Protestant Bible translations were not the first

As I argue in "Luther's Bible translation" (on my Musings of a Pertinacious Papist blog), Martin Luther's translation of the Bible was far from being the first. Catholics published many translations prior to Luther's. There were 18 German translations of the entire Bible prior to Luthers.

In response to this post, I received the following communication from a respected colleague:

Thanks for the information ... I wonder about two things:

First, as to whether Luther (pictured left) gets the credit he does on account of stumping for the Bible to be not only in the common language but also commonly available to those who were not priests and scholars. My guess is that Luther's translation was fairly shortly made available to all who could read and purchase ... perhaps the earlier editions had a more narrow circulation.

Second, though I do not doubt that there were earlier linguistic and philological scholars Luther's equal and superior (Erasmus, for one, comes to mind) ... Zwingli's critique is tainted by his widely known contempt for -- and perhaps jealousy of -- Luther. Zwingli's zeal for his own cause yielded a violent end. Theirs was not a time for civil academic exchange between scholars, but for diatribes and invective ... in which Zwingli, Luther, and Eck, among others, were now and again active participants.

To which I responded thus:

Good questions. The chief warrant for the association of Luther and the Protestant Reformation in general with the popular circulation of the Bible, in my opinion, comes from the rough historical coincidence of Protestantism with the advent of printing. What is also often overlooked is the fact that there was no widespread literacy among the laity until well into modern times, so that even when the Protestant biblical translations were first made, they were not read far beyond a small circle of literate academic intellectuals.

Zwingli (pictured left) was not only a pugnacious opponent of Luther but a philanderer and adulterer, though I do not know whether it follows that on this account what he said about Luther here is false. My main point in this post was to offer a corrective to the wide-spread assumption that the Catholic Church tried to keep the laity biblically illiterate. The laity were virtually all illiterate for the fist sixteen centuries to begin with, but this hardly meant that they were ignorant of the Gospel. Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-1580 (pictured right) has pretty well debunked that assumption in British scholarship. There were numerous of vernacular translations of parts of the Bible in existence from Anglo-Saxon times (Venerable Bede, etc.) up until Wycliffe, though their circulation naturally was confined to the literate minority (mostly priests). From Wycliffe until the Douay-Rheims (the authorized Catholic translation published by English exiles in Belgium and France before the KJV appeared), the Church did adopt a cautious stance toward Bible translations, not because it was afraid of the laity knowing the liberty of the Gospel (as Fundamentalists often suppose), but because of the proliferation of heresy (such as Wycliffe's).

Though it may not be quite "heresy," once can still see "de-Catholicizing" tendencies in many translations of Scripture today. To take just one example, there are thirteen instances of the term paradosis (usually in its plural form, paradoseis) in the NT, of which ten are critical of human traditions that have departed from God’s Word. In the other three cases, Paul commends traditions to the churches to whom he writes (1 Cor 11:2; 2 Thes 2:15; 3:6). Significantly all ten of the negative references are translated by the NIV (pictured left) as "traditions," while all three of the positive references are deliberately mistranslated as "teachings" -- the translation for didaskalia or didachê, not paradosis. Such a translation is regrettably tendentious and parochial, slanted in ways that North American evangelicalism's tastes are not offended and its predilictions are confirmed.

But perhaps this latter bit is a discussion for another time.

A conversation on the significance of Hippolytus' Christology (continued)

This conversation is continued from one that was posted earlier (here). Any new readers would be strongly advised to consult my opening statements to that exchange in order to more fully understand the context of this conversation and who Hippolytus was. Again, I begin with an earlier paragraph -- this one from Foster -- to contextualize the remarks that follow.

Foster:

Hippolytus died circa 236 C.E. While his writings may have been "unsystematic," as you say, there is almost no doubt (historically) that he was accused of being a "ditheist" by Bishop Callistus. W.H.C. Frend thinks that the bishop may have been justified in labeling Hippolytus thus. He also thinks that Hippolytus thought of the Logos as a created being, deified for a time. The Catholic writer Edmund Fortman in his book The Triune God also informs us that Hippolytus "rather deliberately seems to avoid putting the Holy Spirit on the same personal plane with the Father and the Son, and to regard Him more as a divine force than a divine person" (page 119). Granted, as Fortman writes, Hippolytus may not have highlighted the "personality" of the Spirit because he was not dealing with a heated issue that arose prior to 381 C.E., namely, the Pneumatomachi Controversy. Nevertheless,he does not seem to ascribe personhood to the Spirit of God and he appears to subordinate the Son (ontologically) to the Father.

Blosser:

I have no serious quarrells here, as far as I can tell. Muslims regularly accuse Christians of tri-theism, and Christians aren't always cautious to avoid being thus misunderstood. If you ask nearly any rank-and-file Christian to explain "God," he will almost always, if he ventures the least bit beyond the confessional formulations, end up saying things that could be understood either in the direction of modalism or tri-theism. Beyond that, it's an empirical fact that trinitarian concepts are refractory to facile understanding and that many people-- even theologians otherwise known for reasonably careful thought-- have expressed themselves incautiously or misunderstandingly on the Trinity.

