We may have some scrutiny coming our way!
This guy is an influential Roman Catholic apologist. In this video he uses Luther’s defense of polygyny as a method to discredit Protestantism and sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible alone is the source for faith and morals.
The claim obviously being that since you can’t forbid polygyny through the Bible you must have an additional authority to do so. For this guy’s purposes that authority is the pope.
This attack is likely to increase. It’s an effective one for Rome’s claims. Obviously we have the right answer but most Protestants don’t and won’t be able to accept the answer when presented with it.
The video itself isn’t about polygyny, it’s just an aside referenced twice, but it is going to come up more and more.
There is no scrutiny. We is just against sola scripture and therefore uses polygyny as argument against sola scriptura.
First, guy doesn't know history. Good example is Paraguayan War/War of Triple alliance. Basic ides is that Paraguay thought they are next Prussia and started war against Uruguay, Argentina and Brasil. Well, what do you think happens when you attack all regional superpowers whose core territories you can't touch?
Paraguay lost 25-40% of territory, at least 50% of total population and 90% of males. So Catholic Church (in this case, mostly Jesuits) has decided to allow polygyny for one generation to restore population. By the way, heard story that US president saved Paraguay from total extiction (as people and state).
So his argument is wrong since there exist at least situation where Catholic Church is OK with polygyny.
en.wikipedia.org
Now, to the meat. There are two issues this guy mentions.* First is extent of authority of deciding extent of authority of deciding what is scripture and second is theology dispute process. He is right that Protestant approach does result in fragmentation of church since both groups can decide another group is totally wrong and we won't have anything with them.
His solution is, we need authority who will decide. Now, I want to start with Hobbes and social contract and how utterly insane this idea is. Well, we all know people are corruptible and therefore should put corruptible people in authority over others. LOL
Now, past paragraph is generalization. Let's stick to topic. It's true that logical consistency is proof of truth**, but lack of logical consitency is enough to prove something is false.
He mentions Mormons and some other denomination which, according to him, aren't logically consistent and are much younger that Catholic Church.
Now his real problem is that he totally fails to consider contra arguments. So Mormons are like 2 centuries old and therefore full or errors. According to his logic, then Catholic Church must have even more errors.
Anyway, I would ask him how does Catholic Church keep itself error proof since any authority must be composed of humans and therefore keep making errors (error rate of "authority" is special topic for another day). How is cleansing working would be great question for him?
By the way, we know in business that significant changes in values must result in some people leaving (sometimes voluntary, sometimes firing). So, if cleansing process is working we should have significant groups of people leaving Church as proof of this. Or maybe, what Catholic Church truly prefers is unity over truth which implies even more accumulations of errors.
@MeganC is right that current pope is commie. So what is process for throwing out commies outside and purge their doctrines? By the way, communism is materialistic philosophy which denies existence of anything non-material, ie...nothing spiritual doesn't exist which implies no god exists. Religious leader who actually doesn't believe any God exist. What a contradiction.
Since pope is commie this implies total failure of Catholic Church to keep itself accurate in doctrine and therefore "Church authority" according to his criteria is suspect. I say his criteria, because authority in charge of theological questions must be accurate as much as possible, otherwise establishing authority doesn't make sense.
Now back to polygyny. It's possible to use polygyny to prove Catholic Church isn't logically consistent. I'm certain some here will be able to prove that according to Church fathers monogamy is Roman custom. So how can national custom result in thelogical doctrines? I have new one. Everybody must wear shorts all the time including in polar regions because Christianity was created in sunny desert areas.
And let's not get started that polygyny was forbidden first 5 centuries (Roman Empire), then 5 centuries OK, then forbidden again (in 11th century). Or forbidding marriage for priests. So how can "Church authority" be correct, if they, according to them, are wrong for centuries.
How is error correction process working for Catholic Church?
And by the way, 2000 years of existence of Catholic Church doesn't per se prove they are favoured by Lord, only that they are socially useful. For example, I can claim that marriage exist because parents investing very much in their children increasing success rate of their children. And look and behold, in modern times, with catastrophic fertility rate, marriage also looks bad.
Now, to the first. He is right that Bible mentions scripture and we have to prove scripture is Bible. Ok, makes sense. But he also says that any group/process establishing what is scripture must have same authority as scripture. This is my understanding, he does go in that direction.
I'm not buying it. I do feel something is wrong here, but I can't "see it" and prove it. My intuition uses analogy: I think Jesus is God, therefore I have same at least same authority as Jesus. WTF?
*There are more, but aren't relevant.
**Truth must be logical consitent, but it also must be more. For start, accurate desciption of reality
