A Very Substantive Dividing Line Program

https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/a-very-substantive-dividing-line-program/

Again, I wish I had time to write up an article on this; but I don't.  I hope to find time in the future to study the issues more and write more on it.

Some very substantive programs that Dr. White has been doing lately.  Also the one on the gospel of Mark, inerrancy, and Mike Licona's perspective.  See links at my apologetics and agape link.

Tiber Swim Book Club #2

I wanted to provide some book recommendations for all of you getting ready to swim the Tiber and convert to Roman Catholicism. You know how you're reading the Early Church Fathers, and how wonderful it is? You know that feeling you're getting that now you've plugged into ancient Christian history? Well, as you're ordering your books by Hahn, Madrid, or Ray, (the ones telling you all about Church history that you think are "unanswerable"), for the sake of both sides of the issue, because we know you're trying to be as honest and careful as possible in your research, I think you need to secure a copy of this book:

A Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers in the Decision of Controversies Existing at This Day in Religion by John Daillé (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1856)

Here's an excerpt from the book on how two contemporaries and friends have two different opinions on an important subject:

Epiphanius maintains against Aerius,of whom he ranks among the Heresiarchs, that a bishop, according to the Apostle Paul, and the original institution of the office itself, is more than a priest: and this he proves in many words, answering all the objections that are made to the contrary. If you only read the passage, I am confident that when you have done, you would not hesitate to swear that what he has there delivered, was the general opinion of all the doctors of the Church; it being very unlikely that so great and so renowned a prelate would so positively have denied the opinion which he disputed against, if any one of his own familiar friends had also maintained the same. Yet for all this, Jerome, who was one of the principal lights of our western Church, and who lived at the same time with Epiphanius, who was his intimate friend, and a great admirer of his piety, says expressly, "that among the ancients, bishops and priests were the same; the one being a name of dignity, and the other of age." That it may not be thought that this fell from him in discourse only, he there undertakes to prove the same at large, alleging several passages of Scripture on this subject; and he also repeats the same thing, in two or three several places of his work; whereby it evidently appears that even positions quite contradictory to the opinions which have been delivered and maintained by some of the Fathers, and proposed in whatever terms, have notwithstanding been sometimes either maintained, or at least tolerated, by some others of no less authority.

Jerome himself has severely criticised Rufnnus, and condemned many of his opinions as most pernicious and deadly; yet we do not anywhere find that he was ever accounted a heretic by the rest of the Fathers. But we shall have occasion hereafter to consider more at large similar examples; and shall only at present observe, that if those books of Jerome, which we mentioned a little before, should have chanced to be lost, every man would then assuredly have concluded from Epiphanius, that no doctor of the ancient Church ever held, that a bishop and a priest were one and the same thing in their institution.

Who now, after all this, will assure us, that among so many other opinions as have been rejected here and there by the Fathers, and that too in as plain terms as those of Epiphanius, none of them have ever been defended by some of the learned of those times? Or, is it not possible, that they may have held them, though they did not write in defence of the same? Or may they not perhaps have written also in defence of them, and their books have been since lost ? How small is the number of those in the Church, who had the ability, or at least the will, to write ! And how much smaller is the number of those whose writings have been able to secure themselves against either the injury of time or the malice of men!

It is objected against the Protestants, as we have observed before, that Jerome commends and maintains the adoration of relics: but yet he himself testifies, that there were some bishops, who defended Vigilantius, who held the contrary opinion; whom he, according to his ordinary rhetoric, calls " accomplices in his wickedness."*

Who knows now what these bishops were, and whether they deserved any such usage at Jerome's hands or no? For the expressions which he uses against them, and against their opinions, are so full of gall and enmity, that they utterly take away all credit from his testimony. But we have insisted long enough upon this particular, and shall therefore forbear to instance any further in others.

