The Seventh-day Adventist-Roman Catholic Dialogue

The Seventh-day Adventist-Roman Catholic Dialogue - Part 9
John Mann (Seventh-day Adventist)

Hi Stephen

Here are my replies to your comments!

> > What I find interesting is the debate about authority obviously going
> > on in the early church.

>
> I would hesitate to call it a debate ... at least not in the early
> church. I think that everyone accepted papal authority, and the
> authority of the bishops and councils. It is more in modern times that
> this authority is questioned, because such authority is too Catholic for
> most Protestants to stomach.

Well! It depends who you mean by "everyone". As you are no doubt aware, there were numerous "heresies" within the church, and these typically began as legitimate expressions of doctrine which certain groups in the church then decided were incorrect and excommunicated those who followed these teachings. Any history of the church is full of these debates about the nature of Christ, the trinity, salvation by faith, the sacraments etc etc, and these were debates held typically by local groups, not just positions adopted by "officials"of the church. Here is a short passage from J.N.D. Kelly's "Early Christian Doctrines" (Black, 1968):

"At the initial stage the monarchian strain just mentioned was clearly in the ascendancy. This comes out in the attitude of Popes Zephyrinus (198-217) and Callistus (217-22), both of whom sympathized with the widespread popular reaction against the theories of Hippolytus and Tertullian, which they regarded as leading to ditheism. Hippolytus, for this part, considered Zephyrinus an out-and-out modalist, the patron of Cleomenes and the school and the school which collected around him. In proof of this he represents the pope, 'an ignorant and uncultured man'. (p.123)

I would be very suprised to find you able to come up with any quotes by reputable church historians to support your view that there were no disagreements in the early church.

> > Even when you go back to Peter it is clear
> > the church was not authoritarian - there was debate and discussion
> > with Peter, no one just did what he said.

>
> It's sad that the papacy has become so much beaurocracy. Perhaps that's
> an unfair statement - it's not the papacy, but the Curia, that weilds
> the destructive force of beaurocracy, and while the departments
> certainly are necessary and do an excellent job, they are no longer the
> simple government by Peter and the Apostles that existed in the first
> century. On the other hand, if God had intended that the papacy remain
> static, the papacy would not have grown into what it is today. I
> believe the papacy was instituted by Jesus Christ, and is a divine
> insitution guided by the Holy Spirit ... whatever form it takes is a
> combination of the will of God and the will of man, but the will of man
> will never override the will of God in the rule the papacy provides, as
> promised in Matt 16:18.
>

I can appreciate the view held by some Catholics that in the long run the church will get it right, that no matter if it makes a few wrong turns to the left and right, in the end it will arrive at its destination, and that validates "faith in the church". However you appear to be saying much more than that - you appear to be saying that the will of man will never override the will of God - in other words the will of the church is always the will of God. Isn't this denying basic free will? A pope is still free to sin, still free to turn from God. There is no denying, in my opinion, that some popes turned away from God (read for example a book by a Catholic, "The Catholic Reformation" by Pierre Janelle (OU, 1963), to see what state the church was in prior to the counter-reformation).

> > However there is a trend which I am against in seeing the church as
> > having authority over its members. Clement I in particular argues for
> > a very strict obedience to the church, praising the Roman military
> > as a model of obedience.

>
> Clement I was an immediate contemporary of the Apostles - he was pope in
> the late 80's and early 90's, and died before the Apostle John. The
> fact that the first century papacy was as it was without biblical
> reprimand is very significant indeed. Even Peter, though, holds a very
> prominent place in the Bible. Of every time an apostle is mentioned by
> name, Peter's name is mentioned more than 60% of the time. With one
> exception, he is always mentioned first ... the exception being an
> incident which occurred in the diocese of James, where James is
> mentioned first. I think the biblical evidence for Peter's primacy is
> overwhelming.

Regarding Peter in the Bible, your evidence is very circumstancial . There is no clear incident of Peter being in charge and the key point where a church council is mentioned (Acts 15), it is James who says "It is my judgement...", making it clear it is James, not Peter who is in charge. Other stories concerning Peter seem to cast him as being caught in the middle between the Paul and James groups. The fact that he is often mentioned with other disciples and often referred to first simply seems to be because he was literally the first disciple (the first one Jesus called). This is hardly "overwhelming". The other references to Peter and the NT books attributed to Peter give no evidence that he was the leader of the early church.

Let me clarify this - I have no problem with Peter being the leader of the early church, if the evidence is there - fine! What I am saying is, there is no evidence.

> We seem to have disagreements on how that primacy should
> be exercised, but it seems that you agree that it was exercised in some
> manner from early on ... you mention Clement I, the 4th pope.
>

Of course, "how the primacy should be exercised" is exactly what we are discussing. In my opinion the church, once it achieved political power, was criminally totalitarian, and would not tolerate differences of opinion over doctrine. However the seeds of this intolerance can be seen as early as Clement I, who as I said, had a very militaristic ideology.

> Could you explain some of the differences between you and mainstream
> SDAs, and which truths you accept but reinterpret ?

This is all a very large topic, and of course the whole "New Perspectives" web site is concerned with expanding on these themes. However I would say the two key doctrines for Adventists to experience today are the Sabbath and the Advent (the two parts of the name, "Seventh-day" (Sabbath) "Adventists" (the Second Advent)). These are so foundational, that for many members they aren't lived in any more (who lives in the foundations of a house?) but we need to re-understand and re-experience what these doctrines mean, because they are actually much more than a couple of bricks in a wall of "true doctrine".

One Adventist scholar who has in the past promoted a re-experiencing of the Sabbath is Samuele Bacchiocchi and while I don't agree with all that he says (there is an article on the web site where I go into this in more detail), he certainly adds many more dimensions to the Sabbath than are traditionally found.

The other area I would disagree with the church would be its refusal to accept theological differences - their attitude to Desmond Ford was typical of this problem. When God created the world he created variety and difference. When he created humans, again he created everyone different, we are all individual and unique. We need a church that lets us re-discover that uniqueness and value our difference, not one which seeks confirmity and sameness.

God Bless

John Mann

Stephen Korsman is a Roman Catholic
John Mann is a Seventh-day Adventist