Posted on 06/10/2007 3:02:20 PM PDT by NYer
Many modern people have the notion that the principal mission of the Catholic Church is to impose belief on unbelievers. The reality is that most of its time is spent trying to restrain belief in everything from spoon-bending to the aliens who allegedly speak to us through a cat in Poughkeepsie.
The riptides and cross-currents of religious enthusiasm in American culture are kaleidoscopic and dizzying. Cradle Catholics can be forgiven for just ignoring the whole thing and many of them do. But it’s still worth taking into account because some religious trends can have decided real-world effects.
Some of the effects of unrestrained belief can be amusing.
For instance, after five centuries of being told by Protestant polemicists that we “Romanists” do not trust the saving grace of Jesus Christ and ignorantly seek salvation by the works of the law, it is a weird thing for a Catholic to see the spectacle of kooky apocalyptic Protestants eagerly excited about the birth of red heifers because this will (they hope) be the prelude to rebuilding the Temple of Solomon and the re-institution of the Mosaic sacrificial system. Just how that Temple will be rebuilt when the Dome of the Rock is situated on the site of the Temple is not quite as clearly worked out.
Which brings me to something just as kooky, but less amusing.
Recently, James Dobson, a leading Evangelical and a usually sensible man, hosted on his show one Joel Rosenberg, author of something called Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future. Rosenberg claims to know “what the Bible says” about what is happening in the Mideast and is not shy about making “predictions regarding the fate of the Middle East regarding issues such as Iran’s nuclear threats against Israel, the arms race and ultimately ... Armageddon.” Here’s a snippet:
Dobson: “Well, Joel, let’s explain to everybody how Ezekiel 38 turns out, because Israel is about to be attacked, and a huge number of troops from Russia and Iran are coming toward Israel to destroy it, and what happens?”
Rosenberg: “Well, God is going to move. You won’t find in the Scriptures that the United States is coming to rescue Israel or the European Union, but God says he is going to supernaturally intervene — we’re talking about fire from heaven, a massive earthquake, diseases spreading through the enemy forces. It is going to be such a clear judgment against the enemies of Israel that Ezekiel 39 says that it will take seven months to bury all the bodies of the slain enemies of Israel. “
Such standard-issue Evangelical prophetic cocksureness is an excellent example of why a magisterium is so useful and necessary.
Not only does the magisterium help us know what is essential to the faith, it also helps us remain free of what is unessential. For the various species of Protestantism, in addition to denying real biblical truths such as the Real Presence or infant baptism, also have a tendency to invent “biblical truths” that do not exist and impose them by means of a sort of cultural pressure via charismatic preachers with pet theories who, in their own sphere, are granted an infallibility the Pope could never dream of.
Now, a Catholic is quite free to have a kooky private reading of Ezekiel 38-39 as a prophecy of the “coming resurgent Soviet Union” and its alliance with Muslims, communist Chinese or whoever, all in a vast Cecil B. DeMille battle against Israel. The Church has all sorts of room for eccentrics, and everybody needs a hobby.
But a Catholic is not free to go around telling everybody that “this is the clear teaching of the Bible” and demand it be believed. For the fact is, this kooky theory is emphatically not the clear teaching of the Bible, nor does it have any sanction whatsoever from the Church, the tradition, the Fathers, the councils or the popes. It is a pure novelty we can and should ignore.
What we should not ignore is Rosenberg’s claim that, “Given the events going on in our world today, people at the Pentagon, people at the CIA, people at the White House are asking to sit down and talk about these issues, to understand the Biblical perspective, because it is uncanny what is happening out there and it deserves some study.”
I suspect that Rosenberg is exaggerating his clout with the big cheeses in DC. I doubt that the Pentagon’s intel meetings are dominated by exegeses of Ezekiel 38.
But I do think it matters if a significant portion of the American polity drinks in such bizarre theories as if they were God’s revealed Truth.
Ideas have consequences, especially crazy ones. Most crazy ideas do no harm.
Crazy ideas about the Middle East, backed by the force of arms, stand a better than average chance of killing millions.
MD, I salute you.
Like you, I respect everything that's good within Protestantism. But I have noticed that the hysterical, Jack-Chick-style anti-papism tends to come from the same people who are slavishly devoted to the apocalyptic stylings of Tim LaHaye, et. al.
Discussion was allowed. Argument was allowed. Then, BANG! Pius XII announced it infallibly and we were ordered to shut off our thinker and believe. No options!
When you are ordered to submit your will and intellect, and do so, of what use is your thinker?
I thought I addressed that in my analogy to geometry and calculus. Furthermore doctrine like that has ripples. So following them out will keep everyone happily occupied for a while.
I just read (okay, Skimmed) an article by Pannenberg (sp?) which went into some recent work on the Trinity. I wouldn't say defining that doctrine has stifled thought much. I personal am grateful for the bounds because I see the problems with Sabellianism and Arianism and all, and I find the interplay between the trinity and the Chalcedonian definition everlastingly beguiling.
