Appeal to Tradition?

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Davis_tylerj

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Hello All!

I am currently in RCIA with intention of entering the Church this Easter Vigil and I am super excited!

As I have grown in faith and learned, both in RCIA and as a senior in College, I have been blessed to share my faith with many of my closest friends.

Just last week one of my best friends (Nate) decided he wanted to become Catholic too despite our mutual attendance at a Protestant College. It truly is by the Grace of God that I was a part of such a beautiful transition for him.

Our mutual friend, who is also my other best friend (Ben) is a very logical and well spoken evangelical. He is a vocal libertarian who is never afraid to mince words.

Just as I talked with Nate about Catholicism and explained why it was logical and important to become Catholic, I have been talking with my friend Ben.

The biggest stumbling block has been the teaching of sola scriptura for him.

When I have dived into reasons against sola scriptura, we always end up stuck at the same point. He calls what I am describing an “appeal to tradition” which is a logical fallacy by nature. I tried explaining how someone closer to the time of the original writers would better understand the context, he still argued that someone farther removed may have access to better materials and therefore be better equipped at understanding. He used the example of the flat earth, and how despite it being older in concept, it was proven wrong over time. Additionally he raised concerns that only scripture does not change while the Church is run by fallible human beings.

Overall, I am stuck trying to differentiate the logical fallacy of appeal to tradition from what I am describing as evidence in supporting the Catholic position.

Any help is appreciated!

Blessings,

Tyler
 
Davis_tylerj said:
. He used the example of the flat earth
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I hope he doesn’t seriously believe the myth about Columbus, and the people allegedly believing at the time, Earth was flat. Because that is just that, a myth. The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was a sphere, and contrary to what Neil deGrasse Tyson says on his Twitter, No, mediaeval Christians did not believe the Earth was flat. With some of the other things your friend has said, it seems to me that he’s guilty of what CS Lewis called chronological snobbery, which people will say is a logical fallacy, but I’ve seen no compelling evidence that it actually is. It’s almost 2 a.m. where I’m at, and I really need to get to sleep, but I’m sure some other people will fill you in.
 
I really do need to get to bed, but not to mention, Protestant denominations have their own traditions. For instance, I cannot find anything in my Bible about saying the sinner’s prayer to be saved. I’ve read it from cover to cover. Twice.
 
A sola scriptura libertarian!

I do not have a horse in this race, being a non-believer but it is abundantly clear that the books of the new testament were written by people who believed quite different things. The authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke never clear say that Jesus is God. John does. Protestants deal with this by personal decision-making. Catholics deal with it by accepting what the Church says and has said about it. And as an earlier poster said, it was the Church that decided to include some books in scripture and exclude others. There is also the logical problem of here being no biblical support for sola scriptura. How could there be, since the person who would have had to write such a thing would have known of only one or two of the 27 books of the NT! Ann Rand must be doing whatever horrified libertarians do in their graves!
 
I think if I had information as dramatic as a human being God I might have actually said it in so many words. And your examples do not in any case say that Jesus is God: 1) says his name means ‘God is with us’ 2) Says some people thought he was claiming to be God and 3) says he was raised from the dead. But Act also says hundreds of others were too, so that can’t indicate that a person is God.
 
Davis_tylerj said:
Overall, I am stuck trying to differentiate the logical fallacy of appeal to tradition from what I am describing as evidence in supporting the Catholic position.
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There is a classic line of Catholic apologetics that follows the logical fallacy of Sola Scriptura: Scripture Alone is not in scripture. On the contrary we are asked in 2 Thessalonians 2:14:
Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.
Itaque fratres, state : et tenete traditiones, quas didicistis, sive per sermonem, sive per epistolam nostram.
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Davis_tylerj said:
He calls what I am describing an “appeal to tradition” which is a logical fallacy by nature.
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Isn’t the Bible itself a “tradition of God”? 🤔

The stumbling block is the assertion that anything but the Bible is a “tradition of men”. That doesn’t fit well, when you look at the context of Jesus’ words in that passage. In fact, you could make the claim that it’s all “traditions of men”, since the teachings that eventually landed in the Bible started out as the oral Apostolic teachings of those whom Jesus commanded to preach.
Davis_tylerj said:
He used the example of the flat earth, and how despite it being older in concept, it was proven wrong over time. Additionally he raised concerns that only scripture does not change while the Church is run by fallible human beings.
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Doesn’t his “flat earth” example contradict his second objection? In other words, if we misunderstood the teachings from antiquity, and have clarified them (through Church teaching) now, then the “only Scripture does not change” argument fails! It’s about the understanding of Scripture moreso than the words on the page, isn’t it?
Davis_tylerj said:
I am stuck trying to differentiate the logical fallacy of appeal to tradition from what I am describing as evidence in supporting the Catholic position.
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He’s conflating two distinct meanings of the word “tradition” here. The “appeal to tradition” merely means the use of conventional wisdom. “Tradition”, as it’s used in the Church, means “Apostolic Teaching” (which includes the teaching of the successors of the apostles).
 
