evidence for the first few centuries following Jesus' time

from comment 217 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/apostolic-succession-and-historical-inquiry-some-preliminary-remarks/#comment-51816

In your comments to me, Bryan, Ray, and Michael, you have revealed that you have a deep misunderstanding of what data can and cannot tell us. I will start by outlining two simple facts about data. Then I will explain what these facts imply for numerous claims you have made on this thread. My explanations will also serve to reinforce points about data analysis for everyone in the discussion, thus moving the conversation forward.

FACT 1: Most of the early data of Christianity has been lost.

This fact is easy to demonstrate by any number of means. First, consider the size of the data set that has been preserved over time. A good place to get a general sense of the scope of preserved early Christian writings is the Patrologia Latina and the Patrologia Graeca of Jacques Paul Migne. While many critical editions of the fathers exist, it is difficult to find collections more comprehensive than his. Furthermore, since his collections are organized in rough chronological order, it is possible to get a sense from his work not only of how much early Christian writing has been preserved, but also how the number of preserved writings has varied over time.

These collections demonstrate that for the first 300 years of Church history, the collection of Christian writings is sparse. The 300 years between Pentecost and Nicea cover 16 volumes in the Greek collection. This is only one volume preserved from every 20 years of Christian history, with large periods in which nothing is preserved at all. The total number of authors seems to be about 30, or only one Christian author for every ten years of Christian history. Unfortunately, the plurality of these volumes are simply scriptural commentaries by one author (Origen), so we have even less data from these 300 years than the 16 volumes would indicate. Finally, the Latin collection contains only eight volumes during these first 300 years of Christian history.

The number of preserved writings is so small in the early years that it strongly suggests that most of the data has been lost. But it turns out that we actually have direct proof that this is the case. It turns out that there are many known missing writings. We know that these writings existed because they are referred to or cited by contemporary or near-contemporary witnesses. But the writings themselves have never been found in the modern era. Look at the links below, and see what a large number of writings of even exceptionally important early Christians are now missing:

Irenaeus: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08130b.htm
Tertullian: http://www.tertullian.org/works_lost.htm
Origen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen#Exegetical_writings

Take Irenaeus as one example of this phenomenon: Including only works which we see specifically mentioned in other sources, we know that Irenaeus wrote at least seven treatises/ books: (1) Against Heresies; (2) Proof of the Apostolic Preaching; (3) On the Subject of Knowledge; (4) On the Monarchy, or How God is not the Cause of Evil; (5) On the Ogdoad; (6) A Treatise on Schism; and (7) A Book of Divers Discourses (probably a collection of homilies).

Of these seven works, only two have been preserved. And one of these two, the Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, was only discovered centuries after the Protestant Reformation. So, at the time of the Reformation, the preservation rate of Irenaeus’ known treatises was at most 14% (assuming generously that he wrote nothing that hasn’t been referenced in other early literature). As of now, the preservation rate has increased to at most 28%. And this is a very generous upper bound.

Given the facts that I’ve outlined, many more of which you can find for yourself any time you wish, it is clear that most of what was written, let alone spoken, by even the most important early Christians has not been preserved.

FACT 2: Indirect evidence can’t tell us anything: accompanying assumptions do all of the work.

Direct evidence is evidence which tells us about exactly the question we’re asking, and does so as long as we merely assume that the person giving us the evidence is not a liar or completely misinformed. Anyone who has a good reason to know the truth about something and is not a liar can provide direct evidence.

Indirect evidence also requires that we assume that the person giving us the evidence is not a liar or completely misinformed. But it is distinguished from direct evidence in that it doesn’t inform our question without additional assumptions on top of these. These additional assumptions do two things: they allow us to claim that the indirect evidence is actually obliquely referring to the question at hand, and they allow us to claim that the indirect evidence implies a particular answer to the question at hand.

