Justified Concordian🦬

Where does Chemnitz concede your reading of Epiphanius and Chrysostom? There is Whitaker but I don't care since im not a reformed ----------- additionally, regarding augustine, you are conflating the absence of an explicit historical example with the absence of scriptural proof. In Contra Cresconium (1.33) and De Unitate Ecclesiae (22), Augustine concedes that Scripture does not record a literal, recorded case history of a returning heretic being admitted without rebaptism. He never concedes that the doctrine itself lacks scriptural foundation. Which is why in De Baptismo contra Donatistas (Bk. 1, ch. 7), Augustine says: "Lest I seem to operate with human arguments, I shall produce certain proofs from the Gospel." He proves from John 1:33 ("this is He who baptizes") and Ephesians 4:5 ("one Lord, one faith, one baptism") that the objective validity and efficacy of Baptism belong entirely to Christ. The universal custom of the Church does not manufacture a new unwritten dogma out of thin air, it serves as historical confirmation of a doctrine *lawfully deduced* from Scripture against Cyprian's regional novelty. Augustine himself approves Cyprian's principle in De Baptismo (Bk. 3, ch. 26): "What admonishes us to return to the fountain, i.e., to the Apostolic tradition, and from there to direct the channel into our times, is excellent and without doubt to be done." And the "fountain" for Augustine is the written Word of God. ----------- You assert that the canon cannot be about historical apostolic authorship because canonicity is a dogmatic question of divine inspiration. We agree that canonicity and inspiration are dogmatic questions, butwe deny that the dogmatic certainty of a book’s divine inspiration is produced by ecclesiastical tradition. Our theologians would make the distinction between fides humana, the testimony of the primitive Church provides historical, human testimony regarding external facts, who the ministerial authors were, in what language the texts were delivered, and that these physical writings were handed down. Just as the Jewish synagogue was entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:2) without thereby possessing the power to establish new dogmas or add books, so the primitive Church’s external testimony delivers the historical codex without constituting a new article of faith. and fides divina, the belief that a book is sacred, canonical, inspired, and an infallible rule of faith does not rest on the testimony of the Church, but on the internal criteria of the text and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. "Therefore, that the Epistle of Paul to the Romans is Paul’s, we have from the testimony of the primitive Church; but that it is sacred, canonical and a rule of faith, we have and derive not from the testimony of the Church, but from internal criteria." (Aegidius Hunnius, Ratisbon Colloquy, Session XI, p. 247) You say the canon is "discerned by later monuments" but in Lutheran theology the church only ever acts as a minsterial witness and never as a authoritative definer that endows a text with divine authority. "Distinguish between the αὐθεντικοποιΐαν (making authoritative) of the Canonical Books, and the μαρτυρολογίαν (witness bearing) concerning the Canon and Canonical Books. The Church does not make a Book Canonical or authentic, but only testifies about it. No other parts are to be attributed to the Church than that of a witness. For the power of conferring Canonical authority on Holy Scripture does not belong to the Church, for this it has from God alone." (Theological Compendia / Abraham Calovius) ------------- It's no strawman Kevin. This is simply the logical consequence of your own epistemology. Quoting Diego de Andrada, you acknowledge that individual Church Fathers frequently ascribed spurious, apocryphal, or contradictory opinions to "apostolic tradition" such as Papias’s chiliasm, the Gnostic-sounding notion of Christ preaching in Tartarus, or Irenaeus’s assertion that Christ reached the age of fifty. Quoting Matthias Scheeben and the Walenburch brothers, you assert that authentic tradition does not require an unbroken record of historical consensus, nor does it even need to exist from the beginning: "Negatively, the Church must on the one hand never, neither in her entirety nor in the organs defining the faith of the whole, be able to declare decisively something to be apostolic Tradition that is not such... it does however allow that... temporarily it may actually be attested neither by the entire community nor by a decisive part with complete firmness and certainty but is only habitually held." (Scheeben, Dogmatik) To solve how one sifts true traditions from false ones when the early monuments are broken, silent, or contradictory, you appeal to Andrada’s criterion: "This rule, indeed, is the consent of the whole Church, which we know, from the many and various opinions of our forefathers, to have approved and preserved only those which were most removed from every suspicion of counterfeit falsehood." (Andrada, Defensio Tridentinae Fidei) So this is the circularity: Premise A: Why must