I have acknowledged in my reply to your original 6 points that there are multiple levels to anything in Scripture. And I acknowledge that you have in this reply acknowledged that I acknowledge this.
So I don't need to dispute with your interpretations, either of the rock, or Luke's gospel generally, in order to the nonetheless affirm what I have been saying.
I appreciate what you've been saying about not taking verses in isolation - I am well-acquainted with the danger of this, which is precisely why I keep citing EMJ's line about the Bible becoming a revolutionary document if taken outside if the Church. Taking the Bible out of the Church just is to do what you and I have both been doing. I am pointing at verses to help you understand that the substance of the principle is in Scripture. But I don't claim this is self-justifying; it is justified by virtue of the fact that this is what the early Church believed and taught. Then you go and point to a higher level interpretation, but you're still doing the same thing I have done - you are gleaning from the Bible what you yourself are able to, without - and you've admitted this - being any kind of Sctipture scholar.
My point in all this is that, really, this is not something we can settle by our own judgment (). We must have recourse to the Church if Scripture is to be understood, simply because there are so many layers, do many wisdom levels, and so many "hyperlinks" that no two or three guys on the internet could ever hope to get to the bottom of it. Only the Tradition of the Church, which has in it men like Augustine and Aquinas, who have poured over the entirety of Scripture and identified more of these hyperlinks and wisdom levels than we can ever hope to, can accomplish this, especially because this Tradition also includes the Apostolic wisdom that Scripture describes Christ giving to the disciples "in private" - i.e. they weren't written down. Do if Scripture itself affirms this, how can we pretend that we, by our own effort, can discern from Scripture the fullness if truth? Scripture disconnected from Tradition simply isn't readable, period - and Scripture is clear on this point, ironically enough. And for this irony to be explained, understand that I'm not saying that nothing true can be gained from Sctipture, and so we shouldn't waste our time. Nothing could be further from the truth! The graces and insights to be gained are innumerable. But the fulness of truth cannot be known without Tradition.
You conclude by saying what is said of Peter in these Gospels does not lead to an establishment of the papal office, but you don't define your understanding of this office or what ways you think it is any different from the basic reading of Luke 22:31-32, or any of the other Scriptures I've cited. You then rightly point out that Christ was not building in time the Davidic Kingdom, but in heaven - but the Church with Her papacy does not pretend or claim to be Christ's kingdom on earth. She is merely fighting to bring souls to this. Having a successor of Peter to feed the sheep of today and confirm the brethren of today is simply a continuance of the need for which Chriat said these things of Peter himself. And this remains true regardless of what deeper levels of exegesis can also apply.
Having a successor of Peter to feed the sheep of today and confirm the brethren of today is simply a continuance of the need for which Christ said these things of Peter himself. And this remains true regardless of what deeper levels of exegesis can also apply.
Did Christ explicitly speak of such a need? He did not. But of course, you'll cite another piece of scripture and say that it is contained there, and why? Well, tradition of course!
There is not much more for me to say on this subject of interpretation. I find myself running headlong into this interminable circular wall around your beliefs which is always self-justifying according to the same principles. I don't say this as an insult, just to state the fact. So for this final comment, I just want to do a kind of 'meta analysis' of what I see happening within the conversations themselves. On top of this, I can't say any more.
You claim that you have the correct tradition.
I say, "Why?"
You provide scripture name.X.Y
I spend 12,000 words putting together an analysis consisting of tying said scripture together with other scripture in a way which is coherent, effective, and straightforward - one which rings harmoniously with reason.
You say, "No. You don't have the authority to do this."
I say, "Why?"
To which you reply, "Because you are wrong, and if you aren't wrong, then at the very least your understanding is incomplete - rife with milk, but lacking meat."
I say, "Why does yours have meat?"
You say, "Because it's the correct tradition."
I am confident that the Papacy is legitimate as the earliest fathers of my tradition say it is so, because my Church is the seat of the Vicar of Christ on earth.
It is just begging the question. All around. No two ways about it.