If an argument is entirely based on indirect evidence, then that means that the additional assumptions that we’re using to shoe-horn the indirect evidence into applicability to our question are really doing all the work – the claim that the evidence is telling us anything in itself is vitiated. This problem does not exist for arguments based on direct evidence.

You brought up the Sasquatch in your last comment to question whether we really base our arguments on direct evidence in our daily lives, but in fact, we know that the Sasquatch doesn’t exist by direct evidence. In particular, when we have numerous exhaustive surveys of all large land mammals in all parts of the earth, then the fact that none of these surveys finds evidence of the Sasquatch is direct evidence that he doesn’t exist. An argument from silence is perfectly good direct evidence when that argument is based on exhaustive and comprehensive data. In the case of exhaustive and comprehensive data, the absence of evidence is just the same thing as evidence for absence. Where an argument from silence fails as direct evidence is when the data has been sparsely preserved.

Now that I have introduced these two facts, I will explain how they affect some of the key claims you have made on this thread.

Claim 1: You wrote to Ray above:

As I’ve attempted to explain, the reason the Reformed reject the claims of Rome is not only because she possesses late evidence, it is that the large amount of extant writing that we do have from the second century–even centered in Rome–does not make the claims to AS like Irenaeus and later Fathers make.
. . . You can explain it any number of ways, but such evidence is intriguing given the silence from other areas. Couple this with Clement’s letter which nowhere mentions a monoepiscopacy, writings like the Didache which seem to have a less hierarchical structure than an episcopal bishopric, ommissions from Justin Martyr, Tatian, the Sherphard of Hermas, etc, and you have a cummulative case that makes that gap in time look more significant.

This claim is just false. The “evidence” is not “intriguing”. You do not “have a cumulative case that makes that gap in time look more significant”. In fact, the gap in time is completely insignificant to the question of whether we have a monoepsicopy in Rome, and it is insignificant for two reasons:

(1) The gap in evidence for a monoepiscopy between 60AD and 180AD is no more relevant than the gap in evidence for a presbytery in which all presbyters are equal in power between 60AD and 180AD. If it were really true that the argument from silence worked on the data between 60AD and 180AD, then it would be just as damning for your side that we don’t have any direct evidence for a presbytery in which all presbyters are equal in power.

(2) But, in fact, it gets even worse for your case: the argument from silence cannot work in the slightest on the data set between 60AD and 180AD. This is because of Fact 1 above: the early data set has lost too much data. To see why the loss of data vitiates the argument from silence, consider the following exercise applied to the Catholic Church of today. You can be in no doubt that the Catholic Catechism of today teaches the full gamut of teachings on papal authority. But let’s find out if a small sample of data from the Catechism would be likely to reveal the truth that the Catholic Church of today teaches the full gamut of teachings on papal authority.
Suppose that, as in early Christianity, only a small portion of the Catechism of today survives the next two thousand years. You can simulate this by taking a random sample of paragraphs from the Catholic Catechism of today. There are 2865 paragraphs of the Catholic Catechism. Now: how many of these paragraphs provide direct evidence of papal infallibility? Do a search on this website (http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm) and see for yourself how many paragraphs refer to papal infallibility. Now, if you took a 1% random sample (29 of the 2865 paragraphs), what are the chances that this sample would include a reference to papal infallibility? Try taking a bigger random sample. How big would the sample have to be in order to make it more likely than not that a sample would include one of the few paragraphs that directly assert or imply papal infallibility?
As you can see, Ref Prot, arguments from silence don’t work on sparsely preserved data sets. If you want to make an argument from silence based on Augstine’s corpus of treatises, then go ahead: we have 96% of them preserved. But you can’t make convincing arguments from silence on the early data.

Because of the two points above, the “gap” in evidence you speak of is not “intriguing”; it doesn’t hint at anything; it doesn’t make a “cumulative” case. It can’t make a case for anything at all. Which means that you can’t use the early data to criticize or query us for our beliefs in the slightest: the data necessary for such a query isn’t there. Now I note that by the same token neither can we say: “ha, there is no direct evidence for a presbytery in which all presbyters are equal in authority in the early data, so by that fact alone you are wrong.” But, in fact, we have never said that.

