(moved) Can the Philosophical Approach of "Reformed" Protestantism lead out of Christianity?

[PeaceByJesus]

Hello! I have three questions:
(1) Does "Reformed" Protestantism (Calvinism, Presbyterians, Evangelicals, etc.) have a real, direct basis in early Christian traditions and writings to claim that the Communion bread is "only" a symbol and to reject the Lutheran Protestant and Catholic beliefs in Jesus' real presence in the food (consubstantiation and transubstantiation, respectively)?

(2) Does Protestantism have a real basis in early Christianity to reject the special respect and claimed miraculous properties of holy relics?
(For Question #2, please see post #94 http://www.christianforums.com/thre...-of-christianity.7929431/page-5#post-69195600)

(3) Does this Reformed Protestant approach to theology lead out of and away from Biblical Christianity? (See Message #185 below for Q.3: http://www.christianforums.com/thre...of-christianity.7929431/page-10#post-69202770)

In the poll above, disregard the words "Age of Enlightenment". Calvin's rationalistic approach could only be a precursor to the Age of Enlightenment, whose founders included those who came from Calvinism like Pierre Baley and Rousseau.

I propose that we spend a little bit on each question and then as a group move to the next question one by one. We are currently on Question 3.

Hello, I have three questions:

Does Catholicism have a real direct basis in wholly inspired Scripture for making the various uninspired post-apostolic writings of men determinitive of truth, as determined by the historical magisterium which is infallible?

Does the claim of being the historical magisterium and stewards of Scripture mean that what she determines are relics having miraculous properties and worthy of special reverence must be true (but the Bible is a dead book unless she explains it)?

Does the claim of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, under which RCs find assurance that such things as the Assumption is fact, lead out of and away from Biblical Christianity?

These are needful questions in the light of the fact that the argument for literalistic understanding of the Lord's supper much rests upon the understanding of so-called "church fathers" (they were not) as determined by the RC or EO church.

That most of the early CF's who writings we have (it is estimated we only have a fraction of all that ECFs wrote freely available to us) supported the "Real Presence" (though apparently that originally was an Anglican term) seems beyond dispute, yet they also variously held other false beliefs, and RCs and EOs both enlist them in their disputes with each other.

As regards relics, that God can sovereignly bless contact with certain inanimate objects is Scriptural, but (apart from the ark of the covenant, which does not represent Mary) not by formally making such to be objects of veneration and as necessarily permanently conveying grace, which is what Israel did with the bronze serpent, but God can sovereignly choose to bless something like contact with the bones of Elijah in certain instances, which attests to the virtue of those to whom they belonged, or represented.

Simply because brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons or Paul, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them, (Acts 19:12) does not mean they permanently would be used of God as such, and become objects of veneration.

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. (Numbers 21:9)

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:4)

 

[MennoSota]

Unfortunately, this creates a kind of circular logic, Mennosota - One decides religion based on the word, but then what is the word based on? You might answer "itself", but the Bible is not _in reality_ a closed, fully self-explanatory system, otherwise the Protestants would not be so oppositely divided that the Lutheran Missouri Synod bans the Reformed from Lutheran Communion.
You can also answer "God directs us to the true meaning." But Lutherans (Missouri Synod), and many other Protestant groups may feel truly uplifted and inspired and claim, however sincerely, that God is directing them to whatever mutually exclusive doctrines they have reached. So it is with infant/adult-only baptism, the "real presence", etc.
Reality disproves this.
In reality, when a community normally wants to see what the original meanings are, it looks at the teachings past down from the earliest times. It's like an anchor. The Reformed cut the anchor and started to drift into "critical scholarship" and the "ordinary laws of nature" for theology, although I am not arguing that overall they left Christianity yet. It's just an approach that heads in that direction.

Would you say that sects that don't practice ritual baptism or communion and that say that the Old Testament doesn't predict the Resurrection are no longer Biblical Christian? Where do we draw the line when the ship is floating away and don't consider traditional interpretations to be a central authority?


You are not really stuck with accepting "the Roman Church and Tradition" or rejecting Tradition per se. Tradition can be crucial to understanding the Bible without making it "
"infallible". Orthodoxy does not teach that everything a church leader says must be infallible.

You have it backward. Tradition isn't needed to understand the Bible. God is needed to understand the Bible. The Bible determines if tradition is valuable or if it is worthless.
You also are consumed with concern over denominations. Every denomination has its goods and bads. Whether one has open or closed communion is just silly to worry about.
There are core teachings in the Bible simplified in 1 Corinthians 15. When God opens our eyes to this truth, He adopts us. It's so wonderfully simple and gracious that it makes one eternally joy-filled.
I know it's hard for you to accept this truth. You are immersed in your sect to the point that you struggle to let God teach you on your own.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Unfortunately, this creates a kind of circular logic, Mennosota - One decides religion based on the word, but then what is the word based on? You might answer "itself", but the Bible is not _in reality_ a closed, fully self-explanatory system,

Please explain upon which basis did OT writings of God become discerned and recognized as being such (which in principle supports a canon), and that souls could be correct in following itinerant preachers whom the historical magisterium rejected?

And explain how a supreme basis for determination of truth and for unity is to be rejected as being so if the use of which also results in disunity.

Finally, what is the basis for your assurance that your church is the one true infallible church?

 

[rakovsky]

Understand your concern with misguided liberal theology. I share the same concern.

You see the error of their ways from a tradition stand point. It's much deeper IMO. These liberal churches are denying the teachings of Holy Scriptures. In doing so forming their own post modern traditions.

Hello, Redleg.
Yes, this is the major issue. And yes, they are in fact sometimes denying what you, I, and more traditional Christians consider the real meaning of scripture.

Unfortunately, some of them claim that they have the "real" meaning of scripture and use "critical scholarship". And when that happens it becomes in reality very hard to argue with them on the basis of sola scriptura, because both sides claim "We go by what the Bible says". If you could argue "It's very important to respect what Christians have been saying for the last 1700-2000 years since Christianity began when it comes to these verses", you would have a much clearer basis for interpretation.