Some observations follow. Throughout these discussions we've seen that, at bottom, the sum of your arguments rests on the argument from authority. However, by the time we arrive at the medieval tradition of the Scholastics, we find you holding up as the outstanding example of Catholic theology, the philosophy of a man deriving his conclusions not from Church authority herself, but from pure reasoning. Of course, Aquinas goes to scripture and Aquinas confirms himself against the earlier fathers of the Church, but a great deal of what Aquinas did was the result of his own exegesis.
To this you'll say, "This occurred within the Tradition", and while this is certainly true, he is the exemplar of the integration of reason into Catholic thinking. Suppose someone had wanted to denounce Aquinas' thought. What would have been their recourse? The Church authorities, of course.
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 the very kind of authority that makes it impossible for you to have criticized contemporary developments in Church Tradition the way that you have.
I could merely ask, "On what grounds are you justified?"
The answer can only be that you have none. You've conferred by way of Tradition this very power to that very office, and should you choose to denounce it, how should one even go about this? Rather, how does one justify it to oneself given Papal Infallibility established firmly as Church dogma?
Suppose you say, "Well I have my reason! And I appeal to THE TRADITION!"
But what you're rejecting just IS tradition!
You rebut: "The tradition™ is clear that no elaboration or clarification is able to contradict the core magisterium!" But where did the magisterium come from, and by what did it gain its authority? Well by the authority of the papacy as Vicar of Christ!
So see what has now developed: as you wish, you take the Tradition unto yourself to say what It is, for example, as you criticize contemporary development from the Vatican. Yet, as it suits you, you also throw out like paint the concept of Tradition onto a sprawling externalization of names, buildings, and histories, and say effectively: "Look at this castle! How old it is and how large its bricks! This is its power: the weight of History and Consensus."
Now this is when you say that I'm wrong, its power is God Himself by way of the Spirit, and we start right back at noon on our circle.
In this last section, I want to point out that prior to Christ, there had been a longstanding tradition in the religion of ancient Palestine, to which the Jews held with a kind of loyalty that matches yours to Rome.
We could imagine them saying, "Why should we trust your tradition? The burden of proof lies with you to show us that it is true, because history and consensus are our allies."
Then Jesus performs miracles. So establishes a new tradition, and we find that this tradition is one established solely on the words of Christ to His disciples and their compilation into text. The evidence, like rocks against which objections shatter, comes from a combination of their tendency to facilitate gnosis combined with their historicity. Since gnosis is personal and subjective (something which you could claim against me any day out of the week), then by way of argument we come to the subject of historicity. The Gospels and Pauline letters boast their closeness to Christ in his incarnate life, they boast eyewitness testimony, and finally they boast their historical accuracy by way of including landmarks within the narratives that are archaeologically/historically verifiable.
So wherefrom inside of that tradition is the Papacy discussed? It isn't.
Recall that the first true historical evidence of actual Papal authority (not merely implied) doesn't come to us until around the 4th century! Now here enters the fairly subtle problem, for your claims to unbroken tradition by necessity cannot rely on 'traditional tradition' - after all, a tradition by definition implies exactly the kind of evidence of effects in the world which yours lacks for the entire first 3 centuries.
Therefore, you rely on an intermediary 'tradition' which you call oral. If we take what unquestionably existed in the late 1st century as the Gospel Tradition (GT) and what comes later in the 4th century as the Roman Catholic Tradition (RCT), then what you're saying looks like:
GT --> X --> RCT
...with roughly a few centuries of unevidenced papal tradition contained in X. Now, I have addressed in a comment yesterday why this is simply illogical to assume that because RCT exists, that we ought to assume X is equal to and continuous with RCT. I gave the example of the beginning of recorded history to back up this argument, and I think it is a fairly good one.
But we have a puzzle with this period X that just amounts to a quagmire, frankly.
