Victrixa
6th May 2004, 07:57 PM
Hi A. believer!
In the Lutheran forum, you offered to answer my questions concerning Scripture verses that are used by the Catholic Church to explain the Catholic faith. In the Lutheran forums, I was seeking Lutheran answers. But, as you suggested, I have come here to ask the same questions so that I may learn how these verses have been interpreted by the Church Fathers or by any other believers. I am interested to learn what you wish to share with me concerning these verses; I am also interested to learn what anyone else on this forum may wish to share concerning them.
Thank you so very much!
On the Papacy
Matthew 16
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."
15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."
20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.
The Catholic Church teaches that this Bible passage supports the doctrine of Papacy.
Apostolic Succession
Apparently local churches, during the first era of Christianity, were the ones who chose and voted for their pastors? There was no such thing as a bishop in the sense that we know it today as the word ‘bishop’ (‘overseer’) is equal to the word ‘elder’ (‘presbyter’). In other words, the elder of the church was its overseer – or pastor! Is that it? If someone can clarify this!
(I know you want to tell me something about this, A. believer)
Purgatory
Can anyone explain to me the following Scripture passages?
Matthew 12:32Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
(The Catholic Church teaches that, according to this Scripture passage, sins can be forgiven in the ‘age to come’, i.e., after death. But the sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven in this world or the next)
1 Corinthians 3:15 “If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.“
(Catholic teaching refers to the fire here as purgatorial fire)
1 Peter 3:18-20 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison,
20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.
(who were the ‘spirits in prison’. What is the ‘prison’?)
Praying for the dead
2 Timothy 1: 15-18
15 You are aware of the fact that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. 16 The Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains;
17 but when he was in Rome, he eagerly searched for me and found me--
18 the Lord grant to him to find mercy from the Lord on that day--and you know very well what services he rendered at Ephesus.
(Paul prayed for Onesiphorus’ soul? Onesiphorus was dead at the time)
Thank you so very much A. believer and anyone else who is willing to explain these verses to me!
The peace of Christ be with you!
Caroline
A. believer
6th May 2004, 10:39 PM
Hi A. believer!Hi Caroline,
Welcome to the forum. :)
In the Lutheran forum, you offered to answer my questions concerning Scripture verses that are used by the Catholic Church to explain the Catholic faith. In the Lutheran forums, I was seeking Lutheran answers. But, as you suggested, I have come here to ask the same questions so that I may learn how these verses have been interpreted by the Church Fathers or by any other believers. I am interested to learn what you wish to share with me concerning these verses; I am also interested to learn what anyone else on this forum may wish to share concerning them.
Thank you so very much!
On the Papacy
Matthew 16
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."
15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."
20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.
The Catholic Church teaches that this Bible passage supports the doctrine of Papacy. A study was done of all the references to this verse in the church fathers from the third to the eighth centuries of the church, and there were a variety of interpretations of the verse among them. William Webster has documented all of them here (http://www.christiantruth.com/fathersmt16.html). Some of the fathers interpreted the rock as Peter, some as Peter's confession of faith, some as Christ, etc. None of them, though, interpreted the verse as supporting a papacy. I think it's an important point for those who seem to think it's fairly self-evident that this is what the verse means to know that there's no record of such an interpretation in the church until very late. Augustine, for example, at first interpreted the rock as Peter (although without the implication that it referred to an office with a continuous succession.) In his later years, though, in his Retractions, he said that he no longer held to that interpretation, and he interpreted the rock as Christ, instead. He then said that the reader could decide which interpretation is more plausible, or something to that effect. As in the early church, there is no official Protestant interpretation of Matthew 16:18. Just as Augustine suggested, people tend to understand it in light of what seems most plausible. Many Protestants consider the rock to be a direct reference to Peter, but like the church fathers, none consider it to be a reference to the office of the papacy.