Interlocutor:

The primary point I want to make about Hippolytus, however, is that his views do not stem from lack of precision or conceptual clarity. Nor do they originate from his being less than circumspect when it comes to articulating his theological concepts. Hippolytus expresses himself the way he does, I contend, because he believes that Christ is a deified creature, one who has gradually progressed from LOGOS ENDIAQETOS to hUIOS (i.e. LOGOS PROFORIKOS) to QEOS.

Blosser:

Well, I suppose we're both on shaky ground where speculating as to Hippolytus' subjective dispositions are concerned-- whether he was less than circumspect or deliberate and clear. I think what I'm more concerned with is the resulting Christological formulation, which, from the anachronistic perspective of post-Nicene theology, is awkward and weird. An orthodox Catholic just would not talk about Christ in such a manner after the Nicene and post-Nicene Christological dogmatic definitions and clarifications.

From a Catholic perspective, one would say, "Look, we know that the Ecumenical conciliar definitions are true, since they were ratified by popes and have the Church-mediated authority of God behind them. So we know that Christ is nothing less than 'true God of true God.' Now all of this is in perfect harmony with Scripture, even though there was a period of some three-hundred years prior to Nicea (AD 325) during which the Church hadn't settled on any particular official way of formulating the relationships between the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Thus there were a range of various Christological formulas proposed by different theologians-- some closer to what we would today call orthodoxy, others at a farther remove, and still others simply heretical. There were various theories (as you well know) -- adoptionist, Ebionite, docetic, gnostic, and so on -- some of which the Church took a position against (such as the wording in the Apostles Creed directed against a docetic view of Christ) and some of which she didn't immediately. St. Thomas Aquinas raised several questions about the tradition of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, which wasn't formally defined until 1854 by Pope Pius IX, but this didn't get him condemned as a heretic because the doctrinal tradition hadn't yet been defined and a degree of latitute was permitted in interpreting the matter. Likewise with Christology in the 3rd century. Hippolytus' formula would be condemned as utterly unorthodox in a post-Nicene milieu, but within the context of his time, it's not altogether incomprehensible to me how he might have come up with such an interpretation as he did. For one thing, there is a progressive dimension to the earthly life of Christ -- from His lowly birth, baptism, and transfiguration,
to his resurrection, ascension, and glorification, etc., which might suggest the sort of thing Hippolitus thought he saw in Christ. It's just not altogether surprising. But why should I want to follow Hippolytus' Christological speculations rather than the Church's official teaching -- especially when they contradict the latter?"

Interlocutor:

The problem, as Swete notes, is that the language of Hippolytus does not allow for the Holy Spirit being an eternal divine relation or Person--he also believes that the Son as such is not eternal--and his thought evidently contains elements of subordinationism. That is, Hippolytus is not just maintaining that the Son or Spirit are subordinate to the Father as respects function; they are subordinate PER ESSENTIAM. Such claims are utterly at odds with Nicene Christianity.

Blosser:

I find it difficult to be surprised by any of this. Until controversy compels the Church to publicly clarify her mind on a doctrinal issue such as this and define it (as at Nicea), one expects to find a great deal of latitude in what is believed and asserted about the question. This is the case at present with questions such as those eschatological questions concerning the anti-Christ, the meaning of the 'millenial' reign of Christ, the tribulation, the 'binding of Satan', etc., etc. And it was the case with other doctrines before they were defined.

Interlocutor:

I don't think the Church allows that much latitude. Bishop Callistus (who was evidently a modalist or Monarchian) accused Hippolytus of being a ditheist. Frend thinks Callistus was quite justified in appending this descriptive term to the Roman theologian. Moreover, if Hippolytus really did believe that Christ was a deified or apotheosized creature as suggested by Refutation of all Heresies, 10, this would put him outside the bounds of orthodoxy. We are not just talking about imprecise God-talk: the Christological ideas contained in the writings of Hippolytus are at odds with basic Trinitarian thought.

Blosser:

From what I just said above, it should be apparent that I have little to disagree with here. On the one hand, it may be ill-advised to judge the official position of the Church with regard to Hippolytus (if it had one) from the epithets of a modalist or Monarchian who was himself a heretic. [Here I retract an earlier assertion I made in ignorance that the Church never canonized Hippolytus, comparing him to Tertullian, since a brief perusal of an article on him made it clear that he had been, in fact, canonized. The matter is made exceedingly problematic by the fact that he developed Christological formulations that are highly heterodox and that he opposed the popes of his day, even getting his small band of followers to elect himself as a rival pope (what Rome calls an "antipope"), and by the fact that, despite these infelicities, he was later reconciled to the Church before he was martyred, earning canonization as a Christian martyr. These latter judgments of the Church, however, cannot be interpreted as approval of any part of his heterodox Christological doctrines.]

