"So, either there were no Christians for at least a thousand years, and God is incompetent to guard His Church, or the corruption plaguing the Church of 1500 AD was not so great as to make schism permissible.”
This is called a false dilemma, a logical fallacy. Your argument is “either you throw the baby out with the bathwater or you accept Catholic doctrine wholesale.” I don't need to do either and I don't subscribe to either view. Catholicism is not all that unique in that it's riddled with errors. The council of Trent which launched the counter-reformation asserted that Catholic traditions were of equal authority to Scripture, and that is the persistent mainstream view of Catholicism going back many centuries before that as well.
If you study The Word, you might see the problem with this view. That is pretty much why Jesus condemned the Pharisees: they held up their man-made traditions as being equal or greater than God's word. Rabbinical Judaism still holds to their Talmud over the Tanakh to this day. God condemned many Israelites before Christ for much the same reason: departing from His word. That being said, it's not that a Catholic can't be saved or a true believer, I'm down with some renegade Catholics myself, but they are saved in spite of the very twisted Catholic doctrine rather than because of it.
Your characterization of my argument is not quite right. It's is not so much about doctrine as about history. Whether Augustine and Anselm and Teresa of Avila could have jettisoned parts of Catholicism while retaining others is another question, perhaps interesting to some. I am interested in the Catholic practices that many Protestants would identify as so "twisted" that they constitute a fundamental departure from Christianity. Chief among these would be the use of icons, asking the saints for intercession, Marian veneration, etc. The puzzle then is what to do about the fact that these practices were universal from very, very early on in the Church. Nothing new showed up in Trent. (churchfathers.org is a great resource here)
If I'm reading you right, it seems like you actually accept one of the horns of the dilemma: you think that Catholicism just isn't Christianity (though may accidentally lead a few isolated individuals to Christ), from which it follows that there was no Church on earth from some early point until Luther. Turning to the Eastern or Oriental Churches, of course, will not help. They only prove how universal these practices were.
Maybe you are willing to bite that bullet, in which case your mission will be to engage in a grand project of sorting and purifying. But my sense is that most people are not comfortable saying that Christianity more or less vanished from the face of the earth for a thousand or more years, not least because of the promise of Christ. They generally think of themselves as being in broad continuity with the great saints, like Thomas Aquinas. If Catholicism is so deeply twisted as to constitute a different religion, then they really ought to regard these folks as benighted heretics, preserving the truth only occasionally and by accident. Yet they do not. Rather, some of the Protestant greats, like Lewis and Sproul, rely on them heavily. My point is that this creates an inconsistent attitude towards Catholicism. On the one hand, justifying ripping the Church to shreds seems to require that Catholicism be a departure from Christianity; on the other hand, this attitude generates all the same problems as the Mormon doctrine of the general apostasy.
You seem to be willing to accept the premise that Catholicism is not Christianity at all. My only point is that this means you should commit to believing in a general apostasy.
An example would be helpful. Here are some of Augustine's beliefs:
-Mary never sinned
-We can ask the saints for prayer
-Purgatory
-"I would not believe the gospel myself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so."
-Merit is real
-Baptism is necessary for salvation
-There are 7 sacraments
-Rome is the first see of the world
-Realism about justification (i.e. not merely forensic)
We could keep going. But we're left with two options: Either Augustine was a Christian, or he wasn't. If he was, then it seems none of these beliefs are "twisted" enough to make someone nonchristian. But then Catholicism is Christianity, and schism was not warranted.
Now, I will say that I think the argument really can be extended a step further. The claims I ascribed to Augustine seem to me too large to be nuetral about. It's a kind of "liar, lunatic, Lord" style choice. Either those are all inventions of the devil and the Church is the Whore of Babylon, or they fit with Christianity and represent an authentic commitment to the Gospel. So to that extent, I disagree with your presentation of the dilemma as false. But I don't want to distract us with that question. I'm really just trying to force a decision on whether Christianity vanished from the earth before Luther.
Also, as a side note, Catholics would of course not agree that Tradition is man-made. Capital-T Tradition, we hold, goes back to the Apostles, who received it from Christ. We think of infallibility primarily as a gift given to PERSONS, rather than primarily TEXTS. Thus, the complete teaching of Paul is authoritative, whether written or oral. Paul himself references teachings passed on orally a number of times. But the quote from the Gospels you helpfully introduced actually makes this point. I think we can agree that Jesus does not say things for no reason. Why, then, would he need to specify that He's rebuking the Pharisees for "MAN-MADE" traditions? I think the most reasonable answer is that He is distinguishing them from other traditions, that is to say, Traditions that are not man-made but divine in origin. In fact, shortly after this passage, He references "the Chair of Moses," which apparently gives the Pharisees binding authority ("Be careful to do everything they say..."). But search the Scriptures: you will find nothing about a "Chair of Moses." The reason He and His interlocuters knew of it must therefore be because of oral traditions.
