The Reformation

[anon52328184]

mercygate can you please explain what soteriology is. thanks. don’t have a dictionary handy. first time i ever heard that word.

 

[TriuneUnity]

mercygate can you please explain what soteriology is. thanks. don’t have a dictionary handy. first time i ever heard that word.

Doctrine of salvation.

 

[mercygate]

Doctrine of salvation.

Thank you, TU.

 

[Peter_J]

mercygate can you please explain what soteriology is. thanks. don’t have a dictionary handy. first time i ever heard that word.

Not to get off topic but usually if you google a single word, it’ll give you links to definitions of the word. For example

google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=soteriology&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

[anon52328184]

okay, thanks for the replies and information.

i learned something new today!!

 

[jmcrae]

Doctrine of salvation.

Thanks, I didn’t know what that was, either.

 

[Contarini]

That’s because the Church acted through the Pope, in that instance.

This is sounding rather like Barth’s doctrine of Scripture! Except of course that you think there are circumstances under which one can know beforehand that “the Church” will “act through” some particular member or group of members.

There was a traceable sequence of things that happened, from Apostolic times up until 1854, that you can look at and see that the germ of the idea was always there, and then it bloomed in 1854 when the Pope took all of that information together, put it into one place, and told us definitively what it all meant.

So you’re saying that if there’s a “traceable sequence” from Apostolic times lying behind an action of a member of the Church, it is “the Church” that is acting? Who gets to decide whether there is such a sequence? (Many well-qualified Biblical and patristic scholars–some of them even Catholics–question whether there is such a sequence either behind the Immaculate Conception or papal infallibility, for instance.) Wouldn’t it be “the Church”? And in order to determine that “the Church” has acted in determining this sequence, you need to determine that there is a “sequence” behind that decision, which leads to infinite regress.

I don’t see how this is a workable definition.

That’s because when the Pope does something wrong, there’s no history to it - it’s a one-off thing that came from the Pope himself, and not from the Tradition. (There is nothing in the Tradition that says, “Go ahead. Goof up really badly.”)

Well no, but when, for instance, Popes authorized holy wars, or established church courts to use Roman law (including torture) to investigate heresy and hand impenitent offenders over to the secular arm for execution, there was in fact a historical sequence of these events. You can perhaps argue that the sequence began (in both cases) around 1100, so there was one original Pope or bishop who was “acting on his own.” But by the time of the Reformation, for instance, this was a well-established part of Catholic tradition. Indeed, Pope Leo in “Exsurge Domine” specifically mentioned Luther’s rejection of the death penalty for heretics as one of Luther’s errors. And yet Pope John Paul II repented for these actions and ascribed them to “members of the Church” rather than “the Church” (indeed, this is how most non-Catholics first became aware of the distinction).

Because the Church can act through its members, but it can’t make mistakes. If people are making mistakes, the Church is not acting through them - they have become disconnected in some way from the Church when they make mistakes.

This is a good metaphor. The problem is that in order to avoid a sort of “Barthian” doctrine of the Church you bring in this criterion of “historical sequence” which gives you all sorts of trouble.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

When Christ Talked about what to do when someone “sins” against us he made a very interesting distinction between “The Church” and the members of “The Church”.

Matthew 16: 15-18
15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 "**If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. **18 "Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

Now if “The Church” is simply a conglomeration of believers, then "telling it to The Church is accomplished in step #2 above and there is no need for a step #3. Obviously Jesus saw the Church as something more concrete, authoritative, and organized than a “group of believers”.

The problem I’m having with the Catholic doctrine of the Church is not that it is “concrete, authoritative, and organized,” but quite the reverse. You are so used to attacking the “invisible Church” view that you don’t seem to have noticed that you’re up against something quite different here.

Clearly a selected group of two or three believers is not the same thing as “the Church.” You do not need to postulate an ineffable “Church” that occasionally acts through human beings but is not actually made up of human beings in order to distinguish between steps 2 and 3. One is talking about selected witnesses, and the other about the whole congregation.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Not only that, but if the Church is composed of people (which is obvious) and the Church is indefectible and infallible, then every member of the Church would also have to be indefectible and infallible.

I don’t agree. Not all attributes of the whole are going to apply to every member. The problem is that Catholics refer to exactly the same specific organs of authority as “the Church” in one context and “members of the Church” in another. I don’t have a problem with the worldwide-fellowship-of-believers-led-by-pope-and-bishops being infallible and an individual member being fallible. I have a problem with equivocation on the question of whether the wfoblbpab is the Church.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

No, but they indicate to us what the essence of the Church is. For example, when defining the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it was not only the writings of the Early Fathers that were taken into consideration, but also songs sung by children, poems written by hermits, paintings that were found in the Catacombs and in other spaces where early Christian worship took place, the arrangements of furniture in some of these places (did they have a Lady Altar, for example, and with what was it decorated, who used it, etc.) - all of these things came together; it was not purely an intellectual exercise.