The issue is so clearly resolved by Paul. We know that Paul was converted somewhere close to 33 A.D. Paul met with Peter first after his conversion. We also know that Paul wrote his letters to the Romans from Corinth around 57-58 A.D. The first council at Jerusalem was sometime around 45-48 A.D. So we are most likely talking about a so-called Papal tradition (even orally transmitted, be that the case) which is at minimum 10 years old by the time Paul writes to the Romans.
When I pointed out that it is unthinkable (it actually is) that Paul would not have mentioned anything related to this high office, the supremacy of which belonged to Peter, nor to literally any detail that Peter was in or had ever been to Rome, you were not able to contradict that claim - because it is simply true.
Instead you told me that the truth does not come necessarily from just one book of the NT, but the composite (except you directly refuted my claim to as much, earlier in my analysis of Luke, because the authority of the Church was supposedly sufficient to justify the Papacy from one or two verses!).
Nonetheless, you said to me:
First of all, even if this were true, it wouldn't matter based on what has been said about meat vs milk. What the Church knows about the history of the Apostles exceeds what is written in Scripture about them (1)...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). However, elements of this truth are nonetheless revealed, just not as explicitly as you would like
[the labels were inserted by me for the ability to reference these sections; italics are also mine]
(1) How do you know that? Someone else had to write that fact, no? Therefore aren't the very claims that attest to an unwritten oral tradition up for some kind of critique or verification? And does it matter that they come centuries later? I guess not. For the sake of being direct, you are now relying on making claims to extra-Biblical secret knowledge.
(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?
I apologize to both of you for being uncharitable, both in my treatment of your arguments, and in the tone I have employed. Obviously I am passionate about these issues, and tend to get fired up when I see people defending what I perceive to be schismatic or heretical beliefs, but that is no excuse for the rude, dismissive, and generally unloving tone I have employed with you both. I am sorry.
From the first article, of the first question, of the first part of the Summa Theologiae:
"knowledge can be concerned only with being, for nothing can be known, save what is true"
We have discussed before this notion of "true gnosis" and "false gnosis", but in reality there can only be gnosis. If the belief is not true, it cannot be known - thus it is only a false belief. Belief, of course, is full assent of the intellect without doubt (if there is doubt, it is just opinion). Obviously we are all at a point of belief with respect to our positions, which is why you have both made statements suggesting that this conversation stop, since it seems we are getting nowhere.
I blame myself for this. Yes, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. There is no doubt in my mind on this point. But as a result of this, I have been approaching these arguments with insufficient charity, and even an irrational attitude. Chiro has tried to bring this back to reason, and rightly so - where beliefs differ, reason is the only recourse to resolving such conflict (barring grace, of course). While argument alone does not determine gnosis, it can contribute to the path that leads one to it. Back when I was debating with about Orthodoxy, he often frustrated me by making statements like "I just know", and with certainty. Fine, he had belief - but in the context of a debate on the differences of his faith and mine, that was insufficient. But I have begun to do the same thing in this debate, which has caused the two of you - at least so I judge - to treat me and respond to me similarly; which is to say, there are many arguments I have also made that I feel were not treated or interpreted in a charitable spirit, but rather were dismissed because my interpretations contradict the beliefs you two hold. Again, I blame myself, as I did this first, and I am sorry.
None of what I've just said changes the fact that I do believe in what I believe in, and that I do believe getting these issues right is important for our salvation - for our ability to attain union with God. I fear that if these points are not properly addressed, we may live our lives with the temptation to pride, to personal judgment, and with a lack of sufficient humility, which could ultimately close grace out of our lives when we need it most.
So, I understand if the two of you are not willing to pretend that your beliefs aren't true, because I am not willing to do that either. I believe what I believe, without doubt, because I believe they are true. However, even if we all hold firm to our beliefs, honest debate on these issues remains possible, if we have recourse to reason, which is what Chiro was trying to return my attention to.
These debates take up time; I know that as well as you do. It is Lent (for me anyway; I guess the Orthodox Lent may start later). There are certain things I have given up this season, and I considered making Poal one of them. I did decide to give up other social media, but I didn't give up Poal (or at least, Poal message notifications) because this conversation was ongoing, and I didn't want to leave at what might have been a critical juncture. Clearly, it seems, I should have.
