I say this not as an apologist myself, though perhaps I am, but as one who looked and said, "Here are two horns of a dilemma, neither of which are conducive to the position I hold or want to hold, but one must be correct." There were about 8 of these. But let us concentrate on the Church. See, the Fathers insisted that apostolic succession was the principal means by which the Church was identified. The third party in all of this is the Catholic Church of today. So, the interesting problem is this: Both the ancient Church (pick a century; doesn't matter) and the Catholic Church agree that this is correct, and as a necessary inference, that therefore, the Church is fundamentally visible. One problem with the basic claim of the Reformers is that one cannot test their counter-claim (that "apostolic" refers to doctrine) in any meaningful way. Who will definitively establish the body of doctrine from which the ancients allegedly fell away? I have more choices than I could possibly adjudicate, and none is obviously correct. (Tyranny of the Plausible)
So, the Catholic Church says, "OK, it's possible that AS was not the means by which the Church was identified, but 1) Why did everyone besides heretics and schismatics say it was, and 2) Where did orthodoxy come from, if not from that visible community?"
That orthodoxy is inextricably tied to the community to which it is given. That's another way to say that the Church must be fundamentally visible. One cannot even say with any reasonable coherence "Outside the Church, there is no salvation" if one cannot define "Church," and if there is no non-arbitrary way to determine who is outside her (or not). And if some visible body lacks both the jurisdiction and divine infallibility to make that determination, then an individual quite rightly would presume that he still is in full communion with the Body of Christ, which is not strictly synonymous with the boundaries of the community he inhabits, in this [invisible Church] view.
The man is playing a shell-game of pretended deference to these external authorities, whose jurisdiction he himself defines. And he ignores the real organic unity to which he is actually bound.
The argument that moral turpitude vitiates jurisdiction is an implicit concession that the jurisdiction is real. On the other hand, if the jurisdiction was never real, no longstanding rectitude would bestow it. That seems like an obvious point.
So, the Catholic Church says, "OK, it's possible that AS was not the means by which the Church was identified, but 1) Why did everyone besides heretics and schismatics say it was, and 2) Where did orthodoxy come from, if not from that visible community?"
That orthodoxy is inextricably tied to the community to which it is given. That's another way to say that the Church must be fundamentally visible. One cannot even say with any reasonable coherence "Outside the Church, there is no salvation" if one cannot define "Church," and if there is no non-arbitrary way to determine who is outside her (or not). And if some visible body lacks both the jurisdiction and divine infallibility to make that determination, then an individual quite rightly would presume that he still is in full communion with the Body of Christ, which is not strictly synonymous with the boundaries of the community he inhabits, in this [invisible Church] view.
The man is playing a shell-game of pretended deference to these external authorities, whose jurisdiction he himself defines. And he ignores the real organic unity to which he is actually bound.
The argument that moral turpitude vitiates jurisdiction is an implicit concession that the jurisdiction is real. On the other hand, if the jurisdiction was never real, no longstanding rectitude would bestow it. That seems like an obvious point.
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