>If the Church was unjustly captive to culture for 1900 years and only
>realized this after being prompted by post-Christian modern culture,
>then the Church does not transcend culture and the
>Kulturprotestantismus of the 19thc was correct and historic Catholic
>claims about the nature of the Church were incorrect all these
>centuries. This may indeed be true, but then one has become a
>Protestant.
One need not be a protestant to believe that the church is an institution
bound to history and its vagaries. It is indeed a matter of faith over
which the pope reigns that the church transcends history but I don't think
that is a question that need concern a scholar. From that mundane point of
view, the sources do not support the argument.
In the Pauline and deutero-Pauline letters (which are earlier than the
Gospels) there are not ordained priests in evidence and sacraments as we
understand them are only present in the interpretation of the believer. The
clergy include apostles (both male and female). In case Junia is not
acceptable, I would further point out that what Jesus chose twelve men to do
was go forth with the news and he also chose Mary Magdalene and the
Samaritan woman for the same task. But Junia is acceptable by every
objective standard. Then there are deacons (both male and female) and
presbyters (both male and female). Finally there are widows (an ambiguous
category, I admit) who are exclusively female and bishops who are
exclusively male (and must be married). The condition that they be the
husbands of one wife fits in with the official practices of the Roman Empire
and (I think) contemporary Judaism.
The harsh fact is that the development of the clergy as a sacramental body
and the development or ordination took place somewhere in the obscure
century or so between the New Testament authors and the Apostolic
Constitutions, etc. We just don't know what arguments may have occurred
except for the snippets already cited in the Apocrypha) and we don't know
what the variations among various churches may have been.
Catholics (and other folk) are naturally welcome to believe anything they
want to about what may or may not have happened or what the scripture means
in its deeper interpretations, and so forth. But this is religious truth,
not historical evidence.
Jo Ann
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