Isn't it all a great circle? Can anyone break it?

[PRmerger]

I don’t see how you get that, apart from the question of how accurate the NT is (which, if we’re speaking in purely historical terms, we must ask). Which churches, precisely, does the NT say one of the Twelve founded? Most of the church-planting recorded is being done by Paul, who wasn’t one of the Twelve.

By apostles I didn’t specifically mean one of the Twelve. I simply meant what Catholics mean: bishops, or the apostles and their successors.

So there is, it appears, historical evidence in the NT that Paul started a church? Yes?

So that makes the argument a spiral one, not a circular one, which was my original proposition.

 

[PRmerger]

I laid this out in my previous post, and you just ignored it. Sorry to be snippy, but I really don’t want to repeat the same things I already said.

I didn’t interpret it as snippy here. But I am puzzled as to the relevance of your previous post.

The traditional stories about Thomas going to India, Andrew to the Black Sea region, etc., may possibly have truth in them, but it’s hard to tell. Most scholars are pretty skeptical about them.

Ok.

One reason even the most skeptical folks have to grant the NT some degree of historical reliability is precisely the presence of things that would have been embarrassing to early Christians (such as the evidence of tension between Paul and the Twelve and Paul’s independence from the Twelve–though these things are played down in Acts compared to Paul’s own account in Galatians).

Yes.

So it appears here that you are arguing FOR the historical reliability of the NT???

 

[stewstew03]

By apostles I didn’t specifically mean one of the Twelve. I simply meant what Catholics mean: bishops, or the apostles and their successors.

So there is, it appears, historical evidence in the NT that Paul started a church? Yes?

So that makes the argument a spiral one, not a circular one, which was my original proposition.

“To sum up, then: the presiding teacher-prophet at Antioch became the one bishop [presumably Peter], the other teachers and prophets became the college of elders, and the other church workers became the deacons.” p.68

Brown, R., & Meier, J. (1984). Antioch and Rome, New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity. New York, NY: Paulist Press.

 

[Contarini]

By apostles I didn’t specifically mean one of the Twelve.

Which is why when you first mentioned apostles I asked if you meant the Twelve.

I simply meant what Catholics mean: bishops, or the apostles and their successors.

So there is, it appears, historical evidence in the NT that Paul started a church? Yes?

So that makes the argument a spiral one, not a circular one, which was my original proposition.

No, your original proposition (in post 4 of this thread) was “an infallible church was founded.” Then more recently you said the infallibility didn’t matter. In post 6 you said that what mattered was that Jesus founded the Church.

All we can prove historically is that Jesus’ followers, who believed he had risen from the dead, started establishing communities within a few decades of the resurrection. The early Christian leader we know most about and have best evidence for, Paul, was not one of the original disciples and himself boasted of having a somewhat indirect relationship with them, getting his authority and knowledge of Jesus from direct divine revelation instead.

You cannot get from there, by purely historical methods, to a reasonable certainty that Jesus himself intended to found distinct communities devoted to him, separate from the main body of the Jewish people, and including Gentiles as well as Jews, and not requiring Torah observance of Gentiles (as opposed to renewing the whole people of Israel in preparation for the final coming of the Kingdom, or even as the coming of the Kingdom). That’s a post-Jesus development, historically. And you certainly can’t get a belief in an infallible Church by purely historical methods.

Hence I don’t see how your spiral argument is supposed to function. You can’t establish the general reliability of the NT based simply on the fact that early followers of Jesus like Paul were going around establishing communities. Unless your point is simply that there’s enough continuity between Jesus and the authors of the NT that it’s unlikely these authors got Jesus radically wrong. I think that’s a reasonable though far from certain argument, but it’s not what you originally said.

The early Christians themselves appealed to the power of the Holy Spirit, guiding them to interpret the Old Testament in light of Jesus. And, of course, much depends on whether one finds the evidence for the resurrection itself persuasive (I do, but not so conclusively as to eliminate the need for a good deal of faith).

As I said earlier, I think the evidence for trusting the NT (and Christian teaching generally) is strong, but it’s cumulative–hard to quantify and impossible to reduce to a syllogism. Attempts to do so are misguided.