If Hippolytus held a form of subordinationism of the Holy Spirit or Son, this should not surprise us. Further, as mentioned before, there is a legitimate respect in which these two Persons of the Trinity ARE subordinate to the Father and proceed from Him, even if this isn't clearly articulated in the possibly deficient formulations of Hippolytus.

Interlocutor:

According to orthodox Trinitarian thought, the Son and Spirit may be subordinate to the Father in a functional sense--though Kevin Giles disputes this point--but no orthodox Trinitarian is going to openly or knowingly concede the second and third Persons of the Trinity are inferior in essence, which (as you know) is what subordinationism entails.

Blosser:

Yes, I know. My point is that the legitimate "functional" subordination of Persons in the Trinity helps us understand, at least, why heresies holding an "essential" subordination of Persons very likely emerged. I'm not sure, but this sort of distinction may not have even been entertained before Nicea (AD 325).

Interlocutor:

My beef with Mr Bowman is that he has illicitly employed Contra Noetum 10.1-2. This passage does not say what he would like it to say.

Blosser:

I have no quarrel with that.

Interlocutor:

Good, that means I can take a breather. :-)

Here I insert a prior paragraph of Foster's to clarify the context of the discussion following:

Interlocutor:

The problem with God willing the Son into existence, even if He did so by means of His own essence of substance, have been detailed by Jesuit Edmund Fortman (quoted earlier). Fortman lists what he calls two "grave defects" with Hippolytus' "theory" of the Father metaphysically (!) willing the Son into existence: (1) The Logos was not a person or the Son eternally, but only precreationally; (2) "The generation of the Son was not essential to God but only the result of a free decision of God. Hence God might have remained without a Son and thus might have remained only one Person" (Fortman, page 118). In other words, the generation of the Son, according to Hippolytus as interpreted by Fortman, was something that may or may not have transpired. It was a contingent divine act.

Blosser:

Yes, indeed. I don't dispute this. What I dispute is the notion that he can be taken for a careful trinitarian theologian. He's the theological equivalent of an Empedocles, and the notion that his writings can meaningfully be adduced against Nicea seem not more plausible to me than that Empedocles metaphysic should be proposed as counting against the Periodic Table of Elements developed in the 19th Century. At most, it seems to me, Hippolytus gives us one snapshot of the kinds of inchoate Trinitarian opinions that existed in the ante-Nicene period.

Interlocutor:

I wonder if Hippolytus can be taken for a "trinitarian theologian" at all. At what point does a person become a non-Trinitarian theologian? The problem I see with the paragraph above is that you appear to assume that Hippolytus is expressing an "inchoate" form of the Trinity doctrine in a non-precise manner. But I submit that a comparison between Ptolemy and Copernicus would be more apt. Hippolytus does not seem to espouse an inchoate form of Trinitarianism at all. His writings help us to see that the famed "way to Nicea" was filled with twists, turns and diversions. Nicea was firm in its insistence that the Son is begotten, not created. He is consubstantial with the Father (says Nicea), not by promotion or progressive divinization, but UT NATURA or PER ESSENTIAM. I don't believe that Hippolytus' statements were even headed in this direction.

Blosser:

As I intimated earlier, we have no choice but to judge Hippolytus' views heretical in terms of the later dogmatic definitions. We might also judge St. Thomas' questions about the Immaculate Conception somewhat short of the orthodox clarity of the 19th century dogmatic definition, though this is a comparison unfair to St. Thomas, who is canonized, after all, and an official Doctor of the Church.

You object to my appearing to view Hippolytus as expressing an "inchoate" form of the Trinity doctrine in a non-precise manner. That may be a bit over-stated. I see him as a "trinitarian" theologian in the sense that he engages in speculative theologizing concerning the Persons of the Trinity, much as you do -- which, I guess, makes YOU a "trinitarian theologian" in my sense (but don't tell the Watch Tower ).

I like your comparison of Hippolytus and Nicea to Ptolemy and Copernicus. I would expand on it only to add Aristarchus, whose heleocentric cosmology in 250 BC anticipated that of Copernicus in the 16th century. Thus, one could appropriately see Aristarchus as standing to Holy Scripture as Ptolemy to Hippolytus and Copernicus to Nicea. What SEEMED like a "Copernican Revolution" from the vantage point of heterodox thinkers sympathetic to Hippolitus, was merely the retrieval of
the original apostolic deposit of faith found anticipated in Scripture. But even that is probably giving far more importance to Hippolytus than is reasonable, for he was certainly no giant in theology like Ptolemy was in astronomy, and there were many other patristics more congenial to Scripture and Nicea than there were astronomers between Aristarchus and Copernicus who were congenial to them.

