Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
That would be a pretty fair analysis. With one addition, if I may. MANY (not all) Protestants have a disdain for tradition and give it very little, if any, authority. One is free to deviate from past "revelations" of the Spirit. Thus, the Spirit is no longer the Spirit of Truth, but the "Spirit of what's good for today". I realize that not all Protestants are this way... However, one merely needs to look at the difference between moral teachings from Catholicism and Protestantism to see the effects of not respecting the Spirit's movement within the Church of the past.
I would say that doesn't matter since the Church has, in the past, misinterpreted scripture.
What do you mean by "the Church"? Are you speaking of a previously-held dogma of faith or a particular man expressing his opinion - but one that was not accepted by the community at large?
For example the Orthodox Church has formulated policies and have come to different conclusions based upon the scriptures such as the authority of the Pope or the Nicene Creed. Who's right?
We agree on the Nicean Creed. The WORDS are not infallible (in that THEY can NEVER change), but the idea behind the Creed. We both believe in ONE divine principle. "And the Son" COULD be taken to imply a second one, which we CLEARLY do NOT believe - so this is a matter of misunderstanding. The authority of the Pope, I think, the Orthodox agree in principle on his position within the Church. Recall, they were not present at Vatican 1, so they didn't take part in that dogma expressed. But as the Creed, the WORDS are not infallible, but the idea. Catholics and Orthodox will eventually come to a common understanding of his position WITHOUT compromising Vatican 1's intentions.
The issue on indulgences was over ABUSE, not over the Church's ability to bind people by them. We are human, and abuse will take place in all institutions that have men in them. Are we to also get rid of human sexuality, because people abuse sex?
Regards
Who are you to take away God's Freedom to designate men to provide visible manifestations of God's graces among us? Can you show one verse that PREVENTS God from dealing with men in such a way? I suggest you read the Matthew version of this story - the JEWS THEMSELVES recognized with awe that God had given men the power to forgive sins! Did God or did He NOT give men the power to forgive sins in John 20? Only twisting the Scripture out of recognition will bring you to falsely think that God is "not allowed" to deal with men in such a manner.
And secondly, of course, God STILL DOES forgive sins...The priest is "in the person of Christ". The priest visibly represents the voice of Christ. Catholics KNOW they have been forgiven of sin. Protestants always wonder "did my sinner's prayer take? If I start to fall away, I might never had been saved (healed) to begin with!"
Regards
No, the lense called "Catholic" was created by the Messiah and given to Apostles. The Apostles then are "giving" this lense through the use of oral and written teachings.
As to divorce, our vision is still the same given by Christ.
Regards
As you have labored to tell me, man will eventually corrupt such teachings. Look at Protestantism :-) With this concept in mind, WHY on earth would God NOT CONTINUE to guide men so they wouldn't screw up??? Do you really think the Bible is so clear that anyone can pick it up and come to the same conclusion. We got two people who disagree on so much - apparently, the Bible is not so easy to discern ALONE...
Regards
Wrong! That is the Word of God! It is NOT a "tradition" as you say...
"And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree; his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt surely bury him the same day; for he that is hanged is accursed of God" Deut 21:22-23
According to the "Book", Jesus was a "failed Messiah". They expected someone who would save them, free them from slavery. They expected a righteous man, not one who worked on the sabbath, ate with sinners, and flaunted purification rituals. By all accounts of Torah, the Jews who held to the Scripture alone, Jesus was NOT the Messiah. The Scripture even says God condemned him. Look at this from a Jew's perspective and lense for a second...
See, the problem was something called "cognitive dissonance". That is when a conviction you have firmly held to is thrown into jeopardy by an experience that you have. The Apostles experienced the Risen LORD! But their world of Torah told them that Jesus COULDN'T be the Messiah! He hung from a tree! Thus, a whole new paradigm had to come into being, one that explained the Torah in a new light. The old wineskins would NOT do!