Edwin

 

[PRmerger]

Which is why when you first mentioned apostles I asked if you meant the Twelve.

And I thought I clarified that.

No, your original proposition (in post 4 of this thread) was “an infallible church was founded.” Then more recently you said the infallibility didn’t matter. In post 6 you said that what mattered was that Jesus founded the Church.

Right. The “infallible” part was irrelevant in response to your proposition that “No passage of the NT unambiguously says that Jesus founded an infallible Church.”

Whether a passage in the NT says Jesus founded an infallible Church is irrelevant.

The fact is: NT passages proclaim that the apostles (here, lower case is relevant) founded the Church.

 

[Contarini]

I didn’t interpret it as snippy here. But I am puzzled as to the relevance of your previous post.

I thought I had established that you were talking about the Twelve in particular. After all, they are the ones whom the Gospels name as having been close companions of Jesus, and I thought we were discussing whether we can prove historically that Jesus founded a church (or even an infallible church, as you originally stated in post #4). Paul makes a big deal in Galatians about the fact that he didn’t get his teachings from the people who actually talked to Jesus before the resurrection. He got them directly from divine revelation.

I’m a bit confused as to exactly what you are arguing–you seem to be changing your ground from your original post (which replicated the standard “spiral argument” found in the Catholic Encyclopedia and popularized by Karl Keating).

So it appears here that you are arguing FOR the historical reliability of the NT???

I think there are good reasons, on purely historical grounds, to take the historicity of the NT very seriously. But not enough to prove, by purely historical means, that there is an infallible Church with the kind of authority that can then support trust in Scripture as infallible (which is what you claimed in post #4). That argument is simply bogus–and it strikes me as wearisomely unnecessary besides.

With all due respect, non-historians tend to assume that you can just divide up your sources into reliable ones and non-reliable ones, trusting whatever the reliable ones say and dismissing whatever the non-reliable ones say. (You haven’t said this, and you may not think anything like it, but your question above somewhat sounds as if you may be working from some such premise, as if “historical reliability” is a plain either/or.) Historical reliability, as discernible by purely historical methods, is relative. No source can be uncritically trusted, and no sources are historically worthless, though in some cases a source may be valuable mostly or only for what it tells you about its own time rather than the much earlier events it claims to record. I think it’s fair to say that none of the canonical NT narratives (the four Gospels and Acts) are in this latter category (some scholars come close to arguing this for Acts, but I think they’re quite definitely wrong even by purely historical standards). All the Gospels are mined by even secular scholars for historical information. The disagreement is on how much they tell us about Jesus as opposed to the early Church of the later 1st century. My own opinions are toward the conservative end of the spectrum on that, but I’m still open to the possibility that texts like the distinctively Matthaean portions of Matt. 16 are later theological interpretations.

But to support the “spiral argument” you need much more than an inclination to think that the NT is for the most part historically accurate. You need a level of accuracy that can support the theological claim that the Church has the authority to say that the Bible is infallible. And it’s simply ludicrous to suggest that purely historical analysis will give you that.

 

[Contarini]

And I thought I clarified that.

Not immediately (i.e., not in post 70, which responded to my post 69 which raised the distinction–not until post 81). But it doesn’t matter except for a little wasted typing on both sides.

Right. The “infallible” part was irrelevant in response to your proposition that “No passage of the NT unambiguously says that Jesus founded an infallible Church.”

Whether a passage in the NT says Jesus founded an infallible Church is irrelevant.

But it’s not irrelevant to your claim in post 4. You very clearly said “infallible” there. I’m a bit baffled by what is left of the “spiral argument” when you take out infallibility. Isn’t the point supposed to be that an infallible Church declares Scripture infallible, so we know we can trust Scripture? What exactly is the spiral argument as you have reconfigured it?

The fact is: NT passages proclaim that the apostles (here, lower case is relevant) founded the Church.