I have quite a long list of points both of you have made that I believe I have adequate responses to. Some of the essence of my responses are contained in what I have already written, but I can elaborate and ground these more satisfactorily such that they will no longer appear fallacious or circular.
So if the two of you are willing, not to set aside your beliefs, but to argue in what I would call a Thomistic fashion - by not being afraid to present as charitably as possible the strongest arguments against our positions, and draw both on tradition and reason to answer them as best we can - in order to in the spirit of charity and truth try to come to a better understanding of each others' positions, at the very least, if not come to a fuller picture of the Truth on these issues - then I will better structure my arguments and we can continue as we were. Maybe I will post my arguments after Lent ends. Or if you think I've made these exchanges distasteful enough through my folly, that's fine too; just let me know.
Well, it takes a big man to admit that; God forgives, so do I. And I’d be lying if I said I’d never done the same thing, which in part explains my reluctance - borne of experience - to debate these issues of millennial magnitude. A few dudes on POAL almost certainly aren’t going to clear this up, where the greatest Saints and minds of the last thousand years have failed.
I believe the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Infinite Wisdom, knows exactly what’s going on, and why. After having been through enough of these fruitless battles, by now I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to:
1) faithfully preserve the specific Tradition we’ve received, without compromise, and 2) don’t get in fights about any of it with other Christians. 3) be open to the possibility that one’s own mind may change in light of new evidence, which had not been considered; but never expect this of others.
Nobody here got in any of what I’d call “fights”, so I think we’re good. One thing I’d learned which I hadn’t understood was the Latin understanding of the Magisterium. As an Orthodox Christian, it had not occurred to me there was a name for the “good thing” that the Papacy conferred upon her subjects. It hadn’t occurred to me; but I can certainly see the value, and I can admit it was something that pre-Schism Orthodox Christians both East and West basically took for granted. I gained that insight from these debates, and probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
So does that mean I’m ready to start praying the Rosary at a FSSP Mass ? Not so fast. Acknowledging the Traditional understanding of the Magisterium doesn’t suddenly negate the Thousand Years of Divergent Tradition we’re up against.
The pre-Schism Roman Saints are our Saints, too, and they were working and writing within the paradigm that real for them - that is, a living, breathing, Christian Empire at the top of the world. They had an Ecumene. We do not. That changes everything. Would they recognize the post-Schism, late medieval updates to the Roman System as Orthodox? That’s extremely debatable, and almost all Orthodox think they would not.
And this isn’t because we’re schismatic assholes; it’s because we simply cannot believe that our Apostolic Community was completely wrong this whole time - centuries, even - and that God really intends for us to just surrender to this power-hungry globalist corporate super-state.
Consider our perspective, which is more likely;
A) all the other Ancient Patriarchates, and the hundreds of Bishoprics established by them for hundreds of years, were totally full of shit, and they conspired to break free from Latin control in a massive schism, or B) Rome decided that, to expand its power and influence, it pieced together from whatever it could within the Tradition, a sort of unprecedented “super-Bishopric” to rule them all, and proceeded to do so by whatever means possible.
The choice, to us, is incredibly obvious. Rome clearly made it up, to gain power.
I’m not saying this to be a jerk, or to make you doubt your beliefs or whatever. I’ve been happy enough to leave well-enough alone. But please understand, you don’t have a chance at this. By all means, explain your position. But please don’t get bent out of shape that we’re not buying it.
There's no need to apologize, Peace. I'm serious. If I'm honest, I have not been offended at any point in this conversation, but there may be a reason for that which will be important to talk about. But to begin, and forgetting the nature of our current debate topic, I owe you a great deal of credit. Truly, I owe it to you that I have found my way back to Christianity, and this is not merely lip service. I was there while you took on both myself and ARM for a couple of months, and then as I backed off, you continued to field him as he dug in. I've been debating issues of philosophy and religion with people online for years. I've never seen a Christian remain as committed, patient, and unwavering as you did for the better part of a year, let alone against one of the sharper and more highly educated atheists either of us has ever met.