As it is therefore impossible to discover exactly, out of the Fathers, what have been the sense and judgment of the ancient Church,—whether taken universally or particularly, or whether the Church is taken for the whole body of believers, or for the prelates and inferior clergy only,—I shall here conclude as heretofore, that the writings of the ancients are altogether insufficient for proving the truth of any of those points which are at this day controverted amongst us.

Responding to Ben M on priestly celibacy, with a pinch of sarcasm

Ben M has decided to weigh in on celibacy.  I sinned extensively against the Lord recently by watching the Lost finale, and so I'm feeling a bit saucy.  Hopefully both of my readers will forgive the sarcasm of some of my comments here.


No, that's not what St. Paul meant!

He said "forbid marriage".  RC priests are forbidden to marry.
Interestingly, Paul told us that presbuteroi are supposed to be one-woman men.  Not no-woman men or many-boys men.


a. The Roman Church has NO “doctrine” forbidding anyone to marry - marriage is a sacrament open to all.

Except priests.  Do you think we're idiots or something?


b. God has always called certain individuals to the celibate life in order that they may serve him unreservedly.

What's your point?  That's a matter between the individual and God, not to be mandated by the church.


c. The Church has every right to set rules and conditions pertaining to the priesthood

If you say so.  But they violate the biblical commandment.  Apparently they have "every right" to do that, too.



And currently she has chosen to accept candidates for priestly ordination only from among those who have this gift of celibacy

And if the RCC does it, it has to be right!  B/c Christ founded it!  Matthew 16!  Blah!!!


Why do Protestants forbid celibacy to their clergy, when the very Apostles SS. Peter and Paul and their successors - St. Timothy e.g. - were prime examples of a celibate clergy??

1) You have no proof Timothy was celibate.
2) Paul CHOSE to be celibate.  RCC MANDATES its clergy be celibate.
3) Peter was married.  Fail.
4) Paul was an apostle, not a presbuteros.



Re: perpetual abstinence in marriage is unbiblical - “Else, they cannot be one flesh. 1 Cor 7: 3.”
Well, that’s certainly what, with perhaps a couple of exceptions, Protestants believe.

Yeah, that's so crazy, that Protestants might just believe what the Bible teaches.



(Beza said:) We cannot expect people today to live chastely in a sexless marriage, as if they were ‘new Josephs and Marys.’”

1) Beza is not a Protestant Pope.  I can't believe you people can't get that through your heads.
2) Sexless marriages are indeed violations of the command of 1 Corinthians 7 and the various other descriptions of marriage as "one FLESH".  Hard to be one FLESH when you're --ahem-- not, you know, one flesh.



“The traditional option of maintaining a sexless ‘spiritual marriage’ was anathema to Calvin.”

Awesome.  Good for Calvin.  Another reason to like the guy.


One comment in Beza's biography has not served Calvin well, and that was the suggestion that he and Idelette had a sexless marriage, adhering to chastity.

I can't believe it!  Calvin might have actually been a sinner?
Sorry, we can't allow that kind of trash to sully the pages of this blog.  Our team will have a meeting later to determine whether we should delete this comment and also ban all RCs from commenting.  Forever.


St. Augustine:
“So if you can manage it, you shouldn’t touch your partner, except for the sake of having children.” Sermon 278:9:3,

I can imagine nothing so bizarre to as to suggest that a church writer 3 centuries after the Bible was written might say something unbiblical or incorrect.

Scott Windsor can't make up his mind

Scott Windsor says:

You misrepresent the office of the bishop. Each office is NOT infallible in and of itself. They DO have apostolic authority to correct me if I have misrepresented Catholic teaching myself - but a single bishop has not the charism of infallibility, save the Bishop of Rome, and he utilizes that VERY judiciously.

Well, yes, so judiciously as to be unrecognisable.

Anyway, while he's been avoiding the onus of submitting all of his work to the Magisterium (whom he apparently, carelessly equates with his local bishop) like the plague as well as blissfully ignoring the implications of receiving a brush-off from them, he's pursued the following line of argumentation over at his blog, and I'd like to know why.

