Would Sunday Laws Forbit Sabbath Keepers to Buy and Sell?

1) Great Bishop of Geneva! Would Sunday Laws Forbit Sabbath Keepers to Buy and Sell?, 2) New blog on the kid John Cornwell's Incompetent Fan Club Claims Vatican went Nazi

Since my dad has been a Seventh Day Adventist, and since I am a Catholic and in favour of Sunday laws, I can hardly avoid the question.

In the Middle Ages, there were of course Jews who kept the Sabbath living in pretty many towns. Even if they were expelled from one town or even country (like Pope St Pius V expelled them from the Papal States in 1569, I just learned, and gave them 90 days to comply - when I think 100 km or 65 miles would have been enough to be outside its then borders) there were other countries receiving them, and so there were always Sabbath keepers - if they like to call themselves such - among Catholics who reckon the Resurrection as a New Creation and therefore as superceding the Sabbath.

If EVERY businessman without ANY exception were required to close on Sunday and be open all other days, then indeed a Jewish or Seventh Day Adventist business owner would be in trouble.

That was not the case in the Middle Ages. Typically this or that trade would be reserved to guilds, every guild was Christian - as in Catholic (up to Reformation) - but every town decided which trades that applied to and so in every town which had Jews, there could be a trade or two or three where they could perhaps even do business on Sunday - within their part of the town* - but certainly close on the Sabbath. They cannot say that doing business on every non-Sabbath day is required, even if they think working every non-Sabbath day is required. There are works that can be done at home.

So, no, going back to the Medieval system would not be what a Sabbath keeper could in any justice or with any plausibility construe as a fulfilment of Revelation 13:17.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
UL of Nanterre
Easter Tuesday
22-IV-2014

* As in Carpentras, where a certain man was bishop before he became Pope Julius II. Be it noted that his enmity against the French was not inconsistent, since Carpentras in his time did not yet belong to France.

Whom did Christ call "that fox"?

Herod. John Foxe was indeed not himself a Church persecuting tyrant, but he served such, like Elisabeth Tudor. In the continuation his work served other such, like Cromwell, like William of Orange.

His Book of Martyrs is held forth as a Historical Resource at "studylight".

Historical Writings
Books by 'John Foxe'
http://www.studylight.org/his/index.cgi?did=ad&aid=4

The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, is an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history from the first century through the early sixteenth centuries, emphasising the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the reign of Mary I. First published in 1563 by the Protestant John Day, the book was lavishly produced and illustrated with many woodcuts and was the largest publishing project undertaken in Britain up to that time. Commonly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, one fuller title of the work is Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church. Widely owned and read by English Puritans, the book helped mould British popular opinion about the nature of Catholicism for several centuries.

Indeed I think so much that the present edition* is not that of John Foxe himself. It contains the Affaire Calas in chapter 4. And John Calas or Jean Calas was executed by "vile garrote" (strangulation) in 1762.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs
by 'John Foxe'
Chapter 4 — Papal Persecutions, p. 7
http://www.studylight.org/his/index.cgi?did=ad&aid=4&kid=9&bid=1&cid=4

Martyrdom of John Calas

We pass over many other individual maretyrdoms to insert that of John Calas, which took place as recently as 1761, and is an indubitable proof of the bigotry of popery, and shows that neither experience nor improvement can root out the inveterate prejudices of the Roman Catholics, or render them less cruel or inexorable to Protestants.

....

Seeing my own father is a believer in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and seeing he is very upset even twenty years later at my Catholic conversion, and seeing he seems to encourage Protestants both here in Paris - far away from his own Sweden - and world wide where I get contacts on the internet to regard me as a madman or a drunkard, and seeing this has ruined my life up to this day, I am not quite sure that Jean Calas was innocent of murdering his son, after another one had already converted to Catholicism, by being disgusted at having two sons convert. Protestant prejudice against Catholicism can be cruel and persistent.

Back to the chapter 4 of "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" (edition n^th with very many additions).

Before that, there has been an account of St Bartholomew's Massacre, of Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but the Calas affaire goes on to the end of page 9 / last of a chapter belonging to a book with a first edition in 1563.

I think it is a safe bet that this is NOT from the first edition. Studylight does not give us any details of what edition they are using. It is very clearly one into which additions have been made after John Foxe, by editors who may or may not have been named in the book itself, but who remain unnamed on the site "studylight" where I have also been accessing John Calvin's comments.

The most part of the chapter 4 is concerned with French Catholicism vs Huguenots. St Bartholomew's Massacre begins at the bottom of page 2. I find it a pretty safe bet, the edition we deal with is heavily inspired by Huguenot emigrants who got a refuge in England and perhaps already then in the Thirteen Colonies - or such of them as were already extant by the time when Louis XIV revoked it and the ensuing years.

BUT, before that we are dealing with some heavily erroneous stuff which can very well be by Foxe himself.

Popery having brought various innovations into the Church, and overspread the Christian world with darkness and superstition, some few, who plainly perceived the pernicious tendency of such errors, determined to show the light of the Gospel in its real purity, and to disperse those clouds which artful priests had raised about it, in order to blind the people, and obscure its real brightness.

The principal among these was Berengarius, who, about the year 1000, boldly preached Gospel truths, according to their primitive purity.

Where in Christendom was the Real Presence of the Sacrament NOT believed by the time of Berengarius? The question is relevant due to Matthew 28.

One sect in Armenia, the Tondrakians, had denied it, and in their time the Armenian Schismatics or Heretics, known as Armenian Apostolic Church, still uphled this, since they condemned Tondrakians for denying it. Be it noted that on some few points Tondrakians were right about certain things. A baptism is valid even if performed by a layman without subsequent immediate chrismation. Which that condemnation by the Armenian Church denied. Even they were unheard of before the 7th or perhaps 6th Century, as far as I know.

But apart from Tondrakians, no one was denying the Real Presence in Berangarius' time, nor did he himself continue to do so.

Catholic Encyclopedia* > B > Berengarius of Tours
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02487a.htm

The imprisonment, however, did not last long. The Bishop of Angers, Eusebius Bruno, was his disciple and supporter, and the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey Martel, his protector. The following year, by order of Henry I, a national synod was held in Paris to judge Berengarius and Eusebius Bruno; neither was present, and both were condemned. At the Council of Tours (1055), presided over by the papal legate Hildebrand, Berengarius signed a profession of faith wherein he confessed that after consecration the bread and wine are truly the body and blood of Christ. At another council held in Rome in 1059, Berengarius was present, retracted his opinions, and signed a formula of faith, drawn up by Cardinal Humbert, affirming the real and sensible presence of the true body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. (Mansi, XIX, 900.) On his return, however, Berengarius attacked this formula. Eusebius Bruno abandoned him, and the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey the Bearded, vigorously opposed him. Berengarius appealed to Pope Alexander II, who, though he intervened in his behalf, asked him to renounce his erroneous opinions. This Berengarius contemptuously refused to do. He then wrote his De Sacrâ Coenâ adversus Lanfrancum Liber Posterior, the first book of which — now lost — had been written against the Council of Rome held in 1059. He was again condemned in the Councils of Poitiers (1075), and of St. Maixeut (1076), and in 1078, by order of Pope Gregory VII, he came to Rome, and in a council held in St. John Lateran signed a profession of faith affirming the conversion of the bread into the body of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary. The following year, in a council held in the same place Berengarius signed a formula affirming the same doctrine in a more explicit way. Gregory VII then recommended him to the bishops of Tours and Angers, forbidding that any penalty should be inflicted on him or that anyone should call him a heretic. Berengarius, on his return, again attacked the formula he had signed, but as a consequence of the Council of Bordeaux (1080) he made a final retraction. He then retired into solitude on the island of St. Cosme, where he died, in union with the Church.

However, this may have been hidden from Foxe, and the allegation he founded a sect of Berangarians rather than having Eusebius Bruno for sole supporter, more or less, may have come from Catholic sources unduly alarmed of heresies spreading:

According to some of their contemporaries, Berengarius held erroneous opinions about the spiritual power, marriage, the baptism of children, and other points of doctrine. (Bernold of Constance, De Berengerii haeresiarchae damnatione multiplici in P.L., CXLIX, 1456; Guitmond, De Corporis et Sanguinis Christi veritate in Eucharistiâ, P.L., CXLIX, 1429, 1480.) But Berengarius's fundamental doctrine concerns the Holy Eucharist.

I first though Bernold of Constance lived in the fifteenth Century, but no, he was a contemporary, thouugh his works were published centuries later in print:*

Catholic Encyclopedia > B > Bernold of Constance
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02512c.htm

Historian and theologian, b. in Swabia about 1054; d. at Schaffhausen, 16 September, 1100. [...] His name has ever been associated with the reforms of Gregory VII. The seventeen tracts that have reached us are mostly apologies for the pope's policy, or vindications of men who advocated or enforced it in Germany. Chief among these are: "De prohibendâ sacerdotum incontinentiâ", written against the married clergy; "De damnatione schismaticorum", wherein he justified the pope's condemnation of that abuse; "Apologeticus super excommunicationem Gregorii VII", a defence of the pope's excommunication of Henry IV and his partisans. Bernold is the author of a chronicle (Mon. Germ. Hist., Script., V) which is still highly esteemed.

Now, back to Foxe:

Many, from conviction, assented to his doctrine, and were, on that account, called Berengarians. To Berengarius succeeded Peer Bruis, who preached at Toulouse, under the protection of an earl, named Hildephonsus; and the whole tenets of the reformers, with the reasons of their separation from the Church of Rome, were published in a book written by Bruis, under the title of "Antichrist."

Maybe Foxe had read a book "by Peter de Bruis" which he saw entitled as "Antichrist", but I am not sure of the authorship. Besides, Peter de Bruis was living in a century where book publishing was a bit trickier than it became later, since printing with moveable types in the Latin alphabet** was not yet invented. Books were copied by hand.

I suspect that Reformers were challenged about the tenets of Reformed Religion being innovations - or that much I know, I need not suspect it - and then (this being what I suspect) certain works containing theologemes from Luther, Calvin, Beza, Zwingli and others were being forged under names such as "Antichrist by Peer de Bruis" or "The Wicket by Wycliffe". Before the printing press, book printing was so much less of an issue.