I understand that, and it’s an important point. But I don’t see that it addresses the question. When the chips are down *people *make decisions. In practice Catholics routinely do regard priests and bishops as representatives of “the Church,” and Catholic clergy have gotten away with all sorts of stuff because of this. The Church/members distinction relieves the Church and its leaders of accountability. It’s a bait-and-switch–when the Pope and bishops tell you what to do they are “the Church,” but when they goof up they are just members–but members who can’t be disciplined by the laity because they are (hey presto once again!) the Church!

I find that it works just fine. We have this kind of idea in all sorts of areas of our lives

No. Or perhaps only in very corrupt, rotten institutions. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. If any other group of people behaved that way, I would be sick. You can make a case that the Church is radically different from all human institutions. But I don’t see how you can claim with a straight face that any other institution (at least any other institution worthy of a shred of respect–not that I respect any large institutions other than the Catholic Church, for that matter) does the same sort of thing.

• you can tell your child when she is not behaving herself, “The Contarini family does not behave like this,” without any sense of contradiction, even though your own child, who is a member of the Contarini family, is, in fact, “doing this.”

This is a relevant example because my (22-month-old) daughter threw not one but two temper tantrums this morning. Of course *her *behavior does not mean that our family behaves this way, because she is just one member of the family, and the one with the least authority. Similarly, the fact that one or two or (given the size of the Catholic Church) a million Catholics behave in a certain way doesn’t mean that “the Church” behaves that way. But neither can we say that our family is characterized by the inability to throw temper tantrums. Since this is not true of at least one of our members, it is not true of the family as a whole. More to the point, if my wife and I were to throw temper tantrums also, but still claim that “the family” is some perfect ineffable reality that only acts through us when we are *not *throwing temper tantrums, people would rightly laugh at us.

At work, your employer can find you doing something that goes against company policy, and he can say to you, “Here at XYZ Philosophical Musings, we do not do this,” even though, obviously, you are “doing this.”

But again, if I were to be tolerated in doing this over a period of time, it would no longer be strictly true that my institution as a whole does not do this. And if the administration and a large number of the faculty (I work at a college) were to “do this” also, the claim that the institution does not “do this” would become an empty mockery.

Arguably my institution and others like it is tempted to take this line at times. Nations certainly do–claiming that if you criticize the leadership you are somehow criticizing this ineffable reality called “the Nation” which is identified with the leaders even though it doesn’t goof up when they do. But it seems clear to me that when any institution other than the Church does this, it is a step toward decay and madness and death. No, your analogies don’t work for you. In order to prove your point, you’ll need to convince me that the Church is utterly unlike any other institution or group on the face of the earth, and that what would be corruption and hypocrisy anywhere else is holy and godly in the Church.

Edwin

 

[JRKH]

The problem I’m having with the Catholic doctrine of the Church is not that it is “concrete, authoritative, and organized,” but quite the reverse. You are so used to attacking the “invisible Church” view that you don’t seem to have noticed that you’re up against something quite different here.

Clearly a selected group of two or three believers is not the same thing as “the Church.” You do not need to postulate an ineffable “Church” that occasionally acts through human beings but is not actually made up of human beings in order to distinguish between steps 2 and 3. One is talking about selected witnesses, and the other about the whole congregation.

Edwin

Allow me to pose 2 scenerios here regarding the highlighted portion.

How does “The whole congregation” work when there are believers all around the world? In the Catholic Church for instance there are over 1 billion believers. How does one bring a brother’s sin before a congregation of 1 billion?

Of course you are refering to a more “local” congregation.

What does one do when the congregation is split on an issue? Say the Congregation is split 60-40 on an issue? Is it Majority Rules?

Finally, if the above verse refers to taking it to “the whole congregation” as in a local congregation, why did Paul feel the need to take the Corinthian problem of Mosaic Law to Jeruslalem instead of dealing with it in Corinth?

This idea of “The whole congregation” just doesn’t hold up. “The Church” Jesus is talking about here is something much more Authoritative.

Peace
James

 

[jmcrae]

This is sounding rather like Barth’s doctrine of Scripture! Except of course that you think there are circumstances under which one can know beforehand that “the Church” will “act through” some particular member or group of members.

