The Bible, The Church, Tradition, Authority, and the Canon - Page 3

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by Thao 

Eh, I think 1 Timothy 2:15's an easy one. It can't mean "saved BY childbearing", because that would contradict great chunks of Scripture which declare that salvation is by grace through faith; therefore it must mean "saved from death in childbirth".

There are other possibilities besides just those two interpretations.

I think there are quite a lot - there is a ton of writing on the meaning of that passage.  A lot of them go into a more spiritual, prophetic, or typological meaning.  Many would say it actually refers to Mary bearing Christ.

[Shami]

Mamabadger and Bluegoat and anyone...

If you have never seen or experienced and entire congregation carrying out the Lord's supper in a simple way, singing, praising, rejoicing then it would be hard to imagine how do people know what to do?   Any person can call a hymn and we all sing it.  Anyone can pray, praise, speak a verse, but still there is such a flow that words can't describe it.  I am telling you that the Lord's supper can be very simple gathering without a program. 

Sure they were Jews who were used to a particular way, but after Jesus came it was a new covenant and a new way to worship the Lord.  It confuses me to see so many OT practices when we are under a new covenant.  Weren't the Jewish believers charged to leave that all behind them?

Even though you tell me of early church writings showing some kind of procedure, that procedure never made it into the NT.   If there was any problem with a simple worship, Paul would have said, hey, you need to be applying the oil and lighting the candles and arranging the hymns--don't slack off in the area of liturgy.  I realize that doesn't 'prove' that it was a simple worship, but at any rate, whether they carried out your way or my way, wouldn't it be in the NT?  I mean, all the super important stuff is in the NT.  Anything that really matters is in the NT.

Ok obviously I am not going to 'prove' anything to you or any one else who holds Tradition in such high honor that not even scripture can prove it wrong.  But, can you at least see from the scripture where I am coming from?   I gave you so many cases in the NT.  It still seems the same as in the other thread. It seems as if quoting from the NT doesn't mean squat.   It's like we just talk across each other or past each other, without ever really engaging in a joint conversation.   I can live with people disagreeing with me, but from my perspective it seems that no one is even willing to throw me a bone.  Is this how most debate forums are?  

[Purple Sage]

Originally Posted by Bluegoat 

Here is some stuff addressed to Protestants and Calvinists from the Orthodox.  I've only just looked through it so I don't really know how good it is.

Thank you!

[Shami]

Quote from Bluegoat

"Perhaps a clearer way to describe it is to dispense with the separation of Scripture, as if it was something different than Tradition.  Rather, Scripture is just one part of Tradition, along with the practices of the Church like the Eucharist and the liturgy, or art, or hymns, or the writings of the Fathers, or even the stories of saints.  All of these things are part of the teaching of the Church.  They exist not to interpret Scripture for us - yes, they do that.  But their purpose is to give us the full truth of Christ and help us to unite ourselves to him in the Church."

This really helped.  I missed this earlier.  This helps me understand where you're coming from and why you don't need scripture to prove anything.  I still don't agree, but I think i just had and ah ha moment.

[mamabadger]

My responses in red.
 

Originally Posted by Shami 

Mamabadger and Bluegoat and anyone...

If you have never seen or experienced and entire congregation carrying out the Lord's supper in a simple way, singing, praising, rejoicing then it would be hard to imagine how do people know what to do?   Any person can call a hymn and we all sing it.  Anyone can pray, praise, speak a verse, but still there is such a flow that words can't describe it.  I am telling you that the Lord's supper can be very simple gathering without a program. 

I have seen it done, and have no doubt that it can be both simple and uplifting to the participants. I did not mean to denigrate Protestant services aesthetically or suggest they were awkward or stilted, or that the participants were not sincere. I think, though, it is safe to say that this form of worship is an innovation dating back to the Reformation. I believe the Protestant dislike for anything overly ornate or ritualistic is something that developed historically in response to Roman Catholic excesses, and I was suggesting that this dislike was colouring your image of early Church practices.

Sure they were Jews who were used to a particular way, but after Jesus came it was a new covenant and a new way to worship the Lord.  It confuses me to see so many OT practices when we are under a new covenant.  Weren't the Jewish believers charged to leave that all behind them?

There was a great deal that was left behind, but certainly it was never suggested that Christians leave everything of the OT behind. We could not even have Christianity without a great deal of OT content. The Temple rites were essential and sacred, and would be among the very last things to be discarded. 

Even though you tell me of early church writings showing some kind of procedure, that procedure never made it into the NT.   If there was any problem with a simple worship, Paul would have said, hey, you need to be applying the oil and lighting the candles and arranging the hymns--don't slack off in the area of liturgy.  I realize that doesn't 'prove' that it was a simple worship, but at any rate, whether they carried out your way or my way, wouldn't it be in the NT?  I mean, all the super important stuff is in the NT.  Anything that really matters is in the NT.

Again, we are running into that essential disagreement about the primacy of Scripture. I can understand why this argument makes sense, if you accept a particular view of the New Testament. From my church's perspective, it is absolutely not the case that "anything that really matters is in the NT." Anything that really matters (about Christianity) is found within the Church, and some of those things were written down and included in the NT. Some of them were written down in documents by apostles or students of apostles, but for various reasons were not included in the canon of the NT, but are still worth reading. Many more of them were taught orally by the apostles, and put into practice, with or without being written out in great detail afterwards. 

Ok obviously I am not going to 'prove' anything to you or any one else who holds Tradition in such high honor that not even scripture can prove it wrong.  But, can you at least see from the scripture where I am coming from?   I gave you so many cases in the NT.  It still seems the same as in the other thread. It seems as if quoting from the NT doesn't mean squat.   It's like we just talk across each other or past each other, without ever really engaging in a joint conversation.   I can live with people disagreeing with me, but from my perspective it seems that no one is even willing to throw me a bone.  Is this how most debate forums are?  

I am really not trying to be difficult, but we are talking about two very different views of the most basic elements of Christianity. We do often seem to be talking at cross purposes, because what you see as an absolute authority, I do not; and what I see as an obvious proof, you find completely inadequate. Even a comment like "not even scripture can prove it wrong" takes the position that Scripture is clearly the ultimate arbiter. We are completely at odds here. That does not have to be a hostile position, as I see it, but it is a fairly absolute deadlock.

How would one of us throw you a bone? I am unclear on what you would like to see in the discussion that is not happening right now.

[Purple Sage]

Shami, I think this article will explain a lot for you. It certainly has for me. It's long, just to warn you.

[Smokering]

What I need to see is proof that Scripture plus logic are all we need to learn what we need to know.  If they are, then you have a point, but I'm contending that there's something missing from the equation.  And I'm with Bluegoat on this - the burden of proof is on the SS advocates because before the Reformation no one argued that Scripture was sufficient all by itself.

1: "Scripture plus logic are all we need to learn what we need to know" is NOT the position I am advocating, nor is it sola Scriptura. "Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith" is what I'm arguing.

2: I've made several arguments in this thread already on this, which haven't been addressed.

3: Not everyone before the Reformation held the Catholic view of Tradition either (Augustine, for instance). And of course, I believe the apostles did argue that Scripture was sufficient as an infallible rule of faith (or rather, Scriptural teachings, whether written or oral); I've argued this already, and you haven't addressed those arguments.

4: I dislike "burden of proof" arguments. They tend to simply be excuses. Everyone should be convinced of his own position and able to argue it. I don't see why historical recency puts the burden of proof on SS advocates necessarily. I have put several arguments to Catholics about the epistemic necessity and functional usefulness of the Magisterium (which apparently I've been spelling wrong for the last two pages...), and haven't had them addressed.

This is a good example.  I can't reconcile Calvinism with what I know about God.  When I read Catholic commentaries (I'd read EO as well, but I can't find any free ones online) on the verses that Calvinists use to argue for predestination, the explanations make sense.  IMO, Calvinism takes the Scriptures out of their proper place in the entire "deposit of faith" and changes their meaning entirely.  I'm certain you disagree. 

Well, obviously. But notice that you're reading Catholic commentaries. They're not infallible, and you're not infallible - making several degrees of fallible separation from the infallible doctrines, with a whole host of opportunity for error to creep in - yet you accept their arguments by the use of logic and private judgment. Isn't that a tacit admission that knowledge can be gained by sola Scriptura methods - Scripture, logic, fallible minds and all? You may not think your knowledge is infallible, but you seem to think it's good enough to make a confident statement about Calvinism. And, as I said before, you use "good enough" knowledge to run your life in many other vital areas - driving a car, choosing a spouse, learning a trade, reading and writing. You don't infallibly know that you spelled "sausages" right on the shopping list, but presumably you're unhindered by the feeling that you should. Why the different attitude to Scriptural knowledge?

Edited by Smokering - 12/21/10 at 9:35pm

[Smokering]

What kind of lens would be appropriate?  The same kind I suppose that one uses when deciding if Scripture is indeed true.  I think you are wrong to say that going back to Scripture that everyone agrees on would be an option, since many people rely on Scripture as a result or accepting claims about the nature of the Church.  Really, accepting the Church because one trusts Scripture seems quite odd, since it is both temporally and logically and really in every other -arry second to the Church.  If the Church is a fraud, then so is Scripture.  So I guess I would say, how did you come to the conclusion that Scripture was reliable?

Scripture did not come from "the Church" as any kind of organised entity. It came from inspired individuals - in the case of NT, it was written to the church (mostly in the form of letters), not formed by committee based on the consensus of what all believed, and so on. And given that I don't start from the position that the early church was the Catholic Church anyway - and I thought you didn't either? - I'm not sure what your point is. Oral and written teachings were the epistemic basis for the church, not the other way around - and indeed, a believer could hardly become a member of the church without being exposed to the gospel, ie. the Scriptures (whether in oral or written form). So it's simply untrue that Scripture is "temporally and logically and really in every other -arry second to the Church".

Thanks for explaining the deposit of faith. Catholics do, however, try to explain how new doctrines are rooted in the seeds of old ones, though, correct? Using arguments of Scripture and reason? And thus exposing those to the possibility of being proven unlikely, wrong or fallacious?

