Robert iW, unfortunately your response is to simply “beg the question”.

Most of your answers simply state the Roman Catholic Church is right because that church has said so.

Your answers are ”fallacies of relevance” for that reason.

Ken
So if someone tells me that I have two left feet and say ‘no I don’t’ that ‘begs the question’ does it Ken.  These were a series of statements or claims.  The only fallacy here is the one perpetrated by the sect you seem to hold some regard for.

Donna, there are such things as “Laws of Logic”. There are also informal fallacies of relevance, one of which is “begging the question”. below is the definition of this error.

What is “Begging the Question?”
“Begging the question” is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

A simple example would be “I think he is unattractive because he is ugly.” The adjective “ugly” does not explain why the subject is “unattractive”—they virtually amount to the same subjective meaning, and the proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.

What is it Not?
To beg the question does not mean “to raise the question.” (e.g. “It begs the question, why is he so dumb?") This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word “question” in the phrase to refer to a literal question. Sadly, the error has grown more and more common with time, such that even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to “BTQ Abuse.”

Ken
My point was that you used ‘begs the question’ incorrectly.  Robert gave answers, you don’t agree so you assume that it ‘begs the question’.  Call me stupid, but I don’t see how it is so.  You think Robert has made this logical fallacy because he just says Catholics are right and hasn’t answered the questions, but isn’t this what your source has done?  At least Robert was able to give sources for his position.  Your source has proved embarrassingly inadequate here.

Your own explanation of “begs the question” is exactly that which I proposed the claims were in the first instance, i.e., statements made, concluded as true, without any proof.

Don’t you see?  You cannot claim a position for Catholicism, that is does not hold for itself.  It is one thing to disagree on doctrine, but to make false claims is wrong.

Donna, some of the claims in the link may not be accurate, especially in the eyes of Catholic apologists. I cannot be sure. I did not write the link.

But to say that all of the statements are incorrect is drawing a long and misleading bow. A generalisation at best.

If you read Mr William’s responses, you will see that he is simply saying, (in many of the answers) that the statements about the Catholic Church must be wrong because the Catholic Church (the ultimate, and infallable authority’ that is never wrong), says they are wrong .

He says that because the Catholic Church says it. A bit like the story about the King’s clothes which everyone sees although he is naked.

That is a circular argument - begging the question.

My point on Mr Williams begging the question was in response to his answers, not whether everything in the link was totally correct. I was pointing out the unsatisfactory answers he gave, which defied logic.

Ken
If you did not agree with ALL the statements the sources’ provides, then you were negligent in providing them without stating so.  It would not be fair for you, Ken, if we thought you held a position you actually don’t hold for yourself.  I assumed, as I would guess others did, that you believed all these statements to be true.

I read all the claims, and yes Ken, they are all wrong.  It is not a generalisation.  This ‘church’ clearly has a set agenda aimed to discredit the CC in anyway they can.  I would not dare to suppose a set of beliefs a particular church holds if I had not done any homework on them. 

Robert answered the questions you posted.  It seems you take the position his argument must be circular because his answer does not correspond to your position. 

It would be helpful if you would desist from sabotaging healthy debate with baseless claims.

ken it was an Emperor not a king in the Hans Christian Anderson story!

Where do I just “assert the authority of the Catholic Church.”..the source you use is so poor it is incredible. IIt’s like having a piece stating....Christopher Columbus discoverd Australia and the Spanish colonised the country in the seventeenth century....thats how laughable the history is. However it is not laughable because people actually beliieve it and perpetuate the errors

For instance the claim that the sees of Carthage and Hippo became Orthodox ....whether the Catholic Church is true or not.......it is an historical fact , (easily verifiable )that they were wiped out by the Islamic invasion of North Africa in the seventh century. Orthodoxy did not appear until 1054.

The last statement on the early church fathers and the eucharistic real presence..is also easily refuted by plentiful historical sources from the actual authors cited. However I suspect that you will say, “ the Catholic Church has tampered with all the evidence “ ..just like the Mormon missionaries who told me that Catholic priests in 16th century Mexicio destroyed all the evidence for the Book of Mormon !

Its a no win situation...but Ken you are fully culpable.Indeed I like another fairy tale analogy...Cinderella...the ugly sisters desperately trying to make the glass slipper fit......and that is what evangelicals are doing to early Church history.

My masters thesis is on this very subject..its available at Bangor University, North Wales.

However at least you are honest..there are some on this forum who deliberately hide from the continuity issue, because they know it is shark infested water for evangelicals!

To Robert ian Williams

I will give you some of my gut reactions to your answers:

Response :The Catholic church has never rejected in any formal definition that the Books of James and Hebrews were not scriptural. granted befoire definition of the Canon various Church Fathers speculated as to the inspiration of certain books. Inded Martin luther wished to reject the book of James.