Brother, read the end of Luke's Gospel. HERE is where Jesus EXPLAINS THE SCRIPTURES!
"he {Jesus} said unto them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24:25-27
Thus, Jesus solves their cognitive dissonance by bringing about a new paradigm. Jesus does not deny their experience of His resurrection, nor does He deny that the OT was the Word of God. But now, He gives them a new manner of looking at the Scriptures. "Christ is hidden in the Old Testament". Like the Essenes, the first Christians looked to the Prophetic Books of the OT, seeing their community as the ongoing fulfillment of God's Word found in Scriptures. By receiving the fullness of revelation that God would give men, Christianity was able to explain the experience of the Risen Lord, AND to keep the OT Scriptures as point to Christ (but in a different way then the Jews would have thought to look).
I slavishly follow the book because it is of God, and I do not slavishly follow men.
You follow yourself, correct? Thus, you slavishly follow a man - not knowing whether God is guiding you or not.
And all this time you have been arguing that if a notion was commonly held, it must have been right. The popularity argument. I'm glad to see that you now allow for some popular views to have been wrong.
Do we or do we not agree that the Jews had incomplete revelation? That is no longer applicable to us. God has sent the Christ to lead us to all truth. Your argument won't apply anymore. The Spirit leads the Church.
Regards
I would like to point out, with all respect to Greg Bahnsen's protestations, that the idea of the inerrant autograph first formulated by Warfield, et al did not exist prior to the 19th c.
I would be interested if anyone can show pre-19th c. evidence of this concept that the autographs are inerrant, but that body of Scriptural text that we actually have received cannot be said to be so. I don't think that it existed anywhere in Protestantism or in any pre-Protestant Christianity.
Warfield, et al came up with this idea because of the pressures put on them by the weight of liberal Protestant textual criticism. This criticism had come to the conclusion in the 19th c. that the text of the New Testament as we had received it (i.e. as the Greek Orthodox had preserved it for two millenia) was hopelessly corrupt, and that only then, in the 19th c. did mankind have the tools to determine what the more original texts had to say.
The Westminster Divines retreated behind a position that was, they felt, impregnable. After all, this way they could both believe in Biblical inerrancy, as their Presbyterian faith required, and at the same time not be accused of ignorance by their liberal counterparts.
By claiming that only the original autographs are the "real" Bible, it would never be necessary to give up the idea of inerrancy, since we will never have a copy of the original autographs, and since such autographs can never be reconstructed using modern techniques of textual criticism.
To the extent that attempts have been made to "reconstruct the autographs," one is left with the inescapable conclusion that until the 19th century, the Bible was never faithfully copied, since modern critical editions reconstruct the text based on scores of widely-flung and divergent manuscripts. This doesn't say much for the preservation of Scripture by the Holy Spirit.
"It is not a matter of something being WRITTEN that gives it authority, but its ACCEPTANCE by the COMMUNITY at large."
This has quite a large element of truth. Those newly encountering Orthodoxy often find it curious that in practice, Orthodoxy almost places more reliance on the theology found in our liturgical texts than it does on the writings of the Fathers.
But when one understands that the history of the Church is the history of every generation of Orthodox Christians critically asking the question "is this the Apostolic faith?", then it shouldn't be surprising that our liturgical texts are considered to be so reliable theologically.
They have been "scrubbed," as it were, for two millenia, always asking of each new liturgical text that same question in the light of the entire body of Tradition -- beginning with Holy Scripture, which stands alone at the pinnacle of Holy Tradition as the most authoritative written source of Tradition. And of course, this process happens with the active guidance and grace of the Holy Spirit in the Church
On the other hand, the writings of any one given Father at one given point in time can only be considered authoritative in a qualified manner -- that is to say, they are authoritative insofar as they lie within the consensus patrum, and in and of themselves are only the opinion of one man, however revered he might be.
"The only copy of LXX that is positively corroborated with Dead Sea Scrolls (and disagree with Hebrew Masoretic Text) is the oldest version of LXX."
