Defending By What Authority

>He cuts and pastes quotations from the early fathers and Councils, expecting the reader to assume and trust that they are quoted in their proper contexts.

Well, Mr. Haylor is, of course, welcome to read the fathers in all their fullness. He will not find an Evangelical or Protestant among them.

>This response is directed to Mr. Shea, not really to you. If you would like to forward to him, I would be grateful.

And I thank you for doing so.

>For example, when deciding to research "tradition" in the Bible, he already had the Catholic definition of tradition in mind when reading the three passages from Paul's two epistles.

On the contrary, my understanding of tradition was very inchoate in the beginning. "Definition" is a very generous term to apply to my fetal understanding of tradition.

>>Had he understood the historical Protestant definition of "tradition" as used by Paul, the questions he raises would never have come to mind.

That definition being...?

>In his intro, Shea acknowledges the many "good things" that he learned from his evangelical friends, saying that "Catholic Tradition builds on all I received from Evangelicalism." This is very curious, as that is not the conclusion of Trent. Rather, there were more than 100 anathemas made against "Evangelicalism" at that Council.

This is a bit anachronistic. Just is there were no Protestants at the Council of Nicaea, so there were no evangelicals in the time of Trent. As to the anathemas promulgated by Trent, it is, of course, a commonplace of Catholic theology that such anathemas presupposes full knowledge and willful rejection of the truth. Most evangelicals (including myself) are largely clueless about what the Catholic Church actually believes and therefore not addressed by the Council of Trent at all. As to my contention that Catholic Tradition builds on all I received from Evangelicalism, it seems to me rather presumptuous for Mr. Haylor to tell me what my experience was. The fact is I did find that the teaching of the Catholic Tradition crowned and perfected all that I love best about Evangelicalism.

>The way the Catholic Church has at least partially embraced Protestants as believers (though gone astray) today is 180 degrees from the way Rome felt about the Protestants then.

Not really. The Church holds now, as at Trent, that we're responsible to embrace and live the truth. That is the point of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor. (This is also, by the way, a core teaching of Evangelicalism.) What Trent emphasized was the negative side of the balance: i.e. error has no rights. We evangelicals believe the same. This is why we argue so strenuously and so rightly that Buddhism or Islam or Shinto or central African Hippopotamus Worship are not "equal paths to God" right alongside Christianity. What Vatican 2 did was not turn the Church "180 degrees" away from Trent, but rather, it emphasized another aspect of Catholic teaching which has been present in the deposit of faith from the beginning: namely, "though error has no rights, persons do." I freely admit that many Catholics, including Popes and bishops, treated Protestants badly, just as, of course, many Protestants treated Catholics badly. Catholics are, after all, sinners. But the sinfulness of Catholics has exactly nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of Catholic doctrine.

>There was no middle ground to come together on.

Balderdash! Both Protestants and Catholics agree about 95 percent of the creed. Have you never read Mere Christianity?

>Rome understood fully that the difference in beliefs on justification were irreconcilable, thus pronouncing any who believed that the believer was declared righteous rather than made righteous, trusting in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone (something that Shea certainly believed), was anathema.

Again, it seems to me a bit presumptuous for Mr. Haylor to tell me what I certainly believed. Perhaps it is the influence of C. S. Lewis, but I can tell him that I never particularly took the idea of sola fide seriously largely because I never met any Protestants attribute seriously either. It always seemed to me to be a catch word or slogan, trotted out against Catholics, and then safely retired when it came around to actually living faith. As with the doctrine of sola scriptura, observation of Protestant behavior (as distinct from Protestant rhetoric) showed me quite clearly the Protestants believed as much as Catholics the Faith must be incarnated or it was worthless. I have always believed, even as an Evangelical, the sola fide was just a word game. That, by the way, is another reason I don't worry about this anathema apply to evangelicals. For most evangelicals, live (and therefore truly believe) just a way Catholics do when it comes to justification. And, of course, the situation is much the same when it comes to the supposed Evangelical rejection of Sacred Tradition. As my book shows, evangelicals in fact believe a great deal of Sacred Tradition. That's all to the good.

>In Chapter One, he points out two totally off-beat "modernists" who denounce the infallibility of Scripture in order to later relate his own perception of Tradition as being the same modernist thinking. <snip> In this example, "tradition" becomes new fanciful whims of doctrine completely unrelated to Scripture. But "Tradition" is supposed to be doctrines PASSED DOWN from bishop to bishop throughout the ages.