He'd asked me to whom I'm submitted. I told him the elders of my church (my Southern Babdist church is elder-led). Follow the excerpts down the page.
SW: So, your answer is that you are submissive to the elders of your church - to whom do they submit to (sic)?
ME: My elders are in submission to the Holy Spirit Who expresses Himself thru the Word of God.
SW: I see, so your elders are their own little magisterium.
ME: My elders don't think they're infallible. They don't think they're descended directly via "apostolic succession" from Peter. They're not headed by a Pope who can speak ex cathedra whenever he feels like declaring something he said in the past at some point to have been an infallible statement, in retrospect. They are subject to Scripture and teach what it says. There are quite a few large differences. You should really know better, given how long you've been at this.
SW: That's sad, because in the Church which Jesus built, his bishops were indeed given the authority to bind or loose whatsoever they chose, and if it were bound on Earth, then it was also bound in Heaven. Since nothing fallible can logically be bound in Heaven, then this authority had to be infallible authority. Furthermore, this is part of what Jesus was sent to do (or else why do it?) and Jesus said "As the Father sent Me, I also send you." If the Apostles then did not pass on this authority which Jesus passed on to them - then they would have failed the Master right from the beginning. So the first bishops were given this infallible authority and by Jesus' Word, they too - being sent as He was sent - had to pass on this authority, which they did. So, if your elders were True Leaders of His Church, then they would have to have infallible authority, without it - they are just impostors, wolves dressed in sheeps clothing - to fool even the elect.
Me: So you admit that your original assertion was wrong - that my elders are their own little Magisterium. Good, we're getting somewhere. The decent thing to do would be to withdraw that statement, sir. (He didn't.)
SW: You brought up the non-infallibility of your elders, I responded that it was a pity, since Jesus established the True Church with "overseers" (bishops) who indeed had this authority.

Now, contrast that line of commentary with what he said most recently, quoted at the top. Which one is right? One can only wish Mr. Windsor could keep track of his arguments, to say nothing of my own.

On Luther's Adultery & The Wit of Erasmus

One of the most controversial subjects during the Reformation was marriage. Luther was attacked as being an adulterer for getting married, and some of this rhetoric survived for centuries. Consider Father O'Hare's calumny: “As a matter of fact, [Luther] was openly blamed for his well-known and imprudent intimacy with Katherine Von Bora before his marriage…” “Katherine Von Bora was only [Luther's] companion in sin, and the children brought into the world through the unholy alliance were illegitimate children.” I recently came across this very criticism on the Catholic Answers forums: "Luther was an adulterer - a monk who "married" a nun. So please don't call him a devout Catholic."

Now, if I recall correctly, the celibate priesthood is not a capital "T" tradition, it's rather a matter of discipline. I was listening to Catholic Answers a while back and heard Tim Staples say it is theoretically possible this could be changed, and priests could be allowed to marry in the future.

Ask a Catholic.com states, "Well, the celibate priesthood is in place because of the demands of the priesthood on the individual. If someday the Holy Spirit leads the Church to change it, the Church will."

Catholic Answers states, "Even within the Latin Rite, the Church has made exceptions for a number of converted married ministers to become ordained. This is known as the "pastoral provision," and it demonstrates that clerical celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine. The doctrines of the Church are teachings that can never be reversed. On the other hand, disciplines refer to those practices (such as eating meat on Fridays) that may change over time as the Church sees fit."

So, Luther's being maligned for something that theoretically could be validated at some point in the future. As a priest, Luther's now considered by many as an adulterer for his marriage to a nun, perhaps in 2050, priests could be allowed to marry. Does that mean he'll no longer be considered an adulterer? One then has to argue his vows to the religious life continue to make him an adulterer.

