- conflation of principle of the papacy as a legitimate supreme teaching authority with actions taken by popes
I've addressed this more recently, but I will reiterate that it is not the teaching of the Catholic Church that the popes are infallible in all things, and therefore are indeed still capable of sin and error (and Peter's three-fold denial also served to forewarn us they would be). The many and diverse temporal / political actions of the popes, or the Catholic Church in general, does not equate to the legitimacy of what the Church actually teaches Magisterially. Temporal actions of popes can readily be condemned. For example, Pope Leo X was a Medici, was accused, if I recall correctly, of squandering Church wealth on his own interests (infamously he said: "God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it"), and he totally dropped the ball on addressing Luther and evading the Protestant heresy. Instead of actually offering a Catholic response to Luther's questions (which has since been done perfectly adequately by men like Bellarmine in the counter-reformation), he took basically no action at all, and this, combined with the invention of the printing press and Luther's bribing of German princes, led to the widespread effect of his heresy. Do the sins and inaction of Pope Leo X by necessity diminish the reality of his office and teaching authority? Not at all; it is a principle, recall, that "act necessitates potency, but potency does not necessitate act (within a subject)".
- pope has no right to Christ's claim as Head
I believe I have addressed this by recently explaining what is really meant by temporal Head / viceregent / vicar.
- vicar of Christ usage; pontiff usage
I believe I have also addressed this. I am a Thomist, not a nominalist (and I'm not accusing either of you of nominalism), so there is no need for me to view the name applied to an essence as somehow constituting or defining that essence. However words were used elsewhere, or whatever usage they had before being baptized into the Church, what matters is the essence of the office itself, and it is a primacy of teaching authority a la a vicarious office, not a statement of absolute equality with God - and that is the Magisterial teaching.
- lack of definitive / unambiguous presence of the doctrine in Scripture, like can be said of Commandments etc
This isn't an argument that would be accepted by Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christians. A similar was asked in the debate I recently referenced, except it concerned the Nicene Creed rather than Scripture itself. I recommend listening to the response, but he points out that the same logic applies to many other essential Christian teachings - like the Eucharist - and absence from the Creed should not be considered proof of non-truth. And the Orthodox priest basically agrees fully with his answer.
In fact, extending this Eucharist example, one could say that it is not contained in Scripture with the same degree of explicitness or lack of ambiguity as the Ten Commandments, but nonetheless it is affirmed by both East and West, and it is contained I would say clearly in Scripture, but not undeniably in Scripture - just like the primacy of Peter. That's why protestants reject that also; it is just a Protestant way of thinking to say "Well, if it isn't totally and undeniably contained in Scripture, I won't believe it!" because they just don't have the understanding of the essential relationship between Scripture and Tradition (which is affirmed both by Scripture and Tradition, as I've pointed out).
- 4th / 5th / 6th century authorities espousing a Catholic view is unsurprising if the real fork or schism with true tradition took place earlier in history
I think my )
- typological interpretation of Peter as the rock is sufficient without supposing something special is granted to Peter specifically with respect to teaching authority
Maybe this isn't exactly the argument that's being made, since elsewhere you've denied reducing this Scripture to the typological view, but as far as I'm concerned, if we aren't reducing it to this higher level / more general application of the verse, then we have to affirm the significance of Peter the Apostle, and how that significance, logically, would be transferred to his successors.
- Paul visiting Peter is not compelling evidence
Maybe it isn't compelling even from an objective point of view, but I originally cited it because a Saint (Chrysostom) in the Church found it compelling.
- Paul didn't write explicitly about Peter either
I think one of my paragraphs above addresses this. Once we understand both 1) the development of doctrine (which I described in another reply) and 2) the non-necessity for clear statement about legitimate Christian doctrines within Scripture ( a la what I said about the Eucharist above), then I just don't see how this line of argument is at all problematic to the teaching on the papacy (let alone unthinkable).