Here we come to a central point of confusion concerning the Evangelical critique of Catholic Tradition. In part of fact, a principal Evangelical critique of Catholic Tradition is indeed that it is a series of "new fanciful whims of doctrine" which creep into the Church over time. Surely, Mr. Haylor is familiar with the charge that the doctrine of the Assumption is more or less brand-new and was just foisted on the Church in 1950. The same for the Immaculate Conception, papal infallibility, and the doctrine of transubstantiation. A reading of Loraine Boettner’s seminal anti-Catholic tract Roman Catholicism will familiarize him with the common charge that Catholic Tradition is, in fact, a series of innovations encrusting themselves on the original kernel of "pure biblical doctrine". It was this notion I shared what I told friend, as I mentioned in By What Authority, that this is what happens when you have 2,000 years to play around with the gospel.

At the same time, however, evangelicals also have some dim the idea that this is not the Catholic understanding Tradition. They hear Catholics tossing around phrases like "apostolic succession" and "development of doctrine" and "handing down" and formal a sort of comic book picture wherein they imagine Catholics conceive of their bishops as some sort of vast ancient secret society passing down "secret traditions" until the time their faithful are ready to hear some new "truth" that the Church has "always believed" but that nobody ever heard of until this week. (One gets the picture from this Evangelical characterization of "what Catholics believe" that the bishops hold secret "Tradition-Passing-on Ceremonies" in the dark chambers beneath the Vatican: "Psst! Mary is Immaculately conceived, ever-virgin, and assumed into heaven. Pass it on!") Both of these views are, however, parodies of what Catholics actually believe. If Mr. Taylor wants to move past both of these irreconcilable parodies, I recommend he read my essay in Bob Sungenis’ That by Scripture Alone.

>Some specifics from chapter one: On page 22, Shea mentions Christ as being the "one mediator between God and man...," yet on page 146 he says, "Jesus is the one mediator. He is also the one Teacher and the one Son of God. But that oneness, according to Scripture, is the oneness of primacy, not of exclusiveness." Are we to assume that wherever the Bible says there is "one" of something, it means in primacy?

No. But we ought to understand it that way here, for that is the import of the Greek.

>Should not the context determine whether the "one" means primacy or exclusiveness? For instance, in the very passage Shea cites, just in front of the part of the verse he quotes, it says, "There is one God, and one mediator..." Now, does this mean that the God mentioned here is the "one God" in primacy, or does it mean there is ONLY one God? If one simply reads the whole verse, one can see plainly that Paul intended to mean ONLY one God "AND" ONLY one mediator, exclusively.

Do you mean the Paul who, a few verses later, is commanding us to pray for one another (and therefore, ipso facto, to act as mediators for one another)? This, once again, strikes me as a sort of anti-Catholic word game rather than as anything of substance. A mediator is a go-between. Whenever we pray for one another, we act, by the grace of Christ, as priests, go-betweens, and mediators. This is not that complicated.

>To read anything else from this passage is to abuse the Scriptures and to not read them for what they say. Furthermore, the Bible never refers to Christ as the "one Teacher" or the "one Son of God," but simply "the Teacher" and "the Son of God."

"But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one Teacher." Matthew 23: 8.

"And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full grace and truth; we have be held his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. John 1: 14.

>In Chapter Two, he mentions a Jesus Seminarian's words that "We know the nature miracles of Christ... are not to be taken as literal events," etc. The he goes on to argue against that statement as if it were even possibly true, even though it completely contradicts the very words of the Bible.

Galileo (a favorite martyr among anti-Catholics) completely contradicted the very words of the Bible. It turned out that the problem was not with the very words of the Bible, but with the way in which they were understood. Exactly the problem which my book addresses and which you are avoiding is the question of how the very words of the Bible are to be understood.

>Instead of arguing that the man simply did not believe the Bible, he found himself stuck trying to argue against a point that Scripture doesn't even blink an eye to. Why would we assume that the  Bible has to possess every counter-argument for every errant teaching possible?

I do not recall ever asserting that the Bible has to possess every counter argument for every errant teaching possible. Rather, I wanted to know how to answer the modernist who asserts that the present canon of Scripture is simply a human tradition. Making raw circular arguments such as, "The Bible assumes its own truthfulness" is as worthless when dealing with the sacred text as when dealing with a secular one. Such arguments are even more worthless in dealing with the question of inspiration.