Likewise, you wrote to Bryan:

I, on the other hand, conclude that the 100 years of silence causes a different conclusion. If something so essential to the churches existence was not referenced until Hegesippus and in its mature form in Irenaeus over 100 years after the fact, this strains credulity.

No, it doesn’t. See above. 100 years of silence tells us nothing about this issue. You should stop claiming that it does unless you can disprove my explanation of why it doesn’t above.

You also wrote to Bryan:

I take what the Fathers give me with great reverence and appreciation but I do so with a critical eye as well. Just because a Father makes a claim does not mean that it is true. I attempt to weigh what the Fathers say in light of the evidence and make determinations as a result.

Unfortunately, you cannot weigh what Irenaeus says about monoepiscopy “in light of the [earlier] evidence and make determinations as a result.” You have no ground on which to weigh his testimony. You don’t have any earlier evidence which can tell us about monoepsicopy or about perfectly equal presbytery. If you think that arguments from silence give you that ground, then see Fact 1 and the discussion above. If you think that indirect evidence gives you that ground, then see Fact 2. Or better yet, please provide the indirect evidence. I want to see the complicated arguments about off-hand remarks Paul made in one of his letters and about where various houses were in Roman ruins. The arguments will reveal their own indirectness and accompanying baggage of question-begging assumptions.

The first rule of data analysis is that you have to take the data as it is. The person who is eager to throw-out data that he doesn’t like and base his conclusions on portions of the dataset that are unrelated to the question at hand has revealed their own bias, and in professional situations will always be ignored.

My advice is the following. Unless you can directly confront the four key issues, I don’t think you will understand the Catholic position: Fact 1; Fact 2; the “telling” gap in direct evidence for your position itself in the early data; and the lack of ground on which to weigh Irenaeus’ testimony.

That’s four things you need to consider. If you do, then your stated aim of understanding why Catholics remain utterly unconvinced by Protestant historical data arguments will be greatly advanced.

Sincerely,

Found here: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=110766&page=2


COUNCIL OF NICAEA (c. 325 A.D.)

"It has come to the attention of the holy and great council that in some localities and cities deacons give the Eucharist to presbyters, although neither the canon nor the custom permits those who do not offer sacrifice to give the Body of Christ to those who do offer the sacrifice..." (Canon 18)

ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM (c. 350 A.D.)

"Then, upon the completion of the spiritual sacrifice, the bloodless worship, over that PROPITIATORY victim we call upon God for the common peace of the Churches, for the welfare of the world, for kings, for soldiers and allies, for the sick, for the afflicted; and in summary, we all pray and OFFER THIS SACRIFICE FOR ALL WHO ARE IN NEED....

"Then we make mention also of those who have already fallen asleep: first, the patriarchs, prophets, Apostles, and martyrs, that through their prayers and supplications God would receive our petition; next, we make mention also of the holy fathers and bishops who have already fallen asleep, and, to put it simply, of all among us who have already fallen asleep; for we believe that it will be of very great benefit to the souls of those for whom the petition is carried up, while this HOLY AND MOST SOLEMN SACRIFICE IS LAID OUT....

"For I know that there are many who are saying this: 'If a soul departs from this world with sins, what does it profit it to be remembered in the prayer?'...[we] grant a remission of their penalties...we too offer prayers to Him for those who have fallen asleep though they be sinners. We do not plait a crown, but OFFER UP CHRIST WHO HAS BEEN SACRIFICED FOR OUR SINS; AND WE THEREBY PROPITIATE THE BENEVOLENT GOD FOR THEM AS WELL AS FOR OURSELVES." (23 [Mystagogic 5], 8, 9, 10)