- Rome as Highest See / Peter as prince of apostles / Pope as having supreme teaching authority in the Church - being separate essentially from the material-temporal-political relations of the Church, or even the actions of Popes, is a "cover story" and sidesteps the simple fact that the Catholic Church became a "political organization" and conflicted with secular states
This was originally one of KOWA's objections. I feel as if I've said everything that needs to be said in this point, including what I've reiterated in this very message (a la Leo X). It just isn't essential to the doctrine itself that popes, or the Church, be infallible in their temporal actions. What matters is the doctrines themselves, not how well (or poorly) the prelates adhere to them. Sure, we can cite Scripture and say "you will know them by their fruits", but KOWA himself has indicated that, indeed, the fruits are the saints, and the Church has no shortage of saints, even post-schism, who have attained unfathomable degrees of holiness by faithfully following the teachings of the Church, including the papacy itself. Countless Catholic saints, pre- and post-schism, have affirmed the papacy - St. Catherine of Siena, St. Padre Pio, St. Thomas Aquinas. I would be curious - genuinely - to see what post-schism eastern saints are known to have specifically attacked the papacy in their teachings, words, or writings.
- Obedience to the teaching authority of the papacy constitutes affirming the supremacy of a secular state (presumably in political matters)
Again, these have to be separated. It is on matters of faith and morals only to which the Magisterium pertains and for which the papal charism of infallibility can apply. Submission to temporal / secular matters is just not the teaching of the Church - that a Catholic American citizen would be compelled to have "dual-loyalty" a la the kind our circles criticize as applying to politicians who are loyal to Israel, in the same respect to Rome, is just not Catholic teaching. In secular matters, our loyalty is to our own state; in religious matters, to our Church. And, indeed, the Church teaches that the Church's divine right and calling is to inform every state as its soul, but this does not mean the Church has divinely ordained temporal authority over the world - she has spiritual authority, which it goes without saying is an entirely different thing.
- "the majesty of the Bible is that it is self-justifying"
You've said my argument is circular. That Tradition is considered prior to Scripture, and yet cites Scripture to justify this, or something. Fine, I get where you're coming from, but Catholics generally refer to it as a spiral, rather than something circular. We have to begin with Scripture by taking it at face value: as describing real world events, including various publicly witnessed miracles. This, combined with the history of the Church itself, lends the Bible its initial (face-value) credence. If there was no Church, were no Christian relics, no remains of cathedrals, no portraits of saints, no fallen down monasteries, no mark whatsoever of this Christian faith on history, then people would be far more compelled to dismiss it as myth. Like with Homer, many people dismissed it entirely as mythic, questioning the existence of Troy itself, until the remains of Troy were purported to be found, thus lending more credence to the notion that the substance of the matter of that text (namely, the war described) was true.
We have such an abundance of historical situating of the Christian faith, and dating so far back, that it just is not reasonable to dismiss the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, as mere myth, at least when looking at it only at face value. Of course when looking at them more closely it is revealed that the Old Testament in fact typified and pointed to the New with just about every word. The point is, without noticing the hyperlinks, without noticing the fulfilled prophecies (such as the , or Daniel 9 setting a for the Messiah's coming, lining up perfectly with the coming of Christ, etc.), Scripture is given its credence by history. And in fact, even the hyperlinks and prophecies depend on being situated in history, lest they be explained away as retro-active writing or Jewish cleverness. So insofar as Church history is Tradition, I affirm and maintain that the two are not separable.
So back to my spiral point, we can take Scripture (in conjunction with the history of the Church, inclusive of the martyrs who died to bear witness to the truth of the claims in Scripture - which The Iliad lacks) as a legitimate documentation of events. Given this, we can then treat the Church's spiritual authority as legitimate, and on this basis we can then return to Scripture and rightly treat it as an infallible revelation from God. You could reach this conclusion by other means, but I maintain that those means would not be entirely separate from the history surrounding the events described, and thus the history of the Church itself, and thus the Tradition in some sense. Whereas, contrariwise, the Protestants claim sola Scriptura, as if the infallibility of Scripture can be deduced without any reference to non-Scriptural entities, such as history itself. But without situating certain books of the Bible in certain periods of history, "prophecy" suddenly becomes back-dating or just narrative-construction. Do you see what I mean? If anything it is the Protestant view that is circular, since they affirm Scripture as infallible because it speaks of Jesus as God, and Jesus quotes from the Scriptures, so it must be infallible - but they have assumed their conclusion in order to prove it. That is the true fallacy.