I posted a thread where a United Church of Canada (UCC) pastor is a self affirmed atheist and demands to remain in her capacity as pastor. I assure you I am not making this up. We have self proclaimed Christian churches embracing the culture of death by supporting abortion, homosexual clergy, and homosexual marriage.

Add to this church going and self proclaimed Catholics, Orthodox, Anglican etc. ignoring or in full rebellion of their catechism supporting the same as above.

It is not as open at least in those churches where it exists because such a position would contradict their clear Tradition and break their harmony with their Churches.

Episcopalians/Anglicans don't care about their Tradition as much, but this issue has made some controversy:
(http://www.christianitytoday.com/gl...uspended-anglican-communion-gay-marriage.html)

For Reformed Churches who just emphasize following Reason and their own reading of Scripture and don't care intensely about maintaining Church unity or past beliefs, they can just break off and create their own small church (one of hundreds today) based on their new "realization" of what scripture teaches that supposedly has been muddied by the big bad Church (Christian community) for the last 2000 years.

Strong delusion abounds. Perhaps you and I should look at the storm front in front of us instead of fighting the battles of the 16th-19th Centuries.

This is where those battles have gotten us, and in fact the "battles" continue as each "side" continues on its own path. I am actually not arguing against the Reformation per se, some of whose Reforms I think were needed. Nor am I arguing for all the uses and misuses of relics.

Rather, I question whether the Calvinist method of putting modern naturalist Reason above both the plain meaning of scripture and Tradition does not lead in a naturalistic direction out of what Christians typically have believed. In the third question I began by illustrating that method and course with the cases of Jesus' presence in the bread and the wholesale rejection of holy objects' roles in miracleworking, both of which at face value are in scripture and in Tradition with no early writings clearly set against them. The five or so Protestant Bibles teaching a nonChristian reading of Isaiah 53 are good examples of where this trajectory can ultimately lead.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Redleg!

I think your point is losing altitude as you try to blame Calvinism and the Reformation in general for the error abounding today.

I think it is hard to say where we would be today were it not for Calvinism. The Catholic Church needed, and I think still needs Reforms, and maybe there is something to be said about reevaluating the scriptures from a standpoint of Reason.

On the other hand, it can be really tough in practice to treat a deep, mystical, and thoughtful religious book, even one as big as the Bible a closed system that is easily understood, and then come to a consensus about its meaning. Even in Law we use court cases or scholarly treatises to understand basic texts (statutes and the Constitution). If we aren't allowed to rely to a major extent on what the Book's religious community taught in the era when it was written and in the centuries since, one ends up relying on "Bible-only" "critical scholarship" and our current faculties of "Reason", which are quite modern. So if most American Christians are affiliated with Churches that teach against Jesus' real presence in the bread stated in the Bible, and most of them don't care much about carrying on traditions and understandings from the past generations of Christians either, then one can identify ways in which Reformed approaches to religion have had a huge impact on the direction of Western, particularly Anglo-American, Christianity.

Where we differ is you uphold tradition to combat error. Unfortunately that is a departure from tradition as the Church fathers upheld Sacred Scriptures to combat heresy. We have visible evidence Scriptures were the transcendent standard to test tradition and refute error.

We can today use the very OT and NT the early church fathers used to refute heretics in the 2nd century and following.

Other than the above to combat error, what else would you use to combat error? Surely not employ despots to censor heretics and or create an inquisition.

Perhaps we should explore together what Jesus Christ said with regards to wheat and tares, the narrow road, and bearing fruit. There is where you find the sheep and goats, not in a particular church, tradition or denomination.

 

[rakovsky]

I think your point is losing altitude as you try to blame Calvinism and the Reformation in general for the error abounding today.

Where we differ is you uphold tradition to combat error. Unfortunately that is a departure from tradition as the Church fathers upheld Sacred Scriptures to combat heresy.
We have visible evidence Scriptures were the transcendent standard to test tradition and refute error.

We can today use the very OT and NT the early church fathers used to refute heretics in the 2nd century and following.

Hello, Redleg.
I support using scriptures to oppose heresies. The church fathers and teachers also used the traditions passed down to them from earlier Christians that explained the meaning of the Bible and religious issues. Calvin claimed to support Chalcedon, yet at Chalcedon the fathers themselves made a major emphasis on their consistency with previous councils and with theologians like St. Cyril. The term "nature" that the controversy focused on is not so clearly used in the Bible, and so the theologians had to make other arguments about its meaning in relation to Christ.

Other than the above to combat error, what else would you use to combat error?

Why not use a striving to maintain unity in the Christian Church and Tradition passed down over the last 1900 years to show what the religion actually teaches when the Bible's meaning is being debated?

Surely not employ despots to censor heretics and or create an inquisition.

No. But the Reformed tradition did not have tools of tradition and church harmony to persuade people. Calvin and the Puritans of New England at times used other, deadly "tools" to "combat heresey".

How come Catholic Poland could allow Unitarians in large number to remain in their lands under toleration, and yet ultimately persuade the people of Poland of their (Catholic position)? It seems that even Catholicism does not require inquisitions to survive.

Perhaps we should explore together what Jesus Christ said with regards to wheat and tares, the narrow road, and bearing fruit. There is where you find the sheep and goats, not in a particular church, tradition or denomination.

I like your poetry, but unfortunately if you only rely on some beautiful poetry without clear meanings, people end up fighting over what the "real" meaning of the poetry is.

Imagine that 100 years after you write those three lines above, 100 people decide that they will go "only" by what you "wrote" (sola scriptura). Then half the people debate the other half about what you "really" meant and oppose bringing in other writings from your contemporaries as an authority to show your meaning.

 

[rakovsky]

I believe the Reformed would not take Jesus Christ or an apostle healing for the Glory of God as superstition.

If you hear that someone got healed after happening to touch Peter's bones, your attitude as a good Reformed, I think would be intense skepticism. "Yeah... right..... That's superstition."