Actually, we often don’t know until well after the fact (St. Faustina’s writings, for example, were on the Index of Forbidden Books for something like 12 years), but in the case of the Pope, I think it’s usually pretty clear, one way or the other.

So you’re saying that if there’s a “traceable sequence” from Apostolic times lying behind an action of a member of the Church, it is “the Church” that is acting? Who gets to decide whether there is such a sequence? (Many well-qualified Biblical and patristic scholars–some of them even Catholics–question whether there is such a sequence either behind the Immaculate Conception or papal infallibility, for instance.) Wouldn’t it be “the Church”? And in order to determine that “the Church” has acted in determining this sequence, you need to determine that there is a “sequence” behind that decision, which leads to infinite regress.

Those who disagree with the definition of the Immaculate Conception do so because they disagree with the whole concept of Original Sin - they believe that, not only was Mary immaculately conceived, so was everyone else. They aren’t trying to argue that Mary was a sinner. But as an Anglican, I’m sure you know all of the Biblical evidences for Original Sin.

I’m not sure what the rationale is against papal infallibility - I tend to accept it on faith, although I am (gradually) learning the history of it, mostly on an “encounter” basis - for example, just a while back, I read the Homily for Pentecost Sunday by St. John Chrysostom, which discusses the unique authority of the Bishop of Rome, and its roots in Petrine supremacy. (It struck me as interesting, because he was an Eastern Bishop.)

Well no, but when, for instance, Popes authorized holy wars, or established church courts to use Roman law (including torture) to investigate heresy and hand impenitent offenders over to the secular arm for execution, there was in fact a historical sequence of these events. You can perhaps argue that the sequence began (in both cases) around 1100, so there was one original Pope or bishop who was “acting on his own.” But by the time of the Reformation, for instance, this was a well-established part of Catholic tradition. Indeed, Pope Leo in “Exsurge Domine” specifically mentioned Luther’s rejection of the death penalty for heretics as one of Luther’s errors. And yet Pope John Paul II repented for these actions and ascribed them to “members of the Church” rather than “the Church” (indeed, this is how most non-Catholics first became aware of the distinction).

I don’t know what it was, precisely, that Pope John Paul II was apologizing for, but something seems “off” in your description. I can’t put my finger on it at the moment - was he apologizing for people acting in self-defense, or acting according to the law of their day? It doesn’t seem likely.

But it’s also true that violence, even in self-defense, is not part of the Tradition of the Apostles - in fact, quite the opposite; the Early Church was radically pacifist right on up to (at least) the time of St. Augustine.

 

[JRKH]

The Protestant Reformation was spawned on the idea that The Church that existed in 1500 was so completely corrupt that it had lost any legitimate claim to Being the One Holy and True Church.
It is built upon the Idea that Everything we need to know is contained in the Bible. (Sola Scriptura) From this is built all of the various theologies and denominations we know today.
Luther and others felt that they were justified in their “Reformation” due to the problems in the Church at the time and based their Reformed Church on The Bible Alone. Which leads me to this question for the panel.

Where in the Bible does it teach that it is all right to rebel against the Authority of the Church Which Christ established?
I see many instances where the Authority of the Church is affirmed, (Bind and Loose, Keys to Kingdom, hell will not prevail, pillar and foundation etc.) but none that say it is OK to dissent or deny or foment rebellion in the Church.
Christ Even told the Jews and His disciples to obey the Scribes and Pharasees while in the same breath calling those Scribes and Pharasees sinners. (Matthew 23:2-3)
Why would Jesus tell His Disciples to Obey their legitimate but sinful Church Leaders and then sanction the disobedience of Luther and others to their legitimate Church leaders?
Where is the Scriptural Foundation for this?

Peace
James

 

[Peter_J]

First off, great question. I think this is something that’s confusing to a lot of people, and some Catholics get really defensive about it, and muddle the waters. I’m really sorry if I’m saying something already said. I started to read the thread, but it just got so ugly… Anyways, addressing your specific questions:

1. Yes. There have been a lot of problems in Catholic history, and the Church acknowledges it. Pope John Paul II apologized for a great many of the abuses and mistakes.

(2) Yes. Pope Benedict XVI has some great stuff on Luther (timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3492299.ece))… as a native German-speaker, he has a much better background than, say, English speakers like myself. Note: the private theology or musing of anyone, including a Pope, isn’t dogma, infallibility, etc., so the views of the Pope aren’t necessarily the views of the Catholic Church, but I think that in this case, he’s expressing a common understanding by Catholics.

