Last month I posted the first of four parts to this engaging story (if you're into being engaged with this kind of story, that is : ).
Here is the second. If you haven't already read the first, would like to read them all at once, or at least before I 'time-release' them, you can find them linked in the right hand side-bar of the blog under the heading 'Check This Out'.
Brownson's argument is devastating to any (with exception, perhaps, to traditional Orthodox Christianity) non-Catholic form of Christianity. He shows that Protestant/Bible-Only Christianity, in any and all of its forms, can only be incoherent (and therefore logically impossible) when it (a) attempts to affirm revelation and (b) allows for a plurality of contradictory interpretations of that revelation. Brownson demonstrates how the distinction between "essential" and "non-essential" truths is a sophism.
ReplyDeleteWhat non-Catholics confuse/confound is the irreducible difference between competing structures of putative theological orthodoxy with the truly Catholic notion of the hierarchy of revealed truths and practices (see CCC # 90, 234).
On the basis of the hierarchy of truths (and valid Baptism) Christians can engage in discussion across the Catholic--non-Catholic divide. Never, however, can discussion be based on the non-Christian and irrational distinction between essential and non-essential truths.
Ironically, non-Catholics depend on Catholic tradition to discern any hierarchy of truth in the Christian revelation. While Catholics have a discernible and consistent means for discovering and articulating such a hierarchy, non-Catholics merely "happen" on such an order per accidens, by sneaking glances (perhaps unwittingly) at the perennial witness of the Catholic Church.
JG