Wait, I can't back that up. That's too ambitious. I'm an idiot with a keyboard. But here goes:
The claim is that people use reason to discern that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, so that is no different than anyone else using reason to decide anything other than that (like the Catholic Church is a hapless gang of Mary-worshipping pagans, for example). But I want to suggest that these are not the same. Firstly, reason can only take you so far in that endeavor. It can only help you say, "This is credible," or, "This claim is not credible." If you say that the claim is credible, it doesn't make you Catholic. It might. It should. But there is no necessity of that, and no compulsion, until such time as you conclude that there is a theological meaning to looking for "the Church Christ founded" in the first place. You could easily say that was the wrong question to ask.
BUT...it might be. At the beginning, I phrased it like this: "What is the common source or origin of the faith of all Christians, and what is the means of identifying it into the present?" I had before me two things: I had the claims of the Catholic Church to be that origin and means (and the counter-claims of the Orthodox) and then Protestants generally, who think essentially that we're all "branches" of an "invisible" Church that all true Christians are a part of, despite the visible separations between us. It's kind of funny that no one can agree on who (and what) that includes, and if they include each other, but I digress.
But investigating the truth of a claim using reason is not the same thing as accepting the claim as true. If I accept the claim of the Catholic Church, I accept all that it entails for me as Catholic. To discern the truths of theology, I accept the means, or the organs by which it is revealed. Before that, I have competing claims as to that organ of revelation. I have to imagine the implications as if the claim were true in order to find out.
Submitting to the Catholic Church is different. Reason can order my organization of the data of revelation (and it should, obviously) but I do not, to do theology properly, doubt whether it has been revealed, or the means therein. Faith is the very act of accepting what has been revealed, and thus, the means by which it was revealed.
The reason Newman's famous line about history is true is that I cannot accept a contrary means [to that of the Catholic Church] that did not yet exist. Sacred Scripture in the form of the New Testament did not exist in the form we have it today at the beginning of the Christian community. So the community itself pre-dated the written words of the New Testament. That truth is actually one of the bases for the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded. More basic than that, it shows you that seeking the Church Christ founded is exactly the right thing to do. Even what we call the Old Testament is the written product of a community. If the claim of the Catholic Church is true, using the New Testament to disprove something taught by the Catholic Church is like trying to steal your own car with a spare key. Or robbing your own house. It's pointless. I have no idea if I accomplished my goal, but it was fun to write that.
The claim is that people use reason to discern that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, so that is no different than anyone else using reason to decide anything other than that (like the Catholic Church is a hapless gang of Mary-worshipping pagans, for example). But I want to suggest that these are not the same. Firstly, reason can only take you so far in that endeavor. It can only help you say, "This is credible," or, "This claim is not credible." If you say that the claim is credible, it doesn't make you Catholic. It might. It should. But there is no necessity of that, and no compulsion, until such time as you conclude that there is a theological meaning to looking for "the Church Christ founded" in the first place. You could easily say that was the wrong question to ask.
BUT...it might be. At the beginning, I phrased it like this: "What is the common source or origin of the faith of all Christians, and what is the means of identifying it into the present?" I had before me two things: I had the claims of the Catholic Church to be that origin and means (and the counter-claims of the Orthodox) and then Protestants generally, who think essentially that we're all "branches" of an "invisible" Church that all true Christians are a part of, despite the visible separations between us. It's kind of funny that no one can agree on who (and what) that includes, and if they include each other, but I digress.
But investigating the truth of a claim using reason is not the same thing as accepting the claim as true. If I accept the claim of the Catholic Church, I accept all that it entails for me as Catholic. To discern the truths of theology, I accept the means, or the organs by which it is revealed. Before that, I have competing claims as to that organ of revelation. I have to imagine the implications as if the claim were true in order to find out.
Submitting to the Catholic Church is different. Reason can order my organization of the data of revelation (and it should, obviously) but I do not, to do theology properly, doubt whether it has been revealed, or the means therein. Faith is the very act of accepting what has been revealed, and thus, the means by which it was revealed.
The reason Newman's famous line about history is true is that I cannot accept a contrary means [to that of the Catholic Church] that did not yet exist. Sacred Scripture in the form of the New Testament did not exist in the form we have it today at the beginning of the Christian community. So the community itself pre-dated the written words of the New Testament. That truth is actually one of the bases for the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded. More basic than that, it shows you that seeking the Church Christ founded is exactly the right thing to do. Even what we call the Old Testament is the written product of a community. If the claim of the Catholic Church is true, using the New Testament to disprove something taught by the Catholic Church is like trying to steal your own car with a spare key. Or robbing your own house. It's pointless. I have no idea if I accomplished my goal, but it was fun to write that.
Comments
First, given that Tu Quoque is a logical fallacy, isn't it always false? Still the point remains: the Protestant challenge -- in part -- is what the software industry calls "eating your own dog food." That is, if part of the "proof" of Protestantism's failure is its hermeneutical spiral, does Catholicism propose anything that actually solves that problem.
To answer your question to the extent you want to, you need to prove several additional things:
1.) That Scripture as it is exists because the communal will of a centralized body and not connected, but less centralized body.
2.) That the existence of a community of God's people necessitates that we need to find "the church Christ founded."
3.) That there is a disjunct between the OT era people of God and the NT era people of God when it comes to the polity and infallibility of that community of the people of God.
4.) That the same people of God in 34 AD look like the Catholic Church in -- to pick a random, totally coincidental date -- 1517. This one is the hardest, especially for a historical theologian when there is a lot of evidences that suggests a massive evolutionary development in the papacy between its earliest appearances and 1517.
5.) That pre-Tridentine Christianity's differences still place it primarily in the line of post-Tridentine thought, such as that the various debates and schisms of the 13-16th centuries cannot be used to assert that Protestantism is a branch of the same line of thought as modern Catholicism and not a mere split from its already present form.
(You don't need to answer all these now -- and some would take a book to answer -- but I think those stand in the way of convincing a Protestant that Catholicism somehow is the clear way of piety to an honest observer.)
I just need to answer one aspect of this. My post yesterday was not focused on the problems inherent in the Protestant hermeneutical process--though they are there--it was to answer specifically the objection that discerning the truth claims of the Catholic Church using reason means that the Catholic and Protestant are in the same position. I am not presently arguing development, or the evidence vidicating such a claim. I'm saying that this narrow objection is a bad one, for reasons that should be clear, and that finding the Church Christ founded is the right mission. How to do it was not my purpose.