(3) Sort of. This touches on a lot of complicated Catholic teachings which, frankly, confuse even Catholics. Here’s the best way I can describe it in a non-Catholic context. Galatians 2 describes Peter’s personal hypocrisy, yet Christians of all stripes acknowledge 1 Peter and 2 Peter as infallible. So we’re all able to accept that a fallible man can speak infallibly, even though he may sin and even commit heresy in his personal life (pandering to the Jewish converts at the expense of the Gentiles, and even denying Christ three times). Catholics take this basic principle, and apply it to the future popes, as well as the Church speaking collectively. We believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, but that it’s still made up of people. The people fail, sin, etc., but the Holy Spirit doesn’t allow the Church to teach bad doctrine.

As a related note, Dr. Peter Kreeft (a Calvinist convert to Catholicism… say that 3 times fast) uses the corrupt practices of the Church throughout its darkest periods to justify its infallibility. His reasoning: at no point during which the popes had mistresses did any of them declare that God said it was ok for popes to have mistresses, etc. It’s in sharp contrast to other religions, like the LDS Church (I’m not meaning to pick on them), where Joseph Smith gets a divine revelation after he starts an adulterous relationship that lets people have “plural marriages.” Muhammad did it, too. But not a single pope.

Or put another way: the Church has always preached what the bar is, even when those preaching it didn’t live up to it (and frankly, none of us really do meet the bar of what we’re called to be).

(4) You also mentioned the sale of indulgences. I think that (3) basically covers that, but I thought I’d add a couple things specifically. Indulgences are still something which the Church allows (Matthew 16:17-19, Matthew 18:18, and especially John 20:23 blatantly give the Pope and the corporate Church the power to forgive sins through the power of the Holy Spirit). The abuse was in the sale. Numbers 20 describes something similar: Moses had the power to bring water forth from the rock (Exodus 17), but it was still an abuse for him to strike the rock twice when he was told not to.

Great post, Fan.

 

[Peter_J]

Contarini,

Well, sure, the statement “The Church is sinless and infallible” can be, and often is, abused. (Same for the Evangelical idea of an invisible Church which contains only people who are on the road to heaven.) But don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Let me ask you this: Don’t you think that even the statement “God is infallible” can be abused? Indeed we know that there were many false prophets in the Old Testament who claimed to be speaking on behalf of God.

P.S. This is a little bit of a tangent, but I think some of the disagreement of these issues actually stem from sloppiness of speech. For example, I’ve often heard non-Catholics say “The Immaculate Conception is a dogma which I don’t agree with”. But if you consider the I.C. to be false, then you certainly don’t consider it to be a dogma: a false statement can’t be a dogma. (Actually, even a true statement that isn’t part of the deposit of faith can’t be a dogma.)

 

[anon52328184]

The Protestant Reformation was spawned on the idea that The Church that existed in 1500 was so completely corrupt that it had lost any legitimate claim to Being the One Holy and True Church.
It is built upon the Idea that Everything we need to know is contained in the Bible. (Sola Scriptura) From this is built all of the various theologies and denominations we know today.
Luther and others felt that they were justified in their “Reformation” due to the problems in the Church at the time and based their Reformed Church on The Bible Alone. Which leads me to this question for the panel.

Where in the Bible does it teach that it is all right to rebel against the Authority of the Church Which Christ established?
I see many instances where the Authority of the Church is affirmed, (Bind and Loose, Keys to Kingdom, hell will not prevail, pillar and foundation etc.) but none that say it is OK to dissent or deny or foment rebellion in the Church.
Christ Even told the Jews and His disciples to obey the Scribes and Pharasees while in the same breath calling those Scribes and Pharasees sinners. (Matthew 23:2-3)
Why would Jesus tell His Disciples to Obey their legitimate but sinful Church Leaders and then sanction the disobedience of Luther and others to their legitimate Church leaders?
Where is the Scriptural Foundation for this?

Peace
James

great post James!!!

 

[Contarini]

Contarini,

Well, sure, the statement “The Church is sinless and infallible” can be, and often is, abused. (Same for the Evangelical idea of an invisible Church which contains only people who are on the road to heaven.)

In case you’ve missed this, I disagree with the common evangelical doctrine of the invisible Church very strongly. (My reaction to the Catholic view being set forth in this thread is based in my profound antipathy to “invisible churches” of all sorts.) Or more precisely, I don’t think that the “invisible Church” is the proper sense of the word “Church” on this side of the Eschaton. I believe of course in what evangelicals mean by the invisible Church–that all believers are spiritually one in Christ. But I don’t think this is primarily what being part of the Church in this life means. When Christ returns, the glorified Church will consist of all the elect. But here and now the Church is a fallible, earthly body made up of human beings, and if you turn knowingly away from that you turn away from Christ.

