The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum My final word on Apostolic succession...

Hello all,

Before I begin, I want to state that I have recieved personal permission from this site's webmaster to make this post.

This is my rebuttal to Catholicsoldier (James)' response to myself on the Papal Infallibility thread. See here: https://www.the-highway.com/forum/showfla...;o=&fpart=1

James is no longer with us, and at first I had a bit of a problem with responding to one who can or will no longer speak in their own defence, but I feel that for the sake of the Truth being told I should post this. I am quite thankful for the whole conversation with James, as I have learned much about what I believe, and what I obviously don't believe. I'm curious what other think about what I've written here- give some input! It's good to be sharpened by one another as we speak the truth in love.

Please note, that I've done this on a limited time budget, so forgive all spelling erros and the like.


Well, aparantly it's decided then. The point must have been missed, that the analogies were simply examples of a gross logical fallacy, which I expressed in plain form more then once:


This a priori discarding of analogy is quite a blatant evasion tactic to avoid having to deal with the arguments behind them. For the sake of clarity, I will reword my statement on "Bill" to deal specifically with the issue at hand:

...Do you see the humourous logical errors I am making? For starters, the apostles have not told us anything of their plan (for their office to continue forever). Just because they do this thing once (appoint a sucessor for Judas, who died prematurely), I am in no place to assume that they will always do this (i.e. that the line of apostles will continue indefinately), or especially to assume that their sucessors (even if there were any besides Matthias, which there were't- and this may be the most important piece of agrument against your position) will always do this, so that the Apostolic office will carry on for all time. This is simply ridiculous, for countless reasons which don't need explaining.

I will state again, that the only reason we would deduce apostolic succession from the appointment of Matthias, is if, for whatever reason, I held to a predetermined belief in such. But once again, James did not deal with my arguments directly and show that Acts 1 "incontrovertably" lays down apostolic succession. We are still left with no more then sentiment (his term), and absolutely no hard evidence (again, his term) for his position.


More evasion. The thread, at least partially, had turned into a discussion on apostolic succession. He brought it up, and went to the time of responding to my post on the matter. This is just time-buying.


I am well aware of the fact that the Bishop of Rome began to take prominence amoung his peers around the 4th century, and that he made ex cathedra statements before the 13th century (as Joe demonstrated in an earlier post). But, as de Rosa shows in the book I recommended, the pope did not speak ex cathedra as the sole and supreme leader of the church until the 13th century. Before this time, he spoke as one who recieved higher honours then the other bishops, but he did not have supreme authority over the whole church. Actually, this quesiton of Roman authority was one of the issues that caused the Great Schism in 1054. See: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/East-West_Schism

Now that we have dealt with a thorough refutation of the first posrtion of my post, we move on to some quoted portions of "Vicars of Christ" by Peter de Rosa I provided. While I did this simply to highlight some of the absurdity in the Pope claiming to be Peter's successor, I wasn't really expecting direct responses. However, I will offer a couple brief comments, trying not to get sidetracked...


That sounds nice, but just stating something doesn't prove it.


Must we teach every practice of Jesus? Perhaps not, at least not in the sense of the examples of homelessness and celibacy we are given by James here. But we must certainly practice every teaching of Jesus. It could may well be that the good-hearted folks in the Vatican missed Matt. 6:19: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal." "Do not-" that looks awfully like a command to me. Interesting. And as to whether or not Rome's splendour and indulgence is justified because of the Old Testament temple, I must have missed where the New Testament church was commanded to build a new temple. Instead, I read in John 4:21-24:



Perhaps not. But he did teach Matt. 6:19 (above).


It was a great temptation not to get into trasubstantiation here, but it seems James is again oblivious to the teaching of his church.


I am quite curious where the Bible says we are to manifest this beauty physically. Actually, I could yank up tons of proof texts showing the opposite conclusion. Matt. 6:19 keeps singing in my ears...

James also keeps stating "God has not changed." Well, the fact of the matter is that a lot did change from Peter to the Vatican. That's the point I was trying to get across, which was obviously either missed or ignored completely. Peter did quite well without a palace, and I'm at a loss to see where the Bible allows or even promotes the lavish opulence we see the Pope living in, which makes it all the more ridiculous for him to find justification for all this in the fact that he is ostensibly Peter's successor.


See above.


Thanks to The Passion, we've been here, done that, bought the t-shirts, and ripped holes in those t-shirts... We'll forget about this for now.


This confusing of personal opinion with empirical fact seems to be one of James' biggest errors. What "YOU" think, i.e. personal opinion, means absolutely nothing, if it's wrong. Just give me the facts. If they come from a person, fine, but that person had better be able to back them up. If they come from a book, fine, and likewise. But let's just deal with them, putting personal opinion in it's proper place- which should not be taking anything close to a lead role in a theological discussion.

In a similar, and yet enigmatically opposite vein (if you try to follow James' logic here, you'll end up quite confused), we find James dismissing all "antiCatholic" statements as pure sentiment or unfounded opinion, thus supposedly nullifying his responsability to deal with what they they present. This confused duplicity is quite evident, and is simply another example of pure evasion. If you can't fight the enemy, just stick your head in the sand and decide he's not there.


Wow! Read that again, folks: "All such anticathlolic works are like that." The court has sat, the jury has deliberated, and the verdict is in. Anyting negative about the Catholic church is false. Period. So stop arguing, and lets just all go join our local parish.