Actually, before the printing press, book publishing was so much less of an issue and book printing not an issue at all.***

Book copying en masse was not done by one or two men with machinery, but by several men - often University Students - who were sworn to obedience to the Bishop under whose ecclesiastical jurisdiction the university lay. And these in turn were not in existance before Pope Alexander III on Third Lateran Council enjoined the duty of Bishops to hold Cathedral schools. After the lifetime of Peter of Bruis.

I had been speculating that the method used by universities like Sorbonne in the times of St Albert or St Thomas, St Bonaventura and Bishop Stephen II Tempier (all of whom I respect, including the bishop who is not a canonised saint) could have been invented earlier by monasteries.

Here I find the common opinion very useful for my cause, even if it is true that I am a very great fan of books and access to them and that the society before, Catholic and Christian though it was, may have been cumbersome to my habits of reading. In the time of Peter de Bruis, there was no possibility of making a great impact by publishing a book.

He did make a great impact by making a bonfire of crosses. He made such a great impact on the Catholic population there that they resorted to lynching him by letting him join the crosses on his bonfire. It may be noted, first of all, that to them as well as to Church men, Peter de Bruis was acting like an enemy to the Holy Cross of Our Lord - and I subscribe to the judgement - and then that the Church men did not take any initiative to burn him, since burning heretics was simply not done. Peter de Bruis was the first in the West.

A bit earlier, a Basileus of New Rome (at the Bosphorus, a k a Constantinople, more recently Istanbul) had also burned a heretic. Alexius Comnenus had burned Basilius the Physician. Now, nobody in Foxe's book of Martyrs mentions Basilius the Physician or Alexius Comnenus - any more than Tondrakians. By this token you may guess the Reformers were not using Tondrakians or Basil the Physician as precedents for Reformed theology. And he was not reformed. Of Genesis 1:1 he would not have believed the words "and Earth" - and of the creator of earth in his book, he did not believe he was God, nor that it was in the beginning, nor that he also created Heaven.°

But by the Fourth Lateran Council, under Innocent III, there was such a horror at mainly Albigensians - that is people agreeing with Basil the Physician - that the Church did after all agree to the burning of relapsed and of pertinacious heretics. This was not so at the time of Berengarius. If it had been he would have been burned for renewing his heresies after the first recantation.

Be it noted that though Albigensians were not encouraging violence as personal behaviour, neither did they consider the human life as sacred. If you know the Kali sect, the Thuggees, with whom English colonial powers had some trouble, and their tenet they were doing the victims a favour by sacrificing them to Kali, you may guess a little what attitude to death - if not to violent killing - the Albigensians had. Suicide by starvation was one of their "Sacraments" or "Sacramentals." I was in prison invited to a hunger strike, I refused to participate. The one who took or tried to take the initiative had, since his crime, converted to Evangelical Pentecostal Christian practise. To me, a Catholic, a hunger strike is far too much like the Albigensian Endura.°° But among Albigensians there was this further thing, making it worse than a hunger strike, that a person on hunger strike might count on prison guards forcing food into him. An Albigensian agreeing to Endura might be helped the other way round, by his Albigensian surroundings: he was prevented from taking food or water. They also procured abortions.

It is thus not any outbreak of personal instability within an otehrwise totally non-violent sect, but rather a thing not usually encouraged but not impossible to expect either, when Albigensians murdered a Papal legate, an act which propelled the "Albigensian crusade" (or Crusade against the Albigensians).

Here is how Foxe treats the event (yes, this passage is very probably from the original edition or one during his own lifetime - with an addition in later ones):

The Albigenses were a people of the reformed religion, who inhabited the country of Albi. They were condemned on the score of religion in the Council of Lateran, by order of Pope Alexander III. Nevertheless, they increased so prodigiously, that many cities were inhabited by persons only of their persuasion, and several eminent noblemen embraced their doctrines. Among the latter were Raymond, earl of Toulouse, Raymond, earl of Foix, the earl of Beziers, etc.

A friar, named Peter, having been murdered in the dominions of the earl of Toulouse, the pope made the murder a pretense to persecute that nobleman and his subjects. To effect this, he sent persons throughout all Europe, in order to raise forces to act coercively against the Albigenses, and promised paradise to all that would come to this war, which he termed a Holy War, and bear arms for forty days. The same indulgences were likewise held out to all who entered themselves for the purpose as to such as engaged in crusades to the Holy Land. The brave earl defended Toulouse and other places with the most heroic bravery and various success against the pope's legates and Simon, earl of Montfort, a bigoted Catholic nobleman. Unable to subdue the earl of Toulouse openly, the king of France, and the queen mother, and three archbishops raised another formidable army, and had the art to persuade the earl of Toulouse to come to a conference, when he was treacherously seized upon, made a prisoner, forced to appear barefooted and bareheaded before his enemies, and compelled to subscribe an abject recantation. This was followed by a severe persecution against the Albigenses; and express orders that the laity should not be permitted to read the sacred Scriptures. In the year 1620 also, the persecution against the Albigenses was very severe. In 1648 a heavy persecution raged throughout Lithuania and Poland. The cruelty of the Cossacks was so excessive that the Tartars themselves were ashamed of their barbarities. Among others who suffered was the Rev. Adrian Chalinski, who was roasted alive by a slow fire, and whose sufferings and mode of death may depict the horrors which the professors of Christianity have endured from the enemies of the Redeemer.

The Albigensians were very much not of the Reformed Religion, since they were very much not believing Genesis 1:1.

They were not condemned on the score of religious discord alone, but because of their horrendous acts.

Simon of Montfort was not a bigot for heading the Crusade, nor was St Leopold Duke of Austria a bigot for joining it. Which he did.

And the sects in Poland and Lithuania may have or not have included people calling themselves Albigensians, but were very much not the original evil thing which the Medieval Inquisition along with Crusaders like Simon of Montfort and St Leopold of Austria stamped out. Be it noted, usually not by killing, but by conversion.

Here is one corrective to the false impression given in this site of "studylight":

The Night's Dark Shade
by Elena Maria Vidal(Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Nights-Shade-Elena-Maria-Vidal/dp/0557159245

Here is another one:

The Name of the Rose: including the Author's Postscript– September 28, 1994
by Umberto Eco(Author), William Weaver(Translator)
http://www.amazon.com/Name-Rose-including-Authors-Postscript/dp/0156001314/

It may be added that 1994 was not the first edition, I read an earlier one in 1984. It dramatically changed my view of the Inquisition, which up to then I had regarded as a diabolical and at least unbiblical aberration. I had not known what Albigensians were till I read it. My mother had in a Bible school been taught the lie (from Foxe) that they were Bible believing Christians.

Since I was even previous to this pro-Catholic (with reservations precisely on Inquisition), and anti-Reformation (since I knew the Reformation was very bloody and Church Persecuting business), this discovery made me decide to become Catholic.

A little later I came across a sweet passage in a novel by Chesterton, the first I ever read by him, in German translation:

THE RETURN OF DON QUIXOTE
BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Don_Quixote.txt

Looking for the quote I come across this one:

"That has been defended economically," said Braintree, with restraint. "One authority has pointed out that the best trades are paid equally already."

"Karl Marx, I suppose," said the expert, testily.

"No, John Ruskin," replied the other. "One of your Victorian giants." Then he added, "But the text and title of the book were not by John Ruskin, but by Jesus Christ; who had not, alas, the privilege of being a Victorian."

Here, rather, the one I was looking for:

"You think he was affected by the Albigensian doctrines?" inquired the librarian, earnestly and almost eagerly. "It is true, of course, that the seat of the heresy was in the south and a great many of the troubadours seemed to have been in that or similar philosophical movements."

"His movements are philosophical all right," said Archer. "I like my movements to be a little less philosophical when I'm making love to a girl on the stage. It's almost as if she really meant him to be shilly-shallying instead of popping the question."

"The question of avoiding marriage seems to have been essential in the heresy," said Herne. "I notice that in the records of men returning to orthodoxy after the Crusade of Montford and Dominic, there is the repeated entry iit in matrimonium. It would certainly be interesting to play the part as that of some such semi-oriental pessimist and idealist; a man who feels the flesh to be dishonour to the spirit, even in its most lovable and lawful form. Nothing of that comes out very clearly in the lines Miss Ashley has given me to say; but perhaps your part makes the point a little clearer."

"I think he's a long time coming to the point," replied Archer. "Gives a romantic actor no scope at all."

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about any sort of acting," said the librarian, sadly. "It's lucky you've only given me a few lines in the play."

He paused a moment, and Julian Archer looked at him with an almost absent-minded pity, as he murmured that it would be all right on the night. For Archer, with all his highly practical savoir faire, was not the man to feel the most subtle changes in the social climate; and he still regarded the librarian more or less as a sort of odd footman or stable-boy brought in by sheer necessity, merely to say, "My lord, the carriage waits." Preoccupied always by his own practical energies, he took no notice of the man's maunderings about his own hobby of old books, and was only faintly conscious that the man was maundering still.

"But I can't help thinking," the librarian was continuing, in his low meditative voice, "that it might give rather an interesting scope for a romantic actor to act exactly that sort of high and yet hollow romance. There is a kind of dance that expresses contempt for the body. You can see it running like a pattern through any number of Asiatic traceries and arabesques. That dance was the dance of the Albigensian troubadours; and it was a dance of death. For that spirit can scorn the body in either of two ways; mutilating it like a fakir or pampering it like a sultan; but never doing it honour. Surely it will be rather interesting for you to interpret bitter hedonism, the high and wild cries, the horns and hootings of the old heathen revel, along with the underlying pessimism."

"I feel the underlying pessimism all right," answered Archer, "when Trelawney won't come to rehearsals and Olive Ashley will only fidget about with her potty little paints."

He lowered his voice a little hastily with the last words, for he realised for the first time that the lady in question was sitting at the other end of the library, with her back to him, bent over books and fidgeting away as described. She had not apparently heard him; in any case she did not turn round, and Julian Archer continued in the same tone of cheerful grumbling.