There is no way to prove what the oldest version of the LXX is, and I doubt that the comparisons done with the Dead Sea Scrolls were done only with one manuscript of the LXX. I furthermore find it interesting that anyone would seriously posit the idea that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the standard by which to judge the LXX. If so, then the LXX is seriously flawed, since there are many readings in the DSS that disagree with both the LXX and the Massoretic text. In any event I'd be interested in seeing your source for your information on which LXX manuscripts have been compared with the DSS.
"Whether such version exists on the Internet or not is a question, and I assume that you have a translation at home."
The comments in my post were made based not on any translation of the LXX, but rather on the Greek text and apparatus of Rahlf's critical edition of the LXX, which compiles and details the various known LXX manuscripts.
"If what you say is true, this is the first time that I hear that Brenton's is a "misleading" copy. Does this Orthodox Church make any statements to that effect?"
What I say is true. Brenton's is widely used in the English-speaking Orthodox world because it is the most readily available. I use it myself all the time, even though I never forget that there are probably many points at which it doesn't follow the Byzantine textual tradition.
As you know, the Orthodox Church is not given to making proclamations about Holy Scriptures. Our textual tradition of the Scriptures is first and foremost a liturgical one. Since only a few books of the Old Testament are used liturgically, the emphasis on the text of the OT is not nearly as strong as it is in the NT. Also, the state of Orthodox scholarship vis a vis the issues of modern textual criticism is not very advanced. That is not necessarily a bad thing, unless one has a predilection for being taken in by modern skeptical views of Scripture.
"Regardless, my point was from the beginning that various copies contain various statements, even different pararaphs, different lengths of the same books, and that the Bible is doctored and redacted, (mis)translated and altered and that there are no originals available to corroborate what is what."
A concern for the "originals" has never been particularly embraced by the Orthodox Church. The idea of the "original autograph" is a 19th c Protestant one. Orthodox copyists have certainly made efforts to identify poor copies of any piece of writing and to avoid copying them -- look at St. Paisius Velichkovsky's work with cleaning up the texts of the Philokalia. Part of why the major uncial codices are in such good condition in spite of their age is clearly because they weren't used or copied. Our Scriptures are the Scriptures we have passed down within our Church, not the Scriptures that someone's theories claim used to exist.
"Obviously, not one of these copies can make a claim that it is the one true copy and that everything in it is true, just as God wanted it."
No, and the Orthodox Church has never made such a claim. That is why you don't see me promoting the idea of absolute Biblical inerrancy, for all of my respect for our Calvinist friends on this thread. But, on the other hand, the general body of manuscripts handed down in the Orthodox Church, the "text-type," can and is certainly considered by Orthodox Christians to be authoritative and reliable, even though our use of these authoritative and reliable texts is based in the Orthodox spiritual tradition.
"The devil is in the details, Agrarian."
I know. That's why I took the time to write that fairly detailed post.
"Perhaps such little details as Michal's children (why would Melchol be something you need to mention -- Isaiah is not Isaiah in Hebrew) or lack thereof shows the all bibles are not the same, and do not convey the same information."
My mentioning the Greek spelling of Melchol vs Michol was merely to point out that in the reading of Codex Vaticanus that Brenton uses, the spelling of her name differs in this one verse that was being disputed -- to me this makes it suspicious that it is Codex Vaticanus that is the corrupt version, although I can't prove this.
"If one is going to believe everything in the Bible as God's truth than one must assume that the other copies do not meet that criteria because they say different things."
This is nonsense. It is perfectly possible for two divergent manuscripts of the Bible to have equally powerful spiritual effects. If one were to believe that, then one would have to believe that Christianity was without the full effect of the Scriptures prior to the printing press, when manuscripts all differed very slightly from each other, even within a textual tradition. You seem to be saying, in essence, that if the Scriptures are not 100% consistent from manuscript to manuscript, that we are obligated to take a stance of disbelief toward their historical accuracy. To me, that is a false choice, and a choice with no basis whatsoever in the exegetical traditions of the Fathers.
