Textual Shoulder Rub | Roman or Catholic?

Textual Shoulder Rub

Written by Douglas Wilson

Monday, 06 March 2006 09:16

Some people have trouble understanding what actually happened at the Second Council of Nicea, a key point in church history, at which time a new ecclesiastical office was created. It became apparent to our fathers in the faith that Deuteronomy 5:8-10 was far too tight, and rather than try to correct the problem in the previous and ineffectual fashion, it was decided to create the new office of ecclesiastical masseuse, and fix the difficulty with a shoulder and neck rub.

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Last Updated on Monday, 06 March 2006 09:16

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Frank Turk

Tuesday, March 07, 2006 8:22 am

As you can imagine, I nearly spit out my Popeye's chicken when I read your quip here, Pastor Wilson. Hillarious as usual.

The question that comes to my baptist/controversialist mind is how we can make this kind of criticism of 2Nicea -- which is to say, the fellows in charge of the convent have started making dates for the sisters when they should have been adding a better lock to the door -- which recognizes the fallen humanity of the men in the heirarchy, but we ought not (if I understand your position on the TR) to recognize the same kind of problems (the problem of human fallenness) in the family of text they provided to our brothers of the 16th century.

I was reading another blog on Bible ontology today, so I am stuck in a rut. Sorry to disrupt your blog.

Douglas Wilson

Tuesday, March 07, 2006 9:51 am

Now Frank, when you say "TR" do you mean truly reformed, textus receptus, or Trinity Reformed?

Seriously though, your question is a good one, but it doesn't just apply to manuscripts -- it also applies to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and which books are to be considered canonical. To assert that church councils can and do err is not to say that they get it wrong all the time. And in this case, one of the places that the Westminster Confession gets it right is by making the textus receptus a confessional issue.

Frank Turk

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:35 am

I have to say that your server just gave me editorial advice, and having an automated message tell me to "make it punchier" ... I'm deflated.

Frank Turk

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:37 am

I have two concerns about your reply, Pastor Wilson:

(1) I think you conflate of all actions of the church into the same category -- like calling all "clothing" "shoes". Certainly all shoes are clothes, but for example the shirt I am wearing today is not a pair of shoes. Even if I wrap it around my feet.

What I mean by this is that the historical action of the church to perserve a family of manuscripts was, as I understand it, a clerical job which received some local-level (and perhaps some regional) institutional attention. Certainly every guy who could produce a pen was not allowed to copy in a scriptorum, but at the same time the preservation of the Byzantine family was not really any more or less problematic than the preservation of the Alexandrian family -- both families plainly have transmission problems. In that, to say one is more problematic than the other because historical and geopolitical circumstances (can you say that about events in the first millenium?) caused one to "dry up" rather than continue classes non-dogmatic events in the same category as dogmatic events like Nicea or Orange or what-have-you.

I had some dialogs with Theo Letis before his untimely death on this subject (he thought I was a rough youth), and I am probably still working through this -- though I admit to be an accolyte of the James White school of textual transmission. May God have mercy on me.

Frank Turk

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:40 am

(2) I think you mistake what the councils did with the canon. I don't think they ghost-wrote and edited Scripture, did they? They received Scripture -- like Zondervan receiving a book from Rick Warren. The book is not in the purpose-driven franchise because it's published by Zondervan: it's in the franchise because Warren wrote it.

While some have made this mistake, let's not confuse Rick Warren with God. I'm just underscoring the point of how the canon comes into being.

Frank Turk

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:42 am

btw, in reviewing my e-mails, Dr. Letis preferred "Ted", so my typo. Let's not speak ill of the dead.

Kathryn Morkunas

Thursday, March 09, 2006 9:28 am

"Hold fast that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all."
St. Vincent of Lerins

Perfect timing, Mr. Wilson!! This council is celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as "The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy" each year on the first Sunday of Great Lent.

Let us remember the council precisely.
It was determined that "As the sacred and life-giving cross is everywhere set up as a symbol, so also should the images of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the holy angels, as well as those of the saints and other pious and holy men be embodied in the manufacture of sacred vessels, tapestries, vestments, etc., and exhibited on the walls of churches, in the homes, and in all conspicuous places, by the roadside and everywhere, to be revered by all who might see them. For the more they are contemplated, the more they move to fervent memory of their prototypes. Therefore, it is proper to accord to them a fervent and reverent adoration, not, however, the veritable worship which, according to our faith, belongs to the Divine Being alone — for the honor accorded to the image passes over to its prototype, and whoever adores the image adores in it the reality of what is there represented."

AND

"Believing in one God, to be celebrated in Trinity, we salute the honourable images ! Those who do not so hold, let them be anathema.