Interlocutor:

If the pre-Nicenes truly did not view Christ as "fully God," then the early Christians were not simply saying that Christ is subordinate to the Father. Augustine of Hippo writes that each divine Person is fully God or the whole of the Godhead is in each Person. To say otherwise, to deny that Christ is "fully God," is to blatantly contradict what Augustine averred. One who makes such a declaration is not merely insisting that Christ is subordinate in function to the Father. Rather, a Christian who does not affirm the full deity of Christ is subordinating him to the Father vis-a-vis being, essence or nature.

Blosser:

This is assuming that "fully God" can mean only what you think it means. But why should we believe that? It is also to assume that each ante-Nicene utterance regarding a Person of the Trinity is to be accorded the same weight you would accord it in a theological treatise on the Holy Trinity. But why should we think that? It seems to me that there are a wide variety of contexts in which men made reference to "God" ("Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit") in the first three centuries. If I were to respond in the affirmative to my young son's question "Daddy, did Jesus pray to God?" would this mean that I was denying that Jesus is "fully God"?

Interlocutor:

I use the terminology "fully God" as the Nicenes used it and as Augustine employed the nomenclature. For Augustine of Hippo, the whole of the divine substance is in each Person somewhat perichoretically. For Auggie, the Son is VERE DEUS, VERE HOMO. I understand this to mean that Christ (in Augustine's paradigm) exemplifies or instantiates every divine property exemplified or instantiated by the Father and the Holy Spirit, EX HYPOTHESI.

Blosser:

Yes, but that's exactly my point: you're understanding "fully God" in light of the full-blown Nicean and post-Nicean Augustianian formulae here; but I'm asking why we should think pre-Nicene Church Fathers should have understood by "fully God" all that. Wouldn't that be a bit like expecting Euclid to understand Einstein? We know that Einstein doesn't "refute" Euclid, but he certainly builds on him and develops and refines his understanding. When my father and mother first explained Jesus' relationship to His Father to me, I know I did not fathom the full implications of Augustine's "vere Deus, vere homo" or the Nicene "homoousios" and Christological hypostatic union. In fact, I'm not sure many Christians do, perhaps including myself.

I imagine something like this: even though I don't doubt for a moment the veracity of Trinitarian Christology, I do not suppose that Jesus' identity was grasped by his disciples very well, especially before His resurrection. This is clear from the NT, I think. They supposed He was someone special, even the Messiah, but I doubt they even began to fathom what that meant. Even after His ascension, I think it only natural that the more speculative types of individuals had long bull sessions over their beers brainstorming about what exactly the significance of this Messiah was. I have no doubt that it became part of the Apostolic deposit of Faith that Jesus was God made flesh. But I'm not sure what that meant to those with more speculative dispositions among the patristics in the sub-apostolic age. Some basically towed the Apostolic line. Others ventures farther afield. Eventually Nicea became inevitable and mandatory. The bishop-shepherds of Christ's flock could tolerate only so much confusion in their ranks before they had to pull rank and call the dissenters back to the Apostolic Faith.

Interlocutor:

One Catholic theologian writes:

"There are various aspects hence arising, which do not belong to the Divine Essence as such, but are peculiar to one of the other of the Persons and not common to all. These are the only differences between the Persons. They are not differences of substance or of the essential divine attributes; so they mark, not a multiplication of the Godhead, but of the personalities in the one Godhead."

Hence, "fully God" (as I see it) has reference to the divine essential attributes or necessary properties. So, in answer to your question, I would say that you are not necessarily denying that Jesus is God because you answer in the affirmative. Of course, your example has to do with Christ in his incarnate state though, and not with intra-Trinitarian relations per se. In any event, what I'm trying to say is that God is supposed to instantiate or exemplify certain properties, particular attributes. If a being does not possess such attributes EX TOTO, then the said entity cannot be "fully God." Therefore, if the Son (according to Hippolytus) is a deified creature or not eternal as such, how can he be fully God?

Blosser:

Well, of course such a creature could not be fully God; and you should have no doubts by now about my agreement with you that Hippolytus (like JW teaching) is heterodox! So I think I do see your point quite clearly. My argument has been that the existence of such thinkers as Hippolytus before the Council of Nicea is not to be regarded as a bizarre anomaly even on the supposition that the Nicean dogma of the Holy Trinity is true. It takes time for truth to clarify, especially when it's surrounded by those bent on subverting it.

Textual interpretation & infallibility (continued)

The following discussion is continued from an earlier one published here.

I begin with a statement I made in my earlier discussion, establishing the context:

Blosser:

Well, you might objectively be under that obligation but not subjectively know it, as you would agree, I think. You already accept the infallibility of the teaching of one pope, or at least one man to whom Catholics assign the title of the first pope, at least so far as his written teachings go in his two epistles, which you accept on the basis of tradition as comprising part of the NT. I would be curious about the supposition that God's ability to infallibly guide his servant, Peter, and the other apostles in the oral traditions they bequeathed to us (2 Thes. 2:15) and written traditions, suddenly ceased to be extended any longer with the death of the last apostle.