"LXX is the oldest copy of complete Five Books of Moses, Catholics accept it only partially, and Protestants have rejected in outright. So have the Jews. Yet, you are using LXX to show that Protestant's claims, based on Hebrew MT, prove LXX is right, and Jerome, who used partially the MT is wrong. Strange indeed."
I'm really not sure what your point is here. I agreed with you and jo kus that the MT (and thus the KJV and Vulgate) is self-contradictory on this question. It just so happened that the instincts of our Calvinist friends to find harmony in the Scripture rather than contradiction found them agreeing with the Byzantine LXX reading.
My own point, if I had one at all, was simply to correct your statement that the LXX was just as contradictory on this small and trivial point as are those versions based on the Hebrew. Since the reliability of Scripture was apparently depending on this critical point, I thought I should convey to the thread just what the Byzantine LXX tradition had to say about it.
All I did was to do what I always do. I worked from the assumption that the Bible is generally historically accurate and that the Byzantine textual tradition of OT and NT alike is the best one for an Orthodox Christian to examine. The rest was pretty easy. It takes a lot more energy to try to pick holes in the Scriptures than it does to accept them.
A broader point that I wanted to make was that skeptical attitudes toward the Scriptures, which superficially seem to be terribly advanced and intelligent (at least in modern unbelieving America), are just as likely to be based in ignorance as are fundamentalist approaches to Scripture. Which is why the simple peasant beliefs that have dominated the Orthodox Church for centuries haven't had such bad results.
"A broader point that I wanted to make was that skeptical attitudes toward the Scriptures, which superficially seem to be terribly advanced and intelligent (at least in modern unbelieving America), are just as likely to be based in ignorance as are fundamentalist approaches to Scripture. Which is why the simple peasant beliefs that have dominated the Orthodox Church for centuries haven't had such bad results."
Something I have always tried to remember is that my great-grandmother probably couldn't read, at least not much and I am sure she never heard of biblical exegesis, but her best friend was the Most Holy Theotokos...and the influence of her Orthodox faith shows itself daily in the lives of her her great great grandsons.
This is exactly what is being argued for Blessed Mary and John the Baptist, as well as Christ himself. Do not forget the children and the insane either.
I don't think those with diminished capacity (by age or condition) are exempt from the nature of their birth, but I do think they may not be held accountable for their nature in the same way we are.
Do Catholics believe that John the Baptist was sinless?
On the face of the former, they don't even need to be, as it is the pharisees say that only God can forgive sin. But even taking the word of the Pharisees as inspired in this instance, Christ (God) has placed the Holy Ghost (God) into the apostles and then empowered them to forgive sin. The only reason this is met with any mental resistance in the Protestant world is the extrascriptural anticlerical indoctrination.
I disagree. It is interesting that Jesus, starting with the very next verse in Mark, "Immediately" issues a correction to the Pharisees. However, the one point He does not correct at all is the one we are talking about. That speaks volumes to me.
I don't need any "extrascriptural anticlerical indoctrination" to be against the idea of God delegating away His sovereign powers. I'm just looking at the scriptures as they are. You are forced to completely re-write Mark 2:7 in order for it to conform to Catholicism. I object to the re-writing of scripture by men.
Absolutely, as John tells us.
We can assume that the essential teaching of Christ is expressed in the Gospel; the gnostic heresy that there is or was an essentially different hidden teaching was condemned by the keeper of the totality of the revelation, the Church.
And I do thank the Church for that service to mankind. :)
Nevertheless, that leaves the commentary and the clarifications to the recorded doctrine, and that Holy Tradition was committed to writing in a non-Canonical way as the patristic legacy, the hymnody and the iconography.
I think I understand what you are saying, although I wouldn't have before this thread. :) I think you mean that dogma is not possible because we just don't have the records to prove anything. Is that close?
