I John 2:27 thoughts

found in comment     191      here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/

I think that we can all agree that persons who are not anointed Christians need someone to teach them the revealed principles of the faith, else they could never receive the anointing in the first place. So there is a sense in which John’s readers needed John to teach them, i.e., before they became Christians. A question that arises at this point is “Whether or not 1 John 2:27 implies that teaching such as that contained in John’s Epistle, and the indeed the entire Bible, is unnecessary for those who are already anointed Christians?”

Obviously, John is teaching things in this Epistle, and his teachings are explicitly addressed to anointed Christians. The same goes for the rest of the New Testament and indeed the Old Testament (“these things were written for our instruction”). But John says to the anointed: “you have no need that anyone should teach you.” Thus, it would follow, on one reading of this passage, that while Sacred Scripture and pastors and teachers might be useful, they are not necessary.

But I suspect that that interpretation, at least as regards Scripture, might be a bit too much for all but the most individualistic, subjectivist Protestants. But is the radically subjectivist, individualistic position, in which even the Bible is unnecessary for anointed Christians, really a straightforward reading of 1 John 2:27? Given the context, including the fact that John is teaching these Christians by means of this very Epistle, I think that such a reading is unwarranted.

For one thing, it seems natural to understand that by “anyone” John is referring specifically to teachers coming to his readers from outside the company of the Apostles (cf. 2:18-19). For another, the phrase “his anointing teaches you about everything” does not necessarily render John’s letter or the rest of Scripture unnecessary; rather, this anointing which teaches us about everything could be such that it only remains and / or properly functions within a certain context; i.e., the Body of Christ.

Obviously, it is not enough to claim to have the Holy Spirit to actually have the Spirit. Furthermore, the Spirit is not divided against himself, nor is he divided against the Body of Christ, or the teaching of the Apostles, or the sacraments, or the Church’s interpretation of divine revelation. Rather, it is the Spirit who gives life (including understanding of spiritual things) in and through all of these needful gifts of God. Thus, John’s readers would not need anyone *from outside the Body of Christ* to teach them anything. All things, including the deposit of faith, are theirs in Christ, and the Church is the Body of Christ, the “fullness of him who fills all in all.”

I sum, it seems to me that far from rendering the Church and the Bible unnecessary, this verse presupposes that the readers are squarely in the Church and being nourished by the Scriptures, as taught–and written–by Apostles and Apostolic men such as the author of 1 John.

also comment 199---you may have to go there for the link below:

Regarding 1 John 2:20 and 1 John 2:27, I recommend listening to the first five minutes of the following Q&A period by Prof. Feingold (Professor of Theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary):

Prof. Feingold: Sacrament of Confirmation Q&A

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

natural law explanation

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/02/metaphysics-of-romantic-love.html

explanation of transubstantiation and the celiac

http://www.catholicbookwriter.com/goldenarrow/catholic/catholic-celiac-conundrum/

here is a partial quote:

How can a transubstantiated host, which is no longer bread, still act like wheat in the human body?
While the entire substance of bread has indeed been transubstantiated into the entire substance of Christ (Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity) such that the bread and wine cease to exist, their appearances remain, and those appearances act upon the senses just as the substance that they properly belong to naturally would. We sometimes say that Body and Blood of Christ are veiled by the appearances of bread and wine but ‘appearances’ means more than just what we see. The metaphysical term that the Church has employed to more accurately define ‘appearances’ is ‘Accidents’, which means those nonessential properties^[10] that exist in another thing. So those remaining (or attached) appearances (or accidents) belonging to wheat and wine do act upon the senses, are measurable, and do bring about the effects natural to the substance to which they belong. So the Eucharist looks like bread and wine, tastes like bread and wine, and acts like bread and wine, but in substance it is fully Christ and Christ only.

also here  http://www.stanthonymessenger.org/AskAFranciscan/Question.aspx?question=25  :


Why Do We Need Low-gluten Hosts?

