The clergy you refer to as having authority are at this point are a small group compared to the current body of clergy professing to hold the authority of the Catholic Church. As a Christian, why should I care about the authority of the small group you reference, and not the authority of the current group calling itself the College of Cardinals and the Pope? You're just avoiding answering that kind of question. You say that I'm a Protestant so you don't think any answer will satisfy me, but that's really an ad hominem to cop out from having to answer. At the end of the day I profess to be a Christian, and you hold beliefs that you think apply to everyone who professes to be Christian. You should be able to give a coherent answer to the question of why I should care about the specific authorities you submit to as a Christian while not caring about other groups that claim authority. You simply haven't.
Again, I've answered
that in the thread as well. I haven't refused to answer that question. The changes to the rites for ordination and consecration of priests mean that Novus Ordo priests are
at best doubtfully valid, likely completely invalid. The reason you
as a Protestant don't care about this is because you don't even believe Holy Orders are an actual sacrament. It's not an
ad hominem- your givens are just different.
As far as I'm aware, traditional Catholics organization (and only certain ones at that), Orthodox, and certain Protestant sects retain the matter and the form for Holy Orders.
The argument that was and still is at the center of the Reformation is that of justification. Is a person justified before God by faith and works, or are they justified by faith alone? How a person is justified before God is at the heart of the Gospel. Change that, and you change the Gospel. Luther and the other reformers argued that the Pope's dogmas of people being justified by faith and works was another gospel.
The Revolution was a political movement, not theological. If it was, it would have remained within the confines of ecclesiastical authorities. It did not. It very purposefully did not. The Revolution went out of its way to leverage the greed and pride of the nobility to overthrow Church authority. Without said political support, it would have amounted to nothing.
My argument inherently starts from the belief that the Bible is the infallible rule of faith for the Church. Whatever the Bible teaches, I am submitted to it. No human tradition or authority supersedes the Bible. I can have disagreements with other Christians about what the Bible says, but that doesn't somehow disprove the starting point of my argument.
The Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church. Protestants prune books out of it to suit their purpose for interpretation. There are more dueterocanonical books- who says they aren't
also part of the infallible rule of faith and human authorities just missed it?
The starting point of your argument assumes
a lot. It's just hidden by the simplicity of the statement. When you unpack it, there's suddenly a lot of questions.
Further, like I've been discussing with Abhorsen, you still need to interpret the Bible. The
content may be correct but the content and the understanding are different things. We do not have souls capable of pulling understanding from nothing. Inherent to this process, people will have
error in their understanding. The only way to get people over that hump is to have divinely inspired
understanding as well which necessarily means you need an
authority guided by God too. Ergo, the Church and the inclusion of
Tradition.
Both of our givens have complexities embedded within that are incompatible with the others.
This is why when I say you won't accept things as Protestant it's not ad hominem. There are very deeply rooted contradictions between your givens and mine. We share conclusions about the Faith but they're conclusions determined by Catholic theologians in antiquity so really they're just there via inertia. I'm sure if you stuck a baptist, a lutheran, and a methodist in a room and asked them to determine whether our Lord had a Human Will distinct from a Divine Will, they would recreate monothelitism but, unlike a Catholic, not have the specific arguments from Tradition and Scripture to reject the conclusion.
When you speak, when you write, do you have an intended meaning behind your words? If someone takes your words to mean the opposite of what you intended, is that person wrong in their interpretation? Is there an outside authority needed every time you speak for other people to understand what you spoke? The Bible has an intended meaning that can be understood by those who read it. This does not have the consequence of there being "not any true way to interpret Scripture" any more than there is no true way to interpret your words whenever you speak.
Yes, everyone who speaks has an intended meaning, yes, if someone misunderstands you, that person is wrong, and yes, there is always a need for an outside party to reach understanding of something you say if you want to be
correct. The process by which, people speak with each other and the listener cogitates on what's said is
quick and because of this
imperfect. For anything more complex than a few sentences, say, a speech or a debate. You
ineveitably need to reflect, interpret, and iterate on what was said. Like, we've had 2000 years of theology devoted to the Bible- the fact that we've had that much iteration on the subject has at its basis that there's a
correct way to interpret Scripture.
I mean, our Lord knew this problem would happen and gave us a solution.
John 14:26 - DRA said:
26 But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.
The Lord sent us
a teacher not simply a compendium of canonical and non-canonical books. And it was that teacher that elucidated which books were canonical in the first place. It's a teacher that guides you to correct understanding. It's a teacher that issues corrections to error. The Bible, infallible though it is, does not
do things.
