Authority in Catholicism and Protestantism..

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mackbrislawn said:
IggyAntiochus;9229829:
Indeed, that’s my reason too.

That’s a good way of saying it–there was not going to be a situation where that was not going to happen. God would make sure the Church infallibly chose the truly inspired writings from among the uninspired or forged ones. It took several centuries and councils but the matter was eventually settled.
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God would make sure the Church chose the truly inspired writings from among the uninspired or forged ones.

If it’s reworded to that, we agree 🙂
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Lincoln7 said:
I will have to look into this verse a bit more. I mean in Revalation 3:7 The Lord has the key (singular) to the house of David, so I guess I need to do a nice big study of this passage, the one from Revalation and Matt 16:19. I can’t see it as establishing the papacy however,
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So herein lies the problem, Lincs. Prooftexting will never provide you with anything except that which you wish to see.

IOW: text after text after text can be offered to provide “proof” of Belief A, and still there are those who are recusant.

And one text can be offered and that’s all that’s needed to convince this same person of Belief B.

Why? What is it that is persuasive?

The answer: the lens through which one views Scripture.

And without the correct lens, one’s view is going to be distorted.

From apologist Jimmy Akin:

The idea that Jesus — the living Word of God who came to bring us new revelation via his oral preaching and teaching — would have believed and practiced the proposition that all doctrine must be proved only by the written word of God is absurd on its face, yet this does not stop the careless advocate of sola scriptura from appealing to instances where Jesus uses Scripture to prove an individual doctrine as if they were proof Scripture is able to validate all doctrines whatsoever.
 
PRmerger said:
What is it about the authority assumed by the Catholic Church that you object to?
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In theory, nothing. In practice, a lot. Namely, when it adds to the deposit of faith things which there is no evidence the apostles ever taught. When it takes ideas and opinions that were expressed in the church and binds them on the Christian’s conscience even if they are not articles of faith or given as command by the apostles in the sacred writings.

In short, I have no problem with the authority of the church. Only when it is abused.
 
IggyAntiochus said:
In theory, nothing. In practice, a lot. Namely, when it adds to the deposit of faith things which there is no evidence the apostles ever taught. When it takes ideas and opinions that were expressed in the church and binds them on the Christian’s conscience even if they are not articles of faith or given as command by the apostles in the sacred writings.

In short, I have no problem with the authority of the church. Only when it is abused.
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I’m not sure I’m understanding.

At first I thought you were going to go all “The Church has been corrupt” on me.

And then I thought you were going to the “But it’s not in the Bible!” on me.

And then you end with “only when it is abused” and offer no example.

Like what?
 
IggyAntiochus said:
mackbrislawn;9230843:
God would make sure the Church chose the truly inspired writings from among the uninspired or forged ones.

If it’s reworded to that, we agree 🙂
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Yes, rewording it does not change the meaning.

All infallibility comes from God. God used Church as His instrument in chosing the inspired writings. And, since God is infallible, God’s instrument is also infallible.
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mackbrislawn said:
Yes, rewording it does not change the meaning.

All infallibility comes from God. God used Church as His instrument in chosing the inspired writings. And, since God is infallible, God’s instrument is also infallible.
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Going from what is infallible:

papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum20.htm#papal infallibility defined

What specific teachings have been declared by the Church to be infallible?

And since Israel is God’s chosen people and therefore their instrument, are they infallible in matters of faith and morals?
 
Isaiah45_9 said:
Going from what is infallible:

papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum20.htm#papal infallibility defined

What specific teachings have been declared by the Church to be infallible?

And since Israel is God’s chosen people and therefore their instrument, are they infallible in matters of faith and morals?
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Is,

I cannot understand you…

Going from what is infallible…please complete this thought and explain what it is you are trying to say…

Then you refer to a link. Where in the link would you like the reader to reference…take the part or summarize or say the whole document…be a guide for me…

And since Israel is God’s chosen people? Define what it is you believe Isreal to be? so that I may understand your therefore…and then your question…

I cannot read your mind.
 