Foster:

It is possible that I'm objectively under the Pope's authority, but I am subjectively unaware of it. But you know the nature of logical possiblity over against metaphysical or physical possibility. Logically, it is possible that the Absolute is within me, as my old Hindu roomate in Glasgow used to say. However, conceding the logically possibility that the Absolute is within me does not mean that I think it is metaphysically possible that the Absolute can be found inside me.

Blosser:

This goes without saying.

Foster:

Concerning the apostles and infallibility: first, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the apostles were fallible men that God once used to author infallible documents or utter infallible pronouncements. Notice that we do not think that the men themselves were infallible; only their message, and only some of their messages at that. What I mean by this is that there was no guarantee Peter would speak infallibly when he acted in his capacity as one of God's first century shepherds (Jn 21:15-17).

Blosser:

First, with regard to your assertion that the men themselves were not infallible, but that God used them to author infallible documents, this is a distinction without a difference: you believe what we believe.

Second, where we differ is that we do not believe that God left off His divine work of infallibly guiding his apostles or prophets. Further, we believe the infallibility that you see as extended to the written documents also infused their oral teachings (2 Thes. 2:15).

This means that Catholics would agree with you in denying that any human being is infallible in himself. No properly informed Catholic believes the pope is infallible in his mathematics, his opinions about world politics and world religion,
or even in his opinions about theology.

On the other hand, we simply spell out the implications of the infallible divine guidance of fallible human authors, which you readily grant, to embrace the whole context of God's historical revelation to His people and His ongoing protection of that "deposit of faith" (depositum fidei for your benefit, since you wouldn't understand the English, of course) in the teaching of the Church.

Foster:

Second, we believe that powerful works such as the ability to speak infallibly pretty much died out with the last apostle, who was evidently John. Christians living after the death of John the apostle sometimes report that miracles had ceased in their time, it seems. So there is no way that I could affirm the charism of infallibility obtaining in any man living today.

Blosser:

First, I don't think either of us really wants to speak of the charism of infallibility as an "ability," since we're not attributing infallibility to the human beings themselves but to the divine guidance gifted to them.

Second, I was taught that "miracles ceased" generally with the death of the last apostle at Westminster Theological Seminary where I studied. Miracles were seen as having the purpose of amplifying and reinforcing the divine natue of the great events surrounding the Incarnation and Resurrection.

Yet further study of the matter has led me to question whether this position was anything more than a knee-jerk reaction to any implicatin that real divine guidance could be thought to animate the on-going development and life of the Catholic
Church. St. Augustine gives account of numerous miracles that he witnessed while bishop of Hippo in his own day (5th century) in Book XXII, ch. 8 of Civitas Dei; and I find it interesting that the Scottish Presbyterian editors of the English translation of the Post-Nicene Fathers version of the work are at pains to dismiss these miracles as frauds by which the [Catholic] Church mislead and deceived her members!!

Again, the Protestant tradition affirms that the prophetic office has ceased. But on what basis? There are the usual assetions about the prophetic office having lapsed during the "inter-testimental" period, and "post-apostolic" period, etc.
But why should we assume this? There are plenty of counter-arguments. Newman, for example, is quite good on this. And there are some interesting statements in the NT itself.

The following remarks are, again, mine from the earlier exchange, included here to contextualize the discussion that follows:

Blosser:

Wait a sec: show me one fallible doctrinal pronouncement of an apostle. Where? Whom? Which?

Foster:

I use the word "fallible" in the sense of "being capable of error." Having the capacity or potential for error doesn't necessarily mean that a pronouncement will be erroneous or that a fallible person will speak in error. Since the apostles were fallible men, I believe that every apostle was fallible. This does not mean that the apostles could not speak infallibly, if God so willed. Do I think the apostles ever erred concerning dogma or doctrine? If they did, it doesn't seem that we find any instances in the Bible. Yet, I would say that they were capable of error. It is just the nature of sin.

Blosser:

Two things here. First, I have already stated my agreement with you that infallibility adheres to the divine guidance rather than to any "ability" of the human person in question. Having said that, I would not wish for one moment to speak of the doctrinal pronoucements of the apostles as fallible, since I take these to be the product of the aforementioned divine guidance.

Second, while I would agree that all men are as capable of error as they are of sin, I would want to carefully distinguish the two. Peccability (capability of sinning) is not, as you know, the same thing as doctrinal fallibility (capability of error). I think carelessness about letting the meanings of these slip over into one another can lead to a sort of hyper-pessimistic view such as one finds in the Lutheran view of sin. A Lutheran believes that because we are fallen, we are always sinful or in a state of sin. A Catholic denies this. An adult convert who has just been baptized (washed of the stain of original sin) and has confessed his sins (absolved of his actual sins) is in a state of grace. Now, even if it were true that he fell from this state of grace by committing a mortal sin five minutes later, it could still not be denied that for five minutes he went without sinning. A Lutheran will not admit this, but it seems silly to do so.

