Can Sedevacantism Be Condemned as Heresy? No, Here is Why · Casey Chalk is Wrong to Deny Scripture is Perspicacious
Refuting Protestantism's Clarity Doctrine of Scripture
The Counsel of Trent, 3 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ9hpCz-b9E
0:47 Please note, while sola scriptura is technically condemned by the definition of Trent Session IV stating necessity of bowing down to magisterium and consensus of Church Fathers, this was never motivated by "obscurity of Scripture" in general.
5:07 Both title and discussion so far ... to me this sounds about as Catholic as a video stating "refuting Protestantism's doctrine that Christ rose from the dead" ....
Obscurity of Scripture may be a debating point for some Catholic debaters, but it is not a Catholic dogma, and given how devout the Church Fathers generally were to obvious senses (that's why they and I believe the Eucharist and the Papacy, and for Immaculate Conception, I think Pope Pius IX had a better case in perspicuity of Scripture than in consensus of Church Fathers), it's indirectly against Trent Session IV.
6:55 sth "Protestants disagree"
Not just between them, but also with Scripture.
Matthew 28:16-20 is a very clear and perspicuous refutation of any claim of Reformation of a Church supposedly gone wrong for centuries.
14:40 I would actually basically agree with the quote from Westminister Confession - with the proviso that a Church reaching back to the writing of Scripture and preserving tradition from those times is not just clearly taught in Scripture, but is also one of the "ordinary means" (see quote) which it would be culpable to neglect once one grasps it is such a thing.
If a Calvinist said "the early Church was Calvinist, but deteriorated to Catholic, so it is no longer that ordinary means, except where restored by the Reformation" I would answer this is against the plain and perspicuous meaning of Matthew 28:16-20.
If he said instead "given the necessity of Apostolic succession, should I take RCC, EOC or other?" I would answer that was a next question, fine he came so far, and it needed to be settled on other grounds, but given that is five different confessions, it's not a needle in a haystack.
22:58 "7th Article" (of chapter 1) "of the Westminister confession"
All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.
As said, if "ordinary means" involves having an Apostolic Church or rather the Apostolic Church, and taking magisterium and Church Fathers, this is actually, verbally, tenable.
The problem is, those commending that confession were precisely depriving the flock of this ordinary means.
15:37 The main reason Protestants can't agree about what Scripture clearly teaches is that they have all a discrepancy from things that it clearly teaches - like Zwingli from the Real Presence.
17:42 St. James is clear that priests have to confess to each other.
And whether laymen should confess to other laymen or laymen also should confess to priests, and whether it is about all sins or about mortal (optionally also venial) sins after baptism, is a precision, which he leaves up to the successors to provide for the converts.
20:45 That Christ founded His Church as a perpetual presence (Matthew 28:16-20, "all days"), that's arguably hierarchic (verse 16), that's clearly visible, not just dispersed souls having the right faith ("teach nations" + Mt 5:15), that it has a guarantee against doctrinal error ("teach all I have commanded" + "I am with you") can be found very clearly.
Casey is really overestimating the extent to which Protestants can be in invincible ignorance.
22:44 Nor is there any Bible passage saying the Scripture is generally speaking obscure.
St. Peter says that some things in St. Paul are obscure. He was probably referring to Romans, given his audience. That should be a warning against taking the "Romans' road" as a clear Scriptural proof.
But confer the Haydock comment:
Ver. 15-16. As also our most dear brother, Paul, . . . hath written to you. He seems to mean in his epistle to the Hebrews or converted Jews, (C. x. 37.) where he says: yet a little while, . . . and he that is to come, will come, and will not delay. — In which are some things hard to understand, especially by unlearned, ignorant people, unstable, inconstant, not well grounded in faith, and which they wrest,[2] as they do also the other scriptures, by their private interpretations, to their own perdition. Wi.
[2] V. 16. Depravant, streblousin, detorquent. It is a speech, says Mr. Legh, on streblow, borrowed from torturers, when they put an innocent man on the rack, and make him speak what he never thought. They deal, says he, with the Scriptures as chemists sometimes deal with natural bodies, torturing them to extract out of them what God and nature never put in them.
23:01 Hermeneutics doesn't work that way.
A text is assumed clear until proven obscure.
23:10 There is a big difference here.
Being the word of God is not a normal attribute of a text because it is a text. Being clear is.
30:27 Casey's point is good, but not a refutation of perspicuity.
Protestantism is sin, it does contradict not just Scripture, but perspicuous Scripture, that's a sufficient explanation why Protestantism is divided, we need not add "obscurity of Scripture" just to let them off the hook.
32:14 "we as Catholics always need to be assuming the best of our opponents"
As individuals, yes, in collective behaviours, no.
34:09 I have always thought it was clear that infant baptism is OK, since "so and so was baptised with all of his household" ...
The opposite view is not due to lack of clarity, but to overestimating God's agreement with one's own moral idealism ...
Or possibly to the idea that a command always applies in such a way that it only applies when involving all the factors as stated, whereas we know about levirate it could apply to others than actual siblings, from Ruth.
34:27 "the classical understanding of sola scriptura"
a) I thought the video was against "clarity of Scripture" - sure, in the context of "sola scriptura" but still
b) I - as a former Lutheran - do not agree the following is the "classical" understanding of it ...