I don't use any particular source; I use all of them. It was the discovery of the dead Sea Scrolls that "verified" many of the LXX deviations from the MT. I don't have the source handy, but it's the same one that carries Rahlf's.
Here are some facts about the Septuagint (LXX) that I have compiled:
a) the original does not exist
b) The oldest fragments (2nd c. BC) include Leviticus, deuteronomy and Minor Prophets
c) It is unknown how LXX came into existence; there is a legend about it being commissioned and that it was done in ecrod time; evidence shows it was more like two centuries.
d) there are numerous redactions, variations and copies, not all in concord with each other.
e) Oldest known copy of the OT (LXX) is Codex Sinaticus (4th c. AD)
f) the Orthodox Church does not differentiate between different versions g) Some sections are literal Greek (Ecclesiastes); others are periphrasic (Proverbs)
h) LXX Jeremiah is shorter by 1/8 than the MT; Job 1/6; Esther has 50% fewer verses the MT version
i) Exodus differs in many instances
j) Gen 4:7 is very different as compared to the MT
k) Syriac OT, based on Hebrew reatins the Michal/Michol/Melchol in Kings 2
l) There are over 2,000 typographical errors in various LXX copies
j) LXX agrees with DSS where the LXX differs from MT
k) LXX is quoted some 100 times in the New Testament; MT only six.
The Bible has been redacted, doctored, changed, shortened, re-worded, altered, falsified, mistranslated, etc. by men. We don't even agree as to what consitutes biblical canon; how can we even speak of "everything in the Bible?"
The Bible cannot be used as a reliable source of scientific knowledge. Placing trust in the Bible to explain the world's physical make-up would not cause one to know the world correctly. The Bible was not intended to be the encyclopedia of zoology, botany, astronomy, etc. but of spiritual revelation -- of morality, of our ancestral transgression, and of God's salvific work.
Those who mistook the Bible for an encyclopedia believed that the moon couldn't have craters, or that the heavens were the sky above (in fact in Slavonic the word for "sky" and "heaven" is one and the same); they believed the world to be flat; they believed the diseases are caused by demons; they believed lightening was God's anger, etc.
The Bible does not say the earth is round; it does not say lightening is what it is; it does not reveal anything we know of the world today. It reflects the knopwledge of the people who wrote it; not God's knowledge of the world. Most of its events cannot be corroborated; most of the people in it may or may not have existed. The Bible teaches what is good and what is evil, not how the world is. The "errors" of the Bible are human errors of; errors of mixing God's revelation with man's limited knowledge; using man's limited senses to conceive the Unlimited; using imperfect language to describe the Perfect. They are errors of transcribing, interpreting, memory loss, etc. What remains true in any version is God's spiritual message, His love and His glory. As I see it, it should be a source of spiritual wealth of God's word and used to edify us spiritually through it's message, not its "facts" about the world and history. Used for anything esle, it missess the mark.
Perhaps this is related, but I think this concept of humanism came about just before the Protestant Reformation - that man could figure out what God wanted written based on their own study. This "purifying" of the Scriptures was the driving force behind Luther's use of the Masoretic OT text - as he thought it to be closer to the original than the Vulgate. I wonder if he was aware that the Masoretic text is based on an oral tradition - of where the vowels go when translating ...
Regards
Another of those many flexible Catholic positions...
Regards
I don't think that your opinion or knowledge regarding the Church Fathers is the norm of modern Protestantism. Most haven't a clue about their writings and think that the Church started with Christ, and then, 1500 years later came Martin Luther. I have had door-to-door salesman come and try to sell me history books. I kid you not, these books COMPLETELY SKIP 1500 years of Christian history! One chapter is the Apostles, the next is Martin Luther. I asked about this missing history, and they displayed a frown and said "well, that's when the Cath-o-licks had gone and corrupted the Word. It took Dr. Luther to bring Christianity out of the Dark Ages..."That's disdain for tradition, not disagreement...