Davis_tylerj said:
Additionally he raised concerns that only scripture does not change while the Church is run by fallible human beings.
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A hundred different people can come up with 100 different interpretations of Scripture. And a hundred different people a thousand year later may come up with another 100 different interpretations. Jesus appointed a living Church, protected by special charism, to safeguard right teaching precisely because man is fallible. Without a Church any person’s understanding of the Bible is fallible, because men and women are fallible.

And the appeal to tradition as a logical fallacy… He’s mixing subjects here. We’re not talking about logically necessary syllogisms here.
 
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Davis_tylerj.

Welcome to the Church!

Tell your friend the Bible refers to itself as “tradition” (2nd Thessalonians 2:15).

Remind him we have no New Testament Canon apart from Tradition. (We have no Old Testament Canon either, but since he agrees with you on what comprises the New Testament, stick to that for this argument).

Point out that the Ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament was a consonantal language and there is no Bible (at least Old Testament) without oral tradition.
Ancient Hebrew was a consonantal language.

It was all consonants and no vowels.

The words in a consonantal language need to be filled in via oral tradition.

To give you kind of a quasi-example, let me give you one consonantal word.

Mn

What word is it? What word is mn?

Is it man ?
Is it men ?
Is it Amen ?
Is it Man y?
Is it money?
Is it Mini?
Is it Mono?
Is it Mane?
Is it Moon ?
Is it Omen ?
Is it Omni?
Is it Mona?
Is it muni?

You can’t know without orally filling in the gap.

If that is true for one word (“mn”), how much more true is that for a whole document of the Old Testament . . .
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Sola Scriptura and Acts 15 Sacred Scripture
Welcome Autocur. Amos as well as virtually all the Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew (Aramaic - a Hebrew variant). Ancient Hebrew was a consonantal language. It was all consonants and no vowels. The words in a consonantal language need to be filled in via oral tradition. To give you kind of a quasi-example, let me give you one consonantal word. Mn What word is it? What word is mn? Is it man? Is it men? Is it Amen? Is it Many? Is it money? Is it Mini? Is it Mono? Is it M…
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Additionally he raised concerns that only scripture does not change while the Church is run by fallible human beings.
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Yes but just as with oral tradition, it takes careful work to discern that too. Just ask any Scripture scholar and they will tell you about the arguments over “authentic” texts due to manuscript variations for example.

God bless.

Cathoholic
 
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FiveLinden (on the Gospels not asserting the Divinity of Christ strong enough to suit him [her?]) . . . .
I think if I had information as dramatic as a human being God I might have actually said it in so many words.
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Someone could look at Church documents and say the same thing today (only a small minority of such Church documents re-assert the Divinity of Jesus. Not because it is questioned, but because it is assumed).

These are mere re-hashed Bart Ehrman type of arguments FiveLinden.

Don’t fall for them.
. . . Bart Ehrman—a popular New Testament textual critic who was once a Fundamentalist Christian and is now an agnostic—says:
If Jesus went around Galilee proclaiming himself to be a divine being sent from God . . . could anything else that he might say be so breathtaking and thunderously important? And yet none of these earlier sources [Matthew, Mark, and Luke] says any such thing about him. Did they (all of them!) just decide not to mention the one thing that was most significant about Jesus? Almost certainly the divine self-claims in John are not historical” ( How Jesus Became God , 125).
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Is Ehrman’s assessment correct? Are Jesus’ claims to divinity absent from the Synoptic Gospels? Perhaps Ehrman should have looked a little closer. . . .
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Too late. I’ve come to rely on Bart Ehrman for well-founded information about scripture. I doubt you could find a Church document of today that was specifically about the life and work of Jesus and its significance that did not mention the belief that he was God. The same logic applies to the first three Gospels.
 
See also . . .


. . . 11 hours 51 min. (11 CDs / MP3)

Nowadays, skepticism about Jesus is everywhere, and it’s spreading fast. For well over a hundred years, critics have questioned the historical truth of the Gospels, claiming that they were originally anonymous. Others, such as the atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, have even argued that Jesus of Nazareth did not think he was God and never claimed to be divine.

In this long-anticipated study, Dr. Brant Pitre goes back to the sources—the biblical and historical evidence for Christ—in order to explore topics that are at the very heart of Christianity:

• Were the four Gospels anonymous?
• Are the Gospels folklore or biographies?
• Were the four Gospels written too late to be reliable?
• What about the “Lost Gospels,” such as “Q” and the Gospel of Thomas?
• C. S. Lewis vs. Bart Ehrman on Jesus’ divinity
• Did Jesus claim to be God?
• Is Jesus divine in all four Gospels? Or only in John?
• Did Jesus fulfill the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah?
• Why was Jesus crucified?
• What is the evidence for the Resurrection?

