When I say "experts" I mean secular biblical scholars, although it seems to me that a majority of them are Christians. Which makes sense, since one would expect Christians to be more interested in the Bible than non-Christians and become scholars of it. I'm sure that the majority opinion among e.g. Christian ministers is that Paul wrote Colossians, but that's because most Christian ministers aren't biblical scholars.
Fair enough.
Colossians is an interesting case because its authorship really is disputed, as opposed to outright denied. In the case of the pastoral epistles and Ephesians, the scholarly consensus is pretty much universal that they are not by Paul. The language, ideas, and church structure presupposed by them are unpauline. However, Colossians is harder. It's like Ephesians, but less so (in fact much of Ephesians is based on Colossians). The ideas in Ephesians that show it to be unpauline are present in Colossians, but to a lesser degree, so it's conceivable that Paul really did write it at at time when his thinking had been developing. Some scholars think this is the case, others don't. I must say when I read it I thought it seemed unpauline, but then I'm no expert. 2 Thessalonians is also similar, in that scholars are divided over whether Paul wrote it or not; the main reason to suppose that he didn't is that it contradicts 1 Thessalonians, but otherwise it seems perfectly pauline, so the question there is to what extent one is prepared to accept that Paul could contradict himself.
Where does 2 Thessalonians contradict 1 Thessalonians? (Not that I know either book very well at all
)
As for the general orthodox opinion, traditionally of course it's always been assumed that the books of the New Testament that claim authorship were written by those authors. This is, in part, because people in antiquity were almost unbelievably gullible about such things and almost always took it completely for granted that books were written by the named authors. This was so even when those books were obviously spurious. I've mentioned before how Jerome - one of the greatest scholars who ever lived - took it for granted that
the "letters" between Paul and Seneca were authentic, despite the fact that they're pretty much the most obviously inauthentic documents ever written. So did Augustine. Another example is the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (a character in Acts, mentioned as one of Paul's converts in Athens). These writings were "discovered" in the early sixth century and quickly became popular and widely accepted, despite the fact that they used all kinds of technical philosophical terminology that didn't exist in the first century, and even quoted Ignatius of Antioch, a second-century author. In fact it wasn't until modern times that people realised these writings were spurious.
So is the argument here "People of the middle ages were dim wits?" Or is there a better explanation than that?
Also, it's one thing to say that Christians generally uncritically accepted the authenticity of all these things, and another to say that it was a point of orthodox doctrine. Orthodox doctrines generally get articulated and defined only when there's disagreement. Now there was some disagreement in the early church over the authorship of some New Testament writings, but only those whose authors are not specified in the text (e.g. Hebrews and Revelation, which claims to be by "John" but doesn't identify which one). As far as I know no-one in antiquity or indeed the Middle Ages tried to argue that e.g. Ephesians was not really by Paul. Marcion did edit the New Testament rather drastically, but that was purely on doctrinal grounds (i.e. he cut out the bits he didn't like). So the issue never came up.
I think that, today, most liberal Protestant and Catholic Christians have no particular problem with the idea that some biblical books are inauthentic. The Catholic position is that the Bible is infallible on all spiritual matters, which means that it's quite possible that it's erroneous on some other matters, and presumably the claim "Paul wrote this" is a non-spiritual claim.
Well, I'm no Catholic
But I don't think this position makes sense, unless you have a darn good reason someone who is not Paul would be putting his name there. It appears to me that if it wasn't Paul it was some kind of a forger, and it defies reason that someone would blatantly lie about who they are but their book is still authoritative on spiritual matters. ESPECIALLY for a Catholic when intentionally forging a piece of sacred scripture would probably be seen as a mortal sin anyway, which would put the writer himself in a state of damnation.
I suppose one would say that if there's no clear indication that a saying should not be taken literally, one should take it literally - that's the default understanding. I don't really see what makes it obviously symbolic, at least no more so than pretty much any other theological claim in the New Testament. Jesus tells his disciples to "do this in remembrance of me", but that doesn't mean he's not speaking literally - he could be telling them to continue to eat his literal body in remembrance of him. When the Reformers were arguing about this, Luther famously wrote "This is my body" on the table in chalk and sat back, refusing to say any more, because he thought that the plain statement settled the matter once and for all. This perhaps tells you rather more about Luther's personality than about how to interpret the Bible, though.