Now let's say you are living in 800 B.C. and you happen to know that miracles from saints' bones don't happen. Most of the Bible hasn't been written yet, but that doesn't matter for your beliefs, because according to the Reformed, Reformed views were the "original" ones that got covered up by the bad Catholic Church.

So you hear from some of your fellow citizens that they were burying a body, and the body came to life again .... when it touched Elisha's bones! Their claim gives your fellow citizens this mental picture:

Your normal reaction as a "Reformed" would be of course........... (Remember, this is not in the Bible yet.)

This sounds like superstition. Maybe the body was not really dead? Maybe it was just a coincidence that the revived body touched the bones? Maybe it is just a made up story? Because you *know* to be extremely skeptical of bones being used in healings.

One Reformed here wrote skeptically about this Biblical incident: "It does not say the man they cast down there was dead, does it? You are assuming something that is not stated."

So their reaction as a Reformed is to be very skeptical and insinuate that there was no miracle.

Now here is what the Bible says:
2Ki 13:21 One day while some Israelis were burying a man, they saw some marauders, so they threw the man into Elisha's grave. But when the man fell against Elisha's remains, he revived and rose to his feet.

This is one incident, but I could use the same logic when talking about miracles with clothes and with an apostle's presence in the New Testament to show that the Reformed would have the same attitude about those things if they were regular Judeans in the first century AD.
Besides, if these incidents are mentioned in the Bible, there could be other relic "miracles" that happened in Bible times that just didn't get mentioned. How would a good, skeptical Reformed feel about those relic miracle stories that weren't listed in the Bible?

And now c.2000 years later, how can we expect modern "critical scholars" trained in the Reformed tradition to interpret even those relic miracles that are listed in the Bible? This is what I mean about how the Reformed approach of Reason can lead away from the Bible stories.

 

[hedrick]

Catholic Transubstantiation agrees with the Catholic Fitzmyer's claim of "koinōnia, 'participation,' in the body and blood of Christ", which Calvin would agree with too.
…
Participation in events (eg. the Jewish context of a new covenant) and metaphysical identity are not mutually exclusive.

Sure, transubstantiation is consistent with participation. But the original question was about participation of Catholic scholars in ecumenical Biblical scholarship. I’ve never claimed that Catholics have abandoned transubstantiation, just that it doesn’t color the NT scholarship of people like Fitzmeyer. Fitzmeyer may well believe in transubstantiation, but it isn’t argued for in his commentaries (at least not in this place — I haven’t read all of his work).

Haydock’s commentary, to which you refer, is from 1859. That is well before Catholic scholars became part of ecumenical scholarship. (Nor do I claim that every Catholic scholar is, even today, any more than every Reformed scholar is today. There are plenty of conservative Reformed.)

However, Calvin would not agree with that "Bread and cup, body and blood of the Lord correspond to each other in an unmistakable way, and their implication should not be missed; they have become for Paul the real "spiritual food" and "spiritual drink" of 10:3-4."

For Calvin, the way that bread corresponds with the Lord's body is not one where the bread becomes the "real spiritual food". For Calvin, the "real spiritual food" was up in heaven, and the bread down on earth was just a symbol of that.

That’s absurd. Calvin certainly teaches that the bread and wine are spiritual food. You continue to misunderstand Calvin, because you take one of three ways in which he said believers are united to Christ in communion and exaggerate it. “Spiritual food” is a fine term for Calvin’s understanding, and in fact he uses it in his commentary on 10:3. Calvin understands the bread as spiritual food because it imparts Christ’s body. He sees this as the middle course between two extremes: Catholics “who dream of transformations (I know not of what sort)”, and extremists who separate the signs from the realities. He believes that the signs and the reality appear together, so that eating in faith actually imparts the body. “the thing represented is at the same time truly imparted, for God is not a deceiver to feed us with empty fancies.” Hence calling it spiritual food is precisely appropriate.

I think critical scholarship is worthwhile, but it is not really so objective as it makes itself out to be, Hedrick, and even modern naturalism can be a bias affecting an idea of what a prophet or scribe meant. For example, how do you think rabbinical and Christian "critical scholars" will come down on whether the Old Testament predicted that the Messiah will get killed? I think that regardless of whether they propose "critical scholarship" they will tend to come down on the side of their own denominations or biases like Rationalism.

My conviction is that the Christian reading of Isaiah 53 is correct, and the Nicene Creed states that Jesus' resurrection would be "according to the Scriptures", so this is a fundamental of Christianity. But we find multiple modern Protestant (I don't think particularly Lutheran) Bibles claiming that the rabbinical view is correct:

I think you have misunderstood how prophets should be used. Jews applied OT passages to current days. E.g. John the Baptist was seen as Elijah. (Mat 11:14). But this doesn’t mean that we should read the Elijah stories in the OT as simply predictions of John. They have an original context, but in Jewish thought OT events are seen as patterns to understand current events.

Similarly, Is 53 had an original OT context. But it was widely seen by Christians (and probably Jesus himself) as describing Christ. Insisting that OT commentaries should describe the OT context does not invalidate the use of the passage in the NT.

This isn’t “naturalism,” any more than Calvin is actually guilty of naturalism. I think using the term "naturalism" for respecting the original context of a writing is a pretty non-standard use of the term.

Indeed I would claim that it is transubstantiation that is actually “rationalistic,” in trying to turn a spiritual reality into metaphysics. I think many Orthodox would agree with that.

 

[rakovsky]

Thank you for admitting there was some error in your original polemic reference Enlightenment. May God Bless you for your humility in doing so. I am being sincere. Most people would try to brush it off.

Thanks, Redleg.
I am not here to troll the Reformed. Rather, I want a deeper understanding of an underlying issue. It seems to me that if we write off tens or hundreds of thousands of claims of relic miracles wholesale as "superstition" because they involve relics, then if we keep going where this reasoning leads, we can just as easily write off tens or hundreds of thousands of claims of Christian miracles in general.

