Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 19 Dec 2009, 18:01 · from 2009-December.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 10:01:17 -0800
Subject: (urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis
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On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 2:18 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>> No, but they've redefined terms (you know, like "I believe ... in the Holy
>> Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church ...") to suit themselves.
>
> I'm not sure "to suit themselves" is the right term. They were led to their
> positions by a series of empirical observations of the Roman Catholic
> religion in practice. In the end they chose to believe that God and his
> Church were pure and the Pope and his bishops were damned rather than the
> other way around.

So there were only two choices? How binaristic.

>> Too, they
>> tossed out bits of Scripture that didn't suit them....
>
> Now that this claim has been confirmed by a non-brunians, I'm curious as to
> what those bits were.

Among other things, Ecclesiasticus (a/k/a Sirach), the first two books of
Maccabees, and chunks of Daniel and Esther. You will often find them in
Protestant bibles listed as "apocrypha," a term more properly reserved
for books like the Apocalypse of Peter.

>> then set up the
>> unprecedented principle of "Sola Scriptura."
>
> Well, perhaps it only seemed unprecedented because the Church authorities
> were burning at people at the stake for translating the Bible into the
> vernacular (which is what St. Jerome did when he wrote the Vulgate). Was
> burning the translators merely a bad practice? Or was it based on a bad
> theology?

It was unprecedented because Scripture had never been the _basis_ for
the faith: rather, the other way around. The Church had written the New
Testament and established the canon of the Old (independently and
differently from the soi-disant "council of Jamnia"), and therefore could
not have been based on them.

> Look, Dan'l, the scandal of Indulgences was not just a bad "practice".

That's _exactly_ what it was.

> Luther's point was that it struck to the heart of the doctrine of Salvation.
> If you think the Indulgences were wrong (as Luther did), you can either take
> his position that the claim of papal infallibility is "a creation of men" or
> you must presume the papal see was vacant at the time (as my Reformed
> Catholic friends believe has been the case since some time before Vatican
> II).

Actually, the concept of papal infallibility didn't even exist at the time.
It was not defined until the first Vatican Council in the 1800s. Which
might militate toward considering it a "creation of men," but that's a
different question.

The claim of the Church's infallibility is strictly limited: when something
is solemnly declared, under defined circumstances and using defined
formuilae, it cannot be wrong in a way that will lead to damnation; further,
infallibility applies only to matters of faith and morals.

Thus, the Church has not and _cannot_ issue an infallible proclamation
on, for example, the question of married or female clergy. These are
questions of practice and disicpline, not faith and morals.

The entire concept of indulgences is complicated. The idea that you
describe below...

> Otherwise, you have to accept that the Pope has the right to sell an escape
> from Purgatory for cold hard cash (see Acts 8:20).

...is and was based on a fallacy. Purgatory has never been defined
as a "place," only a fact. Simply enough, it is clear that most of us
do not achieve full sanctification in this life; yet the nature of God is
such that something less than fully sanctified cannot exist in His
presence. Ergo, somewhere after death, the blessed undergo some
process which completes their sanctification. We call this process
"Purgatory," and folk-Catholicism makes it a place.

Priests and Popes are often guilty of folk-Catholicism, but the
guidance of the Holy Spirit (which is the basis for the claim of
infallibility - backed up by the Scriptural promise that the Holy
Spirit will "lead you into all truth") has always prevented it from
being defined.

> I think you need to check out a biography of Luther.

I've read two, including the excellent "Here I Stand." He was
- in my opinion - an oathbreaker who started his own anti-Church
because he couldn't bring himself to follow his vows of obedience
and chastity.

> I'm pretty sure that before
> Luther had successfully worked his way through the Roman system, he would
> have ended up so many other reformers who had tried that over the previous
> 400 years (heard of John Huss?). That definitely seems to have been the plan
> in Rome.

I may have spoken misleadingly. I don't mean to suggest that
Luther would have achieved the reforms he originally sought in
his lifetime. The Church is like a dinosaur; you kick it in the ass
and a hundred years later it turns around and says, "Huh?" This
is both strength and weakness: the weakness is obvious, the
strength is that it doesn't easily change vital opinions to
accommodate the fashions of the age.

> I really don't think you can put the long time it took the Vatican to "come
> around" at Luther's doorstep.

I don't, entirely. I believe that the Deformation made the real
reform take _longer_, but it would have been a long road in
any case.

>> -- some of them were not properly addressed until the
>> second Vatican council, which might properly be seen as the Church's
>> response to the legitimate complaints of the Deformers.
>
> See above on Reformed Catholics.

Those guys are _serious_ heretics. I don't think most modern
Protestants are really "heretics"; they live in a new orthodoxy
that happens, in my opinion, to be wrong, but are not damned
for it. As an Evangelical minister of my acquaintance puts it,
"We aren't going to be met at the Pearly Gates with a theology
quiz."

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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