I don’t understand why someone who has celiac disease and is, therefore, allergic to gluten needs a low-gluten host. The bread at Mass changes substantially into the Body of Christ. Clearly there is no gluten in flesh. The use of low-gluten hosts suggests to me that there is a lack of faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Answer

I’m afraid you misunderstand what the Church teaches about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The Catholic Church’s teaching on transubstantiation was officially adopted at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 to explain in the terms of scholastic philosophy what the Church had already believed for centuries.
Those terms spoke of substance and accidents. The substance is what something radically is. The accidents are things like weight, color, shape or taste—things that can vary. Not all bread has the same accidents but it can be recognized as bread because it shares the same substance.
In the case of the Eucharist, the substance of bread is replaced by the substance of Christ’s body and blood. The accidents, however, are unchanged. A host does not change weight, color, shape, smell or taste after it has been consecrated. Similarly, the wine has the same weight, color, smell, taste and alcohol content after it has been consecrated at Mass.

If a host contains gluten before it is consecrated, then it will contain gluten after it has been consecrated. Because of that, a person allergic to gluten will have the same reaction to any host that contains gluten—whether it is consecrated or not. For this reason, some people—including Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati—need low-gluten hosts.

see also : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist_in_the_Catholic_Church  and

http://www.adoremus.org/CDF_Lowgluten-mustum2003.html

Molinism

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10437a.htm   This article starts by saying

The name used to denote one of the systems which purpose to reconcile grace andfree will. This system was first developed by Luis de Molina, and was adopted in its essential points by the Society of Jesus. It is opposed by the Thomistic doctrine of grace — the term Thomism has a somewhat wider meaning — whose chief exponent is the Dominican Bañez. Along lines totally different from those of Molina, this subtile theologian endeavours to harmonize grace and free will on principles derived from St. Thomas. Whereas Molinism tries to clear up the mysterious relation between grace and free will by starting from the rather clear concept of freedom, the Thomists, in their attempt to explain the attitude of the will towards grace, begin with the obscure idea of efficacious grace. The question which bothschools set themselves to answer is this: Whence does efficacious grace (gratia efficax), which includes in its very concept the actual free consent of the will, derive its infallible effect; and how is it that, in spite of the infallible efficacy of grace, the freedom of the will is not impaired? It is evident that, in every attempt to solve this difficult problem, Catholic theologians must safeguard two principles: first, the supremacy and causality of grace (against Pelagianism and Semipelagianism), and second, the unimpaired freedom of consent in the will (against early Protestantismand Jansenism). For both these principles are dogmas of the Church, clearly and emphatically defined by the Council of Trent

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-vs-calvinism

Craig writes:

 Actually, I have no problem with certain classic statements of the Reformed view. For example, the Westminster Confession (Sect. III) declares that

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

Now this is precisely what the Molinist believes! The Confession affirms God’s preordination of everything that comes to pass as well as the liberty and contingency of the creaturely will, so that God is not the author of sin. It is a tragedy that in rejecting middle knowledge Reformed divines have cut themselves off from the most perspicuous explanation of the coherence of this wonderful confession.

read the articles to see what Molinist believe.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-vs-calvinism#ixzz2W9KvnjR4
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-and-free-will

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-and-divine-election

http://www.theopedia.com/Molinism  a summation with links

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/middle1.html

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/middle2.html

here is an explanation of it but it is written against it: http://www.ligonier.org/blog/molinism-101/


from here: http://www.theologyforthechurch.com/1/post/2010/04/so-what-is-molinism.html

