Another response to more objections

De Maria November 14, 2012 at 10:37 PM

I appreciate you putting this information up here on your blog. This topic is of great concern to me it requires much thought and meditation. I have read your book on the Papacy, and I saw how early it was that Christians began to mention seed-forms of what would become the modern day papacy.

It is an excellent book. I enjoyed it immensely!

In the first place, I would agree with the poster who said that something so grounding and important as the Papacy would be mentioned from the very inception of it’s existence.

It is. Matt 16:18-19.

To carry the claim that Jesus Christ established a special, unique, singular, perpetual, indestructible, and infallible “office” which would begin with Peter (the rock of the Church) and that would continue on in the form of a successive dynastic structure, similar to that of the kings of Israel, and that would be the visible head and Shepherd of the world-wide church until the return of Christ, and which depends not on the holiness and righteousness and faith of the person fulfilling this office, is a VERY suspicious claim to carry when one considers the early church’s history.

You’re suspicious. I’m not. I believe in the promise of Our Lord, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Simply resorting to the later development of the NT canon will not do to justify as a comparison

That is a statement of opinion.

( I will mention why a little bit below).
We know that Peter was given the function as “rock” of the Church which would build, and that the “keys of the kingdom” would be given to Peter and that this would involve the functioning authority of “binding and loosing”.

You just proved yourself wrong. The New Covenant is better than the Old. God made an ongoing concern in the Old. Why would Jesus establish a Covenant which would break down in one generation?

Such words would have made sense to Jewish hearers. What Christ was doing was giving Peter authority as a steward of God’s kingdom on earth.

Catholic Teaching. That is what it means to be Pope.

This is why “whatever is bound on earth will be bound in heaven”: this gap which exists between “heaven” and “earth” will be regulated by the Steward of the earth part of God’s kingdom, and such exercises of authority will have it’s settlement in heaven, ultimately, as a result.

You are arguing in favor of the Catholic doctrine. Not against it. Have I misunderstood your post?

Also, this power of the keys, the function of being “rock”, and the authority of binding and loosing are not isolated endowments. Rather, Simon has been divinely inspired to know who Jesus was: The Christ of God. Peter came to know inspired and divine truth. It was Peter’s confession of the true identity of Christ that sets the stage for these figures of the “rock of the Church” and the “keys of the kingdom of God”. Truth is the circle that surrounds the situation.

Absolutely!

Nothing about succession,

1. That is what the keys signify. Succession. He will pass on the keys generation to generation.
Isaiah 22:22-24
King James Version (KJV)
22 And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
23 And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house.
24 And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons.

2. The name Rock signifies that the Church is building upon him for eternity. Not just when he is alive. That is why, the Church, at the time of the Apostles was built upon the foundation of the Prophets who came before them.
3. In Acts 1, Judas place is filled. Indicating that everyone of the Apostles is holding an office which will be filled in the future, when they pass away.

rather truth is the foundation to this situation where Simon is re-named and authority is granted to him.

That is true. And the next person to hold the office will be building upon the legacy which St. Peter left behind.

Moreover, the “church” is able to carry on the “function of the keys” in disciplinary proceedings.

Absolutely. That does not negate that the keys were given to St. Peter. It simply shows that St. Peter’s office is the highest in rank.

A person is “excommunicated” under and by the utilization of these “keys to the kingdom of heaven”. Interestingly, the “keys” are at work here in settling the issue of “offenses” in the Church. We see that it is not just “Peter” alone who can utilize the “keys” but also the “Church” –

1. Christ only gave the keys to St. Peter. Signifying that he is the Chief Officer.
2. The others have authority only when they are united to St. Peter, the holder of the keys.

(obviously Peter is in the Church as well). But we must see that the “keys to the kingdom of heaven” are somehow wider in it’s possession than simply Peter as an individual. In fact, Peter here is representing the whole apostolic church.

That is Catholic Teaching.

All this being said, we read nothing of a succession of bishops.

Yes we do. You simply missed it. Read Acts 1 and read where St. Paul made criteria for the selection of Bishops.

This is something that would have been in an instructional manual

The Bible is not a manual. It is a compilation of the Biographies of Jesus Christ known as the Gospels. It also contains a record of the activities of the Apostles after Jesus ascended to heaven. And it contains some letters exchanged between between certain Apostles and the various Churches.

However, the Bible is not a manual. Not in the Old nor the New do we find detailed instructions on how to run the Church.

As for Catholics, we get that information from Tradition.

or in a contextual conversation with Christ on how the Church was to continue in the world, but rather the Context of Matthew 16 is again the issue of “truth”. It was revealed to Simon who Jesus really was, and this sets the stage. An attempt to pull in Isaiah 22 into the picture here is rather weak in my opinion, for no one argued like this until Catejan in the medieval period.

I doubt that is true. But even if it is, what of it? The keys logically signify authority, you said so yourself. And authority is passed down. Jesus did not establish a Church which would die in one generation.

Finally, trying to appeal to a later development of the NT canon to try and make appropriate the later development of the Papacy is extremely faulty.

That is your opinion. An opinion which I find very faulty.

In the first place, the NT Canon is not a creation or development of the Church

In fact, it is. It is members of the Church who wrote the books of the New Testament.

that began with “seeds” and then eventually underwent a “watering process” and then with time undergoes a “sprouting process”, etc,etc,etc.