- "My “own” Saints certainly do not affirm the sort of Papal Supremacy current today" - presumably a la Unam Sanctum "all humans must submit to Roman pontiff"
Again from KOWA; I referenced this above, asking what post-schism Eastern saints oppose the papacy, and in what ways specifically. As I cited from the Catechism, the Church still recognizes the "means to salvation" that, say, the Orthodox Church provides for people, and therefore the ability to sanctify - but this is not and cannot be fully separated from the Catholic Church as the Body of Christ, and of course the East would not disagree; they would just disagree with the association. But for the sake of argument, if the Roman Catholic Church, as constituted by its structure and teachings, does correspond to Christ's intention for His Church, also known as the Mystical Body of Christ, then it goes without saying that no one who is saved is saved outside of the Catholic Church, which includes all its teachings, including the papacy properly understood.
The submission required of all men to the Roman Pontiff is equivalent to the submission required of all men to the Catholic Church, not insofar as the Pontiff is concerned as a man, but only insofar as he concerned as Vicar of Christ, as authoritative representative and safeguard of all the teachings of the Church - and this is a spiritual submission only, not a temporal-political one.
- Orthodox Church is a body of "right-believing" Churches
From KOWA. I commented already on the difficulty I see there being in the East with properly establishing "right belief" insofar as the churches in the East are in disagreement, and I elaborate on this further in my response to the list of post-schism Orthodox councils.
- By giving the keys to St. Peter, Christ gave the power to bind-and-loose to The Church. The idea that Rome somehow interprets this to mean that the Pope has this power, is absurd to us.
As I touched on elsewhere, while the typological view of this verse has truth, not every element can be applied to all the Church in the same degree. Yes, Peter was given the ability to bind and loose, and this was given also to the Apostles generally. But the keys were only given to Peter, and so what happens when all the bishops, with the ability to bind and loose together, are in disagreement? Peter comes along, jingles the keys, and asserts his Divinely-instituted authority to bind and loose universally, and clarifies the dispute.
- The core of the idea is that Peter, in contradistinction with each of the other apostles, is the first to come to faith in Christ (true gnosis of Christ as the Son of God) by way of the Father solely. Each of the others required seeing with their eyes, a reason why Peter is able to answer Christ's question: "Who do you think I am?"
Of course, Peter was given the keys for a non-arbitrary reason, and this first-born angle plays into that. But that doesn't diminish the nature of the vicarious office he was given, nor the need for such an office.
- The thoroughgoing case you are making is that only Tradition could have decided this. But this deposit, the words of Christ, was had by the apostles, and so whatever MC is, it did not include the office of pope in {X, Y, Z...N}. If it were the case that it had, there would be no schism.
But you would say the schism could have occurred in theory at the time of the apostles themselves?
And further, the impossibility of schism is not Scriptural, because Christ beseeches that the Apostles allow no schism among them ().
In fact, those above verses beautifully articulate the very thing the Orthodox think that the Catholic Church denies, namely, the maintained significance of the non-papal bishops. "And the eye cannot say to the hand: I need not thy help; nor again the head to the feet: I have no need of you." It is not as if the Pope declares himself bishop of the world, as if all the world is one dioceses, and other bishops become superfluous. It strikes me that there are many in the Orthodox community who think this is what the Catholic Church teaches, and thus rightly object to it. But this is not the case. The Church simply teaches that the Pope has universal jurisdiction, universal authority, not that he therefore has the right (even if he has the power) to contradict a bishop's true teaching in his own dioceses. Think of it this way; say we have a knight, and that knight has a sword. If the knight claims that he has the ability (the potens) to unsheath his sword and slay an innocent maiden, does this equate to asserting his right to do so? He maintains the ability to do so at any time, but because he operates according to the Divine law, he will only unsheath his sword when "duty calls"; when someone attacks the maiden, for instance. This is what Jordan Peterson has defined "meek" (from "the meek shall inherit the earth") as meaning; not weakness, but power tempered by virtue; to have a sword, but only draw it when one ought to. Likewise, the Pope has total and absolute authority in the Church, as vicar of Christ; he can ordain priests in another bishop's dioceses, he can toss out bad canons from a Council; but it is understood that these powers will only be used when needed - during times of dispute, rather than times of peace (see my reply about the post-schism councils). This power, if legitimate, and if it is to be trusted when used, must always exist, rather than being contingent upon "the right conditions", lest those involved deny that the context really constitutes a time of dispute. The teaching of the papacy is solid and does not deny the right and powers and significance of the college of bishops; it simply affirms what must be affirmed if the final authority and dispute-clarifying ability to the key-holder is to be exercised at all; and this extraordinary authority is, like infallible pronouncements, understood to be guided by the Holy Spirit itself.