Named after its first proponent, Luis Molina (1535–1600), a sixteenth-century Jesuit priest, Molinism holds to a strong notion of God’s control and an equally firm affirmation of human freedom. In other words Molinism simultaneously holds to a Calvinistic view of a comprehensive divine sovereignty and to a version of free will (called libertarianism) generally associated with Arminianism. As Doug Geivett argues, the fact that Molinism is the one proposal that tries to hold simultaneously to both is a point in its favor, since both “are prima facie true.”
Molinism teaches that God exercises his sovereignty primarily through his omniscience, and that he infallibly knows what free creatures would do in any given situation. In this way God sovereignly controls all things while humans are also genuinely free. God is able to accomplish his will through the use of what Molinists label his middle knowledge.  We will look at the Molinist model of God’s knowledge and providence in the next chapter and in the chapter on sovereign election.    
So Molinism formulates a radical “compatibilism,”—a “Calvinist” view of divine sovereignty and an “Arminian” view of human freedom—and for this reason is often attacked from both sides of the aisle. Calvinists such as Bruce Ware and Richard Muller consider Molinism to be a type of Arminianism, while Roger Olsen and Robert Picirilli (both card-carrying Arminians) reject Molinism for being too Calvinistic. However, Molinism is attractive to many leading Christian philosophers of our day, such as Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Flint, and William Lane Craig.  One of the main reasons is that it demonstrates it is logically possible to affirm divine sovereignty and human freedom in a consistent manner.  Even open theist William Hasker, who is no friend to Molinism, admits, “If you are committed to a ‘strong’ view of providence, according to which, down to the smallest detail, ‘things are as they are because God knowingly decided to create such a world,’ and yet you also wish to maintain a libertarian conception of free will—if this is what you want, then Molinism is the only game in town.”
As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I want because I believe Molinism is faithful to the biblical witness. The Molinist model is the only game in town for anyone who wishes to affirm a high view of God’s sovereignty while holding to a genuine definition of human choice, freedom and responsibility.  William Lane Craig goes so far as to describe the Molinist notion of middle knowledge as “the single most fruitful theological concept I have ever encountered.”  When we apply Molinism to the vexing questions of predestination and election, the reasons for his enthusiasm become evident. 

From Salvation & Sovereignty pp. 5-6

eternal life

from comment 13  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/

If you read the Greek, the word in Romans 6:23 is χάρισμα, which means gift. There is no word which means ‘free’ in the Greek text of Romans 6:23. Eternal life is the gift of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And union with Christ requires saying yes to Christ and no to self and to the world. Living faith is not mere internal trust; it includes agape, which is love for God above all other things. The one who claims to have living faith, but does not love God above all things, is deceived. Agape, by its very nature, includes denial of self, flesh and the world. So the person who does not deny himself, flesh and the world, does not have agape, and hence does not have living faith, and hence is not justified and does not have eternal life. The denial of self, flesh, and world is in this way an intrinsic part of the cost of attaining eternal life. This is why there is no justification without repentance, for those who have attained the age of reason. Your notion that eternal life is absolutely free would make repentance entirely optional.

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)

hell

http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/hellb1.htm

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/can-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell-the-craig-bradley-debate

http://www.redeemer.com/news_and_events/articles/the_importance_of_hell.html

perseverance

from comment 87  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/nature-grace-and-mans-supernatural-end-feingold-kline-and-clark/#comment-51696

Grace upon grace” is necessary for perseverance in sanctifying grace because the gift of sanctifying grace is not identical to the gift of perseverance. Otherwise dying in mortal sin after justification would be impossible. The gift of perseverance is thus an additional grace beyond sanctifying grace, and we should pray daily for this gift. The gift of perseverance is an additional grace because it does not belong to us by nature (i.e. by our human nature) to persevere in grace. For this reason our perseverance in grace is itself a gift of grace, beyond what we can effect by our own natural powers. By “grace upon grace” I simply mean receiving an additional grace beyond the sanctifying grace already received.

the end of the newsletter discusses perseverance  http://chnetwork.org/newsletters/aug13.pdf

see also the other link on side of this blog

from here http://catholicforum.forumotion.com/t914-god-s-permission-of-sin-negative-or-conditioned-decree