Mostly they speak of churches–communities of people who believed in Jesus. But some passages–Matt. 16, obviously, and Ephesians 2:20–speak of a Church in the singular and connect it to the apostles. Sure. How exactly does this support the spiral argument? All we know from this is what early Christians (late first-century Christians if mainstream scholarship on Matthew and Ephesians is correct, which of course it may not be) believed. We have to take what they say on trust (which is not a crazy thing to do given their temporal proximity to the original events they are interpreting, but by no means something required by the historical evidence) or not.

Edwin

 

[PRmerger]

All we can prove historically is that Jesus’ followers, who believed he had risen from the dead, started establishing communities within a few decades of the resurrection.

Yes.

The early Christian leader we know most about and have best evidence for, Paul, was not one of the original disciples and himself boasted of having a somewhat indirect relationship with them, getting his authority and knowledge of Jesus from direct divine revelation instead.

Ok.

You cannot get from there, by purely historical methods, to a reasonable certainty that Jesus himself intended to found distinct communities devoted to him, separate from the main body of the Jewish people, and including Gentiles as well as Jews, and not requiring Torah observance of Gentiles (as opposed to renewing the whole people of Israel in preparation for the final coming of the Kingdom, or even as the coming of the Kingdom). That’s a post-Jesus development, historically.

I believe I can. The Church was founded, according to the NT, by those sent by God Incarnate. There is no arguing with that, from a purely historical POV.

What’s to disprove about that?

And you certainly can’t get a belief in an infallible Church by purely historical methods.

Fair enough.

But if you don’t believe that the Church was infallible, then how do you trust these NT documents as being inspired? (The historical reliability of the text is irrelevant here).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Hmmm… except PR is a woman…

But I’ll take your man-hugs, mate.

They were platonic to start with so a “gender-bender” scenario make’s no diff to the sentiments

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Right, although frankly I think a lot of contemporary scholars have gone to the opposite extreme, imagining the early Church to be made up of all kinds of discrete “communities” with quite different and even mutually opposing theologies. I don’t see good evidence for that either. Clearly there were a lot of disagreements, as 1 Corinthians for instance testifies. But there seems to have been a pretty strong commitment to unity from the beginning–as 1 Corinthians also testifies.

I think the natural human instinct to “tidy” can be turned too easily into something sinister by cynical historians. Sure, there are power plays involved. But we all tend to create narratives even about our own past that simplify what actually happened–if we described anything the way it actually happened, it would take as long to describe it as it did to happen, if not longer.

Edwin

Agreed.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Yeah, I like to see who visits my Profile Page.

And you did.

And would I be correct in assuming that you had yourself a little look-see there? :yup:

Jude help us . I just knew you would eventually ask that.
And the answer is still no, I was really only interested to zoom in the house pic.
Does “love me, love my house” come close enough for you?

 

[Contarini]

Yes.

Ok.

I believe I can. The Church was founded, according to the NT, by those sent by God Incarnate. There is no arguing with that, from a purely historical POV.

Well, one can argue with the phrase “God Incarnate” as a historical description of NT Christology as a whole, though the Gospel of John’s account comes pretty close by calling Jesus the Logos Incarnate and identifying the Logos with God (and of course John is one of the sources for the idea of apostolic authority). But if you mean that the NT contains the claim (Ephesians 2:20, for instance) that the Church is “built on” those sent by God, then sure. But that’s not the spiral argument–the fact that the claim exists doesn’t mean that it can be historically proven. You still have to choose whether to believe the testimony of the NT or not–you’re just back where you started.

But if you don’t believe that the Church was infallible, then how do you trust these NT documents as being inspired? (The historical reliability of the text is irrelevant here).

Well, I do believe that the Church was (and is) infallible–at least I stumble haltingly toward such a belief, with my natural skepticism getting in the way. . . .