"I don't suppose you have much experience of what really grips an audience," he said. "Of course, nobody supposes it won't go off all right in one sense. Nobody's likely to give us the bird--"

"Give us what bird?" asked Mr. Herne, with mild interest.

I may add, since Chesterton's day, the idea that Troubadours were inspired by Albigensian ideology has been discredited.

But what stands its ground through the times of Umberto Eco and - much later - Elena Maria Vidal is that Foxe is very discredited in believing Albigensians were Reformed or otherwise in any way Bible Believing Christians.°°°

If someone will ask me if I take the word of three mere novelists over that of Foxe, who was a Church historian, and very respected such among Protestants, I answer definitely yes. He was not a Church Historian from the Tradition of the Church, and the learning he gathered about his matter has since then been very much bypassed. I prefer three novelists who have done their research# to a hack historian who has not done such. I prefer talent neglected to incompetence (that is the best word I can use for Foxe) vaunted and lifted up to the skies.

I respect Kent Hovind when it comes to research he has done about dragons and thunderbirds and other critters that could very well be post-Flood dinosaurs. But when he gets to subjects like Church History, it is a pity he trusts Foxe, and it is a pity he is a friend of the infamous Jack Chick who does so too and on top of that trust men like Avro Manhattan and Hochhuth. It is a pity also that Romanides studied at Harvard, where he got a very lopsided view of Catholic history. But I do respect him for saying Aeneas spoke Greek when he came to Italy. If it is Mycenean Greek and not Koiné he meant. Though in my opinion it could also very well be Hittite, Aramaic, Phenician, perhaps even Etruscan or Sumerian.

I can believe the historical myths or rather legends from mythology. But I cannot believe the mythology of Foxe.## Soyons anti ces mythes. Let's be against such myths, even if that be seen as an Antisemite stand. For part of Jewry also eagerly looks to Avro Manhattan. And perhaps also that Foxe.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Easter Day
20-IV-2014

* Speaking of editions, the one I use of Catholic Encyclopedia is the following:

The Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/

** Whenever Chinese or Koreans invented their printing, that is of no concern to Peter of Bruis.

*** Thanks to Kent Hovind for lesson in efficient use of misstatements!

° With the Protestants, we Catholics start disagreeing from chapters 3 and 4 of Genesis onward. What was the fall? Did Cain have free will or was he predestined to kill Abel? But with Basil the Physician, the disagreement starts in Genesis 1:1, and therefore we see even Protestants as far more Christian in doctrine than him or other Manichaeans.

°° I have seen the provençal word enduro - Mistralian spelling of same word - used of a motor bike race. I am not into motor bike races either, out of personal taste, but at least they are not sins of suicide. If you tend to think of IRA members as hunger striking, well, IRA of the 1970's was not exactly a fully Catholic organisation, although it was an organisation recruiting among usually not so practising persons of the Catholic confession, since the two religions are there also two ethnicities fighting about the same land (or previously so, up to the famous Good Friday agreement some time ago). Even so, their cause struck me as more just than the Ulster Scots cause, even previously to reading Umberto Eco.

°°° Wonder if BBC had been used as abbreviation for Bible Believing Christians before it became acronym for British BroadCasting (network). Or was it British Broadcasting Company? Either way, Albigensians were not BBC in the other sense - nor in the current one.

# Among these, Umberto Eco is not even a Catholic believer, as far as I know. Meaning that unlike Chesterton and Vidal, he has no bias in favour of the Inquisitors. The Protestants who respect Foxe do not include High Church men like Newman, before his conversion and I think C. S. Lewis knew very much more about the Middle Ages than was usual for his background in Belfast, and so he knew Foxe had at least not spoken the truth about Albigensians.

## Shall I even bother to mention that in chapter 5 he makes St Dominic more or less an Inquisitor and nothing else. A man of prayer, one who spent nights in waking prayer liek St Patrick and Our Lord Jesus Christ, not mentioned. A preacher, not mentioned, or barely. Just that he was connected to the Inquisition insofar as Dominicans and Franciscans became the most usually employed ones. And no, St Joan of Arc was not tried by these.

Answering "Why the Jews are Not the Enemies of the Church"

Why the Jews Are Not the Enemies of the Church
March 6, 2014 By Dr. John Lamont
http://www.hprweb.com/2014/03/why-the-jews-are-not-the-enemies-of-the-church/

"One such attack maintains that the Jews are enemies of the Church in virtue of their religious beliefs. The religious beliefs in question are those of Rabbinic Judaism, which has been the dominant form of Jewish religious belief for the past two millennia. Rabbinic Judaism developed as a result of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, which removed the center of Jewish religious life. Some replacement for the Temple was required if Jewish religious existence was to continue. In the century or so after the destruction of the Temple, the study and observance of the Jewish Law was developed as this replacement."

There is a replacement. It is the Temple that tore down itself and raised itself in three days. It is present in the Eucharist. It is the live body of a Jew who never broke one iod of the law in his eartly life. SO, accepting rabbinic Judaism involves rejecting that Catholicism is the correct replacement.

And it even does so at a pretty basic level.

"The reason why Rabbinic Jews are not enemies of the Church can be put briefly. Such Jews do not seek to convert Christians to Judaism, or to prevent non-Jewish Christians from exercising their faith. They only refuse to become Christians themselves, which does not suffice to make them “enemies” of the Church.

This can be seen by contrasting Rabbinic Jews with Muslims."

Hang on a second. What if a Jew becomes a Catholic? Have they never ever done anything to either prevent or revenge conversions? I would NOT believe that to be completely factual, no.

Or what if good relations (such as sometimes occur) between Catholics and Jews lead to some of the latter becoming Catholics, will the other ones not try to stop the bleeding? I mean they see that as a bleeding of the Jewish community.

Or if someone had a grandfather or greatgrandfather who was Jewish but became Christian, will they not see this as him being past the cursed generations and "offering him a chance" to join Judaism again? I somehow think they will and sometimes they do not take no for an answer either the first or the second time.

And what about avoiding parts of their Community becoming Catholics, will they never ever lie about the Catholic Church or "honestly" believe the most denigrating lie available about it? I think sometimes they will.

"These passages [St. Peter’s statements as recorded in Acts 2:22-23 and Acts 7:52-53, and on St. Paul’s statement in 1 Thess 2:14-16, as Lamont mentioned after Bishop Fellay previously] cannot, however, be understood as applying to all Jews. The statements of St. Peter condemn those Jews who were themselves personally involved and responsible for the death of Christ in bringing about his crucifixion."

As if any subsequent generation of Jews distanced themselves from these?

Thus far I have posted replies on Karl Keating's facebook wall. [Two of these have "disappeared". I e I could still copy it, but next time I log in it won't be there.*] Now I continue:

Honour thy Father and thy Mother. This means generally speaking approving of what they do. When their lives are not possible to approve, under Old Testament and also later among Rabbinic Jews, their generation of iniquity is not counted. In the genealogy of Christ legally, as legal child of St Joseph, St Matthew omits three generations starting with the husband and ending in the grandson of the impious woman Athaliah.

To certain Jews, this is basically how I should treat certain Christian generations. To me, that is how Jews SHOULD treat the generations who crucified Our Lord, who persecuted Christians by lynching first and by denunciations to Nero's and Domitian's henchmen later. They. Do. Not. Many have no doubt not thought the question through. But those who have and remain Jews, well, it is safe to say they approve in principle of this. If they are really Christian friendly, they may say "well, maybe it was a bit harsh". But they do not count the generations who killed St Stephen and St Polycarp as rebels against their fathers and misleaders of their children. Which. They. Were.

"Denial of Christ’s divinity and messianic status was not, and could not have been, the center of Rabbinic Judaism, because the founders of Rabbinic Judaism had little contact with Christians, and knew very little about them. When the Mishnah was completed in 200 A.D., Christians were still a small, illegal community with no profile in the Roman Empire. They lived predominantly in the Greek-speaking cities of the Empire, and used Greek as their language of communication. The founders of Rabbinic Judaism wrote in Hebrew and Aramaic, generally had little or no knowledge of Greek, and took little part in the life of the Hellenistic cities where the Christians were active. They were not seriously confronted with the Christian message, and were not concerned with it. The Jewish communities that were active in opposing Christians, and that were referred to by St. Paul in the passage quoted above, had been almost totally destroyed by the Romans in their suppression of the Jewish revolts in Palestine, Alexandria, Cyprus, and Cyrene between 70 and 136 A.D. – which killed between 90 and 100% of the Jewish populations in those areas."

Nice try, but not likely. Not likely at all that ALL the Jews who opposed Christians were speaking Greek since it involved Palestinian Jews. Not likely at all that ALL the Jews who opposed Christians were destroyed in the Roman suppressions of Jewish revolts.

The Palestinian Jews were speaking Aramaic and probably in connexion with other groups of Jews speaking Aramaic. Including the factual founders of Rabbinism. Before they were possibly all killed off by Romans.

By the way, if they were, then the inheritors of Palestinian Jewry of 1:st Century are those Christians of Jewish, Samarian and Galilean origin who fled to Pella from the Romans and returned. In other words, the Christian Palestinians.

Not at all likely either that the only Jews who were persecuting Christians were those that were in Palestine, Alexandria, Cyprus and Cyrene. Though, I must admit for this thesis, after the martyrdom of St Polycarp, Jewish involvement in the Roman persecution seems to cease for some while.

This is why there are very few references to Christ and Christianity in the Talmud, and those references that exist are brief and inaccurate. They are scurrilous and abusive, but they make no reference to Christ’s claims to divinity or messianic status, and it seems unlikely that the authors of the Mishnah knew about these claims.

In a month's time or two, will Lawrence Krauss remember ANYTHING about a film called The Principle? His reference to Sungenis' and DeLano's claims he was filmed knowing what he was doing are already getting scurrilous and abusive. Now, he is an Atheist, but he belongs, insofar as longranging family traditions are concerned, to that community. Could there be, through Rabbinic Judaism, a certain kind of connexion to Mishnahic authors and their relation to Christianity?

