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[Begin Word Count Here]
For many hundreds of years, Roman Catholics
used the famous Donation of Constantine as evidence of
Papal supremacy in even temporal and political affairs. Yet, as
everyone knows, the Donation was a fraud. Rome has a rich
history in changing and rewriting history to insert her own
claims into the historical record. And why would any group have
to change history, if, in fact, their claims are true?
This debate is on the question of the
identity of the Church that existed in the days of Nicæa. I have
already stated that the Church of 325 was just that: the Church
of 325. It was not Roman Catholic for all the reasons already
enumerated. It was not Eastern Orthodox, nor was it Protestant.
My opponent attempts to provide at least some of the
necessary elements of Roman Catholicism, but certainly not all.
Let’s note a few items:
- Most of Brother John’s
presentation is irrelevant to the thesis at hand. I
am most disappointed by the rhetoric that fills the first
half of his presentation, and will not violate the spirit
and decorum of proper debate in responding to issues that
are not even marginally relevant. I will trust the reader
to do as any debate judge must do: dismiss any and all
claims that are not substantiated by documentation,
citation, or logical argument from previously established
points.
- Even in the later sections where my
opponent attempts to provide some serious argumentation, his
assertions are almost universally undocumented. It is
next to impossible to interact with assertions that have
no citations, no documentation. On a simple debate level,
almost no serious information has been provided by
Brother John.
- Numerous assertions are made that,
while relevant to my presentation, are utterly without
merit. For example, my opponent says, "All of the
Catholics attending the Nicene council had a belief in
Purgatory." Yet, not a single word or citation from
any of those attending Nicæa is provided in support.
This kind of argumentation would disqualify my opponent
immediately in any formal setting. In the same way,
broad, sweeping (and generally untrue) assertions are
made, such as, "Such saints as Popes Leo the Great
and Gregory the Great, Ambrose, and Chrysostom, all of
whom, it can be proved, held Roman Catholic doctrine on
the Papacy, the Mass, prayers to saints, the authority of
Apostolic Tradition, the Papacy, etc., believed in the
authority of the Council." Again, no citations are
given, and such simply disqualifies my opponent on any
logical or scholarly level.
So I have very little, in reality, to which
I can respond from a professional perspective, since the majority
of Brother John’s arguments have been presented in an
invalid way, without scholarly citation or concern for
documentation. Even those areas that I have chosen to address
are, technically, beyond comment, since even the assertions
concerning such things as the role of Hosius and the wording of
the Sixth Canon of Nicæa were presented ipse dixit,
without proper documentation.
Let us keep in mind throughout the debate
the issue at hand: was it Roman Catholicism that forged the
Nicene faith? Or does modern Roman Catholicism hold as doctrines
beliefs that were not held by the Church of that day? If
my opponent fails to establish the belief in all five of
the areas of doctrine that I presented in my opening statement
(and documented from valid sources), he loses this debate. And
let us remember: finding some areas of agreement is not
enough for my opponent. I can find all sorts of areas of
agreement with Protestant belief in the early Church, and I
provided some examples in my opening statement. If finding some
agreements equals identity, then the early Church was Protestant.
But obviously, that doesn’t follow. It is the unique
and definitional beliefs that are important.
And, in passing, I would point out that my
opponent is attacking a straw man when he asks me to find
"Reformed Baptist" councils at the time of Nicæa. I
have never claimed there were any. Apostolic succession is a
matter of fidelity to the truth, not historical genealogy. It is
more important to stand in the teaching of the Apostles
than to trust in an alleged historical procession that casts
truth out into the cold.
Let’s review the five areas I
presented in my opening statement. I said the Church of Nicæa
did not:
- look to the Bishop of Rome as the
Vicar of Christ, the head of the universal Church, the
pastor of all Christians;
- believe in the Marian doctrines that
set Rome apart, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary
and her Bodily Assumption;
- embrace such concepts as the thesaurus
meritorum, purgatory, and indulgences;
- believe in the Roman concept of
authority, replete with extra-biblical, revelatory or
inspired "traditions" that add to the
"deposit of faith" items and beliefs not found
in Scripture:
- nor practice the necessary devotions
to reserved, consecrated hosts that would substantiate
the leap from a belief in "real presence" to
the much later belief in "transubstantiation."