The question is then naturally raised whether or not there is a law that applies to their glorification. The gift of glory and the gift of final perseverance infallibly connected to it are not a part of God’s general providence, by which salvation is once again made possible for fallen man, but are a part of His special providence, by which salvation is made actual and eternal. If these gifts cannot be merited by any of the graces that flow from God’s general providence, it still remains to ask whether or not they can be and are given according to a certain order. Marin argues in the affirmative:

The supreme and supernaturally free gift of final perseverance has, by the most free and merciful will of God, something of an order, and order that can be reduced to a sole law, and that is called the law of impetration. This law consists in this that, although the final perseverance is not causable, nor meritable by man (because it depends uniquely and exclusively upon the pure will of God, who gives it to whom He wants and as He wants, giving it sometimes to the greatest sinners and denying it to others who sin much less, for which Saint Augustine sasy with reason: “quare hune trahat et illum non trahat, noli velle judicare, si non vise rare”), it is nonetheless humbly impetrable or is obtainable from God by the sole way of prayer; but in a way of prayer founded not on the merits of the nature that prays, as perfect as one supposes this nature, nor either in the merits of the grace possessed by the one who prays, as great as one may suppose this grace and these merits, but based exclusively upon the blood and merits of our lord Jesus Christ, that is, in the pure mercy of God through the merits of His Divine Son. There is not, for fallen man, another means of arriving at final perseverance that this of prayer; but it is a means infallible insofar as it pertains to God’s part, and a means God really and truly placed at he disposal of all men, so that it can be said that any man, as great a sinner as he may have been before, still has it really and truly in his hands throughout the remainder of his life (N 382-3).

“Final perseverance, then, is not given out of justice, but out of mercy… [‘pages 153 to 155 are not shown in this preview’” – we will continue on page 156]

from comment  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/do-you-want-to-go-to-heaven/ 184

What is more, in discovering that eternal life is “to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he sent” (John 17:3) and that what it means to know God is to abide in love, obeying the commandments of Christ (1 John 3–5), we learn that eternal life is not merely unending duration (even the damned have that) but a particular kind of life, namely, a life of love. From this point of view, the warnings passages in Scripture come into better focus, as we understand that by the nature of the case anyone who fails to abide in love cannot abide in eternal life and so cannot enter Heaven, which is something that I briefly discussed in point 2 of the original post.

I do think that there are numerous examples in Scripture, either actual cases or implied in various warnings, of a person who was truly declared righteous subsequently falling from that state of righteousness into a state which is truly declared to be unrighteousness. It might be that here we are working with different understandings of what it means for God to declare someone to be righteous or unrighteous. On my view, God cannot lie and he is not merely a judge; rather, he is the truth and the creator as well as the supreme judge, such that when he declares someone to be righteous, that person is truly righteous because he has been made righteous by God’s powerful, creative declaration, even as the heavens and the earth really sprang into existence by God’s powerful, creative declaration.

ecumenical dialogue--some things about

from comment 316 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/does-the-bible-teach-sola-fide/#comment-51689

ecumenical dialogue. Out of respect and charity, each person gets to define, articulate and specify what is his own position, such that no one ought knowingly to attribute to or impose upon another, a position his interlocutor denies is his own. The one holding a position has the say in determining what is his position. And this therefore requires on the part of each interlocutor a disposition and willingness to listen so as to allow his own conception of the other interlocutor’s position to be informed and shaped by the other interlocutor.

So when you claim that in Catholicism there is no justification at baptism, because good works are required to follow, and I reply by pointing out to you that this is a straw man of the Catholic doctrine, and you reply by insisting that it is not a straw man, we are at an impasse until you abide by the basic ground rule I mentioned just above. To impose on Catholics your own conception of what the Catholic doctrine of justification must be, and refuse to allow your conception of the Catholic doctrine of justification to be informed by Catholics, is no longer to be engaged in dialogue, but rather the verbal form of brute force, or bullying. CTC, however, is a forum for dialogue.

You wrote:

Catholic doctrine insists on justification by grace plus works of righteousness, does it not? Is this not what justification-as-translation and justification-as-increase refer to?