I don't think my saying that SS is recent is viewing it through a lens of Tradition.  There is no historical, secular evidence that it existed in the Early Church.  Maybe that is not quite what you mean?  In any case, Catholics would say that any doctrines that appear after 1600 were present in some form before that.  In the east I don't know if you would actually find anything that fits that description.

No, I was saying that it's telling you consider its historicity relevant. SS advocates can certainly be interested in the practices of the early church, and perhaps gain new insight on biblical texts from them; but they do not believe that everything that was taught - even widespread - in the early church was infallible. Particularly if it contradicts reason and logic. So "the early church didn't believe in SS", even if true - and I believe the apostles did believe it, in a pre-fixed-canon kind of way, given what they wrote about Scripture and tradition in the Bible - isn't a compelling argument from the SS point of view (any more than "That isn't in the Bible" isn't a compelling argument from the Catholic point of view.

I understand that you don't think that ideas like infant baptism are unclear.  That isn't the point.  I don't think they are unclear either, which is the point, because I disagree with your conclusions.  And the same can be said for some people that we all agree have some pretty impressive minds.  These are not small items, like whether women should wear hats in church.  These are fundamentals on how we are to interact with God, what he commands us to do, and how we have access to Grace.  If the Eucharist really is what the Apostolic Churches claim (along with Lutherans and a few others), than your view is a really serious problem.  If using images in Church really is idolatry, or leads to it, that is a pretty serious problem.  If God has really offered salvation to everyone, saying that he hasn't is a monumental heresy.  So to say that as Christians using just Scripture, as long as we are honest and intellectually rigorous we can come to pretty close agreement on all of the really important stuff seems just plainly untrue.

1. Just because "great minds" disagree about something doesn't mean they were all being intellectually rigorous and honest. Great minds can start from faulty presuppositions, or be hampered by intellectual sins and weaknesses just like everyone else. With perfected minds and bodies, I believe it would be possible for Christians to come to the same conclusions on matters of doctrine; just as with perfected minds and bodies, a Scripture plus Tradition approach would lead to Christians with unified belief. Here on earth, neither system is perfect. But I don't see why we should expect a perfect system - it was never promised.

2. Practically speaking, the existence of the Magisterium was and is unable to prevent schism and disagreement, including the Reformation itself. So to say that as Christians using Scripture and Tradition, as long as we are honest and intellectually rigorous we can come to pretty close agreement on all of the really important stuff is similarly plainly untrue. Neither situation is a problem unless you expect a level of unity in the church Christ never promised.

3. I agree that misunderstanding these issues can have very serious consequences, but that doesn't logically lead to "Therefore, we need a Magisterium". The apostles, warning against false teachers, never appealed to a tradition that can be proven to be anything other than the teachings contained in the Bible. It would have been fairly obvious and easy for them to say "False teachers will come along, listen to the church of Rome and you'll stay on-track" - but they notably didn't. Why not include such a useful piece of information?

You keep arguing against a position I don't hold, Smokering. Sola Scriptura, as you have described it, believes that it is possible to correctly interpret any passage of the Bible with proper of application of logic. I'm saying that is incorrect. If you are going to debate my posts, please debate the position I actually hold.

Well, I agree it's incorrect, and I'm sorry if my position came across that way. I believe the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith for the believer. For the vast majority of the Biblical text, I believe correct interpretation is possible by people trained in logic and principles of textual criticism, particularly if they have access to books written by learned men (including, in some cases, Catholic men!) and/or the ability to read the original languages. And I'd say this vast majority includes all that is necessary for life and godliness. A fairly small percentage of the Biblical text is much more opaque, and a good deal  of the original percentage is much simpler. If a Catholic authority claims to have the ability to interpret one of the more opaque passages, he traditionally uses Scripture and logic, within the context of Tradition (am I right so far, Bluegoat?) to prove that position. In which case, the Protestant layman is in pretty much the same boat as the Catholic layman - he can use his fallible mind and private judgment to interpret the teaching (recognising its presuppositions, which the Protestant may or may not find problematic, depending on the instance), follow the thread of logic and examine the use of Scripture and previous teachings in the development of the current one. The difference is that the Protestant is free to say "Wait, that doesn't make sense", whereas the Catholic is told - in at least one case of doctrine I know of - that even thinking dissenting thoughts is a sin. Either way, the layman's position is not infallible, and may be incorrect (either by the standards of the original teaching, or - if you believe there can be a difference - by the standards of objective truth). If private judgment, application of Scripture and logic are considered epistemically unworthy to interpret Scripture, they must be considered equally epistemically unworthy to interpret Tradition. I don't think anyone pro-Tradition on this thread has really addressed this point yet, and it's a rather vital one.

[Smokering]

Sorry to multipost, but I thought this point was worth making before I get bogged down in further responses to my last few posts:

The idea that the early church was in near-universal favour of Catholic or proto-Catholic doctrines is extremely simplistic. The early church disagreed on all sorts of things, and in some cases teachings that went against Catholic views preceded teachings that gradually morphed into them. Some of these views were held by people Catholicism considers heretics, either from their views on those issues or on others; but that begs the question (and further proves the point that the early church was all over the place - heresy is still diversity). Others are highly regarded by Catholics. There are also some secular sources which comment on Christian practices, though with varying degrees of credibility.

The first reference to infant baptism is against it; we have evidence that early devout Christian parents did not routinely baptise their babies; and a later practice of baptising dying babies indicated that they had not been routinely baptised before that. Gregory Nazienzen recommended babies only be baptised if they were dying. From church leaders who believed newborn babies had no sin, baptism was declared to be "for the remission of sins" in the Nicene Creed, officially approved in 381. The Didache mentions that baptizees are to fast for a day or two before baptism, with no caveats as to baptizees too young to safely do this. Justin Martyr gives a reason for baptism (155ish AD) that he claims is apostolic, which contrasts the choice of believers' baptism with the lack of choice babies possess. Tertullian argued for a delay in baptizing infants until they could "ask for salvation".

Veneration of images is another one (remembering that proof of the use of images is not the same as proof of their veneration). As late as 306 AD (ish), the Synod of Elvira forbade figurative representations in churches. Epiphanius destroyed a curtain in a church which contained a picture of Christ, and declared that it was "opposed to [the Christian] religion". St Melito, in 170 AD, wrote strongly against making sculptured images of God - even though it seems these particular people were actually offering food to the images (thus going rather beyond Catholic veneration), his arguments are against making images of God at all. Tertullian likewise wrote against the practice. In the second or third century, Minucius Octavius (not a Christian) accused the Christian Church of having no altars or "acknowledged images". Origen wrote against manufacturing images.

I could give other examples, but my point is not to get bogged down in the specifics. (And no, I'm not denying that in some cases, proto-Catholic views also existed in the early Church.) My point is - it isn't as simple as "the Church was unified until those pesky Reformers pulled doctrines out of their hats and spoiled our peace". Not at all. Many of the proto-Reformed positions existed in the early Church, even among the "good guys" of Catholicism (and EO), and later died out for a time. Some other positions were declared heretical early on, allowing the Church to say the positions didn't exist in the Church - which is sort of true, but rather begging the question. It is historically clear that the "seeds" of later Catholic doctrines also coexisted with other denominations' "seeds". Given this, my question is: By what process do/did Catholics determine which beliefs were part of the deposit of faith, and which were not?

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by Smokering 

What kind of lens would be appropriate?  The same kind I suppose that one uses when deciding if Scripture is indeed true.  I think you are wrong to say that going back to Scripture that everyone agrees on would be an option, since many people rely on Scripture as a result or accepting claims about the nature of the Church.  Really, accepting the Church because one trusts Scripture seems quite odd, since it is both temporally and logically and really in every other -arry second to the Church.  If the Church is a fraud, then so is Scripture.  So I guess I would say, how did you come to the conclusion that Scripture was reliable?

Scripture did not come from "the Church" as any kind of organised entity. It came from inspired individuals - in the case of NT, it was written to the church (mostly in the form of letters), not formed by committee based on the consensus of what all believed, and so on. And given that I don't start from the position that the early church was the Catholic Church anyway - and I thought you didn't either? - I'm not sure what your point is. Oral and written teachings were the epistemic basis for the church, not the other way around - and indeed, a believer could hardly become a member of the church without being exposed to the gospel, ie. the Scriptures (whether in oral or written form). So it's simply untrue that Scripture is "temporally and logically and really in every other -arry second to the Church".

Thanks for explaining the deposit of faith. Catholics do, however, try to explain how new doctrines are rooted in the seeds of old ones, though, correct? Using arguments of Scripture and reason? And thus exposing those to the possibility of being proven unlikely, wrong or fallacious?

I don't think my saying that SS is recent is viewing it through a lens of Tradition.  There is no historical, secular evidence that it existed in the Early Church.  Maybe that is not quite what you mean?  In any case, Catholics would say that any doctrines that appear after 1600 were present in some form before that.  In the east I don't know if you would actually find anything that fits that description.

No, I was saying that it's telling you consider its historicity relevant. SS advocates can certainly be interested in the practices of the early church, and perhaps gain new insight on biblical texts from them; but they do not believe that everything that was taught - even widespread - in the early church was infallible. Particularly if it contradicts reason and logic. So "the early church didn't believe in SS", even if true - and I believe the apostles did believe it, in a pre-fixed-canon kind of way, given what they wrote about Scripture and tradition in the Bible - isn't a compelling argument from the SS point of view (any more than "That isn't in the Bible" isn't a compelling argument from the Catholic point of view.

I understand that you don't think that ideas like infant baptism are unclear.  That isn't the point.  I don't think they are unclear either, which is the point, because I disagree with your conclusions.  And the same can be said for some people that we all agree have some pretty impressive minds.  These are not small items, like whether women should wear hats in church.  These are fundamentals on how we are to interact with God, what he commands us to do, and how we have access to Grace.  If the Eucharist really is what the Apostolic Churches claim (along with Lutherans and a few others), than your view is a really serious problem.  If using images in Church really is idolatry, or leads to it, that is a pretty serious problem.  If God has really offered salvation to everyone, saying that he hasn't is a monumental heresy.  So to say that as Christians using just Scripture, as long as we are honest and intellectually rigorous we can come to pretty close agreement on all of the really important stuff seems just plainly untrue.