- Regarding the need for today's deliberation by Church authority to contextualize Church teachings to modern circumstances, there is simply no convincing case that this could not be accomplished by a council absent a Pope
See the case I make in my reply to the list of councils. I simply do not see that the Orthodox Church has the potency here that it claims.
- So why didn't any of the disciples act as if Christ explained Peter's official supremacy to them?
I think this question supposes that it was appropriate or required that this be demonstrated within Scripture, at the time the New Testament epistles were being written, but with what I've said above, I don't see that this is the case.
- As far as we’ve seen, there’s no “objective, absolute proof” either way, and no existing evidences outside of our specific Traditional rejections of said Claims, are free from being subject to inescapable confirmation bias
I comment on this in my reply to the council list; that the very fact that there is a schism, when East and West are looking at the same Tradition, suggests to me that just getting all the bishops together to hash it out cannot possibly (i.e. in potency) manage to resolve this; without a key-holding dispute-settler, there is no solution. That there may be no "objective, definitive proof" in the Tradition, therefore, is not relevant; given that two halves of the episcopate can look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions suggests that there must be a temporal Head (vicar) among them with the authority to say "it is this way, not that".
- Fast forward to the Second Vatican Council and the years afterward. You have made some comments to me about your disagreements with the Novus Ordo and its validity. But you have established as thoroughgoing justification in all of our recent debates they very kind of authority that makes it impossible for you to have criticized contemporary developments in Church Tradition the way that you have.
I don't think I've ever questioned its validity. I have stated that I take issue with its abuses, that I recognize the disastrous consequences of the liturgical reforms (a question Pickstock deals with in her After Writing, which just arrived in my mail box today, very excited), which is a different matter. I don't have the authority to declare about its validity; in fact, by virtue of submitting to the Church, which declares it valid magisterially, I cannot disagree without separating myself from the Church.
However, this is where we Catholics have to be clear in explaining to non-Catholics how the Magisterium works. Not everything the Pope, or bishops, say off the cuff is Magisterial / Doctrinal. And so the Pope can say or do many things, not part of his magisterial office, to which I owe very little if any assent at all. Even his encyclicals, not being extraordinary Magisterium, can be questioned in good faith, especially if they fail to exercise even the ordinary Magisterium by reflecting what other popes or councils have taught. Pope Francis has written about ecological sin, which I'm just not obliged to take all that seriously, since it is totally novel and occurs nowhere else in Church Tradition or Magisterium. If the next five popes all start saying the same thing, clarifying the doctrine as they go, then I will owe a certain assent, understanding the teaching in the most charitable way I can (e.g. "while not a sin in the sense of separating us from God, it serves as a category even less than venial sin, but through the disregard of which may lead to venial sins of other sorts, just as venial sins lead to mortal sins; and thus, indeed, while Scripture says man is lord of creation, this of course comes with a certain responsibility" etc. yadda yadda). Of course, I don't expect the issue of ecological sin to be picked up by future popes, but I hope you get the picture.
And so, if a bishop says "You must believe the Novus Ordo is just as good as the Latin Mass", I'll respond, "No I don't". And if my bishop writes a formal letter saying "You , , ). These verses affirm that there exists an extra-Scriptural Apostolic knowledge, and that this knowledge exceeds what can be derived from the Scriptures reliably by laymen.
Secondly, I hope the arguments I have made about the intrinsic connection between Scripture and Tradition better establish how this continued Apostolic tradition and ministry would, to this day, contain insights not themselves contained in Scripture (at least explicitly enough to be readily drawn from it). I could again point to what I've said about the Eucharist, or any of the writings of St. Thomas - his Scripture exegesis constitutes extra-Scriptural knowledge that draws primarily upon the writings of authoritative figures earlier in the Church's Tradition.
- Concerning "So it may not have suited the Apostles desire to reveal to the masses the full extent of Peter's role, at the time those epistles were being written" (2) A papal succession beginning with Supreme Peter in Rome had been going on IN ROME for a decade or longer and Paul didn't want to REVEAL IT to the Romans? What?
What St. Paul wanted may (or may not) differ from what he and the rest of the Apostles judged as prudent for the time.