As for the "binding and loosing" part of the verse, I'll again quote Augustine's interpretation. Here's how he saw it."He has given, therefore, the keys to His Church, that whatsoever it should bind on earth might be bound in heaven, and whatsoever it should loose on earth might be, loosed in heaven; that is to say, that whosoever in the Church should not believe that his sins are remitted, they should not be remitted to him; but that whosoever should believe and should repent, and turn from his sins, should be saved by the same faith and repentance on the ground of which he is received into the bosom of the Church. For he who does not believe that his sins can be pardoned, falls into despair, and becomes worse as if no greater good remained for him than to be evil, when he has ceased to have faith in the results of his own repentance. " (Augustine--On Christian Doctrine, Book I, Ch. 18)
According to Augustine, the keys were given to the church as a whole, and it refers to the difference between those who have faith in the results of their own repentance as opposed to those who lack that faith and fall into despair. I believe Augustine was thinking of 2 Corinthians 7:10.
"For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death."
Apostolic Succession
Apparently local churches, during the first era of Christianity, were the ones who chose and voted for their pastors? There was no such thing as a bishop in the sense that we know it today as the word ‘bishop’ (‘overseer’) is equal to the word ‘elder’ (‘presbyter’). In other words, the elder of the church was its overseer – or pastor! Is that it? If someone can clarify this!
Yes. And the elders were appointed with the consent of the church. Clement of Rome, for example said this:"Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect foreknowledge of this, they appointed those ministers already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry." (First Clement, 44)
And the church father, Cyprian, said this:
"a bishop is appointed into the place of one deceased, when he is chosen in time of peace by the suffrage of an entire people, when he is protected by the help of God in persecution, faithfully linked with all his colleagues, approved to his people by now four years' experience in his episcopate" (Letter 54:6)
PurgatoryCan anyone explain to me the following Scripture passages?
Matthew 12:32Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
(The Catholic Church teaches that, according to this Scripture passage, sins can be forgiven in the ‘age to come’, i.e., after death. But the sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven in this world or the next)
As one evangelical apologist points out, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that purgatory is for the atonement of sins already forgiven, not for the forgiveness of sins after death, so this doesn't seem to make sense as a prooftext for the Roman Catholic teaching, but more significant is the lack of a concept of purgatory in the early church.
1 Corinthians 3:15 “If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.“
(Catholic teaching refers to the fire here as purgatorial fire)
The context of this verse is in regard to Christian workers building on another man's foundation, and it refers to the quality of the teaching of this Christian worker. In other words, false teaching will be burned as chaff, while the man, himself, will be saved. Purgatory is about a purifying fire in which a man himself will be "burned" or purged. But this verse speaks of the works being burned, not the man, himself, being purged.
1 Peter 3:18-20 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison,
20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.
(who were the ‘spirits in prison’. What is the ‘prison’?)
I won't attempt to answer this. It's a puzzling verse, and I've seen some speculative interpretations, but none that are particularly compelling. To use it as a support for purgatory, though, is at best equally speculative. What I really wanted to address here was the claim that purgatory is an apostolic tradition always believed in the church. If this were so, we'd expect the church fathers to unambiguously affirm it. Instead, here's an example of what we see. From Protestant historian, George Salmon:"In like manner, when Augustine hears the idea suggested that, as the sins of good men cause them suffering in this world, so they may also to a certain degree in the next, he says that he will not venture to say that nothing of the kind can occur, for perhaps it may. Well, if the idea of purgatory had not got beyond a 'perhaps' at the beginning of the fifth century, we are safe in saying that it was not by tradition that the later Church arrived at certainty on the subject; for, if the Church had had any tradition in the time of Augustine, that great Father could not have helped knowing it." (The Infallibility of the Church [London, England: John Murray, 1914], pp. 133-134)
"And it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it." (Augustine--The Enchiridion, 69)
If purgatory were an apostolic tradition passed down through the church, we'd have much more than a "perhaps" from Augustine.
Praying for the dead
2 Timothy 1: 15-18
15 You are aware of the fact that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. 16 The Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains;
17 but when he was in Rome, he eagerly searched for me and found me--
18 the Lord grant to him to find mercy from the Lord on that day--and you know very well what services he rendered at Ephesus.