>He will obviously begin to lay out that we should believe these things because Rome has preserved them infallibly since the apostles. It is interesting, however, that Shea believed these things long before he heard them from Rome. How could he possibly know the truth apart from Rome explaining it to him?

The above paragraph succinctly captures another Evangelical misconception about what Catholics believe. Catholics do not believe that "Rome" preserve the Scriptures, but that the Church did. It is precisely my contention that to be united with Christ in any degree is, ipso facto, to be united in some degree to his body. I believe that the fullness of Christ's revelation subsists in the Catholic Church. I also believe (following the teaching of Vatican 2) that the various Christian sects and denominations participate in various ways and degrees in that revelation. That is the entire point of chapter 6. Evangelicalism has preserved large chunks of Catholic Tradition. But it got it from Reformation Protestantism, which got it from the Catholic Church.

>On page 47, Shea asks a very important question, indeed; "Why should we trust these witnesses?" I'm sorry, but tradition cannot answer that question. The fact is, these men actually SAW the risen Christ.

And the way you know this is ...?

>How do I know? #1 and most important, His Word has proven itself to me to be true of its promise of transforming me from death to life; therefore its words can be trusted.

The "inner witness of the Spirit" argument. All well and good. Does it really useful in determining the canonicity of Ecclesiastes over, say, the book of Wisdom?

>#2, no one disputed their testimony successfully or proved it wrong in the same period they wrote those words.

This would, ironically, serve equally well as an argument for the inspiration of the Donation of Constantine.

>History, not a mystical tradition, attests to the veracity of the gospel's claims.

The term "mystical" is yours, not mine. But you speak of history, you are speaking of the testimony and tradition of the Church.

>#3, from beginning to end, Scripture, not Scripture together with any unwritten tradition, consistently and congruously proclaims the Good News, without contradiction.

I agree that Scripture does not contradict itself. But it requires the sacred Tradition of the Church to see how this is so. See page 63 and 64 of my book.

>No tradition is needed to see this.

Assertion is not argument.

>To see his distorted understanding of Scripture I point out that, in chapter 3, when listing off a bunch of humiliating recorded facts about the apostles, Shea includes Paul's rebuke of Peter's chickenhearted capitulation to the Judaizers, wording it so as to mean that Paul's rebuke was what is embarrassing.

Hmmm. And all this time I thought "chickenhearted capitulation" made it fairly clear that Peter was the one at fault here. I think you are engaging in some unwarranted mind reading.

>Why not just say "Peter's chickenhearted capitulation to the Judaizers?" And this sandwiched between two other mentions of Paul's faults. This is a blatant attempt to see Paul as the lesser apostle, and not Peter, even though it was Peter who acted in cowardice, and Paul acted as an apostle of Christ by defending the truth of the gospel.

I see all of the apostles, like the whole of the Church, as sinners. That was the purpose of that whole passage. The "blatant attempt" turns out to be entirely a construct of your own imagination. I regard Paul's rebuke of Peter as altogether good, not embarrassing.

>Interestingly enough, on pages 50-51, Shea uses the Scriptures alone to show that the self-abasing testimony of the apostles is evidence that they had no ulterior motives. This is a great example of how the Scriptures attest to themselves, without the aid of any outside source.

This "one size fits all" argument doesn't fly well in the case of many other books of Scripture though.

>His modernist acknowledgment "that the gospel is nothing other than a human tradition" is simply unwarranted and cannot be even recognized as legitimate. It presumes that the gospel is in fact a tradition, rather than what it claims to be, breathed by God.

Paul sees no conflict between what is a tradition and what is breathed by God (2 Thessalonians 2: 15)

>If this sounds like circular reasoning, it's because it is, ultimately. It is a circular reasoning that begins and ends with faith.

Then you doom your faith to paralysis, muteness, and sterility when honest people attempt to understand it. Catholic Faith, in contrast, offers answers where your Theology says in effect, "shut up, stop thinking, and believe what I tell you."

>Another supposed modernist assertion (which sounds more like a Catholic playing "devil's advocate" than anything any modernist would concern himself with, as only Catholics view these councils as being the origin of the canon) is that the Bible contains its books "because mere men decreed at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage that a lot of other early Christian writings were to be barred from the canon." First of all, the reason why no canon was "formally" established before these councils was because there was no viable dispute to what was already known to be Scripture.