No, it is not. The role of works is not the same in justification-as-translation, and justification-as-increase. I’ve explained this both in the post and comments above, and here as well.

You then wrote:

One is either justified, or they are not. We are either right with God or we are not.

That first statement is true of justification-as-translation, because of the truth of your second statement. But it does not entail that there is no such thing as justification-as-increase. The problem, it seems to me, is that you are imposing your [Protestant] conception of the meaning of the term ‘justification’ onto the Catholic paradigm, and thus begging the question (i.e. presupposing precisely what is in question between the two paradigms regarding the doctrine of justification).

Lastly you wrote:

It is not I who insists that there is something called justification-as-increase, as if justification could be divided. We are justified by Christ… and it is finished. Sanctification is not a part of justification… it is the result of justification. So no, the Protestant does not see sanctification as a requirement of justification.

This is an example of imposing a concept from your own paradigm onto another paradigm, and then criticizing the second paradigm on the basis of the imposed concept, rather than on the other paradigm’s own terms. You’re insisting that there is no such thing as justification-as-increase, and doing so by presupposing that the meaning of the term ‘justification’ is the Reformed conception of the term’s meaning. That simply begs the question, by presupposing one paradigm in the evaluation of the other. And presupposing one paradigm in the evaluation of the other is not actually comparing the two paradigms. When used within an argument in ecumenical dialogue it implies that the person still sees the other paradigm’s claims only through his own paradigm, and thus has not yet begun the task of evaluating the two paradigms because he has not yet seen the other paradigm as another paradigm.

also from comment 65 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/pope-francis-atheists-and-the-evangelical-spirit/

 However, at the same time, if, when I point out that one of your claims or arguments is begging the question against the Catholic position, and you respond by expressing indifference, (e.g. “You can throw question begging flags all day if you’d like”), then at that point no possibility of rational dialogue remains; the only form of discourse remaining open is table-pounding and sophistry.

from comment 59 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/07/twitter-world-youth-day-and-indulgences/#comment-53807

Ecumenical dialogue is not a way of finding out that we don’t disagree after all. It’s a way of understanding our differences, and finding out if one (or both) of us is wrong. That’s why argument – meaning giving reasons, following the rules of logic, etc – is necessary. Ecumenical dialogue then satisfies everyone only when they reach agreement – and if one (at least) is wrong, he must change his mind for there to be agreement.

also here http://www.catholic.com/blog/matt-fradd/responding-to-the-ad-hominem-fallacy

explains ad hominem and also a variation of thead hominem fallacy usually called “poisoning the wel and The third example is also a type of ad hominem argument, called tu quoque (literally, “you too”). The tu quoque fallacy consists in accusing your opponent of the same thing he has accused you of.

He gives examples and points out'' attacking you (your character, intelligence, etc.) doesn't deal with the argument at hand, then invite him to spend his energy on that instead.''

from  comment 78 
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/archbishop-minnerath-on-rome-the-papacy-and-the-east/
Arguments, as such, are neither true nor false: they are sound or unsound. An argument A is sound just in case (a) A’s premises are true, and (b) A’s conclusion follows from its premises if A is a deductive argument, or A’s conclusion is rendered highly probable by its premises if A is an inductive argument. So if you’re going to refute my argument, you have to show either that at least one of its premises is false, or that its conclusion is not supported by its premises, even if the premises are true.

from a comment here --this article is good by the way http://www.creedcodecult.com/divide-and-dismiss/

“This is typical Protestant behavior. You are debunked on the subject at hand but rather than admit it, you simply begin insulting the Church, the Pope or Mary and the Saints and attack a separate and unrelated doctrine.”

and from another comment

The Catholic Church has a centre. As ignorant as I am about the intricacies of theology, I can tell when a teaching does not agree with that of the Church. I can tell if a Joe Pelosi or Nancy Biden or a pagan philosopher lesbian or a Catechist or priest or Bishop is contradicting the teachings of the Church. There is a standard (alive and breathing) against which I can measure every teaching/doctrine I come across.