No effort was made on my opponent’s
part to say that these doctrines are not, in fact, definitional
of Roman Catholicism. So what effort was made on my
opponent’s part to document these beliefs in the early
Church? Let’s go in order.
- Brother John presents undocumented
assertions concerning the role of Pope Sylvester. Modern
historians agree that Pope Sylvester did not call the
Council of Nicæa (see Schaff’s comments in
his History of the Christian Church 3:335.) Basing
his argument upon the order of signatures, rather
than any statement made by any participant, Brother John
asserts that the Spanish bishop Hosius was representing
the Pope. Yet, he cannot provide any documentation of
this outside the unfounded assertion concerning order of
signatures. Roman primacy can find no better support than
the order of signatures?
- Brother John then points to the
assertion—found nearly four hundred years
later!—from A.D. 680 that Sylvester called Nicæa.
The fact that the earliest documentable evidence for this
claim comes from the end of the seventh century is
sufficient to dismiss the claim and to prove the
correctness of my original assertion. Reliance upon such
dubious material is the hallmark of Roman Catholic
historical revisionism (see Salmon’s comments
on this, Infallibility of the Church, p. 289).
- He asserts (again, without citations)
that "Pope Julius ruled the Church 11 years after
the Council" and that Julius claimed he had to
acknowledge the Council for it to be valid. Yet, simple
historical fact proves that Julius’ support of
Nicæa was insufficient to establish it against the Arian
resurgency that arose immediately after the Council,
proving that the idea that the Church as a whole
subserviated their beliefs to the Roman bishop is an
anachronism of monumental proportions. The lapse of Liberius, bishop of Rome, that followed, likewise shows
the anachronistic character of modern Roman claims
regarding this period.
Hence, with reference to the first issue,
Brother John fails completely to establish, from any credible
sources at all, the concept of Papal supremacy at Nicæa.
Instead, he assumes it, as all faithful Roman Catholics
must.
Next, in regard to the Marian doctrines,
all we find is a single line from Ephraem, noted by Kelly in
these words, "Only in Syria, where Marian devotion was
particularly fervid, do we find Ephraem delineating her as free
from every stain, like her Son" (Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines, p. 495). Yet Brother John not only takes this
isolated quotation as being representative of all in
attendance at Nicæa (an incredible leap!), but goes on to draw
from one line the entire doctrine of the Immaculate Conception!
Such misuse of historical materials is reprehensible, especially
since even the most conservative Roman sources, such as Ludwig Ott, recognize the historical development of the doctrine (see
Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pp. 200-201). No
citations are provided from any of the leading figures who left
us volumes and volumes of works on the subject of theology, such
as Athanasius. Why? Because the doctrine did not exist in the
Church at the time.
With reference to purgatory, indulgences,
and the treasury of merits, we are provided with absolutely
nothing outside of mere speculations and unfounded assertions. A
passage that is manifestly unrelated to the topic (2 Timothy
1:18) is cited by Brother John, but other than this a-contextual
use of a Bible passage, we are given no evidence that the Nicene
Church did, in fact, believe in purgatory, the treasury of merit,
and indulgences. Instead, we are offered only unfounded
assertions, such as, "Since the Jews always believed in a
place of purgation, as we Catholics believe in Purgatory, then
where in the New Testament do we hear of Purgatory being
abolished?" Such is not logical argumentation or debate, it
is a classic example of begging the question.
Only one effort is made to establish any
kind of Roman concept of "tradition," and that in
reference to the use of homoousios by the Nicene Council.
However, as I pointed out in an article on this subject
("What Really Happened at Nicæa?" in the Christian
Research Journal, Summer, 1997):
Athanasius notes that the gathered
bishops truly desired to express their faith in primarily
Scriptural language, and they tried to do so. But every time
they came up with a statement that was limited solely
to biblical terms, the Arians would find a way of
"reading" that in such a way as to allow for
agreement.
This was followed by an endnote that read,
Someone might well say that this
demonstrates the insufficiency of Scripture to
function as the sole infallible rule of faith for the Church;
i.e., that it denies sola scriptura. But sola
scriptura does not claim the Bible is sufficient to
answer every perversion of its own revealed truths.