1. Just because "great minds" disagree about something doesn't mean they were all being intellectually rigorous and honest. Great minds can start from faulty presuppositions, or be hampered by intellectual sins and weaknesses just like everyone else. With perfected minds and bodies, I believe it would be possible for Christians to come to the same conclusions on matters of doctrine; just as with perfected minds and bodies, a Scripture plus Tradition approach would lead to Christians with unified belief. Here on earth, neither system is perfect. But I don't see why we should expect a perfect system - it was never promised.

2. Practically speaking, the existence of the Magisterium was and is unable to prevent schism and disagreement, including the Reformation itself. So to say that as Christians using Scripture and Tradition, as long as we are honest and intellectually rigorous we can come to pretty close agreement on all of the really important stuff is similarly plainly untrue. Neither situation is a problem unless you expect a level of unity in the church Christ never promised.

3. I agree that misunderstanding these issues can have very serious consequences, but that doesn't logically lead to "Therefore, we need a Magisterium". The apostles, warning against false teachers, never appealed to a tradition that can be proven to be anything other than the teachings contained in the Bible. It would have been fairly obvious and easy for them to say "False teachers will come along, listen to the church of Rome and you'll stay on-track" - but they notably didn't. Why not include such a useful piece of information?

You keep arguing against a position I don't hold, Smokering. Sola Scriptura, as you have described it, believes that it is possible to correctly interpret any passage of the Bible with proper of application of logic. I'm saying that is incorrect. If you are going to debate my posts, please debate the position I actually hold.

Well, I agree it's incorrect, and I'm sorry if my position came across that way. I believe the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith for the believer. For the vast majority of the Biblical text, I believe correct interpretation is possible by people trained in logic and principles of textual criticism, particularly if they have access to books written by learned men (including, in some cases, Catholic men!) and/or the ability to read the original languages. And I'd say this vast majority includes all that is necessary for life and godliness. A fairly small percentage of the Biblical text is much more opaque, and a good deal  of the original percentage is much simpler. If a Catholic authority claims to have the ability to interpret one of the more opaque passages, he traditionally uses Scripture and logic, within the context of Tradition (am I right so far, Bluegoat?) to prove that position. In which case, the Protestant layman is in pretty much the same boat as the Catholic layman - he can use his fallible mind and private judgment to interpret the teaching (recognising its presuppositions, which the Protestant may or may not find problematic, depending on the instance), follow the thread of logic and examine the use of Scripture and previous teachings in the development of the current one. The difference is that the Protestant is free to say "Wait, that doesn't make sense", whereas the Catholic is told - in at least one case of doctrine I know of - that even thinking dissenting thoughts is a sin. Either way, the layman's position is not infallible, and may be incorrect (either by the standards of the original teaching, or - if you believe there can be a difference - by the standards of objective truth). If private judgment, application of Scripture and logic are considered epistemically unworthy to interpret Scripture, they must be considered equally epistemically unworthy to interpret Tradition. I don't think anyone pro-Tradition on this thread has really addressed this point yet, and it's a rather vital one.

I think before we go on we need to address a problem - you keep arguing against a Catholic understanding of Tradition, which I agree doesn't work. (That is - I don't think it is Traditional - it is an innovation.)  I've been suggesting a rather different view that is essentially the one held by the EO.  The Magisterium (which I also can never spell correctly for some reason - I have pretty much given it up) is not a viable understanding of how the Church is supposed to work, so I really don't disagree with anything you have directed against it - but that does not leave ss as the only alternative.  Purple Sage linked to an article in post#46 that pretty much outlines the POV I am thinking of.

[Shami]

MamaBadger,

Thanks for the last post.  That one definitely threw me bone. I know this is a debate forum, but I still thought I was on mdc---just a bunch of mom's having a conversation.   I'm going to 'gracefully' bow out of this thread.  Although I'll be reading along and learning.  It's too hard for me to make my points when we don't view the Bible the same. I can't argue like a lawyer and i am not a church history scholar, so carry on...  I'm just out of my league!

Purple Sage, thank you for the link.  I am skimming and reading parts of it.  He makes some points that Smokering batted down in her last post.  Some of the things that he said about Protestants is not the way I view myself. LOL  Two of them being, we 'only take what the Bible says' or we don't need other books/writings beside the Bible, and 'we don't need anyone to teach us'.  On the contrary, I read other Christian writings to learn from them.  And when Protestants say they 'only take what the Bible says', they generally mean that they have to see that it is a reasonable statement backed up by the scripture. 

[Purple Sage]

Smokering, I have to admit that I'm not capable of debating with you the way you want.  For one thing, I'm not Catholic.  At this point, I'm only defending the Catholic doctrines which are in common with the EO, and quite a few of them are as they share an entire millennium of history and Tradition.  I believe one of these Churches is right (I'm leaning East), but I'm still researching both of them with an open mind. 

I came into this thread with the position that I'm still in the process of learning but that I find the concept of an infallible Church to be more logical to me than the concept that Scripture alone is the only infallible rule of faith.  I still hold that position, and the reasons can best be summed up by the link I posted above. (Thanks again Bluegoat for the link you posted where I found that article!)  I think there is a Church that Christ promised us in Matthew 16 and that Paul said is the "pillar and foundation of truth" (which some translations call the "bulwark" or "buttress" of truth, which means that the Church has the position of protecting the faith) and that this Church has dealt with and continues to deal with heresies and false teachers (that Jesus also promised would come) in such a way that does not negate that the Church is what Christ promised us and Paul writes about in multiple places.  This isn't an either/or proposition - it's both/and.

Yes, I am using my own logic and reasoning to get to this point, and it's apparently okay with me to use my fallible mind to determine who or what I believe to be infallible in matters of faith.  I don't think it's logical to jump to the conclusion that God intended Scripture alone as the only infallible way to convey what we need to know about matters of faith because I still don't see any proof of that.  I am thoughtfully considering your points, however, and they are leading me further toward Orthodoxy and not toward SS, to be quite honest.

Shami, I know the characterization of Protestants in the article can be a bit off-putting, but the arguments against SS are solid.  Smokering seems to be saying that because there was any dissent in the early Church then that means there is no way for the Church to have an infallible deposit of faith. (I could be wrong, but that seems to be the gist of it to me.)  What I am learning is that what the Orthodox consider infallible are the teachings that have been truly catholic (universal) within the Church and have withstood the tests that Jesus promised us would occur.  The Church's infallible teachings have been the same since the beginning of Christianity and this is because they come from Christ, and the Church has protected them, just as Christ promised and just as Paul wrote.

[Thao]

Thanks for the clarification, Smokering, although I have to confess I'm still not clear on how you define sola scriptura. "Infallible rule of faith" is one of those phrases that could mean multiple things and requires further explanation. In a previous post, I thought you had defined it by saying:

If you believe that Scripture is infallible and that the laws of logic are infallible, we have an infallible methodology for interpreting an infallible text.

and

The sola Scriptura position is "Words have meanings, and meanings can be understood; therefore Scripture, being comprised of words, can be understood".

Now you say:

I believe the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith for the believer. For the vast majority of the Biblical text, I believe correct interpretation is possible by people trained in logic and principles of textual criticism, particularly if they have access to books written by learned men (including, in some cases, Catholic men!) and/or the ability to read the original languages.

I note you have qualified your position with the phrase "for the vast majority of the Biblical text". Does that mean you believe that there is a small minority of texts that cannot be correctly understood even by people trained in logic and with access to the resources you describe?

If private judgment, application of Scripture and logic are considered epistemically unworthy to interpret Scripture, they must be considered equally epistemically unworthy to interpret Tradition.

I believe a Catholic would say that the Church, through the Pope, receives special additional guidance from God that ensures the interpretation is correct. I'm curious about something: as an adherent of sola scriptura, do you believe that the church fathers were divinely guided when they established the canon we call the Bible? After all, they could  have chosen different books, which would have significantly impacted what you believe today.

If you do believe that God guided the church fathers to do that correctly, why is it not possible that God could offer ongoing divine guidance to the Catholic or EO Church?

If, on the other hand, if you believe the church fathers used only reason and principles of textual criticism to establish the canon - no divine guidance involved - how do you know they didn't make a mistake because of mankind's inherent fallen nature?

[Smokering]

I think before we go on we need to address a problem - you keep arguing against a Catholic understanding of Tradition, which I agree doesn't work. (That is - I don't think it is Traditional - it is an innovation.)  I've been suggesting a rather different view that is essentially the one held by the EO.  The Magisterium (which I also can never spell correctly for some reason - I have pretty much given it up) is not a viable understanding of how the Church is supposed to work, so I really don't disagree with anything you have directed against it - but that does not leave ss as the only alternative.  Purple Sage linked to an article in post#46 that pretty much outlines the POV I am thinking of.

I don't think I'm competent to address the EO position at this time - I'm not nearly as familiar with it as with the Catholic position, and I don't have much time now to research it as thoroughly as I'd like (Christmas and all). I don't want to debate it on the basis of reading a few hasty articles and later have to retract everything I say. :p

I could have sworn that in the last thread this came up, I googled Magisterium and found it spelled with an E. But apparently not. Oh well.

I think there is a Church that Christ promised us in Matthew 16 and that Paul said is the "pillar and foundation of truth" (which some translations call the "bulwark" or "buttress" of truth, which means that the Church has the position of protecting the faith) and that this Church has dealt with and continues to deal with heresies and false teachers (that Jesus also promised would come) in such a way that does not negate that the Church is what Christ promised us and Paul writes about in multiple places.  This isn't an either/or proposition - it's both/and.