Most Christians who would be willing to commit the time lack the knowledge and acumen. Those who have the latter typically wouldn't put in the time. So yours was an example that had a major impact on me. No matter how 'heated' any of our discussions has been - or could still be - that fact doesn't change. Concerning this debate over Catholicism, there's no doubt it is important, nor is it to be dismissed as a prissy debate over abstract theological particulars. Yet at the end of the day, even if it were the case that I never hanged my hat in the Catholic Church, I know you'd be just fine as a Catholic.
I recall one of the exits on the highway of our debate with ARM had to do with the nature of faith, and how ultimately all belief (and therefore all knowledge, by extension) rests on faith. It occurred to me earlier today, as I was hammering on your recursion to belief in Rome's authority, to question what the alternative could be? Is there any belief system that doesn't ultimately come to rest there? Don't they all become circular at some point? One of the things I strive to do, as a basic philosophical method, is to always ask whether whatever 'test' I'm applying to one person's belief/argument/claim could also apply to my own. It's an interesting thing to consider. If I had been really hammering on one of King's theological stipulations, could I eventually force him into that same loop back to "I have faith in this, and that's all I can say."
But this leads me into another point I want to make about my particular situation in this debate. I grew up in a mostly secular environment. I discovered Christianity early in high school, within a Protestant context. It was a Church of God, and back then the concept of theology never really registered to me. I mostly went because of a girl. Later, I fell away from the church and actually found myself first fascinated with pagan tradition and later the occult. By the time I began my talks with yourself and ARM, I'd actually become authentically atheist. I stress that I was a legitimate atheist, because I don't truly think most atheists know what it is like to actually be atheist. They think they do, but they don't. Frankly, I'm not even convinced ARM is legitimately atheistic, as in believes in nothing. When you look for the devil, find it, and come out the other side still not believing anything, you've got nothing to look for anymore. Real atheism isn't this cocky thing we find so many times online, people with an inclination to argue. It's nothing. It's despondent and hopeless. It's powerless.
I'm saying this because it situates me uniquely in this debate, in a way that isn't shared by yourself and King, and this is important. Your faiths are both stronger. You have invested faith in and committed yourselves to an actual communion within the world. I haven't done that.
You asked in your comment if I am willing to be charitable, and all I can say is I am the most charitable person you'll ever find. The rub is: it's because I'm never afraid to treat what I think as wrong, truly because I've never been afraid to give up on anything I believe. We've discussed things related to this before, and the frustrations my Christian friend has had with me. I can bounce back and forth between being these different things, and holding these different beliefs, because in some sense I have this weakness of being a chameleon.
It has its tradeoffs. On the one hand, it can be useful when we are reasoning about things. It can give me some flexibility in debates. On the other hand, what am I risking? I've got no skin in the game. Nothing to lose if I treat every belief like it's cheap to exchange. So I've been in a different predicament than either of you, and I must acknowledge that my desire to know truth combined with what I've said above can cause me to be like 'water on rock', since I am so fluid and unattached to anything, I can seep in as I look for cracks. Again, I acknowledge this can be useful, but is ultimately a piss poor place to be.
Of course this has all begun to change, but some of those tendencies are still there with me. At the moment, I find myself on a bit of an island. Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm arguing for a protestant view here, not at all. In truth, I don't know where I should be, and I'm wondering if I'm not just another Kierkegaard. What a bunch of existentialist tripe!
Do know that if I am critical, it is because I care. I want to find a place to be. If I express a concern, it's not about arguing for the sake of arguing. If I offer an argument that seems a little pointed, or sarcastic, or whatever, it's probably because my frustration is authentic, and not directed at you personally, but at God and the world because I just wish it could be easier to know the Truth.
Sorry for the diary entry.
(post is archived)