Peter knew well that there would be those who twist the
Scriptures to their own destruction, and it is good to note
that God has not deemed it proper to transport all heretics
off the planet at the first moment they utter their heresy.
Struggling with false teaching has, in God’s sovereign
plan, been a part of the maturing of His people.
It would seem to me that the issue of the
deity of Christ and Arianism would be the perfect place
for the Roman apologist to be able to prove the existence of his
inspired oral tradition. Surely someone like Athanasius should
have been appealing to such an "oral tradition" over
and over again in his defense of Nicæa. Yet, of course, this
isn’t the case (see the discussion in "Sola
Scriptura and the Early Church" in Sola Scriptura: The
Protestant Position on the Bible, pp. 42-52).
As to the worship of reserved hosts, the
closest we come is the assertion that canon 18 of the Council of
Nicæa speaks of the "Eucharistic sacrifice." The
phrase, however, does not appear in any of the standard English
translations to which I have access, and since we are, as normal,
not given any reference citations, it is impossible to deal with
the assertion. The same holds true with the assertion that the
canon uses the term "sacrifice." Canon 18 is actually
about deacons not administering the Eucharist to presbyters.
Again, if this is the best the Roman apologist can muster, what
does this say about the actual state of affairs?
The value of this debate has been seriously
diminished by my opponents failure to present his material in a
scholarly fashion. I cannot help but to point out that Rome has a
long history of using fraudulent and untrustworthy sources of
information when it comes to historical claims. Even here,
Brother John has given us an example. He goes so far as to cite a
later Latin interpolation of the sixth canon of the Council of
Nicæa that inserted the phrase, "Rome has the
primacy." I wish to conclude by asking the reader to
consider what this means. Why would a person have to cite a later
interpolation (the insertion is clearly not original, and no
modern scholars, Roman or otherwise, defend it as original) to
make their point? Why? Because Canon Six is so devastating to
Roman claims. Note what it says:
Let the ancient customs in Egypt,
Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria
have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary
for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the
other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.
The most obvious reading of the canon is
that Rome’s privileges are limited (just as the 28th
Canon of Chalcedon would say more than a century later). Later
devotees of Roman authority would find this disagreeable, hence,
they had to change the reading, just as later centuries would
make up the myth that Pope Sylvester had called the Council of
Nicæa in the first place. Obviously, if history is on one’s
side, you don’t have to expend energy to re-write it. The
long, long list of historical revisions undertaken by Roman
apologists over the centuries proves one point beyond question:
Rome did not have the position in the past that she claims for
herself now.
Hence, in conclusion, we see that Brother
John has failed to present meaningful counter-argumentation to my
opening statement. What argumentation he has provided has been
undocumented and unverifiable. His facts are disjointed, and he
has failed to deal with the simple fact that finding similarities
does not prove identity, anymore than my being able to
find similarities in early sources with my own Protestant
beliefs makes the Fathers Protestants. I can agree,
wholeheartedly, with many things spoken by Athanasius or
Augustine or Chrysostom or Cyril of Jerusalem. For example,
Augustine said (Epistolam Johannis tractus, 2):
For when He offered Himself to them to
touch, this did not suffice Him unless He also confirmed the
heart of the believers from the Scriptures, for He foresaw
that the time would come when we would not have anything to
touch but would have something to read.
And Cyril of Jerusalem said:
In regard to the divine and holy
mysteries of the faith, not the least part may be handed on
without the Holy Scriptures. Do not be led astray by winning
words and clever arguments. Even to me, who tell you these
things, do not give ready belief, unless you receive from the
Holy Scriptures the proof of the things which I announce. The
salvation in which we believe is not proved from clever
reasoning, but from the Holy Scriptures (Catechetical
Lectures, 4:17).
But I do not err, as Brother John errs, in
thinking this makes Augustine or Cyril a Protestant. In the same
way, my opponent has erred in thinking the Church of Nicæa was Roman
Catholic, when it was not.
[End Word Count. Total = 2471]
Submitted June 3, 1997
ADDENDUM: Please note. I will not be able to participate
further in this debate until July 15th, 1997 at the earliest. I have responsibilities to my publisher
that will preclude further participation until after that date.
It is my intention to complete the debate, but to do so in an
orderly, proper manner.
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