In my exit interview, federal vision, NPP, and NT Wright were suddenly my pastor’s best friends. He told me that he’d be comfortable if I worshipped with them but that he would worry for my soul if I joined the Catholic Church. When I heard that, I was even more comforted by my decisions. Because suspicion toward Rome seems to be the only thing uniting Protestants at this point.First, let me tip my hat to Andre for at least going through the "exit interview" process. While I am sure I have a lot of issues with him and his views, I am glad to see that he took the process with more seriousness than many.
That said, Andre has a warped perspective. His former pastor would say the same thing if Andre was leaving for Islam or Mormonism, both of which claim (like Romanism) to have an authority that either de facto or de jure supercedes the Bible. The problem is that Andre has left the visible church to join a church that rejects the gospel and has a history of persecuting those who preach the gospel.
We would and do give him the same sorts of warnings we give to those who leave for Islam or Mormonism. The Roman magisterium is no more legitimate than Mohammed or Joseph Smith, notwithstanding their lofty claims for themselves. We fear for the souls of those who take such actions, because they are turning their backs on the gospel, and departing from the catholic and apostolic faith.
Our warnings to those who join the federal visionist or new perspectivist groups tend to be somewhat different, mainly because their serious doctrinal errors there do not necessarily rise to the level of rejecting the gospel. The warnings we would give in those cases would be similar to the warnings we would give to someone leaving to a Methodist or Lutheran church.
I'm not sure whether Andre understands this important distinction between the gospel and other important doctrines. I will, however, pray for his repentance and restoration to the visible church.
-TurretinFan
Actually, Islam is, like Protestantism, a "sola scriptura" religion. And that is why there is no authoritative interpretation. Sufis and progressives promote peace and inner Jihad. Others promote violent jihad against infidels.
ReplyDeleteRyan
Ryan:
ReplyDeletea) There are "Qur'an only" Muslims, but they are a tiny minority. The vast majority are Sunni, who would view the teachings of Mohammed recorded in the Hadith as also divinely authoritative.
b) And, of course, the Qur'an is not the Bible or any part of it. It is a new authority that undermines that authority.
Right that there are few "Qur'an only" (solo scriptura) Muslims, but all remaining Muslims are Sola Scriptura Muslims. The Qur'an, as the eternal Word of God--think about the consequences of the eternality of the Qur'an, which puts it on a separate category from the Hadith--is the sole DEFINITIVE source of truth. The Hadith have varying degrees of authority. There is an entire scientific system devoted to labeling the "authority level" of each Hadith, and there are numerous disagreements about authority, though it is not as fractured as Protestantism because there is no emphasis on personal interpretation. Conceptually, however, it is similar to Protestantism in the historical sense of "sola Scriptura" in which the Bible alone is divinely authoritative and one must sift through other, good authorities (Early Church Fathers theological writings, Medieval theological writing, Luther, Calvin, etc) that one chooses to accept.
ReplyDeleteTo summarize: my point is that Protestantism and Islam are more analogous in this area (and, arguably, in several other areas) than are Catholicism and Islam.
ReplyDeleteAside from the fact Rome believes they worship the same god that Islam does. But hey, why bring facts into the discussion?
ReplyDelete"To summarize: my point is that Protestantism and Islam are more analogous in this area (and, arguably, in several other areas) than are Catholicism and Islam."
ReplyDeleteThe limited analogy is that Protestantism (much of it, anyway) and contemporary Islam don't claim to have a continuing living magisterium. In that way, the Mormons are more like Rome than Islam or Christianity is.
"Right that there are few "Qur'an only" (solo scriptura) Muslims, but all remaining Muslims are Sola Scriptura Muslims. "
ReplyDeleteThat really isn't true. The oral tradition recorded in the Hadith literature is an authoritative source, and is the basis for a lot of central aspects of Islam, such as the form of the Shahada. The use of (and choice of) the Hadith literature also has a powerful influence on the interpretation of the Qur'an in the various sects of Islam.
Some of the oral tradition has more weight than others and various schools of Islam would weight the tradition differently from one another (though most Sunni schools would have generally similar approaches).
What's interesting is that Islamic appeals to "oral tradition" are a lot more compelling than Rome's appeals, because the Islamic appeals actually have some kind of historical documentation. One couldn't fill a postcard with credible oral tradition of what Jesus said beyond what is found in Scripture.
That historical reality rules out the use by Christians of "oral tradition," notwithstanding Rome's pretenses.
-TurretinFan
Ron: "Aside from the fact Rome believes they worship the same god that Islam does. But hey, why bring facts into the discussion?"
ReplyDeleteConsidering that Islam is an Abrahamic faith, and that there is only one God, we might say to the Muslims, "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews [fulfilled in the Christians]" (John 4:22). Because they deny the divinity of Christ, they do not know God in the true sense. They worship the one monotheistic God but have no direct access to Him, in the way Christians do, without going through God the Son.