On a related note, here's one I found in Martin Luther The Christian Between God and Death (Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1999) by Richard Marius. According to Marius, Erasmus initially believed the popular rumor that Cathrine Von Bora had given birth a few days after her wedding, and then commented on whether the child may in fact be the Antichrist. On page 438, Marius describes Luther knew he would be attacked for his marriage:

His forecast that his enemies would reproach him was on the mark. Then and for centuries afterward Catholic antagonists had proof that all Luther had ever wanted was sex, and since he married a former nun, it seemed he had now lived out yet another of the bawdy stories told of nuns and monks lusting for one another. His most bitter foes crowed over the marriage in monotonous fury in print. Erasmus knew of it by October and wrote to friends ironically about it. He passed on the canard that Katherine had given birth to a child a few days after the wedding (10). By March 13 he had learned that the rumor was false, although he understood (correctly) that Katherine was now pregnant. He ruminated on the 'popular legend' that the Antichrist would be born to a monk and a nun- a tale probably circulating about Luther's coming child. If that prophecy were true, he said with bitter wit, 'How many thousands of Antichrists had the world already known!'(11) He expressed the wistful hope that marriage might make Luther more gentle, but by this time he had seen Luther's vehement On the Bondage of the Will, and he had given up all hope that Luther might moderate his language.

(10) October 10, 1525; EE no. 1633; 6:197-199.
(11) March 13, 1525; EE no. 1677; 6:283-284.

EE= Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. Percy S. Allen et al., 12 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906-1958).

One may think that since Erasmus "ruminated on the popular legend" he actually took it seriously. This is hardly the case as his comment of "bitter wit" explains. It does go to show popular Catholic propaganda that circulated during the 16th century.

Phillip Schaff interprets the same facts:

[Luther's marriage] was a rich theme for slander and gossip. His enemies circulated a slander about a previous breach of the vow of chastity, and predicted that, according to a popular tradition, the ex-monk and ex-nun would give birth to Antichrist. Erasmus contradicts the slander, and remarked that if that tradition was true, there must have been many thousands of antichrists before this.3

(1526): " De conjugio Lutheri certum est, de partu maturo sponsae vanus erat rumor, nunc tamen gravida esse dicitur. Si vera est vulgi fabula Antichristum nasciturum ex monacho et monacha quemadmodum isti jactitant, quot Antichriatorum millia jam olim habet mundus? At ego sperabam fore, ut Lutherum uxor redderet magis cicurem. Verum ille praeter omnem expectationem emisit llbrum in me summa quidem cura elaboratum, sed adeo virulentum, ut hactenus in neminem scripserit hostilius."

It appears Schaff has the date wrong. The date of the letter is March 13, 1525. It is one of two surviving letters to Francois Dubois (Franciscus Sylvius).

Luther Vindicated by Charles Hastings Collette outlines the same material:

The learned Romanist, Erasmus, who was ordained a Priest in 1492, also a contemporary and opponent of Luther, gave the following testimony on this subject: "Luther's marriage is certain; the report of his wife's being so speedily brought to bed is false, but I hear she is now with child, if the common story be true, that Antichrist shall be born of a Monk and a Nun, as they pretend, how many thousands of Antichrists are there in the world already?"(3) And that Erasmus was unprejudiced, appears in his following words, viz.: " I was in hopes a wife would have made Luther a little tamer, but he, contrary to all expectations, has published a most elaborate work against me, but as virulent as any book that ever he wrote." It must be remembered that Erasmus himself had previously propagated the scandal, in a letter addressed to the President of the High Council of Holland, in 1525, on erroneous reports, spread by Luther's enemies, but which reports, as I have already shown, he was honest enough subsequently to contradict.

This would explain why this book describes the same material and attributes the letter to a correspondence between Erasmus and Nicholas Everhard, the President of the High Council of Holland:

Erasmus sent word to Nicholas Everard, president of the court of Holland, that the Lutheran tragedy would end, like the quarrels of princes, in matrimony. He says, " If the common story be true, that antichrist shall be born of a monk and a nun, as they pretend, how many thousands of antichrists are there in the world already? I was in hopes that a wife would have made Luther a little tamer; but he has published a book against me, more virulent than ever." Erasmus was not well instructed in this affair, or he was too prone to give credit to the scandal which was published against Luther.