a believer accept an alleged unwritten tradition not found in Scripture? Your answer: Because it is an Apostolic Tradition preserved by the Holy Spirit in the Catholic Church. Premise B: How do we know it is genuinely an Apostolic Tradition if the earliest centuries provide no consensus, contradict it, or show individual Fathers erring when claiming "tradition"? Your answer: Because the universal consent of the Church (even in later ages) approves it. Premise C: Why should we submit to the consent of the Roman Church in later ages as an infallible negative index that preserves original apostolic revelation without error? The only possible answer: Because of the promises of Christ and the apostolic authority deposited with the Church. If antiquity is fraught with error, and if consensus need not exist from the beginning, the modern Magisterium becomes the sole criterion of antiquity itself. The present Roman Church certifies the tradition, while the authority of the present Church is certified by that same tradition. So, whenever you are pressed on how to distinguish divine traditions from human accretions, you reduce everything into a single, self-authortizing oracle! As rightly noted by us. "In place of tradition, he substitutes for us one infallible person, i.e., the Pope. Is the Pope a tradition? You see, reader, how they resolve everything into that one man!" (Hollaz, Examen Theologicum Acroamaticum (Part I, Cap. 1, Q. 11)) But also your last statement is a massive retreat that undermines your own defense of Trent. You say the dispute was "never about" whether things necessary for salvation are in Scripture. That is historically false regarding the Council of Trent and Martin Chemnitz. In Session IV, Decree 1, the Council of Trent established that the saving truth and moral discipline (veritas salutaris et morum disciplina) are contained both in written books and in unwritten traditions, commanding that both be received with equal affection of piety and reverence (pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia). Chemnitz defined the Eighth Kind of Tradition exclusively as Trent’s attempt to impose unwritten dogmas of faith and morals necessary for salvation without scriptural proof: "Let it be observed first of all how dangerous it is for the church, and how destructive for the faith, to receive and venerate traditions concerning dogmas which cannot be proved with any testimony of Scripture with the same devotion and reverence as those things which are handed down and proved with sure and clear testimonies of the Scripture." (Chemnitz, Examen, Topic II, Sec. VIII, n. 5) Chemnitz, and his successors, and us presently today, constantly point out that the Roman side plays a shell game: when attacking Protestants, you declare that Scripture is an incomplete, mutilated rule lacking essential dogmas; but when cornered by Patristic citations proving the sufficiency of Scripture, you retreat to saying, "We agree that all the main articles necessary for salvation are in Scripture!". You try to salvage you argument by shifting the goalposts: "The question is whether there is divine revelation outside of Scripture." If a supposed revelation outside Scripture is not necessary for faith or salvation, then on what possible grounds does the Roman Church bind the consciences of the faithful under pain of anathema and mortal sin to believe it? If it IS bound upon consciences under anathema, they are treated as dogmas necessary for salvation. You cannot have it both ways, you cannot concede that all saving doctrine is in Scripture while simultaneously maintaining that Rome has the authority to define non-scriptural dogmatic revelations that a Christian must believe to be saved. St. Augustine: "In those things which are plainly laid down in Scripture are found all those things which contain faith and the morals of living." (De Doctrina Christiana, Bk. II, ch. 9). And against Petilian: "If an angel from heaven should announce to you, besides what you have received in the Legal and Evangelical Scriptures, let him be anathema." (Contra Litteras Petiliani, Bk. III, ch. 6). St. Jerome: "What does not have authority from the sacred Scriptures is rejected with the same ease with which it is put forward." (On Matthew 23). And on Haggai 1: "The sword of God also strikes down those other things which they invent and fabricate of their own accord, apart from the authority and testimony of the Scriptures, as though by apostolic tradition.". St. Basil the Great: "It is a manifest falling away from the faith and a charge of pride either to set aside anything that has been written or to introduce anything that has not been written." (De Fide, n. 1). St. Thomas Aquinas: "Sacred doctrine uses the authorities of Canonical Scripture indeed properly arguing from necessity, but the authorities of other doctors of the Church not as if arguing from its own, but probably. For our faith leans on the revelation made to the Apostles and Prophets, who wrote the canonical books, but not on the revelation, also which was made to other doctors." (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 1, art. 8).