But you don’t have to believe in an infallible Church to trust the NT documents as being inspired. There’s no necessary connection. Some Protestants, of course, try to show that you can establish inspiration without trusting the authority of the Church, and I don’t buy that argument. Other considerations, like one’s personal experience of God speaking through Scripture, do enter the picture, but the testimony of the Church is crucial. But the Church doesn’t have to be infallible to be right. The only “problem” with a fallible Church testifying to Scripture is that it’s possible for the Church to be wrong about some part of the canon without the Church being wrong as a whole. (It’s always possible for the Church to be wrong, because it’s always possible that your belief that the Church is infallible is wrong–this is the basic issue that the spiral argument is usually invoked–absurdly–to address. But fallibility separates out the possibility that the Church may be wrong on a specific issue from the question of whether the Church is wrong period.) And the only reason that’s a problem is that it should make one readier in principle to accept revisions to the canon, which makes one’s relationship to Scripture a bit shaky, especially around the edges of the canon. The real problem here for Protestants is one of consistency–conservative Protestants (and even most moderate and liberal Protestants) behave as if they were certain the canon was closed. Conservative Protestants defend the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter staunchly even in the teeth of the majority of scholars, but it’s not clear they have a good reason to do so. More liberal Protestants defend the canonicity of 2 Peter while saying it isn’t by Peter, which makes even less sense from a Protestant point of view. (Catholics have better reasons no matter which side of that debate they take.)

I think that epistemological reasons for believing in infallibility are flimsy and misguided. The real reason to believe in the infallibility of the Church is ecclesiological–it’s the only way you can remain loyal to the one Church in the teeth of corruption, abuse, and doctrinal confusion, without being a relativist who thinks doctrine doesn’t matter.

Edwin

 

[eliya]

i may null it easily by putting the burden on the opponent, here is how:

C.S Lewis did apply the popular trilemma on the second Person of the Trinity ; Jesus Christ.
how? by reading the gospels, using them as reference.

what if the bible is fabricated/corrupted/legend?

Now, In the case of validating the Gospels, one must validate the Catholic Church for the simple reason that the Church precedes them and She is the one Who wrote and compiled the Gospels that we abide by today.
And for this,
I would then apply the Trilemma to the third Person of the Trinity; The Holy Spirit.
how? by studying the Church from the inside out, from both the friendly and non-friendly/objective perspectives.
I would read, along with the Gospels, all of the Catechism, history, the Theology, the Saints and their lives, searching for contradictions in the Faith, testing the consistency of her teachings throughout the ages all the way back to the time of her birth, and by observing her logically developed non-contradictorily, rich theology, testing its timeless rigor and its ever progressive and ‘always ready’ defense and tracing the course of her sustainability against her proclaimed spiritual enemies, enemies from the outside and the inside of Her, throughout history from the beginning all the way up until now… and checking, comparing and weighting up the spiritual fruits against the world across the ages, and to try to project Her onto the plane of time and space, past, present and future and see if The Church does in fact stand for what She claims to be ; one, holy, universal and apostolic.
And THEN one would decide for himself if the Church is: Lord(Truth), Liar(Lie) , Lunatic(insanity).
THEN,
–>Consequently and accordingly: whether the Bible is: Lord(Truth), Liar(Lie) , Lunatic(insanity) or Legend(fabrications)"
THEN,
–>Consequently and accordingly : whether Jesus is : Lord, Liar , Lunatic or Legend"

 

[PRmerger]

Well, one can argue with the phrase “God Incarnate” as a historical description of NT Christology as a whole, though the Gospel of John’s account comes pretty close by calling Jesus the Logos Incarnate and identifying the Logos with God (and of course John is one of the sources for the idea of apostolic authority).

You sound as if you are proposing that we know Christ to be God Incarnate NOT through Scripture alone but through Tradition? Yes?

But if you mean that the NT contains the claim (Ephesians 2:20, for instance) that the Church is “built on” those sent by God, then sure. But that’s not the spiral argument–the fact that the claim exists doesn’t mean that it can be historically proven. You still have to choose whether to believe the testimony of the NT or not–you’re just back where you started.

Not following you, Edwin.

If I take the claims of the NT that the Church was founded by Christ, and then take the word of this Church founded by God that the Scriptures are the inerrant revelation of God, how is that circular?

 

[PRmerger]

But you don’t have to believe in an infallible Church to trust the NT documents as being inspired.