That is a poor metaphor. The Church grew. The New Testament Scriptures were written by Church men who were inspired of God to first to preach and then to write down what they preached.

Rather the documents of the NT Canon were already circulating and recognized as authoritative very early in the Church as is evident with Ignatius, Clement, Ireneuas, Tertullian, etc,etc….

How does that argue in your favor? These are all Catholic Bishops you have named. Members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

It was not really a codified doctrine, rather it was just the logical nature of submitting to apostolic teaching.

Again, you’re arguing in favor of the Catholic Teaching. Your conclusions are completely illogical based upon the facts you are presenting.
1. The Bible is not codified doctrine. That is correct as I already mentioned. It is more easily classified as history.
2. Christ wanted us to submit to the Apostles, through the Church. Read Matt 18:17. It is the Church named there because the Apostles make up the Church and logically, because they would leave the Church behind and the Churcb needed to be authoritative throughout history (Matt 28:19-20).

For example, Paul just assumed the right to have his epistles read by more than one church “And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans, and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea” (Colossians 4:16). This doesn’t take great pain to assume that this was a practice from the very start does it? Peter also recognized that Paul’s epistles were circulating (2 Peter 3:16). Now grant it, Paul most likely wrote many more epistles than we have in the Canon, for instance, there is missing the prior letter to the Corinthians and then also the Laodicean epistle (which some believe to the epistle to the Ephesians), but we really are not concerned here with “which letters get in” or “do we have all of them”, rather the issue here is “should we hold them as authoritative scripture to be submitted to?”

You’re still arguing against yourself. It is the Church which answered that question and acted upon it. No one else. There was not some other entity involved in the selection of the New Testament canon.

and I think that such a conceptual question has warrant right from the get go and has evidence right in the NT documents themselves to support the logic of getting what books we know are circulating and must be read by all the faithful.

Again, a decision made by the Church. Namely by St. Jerome when he wrote the Latin Vulgate.

Therefore, the canonization of the NT is not a doctrinal development, rather it is a principle that was put into action.

It is both.
1. The doctrine which was developed is the Table of Contents, the Canon, which was now established for the Bible.
2. The principle was put into action BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

This principle is inherent in any historical investigation. For instance, if we want to know what happened in a homicide event, we consult the witnesses and hear their stories. This is not a development in principle, it is just the action put into practice of a principle that is assumed and inherent to be logical from the start. It is pre-suppositional. To gather the data closest to the apostles and which were being circulated around by all the churches and to put such a collection together is just compared to me cleaning up my library collection and putting things in order so that I know exactly what I have to use.

In that metaphor, you represent the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church put things in order in her library collection. A collection of books, which she had written.

Now grant it, there were many disputes for certain letters, as to whether there was certainty of it’s apostolicity such as Revelation, James, Hebrews, and 2 Peter. But still, whether these letters went into the NT Canon or not, there really is still not development of doctrine involved here. I am really quite puzzled that you use this argument in the book as well to try and legitimize a later development of the papacy.

The papacy did not develop, it was established by Jesus Christ.
The Canon developed as the Church wrote the different books and then sifted through and identified which books were authentic and which were not.

The Papacy claims to have it’s origin with Jesus and Simon at the moment where God reveals to Simon the true identity of Jesus.

Absolutely.

That Christ here established a dynastic structure consisting in an unbroken line of succeeding bishops, uniquely, particularly, singularly, visibly, perpetually, and indestructibly beginning with Peter and which would continue on and on until the end of the age is quite missing from the text of the gospel of Matthew.

For you, because your judgement is colored by the tradition of men which you follow.

But we follow the Tradition of Jesus Christ which is there recorded in the Scripture.

And that this unique and supreme “office” works to fulfill God’s purpose despite who is in the office, whether he is bad, good, believing, or disbelieving, is something which would of had to have it’s publication right from the inception.

Yep. We have faith in God.

For a serious thinker,

You consider yourself a serious thinker, I suppose. But I also consider myself a serious thinker. And I disagree with your opinion.

the analogy of a seed to it’s full blow tree structure is still not working

You mean the on that Our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed?
Matthew 13:31-32
King James Version (KJV)
31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

here in comparison to the modern Papacy with what went on here between Jesus and Cephas. I mean for goodness sake, Paul missed out on telling Timothy about this foundational doctrine when he was giving Timothy sincere admonition to not stray from the truth.

I’m sure if St. Paul missed it, the other Apostles would have reminded him. The letters which St. Paul wrote, none of them were all inclusive of every doctrine of the Church. Do you see any mention of the Eucharist in 1 and 2 Timothy? And the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith.

If the Papacy and the surrounding college of Bishops were really what Christ had it mind when he said “on this rock I will build my church”,

Funny that He used the singular pronoun then.

specifically the reference to the Church, then Paul simply was unaware of this foundational “rock” function of the successors of Peter, and as such we have a witness to the post-apostolicity of the Papacy.

St. Paul was aware of it, although it is obvious that he chafed at it sometimes. But then, he was a work in progress. I’m certain, in the end, he submitted wholeheartedly to the authority of the Church which Christ built.

Sincerely,
De Maria