As of 3-26-10 Mr. Swonger has yet to post a reply. While his email was cordial in initally notifying me of his other duties, and lack of time to dedicate to continue our debate, I must point out that it has been over 2 months. He has not even ammended a few of the quotation mistakes which I pointed out below. Most people would not wait so long before taking it that you have retreated from the field of intellectual battle.
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He starts out by saying that I am authoritative in making my points, whereas he subjects himself to the authority of the church.
Typically, a person would start by showing every which way the early church had things wrong and needed correction...sometimes very harshly, but I know that is a strawman to the Catholic argument of what it means to preserve His word. So at this point, I am waiting for him to give me his verses that make him believe the teachings of Christ would be wholly preserved in the effect that they would always remain in popular and common knowledge. I know this makes a narrow definition of "preserved", but it is actually how Catholicism verifies itself.
Next, I would ask where he has gotten the idea that the seat of the Vatican is in the fact the lone heir of this.
He also gives John 17:21 That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
We should pay close attention to exactly how Christ defined His unity with the Father in other verses. Looking at that alone, you cannot logically convince anyone that we today have that same very literal oneness with God, so you must water it down to something esoteric. This coming immediately after he claims extreme literal-ness of being the body of Christ. It appears to be pick-and-choose.
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The Jews may have accepted Maccabees, but again, that doesn't mean we should. The Jews also accepted the Talmud (and still do). Just because a book is old, doesn't mean it's truthful. Just because a book is widely accepted, doesn't mean it's accurate.
I noticed also that he did not address the pseudepigrapha, so I take it that he has abandoned the accusation that Protestants left out 7 books, knowing that Catholics leave out at least 10 more that we know of.
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Again in bringing up Moses and Elijah, I never tried to make the point that any communication with the dead was wrong. I simply stated that their presence does not support his point, as nobody was asking them to intercede for them.
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He then says "The dead in Christ are more alive than you or I. They are dead not to the communion of saints but to sin. How wonderful. The insinuation that our intercession for each other ceases upon death is what is unsupported by scripture."
To which I say, it is understood that instructions and commandments in the Bible are to those who are living. No Jew was ever expected to eat kosher food, or work 6 days and take the sabbath off, or acknowledge the feast days...after death.
As I said before, the evidence of the existence of this practice at all is nowhere to be found.
This is an elephant standing the corner.
You must consider how every tiny and seemingly insignificant detail of Jewish life and religious practices were recorded and passed down, right down to the correct shade of blue for certain garments that must match the color of a certain seashell, and I'm not making that up (though I'm speaking of the Talmud). This trend continued through early Christianity. But somehow, a core practice like communion of the saints, slipped through the cracks, even past Christ and Paul? The simpler answer is that it's just a Catholic invention.
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On sainthood.
I said it correctly, you cannot prove that these are the saints of Catholicism, you must go on faith that the Catholic church knows who is a saint. It looks like you have admitted this.
I believe I proved just above that there is no evidence of expected prayers after death from recorded religious history (prior to Catholicism). As far as progressing doctrines, I wouldn't say so. Jesus cleared up alot of misconceptions and did away with a large part of the written laws, and sacrifices, in also telling the Jews that neither they, nor their fathers truly heard God's will. We see this hinted a few times in the OT as well. If there was something more to reveal, it would have been done in His teachings, or at the very latest by the time of Paul. Some people believe Paul deviated from Christ but I do not, I can read the exact same teachings albeit slightly elaborated.
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Papal Infallibility came after the fact..."As are most decrees. Something being explicitly defined is not a pre-requisite of doctrine or belief. Decrees such as this, the trinity, the dual natures of Christ and so on, do not introduce the concepts, but undeniably defend them, which already existed." Discovering a concept in something already written is not in the same category as making a retroactive declaration and creating the rules to make it apply.
If I were able to create the criteria, I could make all kinds of claims about this or that in history. I could claim Sonny Liston never really lost a fight, and the American justice system has never executed an innocent man. It's not the same as reading an old tablet and finding out the Greeks had access to liquid combustion.