(Paul prayed for Onesiphorus’ soul? Onesiphorus was dead at the time)
Other than Roman Catholic apologists, I'd never even heard it suggested that Onesiphorus was dead, but someone I know from another board pointed something out that I found kind of odd. in light of this common Roman Catholic apologetic argument. Roman Catholic tradition has Onesiphorus being martyred under the Emperor Domitian in 81 A.D. St. Onesiphorus (http://saints.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=4910), and the Apostle Paul being martyred in 67 A.D. St. Paul (http://saints.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=91) In light of that, I don't understand why apologists use this passage as a prooftext for prayers for the dead, and why they claim that Onesiphorus was dead before Paul.
Thank you so very much A. believer and anyone else who is willing to explain these verses to me!
The peace of Christ be with you!
CarolineYou're welcome. God bless!
A. believer
7th May 2004, 01:51 PM
Caroline,
As further confirmation of the fact that the early church didn't interpret Matthew 16:18 as a prooftext for the papacy, I wanted to offer the following:Cardinal Yves M.-J. Congar wrote: “Application of the principle is difficult, at least at a certain level. In regard to individual texts of Scripture total patristic consensus is unnecessary: quite often, that which is appealed to as sufficient for dogmatic points does not go beyond what is encountered in the interpretation of many texts. But it does sometimes happen that some Fathers understood a passage in a way which does not agree with later Church teaching. One example: the interpretation of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16.16-19. Except at Rome, this passage was not applied by the Fathers to the papal primacy; they worked out exegesis at the level of their own ecclesiasiological thought, more anthropological and spiritual than judicial. . . . Historical documentation is at the factual level; it must leave room for a judgement made not in the light of the documentary evidence alone, but of the Church's faith.” Yves M.-J. Congar, Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay (London: Burns & Oats, 1966), pp. 398-399.
Also, Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger who taught Church history for forty-seven years as a faithful Catholic prior to the official definition of papal infallibility in 1870 cited as among his reasons for leaving the communion of Rome the fact that historical exegesis of Matthew 16 in the ancient church contradicted Rome's claim.
Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger: All this is intelligible enough, if we look at the patristic interpretation of the words of Christ to St. Peter. Of all the Fathers who interpret these passages in the Gospels (Matt. xvi.18, John xxi.17), not a single one applies them to the Roman bishops as Peter’s successors. How many Fathers have busied themselves with these texts, yet not one of them whose commentaries we possess—Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, Theodoret, and those whose interpretations are collected in catenas,—has dropped the faintest hint that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the commission and promise to Peter! Not one of them has explained the rock or foundation on which Christ would build His Church of the office given to Peter to be transmitted to his successors, but they understood by it either Christ Himself, or Peter’s confession of faith in Christ; often both together. Or else they thought Peter was the foundation equally with all the other Apostles, the Twelve being together the foundation-stones of the Church (Apoc. xxi. 14). See Janus, [i]The Pope and the Council, trans. from the German, 2nd ed. (London: Rivingtons, 1869), pp. 91-92.
Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger: St. Augustine has written more on the Church, its unity and authority, than all the other Fathers put together. Yet, from all his numerous works, filling ten folios, only one sentence, in one letter, can be quoted, where he says that the principality of the Apostolic Chair has always been in Rome,—which could, of course, be said then with equal truth of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. Any reader of his Pastoral Letter to the separated Donatists on the Unity of the Church, must find it inexplicable, on the Jesuit theory, that in these seventy-five chapters there is not a single word on the necessity of communion with Rome as the centre of unity. He urges all sorts of arguments to show that the Donatists are bound to return to the Church, but of the Papal Chair, as one of them, he knows nothing. See Janus, The Pope and the Council, trans. from the German, 2nd ed. (London: Rivingtons, 1869), pp. 88-89.
I very much appreciate the spirit in which you asked your questions in the Lutheran forum, and that's why I responded to you. Your lack of presumption that church history can only reasonably be interpreted one way is refreshing.
God bless!