Now if this is true of sin, it is even truer of error. It is quite humanly possible to go all day working mathematical problems without committing a single error. This does not mean that one is not capable of error. But it does mean that it is possible for a fallible human being to produce results of mathematical calculation that are infallibly true and accurate. There is nothing odd or goofy about this.

The divine charism claimed for official Church teaching in the Catholic Church is that God infallibly guides the Church in such a way that whenever the Church declares in an official capacity and a public and solemn way what is true of apostolic teaching, God will infallibly prevent her from declaring something true that is false, or vice versa. There doesn't seem to me to be much that is odd or goofy about this either.

Here, again, is another earlier remark:

Blosser:

I think his fears are unfounded. In the first place, I think he'd readily agree that some interpretations of the biblical text, such as the intepretation that says that the apostles assumed the existence of an infinite-personal God, are infalliblly irrevisible. We're not going to come up with a legitimate "interpretation" of the NT that says that the apostles may not have believe in the existence of God.

Foster:

Vanhoozer no doubt would agree with you here.

Blosser:

Agreement is nice.

Regarding Vanhoozer, I had written earlier that I thought that what he fears is:

... losing interpretive "elbow room" where no definitive understanding has been attained by the mind of the Church. For example, some eschatological issues are far from settled in the Catholic tradition, such as the intrepretation of parts of the Book of Revelation. (Wild and wooly interpretations of this book are a dime-a-dozen, as you know, among some of the more fundamentalist sects, even among televangelists.) But the Church allows such interpretive "elbow room" when it comes to these sorts of things; so I think Vanhoozer's fears are unfounded.

Foster:

I think Vanhoozer may fear more than you're suggesting. He apparently thinks that no biblical interpretation should claim that it is absolutely correct. An interpreter should recognize that his view is provisional and subject to change and not just in matters of eschatology. Clearly, Vanhoozer doesn't think that this is always the case, even if it sounds like that is what he's saying. But neither do I think his comments are linked to adiaphora or eschatological issues either. I'll need to read further to see if my intutions are correct though.

Blosser:

My hunch is that you're right about Vanhoozer. I'm not claiming that HE restricts his concerns to adiaphora or eschatological issues, but that the Church allows for differences of opinon on such matters. Hence, I would argue against Vanhoozer where he suggests that no biblical interpretation can claim absolute certitude. This would seem to fall into the sort of skepticism that can be found in Pannenberg, as suggested by an earlier recent correspondence with you. I would insist, with the Church, that the basics of the Christian Faith are knowable and certain, even if this knowledge and certitude is dependent upon faith. For example, I would say that the proposition that the "virgin" cited in Matt 1:23 from the Septuagint Is. 7:14 refers to the mother of Jesus is indisputably certain (de fide) for a Catholic believer, as well as countless other intepretive propositions.

A conversation on the significance of Hippolytus' Christology

A graduate student at the University of Glasgow currently working on his doctorate in patristics, my Jehovah's Witness friend, Edgar Foster, has been corresponding with me of late about St. Hippolitus of Rome. I should state immediately at the outset that he is the expert here, not I, and my competence has been limited to offering a "sounding board" for Mr. Foster on how an orthodox Catholic might respond to the general outline of his treatment of a pre-Nicene Catholic theologian such as Hippolytus. I did not even know initially that Hippolytus had been canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint. Mr. Foster, if he knew this, was discreet enough not to mention it after seeing some of my assumptions, doubtless so not as to embarrass me. Furthermore, a quick check of the above link to the article on Hippolytus in the online Catholic Encyclopedia reveals that Hippolytus not only entertained seriously hererodox notions about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son bordering if not affirming a curious di-theism, the view that the Father and Son, in some fashion, constitute two independent gods. He also rejected the authority of the Pope, then turned around and had himself elected antipope, a rival claimant to the Holy See, by his small band of followers. The fact that he was later canonized by the Church is explained by the fact that, either immediately before or after his banishment to Sardinia, he was reconciled with the legitimate bishop of the Church of Rome. So Hippolytus is a complex figure indeed, whose theology must clearly be assessed with care and circumspection.

I begin with a paragraph I wrote to Mr. Foster in an earlier correspondence, which sets the state for the remarks that follow:

Blosser:

I would assert here that the writings of Christians in the early third century period (didn't Hippolytus die in the early 200's?) were notoriously un-systematic. Also there's your caveat ["While there are admittedly debatable passages..."] which suggests that whatever you're suggesting must be far from cut-and-dried.