Certainly not the filique
As I said in my last post, we agree on the theological implications and meaning of this portion of the Creed. The wording is the point of contention, not our belief.
What, that the Pope is the final authority? I doubt it.
I think a study of the first millenium of Christianity will show that in matters of doctrine, he was the "deciding vote". I think most Orthodox would agree that in limited situations, God would speak through the Pope to clarify Christian doctrine. There are a number responding to your posts. Perhaps you should ask them. I think where the Orthodox would disagree would be over supremacy in ALL matters. While in theory, that is what Latins believe, it is rarely placed into practice. The bishop is the "pope" of his own diocese, and to a large degree, the pastor is the "pope" over his own church. Micromanagement is not an issue in the Church, for the most part - unless someone begins to teach non-Catholic things. The Pope speaks for the whole Church when some clown bishop begins to teach garbage to the faithful.
Regards
And what, FK, is Jesus correcting??? That HE is God and the Pharisees should already know that - thus had the power to forgive sins??? We are talking about Mark's Gospel - where NO ONE knows WHO Jesus is (except for the demons He casts out) until the centurion on the cross recognizes Him.
Jesus sets out to PROVE that God forgives sin through MAN BY healing the man first. Jesus was a man, fully. No one knew He was God at that point! Jesus is correcting their understanding that as a divine messenger exemplar, His deeds and teachings proved He was from God. Thus, being from God, He had the authority to even forgive sins - proven by the fact that God worked through Jesus to cure that man. Would God cure the paralytic through a man giving false teachings?
Perhaps you should consider the Matthew version of this story. Here is the pertinent verse for you:
"when the multitudes saw [it], they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men." Mat 9:8
See, WE know that Jesus is God. These people did not. Thus, when they witnessed Christ forgiving sins, and THEN curing the man of his physical maladies, the people understood that God was blessing Jesus' words and confirming them. Thus, their response in Mat 9. Thus, it was quite easy for them to understand that this power was passed onto the Apostles with John 20:23. The people regarded that this ministry of forgiving sins through men continued with the Apostles, as Paul says in 2 Cor 5.
And why wouldn't it? Christ came to heal men. Psycologically, what better way are we healed then to actually hear the words "I forgive you" from the person we have offended - Jesus Christ - through the voice of the priest? God doesn't just provide abstract healing...
Regards
I agree with most things in your two posts.
Where I disagree is that I don't think that Scripture was ever meant exactly to "fit," since while we believe God inspires and lives within the Church, he doesn't treat us like robots.
We believe that "all Scripture was given by inspiration of God," unless we think that St. Paul was mistaken or lying. We also believe that God has basically preserved the body of Scripture for us.
Why would he inspire, but not preserve? Since humans are the ones he is using to preserve, there will be variations and slight errors, but I find it hard to believe that the Church could the faith of Christ in its purity but not also basically keep intact the words of the Scriptures they reverenced.
Why would we reverence a Gospel book that is riddled with errors or lies? It is a verbal icon of Christ. Just as all icons of Christ in the Orthodox tradition are slightly different from each other, yet clearly show the same person, so also the Gospels. We don't paint icons that look like Martin Luther, label it an icon of Christ, and then tell people -- "go ahead and reverence it, it's the spiritual idea of Christ that you are reverencing."
Why would the verbal icon of Christ be any different? This is why I also disagree when you say, "...it should be a source of spiritual wealth of God's word and used to edify us spiritually through it's message, not its "facts" about the world and history."
Of course it is the spiritual message that is paramount, but a major part of the way that the Bible conveys those spiritual messages is by telling us the history of how God came to earth and became man, and what he did and said while he was here. It is also the history of how God worked in synergia with a people to produce the conditions of the "fullness of time" for the Annunciation to happen.
These are not "cunningly devised fables," to use the words of the Apostle. They are a record of God's "salvific work," as you correctly state the Scriptures are meant to be.
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