Are you sure you read my book? Marcion quite emphatically disputed the canon of Scripture in the second century and made big waves in the Church in the process. As the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, these did not constitute the rule of faith for the entire Church (since they were local Councils not universal ones), but they are benchmarks since, together with the decreed of Damasus I, they document the earliest moment at which the canon assumed its present shape. When you speak of the Councils as the "origin of the canon" your are muddled. No Catholic believes a council or Pope confers inspiration on the Bible. What we believe is that apart from the testimony of the Body of Christ, an individual cannot infallibly know what constitutes Scripture.

>Then, beginning on page 53, he lays out his argument against the Protestant understanding of Scriptures self-attestation. He asserts that Protestants actually believe the canon they possess, only because of tradition, rather than because the Scriptures reveal themselves. This is completely false, as the Scriptures, from the beginning, were immediately recognized as Scripture, and that the Scriptures were only written during the times of prophets and apostles.

Sorry, but this is simply not so. My discussion of Luther's wafflings about the book of James ought to be sufficient to show that. If you trot out the " Luther was just a man" argument, you must also deal with the fact that several New Testament books were most certainly not "immediately recognized as Scripture" and continued to be disputed for several centuries. Among these were James, Jude, Hebrews, 2 Peter, and Revelation.

>It is not hard to grasp that anything written after the apostles died cannot be scripture, no matter how good it sounds, and that nothing written between the testaments could be Scripture because there were no prophets between Malachi and John the Baptist, as even the writer of 1 Maccabees affirms by saying "Thus there was great distress in Israel, such as had not been since the time that prophets ceased to appear among them, (1 Macc. 9:27)

Concerning the Closure of Public Revelation, you opt for an "it is only reasonable to assume" argument, rather than acknowledging your debt to Sacred Tradition. That is fine, but it limps. Even more lame however, is the completely extrabiblical notion that there can be no Scripture written after the time of Ezra.

>To assume that some extra-biblical "tradition" is what formed the canon is to assert that Scripture nowhere attests to itself.

No. It is to assume that self attestation by any creature, including a sacred text, is insufficient to establish it is a proof of itself.

>What is also unfortunate is that Shea assumes that his own insecurity in the Scriptures is the norm for all Protestants.

I'd be interested to see the passage in which I state this. This is again engaging in mind reading.

>Why is the canon of Scripture not a human tradition? Because it is not a tradition at all. The councils' formal decrees are traditions, based on the testimony of Scripture.

Mr. Haylor is indulging in wishful thinking here. The council Fathers do not believe in sola scriptura and base the canon of Scripture on the testimony of tradition. Essentially, they say, "this book must be Scripture because we've always been reading it at mass."

>Shea's "Blind Alleys" are not an exhaustive list of all the possible answers to how the canon was formed. He does not mention that Scripture is vindicated by prophets and apostles. No Scripture is written when there are no prophets or apostles around.

And the way you know this is...?

>He also neglected to mention the fact that the local churches immediately received the epistles as Scripture, which is attested to by various historical records.

I did not neglect to mention that. See my last chapter. What Mr. Haylor neglects to mention is the fuzziness of constellation of books the Church looks to as Scripture in its early centuries.

>"Blind Alley #4" describes for us the mass of confusion regarding trusting tradition to determine the canon. Shea mentions Jude quoting from the Assumption of Moses and the Book of Enoch, both of which are rejected even by the Catholic Church. Paul is shown to quote Epimenides whom Shea understands to actually be a true prophet, rather than a false prophet, and others who, again, no one takes as inspired today.

I fail to understand how Jude's quotation of the Assumption of Moses of the book of Enoch means Sacred Tradition is untrustworthy. It is, after all the Catholic Church which excludes these books from its canon. What is remarkable is that she did not exclude Jude even though he quotes these are reliable sources. Luther, however, did wish to exclude Jude along with the other New Testament deuterocanonical books. Your attempt to read into Paul some distinction between true and false prophet in his citation of Epimenides is not germane to my point. The fact is, Paul does not say false prophet or true prophet but simply prophet. My point, which was simple enough, is that those who attempt to discern pre-Christian inspired Scripture simply by saying, "the apostles quote it, therefore it's inspired" must account for these texts.

>This is to point out that it was Rome who determined that those books cited are not to be included in the canon. Well, if Paul actually thought the sources were inspired (i.e. God-breathed) then how can Rome say otherwise?

I think you need to go back and read this part of my book again. You are wonderfully confused about a very simple point: namely, that we do not determine what is inspired simply on the basis of what the apostles quote.

>Shea's assumption, along with Rome, is that a quotation does equal inspiration.