Foster:

Hippolytus died circa 236 C.E. While his writings may have been "unsystematic," as you say, there is almost no doubt (historically) that he was accused of being a "ditheist" by Bishop Callistus. W.H.C. Frend thinks that the bishop may have been justified in labeling Hippolytus thus. He also thinks that Hippolytus thought of the Logos as a created being, deified for a time. The Catholic writer Edmund Fortman in his book The Triune God also informs us that Hippolytus "rather deliberately seems to avoid putting the Holy Spirit on the same personal plane with the Father and the Son, and to regard Him more as a divine force than a divine person" (page 119). Granted, as Fortman writes, Hippolytus may not have highlighted the "personality" of the Spirit because he was not dealing with a heated issue that arose prior to 381 C.E., namely, the Pneumatomachi Controversy. Nevertheless, he does not seem to ascribe personhood to the Spirit of God and he appears to subordinate the Son (ontologically) to the Father.

Blosser:

I have no serious quarrells here, as far as I can tell. Muslims regularly accuse Christians of tri-theism, and Christians aren't always cautious to avoid being thus misunderstood. If you ask nearly any rank-and-file Christian to explain "God," he will almost always, if he ventures the least bit beyond the confessional formulations, end up saying things that could be understood either in the direction of modalism or tri-theism. Beyond that, it's an empirical fact that trinitarian concepts are refractory to facile understanding and that many people-- even theologians otherwise known for reasonably careful thought-- have expressed themselves incautiously or misunderstandingly on the Trinity.

Here let me insert once more something I wrote in my earlier correspondence with Mr. Foster in order to contextualize the exchange that follows:

Blosser:

The NT itself partakes of such ambiguities, doesn't it. I see nothing prohibitively problematic about such things as calling God "one" and Jesus His "Son," then portrayhing Jesus in a subordinate role, while still assuming that Jesus too is God, though not God the Father. If the Trinity doctrine is true, what else would we expect but such seemingly confused language?

Foster:

The problem, as Swete notes, is that the language of Hippolytus does not allow for the Holy Spirit being an eternal divine relation or Person--he also believes that the Son as such is not eternal--and his thought evidently contains elements of subordinationism. That is, Hippolytus is not just maintaining that the Son or Spirit are subordinate to the Father as respects function; they are subordinate PER ESSENTIAM. Such claims are utterly at odds with Nicene Christianity.

Blosser:

I find it difficult to be surprised by any of this. Until controversy compels the Church to publicly clarify her mind on a doctrinal issue such as this and define it (as at Nicea), one expects to find a great deal of latitude in what is believed and asserted about the question. This is the case at present with questions such as those eschatological questions concerning the anti-
Christ, the meaning of the 'millenial' reign of Christ, the tribulation, the 'binding of Satan', etc., etc. And it was the case with other doctrines before they were defined.

This does not mean that there was no objective theological truth concerning the issue prior to its magisterial definition by the Church, or that the Church simply "fabricated" its doctrine out of thin air and then imposed it arbitrarily on her members. The objective basis for the trinitarian understanding of God is clearly evident in Scripture and tradition, we believe, even though this was likely not clear to everyone prior to her dogmatic definitions. This is true even regarding something as mundane as which books constitute the Bible-- which was anything but a definite article of faith prior to the close of the fourth century AD.

Hence, if Hippolytus held a form of subordinationism of the Holy Spirit or Son, this should not surprise us. Further, as mentioned before, there is a legitimate respect in which these two Persons of the Trinity ARE subordinate to the Father and proceed from Him, even if this isn't clearly articulated in the possibly deficient formulations of Hippolytus.

Foster:

My beef with Mr Bowman is that he has illicitly employed Contra Noetum 10.1-2. This passage does not say what he would like it to say.

Blosser:

I have no quarrel with that.

Foster:

The problem with God willing the Son into existence, even if He did so by means of His own essence oe substance, have been detailed by Jesuit Edmund Fortman (quoted earlier). Fortman lists what he calls two "grave defects" with Hippolytus' "theory" of the Father metaphysically (!) willing the Son into existence: (1) The Logos was not a person or the Son eternally, but only precreationally; (2) "The generation of the Son was not essential to God but only the result of a free decision of God. Hence God might have remained without a Son and thus might have remained only one Person" (Fortman, page 118). In other words, the generation of the Son, according to Hippolytus as interpreted by Fortman, was something that may or may not have transpired. It was a contingent divine act.

Blosser:

Yes, indeed. I don't dispute this. What I dispute is the notion that he can be taken for a careful trinitarian theologian. He's the theological equivalent of an Empedocles, and the notion that his writings can meaningfully be adduced against Nicea seem not more plausible to me than that Empedocles metaphysic should be proposed as counting against the Periodic Table of Elements developed in the 19th Century. At most, it seems to me, Hippolytus gives us one snapshot of the kinds of inchoate Trinitarian opinions that existed in the ante-Nicene period.