PRmerger said:
I’m not sure I’m understanding.

At first I thought you were going to go all “The Church has been corrupt” on me.
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Depends on how you’re using “corrupt.” Too strong a word, for the most part. It implicitly implies apostasy, which isn’t the case.
And then I thought you were going to the “But it’s not in the Bible!” on me.
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Not so much. But when you’re dealing with something that doesn’t show up in tradition or church teaching for 6 or 7 hundred years, and then expect it to be an article of faith, it better have more apostolic evidence than that!
And then you end with “only when it is abused” and offer no example.
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Like what?
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The infallibility of the papacy, the thesaurus meritum, satispassio in purgatory, required fasting, the assumption, etc. Essentially, cases where the church has just inserted required dogma on those things that, to those of us outside of Rome, look like simply inventions that have no Scriptural or apostolic warrant whatsoever.
 
mackbrislawn said:
IggyAntiochus;9230902:
Yes, rewording it does not change the meaning.

All infallibility comes from God. God used Church as His instrument in chosing the inspired writings. And, since God is infallible, God’s instrument is also infallible.
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God choosing an instrument to carry out His will does not de facto make that instrument infallible. God used the Israelites as His instrument. They were not infallible. God used the Assyrians as His instrument. They were not infallible.
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IggyAntiochus said:
mackbrislawn;9231141:
God choosing an instrument to carry out His will does not de facto
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make that instrument infallible. God used the Israelites as His instrument. They were not infallible. God used the Assyrians as His instrument. They were not infallible.

Ig,

In many and various ways God has spoken through His Prophets…God is infallible and those that he used were infallible as they spoke by virtue of their speaking…otherwise their speaking is fallible…and if they wrote what they spoke, it too is infallible…is it not…or you would say that the Bible is fallible…???

If God spoke through the prophets and in these last days he spoke through His Son…so far so good…then as Paul tells us the Church is the Bride/Body of Christ and that Body/Bride is the instrument through which the manifold wisdom of God is known…how…can’t hear it unless someone speaks it…

And if Paul tells us that the Church is the mystery hidden for all ages then those Prophets were speaking through the Church through which the manifold wisdom of God is known…and you can’t know it unless someone speaks it…for to know is to understand…to understand is to receive…and we receive by word…and that word is spoken…not read…

Makes you think does it not?🙂
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Nicea325 said:
No one said Peter was “acting” superior to anyone. It was GIVEN to Him to be the Head…he did not ask for it.

I do not understand why such the fuss to accept that God can freely choose to set up His Church any fashion or structure. Problem I see with many, especially Americans is the belief of one person not being the Head. It stems from the belief of democracy. Jesus preached the Kingdom of Heaven, not the Democracy of Heaven. Jesus was born and raised in the Eastern part of the world with different ideals, beliefs, customs, and traditions. If having one person as the Head was such an issue, I am curious to know why Jesus never rebuked the Jewish kingship and the Roman Imperial structure?
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I’m English, so I have no issue with monarchy 😃
More important, can the opposition present the “other” ancient tradition challenging the CC tradition? Where are the letters of the opposition going way back to the early church, if the RCC is false?
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Yes. The modern papacy simply is not present in the early church, with respect.