If hundreds of believers claim that they have been healed after praying with holy objects like ikons or saints' bones, and we discount their claims and practices as pious frauds, fabrications, silly delusions, and "superstition" despite witnesses claiming to "confirm" the miracles, it seems that the same cynicism can discount "confirmed" miracles that don't involve relics.

Please explain how scientific discovery led to theological error?

Strongly imposing a "scientific", naturalistic rationale on judging religious claims - claims like Jesus' body being present in the bread - can easily lead away from theological beliefs based on the supernatural.

Calvin's primary logic in his objection was that one body could not be in two places at once (eg. heaven and earth) as per the "ordinary laws of nature", as he termed it. Aside from the fascinating issue that Einstein later claimed a body could be in two places at once, Calvin's conflict with the plain meaning of scripture and Tradition was that Calvin imposed a modern "scientific" rule to judge against a supernatural doctrine. Luther made the same criticism of Calvin on this point.

Does not discovering the wonders of God's creation lead us to rejoice in our Creator and thus glorify Him? Of course since the beginning mankind has an inclination to pervert and corrupt by following the father of lies. What I am getting at is you cannot blame Galileo for Dawin, as you cannot blame Calvinism for Robespierre.

If Galileo and Darwin were both strictly following the scientific method and both always contradicted the Church and the Bible's plain meaning, then arguably such a major figure as Galileo did lead to Darwin.

It is hard to blame Calvin for Robespierre, since the latter was a democratic, political figure. However, if you wanted to, you could think that Calvin's iconoclasm and opposition to relics did have unfortunate results in the French Revolution centuries later. Calvin had a major impact on the Huguenots, who in turn affected indirectly the French revolution's turn against Catholic institutions and relics in particular.

So far so good, I suppose, per more radical Calvinists. However, in destroying relics, some valuable religious items could have been lost. One extremely fascinating object among Christians is the Shroud of Turin. Associated with it are other versions of the Shroud as well as the Image of Edessa. The relationship between these items is unclear, because they could have been destroyed in the French Revolution, as I think one version of the Shroud was.

Unless it is the Shroud of Turin, then the location of the Image of Edessa since the 13th century is unknown but may well have been among the relics sold to Louis IX and housed in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris until lost in the French Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Shroud_of_Turin

That is, on one hand, I think that some skepticism about relics is healthy, and has induced the Catholics to try much harder to avoid "pious frauds". Yet Calvinism's wholesale rejection of them has led indirectly to potential loss or weakness in studying the objects like the Shroud.

 

[redleghunter]

Hello, Redleg.
Yes, this is the major issue. And yes, they are in fact sometimes denying what you, I, and more traditional Christians consider the real meaning of scripture.

Unfortunately, some of them claim that they have the "real" meaning of scripture and use "critical scholarship". And when that happens it becomes in reality very hard to argue with them on the basis of sola scriptura, because both sides claim "We go by what the Bible says". If you could argue "It's very important to respect what Christians have been saying for the last 1700-2000 years since Christianity began when it comes to these verses", you would have a much clearer basis for interpretation.


It is not as open at least in those churches where it exists because such a position would contradict their clear Tradition and break their harmony with their Churches.

Episcopalians/Anglicans don't care about their Tradition as much, but this issue has made some controversy:
(http://www.christianitytoday.com/gl...uspended-anglican-communion-gay-marriage.html)

For Reformed Churches who just emphasize following Reason and their own reading of Scripture and don't care intensely about maintaining Church unity or past beliefs, they can just break off and create their own small church (one of hundreds today) based on their new "realization" of what scripture teaches that supposedly has been muddied by the big bad Church (Christian community) for the last 2000 years.


This is where those battles have gotten us, and in fact the "battles" continue as each "side" continues on its own path. I am actually not arguing against the Reformation per se, some of whose Reforms I think were needed. Nor am I arguing for all the uses and misuses of relics.

Rather, I question whether the Calvinist method of putting modern naturalist Reason above both the plain meaning of scripture and Tradition does not lead in a naturalistic direction out of what Christians typically have believed. In the third question I began by illustrating that method and course with the cases of Jesus' presence in the bread and the wholesale rejection of holy objects' roles in miracleworking, both of which at face value are in scripture and in Tradition with no early writings clearly set against them. The five or so Protestant Bibles teaching a nonChristian reading of Isaiah 53 are good examples of where this trajectory can ultimately lead.

I have to point out you have yet to establish the Reformers used modern naturalist reason above the plain meaning of Holy Scriptures and tradition. You have asserted such but have not established such.

You draw your conclusions by providing evidence of modern liberal churches. These "churches" engaged in doctrines of demons condoning the premeditated murder of unborn human beings, embracing the sins of damnable Sodom and brazenly uplift such and encourage.

However Calvin nor the Reformers encouraged such nor provided a dialectic for such.

We only need to look to Christ and the writings of the apostles to see they warned us of wolves in sheep's clothing, false teachers and gospels which even in the Apostolic NT were creeping in. Even St John penning the epistles to the 7 churches in Revelation 1-3, shows us Satan has been at war with the ekklesia since the beginning.

The Reformers upheld the Sacred Scriptures and upheld traditions which could be found justified by Scriptures. A cursory glance of Westminster confession provides the evidence you seek.

The naturalistic reason you speak of came later in the Enlightenment, and was not theological in nature.

As the radical textual criticism you speak of was a secular 19th century machination which certain German theological centers adopted ignoring the inspiration of Holy Scriptures and the early historical record of Christianity. All of which if Calvin or Luther were still alive would condemn as damnable heresies and extreme error.

Just as the early church fathers would condemn the doctrines of "Jesus" of Siberia today.

 

[redleghunter]

I like your poetry, but unfortunately if you only rely on some beautiful poetry without clear meanings, people end up fighting over what the "real" meaning of the poetry is.

Imagine that 100 years after you write those three lines above, 100 people decide that they will go "only" by what you "wrote" (sola scriptura). Then half the people debate the other half about what you "really" meant and oppose bringing in other writings from your contemporaries as an authority to show your meaning.

Not poetry but the very parables of Christ I referred to. He also explained His parables. I used short hand given you are Orthodox and know the references.