! This is an amazing misreading of that section of my book. My entire point is that quotation does *not* necessarily equal canonicity or inspiration.

>"Blind Alley #5" suggests that there are actually parts of the Bible that contradict each other, disproving the "congruence theory." I assure you, no passage of Scripture contradicts another.

Yes, I know that. My point is not that Scripture contradicts itself, but that it often appears to contradict itself and that the only way we can make sense of these apparent contradictions is with the help of Sacred Tradition.

>It appears to me that the problem lies in Rome's understanding of "theopneustos." This attribute does not seem to have that much significance to Rome, as Rome doesn't seem to have a problem having a God-breathed Scripture that contradicts itself (i.e. contains errors, and, ultimately, lies).

Once again your radically misunderstanding my book. Rome holds as a matter of dogma that Scripture cannot contradict itself. Rome also holds as a matter of dogma that Scripture is inspired by God.

>On page 75, Shea asserts that either the canon is based on a man-made tradition "or else God must have ordained some sort of revelation outside of Scripture as the means by which we could know what Scripture was. There was no third option." This is quite the authoritative statement! To say that there is NO third option is to admit that Shea has thought of everything, or that his logic is airtight. The providence of God is not acceptable to Shea because it does not recognize the need for Tradition.

It does not seem to occur to you that Sacred Tradition is precisely the means by which the providence of God preserved the canon of Scripture.

>Chapter 5 - The whole premise that Paul's use of the word paradosis is anything more than only Paul's pre-inscripturated revelation, is unfounded.

Since you have already said that you are content with circular argument I will leave you in your circle here.

>There is no reference to Paul affirming O.T. "tradition" as the Word of God,

Wrong. Paul and Stephen and the book of Hebrews all treat as revelation the Jewish tradition which says that the law was given through angels. It is nowhere in Scripture. I cite other examples of Paul's reliance on tradition, but you are ignoring them.

>It is this confusing and mystical definition of tradition that Rome uses to manipulate Scripture to support their own traditions.

The Catholic Church has a perfectly clear definition of tradition: namely, that it is the "common life, common teaching, and common worship of the Church."

>Why the absence of any instruction to also preserve, as the Word of God, what is not written down?

"What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus" 2 Timothy 1: 13. Likewise, he commands Timothy to adhere closely, not only to his letters but to "things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses" 2 Timothy 2: 2

>At best, the Catholic Church can point to passages which "refer" to these unwritten traditions, but never cite their sources as being the Word of God. Also, each reference of Paul's to what has been heard, or to tradition, is explained by Paul himself in the context of the passage. Absolutely nowhere is there any suggestion that Paul is referring to any "mystical" or extra-biblical doctrines such as Mary's assumption or perpetual virginity or co-mediatrix position, or Rome's papal infallibility, or even Peter's higher seat of Pope; nor prayers to saints, purgatory, indulgences, confessing to priests, the assurance of salvation through the wearing of a scapular, etc.

You are doing what I described above: speaking of certain aspects of Catholic Tradition as though they were added to the deposit of faith later on. Again, "mystical" is your term, not mine. Catholics do not believe these doctrines faded into existence sometime in the Middle Ages, nor that they were passed down via bishops whispering in secret to one another certain "hidden truths" that they only revealed when they thought the time ripe. Rather, we quite frankly believe that every Catholic dogma has been part of the deposit of faith since the time of the apostles. Again, read my essay in Bob Sungenis’ Not by Faith Alone.

>Shea's "clues" are false assumptions. Clue #1 assumes the Holy Spirit requires recorded history to recall what happened

No, but human beings do.

>In chapter 6, we are told that Scripture does not speak clearly to such issues as abortion, polygamy, and the Trinity, and that we must embrace Catholic Tradition which spells it out clearly for us. The only explanation I can come up for this argument is to go back to the Dark Ages where the Catholic Church assumed that the individual could not think for himself and reason from the Scriptures regarding such things.

You should study some history. It was the great Catholic saint and theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, who specifically taught that the individual could think for himself. It was, in contrast, Martin Luther who called reason "the Devil's whore". As to Sacred Tradition, I said, not so much that evangelicals "must" embrace it, as that they already do. I do say that Scripture is not especially clear concerning abortion, polygamy, and Trinity when we read it without reference to tradition. Again, it was Martin Luther, who said, quite rightly, that the bare text of Scripture without reference to Sacred Tradition did not particularly support Monogamy. And it was the Puritan John Milton who argued against the Trinity using Scripture as his only basis. That is a Protestant's problem, not mine.