Firstly, the ideas of Luther are not relevant. I am speaking about the Apostelic age versus Catholicism. You admit that there was no formal definition of James and Hebrews, but whch Canon are you speaking about. What is the date of finality?

Response:The Orthodox church or churches is a schismatic body, who have rejected the successor of Peter..they have no guarantee of doctrinal infallibility.

Rejecting the successor of Peter? Only Catholics cling to the fallacy that Peter was related to the Papal succession. Scripture does not say that, to the contrary actually. The history of Acts etc indicate Peter may have not even visited Rome.

4: If the Roman Catholic church gave us the Bible, why were the two synods of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage, (397 AD) African councils, and not initiatives of Rome?
Response: all these councils were later accepted and sanctioned by the Bishop of Rome.

You prove the allegation by your statement. You do not disprove it.

5: Since the synod Carthage in 393 AD stated, “But let Church beyond sea (Rome) be consulted about confirming this canon”, does this not prove that Rome had no direct input or initiative in determining the canon.
Response: Yes it does, because Rome’s seal of approval was needed. or the Council is void.

According to Rome only. It is alleged that Rome was not consulted. They had no input, that is the main point.

6: Since the two synods of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage, (397 AD) were under the control of what would later become the “orthodox church”, how can the Roman Catholic church claim they determined the Canon? Would not such a claim be more naturally due the Eastern Orthodox church?
Response : Carthage and Hippo were nver to come nder the spiritual rule of the Orthodox as the Muslim Arabs swept through North Africa in the seventh century and totally eradicated these bishops.

7: If the Catholic church, “by her own inherent God given power and authority” gave the world the Bible, why did she not get it right the first time? Why did the Roman Catholic church wait until 1546 AD in the Council of Trent, to officially add the Apocrypha to the Canon?
Response: All that occured at Trent was a re-affirmation of the previous position...and the definitions of the fourth century included the deutero-canonical books.

Have you proof of this? But this is speaking of acceptance of the Apocrypha to the Canon. In one of your responses above you speak of the RCC later denying errors, and now you speak of errors being accepted at a later date?

8: Both Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox church leaders make the identical claim that they gave the world the Bible. If both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches make the same claim they gave the world the Bible, why do they have different books in each of their Bibles? Whose “church authority” shall we believe? Whose tradition is the one we should follow?
Response: You should accept the Church which has the only valid claim to having the confirmer of the brethren, the feeder of te lambs and sheep, and the key bearer of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven as its leader.

Here you make the logical error of begging the question. The question is which claim is true. You don’t argue the case except to appeal the the authority of the RCC. that is also a fallacy of relevance.

9: Provide a single example of a doctrine that originates from an oral Apostolic Tradition that the Bible is silent about? Provide proof that this doctrinal tradition is apostolic in origin.
Response :The Church teaches that all doctrines can be found implicitly in the written word of God...implicity in Scripture and explicitly in tradition we have infant baptism..another one would be the perpetual Virginity of The Blessed Virgin Mary.

Where is the scriptural proof that Mary was perpertually a virgin? Infant Baptism, proof?
But this answer doesnt answer the question really. You are simply presenting RCC dogma.

10: Provide a single example of where inspired apostolic “oral revelation” (tradition) differed from “written” (scripture)?
Revelation :Gods revelation in written word and tradition never contradicts its self

The traditions of the RCC contradict scripture, really, in many cases. I havnt got the time to go through all of them.

11: If you are not permitted to engage in private interpretation of the Bible, how do you know which “apostolic tradition” is correct between the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox and the Watchtower churches, for all three teach the organization alone can interpret scripture correctly, to the exclusion of individual?
Response: the Catholic Church has only definitively pronounced on certain texts..and we are free to read the Bibl ,as long as our conclusions do not contradict the Church.

.. I will leave it there, getting sore eyes and becoming tired. thank you for saying I am honest. I try to be. I may not be the most educated man on the planet, but who is? I hope my answers were both honest and logical.

Hi Martin

No I didn’t get all the details, as I was just going for a quick overview.  I started but it just got too tedious plus I am time poor and also I anticipate that the review would be discredited and disregarded by yourself.  The point is however this (and what I have found in the past researching various topics), read one book and you are an expert, read two books and you are confused, read a dozen and you start to gain an appreciation of the debate.  All I was looking for was whether you where you sat in the debate and where the concensus view was.

As far as I can remember the first reference you have given is the one to Davies in this post.

Well the guys were associated with Z bible college or similar, which sure sounded calvinist to me.  Maybe they were baptist but the differences between them and calvinists don’t seem overly significant to me.  One thing is for sure, they glossed in both senses of the word.  They added the word metaphorically to describe Jesus words and they glossed over it by not explaining or defending the metaphorical reading.  As I said, I respect the fact that you realise that that assumption requires defending.

