Catholicity and the word Catholic

Comments on being Catholic/ or Catholicity: first from a discussion found here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/11/lawrence-feingold-the-motives-of-credibility-for-faith/#comment-149899   comment 90 which starts with a quote from the PCA guy and then is answered by the Catholic in the discussion:

We hold to apostolic tradition as Irenaeus gives its content (which is essentially the Apostles Creed).

Except what he writes about justification, about baptismal regeneration, and the existence of bishops as distinct from presbyters, about apostolic succession of the bishops, about ordination imparting a grace and an authority received in succession from the Apostles (see comment #38 of the “Apostolic Succession and Historical Inquiry” thread), about the sacrificial priesthood, about Mary as the Second Eve (see comment #30 in the “Mary’s Immaculate Conception” thread), about praying the Lord’s Prayer (see comment #18 in the “Reformed Imputation and the Lord’s Prayer” thread) though it contradicts Reformed theology’s claim that all our future sins are already forgiven, and about the Catholic/Orthodox doctrine of deification, when he writes that “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” (AH V. Pref.)

You wrote:

I agree that Augustine and Irenaeus were catholics. So was Calvin, Luther, Anselm, et al. So are confessional Protestants. What I would deny is that Augustine and Irenaeus were Roman Catholics.

Except St. Irenaeus says “For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church [of Rome], on account of its preeminent authority,” (AH III.3.2), and St. Augustine’s statements about the authority of the bishop of Rome can be found here. Nor is the Reformed doctrine of justification by extra nos imputation compatible with what St. Augustine teaches about justification by infusion.

You wrote:

A church that holds to ecumenical creeds but says that it is the only church Christ founded is by definition not catholic, or at least not catholic enough.

The problem with that claim is that it is self-contradictory. The ecumenical creeds themselves (a) say that Christ founded only one Church (that’s what “one” means when they “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”) and (b) claim to be the faith of that one Church Christ founded. Moreover, St. Irenaeus and St. Augustine, whom you want to affirm as your own, claimed repeatedly to belong to and speak for that one Church Christ founded.

From Comment 91:

I’m sorry, but I don’t find where you extensively deal with the fact that the church was not catholic on Pentecost.

The Church had all four marks from her birth on Pentecost. There was never a time when the Church existed, and lacked any of her four marks. So it is not a “fact” that the Church was not catholic on Pentecost.

I had written:

“(i.e. did not come into existence as a schism from the Church at some point after the birth of the Church on Pentecost). Thus the Church is universal with respect to all peoples, and with respect to the whole of Christian history, and with respect to the same faith taught through all those times among all those peoples. Only the Catholic Church has this mark; it is the same Catholic Church that came into being on the day of Pentecost and was never formed by any mere man starting a schism or starting a denomination. This fulfills the prophecy given in Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan 2:44) that through a stone cut out from a mountain by no human hand, God would “set up a Kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.”

To this you replied:

Here is where you are presuming Roman Catholicism. It’s not self-evident that the catholicity of the church depends on what you say it is. You are defining the church as primarily a visible institution, and you are assuming that other bodies broke away from the bishop of Rome.

I’m not presuming “Roman Catholicism” in saying what I said above. As I showed in the two comments I linked to in comment #84, catholicity as a mark of the Church is consistently understood throughout the Church Fathers as universality with respect to all the peoples who have embraced the teaching of the Apostles, universality with respect to the whole of Christian history, and universality with respect to the same faith taught through all those times among all those peoples.

The East does not agree with you, at least on the point that they broke away.

True, but that is no support whatsoever for your notion that the PCA has the mark of catholicity. Otherwise, I could point to people who disagree with you (e.g. myself) as evidence that you are mistaken.

Protestants certainly don’t agree with you on the church being primarily visible or that they broke away.

I agree. But the existence of persons who do not accept x does not establish the truth of ~x.

Luther, Calvin, et all certainly saw themselves as continuing the faith of what came before them.

Of course. But so have many heretics in Church history who preceded them. It is not enough to see oneself as right, in order to show or establish that one is right. Nor does their opinion provide any reason to believe that the PCA has the mark of catholicity.

If by definition the PCA isn’t catholic because the vast majority of its members are North Americans, then that rules out the early church as well.

The early Church was catholic from her beginning; St. Ignatius is already using the term at the beginning of the second century. And as I’ve already explained (by way of the Mormon example), catholicity includes universality with respect to the whole of Church history from the time of Christ. The early Church met that criterion of catholicity, because, having been born on Pentecost, there was no Church history prior to her.

But the PCA does not meet that criterion of catholicity, because (a) while you want to affirm pre-1973 Church history as the PCA’s own, the PCA came into existence in 1973, which therefore shows that pre-1973 history to be the history of something prior to itself, not her history, and (b) the PCA does not encompass the whole visible Church, as you yourself acknowledge when you speak of NAPARC in comment #86 above. By definition, a branch as such cannot be “catholic,” which is precisely why a schism from the Church cannot be catholic, as St. Augustine argued to the Donatists.

Catholicity as a mark of the Church is consistently understood throughout the Fathers as universality with respect to all the peoples who have embraced the teaching of the Apostles as that teaching has spread around the world, universality with respect to the whole of Christian history extending all the way back to Christ Himself, and universality with respect to the same faith taught through all those times among all those peoples.

If you take the position of Augustine on the eventual catholicity of the church, then any Protestant can say that as well.

St. Augustine never held to the “eventual catholicity” of the Church in the sense that she has ever existed without catholicity. For St. Augustine the Church was already catholic, and had always been catholic.

end

What the word Catholic meant in early times?  http://www.catholic.com/tracts/what-catholic-means