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."
Do you ever pray for others? That is intercession. There is no reason to believe the Mother of Jesus has less ability to intercede than you do.
And Luke clearly says Mary is full of grace. You don't buy the implications of what this means, but that is due to you following a biased interpreter of the original Greek.
(I do, too but I admit my bias.)
IF you can't do that, do not say I need Christ, because I am not following extra-biblical teaching - you are. Pretty bold of you to follow a blasphemous doctrine about Mary and then claim "I" am the one who needs Christ
I didn't say you needed Christ. I think you mis-read me. I meant someone at some point helped you find Christ. Not that you needed someone now to help you. My point was not personal, but rather that everyone has someone who helps them to find salvation.
That is participation in the work of the Savior.
That statement I agree with. It was the insinuation that I am 'lost' because I don't accept Catholic dogma I took exception to.
I’m not talking about educated vs. uneducated (though there is nothing wrong with being educated—Christ didn’t reject the Pharisees because of their education, but because of their hypocrisy and lack of virtue). I’m talking about making conscious voluntary intellectual decisions with the mind over vague and involuntary emotional experiences, like sorcerers use. It is a mark of true faith to continue to choose to follow the commandments of Christ even when your soul feels dry.
Yes, just as I'm doing for you right now. That is not to say that by praying I am helping save souls as your catechism does say regarding mary, nor am I calling myself, "Queen of all things", not am I placing a humongous statue of myself in the center of the altar of a Catholic Church in Evansville, IN larger and more prominent than Christ Himself! (And yes I've seen that).
Federal Headship.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .
So . . . observations . . . true observations about any class of people . . . identifiable group . . .
automatically becomes bigotry
IF
said group feels the least bit uncomfortable with the true observations?
LOL.
I didn’t know we had such a liberal faction represented on FR.
No. But they are bigotry if they extend attributes of some members of a group to members of the group generally.
Hmmmmmm. Interesting.
But you are! Or at least you are trying to help in the salvation of others. Don't think this takes away from Jesus. It's what Jesus wanted us to do when He sent the disciples out with the Great Commission.
nor am I calling myself, "Queen of all things", not am I placing a humongous statue of myself in the center of the altar of a Catholic Church in Evansville, IN larger and more prominent than Christ Himself! (And yes I've seen that).
It would help if you didn't go off on these tangents. Take one thing at a time.
There is no way to spin your way out of that although you’re trying really hard.
= = =
Maybe one of the little publicized dogmas is that all RC’s must have chiropracters on retainer to help handle all their theological, intellectual, linguistic, Biblical, hysterical-historical . . . rubberized contortions.
“Investigate it for yourself”.
I did. That’s why I’m Catholic.
I think we have been through this before.
I Corinthians 12:18
That is a fascinating de’ja vu experience, isn’t it.
“That’s your problem, your trying to “read into” it when there isn’t anything in the verse that demands the Jews and Grecians be treated “collectively.”
(Acts 11:19-21) “Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only.
20. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus.
21. And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.”
Notice the verse 21 says that the Lord was with “them”, not “some of them” as in verse 20. “Them” refers to the “they” of verse 19 and includes the “some of them” in verse 20.
As far as Peter is concerned, there is nothing in the text that would lead anyone to believe he had anything to do with the Antioch church.
It is fascinating to watch RC’s weasel out of dogma promulgated in in-house publications by the RC magicsterical’s own hierarchy.
Very fascinating.
Kind of like . . .
The chief political power-monger and magicsterical are infallible except when they aren’t.
Ah yes, the keys given to ALL BELIEVERS.
. . . to do as outlined at the end of Mark 16.
Fascinating.
Raised four of my own, two sons and two daughters. Teaching them right was always the problem... They always seemed to find the wrong on their own. :D
The case of the infant or insane or retared person who does not sin because he lacks the capacity to do so makes the Bible's "All have sinned" a less-than-absolute statement. It allows exceptions.
But man is not the arbiter thereof. That is Jehovah's to decide, and barring any exceptions pronounced by Him, I will go with what He has determined... Namely that ALL have sinned...
Mary can be an exception. Mary can be without sin and not violate this Biblical passage because it is meant to apply to most every, but not all occassions and people.
But there is no need for the exception, there is no record of the exception, and there is proof against that exception, in Mary's own words.
Your scriptural errors are always fascinating.
and if a frog had wings, it's butt wouldn't bump the ground.
Which words?
So true.
Which is another bit of evidence why He’d have nothing to do with setting up a bunch of bureaucratic political intellectual elitists to head yet another RELIGIOUS BUREAUCRACY to lord it over the serfs.
Sheesh.
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