Here’s an excerpt from the article
the exerpt is indented in this post
The original 16th-century revolutionaries had the mysterious conviction that you could attack a procession of Catholic worshippers… and overturn the altar – yet inexplicably seize their Holy Book and declare it an infallible oracle.
Yep, as pointed out in an earlier post, stones from the porch of a glass house.
The heirs of these revolutionaries were astounded when later generations did to their Holy Book what they had done to the rest of the Tradition …it is really, really nice to have the freedom to publicly reject/question the teachings of the CC w/o fear of being imprisoned or tortured or killed….if the price of that freedom is that we have to hear some members of later generations exercise their freedom and reject/question the infallibility of scripture, then that is unfortunate, but I don’t value a high view of scripture that is publically proclaimed if such is only achieved by an iron fist.
…… while the modern mind never thinks to ask how we know the Church corrupted the simple gospel of Christ, nor how we know what that simple gospel was if we reflexively reject the only possible source of knowledge about Him: namely, the Church that carefully preserved the testimony of "those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word"this is just wrong in so many ways:
First, to reject the claim that the Church (or rather the Catholic hierarchy) is infallible does not require one to throw out everything that every early Christian has passed down to us…not even close…for example, why would one need to distrust the message in the Pauline epistles if one has concluded that the Catholic hierarchy has made mistakes? It simply doesn’t follow since the Pauline epistles existed well in advance of both the Catholic hierarchy and its mistakes.
Second, even if one assumes that the Catholic magisterium is infallible, such a person cannot “know” what the original gospel was to any greater degree than the fellow who rejects that alleged infallibility….the Catholic believer can never do better than what that very fallible assumption will allow…which is knowledge limited by fallibility….claiming to replace the assumption by a spiral argument fails as the spiral argument (which, in reality, is nothing but a circle) is the sort of fallible effort that you claim is insufficient for Protestants
Third, if one understands that Catholic apostolic succession is not valid, then to reject those who claim to be the successors of the apostles (and some of what they teach) is not to reject the Church or to see the Church as being corrupt…it is to merely reject that hierarchy and see that hierarchy’s teachings as corrupted…the True Church, which is seen to have an existence apart from that hierarchy, is not materially affected by that rejection.
Fourth, it is undeniably obvious that additions (often labelled developments) have been made to the original deposit of faith over time, and to reject some things as additions does not throw grave doubt onto the remainder. It is one thing to receive a set of epistles and be told that the letters are true copies of the originals from the pen of the Apostle Paul. It is quite another thing to be receive a set of doctrines (that aren’t laid out in the NT) and be told that these doctrines have been infallibly developed from the “NT seed” that has been discerned by the developers. The first is an endeavour focused on preserving and transmitting
without any alteration. The second is an endeavour** focused on altering** what was received (under the misapprehension that the alteration is also divinely guided). Rejection of the latter does not, in any way, require rejection of the former.
Fifth, having dismissed Catholic apostolic succession as invalid, the CC’s claim to a continuous connection to the earliest church is only as good as the compatibility (of modern Catholic doctrine with the doctrine of the earlier Church) would permit…and given the dramatic additions adopted by the CC, that connection isn’t good at all…and so the Church that recognized the four gospels by 150 AD is not the same church as the modern Catholic Church and so to reject the modern Catholic Church is not to reject the Church that gave us the four gospels…(and of course the same reasoning applies to the rest of the NT).
This is no small reason why one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church is absolutely necessary.
One often hears on these threads (from the porch of that glass house) that the sola scriptura of Protestantism can’t be right, b/c look at how it has worked out in the real world…nothing but division and disagreement….b/c God didn’t make the scriptures so clear that all would arrive at the same interpretation.
By that same reasoning, the establishment of an infallible teaching magisterium can’t be right, b/c look at how it has worked out in the real world…nothing but division and disagreement….b/c God didn’t establish that magisterium clearly enough so that all would arrive at the same identification for it or even be able to discern that establishment.
The long and the short of it is that, Christendom possesses the exact same amount of division and disagreement no matter how you believe God acted wrt scripture and the infallible magisterium.
The body of Christ is made up of all those who have been given the Holy Spirit as a deposit and the eye is no more important than the hand or the foot. The bishops of the CC are but a very small, small part of that body…to believe that the hierarchy (as opposed to the Church) has wrongly elevated itself and then added erroneous doctrine is not to depart from the practices of the earliest Christians…it is to embrace their understanding of the Church as the faithful preserver of the gospel as first taught by the apostles.
**