It seems certain that they would have denounced Christ’s claims if they had heard of them. There would have been no obstacles to their doing so, since the Christians were still an illegal and persecuted group, who could not have posed any sort of threat.

There is no OBSTACLE to Lawrence Krauss suing Stellar Motion Pictures either. The three persons involved are not exactly a physical threat to him, nor bound up with the administration and able to harrass him for it. The kind of risk there is, is the risk he amdits wanting to avoid: the risk of these getting attention to their claims. And the exact nature of these claims (Karl Keating seemed to think The Principle was mainly about the Church condemning Galileo and not really retracting that, while it is rather about the contrast between Copernican Principle and its status in Scientific Community with the lack of empiric back up for it). And the evidence for these exact claims being true (like the footage - Rick DeLano claims he has five hours with Krauss).

In the days when Apostles were daily making miracles, would not a community trying to keep their flock outside the Apostolic Church show some kind of discretion? Well, look at Krauss' tactics now!

The claim that Rabbinic Jews work to deny the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is, therefore, misleading. They deny it themselves, and seek to prevent Jews from accepting it, but they do not work to make non-Jews deny it, and do not work to prevent Gentiles from accepting it. Nor do they seek to destroy the Church in order to oppose it.

That is really and truly different from Jew to Jew. There are those who say they would prefer all Gentiles to be Noahides (i e accepting the Noahidic commands and accepting Jews as a kind of priesthood among them, not unlike how Jews treat Levites among themselves or Levites and Jews treat Cohanim). There are those who state they would prefer each Gentile nation to keep its ancestral gods as long as they will not be Noahides. There are those who, when not being convinced Judaism is religiously superior to Christianity, will opt for Atheism to avoid the problem such a question would pose to them. And there are plenty who, while full of goodwill to a Christian will prefer if he is Protestant rather than Catholic or Orthodox, because these Churches DO claim, in a way that rivals Jewish claims, to be the People of God. Mostly Protestant confessions do not. The Covenanters who did were much more Rabbinic Jewish than the Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic adversaries of their ideal. Indeed, Shylock in Shakespear is likely to be a Puritan rathern than a real Jew in certain aspects. Especially his dislike for Venetian Carnival. Shakespear was in an England which alas had Puritans, but not Jews. And if someone is Catholic or Orthodox, and they care at all about him, it is likely they prefer him to be the Vatican II kind or the Neohimerite kind, rather than a Sedevacantist or a Palaeohimerite.

The Jewish belief was that, with a few praiseworthy exceptions, adherence to religious error was in the nature of Gentiles.

Especially so after failed rebellions and even later after seeing Christianity in power, right?

The idea of getting Gentiles, as a whole, to reject religious error was thus considered unfeasible, and prior to the coming of Christ, was never entertained by any Jews.

Not even by the Prophet Malachi?

1:11 For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.

I think Dr. John Lamont ought to think again. He should not take Rabbinic Jewish words for what Jews previous to Christ thought. Indeed, he should not take the words of Rabbinic Jews about how marginal the Christians were in the Roman Empire either when Judaism was being rebuilt without the Temple.

But this idea of Gentile nature clinging to religious error IS an incentive to such Jews as regard Christianity as their enemy (and they DO exist) to prefer seeing Gentiles in Non-Christian religious errors, such as both they and we Christians would regard as erroneous, to seeing them as Christians. Therefore there is a drive among Jews to make Gentiles apostasise. To be somewhat fair to them, our prophecies might seem to indicate that their conversion and return to grace will come about in the times when Gentiles apostatise from Christian truth.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Hezekiel
10-IV-2014

* I reposted, will see if they stay and are answered. So far, they are still on his wall.

Appendix:

Noteworthy and not to be rejected are these paragraphs on the Talmud:

This is not the judgement of Catholic theology or of the Magisterium of the Church. The Church had little awareness of the Talmud until the 13th century, when she intensified her efforts to convert Jews. The accusation that the Talmud was immoral and anti-Christian, through and through, originated largely with Jewish converts to Christianity of this period, such as Nicholas Donin. One may guess that these converts were influenced in these accusations by a reaction against their former religious position, and by feeling a need to prove their loyalty to Christianity. The inaccuracy of these accusations made them ineffective for missionary purposes, which, in turn, led to Catholic theologians making a thorough study of the Talmud. The most authoritative Catholic work resulting from this study was the “Pugio Fidei,” a magisterial attack on Rabbinic Judaism and Islam written by the Dominican, Raymond Martin. This attack dismissed the claim that the entire Mishnah was received by Moses on Mount Sinai as absurd, but did not reject all the contents of the Talmud. Instead, Fr. Martin accepted that some of the Talmud really did pass on an oral tradition received by Moses, and argued that this genuine tradition proved the truth of Christianity; the rest of the Talmud he dismissed as human invention.

The general principle that the Talmud is a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent elements, rather than a work that should be entirely rejected, is thus the most authoritative position among Catholic theologians, and can easily be seen to be correct by a consideration of its text. The tractate on the “Wisdom of the Fathers,” for example, which contains a number of ethical and religious teachings from rabbis who mostly lived before the time of Christ, obviously contains valuable elements. The fact that this important Talmudic text largely predates Christ, shows the falsity of the claim that the main idea of Rabbinic Judaism is the rejection of Christ’s messianic dignity.

This principle conforms to the judgment of the Church on the Talmud. When the Talmud was burnt in Paris at the instigation of Nicholas Donin, French Jews appealed to the Pope, who judged that it could be permitted, if it was expurgated of any anti-Christian remarks. A similar judgement was made by the Council of Trent. A commission of Jews approached the Council to request that it rule that the Talmud could be printed. The Council passed their request on to the Congregation for the Index, which again ruled that it could be printed if any anti-Christian statements were removed. This evaluation of the Talmud was more positive than that given to the works of Luther, Calvin, Peter Abelard’s Introduction to Theology, and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela – all of which were banned in their entirety by the Church.

However, this does not detract from the fact that the bad is there, in editions of Talmud which are not subjected to the restrictions of the Church. Nor do I agree that the tractate on pre-Christian rabbis shows the falsity of the claim that the main idea of Rabbinic Judaism is the rejection of Christ's messianic dignity. It is as much and as little the main idea of Rabbinic Judaism as rejection of Masses for the Dead and of Purgatory are the main idea of Lutheranism. They cannot be the main idea in any religion as lived, but they can very well be the main idea in the origin of a community as distinct from one other community, or in other words, the main idea of a specific polemic issue./HGL

Update: Whether a Jew not Christian worships the true God because of the Torah, or a false "god" because of Talmud or Kabbalah, is as I suppose known to God alone. If he converts, one may hope he was already loving the true God before conversion. If not ... one more thing:

The general principle that the Talmud is a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent elements, rather than a work that should be entirely rejected, is thus the most authoritative position among Catholic theologians, and can easily be seen to be correct by a consideration of its text.

A Christian trusting Gospel and Tradition is in a position to cherrypick the good from the bad in the Talmud. A Jew reading Torah through the Talmud is not. And since the Torah is entirely good in itself, while the Talmud is not, he will sometimes be reading the good through the bad. A risky business.

Sorry I didn't say this yesterday, but I was, to say the least, tired.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Pope St Leo I, the Great
11-IV-2014

Mark Shea's Understanding of Scripture

1) Creation vs. Evolution : If some pseudo-orthodox thinks Patristic and Literal interpretation of Genesis are incompatible ..., 2) CMI on Allegorical Method - Answered, 3) Literal Sense vs Literalistic Approach, Allegoric Sense vs Figurative Approach, 4) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Congratulating Lita Cosner on agreeing basically with StThomas Aquinas, 5) Mark Shea's Understanding of Scripture, 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Neither Sungenis nor Palm is totally right on Psalm 18 (Sungenis is less off)

The Literal Sense of Scripture
http://www.mark-shea.com/scrip3.html

A very good summing up, as far as it goes, or nearly so:

Scripture has what are known as different senses. That is, there are layers of meaning found in apparently simple sentences and images. ... Sometimes, the deeper sense of something can reveal a truth that takes your breath away, as when Jesus tells James and John that they shouldn't fight about who is to be at his right and left hand when he comes into his kingdom since only God can ordain this--and we finally see who has been reserved for that privileged position only when Jesus is crucified between two thieves.

But also:

The notion that Scripture has different senses is as old as Jesus himself. After all, it was he who said (Luke 24) that the whole Old Testament was actually about him. In other words, as St. Augustine said, the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is only fully revealed in the New.

That said, it is important to remember that the first and foundational sense of Scripture is the most obvious one: the literal sense. In other words, before we go looking for hidden meanings we have to pay attention to obvious ones.

Here too is very good, as far as it goes:

The key to understanding the literal sense of Scripture is to distinguish between the terms literal and literalistic. ... If I tell you, "My heart is broken" I have a definite meaning I'm trying to convey: I am deeply grieved. But I am not using literalistic language to convey that meaning. I don't mean "My cardiac tissue is torn." Same with the biblical authors. They employ all sorts of linguistic tricks of the trade--poetry, history, parable, hymn, fiction, reportage, myth, argumentation, legal codes, apocalyptic--to get their various points across. But however they express themselves, they all have a meaning they intend us to get. That meaning is what is meant by the literal sense of Scripture.

The point I would like to make is this is not something reserved for Catholic Modernists and Orthodox Modernists and Anglicans. Meaning those of the rather usual Modernist kind.

Lita Cosner and Jonathan Sarfati say the same thing when speaking about passages that were used against Galileo by St Robert Bellarmine in his friendly discussion with Galileo.

I would not agree. But I would agree this is a very apt thing to observe against the Skoptsi heresy who took "if your right eye is a scandal to thee, pluck it out" in a very literalistic way. Though not necessarily about eyes.

There is one thing however:

We have to, in short, understand what the human author was trying to say, the way in which he was trying to say it, and what is incidental to the assertion.

I quite agree with Lita, that no statement is merely incidental. Even what is incidental to main points is not incidental to the truth of the Bible.