To an extent, I agree with you; but to prove a Catholic or EO view you need to prove that this Church corresponds with a particular denomination, not an invisible, universal church such as Protestantism declares. The church that Paul referred to as a "pillar and foundation of truth" was a local church in Ephesus - not the church in Rome. You also need to prove that the Catholic and EO churches are the good guys, not the false teachers Christ promised - and Scripture gives us clear instructions for how to determine that - Scripture itself, in oral or written form.

Yes, I am using my own logic and reasoning to get to this point, and it's apparently okay with me to use my fallible mind to determine who or what I believe to be infallible in matters of faith.

How is it OK? Again, I'm not very familiar with the EO position, but it certainly shouldn't be OK from the viewpoint of Catholic epistemology. This is the basic irony of tradition - millions of laypeople using Scripture, reason and private judgment to arrive at the conclusion that Scripture, reason and private judgment are epistemically insufficient tools. And some of them go on to write books - non-infallible books - to persuade Protestants to use their private judgment to join Catholicism! If you take the "Infallible teaching is necessary for the truth" line, you run into HUGE problems. First, the Magisterium hasn't infallibly commented on every aspect of theology - Catholics are left on their own for things that are considered "obvious". Secondly - has the Magisterium ever made an infallible list of the infallible teachings? It's possible, I suppose, but the ones I've seen online have been comprised by laypeople or non-infallible scholars. If one cannot trust the canon as "a fallible list of infallible books", one should not - cannot, logically speaking - trust a non-infallible collection of infallible teachings. Thirdly, if infallible knowledge is necessary for truth, fallible humans are doomed to ignorance, because the minute the layperson hears/processes the teaching through his fallible brain, his knowledge is no longer infallible - whether the source was Scripture or the Magisterium. Fourthly - and I've brought up this point several times, and would be happy if you addressed it - the concept that infallibility is necessary for knowledge is not a concept applied to secular knowledge; so if you consider it necessary for Scriptural knowledge, you must defend the assertion that it is a qualitatively different type of knowledge, which may be difficult, as the Bible certainly does not present it that way.

I don't think it's logical to jump to the conclusion that God intended Scripture alone as the only infallible way to convey what we need to know about matters of faith because I still don't see any proof of that.

To be fair, I hardly jumped to that conclusion - I gave several scriptural and logical reasons in my first post on this thread, and several afterwards, which you have not addressed.

I note you have qualified your position with the phrase "for the vast majority of the Biblical text". Does that mean you believe that there is a small minority of texts that cannot be correctly understood even by people trained in logic and with access to the resources you describe?

I don't believe there's any reason parts of the Biblical text should be inherently opaque - after all, it would be odd of God to write something no-one could or would ever understand. But yes, I think there are some texts which we are unlikely to fully understand barring a new breakthrough in linguistics or philosophy (which could well happen, I guess). I don't see that as a problem for sola Scriptura, for three reasons:

1. These texts don't impact on major doctrines, which tend to be clear by being repeated in various forms throughout the Bible.

2. As far as I know, Catholicism does not infallibly address these texts either.

3. If Catholicism did infallibly address those texts, SS advocates could examine their logic and use of Scripture. If they found it sound, they would simply agree with it, and be on the same epistemic footing. If they found it Scripturally incorrect or logically impossible, they would reject it, and (if they were correct in that assessment) still be on the same epistemic footing.

Also, "an infallible method for interpreting an infallible text" doesn't negate the issue of sinful human minds operating at a sub-par level, which is how heresies and disagreements occur. Otherwise I would be claiming that SS necessarily led to unity and truth, which clearly I'm not. But the same issue applies to Tradition-based epistemologies, of course. As long as humans are fallible, we can't expect infallible knowledge, any more than we would expect perfect physical bodies or perfect love between husband and wife, or any of the other goods we can expect in Heaven.

I believe a Catholic would say that the Church, through the Pope, receives special additional guidance from God that ensures the interpretation is correct. I'm curious about something: as an adherent of sola scriptura, do you believe that the church fathers were divinely guided when they established the canon we call the Bible? After all, they could  have chosen different books, which would have significantly impacted what you believe today.

If you do believe that God guided the church fathers to do that correctly, why is it not possible that God could offer ongoing divine guidance to the Catholic or EO Church?

If, on the other hand, if you believe the church fathers used only reason and principles of textual criticism to establish the canon - no divine guidance involved - how do you know they didn't make a mistake because of mankind's inherent fallen nature?

It's a slightly tricky question, because as a Calvinist I believe God divinely guides all things, good and evil. So I believe God "divinely guided" Catholics to codify the doctrine of free will, even though I vehemently disagree with it. So it would be strange of me to imply He wasn't involved and present during the formation of the canon. I have no problems with the canon (except for the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books), and I see no reason to doubt the conclusion of the canon, having read several Protestant scholars on the issue. The Protestant catchphrase is "a fallible collection of infallible books" - in other words, I believe the church fathers were in that instance right, but not because they "had" to be. Was it part of God's divine providence? Yes, but so's everything. :p

I certainly believe it's possible that God could offer ongoing divine guidance to any denomination. But if so, I would say that should be evident by the impeccable logic and Scriptural accuracy of the statements of those churches; which I do not see in the Catholic or EO churches. It's a "proof in the pudding" sort of thing. I also do not see any reason in Scripture to expect an infallible church, or to expect God to ally Himself with a particular subset of that church (except insofar as the Holy Spirit is with all true believers, who are a subset of the "church" as a historical phenomenon - but even that doesn't guarantee infallibility or agreement, as the NT makes quite clear!).

[Purple Sage]

To an extent, I agree with you; but to prove a Catholic or EO view you need to prove that this Church corresponds with a particular denomination, not an invisible, universal church such as Protestantism declares. The church that Paul referred to as a "pillar and foundation of truth" was a local church in Ephesus - not the church in Rome. You also need to prove that the Catholic and EO churches are the good guys, not the false teachers Christ promised - and Scripture gives us clear instructions for how to determine that - Scripture itself, in oral or written form.

How is it OK? Again, I'm not very familiar with the EO position, but it certainly shouldn't be OK from the viewpoint of Catholic epistemology. This is the basic irony of tradition - millions of laypeople using Scripture, reason and private judgment to arrive at the conclusion that Scripture, reason and private judgment are epistemically insufficient tools. And some of them go on to write books - non-infallible books - to persuade Protestants to use their private judgment to join Catholicism! If you take the "Infallible teaching is necessary for the truth" line, you run into HUGE problems. First, the Magisterium hasn't infallibly commented on every aspect of theology - Catholics are left on their own for things that are considered "obvious". Secondly - has the Magisterium ever made an infallible list of the infallible teachings? It's possible, I suppose, but the ones I've seen online have been comprised by laypeople or non-infallible scholars. If one cannot trust the canon as "a fallible list of infallible books", one should not - cannot, logically speaking - trust a non-infallible collection of infallible teachings. Thirdly, if infallible knowledge is necessary for truth, fallible humans are doomed to ignorance, because the minute the layperson hears/processes the teaching through his fallible brain, his knowledge is no longer infallible - whether the source was Scripture or the Magisterium. Fourthly - and I've brought up this point several times, and would be happy if you addressed it - the concept that infallibility is necessary for knowledge is not a concept applied to secular knowledge; so if you consider it necessary for Scriptural knowledge, you must defend the assertion that it is a qualitatively different type of knowledge, which may be difficult, as the Bible certainly does not present it that way.

To be fair, I hardly jumped to that conclusion - I gave several scriptural and logical reasons in my first post on this thread, and several afterwards, which you have not addressed.

You are definitely giving me a lot to think about, but I can't debate you the way you want me to.  I said that before.  So if I don't reply to some of your points, it's because I'm thinking them over and do not have a response.    I am here to learn through sharing different ideas, and I am not here to convince you or anyone else of my position.  I'm not a Catholic or Orthodox apologist, but I'd be happy to show you things that I'm reading by people who know a whole lot more than I do on the subject, things that make sense to me and are helping me to form my beliefs, and you can judge them for yourself.  

About the bolded part, what I find different about Scriptural knowledge is hard to say.  Matters of faith might not seem any different to you than any other subject, the Bible might not be qualitatively any different to you than any other work of literature, but I feel differently.  I think that knowledge of God is profoundly different than any other knowledge, but I am not capable at this time of putting into words any kind of proof for you. 

And I did not and would not say that you jumped to your conclusion.  What I meant was that I would have to jump to that conclusion because the points you made aren't convincing to me.  I don't see proof in the Bible that God intended Scripture to be sufficient or the only only infallible guide we have.  I posted a link to an article which explained in depth why your arguments are not convincing and explains much better than I ever could why I believe Tradition is a Good Thing.

[Thao]

I don't believe there's any reason parts of the Biblical text should be inherently opaque - after all, it would be odd of God to write something no-one could or would ever understand. But yes, I think there are some texts which we are unlikely to fully understand barring a new breakthrough in linguistics or philosophy (which could well happen, I guess).

I don't really see a distinction between saying a passage is inherently opaque, and saying it may be understandable in theory but at present is not fully understood by humans in our fallen state and may never be. In practice, they are the same thing.

These texts don't impact on major doctrines, which tend to be clear by being repeated in various forms throughout the Bible.

Since you have granted that some passages may never be understood, how do you determine which belong to that category? I would disagree with you that the major doctrines are clear simply given the correct application of logic and sufficient study resources. The issue of authority, for example, is pretty important, but both sola scriptura and church authority can be supported by the Bible, depending on how you define key words like "church".

I certainly believe it's possible that God could offer ongoing divine guidance to any denomination. But if so, I would say that should be evident by the impeccable logic and Scriptural accuracy of the statements of those churches; which I do not see in the Catholic or EO churches. It's a "proof in the pudding" sort of thing.