Kind regards

Lincs
 
Mackbrislawn,
Everyone knows infallibility has existed in some form, since the church in the post-apostolic age infallibly chose the correct scriptures. If it has not infallibly chosen the correct scriptures, then I don’t see why anyone can have confidence in the scriptures.
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Ah see hearin lies some difference, I don’t so much see it as a ‘choice’ as opposed to ‘received’. And on infallible judgments about canon, if that were taken to its full extents; wouldn’t that mean anyone prior to Trent was unsure about the books in their bible? Seems no such pronouncement came until then…
Let’s say for the sake of argument, that the scripture is God breathed and the unchanging apostolic testimony and final authority for us.
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But what happens when controversy erupts over what that final authority means? How can we appeal to that final authority when that final authority is the arena of battle? When that final authority is the bone of contention itself?
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I read a scripture and it is clear to me. But then you read it and you maintain it means something else. I think to myself, are you unstable? You may think the same about me. We could have a fist fight and try to decide it that way. Or we could agree to disagree and each go off our own way. That’s how the church is divided and denominations form.
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Or, we can go to past non-inspired writings to help settle our dispute. We could see what the early Chrisitan writers, the “early church fathers,” had to say about the topic. In other words, tradition.
Tradition means that each generation does not have to figure out all over again what scripture means.
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Another way, we can go to the church to answer the question. Scripture itself does say to go to the church. (Or, at least it says that to me!) If the church did not exist anymore we could not do that. But, as you admit, the church still exists. Therefore authority to settle disputes must inhere in the still-existing church in some way. After all, Jesus says, you will know the truth. But if that church is fallible, how can we know what is true?
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Because I hold to SS doesnt mean I throw out tradition… The institutes for example; full of citations from the early fathers. I would happily go to them as some of them had excellent gifts of nderstanding and exegesis when it came to the text of scripture. But that’s the thing; I can still appeal to them and to the Traditon, no problem, but scripture is still functioning as the rule of faith. Note for example, we can’t go to the magisterium for aid, as it has rarely if ever defined any passage of scripture.
Furthermore, what happens when we disagree about what the CC teaches, if that was our final authority? This all after of course we had used private discernment on scripture and the fathers to reach the conclusion Rome is the true church. The issue is simply moved back a step. Continuing, I also am rather happy with church authority, hence why I agree to historic protestant confessions. But again, for me, but they are still subservient to the infallible scriptures. Sola scriptura teaches all needed for salvation is cleary taught in scripture, but this does not mean every single passage is utterly clear. Rather that as it is the word of God it is the rule of faith, obviously it is in reaction to the Catholic position, where traditions which appeared unbiblical were being binded upon conscience.

Kind regards, good discussion.

Lincs.
 
pablope said:
Hi, Lincs…sorry I am confused with your reply.

But first, let me ask…why would you think the pope would order Jerome to change his views? Did you know the Jerome was the secretary of Pope Damasus? He could have influenced Pope Damasus with his views…but no, the Pope included the DC in his declaration on the OT canon in AD382…so the Holy Spirit prevailed in preventing error.

The point is Jerome never taught anything contrary to what the Church taught…even if he held a contrary opinion on the DC books…Jerome’s obedience and humility.

So on to my other question…I cannot comprehend why you get hung up on Jerome’s views on the DC? Why? His views were his own…personal opinions…but that he followed the pope dutifully and lovingly…you cannot seem to grasp this…so why the hang up?

On to another question…you keep discussing about the development of a modern papacy…have you bothered to look at Calvin’s concepts of authority? Are they the same then as today practiced by Calvinists? Have remained the same or have they evolved?

Would you agree with the conclusions of this Calvinist scholar? calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/how-john-calvin-made-me-a-catholic/

Which I quote:

What most Evangelicals today don’t realize is that Calvin never endorsed private or lay interpretation of the Bible. While he rejected Rome’s claim to authority, he made striking claims for his own authority. He taught that the “Reformed” pastors were successors to the prophets and apostles, entrusted with the task of authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. He insisted that laypeople should suspend judgment on difficult matters and “hold unity with the Church.”3

Evangelicals are used to finding assurance in their “personal relationship with Christ,” and not through membership in any Church or participation in any ritual. Calvin, however, taught that the Eucharist provides “undoubted assurance of eternal life.”5 And while Calvin stopped short of the Catholic, or even the Lutheran, understanding of the Eucharist, he still retained a doctrine of the Real Presence. He taught that the Eucharist provides a “true and substantial partaking of the body and blood of the Lord” and he rejected the notion that communicants receive “the Spirit only, omitting flesh and blood.”6.

