Posted on 05/03/2008 4:38:34 PM PDT by NYer
Scripture, our Evangelical friends tell us, is the inerrant Word of God. Quite right, the Catholic replies; but how do you know this to be true?
It's not an easy question for Protestants, because, having jettisoned Tradition and the Church, they have no objective authority for the claims they make for Scripture. There is no list of canonical books anywhere in the Bible, nor does any book (with the exception of St. John's Apocalypse) claim to be inspired. So, how does a "Bible Christian" know the Bible is the Word of God?
If he wants to avoid a train of thought that will lead him into the Catholic Church, he has just one way of responding: With circular arguments pointing to himself (or Luther or the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries or some other party not mentioned in the Bible) as an infallible authority telling him that it is so. Such arguments would have perplexed a first or second century Christian, most of whom never saw a Bible.
Christ founded a teaching Church. So far as we know, he himself never wrote a word (except on sand). Nor did he commission the Apostles to write anything. In due course, some Apostles (and non-Apostles) composed the twenty-seven books which comprise the New Testament. Most of these documents are ad hoc; they are addressed to specific problems that arose in the early Church, and none claim to present the whole of Christian revelation. It's doubtful that St. Paul even suspected that his short letter to Philemon begging pardon for a renegade slave would some day be read as Holy Scripture.
Who, then, decided that it was Scripture? The Catholic Church. And it took several centuries to do so. It was not until the Council of Carthage (397) and a subsequent decree by Pope Innocent I that Christendom had a fixed New Testament canon. Prior to that date, scores of spurious gospels and "apostolic" writings were floating around the Mediterranean basin: the Gospel of Thomas, the "Shepherd" of Hermas, St. Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans, and so forth. Moreover, some texts later judged to be inspired, such as the Letter to the Hebrews, were controverted. It was the Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, which separated the wheat from the chaff.
But, according to Protestants, the Catholic Church was corrupt and idolatrous by the fourth century and so had lost whatever authority it originally had. On what basis, then, do they accept the canon of the New Testament? Luther and Calvin were both fuzzy on the subject. Luther dropped seven books from the Old Testament, the so-called Apocrypha in the Protestant Bible; his pretext for doing so was that orthodox Jews had done it at the synod of Jamnia around 100 A. D.; but that synod was explicitly anti-Christian, and so its decisions about Scripture make an odd benchmark for Christians.
Luther's real motive was to get rid of Second Maccabees, which teaches the doctrine of Purgatory. He also wanted to drop the Letter of James, which he called "an epistle of straw," because it flatly contradicts the idea of salvation by "faith alone" apart from good works. He was restrained by more cautious Reformers. Instead, he mistranslated numerous New Testament passages, most notoriously Romans 3:28, to buttress his polemical position.
The Protestant teaching that the Bible is the sole spiritual authority--sola scriptura --is nowhere to be found in the Bible. St. Paul wrote to Timothy that Scripture is "useful" (which is an understatemtn), but neither he nor anyone else in the early Church taught sola scriptura. And, in fact, nobody believed it until the Reformation. Newman called the idea that God would let fifteen hundred years pass before revealing that the bible was the sole teaching authority for Christians an "intolerable paradox."
Newman also wrote: "It is antecedently unreasonable to Bsuppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly, from the nature of the case, interpret itself...." And, indeed, once they had set aside the teaching authority of the Church, the Reformers began to argue about key Scriptural passages. Luther and Zwingli, for example, disagreed vehemently about what Christ meant by the words, "This is my Body."
St. Augustine, usually Luther's guide and mentor, ought to have the last word about sola scriptura: "But for the authority of the Church, I would not believe the Gospel."
"I have to admit though, I mistook the intent of your post. I don't think the verse quoted necessarily implies anything beyond David joining the child in death." [excerpt]
“OMG! Bwahahahahahahaha! I haven’t heard such doctrinaire superciliousness since being treated to an oral dissertation on the virtues of the King James Bible by a drunken, toothless, redneck.
Bravo, sir. Bravo. “
Maybe you should have listened to that drunken, toothless, redneck, PT. The Lord might have work through him to bring you a gift of salvation. But as you say “I see”, your sin remains!
So if you said the same thing only used Black for Catholic and White for Protestant, it wouldn't be bigotry? Even if "true?"
It's interesting and telling to listen to the Sunday after service and dinner conversation in catholic and protestant families. I've been in both.