100 years from now the Scriptures I envoked will be the same as they are the words of Christ which was the same yesterday, same today and evermore.

 

[redleghunter]

If you hear that someone got healed after happening to touch Peter's bones, your attitude as a good Reformed, I think would be intense skepticism. "Yeah... right..... That's superstition."

Now let's say you are living in 800 B.C. and you happen to know that miracles from saints' bones don't happen. Most of the Bible hasn't been written yet, but that doesn't matter for your beliefs, because according to the Reformed, Reformed views were the "original" ones that got covered up by the bad Catholic Church.

So you hear from some of your fellow citizens that they were burying a body, and the body came to life again .... when it touched Elisha's bones! Their claim gives your fellow citizens this mental picture:

Your normal reaction as a "Reformed" would be of course........... (Remember, this is not in the Bible yet.)

This sounds like superstition. Maybe the body was not really dead? Maybe it was just a coincidence that the revived body touched the bones? Maybe it is just a made up story? Because you *know* to be extremely skeptical of bones being used in healings.

One Reformed here wrote skeptically about this Biblical incident: "It does not say the man they cast down there was dead, does it? You are assuming something that is not stated."

So their reaction as a Reformed is to be very skeptical and insinuate that there was no miracle.

Now here is what the Bible says:
2Ki 13:21 One day while some Israelis were burying a man, they saw some marauders, so they threw the man into Elisha's grave. But when the man fell against Elisha's remains, he revived and rose to his feet.

This is one incident, but I could use the same logic when talking about miracles with clothes and with an apostle's presence in the New Testament to show that the Reformed would have the same attitude about those things if they were regular Judeans in the first century AD.
Besides, if these incidents are mentioned in the Bible, there could be other relic "miracles" that happened in Bible times that just didn't get mentioned. How would a good, skeptical Reformed feel about those relic miracle stories that weren't listed in the Bible?

And now c.2000 years later, how can we expect modern "critical scholars" trained in the Reformed tradition to interpret even those relic miracles that are listed in the Bible? This is what I mean about how the Reformed approach of Reason can lead away from the Bible stories.

I am not a cessationist. Miracles happen today. I become a skeptic when a miracle does not clearly Glorify Jesus Christ and demonstrate His Gospel in Word and Power.

Again there is a "Grand Canyon" between the bones of a prophet of YHWH or cloth of St Paul, and keeping a saint's bone under the altar where you share the Eucharist or having a chapel and altar made of bones and skulls.

 

[redleghunter]

Thanks, Redleg.
I am not here to troll the Reformed. Rather, I want a deeper understanding of an underlying issue. It seems to me that if we write off tens or hundreds of thousands of claims of relic miracles wholesale as "superstition" because they involve relics, then if we keep going where this reasoning leads, we can just as easily write off tens or hundreds of thousands of claims of Christian miracles in general.

If hundreds of believers claim that they have been healed after praying with holy objects like ikons or saints' bones, and we discount their claims and practices as pious frauds, fabrications, silly delusions, and "superstition" despite witnesses claiming to "confirm" the miracles, it seems that the same cynicism can discount "confirmed" miracles that don't involve relics.


Strongly imposing a "scientific", naturalistic rationale on judging religious claims - claims like Jesus' body being present in the bread - can easily lead away from theological beliefs based on the supernatural.

Calvin's primary logic in his objection was that one body could not be in two places at once (eg. heaven and earth) as per the "ordinary laws of nature", as he termed it. Aside from the fascinating issue that Einstein later claimed a body could be in two places at once, Calvin's conflict with the plain meaning of scripture and Tradition was that Calvin imposed a modern "scientific" rule to judge against a supernatural doctrine. Luther made the same criticism of Calvin on this point.


If Galileo and Darwin were both strictly following the scientific method and both always contradicted the Church and the Bible's plain meaning, then arguably such a major figure as Galileo did lead to Darwin.

It is hard to blame Calvin for Robespierre, since the latter was a democratic, political figure. However, if you wanted to, you could think that Calvin's iconoclasm and opposition to relics did have unfortunate results in the French Revolution centuries later. Calvin had a major impact on the Huguenots, who in turn affected indirectly the French revolution's turn against Catholic institutions and relics in particular.

So far so good, I suppose, per more radical Calvinists. However, in destroying relics, some valuable religious items could have been lost. One extremely fascinating object among Christians is the Shroud of Turin. Associated with it are other versions of the Shroud as well as the Image of Edessa. The relationship between these items is unclear, because they could have been destroyed in the French Revolution, as I think one version of the Shroud was.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Shroud_of_Turin

That is, on one hand, I think that some skepticism about relics is healthy, and has induced the Catholics to try much harder to avoid "pious frauds". Yet Calvinism's wholesale rejection of them has led indirectly to potential loss or weakness in studying the objects like the Shroud.

One can rid places of worship of items which can lead to idolatry, yet preserve the history of such works in Christian museums. As many of the artwork in Christian history proclaims a love of God's Creation and portrays Biblical accounts (see my tagline for a wonderful Baroque work!). Francis Schaeffer Sr. wrote a book on this.

Christians continue to paint and sculpt to proclaim Christ.

 

[rakovsky]

To save time, just see here, by the grace of God. Only the metaphorical understanding easily conflates with the totality of Scripture, and the page on 1 Co. 11 shows how this remembering/showing is to be done, while physically eating/drinking was never a means of obtaining spiritual life, and is actually a pagan concept.

Dear P.B.J.,

You have posted a very long text. Please let me know if there are one or two paragraphs you wish to draw attention to. To object that "physically eating/drinking was never a means of obtaining spiritual life, and is actually a pagan concept" has several problems:
1. The Hebrews didn't practice it because Christ's sacrifice was not yet accomplished. To consume something to take in its life spiritually would bring one down to the animal level, because they just had animals. This is actually explained in the Torah, where it says not to eat blood, because the life is in the blood. Jesus however explicitly explains that you do need to consume his blood because his blood brings life. If you partook of the spiritual life of God, you could become immortal.