So constantly bringing up this Pelosi guy and his crowd does not show that there is doctrinal division in the Church. The doctrines of the Church are clear. These guys are on their own.

What is the centre of Protestantism?

from comment 20 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/06/virtue-and-dialogue-ecumenism-and-the-heart/ :

He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, and the same is true of rudeness and incivility. If I wish to be treated with civility and respect, I must do the same. If I don’t, I invite the descent into the trading of insults and invective, and the possibility of reaching agreement is lost. So I agree with you that if we “take up those tactics” we “give license” for others to do the same. Not all exchange of communication is dialogue. The sort of exchange that takes place between Feser and Dawkins, etc. is not dialogue. It is not for the sake of reaching agreement with each other, but for defending or attacking particular claims or beliefs, so as to convince or persuade onlookers. That’s polemics. Christ’s public rebuke of the Pharisees was not a case of failing to be kind or charitable, nor was it polemics or dialogue; it was a pastoral rebuke, by the Good Shepherd. That’s a different genre, and there is a time and place for that. In this post I am speaking about dialogue, and there are virtues necessary for entering into dialogue, as I explained above. The resolution of disagreement between persons requires dialogue, as Pope Francisexplained just yesterday:

“If we go out to encounter other people, other cultures, other religions, we grow and we begin that beautiful adventure called dialogue,” he told the students.

“Dialogue is what brings peace,” the pope told the group, which included Christians and Buddhists. “Peace is impossible without dialogue.

“All wars, conflicts and troubles we encounter with each other are because of a lack of dialogue,” he said.

Pope Francis said there is always a danger that two people with firm identities and an inability to be open to the other will fight instead of dialogue.

“We dialogue to meet each other, not to fight,” he said.

Dialogue involves asking the other, “Why do you think this?” or “Why is that culture this way?” then listening to the response, he said. “First listen, then talk — that’s meekness.”

“If you don’t think like I do … and you can’t convince me to think like you do, that’s OK. We can still be friends,” he said.

about not begging the question -found at comment  318 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/why-protestantism-has-no-visible-catholic-church/


I think a lot of people are unclear as to how to avoid begging the question. Here are some standard methods:

1) Don’t rely on a premise p in your argument that you accept but your opponent rejects. Using premises accepted by both sides (or all sides, etc) is just fine.

2) Do “internal” criticisms rather than “external” criticisms. (This was first presented to me in the context of a graduate class I took on Marxism). One can give “external” arguments against Marxism and these would, for example, take the form of arguing that Marxism is wrong based on some or other capitalistic premises. Alternatively, one can give “internal” arguments against Marxism – arguments that, even granting Marxist premises, Marxism is still wrong on its own terms. In this context, your arguments about Free Will were purely external. (I’ll summarize and apologize in advance if I misunderstood some claim you made): A. Catholicism denies the position on Free Will known as compatibalism and allows the position on Free Will known as libertertarianism. B. But libertarianism is wrong and compatibalism is correct. So, C, Catholicism is wrong. So, D, Catholicism is false. Since your justifications for (B) relied on premises not accepted by Catholics, your criticisms were external rather than internal. Further, (B) is quite controversial – so even in terms of external arguments it’s very weak (for external criticisms you want your premise accepted by one side but not the other to be as uncontroversial as possible – because the more controversial it is, the less likely it is to persuade anybody, much less someone who antecedently disagrees with your premises!) (Obviously, 2 is just an argumentative application of 1.)
An internal criticism of Catholicism would be to find two infallible doctrines, one of which asserts p and the other of which asserts ~p (not-p) in the same sense. On premises fully accepted by Catholics, if the Magisterium has infallibly held to a contradiction like that, Catholicism is false. So, when I was doing my “due diligence” before converting, I thought “Surely an institution which has been around so long must have contradicted itself at some point or other, particularly if [as my OPC pastor said] Catholicism is a man-made institution”. After my examination, and having found no such contradictions, this constituted significant evidence (although not proof) that the Catholic Church was what she claimed to be – that is, the Church founded by Christ.

