A complete canon of the New Testament did not exist from the beginning of Christianity - this is a falsification of history. The canon was fixed by the Catholic Church councils of the late fourth century, most importantly the Council of Carthage in 393. To deny that it is of any import that the Church defined which books were authentic and truly inspired by the Holy Ghost, to the exclusion of scrurrilous writings and even the inclusion of disputed works (St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, etc), is disingenuous. The Church is the author of the New Testament; therefore, it is held that she is the only true interpreter, ever remaining in consonance with the teaching of the Apostles.
Frankly, on most of the issues that divide us, the Bible is quite clear and you're forced to rely on out-of-context quotations and on placing tradition over the Scriptures.
Sacred Tradition and Holy Scripture are the two fonts of Revelation - I don't have to place one over the other, as they are in perfect harmony. As for Scripture being "quite clear" and Catholics resorting to strained means of interpretation, let's take for an example a passage pertinent to the original thread:
"Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you" (St. John vi.54)
By this, the Church teaches that sanctifying grace ("life") is giving through consuming the Holy Eucharist (Christ's "flesh" and "blood"). By what means does a Protestant such as yourself interpret this passage? In a clear manner without imputing metaphorical language on Christ's part?
Granted, there are a number of places where the Scriptures are obscure enough that honest theologians will doubtless disagree until Christ returns to explain them personally.
Christ sent his Apostles to "teach all nations" with the condition that "he that believeth not shall be condemned." If we had not the means to know what to "believe," i.e. what truths of the Faith require our assent for salvation, then He would have not made such a statement. The Church, the "pillar and the ground of truth," teaches these articles of faith as dogmas, which could be considered as the "true interpretation of Scripture."
Christ (not Peter) being the Rock, etc., the passages involved are extremely plain in their meaning...
"And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (St. Matthew xvi.18).
Yes, the passage is plain: Peter is the rock upon which Christ will build His Church. Why did Christ change Simon's name to Peter, which means "rock"? How would the sentence read in the language Christ spoke at the time, Aramaic? Consider also:
"Beyond the grammatical evidence, the structure of the narrative does not allow for a downplaying of Peter’s role in the Church. Look at the way Matthew xvi.15-19 is structured. After Peter gives a confession about the identity of Jesus, the Lord does the same in return for Peter. Jesus does not say, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are an insignificant pebble and on this rock I will build my Church...I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven." Jesus is giving Peter a three-fold blessing, including the gift of the keys to the kingdom, not undermining his authority. To say that Jesus is downplaying Peter flies in the face of the context. Jesus is installing Peter as a form of chief steward or prime minister under the King of Kings by giving him the keys to the kingdom. As can be seen in Isaiah xxii.22, kings in the Old Testament appointed a chief steward to serve under them in a position of great authority to rule over the inhabitants of the kingdom. Jesus quotes almost verbatim from this passage in Isaiah, and so it is clear what he has in mind. He is raising Peter up as a father figure to the household of faith (Is. xxii.21), to lead them and guide the flock (John xxi.15-17). This authority of the prime minister under the king was passed on from one man to another down through the ages by the giving of the keys, which were worn on the shoulder as a sign of authority. Likewise, the authority of Peter has been passed down for 2000 years by means of the papacy."
History bears out this truth also, as the earliest known writings of the Church Fathers attest to Peter being given supreme authority over the Church of God. From St. Chrysostom:
"He saith to him, 'Feed my sheep'. Why does He pass over the others and speak of the sheep to Peter? He was the chosen one of the Apostles, the mouth of the disciples, the head of the choir. For this reason Paul went up to see him rather than the others. And also to show him that he must have confidence now that his denial had been purged away. He entrusts him with the rule over the brethren...If anyone should say 'Why then was it James who received the See of Jerusalem?", I should reply that He made Peter the teacher not of that see but of the whole world."
To deny that Peter is the rock is to say that Christ misspoke, that the original language it was spoken in is grammatical unsound, that the context was meaningless, and that the earliest recorded Christians were deceived in attributing to Peter the supremacy of rule over the Church of God.
The goal is to continually grow in our understanding of the Scriptures...
You can grow in understanding of Scripture, but you must hold its teachings in the same sense as the Apostles or you will fall into error. The "doctrine of Christ," as St. John calls it, must be held in continuity, and those who revolt against it "have not God" (2 John 9).