2. Eating was an essential part of necessary rituals like the Day of Atonement and Passover, during which the sins were taken away.

3. The concept itself is not pagan, since it is in the Torah, but it's banned because they did not want you to drink animal blood. Further, the Orthodox and Lutheran traditional view is that this Communion is not a "bloody" feast. Luther explains that we don't drink physical blood. Further, if we consider this a pagan concept only, then we would end up accusing Jesus of relying on pagan concepts, whether or not he used them as symbols. And even as per Calvinism, some form of partaking of Jesus is inherent in the ritual.

4. To object that a concept appears pagan would be to repeat the kind of claims that Christianity is "pagan", that the Torah considers it impossible for God to be a "man", that having multiple divine beings (eg. a Trinity) is pagan, etc. Just because something seems pagan is not enough of an objection. Christians respond that all these Christian concepts can be found in the Tanakh in either literal or prophetic form, like how the rule that "the life is in the blood" implies that if we consumed God's "blood" we could have immortality.

In any case, at this point, I wish to please ask you to move on to Question #3.
(http://www.christianforums.com/thre...of-christianity.7929431/page-10#post-69202770)

In the third question, I'd like to focus on how the Reformed position on the Eucharist and on relics leads away from Biblical Christianity, particularly how:

1. The Evangelical website "Credo House" says that disciples who rejected the plain meaning of Jesus' words on eating his flesh left Jesus, and that Jesus didn't call them back and give a symbolic meaning, even though the gospels say Jesus explained all his parables' symbolism to the disciples.
   
   
2. Paul wrote twice in 1 Cor. 10 and 11, asking the Corinthians to "discern" that the ritual bread is Christ's body, and warned them intensely against failing to do so.
   
   
3. The Reformed position takes extreme cynicism that saints' presence, bones, clothes, or other items could be involved in miracle working, yet this attitude would normally discount the numerous Biblical instances of them.
   
   

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, PBJ.

Hello, I have three questions:
Does Catholicism have a real direct basis in wholly inspired Scripture for making the various uninspired post-apostolic writings of men determinitive of truth, as determined by the historical magisterium which is infallible?

1. I am not sure that Catholicism teaches the magisterium is "infallible". At least our Orthodox church does not teach this.
2. It is hard to assert that the writings are "uninspired", since as Christian saints they would have been inspired (filled with Spirit), especially when it came to theology. If that is the Reformed belief, it is hard to understand why the saints would choose the right books of the Bible when they finalized them in the post-apostolic era, picked the right beliefs for the Creeds like Nicea and Chalcedon, etc.

Does the claim of being the historical magisterium and stewards of Scripture mean that what she determines are relics having miraculous properties and worthy of special reverence must be true (but the Bible is a dead book unless she explains it)?

I think Catholics don't claim the Bible is "dead". However in real life you sometimes need to about what the Christian teachings about the verses have been for the last 1900 years, or else you could end up like the JWs and hundreds of other sects who don't care about tradition, get confused about the Bible, and make mutually-exclusive doctrines that they claim are Biblical.

I don't think Catholics claim _infallibility_ about relics either. But they do typically believe that some relics have been involved with miracles. The Reformed seem so contrary to this, that they would normally be predisposed to even rule out the ones in the Bible were it rationally possible to do so.

Does the claim of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, under which RCs find assurance that such things as the Assumption is fact, lead out of and away from Biblical Christianity?

See above on mageristerial infallibility.

These are needful questions in the light of the fact that the argument for literalistic understanding of the Lord's supper much rests upon the understanding of so-called "church fathers" (they were not) as determined by the RC or EO church.

That most of the early CF's who writings we have (it is estimated we only have a fraction of all that ECFs wrote freely available to us) supported the "Real Presence" (though apparently that originally was an Anglican term) seems beyond dispute, yet they also variously held other false beliefs, and RCs and EOs both enlist them in their disputes with each other.

As regards relics, that God can sovereignly bless contact with certain inanimate objects is Scriptural, but (apart from the ark of the covenant, which does not represent Mary) not by formally making such to be objects of veneration and as necessarily permanently conveying grace, which is what Israel did with the bronze serpent, but God can sovereignly choose to bless something like contact with the bones of Elijah in certain instances, which attests to the virtue of those to whom they belonged, or represented

Yes, it's scriptural like you said. But the Reformed mindset appears to denounce said contact, in practice drawing exceptions around those contacts enumerated in scripture.

Simply because brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons or Paul, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them, (Acts 19:12) does not mean they permanently would be used of God as such, and become objects of veneration.

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. (Numbers 21:9)

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:4)

Yes in Question 3, I am not talking about worshiping the objects like they were idols. There was a cult of snakes in the Mideast, and I think the worshipers of the staff probably imagined that the snake image was an idol of a god.

Secondly, there appears to be a Biblical view that the physical body of saints is holy, hence the resurrection of their bodies. Were the bodies worthless to them, they could just stay in the ground and be better off. Christianity instead claims that the saints are spiritually transformed and these bodies will be made incorruptible. Jesus' body and Peter's physical presence are portrayed as playing a role in miracles. This can help make sense of Elisha's bones and how they could be involved in miracles long after his death.

 

[MennoSota]

Hello, Redleg.
Yes, this is the major issue. And yes, they are in fact sometimes denying what you, I, and more traditional Christians consider the real meaning of scripture.

Unfortunately, some of them claim that they have the "real" meaning of scripture and use "critical scholarship". And when that happens it becomes in reality very hard to argue with them on the basis of sola scriptura, because both sides claim "We go by what the Bible says". If you could argue "It's very important to respect what Christians have been saying for the last 1700-2000 years since Christianity began when it comes to these verses", you would have a much clearer basis for interpretation.


It is not as open at least in those churches where it exists because such a position would contradict their clear Tradition and break their harmony with their Churches.