Forgive my sarcasm, but this is ridiculous. Unless James personally has had the privilage of reading every "antiCatholic" work in print, and has evaluated each work, exporing every assertion and thoroughly refuting every statement claimed as fact, this statement is almost humorous, and is again another example of a blantant evasion tactic so as not to interact in any meaningful way with what was presented. This is the closest to "don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up already!" that I have seen on this board since I started here.

I'd give this benefit of the doubt, and credit this to a momentary slip, but this is an unbroken pattern. I feel like I'm playing dodgeball, not having a theological debate. James just didn't stop evading and dodging, and refused to deal with the hard evidence. If I'm wrong, I would expect it to be proven to me, and I'd hope to take it like a man. I would expect the same behavior from the one I am debating with. But this continual side-stepping is just frustrating. Once again, Luther's statements about Erasmus come to mind, when he described him as an eel, who was impossible to grasp- slipping out of your grip, so that only Christ could lay a hold of him.


Actually, I am thankful he brought this up, because it clarified in my mind the incoinsistent hermeneutics at play in his theology here. Let's review:

- The apostles appointed a successor for their apostatized and fallen comrade. Therefore, every apostle must always have a successor.
- The apostles employed certain criteria in choosing a successor. This criteria we can disregard.

I would like to see exegetical support for interpreting one part of the Acts 1 passage one way, and another part another way. A ridgid apostolic uniformatarianism would demand that if the apostles are always to have successors, their successors would have to fulfill the same criteria that the original Apostles did. By this, we would also only have 13 apostles alive at any time. But if we disregard the qualifications and the tit-for-tat succession, what right do we have to still claim support for succession at all?


Perhaps I didn't explain well enough. Yes, the original twelve were choosen by Christ himself, but they were men who were there with him, and shared with most, if not all (in the case for sure of Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip and Nathaniel) of Christ's earthly ministry. When the apostles, Christ's sent ones, chose a successor, they insisted that he be one who had shared in the same experiences. Nothing changed, it's just that the Apostles were appointing him in the stead of Christ. And when Paul came along, like I've stated before, he had seen Christ face to face and spent time in heaven itself learning things too great to speak.

I have a hard time taking James seriously when he states, "if it changed once, it can change again to reflect new situations that warrant the changes." Nothing changed! Every apostle was a man who had seen Christ, who had spent time with him, and had been instructed in his doctrine. I will state again, unequivocally, that unless the Roman church can prove that every pope and bishop throughout all of history has experienced the same thing, then apostolic succession, and consequently the entire Church of Rome, falls apart.

James stated that he will go no further to prove the Biblical case for apostolic succession. Whether he could go any further or not is suspect, but, like before, the fact that he did not do so until now, and again defers it for later, suggests to me that this is just another evasion tactic, an attempted purchasing of time.


Trust me, I could make many such statements about James, saying things like, "I realize that accepting that you've been fed error on this issue would mean accepting that your church is a fraud, and that you've been decieved, and you will never do this, because it would cost too much, so you will simply keep arguing and disputing against the facts until blue in the face, and that's quite too bad, and I'm not sure how long I'll hang around and participate." But I don't think I will say things like that, because I've seen them to be quite pointless in the past, because telling a man that his position is wrong means nothing unless you can prove it. It could also be said, proving to a man his position is wrong is pointless until he's willing to accept it.

But, nevertheless, we again come to the end, and no progress has been made. My position has yet to be proven wrong- for goodness sakes, the arguments I presented have yet to be interacted with, instead of evaded and dodged. I think this discussion is a real example of the lengths someone will go to to avoid having to deal with the cold, hard truth. Truly, only Christ can grab such. I am most sad that things ended like this, and I think it is the responsibility of all of us to pray that the Holy Spirit would convict James of his sin and error, and lead him to the Truth of God as revealed in His Word.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Henry

Good post Henry, I enjoyed it and I think it very thoughtful. I was hoping to get a response from James to most of the same issues you brought forth in the first part of your post.

I am curious as to what has transpired here. In the process of awaiting my response on this same issue I found the thread locked. Now I find out James is gone. I don't care to drag anyone through the mud, but what are the facts?

Henry, it is very commendable that you have spent time and agonizing effort to try to direct a man to examine his steps and take some personal assessment of what he believes and why. We can all benefit from that principle (of Solomon’s, the “preacher”?) that a man sharpens a man as iron sharpens iron.

I have always tried to live my life with an open heart to at least hear what others have to say to my views, be they doctrine, genuine theology, dogma, etc. I believe that one of the qualities of Christian maturity is the ability to be taught and willingness to challenge our own assertions. If they be of Truth, then they will stand on their own merit. And if they fall; (to the un-alloyed Truth of God’s word rightly divided) then good riddance.

I think we all carry around some baggage of the denomination where we received our teaching and discipleship. I don’t think any of us could honestly say which denomination is the “perfect” one. After all, are not denominations due to man’s design and not necessarily after God’s will. However, we are surely encouraged to judge a tree by its fruit. We are warned to be ware of false doctrine. Denominations who depart from the basic tenets of the faith and wrongly apply traits of divinity to humans have essentially departed from the Faith. They have moved across the line from denominationalism to cultism.