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Originally posted by Elitoft:
One should not attribute the ideas of individuals with the universal teaching of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church does not encourage a propositional view, so to speak, of doctrine.
Not every professional theologian calling him or herself Catholic actually teach what is Catholic or what the Church teaches.
I find that far too often the Church is tarred with a brush that really only fits individuals or groups of individuals.
So as I said before there is no difference between east and west in the source and manner and mode of teaching of systematic theology or, if you prefer, doctrine. Perhaps you should talk to some of the professors at Franciscan University, because they emphasized in their lectures how Vatican II's Dei Verbum involves a return -- away from the Scholastic propositional view of revelation -- to a more Patristic understanding of divine revelation as a gift of self.
God bless,
Todd [/QB] Oh Bravo! Precisely! The Church is not the equivalent of the so-called scholastics. The Church never is the equivalent of the sum of her theologians. Thank you for making my point so effortlessly. Eli
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Originally posted by Elitoft: Originally posted by Apotheoun:
Perhaps you should talk to some of the professors at Franciscan University, because they emphasized in their lectures how Vatican II's Dei Verbum involves a return -- away from the Scholastic propositional view of revelation -- to a more Patristic understanding of divine revelation as a gift of self.
God bless,
Todd
EliAh, but as Dr. Hahn pointed out in one of his lectures -- quoting Cardinal Ratzinger -- the theologians who wrote scripture, and the Fathers of the Church as well, are normative for the Church. Eli, I am very pleased, because for once you and I are in agreement. In fact, I must say that I have never run into a Western theologian who had a problem admitting that the Second Vatican Council involved a ressourcement, i.e., a return to the sources of scripture and the Fathers, and a move away from the Scholastic theology of the manuals. God bless, Todd
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Ah, but as Dr. Hahn pointed out in his lectures -- quoting Cardinal Ratzinger -- the theologians who wrote scripture, and the Fathers of the Church as well, are normative for the Church.
God bless,
Todd [/QB] Something that is normative is not indicative of an equivalency. The Church still remains the final arbiter of the truth of revelation, regardless of what the Fathers do or say, regardless of what the professional theologians do or say, regardless of what you and I do or say. For the record and a private opinion which I do not intend to argue: I do not find Scott Hahn to be the final arbiter of my faith nor to I go to his books to get the latest in intelligence on anything at all. He is not at all an original thinker in terms of Catholic theology, and certainly does not compare in any way with the Catholic saints and intellectual luminaries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is to the Catholic Church what Frankie Schaffer is to Orthodoxy. Eli
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Originally posted by Elitoft:
Something that is normative is not indicative of an equivalency. The Church still remains the final arbiter of the truth of revelation, regardless of what the Fathers do or say, regardless of what the professional theologians do or say, regardless of what you and I do or say.
[. . .]
Eli Thanks for your response. I would simply add that, as Dei Verbum indicates, the Magisterium is not above the Word of God, and that it is bound to teach only what has been revealed. God bless, Todd
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Eli,
I think it might have been more charitable for you to have kept your private opinion (the one you expressed in your last post), private.
God bless,
Todd
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Originally posted by Apotheoun:
Eli,
I think it might have been more charitable for you to have kept your private opinion (the one you expressed in your last post), private.
God bless,
Todd I think it might have been more charitable for you to allow my frailties to go unremarked. That being said, I do think that far too much is made in some circles of the Scott Hahn-Stubenville phenomena. There is no guarantee of infallibility to be found there and I find that far too many look there before they look to the Church. And that will be my last word on your judgment of me and my judgment of Stubenville and Scott Hahn as Catholic phenomena, which fits with my comment that no one individual speaks for the Church without the consent of the Church, save for the Head of the Body who needs ask no man. Eli
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Eli,
Please try to be more charitable in the future.
God bless,
Todd
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Originally posted by Apotheoun:
Eli,
Please try to be more charitable in the future.