Oh, but, Edwin, you absolutely do. There is no other way to know that Hebrews is inspired but that the Epistle of Barnabas is not…except through the testimony of an infallible Church.

Unless you are one of those who proclaims the very circular: I know Scripture because it’s inspired! And I know it’s inspired because it’s in the Bible!

Or you may be (but I doubt it) one of those who proclaims that you know something is inspired by a burning of the bosom?

Or you know something is inspired because it is self-evident? I’ve heard that one recently.

But the Church doesn’t have to be infallible to be right.

Ok. Then where do you think she erred in discerning the canon of Scripture? Do you think that she should have excluded Revelation and included the Shepherd of Hermas?

The only “problem” with a fallible Church testifying to Scripture is that it’s possible for the Church to be wrong about some part of the canon without the Church being wrong as a whole

So, then, where do you think she erred?

The real reason to believe in the infallibility of the Church is ecclesiological–it’s the only way you can remain loyal to the one Church in the teeth of corruption, abuse, and doctrinal confusion, without being a relativist who thinks doctrine doesn’t matter.

Edwin

Absolutely not!

Are not children required to remain loyal to their parents even if they are fallible?

Did not the Israelites follow Moses, even when he was leading them the wrong way?

We need not follow the Church only because she is infallible, Edwin. That is irrelevant to our obedience.

We do not obey because she is infallible. We obey because she is the Body of Christ.

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

The argument that the Church made an infallible decision on which books go into the canon and are consider the word of God is not a strong argument for the unique characteristics of the Papacy modern day.

In the first place, the Church that decided which books go into the NT, they did not make the decision arbitrarily, as if it was rooted and grounded in their own personal and ever-present living authority (as many Catholics today rest in). Rather, there was actually a criterion that was separate from the human beings who were bishops; which these bishops tried as hard to adhere to. One of the highest was historical reliability and apostolic alignment. Investigations were conducted. Debates went back and forth. And the Church was confident which writings that have been handed down were of apostolic origin (whether by an apostle or a student) and which faithfully transmitted the deposit that was originally in the apostolic churches prior to. The modern Catholic apologist is going to point to the “bare” decision of the Catholic Church on making this decision while not addressing the “means” by which the Church made this decision. They did anything but base their decision on some present and living authority that resided in the minds of the bishops themselves.

Now, compare the means by which the Church made the decision on the Canon with the means the Church came to teach the modern doctrines of Mary’s unique divinity and role in salvation history for our world of humanity, and you will see many differences. The Canon was based off of many sources of evidence and logic. The marian doctrines are few and late coming, far from being anywhere near the evidence of the 27 books we have in the NT.

 

[PRmerger]

Now, compare the means by which the Church made the decision on the Canon with the means the Church came to teach the modern doctrines of Mary’s unique divinity and role in salvation history for our world of humanity, and you will see many differences.

You seem to be quite unfamiliar with Catholicism, Erick.

The Church has never claimed that Mary has a “unique divinity.”

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

Sorry, I should have explained.

The Catholic Church teaches (which I also believe) in the divinization of the adamic race in the salvation which is in Jesus Christ, from the basis of his incarnation to the flesh and his glorification as a human being.

Mary is unique in the sense that she occupies a place that is distinct from all others. This is granted since she is the Mother of God, the Queen by virtue of her bearing the Messianic King. This is an appropriate uniqueness that no Church Fathers or depository of the apostolic tradition has any conflict with. That Mary is the 2nd Eve, mother of the Church, and is the vehicle for the salvation of the world specifically in her bearing the Christ-Child has nothing but continuity of thought in comparison to the early church documentation.

However, the inappropriate uniqueness is her present role in the salvation of the world. She actually has a status in co-operation with Jesus Christ. This has no finding in any early church father. The present day dogma rests on the oral vehicle and transmission of this teaching from the early years of the church to much later.

 

[PRmerger]

Sorry, I should have explained.

The Catholic Church teaches (which I also believe) in the divinization of the adamic race in the salvation which is in Jesus Christ, from the basis of his incarnation to the flesh and his glorification as a human being.

Source, please?

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

partaking of the divine nature? (2 Peter I believe)