Episcopalians/Anglicans don't care about their Tradition as much, but this issue has made some controversy:
(http://www.christianitytoday.com/gl...uspended-anglican-communion-gay-marriage.html)

For Reformed Churches who just emphasize following Reason and their own reading of Scripture and don't care intensely about maintaining Church unity or past beliefs, they can just break off and create their own small church (one of hundreds today) based on their new "realization" of what scripture teaches that supposedly has been muddied by the big bad Church (Christian community) for the last 2000 years.


This is where those battles have gotten us, and in fact the "battles" continue as each "side" continues on its own path. I am actually not arguing against the Reformation per se, some of whose Reforms I think were needed. Nor am I arguing for all the uses and misuses of relics.

Rather, I question whether the Calvinist method of putting modern naturalist Reason above both the plain meaning of scripture and Tradition does not lead in a naturalistic direction out of what Christians typically have believed. In the third question I began by illustrating that method and course with the cases of Jesus' presence in the bread and the wholesale rejection of holy objects' roles in miracleworking, both of which at face value are in scripture and in Tradition with no early writings clearly set against them. The five or so Protestant Bibles teaching a nonChristian reading of Isaiah 53 are good examples of where this trajectory can ultimately lead.

You have created a narrative that isn't true.
When any denomination bases their teaching on the clear teaching of the Bible, the church (Christ's body) is in agreement. When any denomination bases their teaching on human reasoning and then force the scriptures to match their traditions by using proof texts for their pretext, out of context, that teaching must be rejected by the body because Christ rejects that teaching.
Thus, I acknowledge that there are brothers and sisters in Christ from many many different denominations. This is because God has adopted them by His grace, not by the churches decree.
The gospel is a simple truth, yet it cannot be understood until God makes us alive in Christ. (Read Ephesians 2:1-10.)
All who have been chosen by God are unified by Christ. Denominations are not the unifying piece. It is sad that you cling to the Roman church rather than to Christ.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Mennosota.

You have it backward. Tradition isn't needed to understand the Bible. God is needed to understand the Bible.

The problem with this mentality is that there are hundreds of Protestant sects who don't care about the Christian explanations of verses for the last 1900 years, are convinced they have the right reading of the Bible, that the Spirit is filling them and leading them to this reading, a reading which turns out to be mutually exclusive of the other sects.

Take for example Quakers. They followed Zwingli's belief on sacraments to its natural conclusion. They decided that per the Bible, sacraments are only "outward" symbols and not really necessary, and so they stopped using baptism and communion rituals. In accordance with their full convictions and belief that they were following God, they underwent persecutions that were sometimes deadly.

This is why in practice it is important to care about the Traditions of the early Christians who explained what these passages actually meant, instead of just everybody always deciding major doctrines for their own small faction without caring about normal Christian understandings and imagining that their private, discordant viewpoint must be from God. Theoretically of course God could give you a vision and tell you most people but you are wrong like Ellen White claimed when she started the SDAs, but the early Christians seemed to care about following traditions handed down to them. (2 Thessalonians 2:15)

The Bible determines if tradition is valuable or if it is worthless.
You also are consumed with concern over denominations. Every denomination has its goods and bads. Whether one has open or closed communion is just silly to worry about.
There are core teachings in the Bible simplified in 1 Corinthians 15. When God opens our eyes to this truth, He adopts us. It's so wonderfully simple and gracious that it makes one eternally joy-filled.
I know it's hard for you to accept this truth. You are immersed in your sect to the point that you struggle to let God teach you on your own.

Yes, the Bible has many very inspiring truths. Personally, I find the concept of communion very pleasant too, thinking that God and Christ are directly present right there with us.
Question: When you learn that all the tens or hundreds of thousands of Catholics who claim to be healed and increased in faith from praying with relics are just under silly superstitions about these things, does this cause joy or not?

How should one mentally and emotionally deal with all these inspiring claims of healings and miracles with relics as a hardcore skeptic, and then turn to Reformed claims of miracles with no relics?

 

[hedrick]

I’m actually sympathetic with the primary thesis of this thread, that Calvin was a precursor to modern scholarship and theology. My problem is that in the course of making this thread, the OP is misrepresenting Calvin and using a weird definition of rationalism.

However maybe he means something different by the term than I do. I agree that both Calvin and modern theology are willing to abandon tradition where there’s evidence that it’s wrong. Perhaps he considers that rationalism.

The reason I think the use of the term is weird is because of the major drivers behind modern theology is a perception that a lot of Christian theology turned metaphorical and spiritual language in Scripture into metaphysical puzzles. This is understood as having happened in the transition from Hebrew to Greek worlds of thought. That’s normally described as a move in the direction of rationalism. During the medieval period in the West, theologians further elaborated the concepts, moving it further in a direction I’d also call rationalistic. The Reformation to some extent, and modern theology more, has tried to move back into the 1st Cent Jewish framework.

I suspect, however, that the OP considers any use of evidence to be rationalistic. It’s certainly rational.

I’m inclined to agree with him on the question of relics. There are few examples of relics in the Bible, and the three or so are pretty restrained compared to later practice. That allowed Calvin and other Reformers to draw a line between Scriptural examples and medieval practice. Still, I think the few examples that do occur in Scripture show the same kind of popular piety that resulted in later relic-mania. With Elisha’s bones, Jesus’ garment, and Peter’s shadow, we have holy figures whose holiness became a force in itself. It’s not so clear whether that is true of Paul’s effects. But the principle is there.

If you agree that the late medieval situation is unacceptable, one can take several approaches:
* try to make a distinction between the Biblical examples and what was done
* accept that in principle relics can have power, but demand more careful investigation
* reject the principle

Calvin seems to have done both 1 and 3. I think the Catholic tradition has ended up doing 2. My reading of Calvin’s treatise is that he rejected relics completely. I don’t think he just called for more care.

I believe modern theology would be likely to do just 3, and see the Scriptural examples of popular piety having made its way into Scripture. Critical scholarship does not, of course, reject the supernatural as a matter of principle. However it is aware of the tendency for supernatural accounts to be attached to holy figures. Hence not all supernatural elements in Scripture will be accepted.