God bless,
Todd There was nothing uncharitable in anything I said here. You may press that accusation if you like, but there is nothing that says I cannot make a discerning remark about anyone teaching in the name of the Church these days, and Stubenville and Scott Hahn make a fine personal and institutional fortune in the name of the Church. Highly public in their aspect and open to judgment without condemnation. I would have truly been uncharitable had I condemned, but I did not, I do not. You need now to look to your own failings here, and stop attributing falsely as you seem prone to do in this Forum when you get frustrated. There is a public record of that as well, and I have a number of private correspondence warning me that I will be the blessed recipient of your frustrations if I do not yield to your assertions. One is not a prophet in the face of repeated experience. Thank you, but I think it is time for me to bow out of this topic. It is exhausted at any rate. Eli
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Todd,
I'm trying to understand your presentation of the Eastern view, I really am. What I am struggling with is that it seems (to me) to conflict with the actual facts of history. I'm struggling with how you (and other Eastern Christians) resolve that.
For example, would you agree that 2nd century Christians did not understand the Godhead as three persons in one nature, but instead simply worshipped God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet also confessed one God? They did not understand (nor care to understand) the philosophical meanings of "person" and "nature", etc.
After centuries of practicing this faith, the Church realized the need to define this belief due to the teachings of heretics that contradicted this practice, using the philosophical means available to them. They realized that Arius' claim that there "once was a time when Christ was not" contradicted the faith that had been practiced since the apostles, so they felt the need to define it more clearly and more precisely than it had been defined previously - and they used terms that were new to the Christian practice, including the greek philosophical terms of "person" and "nature", as well as the term "homoousis".
I see this process as a "development of doctrine". How is it not? Or do you simply believe I am wrong in my recounting of history?
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Originally posted by francis:
Todd,
I'm trying to understand your presentation of the Eastern view, I really am. What I am struggling with is that it seems (to me) to conflict with the actual facts of history. I'm struggling with how you (and other Eastern Christians) resolve that.
For example, would you agree that 2nd century Christians did not understand the Godhead as three persons in one nature, but instead simply worshipped God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet also confessed one God? They did not understand (nor care to understand) the philosophical meanings of "person" and "nature", etc.
After centuries of practicing this faith, the Church realized the need to define this belief due to the teachings of heretics that contradicted this practice, using the philosophical means available to them. They realized that Arius' claim that there "once was a time when Christ was not" contradicted the faith that had been practiced since the apostles, so they felt the need to define it more clearly and more precisely than it had been defined previously - and they used terms that were new to the Christian practice, including the greek philosophical terms of "person" and "nature", as well as the term "homoousis".
I see this process as a "development of doctrine". How is it not? Or do you simply believe I am wrong in my recounting of history? The point I am trying to make is that those who who speak of "doctrinal development" are confusing the linguistic formulation of the mystery, with the mystery itself. There can be no development of doctrine because the doctrines are a received experience of the divine given to the Church once for all. Thus, to argue that doctrine develops or grows involves a type of progressive revelation, which is something that the Eastern Orthodox Churches will never accept. Public revelation has ceased, and the Church of today has the same exact experience of God as the Church of the first and second centuries. In other words, the Church of today believes exactly what the Apostles believed, no less and no more. God bless, Todd
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Originally posted by francis:
[qb] Todd,
[. . .]
For example, would you agree that 2nd century Christians did not understand the Godhead as three persons in one nature, but instead simply worshipped God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet also confessed one God? They did not understand (nor care to understand) the philosophical meanings of "person" and "nature", etc. No I do not agree. I hold, just as the Fathers of the 4th century held, that Christians -- and even the Old Testament Prophets and Patriarchs -- have always believed in the tri-hypostatic God. St. Athanasios in his De Synodis taught this, which was repeated by the Palamite Councils of the 14th century. The Fathers did not believe in a "development of doctrine," nor did they reduce doctrine to linguistic formulations. The doctrines of the faith are immutable truths revealed to man by God. Again, Westerners may not like it, and they may see their reading of history as true, but Eastern theologians do not agree with them. As far as the "philosophical" meaning of "person" goes, the East does not do philosophy, it does theology, and so once again there is a disconnect between the Eastern and Western perspectives, because the theology of "person" in the East is a revealed doctrine, and not a philosophical speculation. The theology of Trinity of persons is an experience of the Tri-hypostatic God in worship, it is not a "science" or a "scholastic" enterprise. God bless, Todd
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Originally posted by francis:
I see this process as a "development of doctrine". How is it not? Or do you simply believe I am wrong in my recounting of history? To put it simply, yes, I do not agree with your understanding of history. As I see it, you are confusing the "words" used to describe the mystery, with the reality of the mystery itself, which always transcends the words of a doctrinal formulation. The reality of the mystery is an immutable and ineffable experience that is received by man in the act of worship, and not through rational speculation.
