The Recalcitrant Romanist

From time to time I take a look at what passes for Christian Apologetics on Instagram.  Recently, I ran across a gentleman who is a lay Catholic Apologists who asserts that the Holy Spirit will keep the Church (i.e. Rome) from teaching error. 

By way of reply: 

That’s not at all true.  Rome teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin, & they underwrite this belief by way of Natural Theology insofar as they interpret “natural” in Romans 1:18 - 32 to mean “heteronormative” or is equivalent —— but that’s not at all what the word means & is, in fact, its polar opposite. 


Romans 1:20 very clearly states that the purpose of the created order is to testify to God’s existence, attributes, & authority.  Chapter 1 goes on to teach that people fell (and still fall) into idolatry in which they pursue idols crafted in their own image & other images within the created order by way of supplanting God’s image with the human image then reasoning accordingly. 


They drew (draw) their worship & sexual ethics from their own image & then behaved accordingly.   In other words, they authorized their own image and that of others & then proceeded to believe & behave accordingly. 


How did they reason?  They reasoned out of the created order & used their own image & authority.    


If it’s true that “natural” means “heteronormative,” then that means that God has baptized the use of the human image (which is part of the created order) & for use as a sufficient epistemic warrant for sexual ethics — which results in 3 to 5 logical, epistemic, & exegetical fallacies : Is-Ought, Vicious (not Virtuous) Circularity, Overspecification, Special Pleading, & Category Error. 


Rome’s reasoning (& that if Protestants & others) on the this issue teaches 4 errors: 


(1) Via their rule of faith, Rome authorizes their own image as the supreme earthly arbiter of Christian faith & practice & demands its people & others to behave accordingly.  The Bible, in Romans 1, forbids people, both individually & corporately,  from authorizing their own image(s) &/or others as a sufficient epistemic warrant for faith & practice, yet Rome warrants its faith & practice through (a) itself & (b) a species of Natural Theology.


(2) Rome teaches others to warrant their sexual ethics the same way, (a) by looking to Rome itself both generally & particularly & (b) by authorizing the human image (specifically human anatomy & physiology) for our sexual ethics. 


(3) Rome teaches itself to separate faith & practice relative to worship & sexual ethics & (4) teaches others to do the same. On the one hand, God is an absolutely non-material being with no sexual attributes (sex/gender, sexual orientation/preference)  & our worship ethics ought to conform to that, yet on the other, God intends for us to draw abstract moral principles from human anatomy & physiology.  


By way of contrast, Romans 1 teaches that worship ethics & sexual ethics are bound together.   If the human body is a sufficient warrant for our our theology of human sexuality & the ethics thereof, then the human body is also a sufficient epistemic warrant for our theology of God. On that view, it’s possible that God has an incorporeal or corporeal body, & that’s just plain not true at all. 


Ergo, God clearly allows Rome (and other Christian communions) to teach error as dogma from time to time.  



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