It's also sort of rich for you to criticize me as being a "member of 1 sect of many" when you yourself are a member of 1 sect of many in the larger scheme of Christianity, and you have also abandoned any real authority in the present day to interpret Scripture. Again, as a sed, this is a problem for you just as much as it could be a problem for me.
Yes. That was the point of putting it in that adversarial tone. It's fucking annoying, isn't it? That I point that out? Except, unlike how you assert, sedevacantists are fully in communion with the Pope and his authority. The See is empty, not destroyed. The Faith up until 1958 is fully intact, recorded, and perfectly safe to follow. The moment the See has a Catholic Pope again, it'll be exactly as if nothing changed.
I see no evidence from Scripture to prove that Mary is a special case in that she was born without sin. You've provided no evidence from Scripture to prove that claim.
Romans 3:9b-12 ESV said:
No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good,not even one.
Any belief that someone was born without sin (besides Jesus Christ) stands in contradiction with these words of the Apostle Paul.
Your interpretation here is too broad, or rather, too literal. Paul is speaking in the context of a conflict between the Jews and the Gentile converts to the Faith. The Jewish converts, pridefully, believed their sins were somehow less objectionable than that of the Gentiles'. Paul rebukes them by quoting Psalms. There is more to unpack here, though. For one, Psalms is very lyrical- that is poetic. That means it employs rhetorical devices to get across a particular point. In this case, the source material uses "All" in the sense of a majority of people, not strictly
all of every human ever. This is reinforced by other Psalms that specifically call out the righteous and those who do good works. It's also very important to keep in mind the last part-
does good. This psalm isn't specifically about the inherited sinful nature of man, but the generally evil actions of
most people.
This passage doesn't specifically rule out the special case line of argument.
We may be having a bit of a mix-up here. I'm referring to Genesis 3:15. You referenced that verse as evidence for the Immaculate Conception, and said that the idea that the woman crushes the serpent's head is "crucial to the Catholic understanding of this dogma". I pointed out that the ESV rendering is "he", meaning the woman's offspring, would crush the serpent's head, not the woman. You referenced that the DRA says it's the woman who will crush the serpent's head. To bypass the ESV vs DRA debate, I went to an online concordance and found that the actual Hebrew in question does use a masculine pronoun, so the DRA is demonstrably mistranslated in this verse. According to what Scripture actually says then, your claim about the woman crushing the serpent's head was false. Your response was to acknowledge what I said, give no rebuttal, but not concede anything. You can't say I'm wrong in what I'm describing the Bible, the original text of the Bible, as saying, and what the Bible says stands in direct contradiction to what you're claiming.
Read this: this is not a matter of "my particular interpretation". Genesis 3:15 uses a masculine pronoun in the Hebrew. Whether or not you "accept my interpretation", the fact remains that is the pronoun that is used and it simply can't mean what you claimed that it meant. It proves that it is the woman's offspring that will crush the head of the serpent, not the woman herself.
I can only conclude from that response that your actual attitude is that, when faced with evidence that what the Bible actually says is in contradiction with the Roman Catholic dogma you believe in, you will not change what you believe. It's an example of what the Bible actually says not making a real difference to you, of you dismissing the authority of the Bible in favor of the authority your (human) tradition.
I see, okay, let's try to keep the discrete quotations of scripture separated to avoid this in the future.
Now, to this assertion, "the DRA is demonstrably mistranslated in this verse". The Hebrew he seems pretty damning on its face, this is true. But even
here there is contention about the correct interpretation of the Hebrew for two (three?) reasons. First, the Hebrew as written has
two possible interpretations- that of masculine or neuter conjugation. That is, that you could translate it in a way that humanity in general is the object. There are various theologians that have argued for this interpretation. Next, the Hebrew as written and Hebrew as spoken are different. When written, you still need to consult
Tradition to reconstruct the correct meaning of what's written. When St. Jerome first translated the Vulgate, he had more and better copies of the Old Testament AND more and
better access to Jewish theologians with a grasp of the oral tradition of the time. His commentary on this, is also telling in that
he personally believed that masculine conjugation was correct. Why then, was the Vulgate rendered as
ipsa rather than
ipsum? (That the DRA was based on) His translation, further, did not exist in a vacuum. The proliferation of the Vulgate had an inevitable effect on the Jewish oral tradition that, later on, plays a part in this conundrum.