Well, having granted that it is possible, you have answered your own question about how the Magisterium or the EO could infallibly decide matters of interpretation; through God's divine guidance. The next step would be to investigate their doctrine to see if they are impeccably logical and Scripturally accurate. In your response to Bluegoat's post, you said you are not competent to address the EO position on tradition. If your knowledge is that cursory, how can you say that the EO lacks impeccable logic and scriptural accuracy? Surely you know that certain positions may seem illogical on their face, but can be reconciled with logic upon further explication (the Calvinist view of a God who loves all people while intentionally creating vast numbers of people for eternal torment springs to mind - it's requires a definition of love that is quite foreign to any definition I've ever seen). Are you stating that you have a sufficiently nuanced understanding of both the Catholic and EO doctrine that you can definitely that they are inconsistent?

[Smokering]

Purple Sage: I generally prefer to keep these discussions "in-house", otherwise it can get unwieldy with links and counter-links and accusations as to the reputability of the websites in question... plus, someone once linked me to a, like,  60-page document on free will from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. But I'll go through this article if you want.

some twenty thousand plus differing Protestant groups that now exist

OK, this isn't that relevant to the main point, but where do Catholics and EO get this number from? It seems grossly inflated to me. There are many different Protestant groups, certainly, but 20,000? In how many of these groups are the theological differences significant? Some "denominations" are simply ethnic versions of a base denomination. Other legitimately separate denominations are extremely similar in theology - far more similar than some "flavours" of Catholicism are from each other. So it seems a dubious statement to trot out.

All Protestant groups (with some minor qualifications) believe that their group has rightly understood the Bible, and though they all disagree as to what the Bible says, they generally do agree on how one is to interpret the Bible — on your own! — apart from Church Tradition.

"On your own" is a GROSS mischaracterisation of Sola Scriptura. It sounds similar to the Catholic line about "every Protestant is his own pope". I hope this thread has already made this clear, so I won't address it further.

Even groups as differing as the Baptists and the Jehovahs Witnesses are really not as different as they outwardly appear once you have understood this essential point — indeed if you ever have an opportunity to see a Baptist and a Jehovahs Witness argue over the Bible, you will notice that in the final analysis they simply quote different Scriptures back and forth at each other.

Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in sola Scriptura, so.... yeah.

If they are equally matched intellectually, neither will get anywhere in the discussion because they both essentially agree on their approach to the Bible, and because neither questions this underlying common assumption neither can see that their mutually flawed approach to the Scriptures is the problem.

It's an interesting assumption that intellectually matched people of different religions will never resolve theological issues. It assumes that all SS denominations are intellectually equal, and/or that all SS advocates are intellectually stubborn enough not to change. Which doesn't explain why so many Protestants switch denominations as their theology develops: and neither assumption is actually defended here, so it comes across just as a slur.

Protestants who are willing to honestly assess the current state of the Protestant world, must ask themselves why, if Protestantism and its foundational teaching of Sola Scriptura are of God, has it resulted in over twenty-thousand differing groups that cant agree on basic aspects of what the Bible says, or what it even means to be a Christian? Why (if the Bible is sufficient apart from Holy Tradition) can a Baptist, a Jehovahs Witness, a Charismatic, and a Methodist all claim to believe what the Bible says and yet no two of them agree what it is that the Bible says? Obviously, here is a situation in which Protestants have found themselves that is wrong by any stretch or measure. Unfortunately, most Protestants are willing to blame this sad state of affairs on almost anything — anything except the root problem. The idea of Sola Scriptura is so foundational to Protestantism that to them it is tantamount to denying God to question it, but as our Lord said, "every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a bad tree bringeth forth evil fruit" (Matthew 7:17). If we judge Sola Scriptura by its fruit then we are left with no other conclusion than that this tree needs to be "hewn down, and cast into the fire" (Matthew 7:19).

I partly addressed this already, but let's see...

1. This argument assumes that an epistemic system will work perfectly in a fallen world. That's an odd thing for a Christian to believe.

2. Orthodoxy (and Catholicism) had an epistemic system which resulted in schism too - the major one between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, and then (Catholicism in particular) the Protestant Reformation. So if the emergence of "bad fruit" is an indictment on SS, it is doubly an indictment on the Orthodox faith!

3. This argument assumes that Orthodox "fruit" is good and Protestant "fruit" is bad, which I personally find somewhat tendentious.

OK, on to the "does Scripture claim Sola Scriptura" argument, which again I've addressed to some degree already.

Obviously here [refing 2 Tim 3:16], and in most references to "the Scriptures" that we find in the New Testament, Paul is speaking of the Old Testament; so if this passage is going to be used to set the limits on inspired authority, not only will Tradition be excluded but this passage itself and the entire New Testament.

Except that the passage says "All Scripture", and various NT texts are referred to in the Bible as Scripture as well.

In the second place, if Paul meant to exclude tradition as not also being profitable, then we should wonder why Paul uses non-biblical oral tradition in this very same chapter. The names Jannes and Jambres are not found in the Old Testament, yet in II Timothy 3:8 Paul refers to them as opposing Moses. Paul is drawing upon the oral tradition that the names of the two most prominent Egyptian Magicians in the Exodus account (Ch. 7-8) were "Jannes" and "Jambres."2 And this is by no means the only time that a non-biblical source is used in the New Testament — the best known instance is in the Epistle of St. Jude, which quotes from the Book of Enoch (Jude 14,15 cf. Enoch 1:9).

I've addressed this already. Since when does quoting a source indicate that one considers it infallible? Paul also quotes a Greek poet, IIRC. Jewish oral tradition as a whole was certainly not supported in the NT - Jesus made some very strong statements about it.

Then follows a slightly irrelevant bit about Orthodoxy and the canon. I'm not quite sure what point the author's trying to make here. Then a bit about how worship services aren't described in the NT, which... okay? I think it's a stretch to say the early Christians worshipped "liturgically" according to any use of the word I'm familiar with, but whatever - this mostly seems to be aimed at charismatics, which I hope the author doesn't think are synonymous with SS or Protestantism.

We need also to note that none of the types of literature present in the New Testament have as their purpose comprehensive doctrinal instruction — it does not contain a catechism or a systematic theology.

There are portions of the NT that are definitely systematic theology. Romans, anyone? Part of Hebrews?

If all that we need as Christians is the Bible by itself, why is there not some sort of a comprehensive doctrinal statement? Imagine how easily all the many controversies could have been settled if the Bible clearly answered every doctrinal question. But as convenient as it might otherwise have been, such things are not found among the books of the Bible.

Again, this is based on a strange view of SS. Most SS advocates accept the Apostles' and Nicene Creed (I have issues with "he descended into hell", but other than that, gravy). There is no reason a SS-believing Christian would not take advantage of the handy phrasing of creeds - like catechisms or TULIP, they're a useful way of quickly outlining a system of belief. But the implication in this passage is that God should have provided a comprehensive doctrinal statement, which seems simply arrogant. Just because the author might have done that if he'd been God, doesn't mean God should have. God is well within His rights to provide us with the doctrines necessary for making such a statement, and letting us hash it out for ourselves.

but the fact is that the Bible does not contain within it teaching on every subject of importance to the Church. As already stated, the New Testament gives little detail about how to worship — but this is certainly no small matter. Furthermore, the same Church that handed down to us the Holy Scriptures, and preserved them, was the very same Church from which we have received our patterns of worship. If we mistrust this Churchs faithfulness in preserving Apostolic worship, then we must also mistrust her fidelity in preserving the Scriptures.

1. The fact that the NT gives little in the way of specifics on worship could equally mean that Christians have freedom of conscience and culture in this area. As an internal, spiritual religion as distinct from the largely national religion of Judaism, perhaps the outward trappings and forms of worship aren't as important? The author doesn't address this.

2. The Jewish church preserved the Old Testament texts faithfully, yet we mistrust their fidelity in a number of rather significant ways. The Catholic Church did an impeccable job of preserving Scriptures in certain parts of the world for centuries, yet I gather the Orthodox Church mistrusts Catholicism on a number of important issues as well.

Protestants frequently claim they "just believe the Bible," but a number of questions arise when one examines their actual use of the Bible. For instance, why do Protestants write so many books on doctrine and the Christian life in general, if indeed all that is necessary is the Bible? If the Bible by itself were sufficient for one to understand it, then why dont Protestants simply hand out Bibles? And if it is "all sufficient," why does it not produce consistent results, i.e. why do Protestants not all believe the same? What is the purpose of the many Protestant study Bibles, if all that is needed is the Bible itself? Why do they hand out tracts and other material? Why do they even teach or preach at all —why not just read the Bible to people? The answer is though they usually will not admit it, Protestants instinctively know that the Bible cannot be understood alone. And in fact every Protestant sect has its own body of traditions, though again they generally will not call them what they are. It is not an accident that Jehovahs Witnesses all believe the same things, and Southern Baptists generally believe the same things, but Jehovahs Witnesses and Southern Baptists emphatically do not believe the same things. Jehovahs Witnesses and Southern Baptists do not each individually come up with their own ideas from an independent study of the Bible; rather, those in each group are all taught to believe in a certain way — from a common tradition. So then the question is not really whether we will just believe the Bible or whether we will also use tradition — the real question is which tradition will we use to interpret the Bible? Which tradition can be trusted, the Apostolic Tradition of the Orthodox Church, or the muddled, and modern, traditions of Protestantism that have no roots beyond the advent of the Protestant Reformation.

1. Again, "just believe the Bible" is NOT SS, although there are certainly non-SS-believing Protestants who say it. So that whole argument is a strawman. Small-t tradition is not the same thing as big-T Tradition.

2. It also rebounds on Orthodoxy. If Scripture interpreted by Tradition is sacred, why do Orthodox writers writer non-infallible texts? Why is the author of THIS article writing it, instead of simply handing out Bibles and a list of the infallible doctrines?

3. Again, it's begging the questio to say that the traditions of Protestantism "have no roots beyond the advent of the Protestant Reformation". They claim to have their roots in Scripture, which is considerably older than that; and the author does not address that claim.

