation only fully fleshed out in the middle to late medieval period. The Orthodox Church continues to tolerate a wide variety of views ranging from ones that sound like Calvin to ones that sound like Thomas.
1.) Eh, how about we go with the Nicene Creed, interpret it within a reasonable ancient semantic range and be done with it?
You really need to read some writings from a non-Catholic perspective -- maybe Ware, at least. Not everything is as cut and dry as Catholic apologetics suggests (just as I would say of Protestant apologetics -- apologetics in general is way too black and white far too often).
4. Ignatius of Antioch strongly disagrees.
3. I hate to say this, but this is an ad hominem.
2. I was unaware that Justin Martyr lived in the Middle Ages. http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/church-fathers-on-transubstantiation/. And if Orthodoxy varies so widely as you say, its claim to be the Church Christ founded suffers. This variation is likely the result of what it lacks in real, visible unity. If Ware has nothing distinct to say or offer apart from Protestants, there's no point in being Orthodox. It will not do to use the mere existence of Orthodoxy to evade the pertinent ecclesiological questions.
1. You and I disagree about the meaning and authority of the Nicene Creed, so we cannot pretend otherwise. Either it is authoritative in itself (along with the Church that produced it) or it is as open to question as any assertion.
4. What did he say of Protestants?
3. Can't a guy joke without being accused of ad hominems? Comrade, you make tongue in cheek stabs at various public figures all the time. I am rather shocked you are heading "there."
2. It wasn't dogma until the Middle Ages... you can't retroactively disqualify Orthodoxy for not following "your side."
1. Other than what one two word phrase means, what do we disagree about in the meaning of the Creed? If we disagree with the core then I would be a heretic from your angle, of course, which is certainly not the official Catholic position.
The critique of Orthodoxy was not "retroactive." They have no means of determining definitive Orthodox teaching. You see it as a feature; it's definitely a bug. If Orthodoxy permits enough variation that Orthodoxy itself is not distictive, their apologetics re: Protestants is worthless.
I doubt very seriously that St. Ignatius knew anything about Protestants in 107. What point are you attempting to make?
There is a distinction between material and formal heresy. While it may not cut one off from the life of grace in any one case, it is not good to believe differently than the Church.
I missed the humor of your Doug Wilson reference; I thought perhaps some of his unwise political stances may serve as an occasion to dismiss his arguments. Again, if you find Orthodoxy so appealing, join it. Otherwise, it doesn't help you. There is no "Orthodox Church"; there are Orthodox Churches. Do we agree on the meaning of the four basic marks of the Church? No. Thus, we cannot agree fundamentally on what the Church is. If we do not agree on what the Church is, we cannot precisely define the content of Christian faith. Or is something else the pillar and foundation of the truth?
Was God a Trinity in 67 AD? Even if no one used the precise wording that would be used later, (or would even ask the question) doesn't change the truth of it.
Clarity would be nice, but let me ATP out of myself for a moment and into religious studies mode. As my favorite anthropologist says, there is no essential form of a religion. If you study people and beliefs, no matter how clearly you look for order, there will be a degree of disunity. Nevertheless, the human mind deals with this easily enough because we can work in (and must, to maintain sanity), as computer science guys would say, "fuzzy logic."
Ok, the religious studies scholar hat is off... You raised Ignatius in response to a comment I made about how Protestants should act. I too was wondering how he would comment on such things. :-)
As to Doug, no I was using what was intended to be humorous hyperbole. Of course, I have significant issues with both his theology and his politics, but that's another discussion. I do think he is outside normal Protestant orthodoxy on enough points that he cannot be held up as a clear representative of Reformed theology. (Just as me citing some liberation minded bishop would be unfair to Catholicism as a whole.)
The pillar and foundation of truth is not proper doctrine, but Christ. Pure doctrine is to be desired, but cannot be the be all, end all. Of course, the Catholic Church recognizes this. And you made part of my point: if your central pillar is doctrinal precision, you sound more like a Machen-style Protestant than a Catholic. This isn't a bad thing (so please don't hear it as such), but notes how you have imported Protestant concerns and brought them to the application of Catholic dogma. Protestant converts to Catholicism almost always sound different in this respect than cradle Catholics.
Even with intentional non-specificity in Orthodoxy, you're missing the point. I don't know how and where I became a purveyor of doctrinal exactitude, but that's preposterous. I'm much more concerned about the visibility of the Church than a rigid imposition of culturally-conditioned formulae. Do you see the relativistic implications of following such a foolish statement as made by your anthropologist friend? You might as well say, "Truth does not exist." The pillar and foundation of the truth is the Church. Of course, it is Christ, but that's the same thing. The most reasonable explanation for what you and I share in common is not the Scripture as some fixed marker, as you seem to suggest, but the rule of faith, known and taught before any words of the New Covenant were committed to parchment. The Church lived and preached Christ for 20 years before it began. The Scriptures reflected it more than established it.
The problem with your move to equate Christ and the Church is that they are not the same. The Church is the Bride of Christ, not Christ himself. So, we can agree that Christ is the pillar, but we will not agree that the Church is the pillar. The trouble with appealing to a pre-Scriptural church is that our best insight into that Church comes from the oldest documents concerning it: Scripture. So, to distinguish between Scripture and the pre-Scriptural church isn't terribly helpful (and, one might add, it is pre-NT, not pre-Scripture -- they had the LXX). I might actually ask what the point is, since for our purposes, the pre-Scriptural church's observance and Scripture's report thereof are the same.
Notice I've said nothing about the Catholic Church at all. I don't plan to. I don't need to. Just ask the early church what their process was. How was truth determined? What was their ecclesiology? My earlier point about Orthodoxy was not a cheap shot, nor even a polemical point.
If you can't say, "This is Reformed," etc., then your earlier critique of CtC is off-target. They mean to address specific arguments advanced by notable people who self-identify as Reformed, not put them forward as poster-children for it just to destroy them. Reformed theology has enough problems; a few keyboard-jockeys with too many academic credentials aren't going to scare you, are they? :) You owe me a pizza. :)