But since you opted for an external criticism based on a significantly contentious premise, you’ve thoroughly weakened your own argumentation, particularly since it’s far from obvious that compatibalism is (philosophically) correct or (theologically) necessitated by correct Biblical exegesis. (And it kind of doesn’t matter, because one of the very points in dispute is whether the Roman Catholic Church gets exegetical priority over my or your individual exegeses – but if the Catholic Church gets exegetical priority, then your arguments about correct Biblical interpretation would have to give way to the Church’s declarations anyways.) Speaking of…

3) Make your claims if/thens. Not sure if you’ve read Mike Liccione’s philosophical piece here or not but he does a masterful job of avoiding begging the question by doing just this. More specifically, one of Mike’s claims (or rather, my summary of it) is that if there is to be a principled way to distinguish human opinion from divine revelation, then Protestantism has no means to provide that kind of distinction. What I found fascinating when I talked (at relatively great length) with conservative Presbyterian pastors (OPC and RPCNA) was that they conceded that there was no principled way to distinguish human opinion from divine revelation itself. But Mike’s argument avoids begging the question because it did not assert a premise rejected by his opponents – indeed, these confessional pastors I talked to fully agreed that if there was to be a principled way to distinguish human opinion from divine revelation, then Protestantism couldn’t do it – they just also thought no such principled way actually existed.

also this point from comment 48 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/11/sola-scriptura-redux-matthew-barrett-tradition-and-authority/

You are assuming your conclusion on the basis of assumptions you are bringing to the text, because the need for an authoritative interpreter is fully compatible with the verse (Mt. 4:4). So therefore you are not deriving your conclusion only from the text, but from the text in combination with assumptions you are bringing to the text. And that begs the question, because those assumptions you are bringing to the text are the assumptions *in* question

The Reformers

From St. Francis de Sales  The Catholic Controversy (kindle copy)

In speaking about the tactics of the Reformers:

I beg you, should we be? Do you not perceive the statagem? All authority is taken away from tradition, the Church, the Councils, the pastors; what further remains? The Scripture. The enemy is crafty. If he would tear it all away at once he would cause an alarm; he takes away a great part of it in the very beginning, then first one piece, then the other, at last he will have you stripped entirely without Scripture and without Word of God.

He then explains all of the books Calvin and Luther took away.


Here is a good quote by de Sales on heresy:

Heresy covers up, in the bed of its brain, the statue of its own opinion in the clothes of Holy Scripture

 “The Holy Word then is the first law of our faith; there remains the application of this rule, which being able to receive as many forms as there are brains in the world, in spite of all the analogies of the Faith, there is need further of a second rule to regulate this application.”

 “The Scripture cannot be your arbiter, for it is concerning the Scripture that you are in litigation, some of you being determined to have it understood in one way, some in another.”

—	Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy

see also http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/which-lens-is-the-proper-lens/

a quote from a book in this above link found in comment 14:

The Reformers unequivocally rejected the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This left open the question of who should interpret Scripture. The Reformation was not a struggle for the right of private judgement. The Reformers feared private judgement almost as much as did the Catholics and were not slow to attack it in its Anabaptist manifestation. The Reformation principle was not private judgement but the perspicuity of the Scriptures. Scripture was ‘sui ipsius interpres’ and the simple principle of interpreting individual passages by the whole was to lead to unanimity in understanding. This came close to creating anew the infallible church…It was this belief in the clarity of Scripture that made the early disputes between Protestants so fierce. This theory seemed plausible while the majority of Protestants held to Luthern or Calvinist orthodoxy but the seventeenth century saw the beginning of the erosion of these monopolies. But even in 1530 Casper Schwenckfeld could cynically note that ‘the Papists damn the Lutherans; the Lutherans damn the Zwinglians; the Zwinglians damn the Anabaptists and the Anabaptists damn all others.’ By the end of the seventeenth century many others saw that it was not possible on the basis of Scripture alone to build up a detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent. (A.N.S. Lane, “Scripture, Tradition and Church: An Historical Survey”, Vox Evangelica, Volume IX – 1975, pp. 44, 45 

from comment 16:

 Lane then writes,

The Reformers loved the church and highly respected her opinions. They respected her opinions above their own, in fact. And this is really the point. In submitting to the confessions, we acknowledge that the church is our mother.