It comes as quite a blow to such Protestants (as it did to me) when they actually study the early Church and the writings of the early Fathers and begin to see a distinctly different picture than that which they were always led to envision. One finds that, for example, the early Christians did not tote their Bibles with them to Church each Sunday for a Bible study — in fact it was so difficult to acquire a copy of even portions of Scripture, due to the time and resources involved in making a copy, that very few individuals owned their own copies. Instead, the copies of the Scriptures were kept by designated persons in the Church, or kept at the place where the Church gathered for worship. Furthermore, most Churches did not have complete copies of all the books of the Old Testament, much less the New Testament (which was not finished until almost the end of the First Century, and not in its final canonical form until the Fourth Century). This is not to say that the early Christians did not study the Scriptures — they did in earnest, but as a group, not as individuals. And for most of the First Century, Christians were limited in study to the Old Testament. So how did they know the Gospel, the life and teachings of Christ, how to worship, what to believe about the nature of Christ, etc? They had only the Oral Tradition handed down from the Apostles. Sure, many in the early Church heard these things directly from the Apostles themselves, but many more did not, especially with the passing of the First Century and the Apostles with it. Later generations had access to the writings of the Apostles through the New Testament, but the early Church depended on Oral Tradition almost entirely for its knowledge of the Christian faith.

Again, the author simply has no clue what SS entails. No sensible advocate of sola Scriptura argues that the concept is applicable before the formation of the canon - and I doubt any semi-intelligent Christian is really that surprised to find that early Christians didn't "tote their Bibles with them to Church" - that's just obnoxious. The content of the Scriptures, whether passed along orally or in written form, is authoritative and infallible. If Orthodoxy claims that these oral teachings included the seeds of modern Orthodox doctrines, including some which I consider to be flatly contradicted in Scripture, the author need to make that case.

This dependence upon tradition is evident in the New Testament writings themselves. For example, Saint Paul exhorts the Thessalonians:

Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word [i.e. oral tradition] or our epistle (II Thessalonians 2:15).

Which fits in nicely with the point I just made. To say this proves the Orthodox (or Catholic) position on Tradition is a huge leap.

But how can we know that the Church has preserved the Apostolic Tradition in its purity? The short answer is that God has preserved it in the Church because He has promised to do so.

And the author ties these promises to the existence of a denominational, external church, without any justification for that claim.

The common Protestant conception of Church history, that the Church fell into apostasy from the time of Constantine until the Reformation certainly makes these and many other Scriptures meaningless. If the Church ceased to be, for even one day, then the gates of Hell prevailed against it on that day.

Not if you believe in an invisible church, with believers in many different denominations. Few Christians believe that the medieval Catholic Church contained no true believers, even though their theology may have been sadly flawed. Again, the author of this article just isn't too savvy about the Protestant mindset, for all that the article is meant to get inside our muddled little heads!

True Apostolic Tradition is found in the historic consensus of Church teaching. Find that which the Church has believed always, throughout history, and everywhere in the Church, and then you will have found the Truth. If any belief can be shown to have not been received by the Church in its history, then this is heresy. Mind you, however, we are speaking of the Church, not schismatic groups.

So, not terribly helpful then. Whenever someone points out a difference of opinion in the early Church, Orthodoxy can quickly say "Oh well, they were heretics" or "That doesn't count, it was a schismatic group". If comparing doctrines to the Scriptures to determine their legitimacy is considered taboo, we're left with a history-written-by-the-winners situation.

Anyone can interpret the Scriptures for himself or herself without the aid of the Church.

I've addressed this already.

Rather than listening to the Fathers, who had shown themselves righteous and saintly, priority should be given to the human reasonings of the individual.

I'm not sure we have enough biographical information about the Fathers to know they were universally righteous and saintly. But it's again begging the question to call the words of the Fathers anything other than the "human reasonings of the individual" - from a sola Scriptura perspective, that's what they are, and thus prone to error, no matter how saintly the writer. Indeed, I'm not sure why the character of the person making an argument is relevant to its truth - that's the ad hominem fallacy. The saintliest saint in the world can't make A equal both A and not-A in the same time and in the same sense, any more than the vilest scoundrel.

Let us not allow ourselves to learn a new kind of faith which is condemned by the tradition of the Holy Fathers. For the Divine apostle says, "if anyone is preaching to you a Gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:9).9

Ironically, a passage usually cited by SS advocates.

there is not one single verse in the entirety of Holy Scripture that teaches the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Yawn. Been there, done this.

But not only is the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura not taught in the Scriptures — it is in fact specifically contradicted by the Scriptures (which we have already discussed) that teach that Holy Tradition is also binding to Christians (II Thessalonians 2:15; I Corinthians 11:2).

And again.

The article then goes on to look at several methods of interpretation used by Protestants (while ignoring the fact that some, at least, are used by Orthodox and Catholic writers as well). This whole passage is somewhat confused, and again I'm not quite sure of the point the author is making - he or she attacks liberalism, empiricism and so on, but those aren't terribly relevant to the issue at hand. The author seems to be saying "These are the only ways Protestants can interpret Scripture, and they're all wrong" - but not only does he fail to list all the methods used to interpret Scripture (including hermeneutical principles and examining theological texts throughout history - which, yes, Protestants do), he doesn't allow for the possibility of several methods being combined, or address the concept of systematic theology. I'll just comment on a few particularly odd statements:

As denominations stacked upon denominations it became a correspondingly greater stretch for any of them to say, with a straight face, that only they had rightly understood the Scriptures, though there still are some who do.

Why? Certainly anybody saying this would get "oi"s from more groups than if fewer groups existed, but there's no logical reason that the existence of disagreement means that objective truth cannot be discovered.

ETA: I'll add that very few denominations, if any, believe that all other denominations have TOTALLY misunderstood the Scriptures. In many cases the divisive issue only has three or four possible (or extant, at any rate) interpretations. For instance, on the subject of free will there are, what? Five or six views? Calvinism, hyperCalvinism, four-point Calvinism, Arminianism... Open Theism, if you count that as Christian... maybe one or two positions I can't summon to mind right now, but let's say no more than eight. So a Calvinist is saying that one position out of eight is correct, not one out of 20,000. The Lord's Supper? Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, the metaphorical view, and let's say one other view I'm not aware of. So a consubstantiation-ist is saying that his view is correct out of the four - again, not out of the 20,000. And many denominations are marked from their closest fellows by only one or two such points. So it's not, prima facie, unreasonable for a church to say it is correct on an issue when there are only five others available. I don't believe it's necessarily true that one couldn't claim a particular view out of 20,000 was the only correct one, either - but the author is clearly framing this issue in a manner that exaggerates the differences, and implies all Protestant denominations think all other Protestant denominations are entirely wrong - which of course isn't the case.

Like all the other approaches used by Protestants, this method also seeks to understand the Bible while ignoring Church Tradition.

Not at all. H-C exegesis often investigates Church Tradition. Not believing it's infallible is not the same as ignoring it.

The question Protestants will ask at this point is who is to say that the Orthodox Tradition is the correct tradition, or that there even is a correct tradition? First, Protestants need to study the history of the Church. They will find that there is only one Church. This has always been the faith of the Church from its beginning.

No justification for this question. One would think it deserved a cursory supporting argument, especially as the Catholic Church also claims to be the one Church from the beginning.

Obviously, one of three statements is true: either (1) there is no correct Tradition and the gates of hell did prevail against the Church, and thus both the Gospels and the Nicene Creed are in error; or (2) the true Faith is to be found in Papism, with its ever-growing and changing dogmas defined by the infallible "vicar of Christ;" or (3) the Orthodox Church is the one Church founded by Christ and has faithfully preserved the Apostolic Tradition. So the choice for Protestants is clear: relativism, Romanism, or Orthodoxy.

Or, there is no correct Tradition, yet God has preserved the Church anyway, just as He preserved a remnant of Judaism for thousands of years even though there was no (legitimate) Tradition there either.

Most Protestants, because their theological basis of Sola Scriptura could only yield disunity and argument, have long ago given up on the idea of true Christian unity and considered it a ridiculous hypothesis that there might be only one Faith. When faced with such strong affirmations concerning Church unity as those cited above, they often react in horror, charging that such attitudes are contrary to Christian love. Finding themselves without true unity they have striven to create a false unity, by developing the relativistic philosophy of ecumenism, in which the only belief to be condemned is any belief that makes exclusive claims about the Truth. However, this is not the love of the historical Church, but humanistic sentimentality

So claiming you're the only ones who believe the truth is OK now? A few paragraphs ago it was laughably ridiculous when Protestants did the same thing. Are we fuzzy-minded humanists, or narrow dogmatists?

The Church is one because it is the body of Christ, and it is an ontological impossibility that it could be divided.

Again, the author fails to address the concept of the universal Church. (Out of curiosity, is he/she also implying that no non-Orthodox are saved?)

In the Catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.

"All" apparently not including the many, many groups who disagreed and were promptly kicked out by those in power. That's not unity.

If Protestants should think this arrogant or naive, let them first consider the arrogance and naivete of those scholars who think that they are qualified to override (and more usually, totally ignore) two thousand years of Christian teaching. Does the acquisition of a Ph.D. give one greater insight into the mysteries of God than the total wisdom of millions upon millions of faithful believers and the Fathers and Mothers of the Church who faithfully served God, who endured horrible tortures and martyrdom, mockings, and imprisonments, for the faith? Is Christianity learned in the comfort of ones study, or as one carries his cross to be killed on it? The arrogance lies in those who, without even taking the time to learn what the Holy Tradition really is, decide that they know better, that only now has someone come along who has rightly understood what the Scriptures really mean.

Believing in the validity of a logical argument is not arrogant or naive. And the author is conflating Christian virtues with Christian doctrine - when it comes to weighing the truth of doctrine or interpreting Scripture, I think one would be far better off to be in one's study than carrying one's cross to an execution. Suffering may produce holiness, but there's no guarantee it produces insight into what Jesus' words or Paul's doctrines. This is very confused rhetoric. You can't write off the arguments of SS advocates because you think they were cocky to make them in the first place.

I'll also point out that this article doesn't address any of the epistemic problems I mentioned with Tradition earlier in the thread. From the information I gleaned from the article, it seems like at least some of them apply to Orthodoxy as much as to Catholicism.