I will give an example (one that I cited to you, or maybe ARM, many months ago, although in the context of an entirely different discussion). In , as the creation of all things is being described, no mention is made whatsoever of the angels. St. Augustine's explanation of this fact is twofold. First, he points out that "the light" refers probably, at least on one level of interpretation, to the angels. But secondly and more importantly, Augustine argues that, because the Hebrews were a people so prone to idolatry, that revealing to them the existence of the angels in this way and at the time this was written would only have served as a cause for idolatry. Now, if we situate ourselves in that period of history where the Hebrews had access to the Book of Genesis, and other books, but not so late in history that they had access to later books that do speak more explicitly of the angels - would we in that time be justified in questioning the existence of the angels? Well yes, actually, we would. But would that change the simple fact that, at that time, angels did in fact exist? It would not.
Now you could argue that, in my example, it was not the case that no additional Scriptural revelation would be made after Genesis - much more would be revealed, and this would include more explicit writings on the angels. Whereas, in the case to which I am comparing this example, namely, the fact that no explicit reference is made to the papacy in the New Testament, the deposit of faith was complete and nothing new would be revealed in this way. This is a fair point, but, unlike under the Old Testament, in the New Testament Christ gave us a Church (and this is what Christ succeeded in establishing for the faithful, after all; a Church, including its hierarchical structure; the New Testament Bible came only after Christ's ascension). And so my point is that, just as it was not fitting to reveal to the early Hebrews the existence of angels, so too it may not have been fitting to reveal to the early Church the true and full nature of the papacy, but this true and full nature could still be later on revealed / defined by the Church, since Christ gave the Church this very authority to clarify and expound upon (but not change) doctrine throughout time. Maybe a defining of the papacy to the kinds of people to whom the Apostles were writing epistles would only have served to raise eyebrows, or generate the kinds of concerns we hear from Protestants who don't understand the papacy. If there was a risk, at that time, of the doctrine of the papacy being misunderstood, why reveal it? It wasn't even really that needed at that time. But by the time all these universal councils were being called, and disputes were arising, and much larger and more complex heresies were arising, suddenly the true need for the office that Christ did in fact establish was required, and thus we begin to see more Church teachings on this point. The existence of the angels was revealed at the proper time.
I've said what I wanted to say. I think a lot of the arguments I've made here are strong, but of course, I'm biased. I look forward to your thoughts; I'm sure there will still be disagreements, or need for clarification, but that's what dialogue (Logos) is for, after all.
Do the sins and inaction of Pope Leo X by necessity diminish the reality of his office and teaching authority? Not at all; it is a principle, recall, that "act necessitates potency, but potency does not necessitate act (within a subject)".
If you get the time and inclination, I'd like you to elaborate a bit more on this connection you're establishing between the pope as office and these metaphysical principles. Honestly, the more reading that I'm doing on the subject of the New Testament gospels the more I am realizing that a historicist interpretation applied to them must fail miserably. But following on this realization comes confusion, because whereas some of the crucial 'events' of the gospels are not to be taken historically, we are to apply their symbols as a hermeneutic for interpreting the papacy (for example, the Last Supper or the Keys).
I see parallels here which exist between the Eucharist and the pope, for this reason, but whereas the Eucharist is merely liturgical and ritualistic, the high office of pontiff is consequential in a way beyond the spiritual. Where the Eucharist is something like a correspondence in sympathy to something taking place at a spiritual level (in Heaven), the papal office can influence the very 'magisterium' which was thought to have entered the physical world but originated in Heaven. I'm not sure I am making this clear, but imagine that you say, "The pope cannot alter the core of the magisterium." There appears to be a bit of convenient back-and-forth here, i.e. between the less substantive position of a viceregency alone and the literal Vicar of Christ on earth.
Where it suits, one can point to the pope's lack of authority, but at the same time it removes the 'teeth' from the arguments that support his position on theological grounds. So what happens is a kind of wavering between a power-level which would honor the theological justification, and the more mundane human side of things. If the man can say things which even bridge the unholy, then where are the distinctions drawn? Is it merely in what he chooses to label a given utterance or piece of writing? If it is called X it is binding, but if it occurs as a Y, then it is just a man talking. When and where do these powers 'kick in', at will? It's hard to conceive of a Vicar of Christ on earth which can be such a thing and exist in such a way that at one moment, he is speaking blasphemy, and in another he is speaking with Christlike authority.
