The Roman Catholic Axiom can be defined in various ways. Here are a few:
Sola ecclesia: Roman Catholicism is the Church that Jesus founded on Peter and his successors. Because Rome is the True Church, every doctrine it teaches is therefore true.
Indeed, the very fact that a doctrine has been at any time held universally with the sanction of the Church, is of itself a proof, not only that such doctrine is infallibly true, but also in full accord with Apostolic teaching. Since, otherwise, the promise of Christ would be found to have failed, and the gates of hell be shown to have prevailed against His Church.
The tiring Protestant rhetoric of pointing to early Church Fathers who erred by denying points that were later dogmatized by the Church is refuted by St. Augustine writing against the Donatists:
“But if they really had baptism, and this was not rightly perceived by those who thought that they should be baptized again, that error was covered by the charity of unity so long as it contained.”
— Augustine On Baptism, 5, 2.
The recent explicates the older.
When looking at doctrinal development, it behooves us to look at the former through the lens of what it developed into later.
All of these formulations point to the authority of the Roman Catholic church to claim that what it teaches now is correct, apostolic, and testified to by the apostles in unbroken succession backwards through time, either by written or spoken word, with the latter doing most of the heavy lifting.
I have found it impossible to ground my Christian faith on historical claims about things that happened or got written many hundreds of years ago – with an expectation that our fundamental beliefs ought to be dictated by “the historical evidence”.
Such a faith devolves to scholarly (or pseudo scholarly) wrangling about what did or did not happen then; and what that implies for now.
The same applies to a faith grounded in Scripture, with Scripture seen as primary – in practice this degenerates into wrangling over historical and linguistic assertions about textual sources, corruptions, transmission, translation, cultural context etc etc.
With Christianity defined in the supposedly evidential and backward looking fashion, it seems nigh impossible to have a solid and committed faith – so multi-stepped and extended are the necessary chains of judgment and interpretation.
What results is terribly complex, hence terribly insecure.
It seems evident to me that our personal faith must be rooted in what we can know, grasp, comprehend for ourselves and directly (by spiritual knowledge, not by verbal and written language, not by institutional transmission).
Catholic/ Protestant debates seem like superficial quibbles when the significant problems* with both are identical and fundamental.
These include – the question of “how do we know?” as discussed jus now.
As well as the problems resulting from the shared Catholic/ Protestant dogmas of omni-God, creation ex nihilo, and monotheism – with the consequent elimination of any coherent (including clear and simple) explanations for the reality of evil and a basis for Man’s freedom.
It seems evident to me that our personal faith must be rooted in what we can know, grasp, comprehend for ourselves and directly (by spiritual knowledge, not by verbal and written language, not by institutional transmission).
Yeah! i largely agree with this.
i mostly knew what JESUS said(& did) through films like ITC’S ’77’s JESUS of Nazareth in the ’80s, as my loving extended ”family” was allowed to run wild over thinking about inheritance(even though my grand parents were only in their 60s/early 70s at the time)& how i was the BIGGEST & GREATEST impediment to them getting their ”fair share” as well as to them being allowed to run wild as even back then i was very Godzilla/Gojiraish over my Japan-like ancestral homeland(that i actually lived & worked on unlike most of my extended ”family” of fiat money lusting & womanly bums & outlaws-the gina & butt-centric gamey and womanly, complaint-heavy ”redpill” bums & outlaws of the faux-masculine ”manosphere” remind me of that scum of decade’s past).