The fact that commentators disagree about the text reflects the difficulty of arriving at the meaning.  It certainly suggests to me the importance of perspectivism in arriving at a meaning.  I would say that yes arriving at a meaning in the sense of being 100% certain is not possible.  Different people read in different meanings from exactly the same data.  There are two explanations:  you are right and everyone else is wrong either because they are stupid or ill informed; or all these commentators arrive at different positions because of differences in ideologies and epistemologies and the weight they give to various pieces of data.  Can some one help me here?  To me this seems as obvious as saying the sky is blue, am I failing to articulate the point?  I know it doesn’t fit in with a view that if we all read the bible (whatever that is) with the holy spirit then the truth (again whatever that may mean) will out.  To me that is an outrageous and philosophically unsustainable position, however I understand it is central to protestantism, notwithstanding empirical evidence around the diversity of protestant sects to the contrary.

I don’t appreciate you using parody to sleaze out of my point.  It is simply this.  How can you dismiss an opponent’s point if you have not articulated and understood it.  In my experience, understanding their point is important in understanding the assumptions behind their view, with those assumptions being the thing to be challenged.  I can understand your view.  If the words are metaphorical then the eucharist is merely symbolic.  I can see how that explanation is plausible.  So I don’t say your position is implausible, I say it is unlikely because of my various reasons and the weight I place on them.  To me, your refusal to engage with alternate views just says I am dealing with someone with unexamined views.  It seems to me that certainty has to be a fundamental requirement for bigotry.

Regarding paradigms, it seems to me that if your rule were consistently applied, that is deny any aspect of christianity that is inconsistent with jewish culture, then we would need to reject the resurrection, christs claim to be the son of God, the various miracles performed on the sabbath and all the other many points in the gospels where Jesus upsets the Jews and they start grumbling.  Jesus says out and out confrontational things.  Coming back to John 6, in verse 66 many of his disciples left him because of his intolerable language in verses 53-58.  Why didn’t he say “hang on guys, don’t get upset here, I’m just talking metaphorically”.

I understand your view to be this.  This was a primitive form of christianity where the eucharist was a symbolic memorial and nothing else.  Some time between the death of Jesus and the first writings with references to the real presence (such as Paul maybe 20-30 years later), that primitive christianity was corrupted by Hellenism.  I am not sure why Hellenism would have demanded a belief in the real presence in the eucharist but I will let that past.  By the time we get to 60-70 years later it is definitely corrupted.  All I can say about that is that all our records are post corruption and so presumably should be given little weight.  You avoid this point by saying that the gospel writings don’t really represent the corrupted christianity, as it is obvious that any reference to the eucharist is metaphorical.  There is a certain circularity in this argument that I find fascinating, sort of along the lines of it must be metaphorical because there is no real presence, and the fact the words are metaphorical means there is no real presence. 

With respect to sources, I quoted (chapter and verse) a number of references in both the bible and in the writings of the early church supporting a belief in the real presence.  As far as I can tell you have given me one tertiary source, the one your last post.

Given the likely dates of authorship of the various gospel writings, and the fact that they were copied over many years, do you apply the same test of corruption by Hellenisation to the gospels?  It would be, for example, one way of getting rid of the pesky references in John 6.  And if so, how do we decide which are the bits that truly reflect primitive christianity and which bits reflect Hellenisation?  I fear however that such an approach would place you in a cleft stick.

RSV translates verse 27 as” Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord”.  The translators clearly have a different view to you.

I get really annoyed at the old canard so blithely put forward that the eucharist cannot be both the body and blood of christ and a remembrance.  Why can’t it be both?

You didn’t answer my question.  I asked what would comprise evidence to you.  If the answer is nothing then we are wasting our time here.  This is not a discussion but rather a belligerent presentation of ideology.  If you told me what would comprise evidence then I can examine my case against that.  For example, for me evidence would comprise no trace of the real presence in the early church, and uncategorical use of words suggestive of metaphor or symbol.  While you have addressed both these issues, the first by discrediting the early church writings as Hellenistic and the second by an appeal to Jewish culture, I find the arguments unconvincing.  So I ask you again, what would comprise evidence to you?

I am not talking about the genetic fallacy (which I have only encountered here, it must be dear to someone’s heart in protestant apologetics).  I am talking about consistent application of rules.  For example if you consistently applied metaphor, then you would have particular views.

Baptism is interesting because it is also a sacrament.  Do you see it as a mere symbol or rite of passage, or does the physical action of baptism effect some fundamental change in the person baptised?  If the first then I would say you are consistent but at odds with christian orthodoxy.  If the second, I would ask you what the belief is based on?  If it is the various gospel texts I am familiar with, why don’t we read those passages as meant symbolically or metaphorically?  So
1 expound your position on baptism
2 provide reference to supporting biblical passages
3 demonstrate why those passages are not symbolic or metaphorical

cheers

John

To the transubstantialists out there, what do you believe the cup symbolises?