...not to simply accept some other authority's word on the matter.
What an arrogant thing to say. Do you reject all authority, or just that which doesn't suit your fancy?
On the contrary, while there were some debates about a few of the books (e.g. Hebrews because of its annonymous author, 2 Peter because of its stylistic difference from the first, Revelation because of its strange content), one of the key attributes of all of the books that were ratified by the later councils is that they were in wide use already in the Church. Frankly, if we lost every copy of the NT, we could reconstruct the entire document (sans about six verses, IIRC) from the ECF's quotes, because they constantly appealed to that written Word, and not unwritten traditions, to support their theology.
Again, the canon is not an authoritative list of books, it's a list of authoritative books. The fact that the early Roman church (which was a far cry from what exists today) put together such a list no more gives you exclusive right to "interpret" them than the rabbis putting together the canon of the OT gives them the right to "reinterpret" the Messianic prophecies to exclude Jesus.
What's really disingenuous here is to claim that the RCC is "the Church" when it rejects the sola gracia so clearly taught by the prophets, the Apostles, and Christ Himself.
Sacred Tradition and Holy Scripture are the two fonts of Revelation - I don't have to place one over the other, as they are in perfect harmony.
No, they're not. Scripture claims that Christ paid the full price for our sins on the cross, and that He was crucified once and for all. Catholic tradition claims that we also have to either burn in purgatory or obtain (via purchase or otherwise) indulgences to pay for our own sins, and that Christ still relives the agony of the cross in the "bloodless" sacrifice of the Mass. Scripture claims that Christ alone is our mediator before God and that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth. The Catholic traditions say that we must also have a priest, the saints, the angels, and Mary to mediate between us and God, and that only the traditions can lead us into the truth of the Scriptures.
The claim that there is perfect harmony between Scripture and Tradition is disingenous--if there was, Catholics wouldn't be so threatened by sola scriptura, since they would be able to prove all their beliefs by the Scriptures apart from Tradition.
By what means does a Protestant such as yourself interpret this passage?
Did Christ not often speak in parables and symbols? To resume my earlier flippancy, when Christ said He was the Vine, does that mean He was green and leafy? When He said that He was the door of the sheepfold, does that mean that He is made of wood and has hinges? Clearly, Christ often used metaphors to describe Himself!
In all cases, the unclear must be interpreted by the clear. John himself clearly states that "all who believe in [Christ] shall not perish, but have eternal life" (3:16). Clearly, it is belief that is key, and the ritual of "eating" Christ is an outward reflection of that--as I've said several times on this thread, the key is to partake of Christ as we would of our daily bread.
Furthermore, Christ also said in Jn. 6 that those who ate of His flesh would never hunger, and those who drank of His blood would never thirst. Now if the flesh and blood are literal, then I defy you to go a year without eating or drinking anything. If on the other hand, Christ was speaking of spiritual hunger and thirst, just as He earlier had been speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, then the "transubstantiation" of the bread and wine must be spiritual rather than physical as well.
Likewise, Christ Himself when instituting the Lord's Supper said, "Do this in rememberance of Me," thus clearly making the act a memorial, as indeed Passover was a memorial of both Israel's rescue from Egypt and the sacrifice of the Lamb of God which rescued us from our sins.
Is Christ truly present in the Lord's Supper? Absolutely. But is it the priest that causes Him to be present, as the RCC declares? Absolutely not. Christ said that where two or more are gathered together in His name, He is truly there among them; therefore, the only condition for Communion is that we be gathered together with our brothers and sisters in Christ and partake of the Supper in His name, and we have truly partaken of the body and blood of Christ which He gave up for us on the cross.
Christ sent his Apostles to "teach all nations" with the condition that "he that believeth not shall be condemned."
Go back and reread Jn. 3:16. The key is to believe in--and the Greek means to put your trust in, not simply to make a mental acknowledgement of--Jesus Christ. Having a fully correct theology is not the issue, though having a fully correct theology will help you in the process of sanctification (another issue entirely). Having a personal covenant relationship with the Lord, which He made available to all with the shedding of His blood, is.
To refer to my earlier post, did God rescue Israel from Egypt before or after they had received and properly understood His Torah?
Yes, the passage is plain: Peter is the rock upon which Christ will build His Church.