Now we get to his grasp of Allegorical sense:

The Allegorical Sense of Scripture
(excerpted from Chapter 7 of Making Senses Out of Scripture)
http://www.mark-shea.com/7.html

As we mentioned in the last chapter, one of the standing temptations of the biblical student is to oversimplify by seizing on one truth and using it to discount other, equally important truths.

Here too I heartily agree. BUT, the next passage will signal my stance for a disagreement:

One such oversimplification consists of the habit some modern people have of exalting the primacy of the literal sense of Scripture into a flat denial of the possibility of any other senses of Scripture at all.

True, but very much less current than the oversimplification of people wanting to defend Scripture by exaggerating the estimates of what is incidental and resorting to the allegoric sense when the literal one will do just fine. As soon as you actually get at it.

This denial of a second sense in Scripture can lead to curious results, as a friend of mine discovered one evening watching one of those "Mysteries of the Bible" shows on TV. On the show were a couple of theologians eager to get their 15 minutes of fame on the tube. So rather than talk about the Faith, they obligingly told the camera that Jesus was not born of a virgin and based their claim on the allegation that St. Matthew misunderstood the prophet Isaiah.

The Literal Sense will do just fine. Isaiah very much did prophecy that Christ was to be born of a Virgin.

This statement may sound somewhat peculiar to some publics, but is nevertheless right. I will first let Mark Shea state the problem, before giving my solution:

It's like this, said the scholars: A couple of centuries after Isaiah wrote, the Hebrew Bible (including the book of Isaiah) was translated into Greek (since many Jews were spread over the Greek-speaking ancient world and were forgetting their Hebrew just as European immigrants to the United States forgot their Yiddish in an English-speaking culture). This Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (that is, the Old Testament) is called the Septuagint.

Now in the original Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14 we read the prophecy that "the 'almah' shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name 'Immanuel.'" "Almah" means in Hebrew "young woman" and refers to any young woman, virgin or not. But when the Jewish translators of the Septuagint translated Isaiah into Greek (decades before the birth of Christ), they did not translate the term as "young woman" but as "parthenos" which means "virgin." Later on, after Christ comes, St. Matthew is reading this Greek translation, not the original Hebrew when he declares of the Virgin Birth, "All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.'" But, said the TV theologians, we now know St. Matthew was mistaken to believe in the Virgin Birth since Isaiah did not say "virgin" but "young woman."

There is a problem in the statement:

"Almah" means in Hebrew "young woman" and refers to any young woman, virgin or not.

It is that we do not know that Almah has never had the exact meaning Virgin.

First of all, I do not know Hebrew, when discussing this earlier I was met with the assertion, as my memory recalls, that Almah is the word for young plus the - even to me obvious - feminine ending -ah. Then, even so, a word that etymologically means "young woman" need not therefore be referrable to just any young woman even not a virgin. This is not based on my expertise of Hebrew, which as just admitted does not exist. It is based instead of my knowledge of how meanings change.

Does Mark Shea know what the word "sad" etymologically means? I suspect a man whose blog is called "Catholic and Enjoying It", and who is often smiling, would think the word "sad" is less applicable to him than the word "glad".

I agree that Mark Shea is more glad than sorrowful. But the etymological meaning of "sad" is NOT sorrowful. It is a description of how Mark Shea feels after eating his favourite meals in the favourite quantities no quite allowed during Lent (be patient Shea! Easter is soon at hand and then there are 50 days without fasting!), and second meaning is how Mark Shea weighs on the scales. So, first meaning is "full" or "having eaten one's fill" (like German "satt"), and that is the etymology. Second meaning is "heavy". It is only FROM the second meaning heavy that you get a third meaning, like "serious" or "important" or "not negligible". And only from there do you get a FOURTH meaning of sorrowful, since our existence on earth is such that mirth is easier overlooked in its importance than sorrow. By the way, I mentioned that "having eaten one's fill" is in German "satt". As for "sorrow" it is in German "Sorge" or "Trauer" (hence "sorrowful" = "besorgt" / "traurig"), but rather with Trauer/traurig as real equivalent, "Sorge" and "besorgt" verging on "[having] something on one's mind" (in a sorrowful rather than merely pensive way). Swedish does not have the word "sad" in the first meaning, but uses "mätt" (a word related to meat, perhaps, and to Swedish "mat"="food"), however "sorrow" or "sadness" (modern sense) are "sorg". And "sorrowful" is "sorgesam".

So, proving that Almah etymologically means "young" and stands in the feminine noun form is not equal to proving it grammatically in Isaiah's Hebrew meant "young woman" and on top of that referred to any young woman, whether virgin or not. One can easily see how a word starting out to mean "young woman" can easily come to mean "virgin" - especially in a society expecting Virginity to be what young women did up to marriage. And especially if the word ceases to apply at marriage - like Miss becomes Mrs or Mademoiselle becomes Madame.

This is a first problem with the assertion that Isaiah - as the unstated logical conclusion would go - used a word meaning "young woman" rather than Virgin.

There is another problem: how do we know Isaiah wrote Almah? Well, the Masoretic text has, obviously, Almah. But the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX) was translated by Seventy translators (hence the name) and it translated the word as παρθενος, which means Virgin. And St Jerome had access to a Hebrew text, and he translated Virgo, which means virgin and is also the very same word. A traditional Catholic or Orthodox, if seeing a contradiction between LXX and Masoretic text, or between Vulgate and Masoretic text will tend to say that the Masoretic text has been deliberately corrupted by Jews.

And indeed after the Jews rejected Jesus, they had a real motive to corrupt precisely that passage. Either by changing the word or by changing the meaning of the word. Either the Hebrew word had been another word than Almah, and in that case they might have stamped copies using it as heretical and Christian and burnt them. Or Almah had had the meaning Virgin, and they had changed the meaning, which was so much easier as:

• Hebrew was a study language so it could be manipulated by an élite if they controlled studies of it sufficiently centrally;
• "Almah" had the etymological semantics appropriate for meaning "young woman."

There is actually a third solution. Suppose Almah means "young woman". Suppose it was the word in Isaiah from the start. Even so, it would automatically carry the meaning of "virgin", due to the Hebrew law. A young woman giving up her virginity was to be stoned. A young woman loosing it by rape was to be compensated. One option for her father being to demand the rapist marry her. In such a scenario, she could possibly be a young woman while conceiving, but not any more while giving birth. Nine months after loosing a virginity a Hebrew young lady was either married or stoned. And if Isaiah had meant that someone would conceive as a young woman though no longer virgin and give birth as married to the child's physical father, he would not have said that word "shall conceive and bear a son". He would have said "yes, a newly wed shall bear a son".

This being so, we must conclude that Isaiah indeed literally prophecied the Virgin Birth.

But he did not literally prophecy that Jesus would be called Jesus? No, but Jesus is a synonym of Emmanuel.

Isaiah did literally prophecy that Cyrus would be called Cyrus. The prophecy was fulfilled through parents who did not know it. But parents must not be in a position to manipulate the prophecy by knowing it.

If we take a prophecy about quite another kind of guy, namely Antichrist, I think people whose parents have choosen names so that Hebrew or Greek sums of the letters shall add up to the number that is 18 times 37 or the 36:th triangular number, may be pretty safe. The name of Antichrist must add up either in a less obvious way (I have heard that Barack Hussein Obama does not add up to more than 501 - but each name has a meaning, their translations into English ... well, you see what I mean), or in a gematria not accessible at his birth (ASCII code was not around when I was born, and at that time - according to Padre Pio - Antichrist was already in the word, I hope I can add "also" - so someone's name adding p that way in ASCII code but his being born well before it was around may be a real sign, especially if no other names add up that way in ASCII code: and so far "Bergoglio" in block letters fits that, and "Pope Francis" is the only prominent such alive today).

If St Joseph had named the child Emmanuel, he would have been seen as manipulating the prophecy. He could be aware that Jesus by its meaning implied Emmanuel, but he had not choosen it himself, he had been ordered by the angel.

This brings us to a point where Mark Shea is wrong.

The first and most obvious point in the New Testament, as we saw in chapter 5, is that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. The apostles came to believe this, not because they saw the Virgin Birth, but because they saw the risen Christ. And the risen Christ, as we saw previously, is the one who did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17) and, after his resurrection, tells his disciples that "Moses and all the prophets" had written "concerning himself" (Luke 24:26-27). This is where the apostles get the idea that the whole life and ministry of Christ "fulfilled the Scriptures." So far so good.

What is not so good however is that it is easy for the modern reader to adopt a kind of "checklist" mentality about messianic prophecy, as though every first century Jew had an agreed-upon set of "Messianic Verses" in the Old Testament against which all messianic claimants were measured. Indeed, many books of Christian apologetics today lay out precisely this sort of schema:

Prophecy:   Source   Fulfillment The Messiah must...   In the Old Testament   in the New Testament Be the born in Bethlehem   Micah 5:1   Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:4-7 Be adored by great persons   Psalm 72:10-11   Matthew 2:1-11 Be sold for 30 pieces of silver   Zechariah 11:12   Matthew 26:15

and so forth. One could easily get the impression that all a first century Jew had to do was follow Jesus around, ticking off prophecy fulfillments on his Old Testament Messianic Prophecy Checklist and he ought to have known everything that Jesus was going to do before he ever did it.

...

This is why nobody before these events says, "Why, it's plain from Scripture that the Messiah will be born of a virgin, rejected by the chief priests, handed over to Gentiles, crucified with thieves, risen, ascended, and that he will abrogate the circumcision demand for Gentiles as he breaks down the barrier between man and woman, slave and free, Jew and Gentile." Even the disciples themselves, close as they were to Jesus, make it clear they did not anticipate the crucifixion, much less the resurrection, one little bit-even when Jesus rubbed their noses in it (Mark 9:9-10). As John says, they did not understand from the Scripture that the Messiah had to rise from the dead, even while they were standing in the mouth of the empty tomb gawking at his graveclothes (John 20:1-10).

The problem is that the checklist did in fact exist. I do not know about a set list of items with a fixed order and all, that, but a Jew who had studied the Scriptures and waited for the Messiah would know what he was looking for. The shepherds were told and had probably no previous studies. I do not know what verbal prophecy their presence fulfilled, but they did so to speak stay in Bethlehem as colleagues to young David before he was a King. He too was a shepherd. So, their adoration fulfilled the words "dixit Dominus Domino meo" since to those that knew it, they were showing forth King David acknowledging the main character of that Psalm as not just his son (which is allegorically shown by the shepherds being obviously older than Jesus) but also his Lord.