By making themselves their own highest interpretive authority (and thus acting as biblicists), and without the authorization of the Church’s established teaching and ruling authorities, the first Protestants redefined the marks of the Church according to their own interpretation of Scripture. Then, having redefined the marks of the Church so that ‘church’ referred to those who shared their own interpretation of Scripture, they were free to do or say whatever they wanted against the Catholic Church, while telling themselves (and others) that they “loved the church and highly respected her opinions,” even “above their own”. Then they constructed their own confessions, and ‘submitted’ to them, and claimed that by doing so they were acknowledging that the church is their mother. But since they themselves had fashioned these confessions with their own hands, in ‘submitting’ to them they were in actuality saying, “We are our own mother, thank you.”

from comment 37:
We do have a duty to learn Scripture. But we have no duty to interpret Scripture-apart-from-the-guidance-of-the-Church or to interpret Scripture in defiance of the guidance of the Church. Instead, our duty in interpreting and understanding Scripture is to approach it very much as we approach the Eucharist offered to us by the Church: in humility and gratitude, and with a recognition that Christ, through the instrument of His Church, is giving this gift-of-Self to me, not so that I can do my own thing, but so that I can participate in something His Body is already doing, and has been doing for almost two-thousand years. For this reason, the responsibility of the student of Scripture should not be seen as in tension with the divinely-established interpretive authority of the Church, just as the responsibility of the Ethiopian eunuch to seek to understand the book of Isaiah was not in tension with the interpretive authority of Philip the deacon. The eunuch would have been acting against his responsibility had he ignored Philip or insisted that he knew better how to interpret Scripture than did the apostles and deacons. It was precisely the eunuch’s obligation to seek to understand Scripture that called him to receive in humble submission the guidance and instruction of those whom Christ had authorized (through ordination) to teach in His Name

from comment 39

 Did He found a visible catholic Church, or did He found only an invisible catholic Church? Because if He founded only an invisible catholic Church, then the visible one that we find in the fathers of the first three or four centuries is a man-made counterfeit, an earthly substitute for a spiritual entity, and in that case there is absolutely no reason to expect that man-made abomination to be teaching orthodoxy at all, let alone be protected from error. But if Christ founded a visible catholic Church, then the promises regarding the Church attach to it. In that case it is that visible catholic Church that will remain and prevail through the rest of the age, until Christ returns, and that is the pillar and ground of truth, and so forth. And in order for the visible catholic Church to be that sort of thing, until Christ returns, it needs to be protected from falling into heresy or apostasy. And that means that her teaching office needs to be protected in this way. It also means that her authority must derive in an organic way from Christ, and hence a visible catholic Church requires apostolic succession, otherwise, there is no divinely authorized teaching office (apart from miracle-working prophets showing up from time to time).

interesting article and discussion here by the reformed and Catholics response:http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/whose-lens-are-you-using/

quote by newman here  http://www.readability.com/articles/lxuqd2hz

Busenbaum, of the Society of Jesus, whose work I have already had occasion to notice, writes thus:—"A heretic, as long as he judges his sect to be more or equally deserving of belief, has no obligation to believe [in the Church]." And he continues, "When men who have been brought up in heresy, are persuaded from boyhood that we impugn and attack the word of God, that we are idolators, pestilent deceivers, and therefore are to be shunned as pests, they cannot, while this persuasion lasts, with a safe conscience, hear us."—t. l, p. 54.