I don’t think you read the piece correctly. I think you will find that what Armstrong is arguing is that Baptism of Desire was ASSUMED in the Papal and conciliar documents. I also don’t think that Dave argues that souls were redeemed prior to the resurrection.
Perhaps, though, you would like to engage with him? Send an email. Dave Armstrong promises to ALWAYS respond to a critique of his papers. It may make an interesting piece for parties here to read.
I do admire the work Dave Armstrong has done on the internet but i find his style long winded, to say the least. He is also a big advocate of Cardinal Newman’s “Developement of Doctrine” theory. Newman was a very confused thinker even admitted by Newman expert Ian Carr. Newman’s theory of development is really the starting basis of many of the problems in theology today. He, simular to Decates, tryed to defend Christianity and ended up attacking its foundations. I believe there is development in our understanding of doctrine but not the way Newman spells it out in his book.Newman is relivant to the "no salvation outside the Church’ becuase he believed in dogmas evolving.
The article written by Father Most, sited in the link artcle, is also weak. Father Most says in one place that we are only to take the WORDS of any council not their intentions. Then later contradicts himself and says that a council was pointing to Thomas Aquinas when no mentioin is in the WORDS of the council about Aquinas. Most writes:
Before going ahead we need to notice one more principle of interpretation. It is this: the only things guaranteed in statements of the Magisterium, and protected in lesser ways in the works of the Fathers, are the things explicitly set down on paper. We may indeed know historically that certain thoughts, more extensive, were in the minds of the writers.
Yet Divine Providence has committed itself to protect only the explicitly written texts, not what is merely in the mind and unexpressed.
Then he goes on to contradict his above criteria by reading into the WORDS of the council by putting in St.Aquinas in place of the council of th “real” meaning the Poes had. when the council or Pope never mentions Aquinas. now he put Aquinas over the Pope or council for the “real” meaning telling us what they were THINKING not what they WROTE:
The texts of Innocent III and IV Lateran do not go farther than the
patristic texts we have seen. But the second sentence from Boniface VIII does raise a further question. However, the difficulty is easily handled; for the critical line is quoted from St. Thomas, “Contra Errores Graecorum”: “Ostenditur etiam quod subesse Romano Pontifici sit de necessitate salutis”[23] (“It is also shown that to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation.”) But in the context, shown by the two quotes St. Thomas gives at this point, it means merely that there is no salvation outside the Church. In that sense one must come under the jurisdiction of the Pope.[24]
Most of Fr. Most I have loved but he appoaches this issue with preconcieved ideas not just open to were the truth may lay.