Except for two things. First, Christ used two different words for "rock"--petros and petra--indicating that two different rocks were in view: Peter as the "piece of rock," and Himself as the great rock on which the Church was founded. Peter, as Paul later pointed out (Galatians, I think), did not die for us to make us his Church; Christ did.
Secondly, get an exhaustive concordance and go through the whole of the Scripture. Who is repeatedly throughout the whole referred to as the Rock of our salvation? It isn't Peter.
How would the sentence read in the language Christ spoke at the time, Aramaic?
Do you have an original Aramaic copy of the Matthew on hand? No? Then you are merely making assumptions based on your pre-existing viewpoint, not learning from the Scripture what it has to say. Perhaps Christ said "little Cephas" and "big Cephas" respectively, and Matthew rendered those into "petros" and "petra" in the Greek. Perhaps He used the same word but pointed to Himself when He said, "On this Rock I will establish My Church." Heck, Greek was in such common use in those days, the Lord could have easily interjected the Greek words into His Aramaic presentation the same way we might pepper our sentences with Latin! For whatever reason, the Greek makes a clear distinction, and citing a non-existant Aramaic translation is clear evidence that you have to really stretch to get the RCC interpretation.
In any case, even if Peter was appointed the chief of the Apostles (certainly, he often served in a leadership role), and even if he did pass that on to his successors (which really isn't defensible, even by Acts 1), I don't think you can maintain that an office that was repeatedly bought or taken by the sword counts as an "unbroken line of apostolic succession." Either Biblically or historically, the Roman claim fails.
. . . and that the earliest recorded Christians were deceived in attributing to Peter the supremacy of rule over the Church of God.
As I pointed out earlier, not all of them did. Origen for one rejected Peter's supremacy. For that matter, both the Bible (Acts 15, where James gets the last word and is the one to render judgment) and Josephus confirm that it was James the brother of Jesus, not Peter, who was head of the Church in Jerusalem, its original headquarters. Peter was busy being a missionary; he didn't have the time or the inclination to rule from his supposed throne.
You can grow in understanding of Scripture, but you must hold its teachings in the same sense as the Apostles or you will fall into error. The "doctrine of Christ," as St. John calls it, must be held in continuity, and those who revolt against it "have not God" (2 John 9).
I agree completely. That's why I reject the RCC's claims.
What an arrogant thing to say. Do you reject all authority, or just that which doesn't suit your fancy?
I've explained this nine different ways: I reject all authority which presumes to put itself over, rather than under, the Scriptures, and I reject all teachings that in letter or in Spirit contradict the Bible.
"Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you" (St. John vi.54)
By this, the Church teaches that sanctifying grace ("life") is giving through consuming the Holy Eucharist (Christ's "flesh" and "blood"). By what means does a Protestant such as yourself interpret this passage? In a clear manner WITHOUT IMPUTING METAPHORICAL LANGUAGE ON CHRIST'S PART?" (emphasis mine)
Since when is metaphor forbidden? It's one of Jesus' favorite tools! Or I suppose when Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be "born again", he literally meant it. Nic didn't get it either- so Jesus had to explain that it was a metaphor for a total spiritual renewal. Or how about when Jesus said that if our eye makes us sin, we should "pluck it out". Was he advocating self-mutilation? Hardly! Once again, a metaphor for an INNER, SPIRITUAL change. Likewise, the command to eat His body and drink His blood was a metaphor for a deep, spiritual belief in Him (see John 6:35 "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst") So, it's not the physical acts of eating and drinking that are important, but the spiritual act of belief that is important. The words of institution at the Last Supper were a beautiful tie-in to this metaphor. Yes, we are commanded to do the physical acts of eating and drinking, but as a REMEMBRANCE of Him, and an outward symbol of our inner, saving belief.
Without imputing metaphorical language and in a strictly literal sense, I would choose to reject such a belief and acceed to obedience to the words of YHWH my Creator that we not eat blood, nor do we eat flesh of man.
However, since I do see it as metaphorical, I can see Yeshua and how he continues to make reference to himself and reveal himself in terms of the Passover and feast days. Passover is a "remembrance", so when he says "Do this in remembrance", he is further showing his link to the observance of the Passover. He also links this to the eating of the flesh of the lamb of the Passover meal and the tradition of drinking wine(blood of the vine) signifying the blood of the covenant.
B'rakhot