- "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.
(post is archived)