You claim the Crusades are arguably justifiable, please then justify something that neither Christ, nor the apostles ever pursued (holy wars), and in fact taught against such methods. We see a completely different model of Christian reaction under the reign of Nero.
You claim that no respectable historian calls it the "Dark Age". That is a subjective statement, as we all know that is what it is referred to as.
You claim that the whole church did not act on these things. The (militarized) Teutonic Order was supported by the Church from 1192-1929. But the battles fought across Transylvania, Hungary, Poland, and the seizing of land in Courland, Livonia, Estonia, Prussia, Pomerelia, and Samogitia were not endorsed by the Church? Winrich Von Kniprode? He never existed, no? His rise to military conquest in the 1300s never happened, or certainly didn't come from the aid of the church?
I believe you have forgotten that the history of military Catholicism was not limited to scrapping with Muslims in the middle-east. It is much easier to admit that yes, we were bloody and vicious people, who sincerely believed God was commanding us to take up swords and conquer the nearby savages. Might makes right. But again, compare this to the model of Christianity at the time of Nero.
For consistencies sake, what about the wars of the Old Testament? More often than not, they too were done by ignorant people, who sincerely believed they were hearing from God. The noteworthy thing is, God disavows his involvement a handful of times in the Bible, I have an article about this here. As far as getting my figures from skewed propaganda, ok then. Hernando del Pulgar, serving under Ferdinand and Isabella, estmiated that the first decade of the inquisition burned around 2,000 people at the stake. That's as close to the source as you can get. Numbers of executions after this from other sources are arguable, but all seem to point to death tolls in the thousands, with hundreds of thousands of trials between 1478-1833. This is undeniable.
His further attempts to explain why the Crusades happen, are just trying rationalize them. I am not taking the positions of any of the common misunderstandings of the Crusades, nor am I nitpicking over the details of how many were killed, or in what fashion. I am hitting right at the center and saying it never should have been.
Explanations of who was affected by the Inquisition are to draw away from the issue that human beings were imprisoned, tortured, and killed, sometimes for just disagreeing with the church, and 'not shutting up' when ordered to. One of the links he provided explains the position best by saying "No account of foolishness, misguided zeal, or cruelty by Catholics can undo the divine foundation of the Church.". Or in other words "No matter what we did, continue to believe that we hear from, and follow God". This is a lapse in critical thinking. The crazy thing is, the Catholics of the days of the Inquisitions really believed they did too.
He finishes with a few verses of warning, one of which I take ought with the common explanation, held by Catholics and Protestants alike, and that is James 2:10, which I explain here. We are not all equal, nor are we all guilty in the same way, and that some people really are better than others.
These verses, I imagine, are to warn me not to judge. Need I remind anyone that we are commanded to judge those who are within the body, and that we should also judge the things of this world, for someday we will judge the angels. As I said above, I am not the one trying to whitewash nearly 2,000 years and say no matter what we did, this organization is still the sole heir of the Truth.
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So you will hold to Peter being the first Pope, and that he was the rock, not that Jesus is the Christ. Very well then, I have a forthcoming article for that. I will put the link here when it is done.
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Regarding the use of adelphos. I do not dismiss those verses, I just believe in some places the explanation is literal...but about those verses, I noticed a few things.
You are incorrect in quoting Luke 10:29, the word used is "plesion".
Matt 5:47 can literally be read as brothers and not some group.
Matt 25:40 We will be made joint heirs with Christ, so it becomes quite literal to call us His brothers.
Rev 22:9 Brethren is modified by being a prophet, so it explains itself.
But why focus on John 2:12 you ask? Mainly because it includes His mother, and if it didn't want to suggest that they were his literal brothers, then I believe it would have used suggenes and not adelphos. All of them travelling together was an intimate ordeal, as it was at the very beginning of His ministry, thus didn't include 'the multitudes' that usually followed Him.