I really don't have much trouble with Mary as a proleptic embodiment of all the gifts and promises "purchased for us" by the life death and resurrection (etc.) of our Lord, and working out how J2P2's "doctrine of the body" is related to it is surely somebody's doctoral thesis.
Plenty of thinking yet to do.
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Are you Catholic?
Is a hermanuetic beyond 2 Timothy 3 needed?
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
This passage requires that all scripture be read in harmony with all other scripture, since all scripture is God-breathed, none can be ignored. It assumes that scripture itself is known, as we today have the Bible, so then it was known what scripture he spoke of. It applies to “all God’s people” and equips them for “every good work.” All people, all work, all scripture . . . it’s very comprehensive. What is left out?
Not asking a trick question or coming at you with some tract or PhD study on this. Want your view.
Do you have ANY idea how much penance I'm going to have to do?
You know, whenever I tell, as I often do, one of our local stable of Dominicans, "THAT sermon was nothing but net, and from outside the three point line, too!" (or words to that effect) they always reply (before they laugh), "Praise God."
Is that great or what?
Laudamus ergo Dominum cum laude et jubilatione! Quia ores fatuitatum implevit verbis bonis!
I am one of those strange creatures, a Bible Based Unitarian and believe God loves every one of us and makes allowances for our differences. Further, I don't believe there is a person on earth who is in possession of the whole and entire truth.
O lux beatissima
Reple cordis ntima
Tuorum fidelium.
The article takes as its example a Protestant who thinks he knows exactly when the Apocalypse will arrive.
But it could just as easily taken as examples all the New Age schlock that fills the minds of non-Christians of the present day. Indeed, that is what I expected when I read the introductory words.
The Magisterium allows us to privately speculate about the meaning of obscure passages in the Bible, but not to declare our beliefs as the one and only truth. Similarly, the Magisterium protects us against all kinds of pagan superstitions, Gaia worship, witchcraft, channeling, reincarnation, all-out Darwinism, Freudianism, Nihilism, and the rest of the baggage that pervades what you might call the Hollywood mentality or the secularist view.
Further, I don't believe there is a person on earth who is in possession of the whole and entire truth.
We humans are flawed, it is true.
Something like “He who acts in truth will come to the light” ? John 3:21
Bless you, friend and brother!
Among those who take 2 Tim 3:16 as a keystone of the place of the Bible in God's self-disclosure, there are many, many disagreements. So we RCs are saying that there does indeed need to be some outside hermeneutic. We would say that Calvin and Luther and Campbell and Miller and many, many, more all are examples of that need, so to speak, on the ground. That is, people we're saying "What he said," after Luther or Calvin or whoever expounded Scripture. They didn't just get Bibles and after much study join in one ecclesial assembly. SOMEBODY needed some guidance, something that he wasn't getting from Scripture.
And even Paul a few verses earlier is asking Timothy to remember his teacher after commending him for following "my teaching". Is it parsing to say that "useful" ωφελιμος does not mean "all-sufficient"?
Predictably, I would also go to (the coffee maker - thanks be to God for all His mercies and then to) 2 Thess 2:15 about holding fast to the παραδοσεις which "traditions" were learned either δια λογου or διÂ’ επιστολης - by word or by letter (in the sense of missive, not character).
Seriously, not trying to be obnoxious (yes yes, I know I succeed without trying), I think that it is over-playing that text to get sola scriptura out of it. Clearly YMMV.
I would also suggest that the history of Christianity argues against the sufficiency of Scripture. Luther may think that a plow-boy could understand it, but look at the recondite discussions we have on FR. I've gotten so I just trot out the Greek so that we can start disagreeing there rather than disagree about translations and then go to the Greek ... And even then Alamo girl has done awesome exegetical work on things like the use of "rock" in Scripture. At the very least we need one another because we simply cannot, most of us, read Scripture by itself. Like the eunuch of the Candace, we need someone to guide us, and like the eunuch, most of us know our need.
Is that responsive to your question?
Psst! Don't tell my daughter, okay?
I am ... believe God loves every one of us and makes allowances for our differences.<.p> I've had enough of THAT dangerous nonsense, I have. String 'im up!
The topic of the article at the top of this thread is eschatology (sp?). I know of no mainline Protestant denomination that demands that their members hold a particular eschatological view. Books like the LaHaye series are popular with a lot of Christians that hold a pre-tribulation, pre-millenial view, but are not required dogma. Sounds a little bit like your description of what the Magesterium allows.
Are you referring to the Albigensian Crusade?
Catharism forbade or strongly discouraged marriage. Its widespread adoption would have meant the end of society itself, so it was within the State's competence to suppress this movement. The means of suppression may have been excessive at times, but the suppression was justifiable in principle. The Dominicans' advice to the government in this regard was sound.
How did this dogmatic teaching restrict your thinking?
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How can the Church, which Scripture calls "the pillar and foundation of truth," teach anything authoritatively if Catholics are permitted to reject any dogmatic teaching?
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