But the shepherds didn't know. Nor did the disciples.

Even the disciples themselves, close as they were to Jesus, make it clear they did not anticipate the crucifixion, much less the resurrection, one little bit-even when Jesus rubbed their noses in it (Mark 9:9-10). As John says, they did not understand from the Scripture that the Messiah had to rise from the dead, even while they were standing in the mouth of the empty tomb gawking at his graveclothes (John 20:1-10).

They were chosen among people who had not studied. Galilean Fishermen would very obviously not know the checklist. Pharisees would know it far better than they. They would be ticking off occasion on occasion as they hoped for a discrepancy between Jesus' actions and the prophecies. And they would time after time be disappointed. And the disciples would simply not know all that was happening. Close as they were to Jesus. The one man with some real Hebrew letters among them was St Matthew. And he had been neglecting them for years on end as he was collecting taxes. Sts Paul and Barnabas would have known all this too, but they were not yet among the disciples.

So, though one prophecy was fulfilled in a way that was literally true but not literalistic - Jesus fulfilling Emmanuel - nevertheless the fulfilment of these prophecies (those on checklist) were literal fulfilments, but not allegorical fulfilments.

We get to allegory when Jesus explains ALL of the Old Testament as prophecy, not just the prophetic passages.

We get to allegory when David saying "the Lord said unto my Lord" is allegorically present in the shepherds of Bethlehem. We get to allegory when Jesus explains how Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is a prophecy in very great allegorical detail of his own via Dolorosa. We get to allegory when the stars fighting from their orbits against Sisera are there again as the Sun goes dark over Calvary. We get to allegory when the fleece of Gideon is a prophecy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But for the proper understanding of Isaiah 7:14, we can be satisfied with the letter.

Mark Shea does not quite miss that:

So, for instance, Hebrews 2:13 quotes Isaiah 8:18: "Here I am, and the children God has given me." In its literal sense, Isaiah is speaking about his own disciples with no hint of messianic intent behind these words. Yet the author of Hebrews sees Christ, far more than Isaiah, fulfilling the text. Why? Because Christ and his Church are, most fully, what Isaiah and his disciples were in a kind of foreshadow.

That indeed is what the Sensus Allegoricus is all about.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre, UL
Pope St Xystus I
Martyr
3-IV-2014

Romae natalis beati Xysti Primi, Papae et Martyris; qui, temporibus Hadriani Imperatoris, summa cum laude rexit Ecclesiam, ac demum, sub Antonino Pio, ut sibi Christum lucrifaceret, libenter mortem sustinuit temporalem.

Answering Paul S. Pavao, Part I

1) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Steve Rudd, 2) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Answering Paul S. Pavao, Part I

I came across Paul S. Pavao as an Old Earth Compromiser. One who considers Evolution not only OK, but even preferrable as consistent with "the laws of spiritual growth" whatever that might be. That phrase is as little from Bible or Church Fathers as Evolution. Of course the concept may repose on some misreading of the Church Fathers, as with some other Old Earth Compromisers who claim St Augustine's One Moment Creation against the Six Days and then the freedom from Six Days to depart from them in the opposite direction in an extreme way. Not quite what I consider reliable as theologians. But here I am not out to out him for his lack of Creationism, but rather for his attacks on Apostolic Succession.

The point, however, is that when a Catholic writes to me, he or she is always—I can't think of a single exception—telling me either that church history and the Bible require me to acknowledge that the RCC is the one true church ...

Church History and Matthew 28:18-20 require you to consider as the true Church the one that was in place at the day of Constantine with its legitimate successor today IN UNBROKEN SUCCESSION, and excludes:

a) the false answer that Primitive Christianity was preserved by Celtic Church and therefore independently of hierarchical Churches;

and b) the false answer that Primitive Christianity was preserved by Culdees forming a secret society.

It is true Church history which requires you to renounce as false answers what is false history. It is Holy Bible which requires you to concede an unbroken succession.

Now, there is another passage. Noone lighteth a lamp to put it under a bushel. A city on a mountain cannot be hidden.

These two items, if you concede they refer to the Church, exclude solution a) since a narrow Geographic visibility is a kind of minimum that would still leave the Church invisible to most of the world.

But they exclude solution b even clearer, since it would imply a Church that is precisely hidden and made invisible by hand of man despite the expressed will of God.

This does not leave you searching for a needle in a haystack. There is Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Monophysite in its Coptic and Armenian branch, Nestorian, none other. Monotelethites were united to Roman Catholics in Lebanon, they are called Maronites and are one of the Uniate Churches. So, they are not a fifth option. I am glad you are not considering Arians, but if you were, where were they between conversion of Visigoths in Spain and reemergence of Arianism through the two Sozzini in 1517? Eight hundred years without Church is not possible. Therefore Arianism is not possible.

There is a third false solution, which is also impossible:

c) the false answer that Primitive Christianity was preserved after its open glory UNDER Popes and Bishops who had nothing to do with so preserving it.

This is false because the hierarchy did claim obedience and because someone obeying to the eyes but disobeying only interiorly to obey God's word more would not be obeying God's word who did ask very clearly to obey, openly, Himself more than men defying Him.

And this gives us a clue to another one:

d) the false answer that Primitive Christianity was preserved by people believing as Catholics through no fault of their own while Catholicism was not Primitive Christianity.

It is false because the Church is not JUST an unbroken series of faithful but ALSO an unbroken series of open testimony to the truth.

The Church is the Pillar and Foundation of Truth.

In a sense, only God is that. But in another sense of visible social causes, God has said that the Church is so.

You cannot have ignorant Catholic laymen preserving the Church under wicked Catholic bishops destroying it, and the laymen not suspecting that, because that is not a visible Pillar and Foundation of Truth. Even if ill-instructed flocks could possibly be saved each soul individually despite total collective damnation for heresy of their shepherds, this could only be a local exception, not the case all over the world or even in a larger part of it than that having openly Orthodox shepherds, for a prolonged time.

If it were true that Roman Catholic Church in all its bishops, Eastern Orthodox Church in all its bishops, Copts and Armenians in all their bishops, Nestorians in all their bishops were with one voice denying the Literal Six Days of Creation, and God resting from New Creatures definitely the Seventh (at least new types of such), if they were in one voice denying Geocentrism and other options of Geostasis all together, one could only conclude one of two things, either that Evolution and Heliocentrism were right or that the Church had succeeded in breaking a promise given by God himself. Up to now it has not happened.

One could however see the Church reduced to one bishop. Or two. Or three. For a short time, like under St Athanasius in Egypt (but Latins remained Orthodox!) until the truth was restored to its correct place (even in Egypt in our example).

So, if denial of the Catholic dogmas attacked by the Reformation were part of truth and those dogmas part of Apostasy, the Reformers would have had to point to a fairly recent point in time when nearly all bishops, but not quite without exception, had ceased to proclaim the up to recently Protestant dogma of the church.

But instead that kind of dogma is known as Protestant precisely because it was protesting against all the bishops, hardly even getting a hearing from Kyrillos Laskaris in Constantinople, and that one not received in his place either as traditional, but rather as a revolutionary, one to be deposed and repudiated. Iasi and Jerusalem repeated, not all, but most of the Trentine Council's anathematisms over Protestant errors.

In other words, without exception, every time a Roman Catholic has written me, it has been as part of an attempt to claim every Christian needs to be under the authority of the bishop of Rome.

We think indeed that Matthew 16:16-19 refer to an individual authority given St Peter and transmitted to his successors precisely in Rome where he died.

One school of Eastern Orthodox (Gregorius Palamas - Paul S. Pavao cites St Cyprian for the same attitude) agree that authority was given St Peter individually, but that he started to transmit it as soon as there were other dioceses than the one where he was residing, in other words when the Church of Samaria was added to the Church of Jerusalem.

Another school of them (often pursuing the passage only to verse 18) would claim St Peter was given authority earlier than the others, but only same as the others of the twelve. And that the authority of these is transmitted to the bishops.

I think this latter position wrong, but even that one would clearly exclude Protestantism from being the true Church or even a legitimate and regular part of it.

Because we're ignorant of early Christian history—something that was not true of Martin Luther and John Calvin—we have been deceived into believing that Catholic claims about "the church fathers" are true.

The RCC does study and promote early Christian history. Non-Catholics, not knowing history themselves, believe Roman Catholic claims, such as that the "early" fathers worshipped liturgically, elevated the sacraments the way Roman Catholicism does, and had a hierarchy of priests, bishops, archbishops, and a pope.

Early Fathers worshipped Liturgically

St James the Brother of God was first bishop after St Peter left, in Jerusalem. The oldest and richest Liturgy preserved as such is his. The liturgy of St Basil is a shorter version of that. The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom is a shorter version of that. St Peter had a shorter Liturgy in Rome, but it has become longer in the Canon up to Pope St Gregory the Great, and before and after Canon, additions have been made even later.

Early Church Fathers elevated the sacraments the way Roman Catholicism [and Eastern Orthodoxy] does.

Hermas' Shepherd gives a Prophecy going through two positions about forgiveness of sins:

• Once in a lifetime only, by baptism. Those that sin after Baptism are lost.
• Once by baptism, but those that sin after baptism have a second chance by Penance.

Whether or not Penance was in that particular book once only, such claims about Baptism and Penance make these practises - and they count as belonging to the list of Seven Sacraments - decisive for Forgiveness of Sins, and therefore for Salvation. How is that not elevating the sacraments? Add thereto how St Ignatius of Antioch speaks of the Eucharist.

Early Church Fathers had a Hierarchy of Priests, Bishops [Deacons] ...

St Ignatius of Antioch clearly refers to it when telling "do nothing without the bishop"

Early Church Fathers had Archbishops in their hierarchy.