At any rate, my argument is not that the “sinlessness of the Church” or the “invisible Church” is an idea subject to abuse (as all ideas are), but that both ideas are plain wrong. As errors, they naturally lead to abuses. But they do so because they are errors–it’s not that they are errors because they sometimes lead to abuses. So you’re setting up a straw man.

My belief in a sinful and fallible Church can lead to abuses too. Just hang out with us Episcopalians for a while and you’ll see that!

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Allow me to pose 2 scenerios here regarding the highlighted portion.

How does “The whole congregation” work when there are believers all around the world? In the Catholic Church for instance there are over 1 billion believers. How does one bring a brother’s sin before a congregation of 1 billion?

Of course you are refering to a more “local” congregation.

Because Jesus clearly was. I agree that this applies by extrapolation to the fellowship of believers throughout the world.

What does one do when the congregation is split on an issue? Say the Congregation is split 60-40 on an issue? Is it Majority Rules?

If the congregation is that seriously divided, it is probably evidence that the congregation as a whole has not yet heard clearly from the Holy Spirit on this matter, and that we should bear with one another in love until consensus is reached. However, I also believe in offices of leadership within the Church, and that holders of those offices derive their authority from the apostles. So I am not proposing a democratic model necessarily.

Finally, if the above verse refers to taking it to “the whole congregation” as in a local congregation, why did Paul feel the need to take the Corinthian problem of Mosaic Law to Jeruslalem instead of dealing with it in Corinth?

Mosaic Law wasn’t much of an issue at Corinth. You maybe thinking of Galatians, but Paul didn’t take the Galatian controversy to Jerusalem. On the contrary, he informed the Galatians in no uncertain terms that his authority did *not *derive from the Jerusalem church, although he claimed to have their backing anyway. I think you’ve conflated the Galatian controversy with the controversy at Antioch (after Paul’s first missionary journey) recorded in Acts 15, and in a somewhat different version in Galatians 1-2. And this does make a case for referring intractable controversies to the “mother church.” I agree with this approach, but I don’t agree that Matthew 18 is directly referring to this issue. It is talking about personal controversies within a local congregation.

This idea of “The whole congregation” just doesn’t hold up. “The Church” Jesus is talking about here is something much more Authoritative.

Could you name some respected Catholic exegetes of the last 50 years who agree with your interpretation of Matt. 18?

Edwin

 

[Peter_J]

In case you’ve missed this, I disagree with the common evangelical doctrine of the invisible Church very strongly.

Oh yes, I realized as much.

That’s the irony of it all: in most regards, Anglicans and Lutherans are pretty close to Catholics and Orthodox, and Evangelicals are off doing their own thing.

But on this particular issue, it’s the Evangelicals who are closer to Catholics and Orthodox, and it’s the Anglicans and Lutherans who are off doing their own thing.

(My reaction to the Catholic view being set forth in this thread is based in my profound antipathy to “invisible churches” of all sorts.) Or more precisely, I don’t think that the “invisible Church” is the proper sense of the word “Church” on this side of the Eschaton. I believe of course in what evangelicals mean by the invisible Church–that all believers are spiritually one in Christ. But I don’t think this is primarily what being part of the Church in this life means. When Christ returns, the glorified Church will consist of all the elect. But here and now the Church is a fallible, earthly body made up of human beings, and if you turn knowingly away from that you turn away from Christ.

At any rate, my argument is not that the “sinlessness of the Church” or the “invisible Church” is an idea subject to abuse (as all ideas are), but that both ideas are plain wrong. As errors, they naturally lead to abuses. But they do so because they are errors–it’s not that they are errors because they sometimes lead to abuses. So you’re setting up a straw man.

Not so. I was clarifying what my own position is – in particular, that I don’t deny that Catholics often abuse the “sinless and infallible Church” idea, sometimes horrendously.

For example, a number of times I’ve seen Catholics on this very forum attack Protestants based on the sinfulness (sometimes exaggerated) of the Reformers; and yet when the topic of the sinfulness of Popes and other Catholics comes up, these same Catholic posters will say things like “So what? We never claimed that members of the Church are sinless.”

Or another time, I pointed out that the Pope isn’t infallible, and then another Catholic poster chimed in to inform me that I was obviously confusing infallibility with impeccability.

 

[Peter_J]

P.S. Framing it in a more general way, I think that Roman Catholics engage in way, way too much “bait-and-switch”.