Well, Luther presumably (As far as I understand it) still thought it was bread. In any case, I've stopped lying to myself in many ways and have begun to actually look at history a bit. I don't know what the historical interpretation of
John 6:54 is, but it does not make logical sense that its talking about the Eucharist, because if it did, everyone who took the Eucharist (Theoretically even unworthily) would have eternal life, and no Church teaches this. It makes much more sense (To me) that eating the flesh means reading the Word of God (The Bread of Life) and believing and obeying it.
You're right that Jesus was physically present in person, but that doesn't mean the bread couldn't have been his body as well, because transubstantiation is a miracle that involves the entirety of Christ's body being present on the altar even though it is also entirely present in heaven (and also entirely present on innumerable other altars, probably). It's no more impossible that Christ's body could have been present on the table in front of Jesus than it is that it can be present in two different churches at the same time.
That's a fair point I suppose.
This is quite a good point. Yes, one might say that if the elements appear to be bread but are not, then God is somehow being deceitful. I've said before that this is an argument against taking the creation accounts in Genesis literally, because there too, if they are true then God is deceitful in creating a universe that appears in every respect to be very ancient when in fact it is not. I suppose the fundamentalist answer to that is that God isn't deceitful because he's told us the truth in the Bible, so perhaps the Catholic answer to your objection would be the same, that God isn't deceitful because he's told us in the Bible (and in church teachings) that the bread isn't bread at all. Whether that's a good answer or not, I'm not sure.
Here's the thing you've got to understand, no matter how horrible our arguments are (And I don't even try anymore, I'm fundamentally not good enough at science or interested enough [I'm a lot more interested in theology] to pursue most Evolution debates anymore, partially because I think its importance is a bit overhyped) nobody says "Science says Evolution is true but I still believe the world is young." We ALL think science is on our side, no matter how ridiculous that may be.
That said, Jesus spoke in parables all the time. I see no reason we should assume Jesus was being literal about the Eucharist, although it does seem like most (All?) of the Church Fathers did.
As I understand it, consubstantiation is the claim that the bread really does turn into Christ's body (i.e. Christ's body isn't just there alongside it), but it remains bread as well. The important point is that Christ isn't just there spiritually - this is closer to the Reformed view - but his body is present.
Ah, OK.
Well, the Bible doesn't claim to be infallible. It just doesn't. Even if it did, it wouldn't be the case that "the Bible" claims that "the Bible" is infallible - it would be the case that a particular biblical author claims that some texts are infallible. The Bible is not like the Iliad, a single text which really does claim divine inspiration for the whole thing. The Bible is a collection of books. Talking about it as if it can make claims about "itself" is just wrong to start with.
Is there any reason Paul (Or whoever the writer of 2 Timothy is) wouldn't have viewed "Scripture" as the Bible we have today?
Even putting that aside, though, I think it's perfectly possible to take a source very seriously and authoritatively without accepting all its claims about itself. Take the Dalai Lama (who I heard speak last week). Many people take him very seriously as a very authoritative person who speaks with great insight. That doesn't mean that these people really believe his claim to be the reincarnation of his thirteen predecessors, let alone an incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. There are also people who take the Pope very seriously as a spiritually authoritative person but who reject the doctrine of papal infallibility. In fact, when papal infallibility was made a dogma of the church in 1870, a whole group of Catholics split from the Church and became known as Old Catholics, because they rejected this doctrine. They were people who took the Pope to be the representative of Christ on earth, but they did not believe him to be infallible and they did not believe him when he said he was. Similarly, I don't see any problem at all with somebody believing the Bible to be authoritative but nevertheless rejecting its claim to infallibility. Although, as I say, this is a purely academic point, since the Bible doesn't claim to be infallible anyway. And certainly people who reject the notion that it's infallible also reject the notion that it claims to be infallible.