Pax Christi
"Considering that Islam is an Abrahamic faith, and that there is only one God, we might say to the Muslims, "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews [fulfilled in the Christians]" (John 4:22). Because they deny the divinity of Christ, they do not know God in the true sense. They worship the one monotheistic God but have no direct access to Him, in the way Christians do, without going through God the Son. "
ReplyDeletea) Vatican II, however, does not say "salvation is of the Christians" (as Jesus said "of the Jews") but rather that the plan of salvation includes the Muslims and Christ-rejecting Jews.
See more discussion here:
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2008/08/response-to-paul-hoffer-salvation-of.html
b) Those who do not have the Son do not have the Father, either.
John 5:23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.
1 John 2:23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.
2 John 1:9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
c) Islam is not an Abrahamic faith, just as modern Judaism is not an Abrahamic faith. If they were the seed of Abraham, they would worship Christ.
John 8:39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
Galatians 3:7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
d) In short, they are as much "Abramic" as the Mormons are, and both will (unless they repent and worship the Son) find themselves in the same place on the day of judgment.
Turretinfan: "The limited analogy is that Protestantism (much of it, anyway) and contemporary Islam don't claim to have a continuing living magisterium. In that way, the Mormons are more like Rome than Islam or Christianity is."
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly my point. Islam does not have an authority that "de facto or de jure" supersedes its Scripture. The comparison between "Romanism" and "Islam" in this regard is false. The varying levels of authority of the Hadith might be analogous to the varying levels of authority Protestants ascribe to certain early councils and creeds, insofar as they do not contradict but expound upon Scripture. One difference is that the Hadith are more "supplementary" than "expository," but for the expository side of things there is a wealth of various historical Islamic commentators, none of which is seen as definitively authoritative (a la Protestantism).
"The use of (and choice of) the Hadith literature also has a powerful influence on the interpretation of the Qur'an in the various sects of Islam."
"Some of the oral tradition has more weight than others and various schools of Islam would weight the tradition differently from one another (though most Sunni schools would have generally similar approaches)."
This is entirely different from Catholicism's approach to authority and is much more analogous to Protestant authority--i.e. Spirit-guided reason and conscience in coming to conviction about what one takes as authoritative underneath, not alongside, the Bible (Early Church councils? Apostles Creed? Nicene? Westminster?). They would, of course, use very different language to describe this process, and because there is not an emphasis on personal interpretation there is not quite the diversity one finds in the Protestant landscape.
"Islam does not have an authority that "de facto or de jure" supersedes its Scripture. The comparison between "Romanism" and "Islam" in this regard is false."
ReplyDeleteAnd consequently, I don't think you'll see me arguing for that comparison.
"The varying levels of authority of the Hadith might be analogous to the varying levels of authority Protestants ascribe to certain early councils and creeds, insofar as they do not contradict but expound upon Scripture."
The life and teachings of their alleged prophet are more analogous to the imaginary oral tradition of Rome. They insist that if Mohammed taught it, it was a divine teaching. So, it would have equal authority with the Qur'an (like Oral Tradition has the same authority as Scripture, in theory, in Romanism).
"One difference is that the Hadith are more "supplementary" than "expository," but for the expository side of things there is a wealth of various historical Islamic commentators, none of which is seen as definitively authoritative (a la Protestantism)."
The Islamic commentaries are a different matter - their authority is less than that of the Qur'an or the "certain" hadith.
Re: "The use of (and choice of) the Hadith literature also has a powerful influence on the interpretation of the Qur'an in the various sects of Islam." and "Some of the oral tradition has more weight than others and various schools of Islam would weight the tradition differently from one another (though most Sunni schools would have generally similar approaches)." You wrote: "This is entirely different from Catholicism's approach to authority and is much more analogous to Protestant authority--i.e. Spirit-guided reason and conscience in coming to conviction about what one takes as authoritative underneath, not alongside, the Bible (Early Church councils? Apostles Creed? Nicene? Westminster?). They would, of course, use very different language to describe this process, and because there is not an emphasis on personal interpretation there is not quite the diversity one finds in the Protestant landscape."
There is a difference: Rome doesn't really have an oral tradition - Islam does. However, in principle Rome honors oral tradition as having equal authority (just as Islam does). In practice, standards of judging "oral tradition" end up being (in practice) standards of judging the "unanimous consent of the fathers." Some fathers end up having more weight than others, and certain patristic doctrines end up being emphasized more or less, depending on a variety of factors.
Ultimately, the existence of the alleged magisterium is a differentiator that distinguishes Romanism, Mormonism, and Islam during the life of Mohammed, from Islam now and Christianity.
-TurretinFan
""Islam does not have an authority that "de facto or de jure" supersedes its Scripture. The comparison between "Romanism" and "Islam" in this regard is false."
ReplyDeleteAnd consequently, I don't think you'll see me arguing for that comparison."
Sorry, I thought that was precisely what you were arguing for in your third paragraph.