>I was struck by a quote made from a catechism on page 119, of "his apostles, who are the source of all saving truth and moral teaching...."

>REALLY!? I recall Jesus saying somewhere that HE was the source of truth! I seem to recall Paul saying that the Scriptures were theopneustos, not apostolospneustos!

Spare me. Surely your familiar with the text which says of the apostles "he who listens to you listens to me." The Church is of course aware that Jesus is, in the ultimate sense, the source of salvation. Nonetheless, it is the case that he wrote no book. The only way we know of him is through his apostles. That is the point of the quote you cite.

>On page 122, Shea seems to think that "those who were of reputation" were actually the Twelve. This is another glaring mistake in interpreting Scripture. It would help if he would read the whole verse; for Paul plainly states that he preached the gospel to those of reputation, and that he did it privately, "lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain. The twelve are nowhere in this picture. It was prominent Jews that Paul went to there.

! Are you seriously suggesting that Paul went to Jerusalem to find out if the Pharisees and Sadducees approved of his gospel?

>So, Paul says he received it "from the Lord."

I guess that means he received it from the Lord! Again, "he who listens to you listens to me". I fail to see the contradiction.

>On pages 124 and 125, Shea refers to the Scripture, saying "this too is authoritative," and "not because they are written but because they are apostolic," thus placing the Scriptures, in reality, beneath "Tradition."

No, not beneath. In union with.

>However, Paul never says he trusts the Scriptures because they are apostolic, but because they the Word of God and are God-breathed.

Actually, as far as I can recall, Paul never says why he trusts the Scriptures. He does however tell Timothy that he should trust the Scriptures because "you know those from whom you learned them." In other words he refers the authority of the God breathed Scriptures to the authority of the God breathed Body of Christ. Paul sees no competition between the Body of Christ and the word of Christ, since *both* are God-breathed. Meanwhile, Mr. Haylor gives the honest inquirer absolutely no reason as to why he or she should think Scripture is God breathed and the first place besides the blank assertion, "it's a circular argument and I like it that way."

>On page 126, we see another example where Shea points to a passage that actually confirms the clarity of Scripture, only to say that it doesn't. He says, "As the Apostle John observed, until Jesus opened their eyes - by His death and resurrection and not a Bible study - 'they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead...'" So where is the paradosis?

On the lips of Christ.

>On page 138, Shea states some traditions "clearly were big 'T' Tradition[s]," and others were "small 't' traditions." Where exactly does Rome historically make this distinction?

Nowhere. The Church is, in fact, disinclined to define its Tradition unless it absolutely must.

>Sounds like a convenient way of getting around certain changes, while still maintaining that nothing has changed since the apostles.

Or perhaps it's just the fact that it is a curious Protestant assumption that every aspect of Sacred Tradition must be legally defined and Carbon copied in triplicate before its real.

>On page 166, Shea discusses the canon as defined by Trent, as opposed to earlier Councils, saying that until Trent, the church "held the canon as a kind of 'generally received' Sacred Tradition." Now, why would Trent be considered any more infallible or solidified than Carthage or Hippo, other than to cover over the enormous pothole in the road of Tradition regarding the canon?

Because Carthage and Hippo were local Councils, not universal Ecumenical Councils. They did not legislate for the whole Church. Trent did (as did Nicaea, Ephesus, Constantinople, and the other 17 Ecumenical Councils, including Vatican 2). Thus the canon was not made an article of dogma until Trent. Until then the canon was indeed a kind of generally received Tradition. Similarly, the Church is never defined when precisely a human person comes into existence. If the Church were to define a dogma tomorrow stating that a human person exists from the moment of conception it would be a "new" dogma. Yet, can anyone in their five senses say that the Church was really adding anything new to the deposit of faith? Obviously not. The reverence for human life from the moment of conception is an ancient part of the Catholic Tradition. It is not however a carefully defined part.

>There were other statements made that I found to be just as faulty, but I think this is enough to show Shea's poor understanding of Scripture, and the number of straw man arguments he makes regarding the Protestant beliefs, as well as the false assumptions regarding the mention of tradition in Scripture.

On the contrary, you yourself affirmed the central flaw of the Protestant beliefs concerning sola scriptura: namely, that it is circular and therefore nonsensical. I require no straw man arguments. You yourself affirmed the central weakness of Protestant position.

Thank you for your critique.

Under the mercy,

Mark Shea