When it comes to the Pope, when do these correspondences between earth-Heaven (as in what is bound here is bound there, and what is loosed here is loosed there) cease and then resume again?
In fact, extending this Eucharist example, one could say that it is not contained in Scripture with the same degree of explicitness or lack of ambiguity as the Ten Commandments, but nonetheless it is affirmed by both East and West, and it is contained I would say clearly in Scripture, but not undeniably in Scripture - just like the primacy of Peter.
It is interesting that you bring up the Eucharist, again because most of the evidence shows that the concepts contained in this particular ritual preceded Christ, and certainly preceded the gospels. Take the Didache from the 1st century:
Concerning the eucharist, give thanks thus:
First, concerning the cup: We give thanks to you, our Father, for the holy vine of David your servant, which you have revealed to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory forever.
And concerning the broken bread: We give thanks to you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have revealed to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory forever.
As this broken bread was scattered upon the hills and has been gathered to become one, so gather your church from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.
The Didache predates the gospels, and we see a quite different focus of the eucharistic rite here, with no mention of the blood or body of Christ, but of the wine as symbol for the Vine (or branch cf. Jeremiah XXIII 5) of David's House and the bread as a reunification of its crumbs in one body of followers. As I think about this ritual, it is so obviously a mixture of Greek and Hebraic components. The bread and wine are a perennial component of rites of theophagy, going back to the most ancient proto-Greeks (contemporary with the Hebrews of Deuteronomy) who consumed them to worship Bacchus. The signature Hebraic component of this early Eucharist evidenced in the Didache is precisely that it does not celebrate either the death or resurrection of Christ, but instead worships the lineage of David through Christ as a revealed holy 'branch'. They praise this branch, or vine, symbolically via the fruits of the vine - as Christ is The Fruit of the Davidic branch, King of kings.
So what are we to think of the Eucharist as supposedly issuing from the Last Supper of the gospels? It's really impossible to think of this in historical terms. For one, Christ was a Jew and the ethnoreligion of His apostles was deeply Jewish. It is unthinkable they would have espoused the consumption of blood or of the body.
No, the far likelier origin of the Eucharist is not from Christ himself or from the gospels. Instead, the gospels adapted an existing and widely respected ritual into the gospels, including the highly non-Jewish (I really can't stress enough how much Jews themselves would have anathematized theophagy, especially involving blood consumption symbolism) aspect of theophagy, at once uniting the narrative of the Jewish messiah together with a would-be priestly liturgical rite. (I don't rule out the possibility that Christ himself could have known of the Greek tradition though and possibly introduced it to the apostles in a Judaized manner).
The point is that what we find in the Catholic Church as Eucharist today is not strictly scriptural, but no doubt relies on certain commentaries and oral traditions arising throughout and after the time of Christ. You have said as much about the papacy itself, and I am inclined to agree that although the papal office is not laid out concretely by scripture, it is a Christian tradition which is not unique to Christians, but is something featuring an admixture of Jewish and Roman influence.
I don't think these facts diminish much in the case of the Eucharist. In fact, I'm not at all convinced that it does. If as Plato told us (after many others had) in philosophical terms that what happens on earth corresponds with what happens in Heaven, and Christ conferred by way of knowledge to His apostles the first powers to govern how that transmission from earth-to-Heaven would go, it almost seems as if Christ might have been conferring some power to decide what way is best to facilitate the binding of people to the earthly church so as to bind them to the Kingdom of Heaven (in the spirit). Therefore, would we not expect some of these extra-scriptural rituals - many of which had already been proven, despite their roles in pagan traditions - to be claimed and modified for the Christian Church?
I truly believe my difficulty is coming from the way I interpret both Jesus Christ and the pope. If I take a historical view of the Christ (but not merely a historical version of him), it's hard to see how Christ did not establish an eternal kingship in the Spirit, and abolish any and all need for priestly offices. At the same time, there are the practical and earthly matters that attend what PS has called the temporal church. If Christ gave the crucial news to the apostles and expected from them to 'fan out' this good news, then something of an institution is implied (even if not laid out explicitly). The latitude given to these men in terms of their ability to best build on earth that which would bind in Heaven, may leave room for considerations in praxis that Christ did not simply hand them.