Edited by Smokering - 12/22/10 at 9:13pm

[Bluegoat]

I'm not sure that I am even really saying that the Church gives infallible knowledge - I'm really not caught up in the word infallible.  I would say for sure that it doesn't give that on everything.  II think the Church was established by Christ and given a particular structure, and that the deposit of faith was left in the Church, and that what is essential in that is protected by the Holy Spirit.  And that structure and deposit is protected by the Holy Spirit, and true.  So to know what the Church teaches, we look at what is says, and has said - not just one guy, but the whole of it - priests, laypeople, monks, nuns, Bishops, theologians, mystics...  I guess it would be infallible, but that just isn't a term I think of as important really, it's not the point to me.

But is infallibility important?  Well, in the Episcopal Church there is a famous, or infamous bishop, who doesn't believe that Christ is God, or in the Resurrection, or even in a personal God.  If infallibility isn't a factor - if we can't know for sure as Christians that he is wrong - where does that leave us?  Of course we are always left in the position that our assessment that the Bible is infallible, or that the Church is infallible in some ways, could be totally wrong.  But what does it mean for Christianity if it does not even claim to be sure about that? (I don't know the answer to this, so it isn't a rhetorical question.  But it sounds a lot like what it is saying is that maybe we are saved.)

[Smokering]

I don't really see a distinction between saying a passage is inherently opaque, and saying it may be understandable in theory but at present is not fully understood by humans in our fallen state and may never be. In practice, they are the same thing.

Yes, but epistemically there's a vast difference. The latter maintains that those passages are still theoretically knowable by the same methods that are used to interpret other Scriptures, or indeed other documents. The former tends to lead to the idea that Scriptural knowledge is qualitatively different to other knowledge, which in turn tends to lead to the idea that Scripture isn't bound by logical thought, and "mystery" can be invoked to hold together two mutually contradictory doctrines; or that a particular set of people have mystical insight into the truth, and no obligation to explain it rationally. And that is a practical difference.

Since you have granted that some passages may never be understood, how do you determine which belong to that category? I would disagree with you that the major doctrines are clear simply given the correct application of logic and sufficient study resources. The issue of authority, for example, is pretty important, but both sola scriptura and church authority can be supported by the Bible, depending on how you define key words like "church".

If by church authority you mean infallible Tradition, aren't we covering this already in this thread? I think Tradition is epistemically incoherent, and therefore cannot be true on a logical level, which is evidence for the other interpretation of Scripture.

I don't think it's a helpful approach to say "This passage may never be understood"; it makes more sense to go in with the assumption that the passage can be understood. My own knowledge of the Scripture is hardly comprehensive enough that I'd claim that about any doctrine - I don't imagine there's a topic on which I've fully exhausted the available scholarship. In the interests of time and sanity, I suppose every Christian will arrive at a point in various doctrines of saying "Wow, I have no idea" and pursuing other doctrines instead, but that isn't an admission that all other Christians will find that doctrine equally opaque. There's no reason to assume every Christian will arrive at the same level of knowledge and assurance on every doctrine - again, it's a fallen world, and we all have limited brain-power and time. For minor doctrines, once they have been determined to have limited theological ramifications, I think it can be a waste of time to anguish about them for years when there are more important doctrines at stake (and other facets to Christian life than doctrine!). I certainly believe that a vast array of theologies can lead to salvation, even if they're pretty severely flawed or badly understood.

Well, having granted that it is possible, you have answered your own question about how the Magisterium or the EO could infallibly decide matters of interpretation; through God's divine guidance. The next step would be to investigate their doctrine to see if they are impeccably logical and Scripturally accurate. In your response to Bluegoat's post, you said you are not competent to address the EO position on tradition. If your knowledge is that cursory, how can you say that the EO lacks impeccable logic and scriptural accuracy? Surely you know that certain positions may seem illogical on their face, but can be reconciled with logic upon further explication (the Calvinist view of a God who loves all people while intentionally creating vast numbers of people for eternal torment springs to mind - it's requires a definition of love that is quite foreign to any definition I've ever seen). Are you stating that you have a sufficiently nuanced understanding of both the Catholic and EO doctrine that you can definitely that they are inconsistent?

Sure. But I think there are some positions which are illogical to the core, such as believing in libertarian free will and perfect definite foreknowledge. To my knowledge, Orthodoxy believes in both, which to my mind is enough to invalidate the entire system of belief. If there are "mitigating circumstances" to those beliefs in Orthodoxy, such that the logical dysjunction can be reconciled, I'm happy to hear about it - although somewhat skeptical, because I think it's a very severe dysjunction. And of course, remember that any time I examined an Orthodox belief - even taking its Tradition into account - I would still be relying on my private judgment, my analysis of their Scriptural exegesis and reason. Which, according to the article I read above, are considered illegitimate or insufficient for determining truth. So I could only be reconciled to Orthodoxy by adopting an anti-Orthodox epistemology! You can see why I find this a serious problem with the position. (Unless I decided to become Orthodox for no reason at all - decided to simply jump in and accept their Tradition and Scriptural interpretations for the sheer hell of it - but apart from not really being my style, is that really what they want of their converts? Conversion as a random act, like flipping a coin? I assume not...)

ETA, addressing Bluegoat:

But is infallibility important?  Well, in the Episcopal Church there is a famous, or infamous bishop, who doesn't believe that Christ is God, or in the Resurrection, or even in a personal God.  If infallibility isn't a factor - if we can't know for sure as Christians that he is wrong - where does that leave us?

It depends on how you define "for sure". Isn't there a fairly compelling philosophical argument that we can't know with absolute certainty that we're not brains in a jar inside a Matrix-like simulation? Or indeed the philosopher who decided one can't infer anything other than one's own existence? I'm not entirely up on these arguments, but it seems like assurance has various degrees, and I don't think infallibility is required for fairly definite and useful knowledge. I don't believe we can infallibly know that we have kids, but we can be pretty darn sure and act accordingly. If we are similarly "pretty darn sure" that the Episcopal bishop (are we talking about Spong here?) is teaching heretically, why should we hesitate in our response, any more than we'd hesitate if one of the kids we (probably) have addressed us as if she were indeed real?

And remember - and I'm sorry I keep bringing this up, but it's important - even in a system with infallible Tradition, once the infallible teachings enter YOUR head they're no longer infallible. So you, as a Catholic layman (hypothetically speaking, I know you're not Catholic) couldn't infallibly denounce the bishop either.

[Bluegoat]

I started to look at your comments individually and realized that I was saying generally the same thing in a lot, so I'll sum them up somewhat.  I don't think the idea was so much to give you a proof as a general basis for the kind of position PS or I might be coming from.  And more to the point, a lot of this article is not addressed to someone like you. The intent if a lot of it is to get people to think about what they are really doing in their own use of Scripture.  It may not be as common where you are, but in the US the whole mind-set that says "Christmas is evil because it is a tradition of man" is very common.  There is a lot that is just trying to get those people to really look at the assumptions behind that, or alternately behind liberal Christianity.  But there were a few things that struck me:

My comments in red

Quote:

Protestants frequently claim they "just believe the Bible," but a number of questions arise when one examines their actual use of the Bible. For instance, why do Protestants write so many books on doctrine and the Christian life in general, if indeed all that is necessary is the Bible? If the Bible by itself were sufficient for one to understand it, then why don't Protestants simply hand out Bibles? And if it is "all sufficient," why does it not produce consistent results, i.e. why do Protestants not all believe the same? What is the purpose of the many Protestant study Bibles, if all that is needed is the Bible itself? Why do they hand out tracts and other material? Why do they even teach or preach at all —why not just read the Bible to people? The answer is though they usually will not admit it, Protestants instinctively know that the Bible cannot be understood alone. And in fact every Protestant sect has its own body of traditions, though again they generally will not call them what they are. It is not an accident that Jehovah's Witnesses all believe the same things, and Southern Baptists generally believe the same things, but Jehovah's Witnesses and Southern Baptists emphatically do not believe the same things. Jehovah's Witnesses and Southern Baptists do not each individually come up with their own ideas from an independent study of the Bible; rather, those in each group are all taught to believe in a certain way — from a common tradition. So then the question is not really whether we will just believe the Bible or whether we will also use tradition — the real question is which tradition will we use to interpret the Bible? Which tradition can be trusted, the Apostolic Tradition of the Orthodox Church, or the muddled, and modern, traditions of Protestantism that have no roots beyond the advent of the Protestant Reformation.

1. Again, "just believe the Bible" is NOT SS, although there are certainly non-SS-believing Protestants who say it. So that whole argument is a straw-man. Small-t tradition is not the same thing as big-T Tradition.

Again, he is simply pointing out that the idea that Scripture alone is what is necessary is not true.  There is more required.  Every Church has a tradition, and that determines a lot about how they read the texts.    He is setting up his next point.

2. It also rebounds on Orthodoxy. If Scripture interpreted by Tradition is sacred, why do Orthodox writers writer non-infallible texts? Why is the author of THIS article writing it, instead of simply handing out Bibles and a list of the infallible doctrines?

Ah, yes - you are misunderstanding what Tradition is I think.  Those texts may well be part of Tradition, even though they are not infallible.  There is no list of infallible doctrines, but this article may one day be part of Tradition - if it is correct it is part of Tradition now. 

3. Again, it's begging the question to say that the traditions of Protestantism "have no roots beyond the advent of the Protestant Reformation". They claim to have their roots in Scripture, which is considerably older than that; and the author does not address that claim.

He means their method - the idea that Scripture alone is the rule.  As a method, it is not seen before the Reformation.

