To follow up on some comments in yesterday's post, I don't suppose one has to account for the ancient Church, if one simply equivocates on the term. If one assumes a fundamentally invisible Church, one could be referencing any one set of people at any time. Sure, it's begging the question with respect to the Catholic Church, since the Catholic Church holds to a fundamentally visible Church (and that she is that Church).*
By the way, the argument is not, "Submit to the pope, because he says so!" It is, "The Catholic Church's claim to universal jurisdiction over all Christians flows from its being continuous and synonymous with the ancient Church." If I had only the word of Pope Francis and my beloved Archbishop, without any reason, no one would be Catholic, least of all me.
But as I wrote before, Petrine primacy, apostolic succession, and transubstantiation of the Eucharist are fairly easily established. At that point, there are two things I cannot do, if I am to be intellectually honest: 1. I cannot ignore the obvious challenge this poses to my claim (as Reformed) that my community has better recapitulated the faith of the Church fathers; 2. I cannot reject the ecclesiology of the fathers, whilst agreeing with some other point. For them, ecclesiology (the study of the Church) and soteriology (the study of salvation) are the same thing.
Indeed, the very reason we cannot pick-and-choose from this history is because Christianity is a faith received. If I am adjudicating what is truly "catholic" from the mass of data, it's possible I have not submitted myself to the Church or to its revealed truth at all, but rather, to myself.
*Please see Pius XII's "Mystici Corpus Christi," paragraphs 64-65. (encyclical on the mystical Body of Christ)
By the way, the argument is not, "Submit to the pope, because he says so!" It is, "The Catholic Church's claim to universal jurisdiction over all Christians flows from its being continuous and synonymous with the ancient Church." If I had only the word of Pope Francis and my beloved Archbishop, without any reason, no one would be Catholic, least of all me.
But as I wrote before, Petrine primacy, apostolic succession, and transubstantiation of the Eucharist are fairly easily established. At that point, there are two things I cannot do, if I am to be intellectually honest: 1. I cannot ignore the obvious challenge this poses to my claim (as Reformed) that my community has better recapitulated the faith of the Church fathers; 2. I cannot reject the ecclesiology of the fathers, whilst agreeing with some other point. For them, ecclesiology (the study of the Church) and soteriology (the study of salvation) are the same thing.
Indeed, the very reason we cannot pick-and-choose from this history is because Christianity is a faith received. If I am adjudicating what is truly "catholic" from the mass of data, it's possible I have not submitted myself to the Church or to its revealed truth at all, but rather, to myself.
*Please see Pius XII's "Mystici Corpus Christi," paragraphs 64-65. (encyclical on the mystical Body of Christ)
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