Again, I insert a quote from the earlier exchange to contextualize what follows:

Blosser:

I think this is merely a reflection of the fact that Christ is clearly in many respects subordinate to the Father. But even if we talked about the Petrine notion of our being "partakers of the Divine nature" in the Greek language of THEOISIS (or QEOSIS), neither you nor I could, strictly speaking, call one another or ourselves "God" even in the sense that Hippolytus calls Christ "God."

Foster:

If the pre-Nicenes truly did not view Christ as "fully God," then the early Christians were not simply saying that Christ is subordinate to the Father. Augustine of Hippo writes that each divine Person is fully God or the whole of the Godhead is in each Person. To say otherwise, to deny that Christ is "fully God," is to blatantly contradict what Augustine averred. One who makes such a declaration is not merely insisting that Christ is subordinate in function to the Father. Rather, a Christian who does not affirm the full deity of Christ is subordinating him to the Father vis-a-vis being, essence or nature.

Blosser:

This is assuming that "fully God" can mean only what you think it means. But why should we believe that? It is also to assume that each ante-Nicene utterance regarding a Person of the Trinity is to be accorded the same weight you would accord it in a theological treatise on the Holy Trinity. But why should we think that? It seems to me that there are a wide variety of contexts in which men made reference to "God" ("Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit") in the first three centuries. If I were to respond in the affirmative to my young son's question "Daddy, did Jesus pray to God?" would this mean that I was denying that Jesus is "fully God"?

Textual interpretation & infallibility

Like Catholics and evangelical Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses accept the "infallibility of Scripture," which is shorthand for saying that the Holy Spirit infallibly guided the human authors of the Bible, making full use of their human faculties, to have them say what He wanted them to say, thus making Scripture a trustworthy special Revelation of God's truth for mankind. Unlike Catholics and like evangelical Protestants, however, Jehovah's Witnesses accept the Bible as their ultimate authority, roughly according to the Protestant principle of "sola Scriptura" formulated by Philip Melanchthon. The following discussion is about the question of authority in interpreting scripture, or even texts in general, but with particular reference to the question of infallibility, which Protestants traditionally have assigned to Scripture alone, but Catholics have assigned also to the Church and its teachings, including the Pope under certain circumstances. Edgar Foster (my Jehovah's Witness interlocutor) responds to my previous assertion that as surely we would both affirm that St. Paul's interpretations of the Gospel are absolute and infallible, so must a Catholic affirm that Pope Pius XII was infallible in his proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.

Foster:

Maybe Catholics have to affirm the "infallible" proclamation of Mary's Assumption made by Pope Pius XII, but I am under no such obligation since I do not recognize any pope's authority as the Vicar of Christ or Universal Shepherd.

Blosser:

Well, you might objectively be under that obligation but not subjectively know it, as you would agree, I think. You already accept the infallibility of the teaching of one pope, or at least one man to whom Catholics assign the title of the first pope, at least so far as his written teachings go in his two epistles, which you accept on the basis of tradition as comprising part of the NT. I would be curious about the supposition that God's ability to infallibly guide his servant, Peter, and the other apostles in the oral traditions they bequeathed to us (2 Thes. 2:15) and written traditions, suddenly ceased to be extended any longer with the death of the last apostle.

Foster:

Similarly, you don't accept or submit to the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, as I do. Granted, their "pronouncements" are fallible, as were the doctrinal decisions of the apostles.

Blosser:

Wait a sec: show me one fallible doctrinal pronouncement of an apostle. Where? Whom? Which?

Foster:

But they too are capable of communicating "fallible" truth. We just do not believe that the GB has the so-called "charism of infallibility." But you knew all of this anyway. :-)

Blosser:

Um ... well, yeah.

Foster:

What seems to concern Vanhoozer is the "conviction" that "a single correct interpretation" of the biblical text "is our exclusive possession" (page 184). He seems to, in some sense of the word, fear "dogma," though I need to read further to see how he correlates his view (if this is in fact his view) with the Christian faith as practiced by Catholics or Protestants. Surely there is room for dogma in the Christian faith, isn't there?

Blosser:

I think his fears are unfounded. In the first place, I think he'd readily agree that some interpretations of the biblical text, such as the intepretation that says that the apostles assumed
the existence of an infinite-personal God, are infalliblly irrevisible. We're not going to come up with a legitimate "interpretation" of the NT that says that the apostles may not have believe in the existence of God.

In the second place, I think what he fears is losing interpretive "elbow room" where no definitive understanding has been attained by the mind of the Church. For example, some eschatological issues are far from settled in the Catholic tradition, such as the intrepretation of parts of the Book of Revelation. (Wild and wooly interpretations of this book are a dime-a-dozen, as you know, among some of the more fundamentalist sects, even among televangelists.) But the Church allows such interpretive "elbow room" when it comes to these sorts of things; so I think Vanhoozer's fears are unfounded.