In an event much later in His ministry, you could definitely make the case that the use of adelphos would more likely be countrymen. Also, clearly Josephus in Antiquities 20.200 believed that James was Jesus's literal brother, and not a half or step brother.
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He goes into a lengthy paragraph on Mary's virginity, which may make sense, and may be true. For the moment, let's consider that the Protoevangelium of James is true. Why would Mary's perpetual virginity be important, and why would it be insulting to say that she wasn't? The value of this idea relies heavily on Jewish traditions, which actually were not important at all. I go into great detail about this here and how many of these customs were simply nonsense by people who didn't understand God. In other words, these were not righteous virtues in and of themselves, they were superstitions.
If you committed to God that every day of your life you would stand up, sit down, turn around, and quack like a duck 3 times, keeping that would not make you holy, nor would your righteousness be decided solely by how well you kept it. We see this example dozens of times in the history of Israel, on up through the era of the Pharisees.
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He then says He is aware of female anatomy, and quotes from the Catechism.
According to Catholics then, it must be believed that Mary's water broke, she went into labor, fully dilated, and gave birth, without her hymen tearing.
That would have to have been Christ's first miracle. No, I'm not kidding, passing through without breaking a delicate membrane that is always torn by a much smaller vessel than a baby. The immaculate conception appears to have overshadowed the immaculate delivery. This should really be emphasized more in doctrine, if that's the case.
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Yes, I will admit getting your doctrine from sola scriptura is very important. I never said it was mandatory, or weighed in on your salvation. Checking your gas tank before embarking on a trip is important too, but is not the same as checking to see if a gun is loaded.
The so called liberties taken are anything but liberal, or grandiose. The portrait of protection from error is Apostolic and Biblical, as has been demonstrated.
Ah, but you haven't demonstrated that at all, that is the proposition at the opening of my response here.
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In why you regard apostolic succession. You do realize that "heresy" is a subjective term. When he quotes John Paul II on saying "Truth is not a majority vote." the exception of course is when it applies to a majority of the Vatican vote, am I right?
As far as disagreeing with the "Church of the Apostles", I will repeat myself with a few phrases....
Crusades
Dark Age
Spanish Inquisition
Pope Pius II
I will also refer to my former statement, that you are putting in enormous faith that the unbroken lineage of all truth rests in Vatican City.
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"You don't "trust" Nicea but I have yet in my many years heard anyone claim that a translator is infallible." Plenty of people on both sides believe it for you having never heard it. You're proving my point though. There is no reason to trust the words of men who turned to dust long ago, just because they said so.
I've spent the greater part of my life studying the book, but I also have a mind of my own. I am reminded of the joke where a monk cries because he finds out the word was really "celibrate".
"This is the problem. Catholicism isn't "based on the Bible". Catholicism gave us the Bible. The Church came first. The Bible came from the Church under guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Any serious person that discusses these subjects knows that Sola Scriptura is a man made invention of the 16th century..."
The simple truth is, we don't see this displayed in the outline for the early church. In fact, when the disciples wanted to call down fire on a group of people for not receiving Him, Jesus rebuked his own instead (Luke 9). When the disciples came across someone doing miracles in the name of Jesus, but yet wasn't part of their clique, they wanted to forbid him, Jesus poignantly corrected them on this (Mark 9). This is not the example we see through the entire saga of Catholicism, carried over into early protestant methods.
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We owe nothing to those who belittle slander and abuse the Church we know what we mean when we say what we say.
If I said "I am God, and I possess phenomenal cosmic power, the orbit of the planets is mine to command. The Sun rises and sets at my will." it would be unwise to make such a declaration, only to have to explain it away, and then again, and again, and try to explain later how I didn't really mean it the way any average Joe would read it. It makes much more sense to not say it in the first place, or just scratch it from record.
I am not trying to slander anyone, I simply want to know why a statement that would be clearly questionable remains, only needing to be clarified elsewhere later. Just remove it to avoid confusion, re-word it and try again.
Unless to do so would cause an internal problem with dogma regarding authority perhaps? Which is what I'm driving at.