I do not know, but I do not find it anyway near certain either way, though Ephesus could have been Metropolis to Smyrna, since St John the Disciple was in Ephesus and St Poilycarp of Smyrna, being in Smyrna as bishop, was disciple of him who was in Ephesus and thus came from there to Smyrna. And one can argue that Jerusalem's See was from the first Archsee to that of Samaria.

Early Church Fathers had a Pope

St Ignatius of Antioch who succeeded St Peter via St Eleutherius in Antioch refers to the contemporary Bishop of Rome (who had more intermediaries between himself and his predecessor St Peter, I think, but I could be wrong), as Presiding the Community of Christian Love (tes koinonias tes agapes). Pope St Clement was recognised in Corinth, at least as having a judicial supremacy of appeal (his first Epistle to Corinthians), and in all probability also of having so directly (if Second Epistle to Corinthians is genuine, I think it has been called into question as spurious by antipapist fury rather than for good philological reasons).

Next item from Paul S. Pavao:

The Roman Catholics argue that it is the passing down of authority. Peter, and not any other apostles, passed authority down to the first bishop of Rome, and not any other bishops, and then down to the succeeding bishops of the Roman church.

This is not what the early church believed.

To the early churches, apostolic succession was a proof of the preservation of truth within the churches.

A proof of a thing and that thing itself are usually two different things or two different facts about a single thing.

The preservation of truth is called Apostolic Tradition. It is as much a fact about the Church as Apostolic Succession. However the fact of Apostolic Succession, every diocese but foremost in Rome, is a fact which in and of itself is a fact about a succession in authority.

Peter, for example, taught the truth—the faith once for all delivered to the saints—to Linus and other elders in Rome around A.D. 60. Linus taught it to Anacletus, Anacletus taught it to Clement, and so forth.

No. All three had it from both Peter and Paul. This order is the order in which they succeeded him in position of authority.

Clement did not need to hear the truth as if the first time from Cletus. He had already heard it from Sts Peter and Paul. He had been considered a good listener and transmitter also by St Linus whom St Peter had directly choosen as successor. He had also been that under St Cletus. If in any sense the words were used implying this latter was teacher of Pope St Clement, it meant that before the latter became Pope, Cletus had been recognised as teacher of the Church where he was, unless it was indeed as Roman Catholics claim, as teacher of the truth everywhere. But that Cletus and Clement should not have known St Peter or St Paul is preposterous. It makes the tradition of truth so slender, and it is therefore a clear misunderstanding of what St Irenaeus was saying in Contra Haereses.

Catholic Encyclopedia gives one hint about his being a disciple of Saint Paul:

Origen identifies Pope Clement with St. Paul's fellow-labourer (Philippians 4:3), and so do Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome — but this Clement was probably a Philippian.

How would his being a Philippian have impeded his being later on in Rome? How would his origin as a Philippian impede his being elected in Rome after he had been there some time and known as a disciple of St Paul who died along with St Peter? I also consider that "this Clement was probably a Philippian", but I see no point in placing a "but" before that and against his being Pope St Clement. Haydock Bible Commentary of 1859 comments on the verse in question, among other things:

[Verse 3 ...]With Clement. St. Jerome, Estius, and some others, believe that this Clement was the fourth pope that governed the Church, after Sts. Linus and Cletus: this at least is the common opinion.

What is this thing about "he was Philippian, so he cannot have later been Roman"? Is it Twentieth Century reliance on modern transports coupled with the knowledge that they did not exist back then?

So, no, Succession and Tradition are two distinct facts about the Church, both being part of its Apostolicity (and both being lacking in Protestantism). St Irenaeus even says so where he is quoted as somehow implying the opposite:

In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us.

Tradition or preaching of truth is thus one thing and the succession is a means for making it be there. Not identic with it.

The words that the tradition followed the same order as that of succession means that Cletus and Clement continued to listen while Linus was the great testimony to truth in the Church of Rome. And Clement waited with teaching while Cletus was doing it after Linus. Not at all that Clement was somehow ignorant of Christianity until he met Cletus, or Cletus until he met Linus as Linus had been until meeting either St Peter or St Paul or both or someone else (St Barnabas was in Italy too). Therefore Paul S. Pavao is just misreading the authority he is giving.

Saying that a Church that is Apostolic, i e has Apostolic Succession as its authority of action, is a witness to Tradition is not in any way a detraction of the fact that they are also enjoying to be Ruled by Successors of Apostles.

To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time

Succession does not mean they only heard of the truth from Polycarp. In some cases it may be so, in other cases perhaps not. It means each of them - up to the time of St Irenaeus who himself was not directly a disciple of Apostles, but only via Polycarp of St John - was in his turn bishop in Smyrna where Polycarp had been so up to his martyrdom.

Then again, the church in Ephesus, founded by Paul and having John remaining with them permanently until the times of Trajan [began his reign in A.D. 98], is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.

Founding suggests very much a community with a real authority.

Will Tertullian (not a Saint, not a Church Father, but an early author) help our author better? He cites him:

We have fellowship with the apostolic churches because our doctrine is not in any way different from theirs. This is our witness of truth.

He is not saying this is only functioning as witness of truth and as nothing else. He is saying this is his witness of truth even before the texts and proof texts of the Bible, at least insofar as it is through this that he understands them.

Run over to the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles are still preeminent in their places

To me a preeminent chair suggests a throne.

There is a cultural loan from the Roman administration very likely here. Certain magistrates of the Republic were sitting in Sella Curulis. It was a chair, it was even a chair that was possible to fold and carry, so physically a simple chair. But it had some distinct decorations meaning no one could sit in it unless he had a command in Rome.

If Sts Peter and Paul, Sts Barnabas and John were using chairs only as objects of daily use, why should it matter if their chairs were there when they were not? Why should their chairs have any kind of eminence? You can suggest they were valuable as relics of the second degree (precisely as the Scapular of St Theresa of Avila is a relic of the second degree of her - first degree being body or parts of it), and that the cult of relics had started already when a handkerchief that had touched St Paul could heal a sick man and was continuing. You can suggest that the chairs were reserved, so that the next man who sat in that chair was the next man who exercised that command. Or you can say that both things were true of these Chairs that had belonged to Apostles and were still preeminent in their Churches.

in which their own authentic writings are read. These utter the voice and represent the face of each of them individually.

Their own authentic writings. This very probably means the manuscripts of each New Testament book were still extant where the Apostles had placed them. These were venerated as relics - once again - up to the Iconoclastic Controversy in Byzantium, in which they were lost or destroyed along with so much else due to the fury of persecuting Emperors.

It could suggest that certain books were not known as part of the collection called the New Testament yet, but known mainly as genuine because they remained in place. Precisely as in United States the Declaration of Independence still remains in place. Or the Bill of Rights. But even if the New Testament was already a collection identic or near so with minor fluctuations, we see in Tertullian what the criterium was. The hierarchic structure of the Church, Apostolic Churches having preeminence over others, was the ultimate practical guarantee for the texts being genuine. Precisely as the hierarchic priesthood of the Old Testament had been for preserving the Torah and for recognising to the Book of Joshua, to the Book of Job, to the Book of Judges, and this for each part of it while it was being successively chronicled, and same for Ruth and the Four Books of Kings, the character of genuine Sacred Scripture.

In the late 2nd and early 3rd century, apostolic succession was a great argument.

After all, who really understands the Scriptures and the message of the apostles? Is it not those who are directly descended—spiritually speaking—from those to whom the apostles committed their message and the churches themselves?

However, to argue that apostolic succession has faithfully and accurately preserved apostolic tradition for two thousand years, including throughout the massively corrupt Middle Ages is quite a different issue.

Calling the Middle Ages "massively corrupt" is begging the question how he is supposed to know that. Especially as the same centuries are not only "massively corrupt" among Latins, apparently, but also among Greeks, Copts, Armenians, Nestorians - or otherwise Paul would simply have said teh Church was preserved, not in Rome but in Ethiopia, not in Rome but in Babylon on Euphrates, not in Rome but around the lake Van. But that is not Protestantism. That would not imply a connexion primarily with the Reformation. Which Paul S. Pavao does show. But more of that later. I have however previously on this blog dealt with massively corrupt or supposedly so Middle Ages.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Memory of St Amos the Prophet
31-III-2014

Thecuae, in Palaestina, sancti Amos Prophetae, qui ab Amasia Sacerdote frequenter plagis afflictus est, atque ab hujus filio Ozia vecte per tempora transfixus; et postea, semivivus in patriam devectus, ibidem exspiravit, sepultusque est cum patribus suis.

Citing From:

Christian History - Roman Catholicism
By Paul S. Pavao
http://www.christian-history.org/roman-catholicism.html

Christian History - Apostolic Succession
By Paul S. Pavao
http://www.christian-history.org/apostolic-succession.html

New Advent : Catholic Encyclopedia > C > Pope St. Clement I
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04012c.htm

St. Irenæus (III, iii) tells us that Clement "saw the blessed Apostles and conversed with them, and had yet ringing in his ears the preaching of the Apostles and had their tradition before his eyes, and not he only for many were then surviving who had been taught y the Apostles".

New Advent : Catholic Encyclopedia > Making of the Catholic Encyclopedia (1917)
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/00001a.htm

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
PHILIPPIANS - Chapter 4
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id210.html

Note on Cletus/Anacletus:

Anenkletos is the Greek name. Cletus is a Latin shorter form, and "it is more Christian". So is the Greek Anacletus. Kletos means "called", as Latin vocatus, and "ana kletos" means "called upwards". Two articles might clarify.

Rejecting Pelagius and Calvin

1) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Rejecting Pelagius and Calvin, 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : In Agreement with CMI on Authorship of Genesis

I was just reading how on CMI* they were referring to Church Councils:

Bible scholars at the time of Pelagius recognized the contradiction between his teachings and Scripture. As a result, Pelagianism was condemned as heretical at many church councils including the Councils of Carthage (in 412, 416 and 418), the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Orange (529).

While we are at those, let us not forget:

• Council of Francfurt (794) dogmatising God predestines no one to evil, followed up by Trent (1545 - 63) when condemning Lutheranism and Calvinism.
  
