Even if he's not there, it doesn't go down without his say-so. It's always been that way, and it always will. So it just strikes me as mind-games to speculate whether the bishops wanted to be "distant" from the Holy Father or not in any one case.
We have the same 3 choices: 1. Accept all the ecumenical councils as the most solemn invocation of the Church's authority; 2. Reject all of them as an unlawful imposition of human authority; or 3. accept some and reject others.
If you choose (3), then you cause 2 problems: You violate JK's Axiom #1: "One cannot be both the arbiter of divine revelation, and a humble receiver of it at the same time," and 2. You lose the ability to distinguish human opinion from divine revelation. At some point, the convenience of the "true gospel" conforming precisely to what you already believe will test your intellectual honesty, just like it did mine.
You may hold up the Westminster divines or their documents as the moment when the truth was "recovered," but that's just it: they weren't the only ones claiming to speak for Christ at the time. I sensed this right away: Just because I currently inhabited a community descended from them doesn't mean they were right. I'm sure you have as many personal reasons to ignore this challenge as I did, but you've got to push through it. It's the intellectually honest thing to do.
We're looking for the visible Church in history. Because the Church is no less visible than Christ in the Incarnation. Think of it: An invisible "Church" lets us make our own "gospel", Inception-style. Sola Scriptura makes it even worse: I can make my own faith, and look pious and humble, too. Not everyone is willfully doing that, of course. But at the least, we're wasting time by submitting to a community that by its own admission is not the sole Church that Christ founded, and dodging the question of the true ultimate authority in Sola Scriptura. (It's ourselves.)
We have the same 3 choices: 1. Accept all the ecumenical councils as the most solemn invocation of the Church's authority; 2. Reject all of them as an unlawful imposition of human authority; or 3. accept some and reject others.
If you choose (3), then you cause 2 problems: You violate JK's Axiom #1: "One cannot be both the arbiter of divine revelation, and a humble receiver of it at the same time," and 2. You lose the ability to distinguish human opinion from divine revelation. At some point, the convenience of the "true gospel" conforming precisely to what you already believe will test your intellectual honesty, just like it did mine.
You may hold up the Westminster divines or their documents as the moment when the truth was "recovered," but that's just it: they weren't the only ones claiming to speak for Christ at the time. I sensed this right away: Just because I currently inhabited a community descended from them doesn't mean they were right. I'm sure you have as many personal reasons to ignore this challenge as I did, but you've got to push through it. It's the intellectually honest thing to do.
We're looking for the visible Church in history. Because the Church is no less visible than Christ in the Incarnation. Think of it: An invisible "Church" lets us make our own "gospel", Inception-style. Sola Scriptura makes it even worse: I can make my own faith, and look pious and humble, too. Not everyone is willfully doing that, of course. But at the least, we're wasting time by submitting to a community that by its own admission is not the sole Church that Christ founded, and dodging the question of the true ultimate authority in Sola Scriptura. (It's ourselves.)
Comments
I reject the premise of axiom, which is perhaps the problem here. Notably, the Westminster Divines *expected* that others also "recovered" the truth. Sheesh, they invited many of them to come attend the assembly. So, they had no trouble with the idea that confessions are situational -- bound to the needs of a particular place and time. So, to try to force it to fit into the Catholic paradigm is to try to make it something it never claimed to be.