It comes as quite a blow to such Protestants (as it did to me) when they actually study the early Church and the writings of the early Fathers and begin to see a distinctly different picture than that which they were always led to envision. One finds that, for example, the early Christians did not tote their Bibles with them to Church each Sunday for a Bible study — in fact it was so difficult to acquire a copy of even portions of Scripture, due to the time and resources involved in making a copy, that very few individuals owned their own copies. Instead, the copies of the Scriptures were kept by designated persons in the Church, or kept at the place where the Church gathered for worship. Furthermore, most Churches did not have complete copies of all the books of the Old Testament, much less the New Testament (which was not finished until almost the end of the First Century, and not in its final canonical form until the Fourth Century). This is not to say that the early Christians did not study the Scriptures — they did in earnest, but as a group, not as individuals. And for most of the First Century, Christians were limited in study to the Old Testament. So how did they know the Gospel, the life and teachings of Christ, how to worship, what to believe about the nature of Christ, etc? They had only the Oral Tradition handed down from the Apostles. Sure, many in the early Church heard these things directly from the Apostles themselves, but many more did not, especially with the passing of the First Century and the Apostles with it. Later generations had access to the writings of the Apostles through the New Testament, but the early Church depended on Oral Tradition almost entirely for its knowledge of the Christian faith.

Again, the author simply has no clue what SS entails. No sensible advocate of sola Scriptura argues that the concept is applicable before the formation of the canon - and I doubt any semi-intelligent Christian is really that surprised to find that early Christians didn't "tote their Bibles with them to Church" - that's just obnoxious. The content of the Scriptures, whether passed along orally or in written form, is authoritative and infallible. If Orthodoxy claims that these oral teachings included the seeds of modern Orthodox doctrines, including some which I consider to be flatly contradicted in Scripture, the author need to make that case.

Why are you separating the knowledge of the Church based on whether it was written down in the NT or not? It seems rather arbitrary. That method of understanding it did not belong to the people who did the deciding.  Don't you think that may have influenced what they decided to include?

This dependence upon tradition is evident in the New Testament writings themselves. For example, Saint Paul exhorts the Thessalonians:

Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word [i.e. oral tradition] or our epistle (II Thessalonians 2:15).

Which fits in nicely with the point I just made. To say this proves the Orthodox (or Catholic) position on Tradition is a huge leap.

I'm not seeing what you meant here?

But how can we know that the Church has preserved the Apostolic Tradition in its purity? The short answer is that God has preserved it in the Church because He has promised to do so.

And the author ties these promises to the existence of a denominational, external church, without any justification for that claim.

Because that is how the Fathers and the early church understood it would be my guess.

True Apostolic Tradition is found in the historic consensus of Church teaching. Find that which the Church has believed always, throughout history, and everywhere in the Church, and then you will have found the Truth. If any belief can be shown to have not been received by the Church in its history, then this is heresy. Mind you, however, we are speaking of the Church, not schismatic groups.

So, not terribly helpful then. Whenever someone points out a difference of opinion in the early Church, Orthodoxy can quickly say "Oh well, they were heretics" or "That doesn't count, it was a schismatic group". If comparing doctrines to the Scriptures to determine their legitimacy is considered taboo, we're left with a history-written-by-the-winners situation.

Yes, that is true.  The early Church was pretty clear that unity of belief was very important, and that those who went outside of it were no longer part of the Church. ( Although he doesn't bring it up here, the institutional nature of the Church is also relevant, though it isn't the only relevant point.) 

Rather than listening to the Fathers, who had shown themselves righteous and saintly, priority should be given to the human reasonings of the individual.

I'm not sure we have enough biographical information about the Fathers to know they were universally righteous and saintly. But it's again begging the question to call the words of the Fathers anything other than the "human reasonings of the individual" - from a sola Scriptura perspective, that's what they are, and thus prone to error, no matter how saintly the writer. Indeed, I'm not sure why the character of the person making an argument is relevant to its truth - that's the ad hominem fallacy. The saintliest saint in the world can't make A equal both A and not-A in the same time and in the same sense, any more than the vilest scoundrel.

Well, I guess I would say that it is a consideration rather than a proof.  If you are a rather melancholic German monk, and you decide that you have some real fundamental disagreements with what the Church says - and not just things that seem to be added on later, but early stuff - do you look at these men and women that were at least as intellectually coherent as you, and very close to God, and say - well, I am really going to push this?  Maybe, but it would certainly be a point to be very careful with.  You are telling the first Christians, those who knew the Apostles, that they got it pretty wrong. 

The article then goes on to look at several methods of interpretation used by Protestants (while ignoring the fact that some, at least, are used by Orthodox and Catholic writers as well).

This whole passage is somewhat confused, and again I'm not quite sure of the point the author is making - he or she attacks liberalism, empiricism and so on, but those aren't terribly relevant to the issue at hand. The author seems to be saying "These are the only ways Protestants can interpret Scripture, and they're all wrong" - but not only does he fail to list all the methods used to interpret Scripture (including hermeneutical principles and examining theological texts throughout history - which, yes, Protestants do), he doesn't allow for the possibility of several methods being combined, or address the concept of systematic theology. I'll just comment on a few particularly odd statements:

As denominations stacked upon denominations it became a correspondingly greater stretch for any of them to say, with a straight face, that only they had rightly understood the Scriptures, though there still are some who do.

Why? Certainly anybody saying this would get "oi"s from more groups than if fewer groups existed, but there's no logical reason that the existence of disagreement means that objective truth cannot be discovered.

No, but it doesn't look really hopeful that the method is tending towards success does it?  But that isn't his main point here.  He is addressing the idea specifically that there is no "truth" at all, or that it is completely fragmented.  He's been pointing out to fundamentalists that the same views they have are what lead to liberal Protestantism.  He is also talking about the assumptions and results of science as a way of looking at scripture.  He doesn't need for his purposes to look at each method - and in fact he does point out that valuable things are learned with these types of inquiries.

The question Protestants will ask at this point is who is to say that the Orthodox Tradition is the correct tradition, or that there even is a correct tradition? First, Protestants need to study the history of the Church. They will find that there is only one Church. This has always been the faith of the Church from its beginning.

No justification for this question. One would think it deserved a cursory supporting argument, especially as the Catholic Church also claims to be the one Church from the beginning.

He is just saying that the early Church was very clear on the unity of the Church.  Heretics were Christians, but they were outside the Church.  He isn't writing a book eh?  He is telling anyone whose interest has been piqued what they need to do now.

Obviously, one of three statements is true: either (1) there is no correct Tradition and the gates of hell did prevail against the Church, and thus both the Gospels and the Nicene Creed are in error; or (2) the true Faith is to be found in Papism, with its ever-growing and changing dogmas defined by the infallible "vicar of Christ;" or (3) the Orthodox Church is the one Church founded by Christ and has faithfully preserved the Apostolic Tradition. So the choice for Protestants is clear: relativism, Romanism, or Orthodoxy.

Or, there is no correct Tradition, yet God has preserved the Church anyway, just as He preserved a remnant of Judaism for thousands of years even though there was no (legitimate) Tradition there either.

That's interesting, I'm not sure he'd say there was no legitimate Tradition in Judaism before Christ - actually I am almost positive he wouldn't.  Tell me, in your scheme, what is the Church?  Everyone who believes in Jesus?  Do they need to believe anything specific about him?

Most Protestants, because their theological basis of Sola Scriptura could only yield disunity and argument, have long ago given up on the idea of true Christian unity and considered it a ridiculous hypothesis that there might be only one Faith. When faced with such strong affirmations concerning Church unity as those cited above, they often react in horror, charging that such attitudes are contrary to Christian love. Finding themselves without true unity they have striven to create a false unity, by developing the relativistic philosophy of ecumenism, in which the only belief to be condemned is any belief that makes exclusive claims about the Truth. However, this is not the love of the historical Church, but humanistic sentimentality

So claiming you're the only ones who believe the truth is OK now? A few paragraphs ago it was laughably ridiculous when Protestants did the same thing. Are we fuzzy-minded humanists, or narrow dogmatists?

Both, really.  Just not at the same time, in the same space.  I don't think he has a problem with dogma as a principle though.

The Church is one because it is the body of Christ, and it is an ontological impossibility that it could be divided.

Again, the author fails to address the concept of the universal Church. (Out of curiosity, is he/she also implying that no non-Orthodox are saved?)

No, I would not imagine he is saying that.  My guess is he would not claim to know who will be saved.  Do you mean the invisible Church? 

In the Catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.

"All" apparently not including the many, many groups who disagreed and were promptly kicked out by those in power. That's not unity.

Why do you think unity of belief is not what was meant?  Who would you include?  Would you include Muslims?  There is historical precedent for them to be thought of as a type of Christian schismatic group.  Could they then be part of the Church?  What about other non-Christians?  What do you think unity is?

If Protestants should think this arrogant or naive, let them first consider the arrogance and naivete of those scholars who think that they are qualified to override (and more usually, totally ignore) two thousand years of Christian teaching. Does the acquisition of a Ph.D. give one greater insight into the mysteries of God than the total wisdom of millions upon millions of faithful believers and the Fathers and Mothers of the Church who faithfully served God, who endured horrible tortures and martyrdom, mockings, and imprisonments, for the faith? Is Christianity learned in the comfort of ones study, or as one carries his cross to be killed on it? The arrogance lies in those who, without even taking the time to learn what the Holy Tradition really is, decide that they know better, that only now has someone come along who has rightly understood what the Scriptures really mean.

Believing in the validity of a logical argument is not arrogant or naive. And the author is conflating Christian virtues with Christian doctrine - when it comes to weighing the truth of doctrine or interpreting Scripture, I think one would be far better off to be in one's study than carrying one's cross to an execution. Suffering may produce holiness, but there's no guarantee it produces insight into what Jesus' words or Paul's doctrines. This is very confused rhetoric. You can't write off the arguments of SS advocates because you think they were cocky to make them in the first place.

Look at his first sentence.  He is staving off the "who do you think you are telling us the Bible is not the foundation of Christian belief! comments.  But it's an interesting point - what is holiness do you think?

I'll also point out that this article doesn't address any of the epistemic problems I mentioned with Tradition earlier in the thread. From the information I gleaned from the article, it seems like at least some of them apply to Orthodoxy as much as to Catholicism.

You'll have to restate them.  I can't say they really resonate with me.