  
• II Council of Nice (or Nicea, 787) dogmatising that images of the God-Man Jesus Christ, of His Blessed Mother, images and relics of the Cross and so on may variously be honoured with direct or relative cult of:
  
  
  • Adoration (since Jesus is true God, we adore Him, as is also the case with the Cross which was united to Him for Our Salvation, which is also the case with what was previously bread and wine but after the Epiclesis is His Body and His Blood),
  • Hyperdulia (for His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary),
  • Dulia (for other saints).
  
  
  It was, at Francfurt, accepted only with reservations. The Pope condemned neither council.

There were, by the way, two councils of Orange. If the other one had been later than the one condemning Pelagianism and Semi-pelagianism in 529, I could understand how a Protestant could possibly think there was some kind of "apostasy to papism" in between. You know the kind of thing that Mormons posit just after the death of the Apostles, other Protestants variously at Constantine (2 centuries before the relevant council of Orange), at Pope St Leo I called the Great (precisely at Ephesus!) or at Pope St Gregory I called the Great, a little later than the relevant council of Orange. Also the kind of thing that according to Matthew 28:18-20 can never have happened at a universal scale.

But in fact the "other" Council of Orange is earlier, not later. The First Council of Orange was in 441.

The First Council of Orange (or First Synod of Orange) was held at Orange, then part of the Western Roman Empire, in 441.

The first council of Orange took place on 8 November 441 under the presidency of Bishop Hilary of Arles, with Bishop Eucherius of Lyons among those present. Seventeen bishops attended the meeting. Thirty canons (or judgements) were passed, dealing with unction, the Permission of penance, the right of asylum; recommending caution to bishops in the ordination of foreign clergy, the consecration of churches outside of their own jurisdictions, and other matters; imposing limitations on the administration of ecclesiastical rites to those who were in any way defective, either in body or mind; and emphasizing the duty of celibacy for those belonging to the clerical state, especially deacons and widows, with express reference to canon viii. of the Synod of Turin (AD 401). The exact interpretation of some of them (ii., iii., xvii.) is doubtful. Canon iv. is alleged to be in conflict with a decretal of Pope Siricius; and ii. and xviii. betray an inclination to resist the introduction of Roman customs. These canons were confirmed at the Synods of Arles about 443.

The canons of the first council are often cited in the contemporary debates over the ordination of women to the ministry.

So, the guys who assembled at Carthage, Ephesus, Orange, condemning Pelagianism, were they Bible Scholars in general or were they bishops as in Roman Catholic (or possibly Greek Orthodox) clergy?

But of course I do agree that BioLogos foundation is by denying the very existence of the Adam who was seventy two generations before Jesus Christ (genealogy of St Luke) is also denying the exact and correct consequences of Adam's sin.

Since however I consider both Pelagius and Calvin faulty in analysing those, I must conclude that BioLogos foundation risks reviving both Pelagian and Calvinist errors.

I saw, on another article of CMI**, Dr Jonathan Sarfati make a very good and Thomistic pronounce- ment about the Eutyphro dilemma. He said that the expressed will of God is good, since God is by His very nature goodness, and uncapable of ordering evil. I am not sure, and it is at least reputed among Traditional Catholics agreeing with him, that John Calvin was not in agreement with us. And obviously this is one way in which a kind of Calvinism (or perhaps rather a certain school of Islam, if John Calvin would be innocent of the charge, I have not checked) could creep in through evolutionism. If "god" expresses himself with Evolution, and if ... well first of all we might not yet be sufficiently evolved to be attuned to the Natural Law (even while breaking it as sinners) if there is one, but ... if "good" also means "whatever the divine decrees", then we would have to take good as meaning "whatever Evolution decrees". And since biologic evolution is not the only sense of the word, since Human Morals are supposed to be a product of Evolution, at least indirectly so through a reasoning process which higher evolved men have better capacities for than less evolved apes, well, I suppose you can guess what BioLogos might be doing (or arguing) at the next turn. Or perhaps is already doing so.

Meanwhile, as a colleague of CMI, except I am not clergy and do not pretend at "ministries" outside or independent of clergy, I am a writer, but as a fellow creationist, though often less informed [individually] than they are [taken] together on scientific subjects of great note, I say as they did when citing a reader:*

As one supporter said, “You keep making the bullets and we’ll keep firing them.” It will take effort from truth-loving Christians everywhere to stand up and accurately and patiently, with humility, refute error.

However, they were wrong to cite Thomas Bradwardine:

However, Pelagianism continued to influence the Church after Augustine and even saw a ‘revival’ through the influential lectures of William of Ockham at Oxford University in the early 14th century. As before, God raised up scholars and teachers to stand against error and teach truth. Thomas Bradwardine was a voice for truth responding to Ockham’s Pelagian views at Oxford.

He was, like they, a great genius in Natural Philosophy or what is today known as Natural Science. He has however not been canonised.

Chaucer in The Nun's Priest's Tale (line 476) ranks Bradwardine with Augustine and Boethius. His great theological work, to modern eyes, is a treatise against the Pelagians, entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum. Bradwardine's major treatise argued that space was an infinite void in which God could have created other worlds, which he would rule as he ruled this one. The "causes of virtue" include the influences of the planets, not as predestining a human career, but influencing a subject's essential nature. This astrophysical treatise was not published until it was edited by Sir Henry Savile and printed in London, 1618; its circulation in manuscript was very limited. The implications of the infinite void were revolutionary; to have pursued them would have threatened the singular relationship of man and this natural world to God (Cantor 2001); in it he treated theology mathematically. He wrote also De Geometria speculativa (printed at Paris, 1530); De Arithmetica practica (printed at Paris, 1502); De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus (1328) (printed at Paris, 1495; Venice, 1505); De Quadratura Circuli (Paris, 1495); and an Ars Memorative, Sloane manuscripts. No. 3974 in the British Museum—earning from the Pope the title of the Profound Doctor. Another text, De Continuo is more tenuously credited to him and thought to be written sometime between 1328 and 1325.

Of course I agree that "God could have created other worlds, which he would rule as he ruled this one." I do not agree that space is an infinite void in which God could have done so. But he promoted a kind of Calvinism, and this also in Astrological terms, which I am happy did not sully an episcopal see, but that rather he died of the plague. The fact that he was confirmed as bishop by a Pope seems to indicate either that he was as yet incomprehensible in some of his implications or that there was a trough of Papal Orthodoxy. Since looking up Clement VI, I think rather the former.

Clement VI issued the Bull Unigenitus Dei filius on 27 January 1343 to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences. This document would later be used in the defence of indulgences after Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to a church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517.

Clement VI reigned during the period of the Black Death. This pandemic swept through Europe (as well as Asia and the Middle East) between 1347 and 1350 and is believed to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population. During the plague, Clement sought the insight of astronomers for explanation. Johannes de Muris was among the team "of three who drew up a treatise explaining the plague of 1348 by the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in 1341" Clement VI's physicians advised him that surrounding himself with torches would block the plague. However, he soon became skeptical of this recommendation and stayed in Avignon supervising sick care, burials, and the pastoral care of the dying. He never contracted the disease, even though there was so much death around him that the cities ran out of ground for cemeteries, and he had to consecrate the entire Rhone River so bodies could be thrown into it and considered to be buried in holy ground. One of his physicians, Gui de Chauliac, later wrote the Chirurgia magna.

Popular opinion blamed the Jews for the plague, and pogroms erupted throughout Europe. Clement issued two papal bulls in 1348 (6 July and 26 September) which condemned the violence and said those who blamed the plague on the Jews had been "seduced by that liar, the Devil." He urged clergy to take action to protect Jews as he had done.

Clement continued the struggle of his predecessors with Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV. He excommunicated him after protracted negotiations on 13 April 1346 and directed the election of Charles IV, who received general recognition after the death of Louis in October 1347, ending the schism which had long divided Germany. Clement proclaimed a crusade in 1343, but nothing was accomplished beyond a naval attack on Smyrna on 29 October 1344. He also had a role in the Hungarian invasion of the Kingdom of Naples, namely a papal fief; the contest between Louis I of Hungary and Joan I of Naples, accused to have ordered the assassination of the former's brother, was ended in 1352 by a trial held in Avignon, by which she was acquitted from any charge. Among the other benefits, Clement took advantage of the situation to obtain by her the rights over the city of Avignon.

The man who ordained Bradwardine as bishop issued an Indulgence and excommunicated an Emperor. Hmmm ... would Fangrad* perhaps consider it a fluke that Bradwardine "defended truth"?

I have elsewhere talked about the traditional early Christian indulgenced actions for the dead. And excommunicating an Emperor had been done by St Ambrose - one generation of Christians before Sts Augustine and Jerome.

I cannot see how someone can accept evidence from Tradition against Pelagianism from Bradwardine without accepting evidence from Tradition against Calvinism in certain other contexts from Clement VI. I cannot see how one can accept evidence from Second Council of Orange against Calvinism without accepting evidence from First Council of Orange against Presbyteranism. I cannot see how one can accept evidence from St Augustine against Pelagianism without accepting evidence from St Ambrose that even an Emperor can be excommunicated, can be judged by the Church if he is at all a Christian. And so an as also previously noted that if one accepts evidence from II Orange 529 against Pelagianism, one accepts evidence from Francfurt 794 against Calvinism, and from II Nice and Francfurt against Iconoclasm. And from Trent summing this up.

I am as much a Creationist as Fangrad.* I think he would be a more logical one if he were as much a Catholic as I.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Bennet of Monte Cassino
21-III-2014

Notes:

* CMI : BioLogos, theistic evolution and the Pelagian heresy Debating an historical Adam and the destruction of the Gospel
by Richard Fangrad
Published: 22 March 2014
creation.com/biologos-pelagian-heresy

** What is ‘good’? (Answering the Euthyphro Dilemma) Published: 5 May 2007
creation.com/what-is-good-answering-euthyphro-dilemma

Wiki references given in text by links. For the part about Pope Clement VI, four references, of which first two same pages, same work, are:

• Diana Wood, Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 32-33.
• Andrew Tomasello, Music and Ritual at the Papal Court of Avignon 1309–1403, 15.
• Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners, a History of the Popes, 2nd edition, 167.