I’m sure the OP will see this as rationalism. I’m not so sure that’s actually a correct use of the word. But it is surely the case that Calvin’s attitude is a precursor to the modern one.

Of course the current Catholic practice of demanding very careful documentation for miracles isn’t all that different from critical scholarship. In both cases it’s understood that Christianity inherently involves some supernatural claims, but it’s also understood such claims can also be spurious. Thus careful review is needed. Hence the current very careful reviews done of purported miracles by the Catholic Church is just as much rationalism as critical scholarship.

In my opinion the things characterized by the OP as rationalism are all good, though I’m less clear whether that word is the right one. It seems to me that for the OP, rationalism means anything that would challenge tradition, with little discrimination among them.

 

[rakovsky]

Please explain upon which basis did OT writings of God become discerned and recognized as being such (which in principle supports a canon), and that souls could be correct in following itinerant preachers whom the historical magisterium rejected?

And explain how a supreme basis for determination of truth and for unity is to be rejected as being so if the use of which also results in disunity.

Sorry, I am not sure what you are asking.

Finally, what is the basis for your assurance that your church is the one true infallible church?

If the Orthodox church care a lot about following the beliefs and writings of the Christian community from their first period when the Biblical books were agreed on, this is a good sign that the Church reflects the teachings of that Church.

If on the other hand a movement appears 1500 years later and goes ONLY on that main sacred Book and doesn't care much about how the contemporary Christian leaders understood the passages in the books that they passed down, it seems likely that the new movement 1500 years later could easily misunderstand some passages.

Besides, one of the proofs of Christianity is supposed to be that in the first few centuries the believers survived persecution for their faith. How can that be a proof of Christianity's truths if you don't care about the real, specific beliefs of those thousands of Christians as they directly wrote them down and explained their Bible?

It looks like Reformed is much more about caring what each Reformed person thinks about religion and the Bible, not about what the early Christians who formed the original Church that the Bible came from actually thought about it themselves. After five centuries it is not surprising this leads to some sects creating their own versions of religion based on what they want or expect to see, with "critical scholarship" debunking the Christian reading of Isaiah 53, etc.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Hedrick!

I like that you lean ecumenical and have been able to grasp some critical ideas I have tried to express. Also, you have alot of research knowledge, and it's nice that you can address issues of critical scholarship. It gives a feeling that you are clued into the discussion.

Sure, transubstantiation is consistent with participation. But the original question was about participation of Catholic scholars in ecumenical Biblical scholarship. I’ve never claimed that Catholics have abandoned transubstantiation, just that it doesn’t color the NT scholarship of people like Fitzmeyer. Fitzmeyer may well believe in transubstantiation, but it isn’t argued for in his commentaries (at least not in this place — I haven’t read all of his work).

Fitzmeyer writes: "His words thus affirm the real presence of the Lord in the eucharistic food and drink, as he will do again in v. 29" (about discerning the body).
Here, Fitzmeyer uses the term "Real Presence" which in theological discussions by Catholics and Lutherans typically refers to the belief that the Presence is in the food itself. Further, that is actually what Fitzmyer specifies- "the real presence... in the.. food". Calvin believed in Jesus' body's "real presence" being experienced up in heaven during the ritual, but not the real presence being within the "tokens" as he called the food.

=====================================

I may come back to the rest of your message later. But let's move on to the other part I have mentioned about the 3rd question: Namely, why do the Reformed seem to rule out any involvement of saints' objects, bones, or mere presence in miracles, and how do they deal with the contradiction with the Biblical usages, aside from portraying relics as "idols"?
Calvin seems to reject them out of hand as superstition, and repeatedly does so in his essay. It's true that he focuses on "idolatry", but that is not the kind of role of objects I am talking about.
Another answer I've gotten is that bones and clothes can't be themselves miraculous, so they can't be used in miracles either. It's the most direct answer I've gotten.

So then how do we deal with the numerous cases in the Bible when they are used?
One answer I am given is that it was OK because they weren't used as idols. OK, I know that. But Calvinism doesn't have a pleasant opinion about holy objects whether they are treated like idols or not. I've just been told that relics can't be used in miracles because they aren't magic, and then I read in the Bible about relics used in miracle working.

Another explanation I get is that it was OK that time because Paul was trying to show that Christ was holy to pagans. Of course, this kind of rationale is not enough to make Reformed approve of saints going to pagan places and using relics there to make conversions outside the Bible.

This total situation seems to imply to me that the Reformed consider the relic miracles of the Bible to be extreme exceptions that basically don't happen elsewhere in the Christian world. They don't really have an explanation of why God would break the Reformed principle against using saints' objects, but just look at it as a kind of aberration that they give circuitous excuses for. When I try to discuss this, the discussions seem to go in circles, as Hedrick said, with no real resolution for the major contradiction.

I suppose I just have to recognize that and move on. I can't expect that Reformed will actually grasp the substance that there is a real contradiction between a strong principle saying that relic miracles are superstitions that basically *don't happen* and then miracles with saints' bones or clothes being described in the Bible.

Too bad. I think it's an important issue. Once modern "critical scholars" who (1) have been trained in the "relics=superstition" Reformed movement and (2) as "critical scholars" no longer automatically accept Biblical inerrancy face these passages, they could turn their "critical guns" around to aim at the relic stories in the Bible itself, proposing that the revived Israelite who touched Elisha's bones hadn't really been dead, etc.

If Bible-believing Reformed don't want to see where their approach deriding ancient Christian religious Traditions reflected in Biblical incidents wholesale as unreasonable "superstition" leads, I can't "make" them. But it's really too bad, because Reformed make up a huge majority of American Christians. Their beliefs and approach have and will have a huge, crucial impact on Christianity in our country.

P.S. I know that you are grasping ideas here, Hedrick. I am not talking about everyone "not understanding". But I think most people will not. I am not saying critical scholarship is bad, or that Reason is a bad way to discover the world. I just think that there are major issues here in these Reformed approaches and people don't realize where it can and sometimes has led some Reformed theologians.
Peace.