Outside of Geneva, without the force of the state to impose one version, Calvinism itself splintered into factions. In her book Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism, historian Janice Knight details how the process unfolded very early in American Calvinism. 8

It is not surprising that by the eighteenth century, leading Calvinist Churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic had given up on the quest for complete unity. One new approach was to stress the subjective experience of “new birth” (itself a novel doctrine of Puritan origins) as the only necessary concern

Since the eighteenth century, Calvinism has devolved more and more into a narrow set of questions about the nature of salvation. Indeed, in most people’s minds the word Calvinism implies only the doctrine of predestination. Calvin himself has become mainly a shadowy symbol, a myth that Evangelicals call upon only to support a spurious claim to historical continuity.
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Hi Pablope,

I’m not really ‘hung up’ on Jerome, I just let him be who he was, I’m not trying to turn him into a sixteenth century Protestant. He simply held to a differing canon to the modern CC.

On Calvin, I will have to do some more study. I’m rather comfortable with church authority, that why I very much like historic Protestant confessions. I react against the authority claimed by the Pope, but this doesn’t mean I dismiss all church authority, far from it.

Kind regards

Lincs
 
Skeptic92 said:
In Relation to the ‘Keys of the Kingdom of God’ mentioned in Matthew 16, I have just written a Paper titled ‘Peters Confession and the Royal Keys: Stewardship in the Davidic Jewish tradition and the foundations of the Church’ (which unfortunately i don’t have access to all the sources I used for the paper at this present moment) which covered this aspect indepth.

Current biblical scholarship has linked ‘the Keys’ to the Prophecy of Isaias 22:22 [BIBLEDRB]Isaiah 22:22[/BIBLEDRB]

and Matthew 19:19

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 16:19[/BIBLEDRB]

The parallel is outstanding, what Christ says to Peter is almost word for word the same as the Prophecy of Isaiah.

In the Davidic kingdom, David had many servants (1 Kings 4:7 lists twelve, another parallel for another time) but one would be the ‘cheif servant’ or the ‘Prime Minister’ if you would like. The symbol of this office would be the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’, a visible sign of the authority handed by the Davidic King (who is now Christ, reigning permanently) to his ‘Chief Servant’. When Peter was given these keys, he was placed in a position of greater Authority then the other Apostles. This interpretation is not just a Catholic one, it is included in the Oxford Bible Commentary, books by Protestant scholars, my own New Testament lecturer (Dr Kathy Ehrensperger, a Swiss Methodist minister and Pauline Scholar) holds this view, as well as many other Biblical Scholars, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant.

The other question that is raised mainly by Orthodox Scholars, is what exactly does this mean to the Successors of Peter? A Primacy of Honour, or a Primacy of Authority, in my own Paper I agreed with the Primacy of Authority due to the obvious parallel with the Prime Minister in the Davidic Kingdom, who would be chief amongst the Servants of the Court, above them in all authority, third to the Queen Mother (Orthodox and Catholic Scholars agree this is Mary, the Theotokos) and the King (universally accepted to the Christ). However the Primacy of honour tradition is not without merit, Patristic works are not unanimous in how far the authority of Rome spread, some like St Jerome, St Ignatius etc appear to hold that the Primacy of Rome is universal. While on the other hand many Greek Fathers appear to hold that while Rome has a Primacy, the Bishop of Rome is the ‘first among equals’ and doesn’t hold any higher authority then the other Patriarchs, this in practice however appears to be inconsistent, with Rome getting involved and having the final word many times in the first 10 centuries of the Church.

The argument is not on the Primacy of Peter, it’s about what form this Primacy takes, the idea that these ‘Keys’ hold no significance is not in line with Biblical Scholarship, from all parties.

I am sorry for the amount of grammatical mistakes throughout this, but I am rushing as I’m currently writing a paper for another Class, on whether the invasion of Libya was a ‘Just War’, I will however reply at even more length once I can get a hold of all the source I used for the Paper on the keys (all in all, amounting to 2 Biblical Commentaries, Greek & English texts of the Apostolic Fathers, 6 academic books, all peer-reviewed both within and outside their own denominations, 2 Journals, and transcripts from lectures and previous work by my Professors).
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Fascinating, I shall have to do some more reading. I have access to most of the big journal sites so will set myself some homework too 🙂

Regards

Lincs.
 
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