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 promise you if you look upon a text with the attempt to find "gotchas" by bending meaning, ignoring context, and dismissing qualifiers, you can be appalled at just about anything.
It's your choice. Honestly try to understand, or feed your bigotry.
Because the lord you speak of is a dark and cruel lord contrived by the mind of a German monk.
I don't believe I posted that verse...Besides you have to have 2 verses to cancatenate...
Just like when you claim we believe Mary is a goddess--when we do not--grotesquely misrepresents our beliefs.
No, I find it rather sad, actually.
Yes and I will do the same with you. Continue to follow mere men for your eternity. Good luck with explaining that one to Christ. Even our Lord Jesus Christ, when not appealing to His own inherent authority, clinched His arguments with His opponents by saying, “It stands written!” or “Have you not read” in the Bible? He never said look to men or look to 'tradition'. He said, “Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me.” John 5:39 (ASV) In Jesus’ day, Jesus acknowledges that the appropriate approach to salvation was to search for it in the Scriptures! And you know, that in Jesus’ day, the scribes had about as much authority as has ever been given to human tradition. And yet, Jesus pointed them to the Scriptures, not to the oral tradition, not to the authority of the scribes, but to the Scriptures. And then He said, “The Scriptures bear witness of Me!”
I'll stick with Scripture because that's what HE told me to do. Thanks.
My fear is that my Catholic brothers and sisters will miss heaven because of false teachings from Rome. I pray that’s not true, but I’m afraid for some it will be.
Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. "In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls.
Only God can 'deliver our souls' only God can 'restore supernatural life to souls'. If you can't see the blasphemy in these statements there is no help for you.
Why do yoi ignore the opening statement that Mary's role can not be understood apart from her union with her Son?
You want to rip Mary's role out of context to prove that we elevte her to a diety status. It is you who do so.
You also can't seem to read English very well, but we proved that yesterday.
In the first excrerpt, Mary is praying to her Son to deliver our souls. She has no power of her own.
In the second, you totally miss the phrase "the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls." Mary may cooperate because of who she is, but guess what? Other believers co-operate in the salvation of others all the time.
Someone helped you find Christ.
Oh plueeze, another ridiculous argument. Sheez. A child draws a single breath and dies hasn't lived at all let alone has time to be selfish. A better analogy is a child who breathes, lives, screams, eats, poops, and screams for more until his desires are met.
Chapter and verse and please keep in mind that the ONLY Scripture that He could have referred to is the Old Testament.
Yes, yes you do. I'm not sure what word I thought I was using. I meant cut short. I never post part of a verse, lest I give the false impression I'd posted the whole thing.
Thank you for acknowledging a basic truth.
On second thought, by "hasn't lived at all" am I to presume that you support abortion?
Fat fingers: I meant 16:19
Perhaps I need a typing wand.
Here's the thing you don't understand --- we don't do this.
Your very conception of what it is we believe is flawed. We follow God the way we believe He revealed He desires.
Certainly the cacophany of UFO belief and splintering of Protestant groups gives some testimony to the usefulnes of an earthly, authoritative Churc guided by the Holy Spirit.
If we believed we were following mere men, we would be foolish. But we're not and attacking us on that misconception is never going to work.
Learn what we really believe and then try to debate us from a position of intellectual honesty. But beware, many before have studied the Church looking for the error and joined.
Ah, well I thought you had expanded your definition, as your example was a toddler.
If infants have no capacity for knowing and choosing and understanding the remifications, then they do not sin.
But we have no means to know what passes through the 'mind' of an infant. We don't know if the soul is full formed and simply unable to fully control the synaptic switches to get it's point across, or if the soul is in development along with the body. For all we know there is a potential for sin within the womb itself. It cannot be proven in any event.
And the "all have sinned" Bible verse must allow exceptions and can not be used as a bludgedon to deny Mary her role.
Even if I grant that all infants are innocent, that then leaves no special role for Mary in that case. There is truly *nothing* in the Scriptures that suggests an immaculate birth for Mary, nor that she led a perfect and sinless life (in fact, Mary herself suggests the opposite)- For if that were to be so, there would be no need for Christ, as His Mother would have set the precedent before Him.
I do not follow mere men.
Obviously not, since both Adam and Eve were created without sin and were not God. That in no way applies to Mary which is the gist of this argument since Romans 3:23 says post Eden that ALL have sinnned.......there has only been one sinless person since Eden and that was Christ. Were there a verse in Scripture that could be found that said only SOME sinned.....or said Mary was sinless (which there isn't) then you might have a point. But they are not there so you are digging a hole for yourself.
Reading minds and attributing motives are types of "making it personal."
To say a statement is false, misleading, incorrect, etc. is NOT making it personal. But to say the other Freeper is a liar, or that what he said is a lie, attributes the intent to deceive - and IS "making it personal."
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Such an extravagant conceit!
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