I guess you can argue this. I don't see why you'd trust a book enough that you'll risk your soul on its ideas being true if you still think some of its ideas are false. And besides, even if some of the ideas are false (I still reject this, God doesn't make mistakes
) what gives us authority to decide what's false?
One could say exactly the same about the church. Evangelicals believe that the church is flawed, that it does not speak infallibly, and that it has a matter of fact gone wrong in all sorts of ways. Why would God set up a church with such flaws? Why would he allow his church to become flawed? Whatever answer you have for that, can also be applied to the Bible. In both cases the most plausible answer, from a theological point of view, would presumably be that God likes to do things through human beings, who have an unfortunate tendency to be fallible.
The Church (Evangelicals don't really think there's even such a thing the way the Catholics, Orthodox, or Anglicans do) has also had 2,000 years to screw itself up. The New Testament was all written by the Apostles and those that lived at the same time as they did, and the vast majority of the New Testament (Including everything Paul wrote, since he did see Jesus even though he Jesus had already ascended at that point) had met Jesus personally, and a lot of them had no doubt been taught theology by Jesus. I really don't see the Apostles getting it wrong, at least not on a theological point.
It was very definitely the latter. And, yes, it does make it impossible to take the early Christians as Catholic, at least if you take "Catholic" to mean having that view of the church.
Well, here's where I was coming from. If you think there's "One true physical Church" you could believe that's literally any church without contradicting yourself; it could be the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, whatever. However, the only Church organization the Early Christians knew of was the Catholic Church, the Orthodox schsim happened 1,000 years later, and the Protestant churches formed 500 years after that. However, you claimed that the Early Christians were more Orthodox in their theology than Catholic for the most part.
If, in the first thousand years of the Church, you hold that a single, visible Church was the true Church and that it would be "Wrong" to be in any other Church, I'd think you'd have to be a Catholic. I don't see how you can argue that there is one true physical Church, and that it was the Orthodox Church (As per the Church Fathers) when the Orthodox Church didn't exist.
Then again, I don't totally understand how schism happens, so I don't know if you could legitimately argue that the "One True Church" became false and a new schismatic Church became true.
Either way, I don't understand the Eastern Orthodox claim to Apostolic Succession at all, or how it makes any sense.
Of course opinions varied. Some Christians viewed the church in rather more spiritualising terms that didn't make such a big deal of its actual institutions, whereas others did not. One might also say that the fact that there were a number of different church organisations would also imply that at least the members of those organisations did not share this view of the church, because if they did, they would not have left the Catholic church. However, that would be wrong, because as far as I can tell, the members of these schismatic churches all regarded
themselves as the true Catholic church, and thought that the Catholics were the schismatics. There was a Novatianist bishop of Constantinople called Sisinnius, who was
noted for being something of a wit; when John Chrysostom, the Catholic bishop of Constantinople, told Sisinnius that it was shameful for there to be two bishops in the city, Sisinnius replied "There aren't."
How did they defend those views?
I think it was a Reformation innovation, as far as I know.
How was Salvation viewed in the Early Church? And how did they interpret "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved" (Acts 16:31) and 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2: 8-9)
Veneration of saints really began with the martyrdoms under the Roman empire, I think. Martyrs were regarded very, very highly indeed. When Cyprian of Carthage knelt down before the executioner's block, the last thing he saw before the blindfold was put on his head was people coming forward from the crowd to place handkerchiefs around the block. They wanted to catch the blood, so that those bloodstained cloths could later be venerated as relics. And really this isn't so surprising. If you belonged to a religion which was illegal and where anyone could be executed for it at any time, you'd probably have a pretty high opinion of those who actually were executed. Martyrdom was known as the baptism of blood, and many Christians longed for it and actively sought to be martyred (and many didn't, of course).
OK that makes sense, but seems to imply that the veneration of saints was an Unbiblical addition to Christianity.
(Christians who had been willing to be executed, but who for some reason were reprieved, were known as "confessors" and were held to be almost as holy as true martyrs, since they had shown they were prepared to be martyred.)
Understandable, of course.