As The Case for Jesus will show, recent discoveries in New Testament scholarship, as well as neglected evidence from ancient manuscripts and the early church fathers, together have the potential to pull the rug out from under a century of skepticism toward the traditional Gospels. Above all, Dr. Pitre shows how the divine claims of Jesus can only be understood by putting them in their ancient Jewish context. . . .
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And this . . .

The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ Hardcover – February 2, 2016​

by Brant Pitre (Author), Robert Barron (Afterword)
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https://www.amazon.com/Case-Jesus-Biblical-Historical-Evidence/dp/0770435483
 
FiveLinden . . .
I’ve come to rely on Bart Ehrman . . .
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That’s what I figured from what you have displayed.

.

FiveLinden . . .
I doubt you could find a Church document of today that was specifically about the life and work of Jesus and its significance that did not mention the belief that he was God. The same logic applies to the first three Gospels.
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Indirectly yes (since everything is about Christ). Directly no.

If you think otherwise, evidently you have not read much for Church documents.

.

BTW . . . .

The Old Testament is filled with Jesus too.

But I would suggest Ehrman would think otherwise because Jesus isn’t explicitly mentioned there either. At least in the way Bart would tell you He should be.

And the reason he would think otherwise is he cannot contextually think in terms of Judaism at the time of Christ.
LUKE 24:13-27, 31-35 13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emma′us, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cle′opas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning 23 and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see.” 25 And he said to them, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. . . . 31 And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” 33 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, 34 who said, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
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FiveLinden (asking about Catholic Church documents that do NOT deny OR re-assert the Divinity of Christ in THAT given document saying . . . “I doubt you could find a Church document of today that was specifically about the life and work of Jesus and its significance that did not mention the belief that he was God.” - you can see FiveLinden offer up this here)
So can you point to one such document?
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If I do this, will you come back here and affirm the Divinity of Christ in the Gospels? (Otherwise I won’t waste my time.)
 
Cathoholic said:
If I do this, will you come back here and affirm the Divinity of Christ in the Gospels?
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What an unusual approach to debate. It’s an exchange of ideas and evidence, not a transaction. But no, this would convince me only that I was wrong that no one writing a Church document in the modern world about the life and works of Jesus would fail to mention their belief in his divinity. That would weaken, but not eliminate, my argument that the writers of the first three Gospels, if they had believed this, would have indeed mentioned it to those for whom it would have been astounding news.
 
FiveLinden . . .
What an unusual approach to debate. It’s an exchange of ideas and evidence, not a transaction. But no, this would convince me only that I was wrong that no one writing a Church document in the modern world about the life and works of Jesus . . . .
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Well then I invite you to be just as convinced Ehrman
was wrong about Church documents in the ancient world too. Namely the Gospels.

What is really an “unusual approach” here,
is your expecting me to go on a wild goose chase.

.

For everyone else.

Look at Luke 24 and ask yourself what the conclusion would be if you saw someone who was Resurrected.

I am not talking someone raised from the dead and dies again, but someone who was resurrected.

And TOLD YOU about it from the Old Testament Scriptures.

Then made Himself known to you in the Eucharist.

And by the way @Davis_tylerj.

The Luke 24 passage suggests oral tradition too.

After all, Jesus showed Himself in the Old Testament “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”.

Some of that would not have been in Scripture necessarily.

Like Matthew 2:23
MATTHEW 2:23 23 And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
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This was nowhere in the Old Testament.
 
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Tradition is all about experience. A non-Catholic telling us that such and such is the case, contrary to Catholic positions, is like someone telling me that I never went to a Giants baseball game in San Francisco as a youth because I don’t have proof: photographs, etc. And there’s not a single reason to believe that Scripture was intended to be some sort of clear and exhaustive catechism-the church taught the gospel before a word of the New Testament was written, in fact.

And Sola Scriptura adherents disagree with each other all day long. They have nothing to appeal to except their own, human, interpretations when claiming to know the true faith. So some Protestants believe in baptismal regeneration while others deny it, and some believe in the Real Presence while others do not. Even JWs are offspring of the Reformation and SS and have plausible arguments, based on Scripture, for the non-deity of Christ. In both the eastern and western ancient churches these were either non-issues from early on since they were settled at the beginning, or they were settled at council where controversy arose. Who among Protestants could even call an ecumenical council?? And disagreement in beliefs within the Protestant fold are spreading/increasing daily.

There must be a physical, locatable entity that God established, with roots directly traceable to the beginnings of Christianity that has the purpose of having received, preserved, and proclaimed the true gospel. Or else we’re all lost in sea of guess-work.
 
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