"So, either there were no Christians for at least a thousand years, and God is incompetent to guard His Church, or the corruption plaguing the Church of 1500 AD was not so great as to make schism permissible.”
This is called a false dilemma, a logical fallacy. Your argument is “either you throw the baby out with the bathwater or you accept Catholic doctrine wholesale.” I don't need to do either and I don't subscribe to either view. Catholicism is not all that unique in that it's riddled with errors. The council of Trent which launched the counter-reformation asserted that Catholic traditions were of equal authority to Scripture, and that is the persistent mainstream view of Catholicism going back many centuries before that as well.
If you study The Word, you might see the problem with this view. That is pretty much why Jesus condemned the Pharisees: they held up their man-made traditions as being equal or greater than God's word. Rabbinical Judaism still holds to their Talmud over the Tanakh to this day. God condemned many Israelites before Christ for much the same reason: departing from His word. That being said, it's not that a Catholic can't be saved or a true believer, I'm down with some renegade Catholics myself, but they are saved in spite of the very twisted Catholic doctrine rather than because of it.
Thank you for taking the time to respond!
Your characterization of my argument is not quite right. It's is not so much about doctrine as about history. Whether Augustine and Anselm and Teresa of Avila could have jettisoned parts of Catholicism while retaining others is another question, perhaps interesting to some. I am interested in the Catholic practices that many Protestants would identify as so "twisted" that they constitute a fundamental departure from Christianity. Chief among these would be the use of icons, asking the saints for intercession, Marian veneration, etc. The puzzle then is what to do about the fact that these practices were universal from very, very early on in the Church. Nothing new showed up in Trent. (churchfathers.org is a great resource here)
If I'm reading you right, it seems like you actually accept one of the horns of the dilemma: you think that Catholicism just isn't Christianity (though may accidentally lead a few isolated individuals to Christ), from which it follows that there was no Church on earth from some early point until Luther. Turning to the Eastern or Oriental Churches, of course, will not help. They only prove how universal these practices were.
Maybe you are willing to bite that bullet, in which case your mission will be to engage in a grand project of sorting and purifying. But my sense is that most people are not comfortable saying that Christianity more or less vanished from the face of the earth for a thousand or more years, not least because of the promise of Christ. They generally think of themselves as being in broad continuity with the great saints, like Thomas Aquinas. If Catholicism is so deeply twisted as to constitute a different religion, then they really ought to regard these folks as benighted heretics, preserving the truth only occasionally and by accident. Yet they do not. Rather, some of the Protestant greats, like Lewis and Sproul, rely on them heavily. My point is that this creates an inconsistent attitude towards Catholicism. On the one hand, justifying ripping the Church to shreds seems to require that Catholicism be a departure from Christianity; on the other hand, this attitude generates all the same problems as the Mormon doctrine of the general apostasy.
You seem to be willing to accept the premise that Catholicism is not Christianity at all. My only point is that this means you should commit to believing in a general apostasy.
An example would be helpful. Here are some of Augustine's beliefs:
-Mary never sinned
-We can ask the saints for prayer
-Purgatory
-"I would not believe the gospel myself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so."
-Merit is real
-Baptism is necessary for salvation
-There are 7 sacraments
-Rome is the first see of the world
-Realism about justification (i.e. not merely forensic)
We could keep going. But we're left with two options: Either Augustine was a Christian, or he wasn't. If he was, then it seems none of these beliefs are "twisted" enough to make someone nonchristian. But then Catholicism is Christianity, and schism was not warranted.
Now, I will say that I think the argument really can be extended a step further. The claims I ascribed to Augustine seem to me too large to be nuetral about. It's a kind of "liar, lunatic, Lord" style choice. Either those are all inventions of the devil and the Church is the Whore of Babylon, or they fit with Christianity and represent an authentic commitment to the Gospel. So to that extent, I disagree with your presentation of the dilemma as false. But I don't want to distract us with that question. I'm really just trying to force a decision on whether Christianity vanished from the earth before Luther.
Also, as a side note, Catholics would of course not agree that Tradition is man-made. Capital-T Tradition, we hold, goes back to the Apostles, who received it from Christ. We think of infallibility primarily as a gift given to PERSONS, rather than primarily TEXTS. Thus, the complete teaching of Paul is authoritative, whether written or oral. Paul himself references teachings passed on orally a number of times. But the quote from the Gospels you helpfully introduced actually makes this point. I think we can agree that Jesus does not say things for no reason. Why, then, would he need to specify that He's rebuking the Pharisees for "MAN-MADE" traditions? I think the most reasonable answer is that He is distinguishing them from other traditions, that is to say, Traditions that are not man-made but divine in origin. In fact, shortly after this passage, He references "the Chair of Moses," which apparently gives the Pharisees binding authority ("Be careful to do everything they say..."). But search the Scriptures: you will find nothing about a "Chair of Moses." The reason He and His interlocuters knew of it must therefore be because of oral traditions.