After the early fourth century, Christians were no longer martyred, and so naturally people started instead to venerate the great saints of the past (martyrs and others). Relics became more and more important, thanks to the operation of simple laws of economics: there was more demand for them (because there were more Christians), but there were fewer of them (because no more were being produced). Inevitably they came to be seen as more and more holy.
(This is despite the fact that persecutions were still going on outside the Roman empire, notably under the Sassanids, who slaughtered far more Christians than the Romans ever did. This seems not to have made much of an impact on Roman Christians, but I don't know why.)
Human nature I imagine? I don't know how common racism was back then, but history does show in times when it is common Christians aren't generally exempt from it. Or perhaps they weren't aware of what was going on in a distant land?
This coincided with the rise of greater interest in what one might call the physical aspects of faith, especially geography. Before the fourth century, no-one seems to have been very interested in the places where Jesus actually lived and worked or the important sites mentioned in the Gospels. After that time, though, they became very interested in these things. Constantine's mother oversaw a series of archaeological excavations in Palestine (very unusual for antiquity) which sought to identify locations from the Gospel. These were later held to have discovered relics such as the True Cross as well. Palestine was re-invented as "the Holy Land" and people started going on pilgrimages to it and to other holy places.
Any iidea why they didn't care back then?
Veneration and worship do seem to me to be clearly different things, at least as they were defined in the course of the Iconoclasm controversy. However, to what extent they are distinguished in practice is another matter. Also, I think the distinction before then was a lot hazier. Justin Martyr famously claimed in the second century that Christians worship the Father, the Logos, the angels, and the Holy Spirit. As that indicates, Christians at that time really hadn't got the Trinity worked out, but they also weren't very clear on their attitudes to the angels either.
How widespread was angel worship back then? I think that's rather bizarre considering Paul seemed to put the teaching of the Apostles above the angels (If even an angel preaches a different gospel than the one we passed down to you, let him be eternally condemned.)
No-one thinks that it includes literally everyone, at least no-one who thinks that Jesus was sinless. I don't see any logical problem with thinking that it includes everyone else. But it seems to me from a purely hermeneutical point of view that it's placing too much weight on the verse. Paul thought in groups rather than in individuals. His point in those chapters is that pagans are pretty horrible (which all Jews thought), and that Jews are actually just as bad (which Jews did not typically think). He's not making legally precise assertions about individuals. That's not to say that if you'd asked Paul, "Do you think there has ever been anyone who lived without sin?" he would have denied it. I just mean that it's not the question he's trying to answer there, at least not as I see it.
To be honest, I've heard at least two Catholics claim "Well if it includes everyone it should include Jesus as well" to try to logically prove it didn't literally mean everyone and so Mary could be exempted as well." Truth be told, this argument initially annoyed me because it seemed almost obvious why Christ should be excluded. I was curious if you'd try the same argument
However (1 Cor. 15:22) - "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive."
Sin passes from the father to the son. As Christ had no Earthly father, and his Heavenly Father obviously never sinned, Christ was born perfect. But Mary had a father. So how could she be born perfect? And what is the theological reason that she was?
As MagisterCultuum said, Augustine seems to have thought that Mary should at least be regarded as sinless, but of course his official view was that everyone is sinful. To what extent this was the standard Christian view, I'm not sure. I'm inclined to think there was no standard view of the matter until the Pelagian controversy forced people to think about it.
Regarding the Pelagian controversy, I know Pelagius lost the debate, but who won? Or, in other words, what position won? Was it in any way the same as the position that the Catholic Church holds today?
It's uncertain. Universalism was certainly around in the third century. Clement of Alexandria (probably) and Origen of Alexandria (very probably, but not certainly) were universalists. In the fourth century Titus of Bostra and St Gregory of Nyssa (far more explicitly) were universalists. These are some impressive names, but they hardly constitute a majority. I think that there was no settled view on the matter at this time, although individuals certainly could have clear views (Gregory's brother Basil seems to have rejected universalism quite unequivocally). In
The city of God, Augustine
discusses the view that punishment is not eternal as something that evidently some people in his day believed, but how many is unclear.
How can you possibly reconcile Universalism with the fact that "Narrow is the way that leads to life"?