No, I argued that Islam has an authority that allegedly supercedes the Bible. (the Qur'an and the other teachings of Mohammed being that authority). Recall, I wrote: "both of which claim (like Romanism) to have an authority that either de facto or de jure supercedes the Bible"
ReplyDeleteHow dare you contradict the assuredly infallible perpetual authority of Rome, which has autocratically infallibly defined that she is infallible when speaking in accordance with her infallibly defined scope and subject-based criteria, thus rendering her very declaration of infallibility to be assuredly infallible, and all else that fits that formula though the RC must make a fallible decision to trust in said magisterium, and in discerning which pronouncements are infallible, and to some degree what the mean). As one RC argued, Rome cannot be wrong as she defines what right and wrong are, and thus Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, can say,
ReplyDeleteIt was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
But you basically dealt with this in the blog below: http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2012/02/unto-what-shall-we-liken-roman.html
Ah, I think I now understand. The Qur'an supersedes the Bible (in a contradictory way even within the Qur'an itself), and so does the Book of Mormon? I mistakenly thought you meant there was an authority above all Scripture.
ReplyDeleteNow that I understand this, on what basis do you say Catholics claim to have an authority that supersedes the Bible in this sense?
>Now that I understand this, on what basis do you say Catholics claim to have an authority that supersedes the Bible in this sense?
ReplyDeleteMr. Turretinfan can answer this much better than myself, but I'll just say that Roman Catholics put tradition and the pronouncements of their Magisterium at an equal level with Scripture, and by default, really, at a higher level than Scripture because their Magisterium can contradict or override Scripture.
Well, I should have read the thread before I posted, yet I think my simple response still answers the question, even though such simplicity may have been waved off or anticipated in previous comments, truth doesn't get to be waved off or anticipated with the pretense of being made null.
ReplyDeletePuritanChristian: Yes. Those in the Roman communion claim that Scripture can only be understood in a sense that does not contradict what the magisterium says. That places the magisterium in the driver's seat.
ReplyDeleteTurretinfan: That's a claim you can make, but again your analogy between Islam, Mormonism, and Roman Catholicism is shoddy. Islam and Mormonism claim to have Scripture either superseding or updating the Bible. Roman Catholicism has a Magisterium that it claims is divinely protected against errors in Biblical interpretation.
ReplyDelete"That's a claim you can make, but again your analogy between Islam, Mormonism, and Roman Catholicism is shoddy. Islam and Mormonism claim to have Scripture either superseding or updating the Bible. Roman Catholicism has a Magisterium that it claims is divinely protected against errors in Biblical interpretation."
ReplyDeleteYour claim that it is "shoddy" is just a statement that you don't like the comparison.
You don't call the decrees of your allegedly ecumenical councils and "ex cathedra" papal statements "scripture," but you give them superior authority to Scripture.
What's most amusing about your claim is the idea that your magisterium is protected against errors in Biblical interpretation: as though the dogma of the bodily assumption were simply a Biblical interpretation. Moreover, when we demonstrate a clear error in the interpretation of Genesis 3:15 in the document defining the dogma of the immaculate conception, we hear that only the conclusion is protected from error. And you're free to hold such an opinion - but then it really isn't an interpretation that is being protected - just the definition of dogma.
-TurretinFan
Turretinfan:
ReplyDeleteMany comparisons can be made between Catholicism and Islam--one God, final judgment, heaven & hell, Abraham, etc. Comparisons between the two suggests nothing about their truth. There are more similarities between Protestantism and Mormonism than between Mormonism and Catholicism, but that by itself does not necessarily mean Protestantism is false. My problem, still, is that the comparison is illogical. You can deny the authority of the Magisterium and ex cathedra papal statements, but that doesn't mean there is an analogy between Catholic authority and Islamic authority.
You write: "You don't call the decrees of your allegedly ecumenical councils and "ex cathedra" papal statements "scripture," but you give them superior authority to Scripture."
I give statements of the Magisterium and ex cathedra papal statements superior authority to MY OWN interpretation, not to Scripture itself. What you are really saying is YOUR INTERPRETATION of Scripture is more authoritative than the Catholic Magisterium. Because you believe the Bible teaches monergism, and the Catholic Church does not believe the Bible teaches monergism, you are really comparing your interpretation to the Church's interpretation, whereas I submit my own interpretive authority to the Church.
You might not think baptism regenerates us, but the Church has interpreted the Bible to mean we are indeed regenerated by baptism. The difference is not that the Church has superseded Scripture by daring to interpret it authoritatively; the difference is that you think your interpretation is better. If your analogy holds, YOUR own authority has also superseded Scripture.
"We would..."
ReplyDelete"we give..."
"Our warnings..."
Who is this you are referring to? You? A group you belong to?
"Our warnings to those who join the federal visionist or new perspectivist groups tend to be somewhat different, mainly because their serious doctrinal errors there do not necessarily rise to the level of rejecting the gospel."
Many Reformed people would disagree that the FV doesnt "rise to the
level of rejecting the gospel". So my question is:
Who gets to decide if it rises far enough? I could never figure it out as a Reformed guy. Some said it did, some that it didnt. Both of their scriptural arguments sounded convincing, and after prayer and reflection I couldnt decide who was right. So in the Reformed system, who gets to decide?