Instead of graciously withdrawing, Ken has dug himself further into his hole.

First of all his knowledge of history again fails him. Carthage and Hippo were never under Constantinople....Africa was always under the Patriarch off Alexandria,..the see having been established by St Mark. however the Patriarchate always accepted the primacy and authority of Rome..as did Constantiniple until 1054.

The canon was definitively fixed in the fourth century and that includes the deutero-canonical books.

You have not properly read my answer as regards tradition. It is Catholic
tradition that everything is at least implicitly in Scripture, but doctrines such as the perpetual virginity of Mary and infant baptism are explicitly in tradition.

To be authoritative the Councils had to be endorcsed by Rome..as was a local Council in Spain that introduced the fililoque clause to the Nicene Creed..affirmming the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.

The calling of the deutero-canoical books , apochrypha is a sixteenth century Protestant invention.

The perpetual virginity of Mary has always been reconciled with the biblical references to Christ’s brethren through a proper understanding of the meaning of the term “brethren.” The understanding that the brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph) rather than half-brothers (children of Mary) was the most common one until the time of Jerome (fourth century). It was Jerome who introduced the possibility that Christ’s brethren were actually his cousins, since in Jewish idiom cousins were also referred to as “brethren.” The Catholic Church allows the faithful to hold either view, since both are compatible with the reality of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Today most Protestants are unaware of these early beliefs regarding Mary’s virginity and the proper interpretation of “the brethren of the Lord.” And yet, the Protestant Reformers themselves—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli—honored the perpetual virginity of Mary and recognized it as the teaching of the Bible, as have other, more modern Protestants.

Athanasius who defended the diety of Christ wrote;"Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his essence deny also that he took true human flesh from the ever-virgin Mary” (Discourses Against the Arians 2:70 [A.D. 360]).

Roman Catholic tradition is in complete conformity with Scripture..state your view where it appears to you as different...and I will attempt to show you, that you are wrong. ( sigh)

HI Danii

Interesting point.

If you are talking about the eucharist and the last supper, the cup seems to be a container for the wine which is truly the blood of christ according to his words.  In Mathew Christ talks about drinking his blood from the cup, Mark refers to drinking.  In Luke Jesus refers to the cup but there is also a reference to pouring which might reasonably infer the liquid so Luke might support your suggested reading.  Paul specifically refers to drinking it, again suggesting the contents.

So if your point is that Jesus was referring to the cup and not to the contents, it is plausible but language and context suggests it is unlikely.

cheers

John

Hi Ken

First I would like to thank Robert for responding to this, as these type of assertions are particularly tedious to refute, due to the embedded layers of assumptions and preconceptions.

More interesting is the overall genre that I call “Why Catholics are wrong”.  Can anyone tell me why Protestants put so much time and energy into this?  From my (admittedly somewhat dismissive and negative perspective) it suggests things like a lack of internal identity (protestants are defined by not being catholics), a need for certainty and a belief in absolute truth (we know we are right so how do we explain the existence of people who believe something different and in large numbers for a large time), encouragement of internal group cohesive by the process of “othering” (more commonly known as bigotry and prejudice) and a reliance on attacking others to avoid facing up to inconsistencies and holes in their own beliefs.

There is also an element of “gotcha” in the whole thing.  This is a type of approach which goes along the lines of “I found one inconsistency, and so I discredit everything else you said”.  On this approach we should deny all of Einstein as he denied the randomness of quantum mechanics (God does not play dice with the universe). 

More specifically, I find the best response to these type of questions is to ask the asker to articulate the assumptions informing the question.

Apart from the numerous errors of fact identified by Robert, and the tendency resort to generalities (see 14b), the questions, although numerous, are probably essentially the same question.

If I were to say that the canon and theology evolve and that our view of both is essentially a consensus that avoids the Scylla of heresy and the Charabydis of illogicity, then that would make sense of it all to me.

With respect to Papal infallibility, I can accept that in the same way we accept the high court as infallible, in essence law is what the high court thinks law is.  There is a stronger form of papal infallibility that seems a bit of a long bow to me, but then the consequences of that to me don’t add up to any thing that matters so that I can live with it.

I would finally contrast this approach with what I characterise as an academic approach.  In a academic approach, the various approaches to theological questions would be set out and evaluated individually with the supporting evidence for each approach clearly elucidated.  Those factors leading a reader to adopt one view or the other would be seen.

In other words, the tendency of this genre to look at one side of the question says propaganda for the converted to me.

cheers

John

I was wondering if there was much connection with the cup of God’s wrath, mentioned several times in the OT.

At the passover there were actually several cups, but I forget which one Jesus would have passed around and what it meant. That would be interesting to know, if anyone does?