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Thanks, Todd, for your responses. I think I see where you are coming from now.
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Originally posted by francis:
Thanks, Todd, for your responses. I think I see where you are coming from now. Francis, The following is from the Catholic Answers page and I think it addresses the heart of your question. You might want to remember that the patristic Fathers were not nearly so paranoid about using words to express a growth in understanding, as some eastern Christians would now have us now believing. There was no real fight between faith and reason for the Fathers. They surely were aware and talked about the fact that there were dangers in expression of either one or both with respect to our teaching the Kingdom and talking about our knowledge of a personal God, the Indwelling Trinity, since we are terribly fallible creatures and small beside the magnificent mystery of the God of revelation. There is no need to make faith and reason stand in opposition to one another. Eli Can Dogma Develop?
The opening verse of the book of Hebrews tells us that "[i]n many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets." This was done fragmentarily, under various figures and symbols. Man was not given religious truth as though from a Scholastic theologian, nicely laid out and fully indexed. Doctrines had to be thought out, lived out in the liturgical life of the Church, even pieced together by the Fathers and ecumenical councils. In this way, the Church has gained an ever-deepening understanding of the deposit of faith that had been "once for all delivered" to it by Christ and the apostles (cf. Jude 3).
Protestants�especially Fundamentalists and Evangelicals�admit that much. They recognize there was a real development in doctrine: There was an initial message, much clouded at the Fall, and then a progressively fuller explanation of God�s teachings as Israel was prepared for the Messiah, until the apostles were instructed by the Messiah himself. Jesus told the apostles that in the Old Testament "many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it" (Matt. 13:17).
Hold Fast to What You Were Taught
Christians have always understood that at the close of the apostolic age�with the death of the last surviving apostle, John, perhaps around A.D. 100�public revelation ceased (Catechism of the Catholic Church 66�67, 73). Christ fulfilled the Old Testament law (Matt. 5:17) and is the ultimate teacher of humanity: "You have one teacher, the Messiah" (Matt. 23:10). The apostles recognized that their task was to pass on, intact, the faith given to them by the Master: "[A]nd what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2); "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it" (2 Tim. 3:14).
However, this closure to public revelation doesn�t mean there isn�t progress in the understanding of what has been entrusted to the Church. Anyone interested in Christianity will ask, "What does this doctrine imply? How does it relate to that doctrine?"
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Originally posted by francis:
Todd,
I'm trying to understand your presentation of the Eastern view, I really am. What I am struggling with is that it seems (to me) to conflict with the actual facts of history. I'm struggling with how you (and other Eastern Christians) resolve that.
For example, would you agree that 2nd century Christians did not understand the Godhead as three persons in one nature, but instead simply worshipped God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet also confessed one God? They did not understand (nor care to understand) the philosophical meanings of "person" and "nature", etc.
After centuries of practicing this faith, the Church realized the need to define this belief due to the teachings of heretics that contradicted this practice, using the philosophical means available to them. They realized that Arius' claim that there "once was a time when Christ was not" contradicted the faith that had been practiced since the apostles, so they felt the need to define it more clearly and more precisely than it had been defined previously - and they used terms that were new to the Christian practice, including the greek philosophical terms of "person" and "nature", as well as the term "homoousis".
I see this process as a "development of doctrine". How is it not? Or do you simply believe I am wrong in my recounting of history? Dear Francis, Have you ever read this [ ewtn.com] papal document? It is very often forgotten but a very important document for the Church as she emerged into the 20th century. Please do not take seriously the idea that reason causes one to mistake doctrinal or theological teachings about a mystery for the mystery itself. None of the Fathers would have written one word in glory or in defense of the Word, if they had been that convicted of the impossibility of knowing what was revealed, so that men might know. If people like Stephen Todd were correct then God would not have revealed his Word, but would have imprinted the great I AM directly onto our nous. :rolleyes: Eli
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