"Protestant Reformers were saying, that you don't need an institution, like the Catholic Church"
Luther may have said that in some moment of rhetoric exaggeration. Lutheranism classically could be described as:
- you usually need an authentic magisterium
- but the magisterium, unlike the Bible, is not infallible
- so, you trust the magisterium as authentic which was providentially chosen for you by your King (or other legal authority).
And when Kings chose to support Reformation, the Reformers were certainly imagining their own commentaries were a useful "ordinary means" to arrive at a good understanding of Scripture.
38:57 Obviously, United Methodists have given up on being Christians. Dito for CoE. And for CoS, which I left.
39:45 Shooting an arrow and drawing the target around it is indeed characteristic of a specifically Protestant way of understanding perspicuity.
It's a product of Protestant disunion and ecumenism. The Calvinist refuses to condemn the Lutheran and the Zwinglian, the Lutheran to condemn the Calvinist, and so on and so forth.
If they disagree on Real Presence, to them that buy into it, it must be because the exact doctrine of the Eucharist is an obscure and therefore not necessary for salvation point.
Well, it seems it is very clear (John 6, Lizzie Reezay made a video about the exact meaning of "trogon"), and very necessary for salvation (John 6, I Cor. 11).
And as a Catholic I can afford to say that, and therefore I can say Catholicism saved my childhood faith in perspicuity of Scripture.
42:26 Very important point.
Scripture needs to be read within the hermeneutic of the Church herself.
There are various ways to make sure of that and some have been legally, that is canonically binding, but the fact that asking a bishop (back when your local Catholic bishop actually was Catholic) if you could publish a book is such a strategy, doesn't make this strategy the basic requirement of Catholic hermeneutics.
If you actually agree with both all infallible teaching and with all Church Fathers on a topic, this in and of itself is sufficient to make your interpretation Catholic. And it can often enough be reached by the Scripture itself being perspicuous.
This is not a recommendation to bypass tradition when you have access to it - in order to do that, you would have to actually twist some Scripture in ways that are perspicuously unwarranted.
43:11 For my part, Casey would have been even better off stating "these passages clearly do teach the existence, nature and necessity of the Catholic tradition, so Protestantism is false" ...
Example. Christ taught Christological exegesis of the OT to the Apostles during the 40 days after Resurrection, starting with the disciples of Emmaus. It encompasses all of the OT.
But the NT does not include a Christological exegesis of all of the OT, just some prophecies. Therefore part of Christ's teaching is not in the written 27 books of the NT.
However, it is promised that His words cannot be lost and most especially not His teachings to the Apostles. Ergo : something apart from the NT survives to Doomsday as teaching of Christ, namely the traditions that in the Apostolic age were oral, were not written down in the books that became canonical.
45:20 II Peter 3:16 is indeed arguing for limited obscurity of certain passages.
Absolutely not for Scripture as a whole.
Too bad for the Protestants they think St. Paul is the clearest, when Scripture explicitly says otherwise.
45:43 Note, the people who are either not using ordinary means to get instruction, or are positively unstable, are not just twisting obscure passages, but even clear ones.
Deuteronomy 18:11 is very clear against the Ouija board, and it is a tragedy that some have been able to find it also an obscure condemnation of invoking saints.
They are unstable and twist even passages that are not obscure.
46:33 Given St. Peter was arguably in Rome, it's pretty clear that Romans may involve passages more difficult than Ephesians ...
46:44 Galatians, Ephesians or Romans?
Galatians very perspicuously is talking of the Mosaic law as not justifying, i e circumcision and by extension kashrut.
Ephesians? Have you even watched Protestants argue "faith alone" from Ephesians?
Does it not strike you as very bad faith to cite:
8 For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; 9 Not of works, that no man may glory.
and then to omit the immediate continuation:
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.
I'm reminded of Protestants and Orthodox who cite Matthew 16 from 17 to 18 and then say "but the rock is Jesus, you see!" and than fail to continue to verse 19 and watch who's given the keys ....
Though, Bishop Witham thought that St. Peter referred to Hebrews ...
48:01 For Pauline epistles, especially Romans, you have a point.
For Scripture generally, not so much.
For Pauline epistles, St. Peter himself said in which are certain things hard to be understood,
then we get a comment on that which the unlearned and unstable wrest, ... to their own destruction.
which includes the further comment as they do also the other scriptures,
For "the other scriptures" he was not saying that same thing.
Only that they are treated the same by the unlearned and unstable.
51:13 It may be mentioned that the councils decided because Scripture was clear. Once a sufficient number of bishops in sufficient state of grace (none of them even material schismatics) had sifted a sufficient number of passages with the ordinary means available to them.
When the Catechism of Trent explains "traditiones non scriptas" the examples are pretty banale, like sign of the cross or fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays or hallowing Sundays.
A tradition cannot be considered totally "non scripta" if the tradition is like the exegetic tradition of Scripture.
51:30 Since early 90's these other offices have been providing darkness on certain matters.
It was only in 1990 that "John Paul II" became formal schismatic by from then on being opposed to Pope Michael.
A Sirian could say it was only in 1989 that "John Paul II" lost the prayers of the secret pope Cardinal Siri ... which were restraining him.
52:11 I think a Church Father exposed it like this:
- usually one is bound to baptise "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost"
- but the Apostles had a special privilege, so they, but no one else could baptise "in the name of Jesus"
It is pretty obvious for any text exegesis to contact whoever is heir of whoever said sth and hear what it meant, if one thinks it available, and hear what they have to say - unless one has a valid suspicion they changed their mind (like Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith obviously did on Genesis 1 to 11 from 90's).
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