It is
more than simply a question of what pronoun is used in this sentence, unfortunately. It's both a question of grammar and tradition. The Hebrew you're referencing, has an oral tradition that underlies its meaning. This of course, doesn't even take into account that the Hebrew sources in question come from the Masoretic versions that show up
after St. Jerome's work as consequently have a different oral tradition. I don't mean to say that the Masoretic version is incorrect, merely different. Additionally, Jerome's work pulls together Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac (Aramaic) sources. He just had
more and different data from which to render the Vulgate.
There is most definitely enough historical record to
at least rule out your usage of "prove" and "can't" since there are plausible reasons to interpret this in the Catholic sense. As far as I'm aware, the Hebrew we have of Genesis is younger than the sources used by St. Jerome. What sources we have that are
older are fragmentary and unfortunately do not contain Genesis 3
and the oral traditions that underpin them are, to my knowledge, lost. What makes this even worse, is that there are even
Jewish scholars that render the Hebrew in the feminine sense, like the poet Philo.
There is a
reason why Catholics still consider the feminine conjugation valid. There is a
reason that, at least in the Novus Ordo, the RSV-CE renders it in the masculine as well but Catholics don't consider them contradictory. It's not as clear cut as you would like to believe.
As for Luke 1:28. One, the meaning of "kecharitomene" isn't as straightforward as the meaning of a masculine pronoun. The translation of "he shall bruise your head" is provable. Translating "kecharitomene" as either "full of grace" or "favored one" isn't so provable. But even if we grant that the translation "full of grace" is valid, it still falls well short of carrying the full meaning that Mary was made to be without sin by God from birth. It falls far short of establishing this as a dogma that all Christians must believe. You just don't get that idea from the text itself. You get it from human traditions outside of Scripture, then go back to look for Scripture that kinda sorta looks like it's hinting at the dogma if you squint long enough at it. We just end up where I said at the start: The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception simply does not follow from reading Luke (or the rest of the Bible). I don't have to dismiss anything the Bible actually says to hold that position.
I said at the start, that there's a Scriptural
basis for the Tradition to which this and other passages are evidence.
Of course, it's not resting on this solely- I never claimed it was. Further, you're qualifying some things that Catholics do not. Catholics don't
dismiss things in the Bible for it. Careful reasoning underlies the dogma. Catholics didn't just ex nihilo reach the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The arguments you've advanced aren't
new they've been reflected on, studied, interpreted, and iterated on for
a while. They've had to wrestle with Romans 3:9 and resolve contradictions between books in ways that show that the contradictions aren't really there. I mean, shit, in this thread even you've been presented with a contradiction about this one passage where there are "righteous" and "good" people in the old testament that means that categorically the interpretation of Romans 3:9 (which is really Pslams 12 or 13) you're using isn't right and, at least in my estimation, you didn't resolve the issue at all.
Basically, Catholics have already accepted an interpretation of Scripture that
doesn't contradict the Tradition because Catholics by necessity
require that the Tradition and the Scripture be divinely inspired. They
must have a concordance- and it does. You just don't
like the conclusions made when using this premise as the underlying given.
I don't think you're lying or arguing in bad faith, per se. I just think your argument is inconsistent and the authorities you claim to follow are contradictory to the authority you actually follow in practice and reality.
See, this I don't understand. The contradiction isn't
there to Catholics. It only exists when you
tear out half of the deposit of Faith and remove the context of things by constraining argumentation to particular details. Like with the Genesis 3:15 argument, it would be
catastrophic if the translations we have from antiguity didn't also contain scholarly commentary and the historical records for why translation was done in a particular way. It's
catastrophic to use a particular language divorced from the context of its reading, like the Hebrew
writing system and it's
oral tradition of interpretation. It's
catastrophic when you ignore the context of the time where St. Jerome just had flat out
better source material.
Catholic theology doesn't make things up for no reason. It's based on
things. Logic is carefully structured to explain from that basis dogmas that Catholics need to accept.
Of course, you're going to find inconsistencies otherwise. Once again-
different givens.
Catholics are
very consistent though, I suppose, it may seem otherwise when we meet you halfway so that we can even have these sorts of discussions at all.
I'm a professing Christian assessing your claims as a professed sedevacantist Roman Catholic Christian. You say it won't be solved easily, but as far as I'm concerned this issue was solved some 500 years ago. But that's just me.
The revolution and sedevacantism do not even share the same ideological basis let alone its purposes or its actions. The comparison is... shallow at best, disingenous at worst. Though I believe it's the former in your case.