Yet you only have first-hand knowledge of families you have observed. You extrapolated the behavior of some members of the group to all members of the group. In other words, you offer a description of behavior you have observed as representative of the behavior of all. That is bigotry.
You used quotations. Whom were you quoting?
Whether it is of the Law, the Talmud, or Mishnah, I cannot recall, but I had satisfied myself of the concept some years ago, and I do agree with you.
"bar mitzvah" literally means "one to which the Commandments apply", or something close to that...
You don't know what you're talking about.
I LEFT twenty years of Bible-thumping Evangelical Fundamentalism because it never lived up to the promise of freedom from sin outlined in Romans 7.
God seems to have waited until I crossed the Tiber to make good on those promises.
I understand that, but possibly I was too vague.
Scientists.
I don't know that to be true, and I don't know that I would believe them if they said it was so. Science is only useful when it is not speculative, a condition that is less frequent than it once was.
Well, I’ll just add this and move on:
Cognition of right and wrong in infants is science fiction.
LOL! no, nothing like that, but he did have a preference for Southern-fried Country/Rock, which is evident to this very day.
SCWEEEEET HOE MALA-BA-MA!
God seems to have waited until I crossed the Tiber to make good on those promises
Since you think you can see Mary in Gen.3:15, it's hard to say what you may think you can see in Rom. 7...
In my experience talking to RCs, in my view, they don't have a clue what Rom. 7 is about...
I have two bibles: a ginormous KJV bound in red leather and an electronic Douay-Rheims/Vulgate/KJV/Darby/Elberfelder on my laptop. Neither lends itself to use in the pew. I am shopping for a personal size DR, but for now, I make due with the passages from the NAB printed in the missalette provided in the pews.
Here's an excellent definition: "". . . the structure of sin in the human personality is far more complicated than the isolated acts and thoughts of deliberate disobedience commonly designated in the world. In its biblical definition, sin cannot be limited to isolated instances or patterns of wrongdoing; it is something much more akin to the psychological term complex: an organic network of compulsive attitudes, beliefs, and behavior deeply rooted in alienation from God. Sin originated in the darkening of the human mind and heart as man turned from the truth about God to embrace a lie about him and consequently a whole universe of lies about his creation. Sinful thoughts, words and deeds flow forth from this darkened heart automatically and compulsively, as water from a polluted fountain." (Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1979, p. 89).
Sin flows from the heart (Matt. 12:35; 15:18; 15:19; Mark 3:5; 7:19; 7:21; Luke 6:45; Luke 8:12; 2 Cor. 2:4; 2 Cor. 4:6; I Tim. 1:5; 2 Tim. 2:22) it is more than just outward actions, although certainly outward actions are a part. But the outward actions occur because of the INWARD condition of our hearts and is why we need a new heart (Ezek. 18:31; Ezek. 36:26).
Look at Genesis 3:6a - When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate...
Note how James describes how sin is conceived in James 1:15 - Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.
Also in James 4:2 - You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.....
Sin flows from within desiring, lusting, envy, rebellion. Its basically a focus upon selfish desires that flow from WITHIN. As we give in to these desires the outward actions follow. The outward actions are not in and of themselves 'sin', they are the manifestation of the inner condition of our hearts. The same way that coughing and sneezing are the outward manifestions when you have a cold of the inner problem which happens to be a virus.
Once you understand the self-centered focus of sin in each and every one of us, then you can understand than a hours old infant can indeed sin. When that infant demands food, demands to be changed, and screams at the top of his lungs demanding that you satisfy his desires you can begin to see a very self-centered little guy and original sin in all its glory. As he grows he begins to demand more and more, even as a toddler taking a toy away from another toddler or throwing a temper tantrum to 'get his own way'. That's sin. It isn't just murder, or theft, etc. Its DESIRE and its rebellion. And an infant is just as capable of that as any adult.
And you still failed to provide one New Testament (or Old Testament for that matter) verse specifically stating that Mary would be free from sin.
Do you think it’s wise for a Catholic to possess a Protestant bible like the KJV?
"Much" is a subjective term and by YOUR account, with the exception of the Pauline epistles, ONLY two gospels, Acts and one epistle were written before his death.
Wise? I don’t know that it’s wise or unwise. In any event, it was a gift.
The contention made by some here is that Paul considered the New Testament to be “complete,” I was simply pointing out that this is IMPOSSIBLE.
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