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."
Yer absolutely right...Catholics leave your church when they start reading the KJV...Cause they might believe it...
I will not be misled so.
You did.
That makes her a GOD.
Only in your mind.
Paul's ministry to the Gentile church was completed...And his completed epistles are a record of it...
You continue to misrepresent this matter, having been repeatedly corrected.
Of course, you also profess your belief that the Pope is the antichrist.
Nope.
To believe in the Trinity is to jettison sola scriptura.
Keys of the Kingdom.
NOBODY has suggested this (though I have no doubt that the anti-Catholic nonsense you peruse falsely assert this); additionally, you have been told ad nauseum that Catholics DO NOT believe this.
Your continued repetition of this falsehood AND the fact that you are ascribing it to others is bordering on bearing false witness (which I presume you believe is wrong).
Feed my sheep.
United - Adjective - made into or caused to act as a single entity: a united front. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.)
Unite - verb - to join, combine, or incorporate so as to form a single whole or unit. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.)
United - verb - To bring together so as to form a whole. Adjective - to combine into a single entity (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company).
You seem to have problems with understanding the English langugage. Either that, or you can't admit this or you have to admit to goddess worship. I suspect its probably the latter.
But this IS NOT the New Testament.
ROFLMBO!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, okay - ROFL.
Keys of the Kingdom
Thanks for affirming non-biblical sources. This of course makes the case FOR sola scriptura as deviating off leads to error. (Error such as mythical keys of the kingdom).....
It's all over the place just like the Trinity is...It took you church over 300 years to find the Trinity...Your church doesn't want to find Sola Scripture...
Your church tells you what to believe and you do it...
And that brings up an interesting problem...You guys claim that since the Mormons don't believe in the Trinity, they can't be Christians...So I guess that no one in your church, including your church fathers were Christians for the first 3 or 4 hundred years???
1. Combined into a single entity.
2. Concerned with, produced by, or resulting from mutual action.
3. Being in harmony; agreed.
You continue to accuse me of goddess worship even though I have stated that I do not do so. I suggest you look up Exodus 20:16 and remove the plank from your eye.
What falsehood? Its stated in YOUR catechism that Mary is 'united' with Christ and 'Queen of all'. That makes her deity, unless Christ is NOT God, and I don't believe you believe that so it makes her deity. You like Petronski need a dictionary and look up the word united and what it means.
Like I told Petronski, reasoning with you Catholics is like trying to reason with Mormons who refuse to read what their own leaders have SAID (or in this case what their own catechism teaches)......
The Catholic Church has found sola scriptura...found it to be a false confection of men.
It does not.
Yes, it is. And, frankly, I think you are wrong.
Children do not sin because they lack the capacity to choose right from wrong.
You are saying that if a toddler knocks the gear shift out of place and the family car runs over his mother, that the toddler sinned, but it won't be held against him. That's just wrong.
Toddlers don't understand and their actions are not sinful. Sin is about the will, not the actions.
Where's that Kingdom right now???
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