So there is one aspect in which we could choose to view the Catholic system as a 'paganized Christianity', and another where we could choose to view the Catholic system as 'Christianity that took for itself the useful, but errant (in object) rituals of the pagans and adapted them to direct their power to binding in Heaven by the authority of Christ.'
It's interesting because to view things the former way is almost to give more power to paganism, i.e. if paganism 'paganized' Christianity, we see it as an interloper on Christianity that was able to alter Christ's church. But if we view things from the latter perspective, why wouldn't Christianity have the power to say, 'Yeah, that ritual you have there? Christ is the one way, the one truth, the one life. That ritual literally belongs to us now.'
Just want to mention that the bread-and-wine of the Eucharist hearken back to Melchizedek, in Genesis. St. Paul talks about Melchizedek in the Epistle to the Hebrews, wherein he explains that Christ is a priest-king, like Melchizedek.
That is interesting. I was not aware of that - the OT is my biggest weak spot. If it is the true source of the signs for the bread and wine, that would make it the earliest reference for a eucharistic rite that I am aware of. I want to say that Genesis is supposed to date from around 1500-1300 B.C.
One thing I am wary of - just taking the scripture on its own - is that to bring out bread and wine to celebrate Abram doesn't appear to be a eucharistic rite, but rather something merely celebratory. As far as I know of sources for eucharistic material in the Palestinian/Hellenistic world, the Didache and Paul's letters were the earliest, along with the gospels. I brought up the Didache in the prior comment because it appears to contain evidence for very early Jewish-Christian observance of the shared-table literal rite of a eucharist, but not truly, for the reasons I gave before.
I suppose it could be possible that if Christ had introduced the concept to the apostles at Passover, that he might have been drawing on Melchizedek instead of a Hellenized version of Jewish table tradition. It's the drinking it and treating it as blood that form the strongest case against a pure Jewish or Christic origin. That consumption of a savior-God's body and blood appears very tethered to the mysteries of the Greeks.
But, who the hell knows. When it comes to the Bible, where there is a question, there is a controversy.
For my part, I think Paul is (if not wholly, then close to it) responsible for the gospel-form of the Eucharist. Paul had a Hellenistic background, and he was primarily preaching to the Gentiles, so the transition from what we see in the Didache to what we get with Paul's description makes sense if he was doing what I think he was. Of course, we know that Paul says he is bringing to the Corinthians what he received from God, but either way, even if we take it as having divine origin, the change over to the traditional sacrament that we know today is something I'd place with Paul.
I'm highly doubtful that Christ Himself ordered this as a sacrament to the apostles at the Last Supper. It's certainly possible that Christ would have, in teaching at the Passover table, made a reference to the Passover lamb and to the blood that they were to mutually spill as sacrifices. That just makes sense. But it doesn't make sense that Christ would have told the apostles to drink His blood and eat His body, that is, unless Christ himself (in the decades of his early life the Bible omits) was exposed to the same Hellenism that Paul had been.
EDIT: Just for clarity, what I'm trying to do here is establish a way to see the development of early Tradition from within the logical framework that Peace has given us as it regards popery, the idea being that what Christ empowered through the apostles was a means of founding the Church by means of binding and loosing people by temporal forms, assuring the apostles that what they did to this end would be binding in Heaven also. Viewed this way, this bestowal is the prescription to build the Church according to ways which Christ may not have directly prescribed, but which we think are inspired by the Spirit. Hence, my belief that Paul had a heavy hand in the early tradition of the developing Eucharistic sacrament, which the writers of the gospels would have taken up in his wake (and they did).
On the one hand, if we appeal to the advent of popery on the very grounds that Peace has, then what I am saying about the Eucharist can't be rejected on the grounds of the argument where you say: "Well, that's wrong because it's not contained in scripture! It's wrong to appeal outside of scripture for the source of the Eucharist when it says so right in the gospels!", while at the same time not relying solely on scripture for the case for the pope. I'm trying to resolve what I see as the source of wrong impressions about early tradition. The result must be the very same source of authority that was first granted to the apostles to bind and loose. If Christ didn't lay out the way to build the Church up temporally, then it makes sense that the earliest fathers had the latitude and inspiration to know how best to do it. In the case of the Eucharist, I think Paul, and later the gospel writers, were exercising that exact authority.
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