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 not define truth by popularity polls. You’ll end up a populist nutbar like Huckabee.
Didn't I try to address this in an earlier post?
From a visual POV the center is going to be where the motion is, and the motion is going to be at the altar where there is a distinct crucifix and the Sacrament will be being celebrated. An empty church building does not give you the effect that one "in action" has.
For one thing, we don't know how the light would be distributed during a Mass. As the Church is empty, yeah, you get the play of light on the statue and on the walls. I'm not persuaded that that gives an accurate depiction of the room in real life, so to speak.
Quelle Horreur! I must go fan myself.
I have the wapors!
Well, you may be right...
God said, 'All have sinned'...You know what my personal, private interpretation is??? It is, 'ALL HAVE SINNED'...
How much do you know about the Greek word in that verse that we translate as “all?”
Brandy, I must have brandy!
(What's that? Brandy's not available?
Well then, is Tiffany free?)
Sir! You’re a married man, you should NOT have these two young women in your hotel with you!
You’re gonna make me pick?
And I was just going to "counsel" them. I was trying to act like a Democrat. I guess this ecumenical stuff can go too far though ....
I do not see conflict wrt salvation within the Protestant denominations. Perhaps you could be more specific.
Reform, yes. But the Reformation wasn't about reform, it was about starting separate churches, with each adherring to its own traditions of man, based on their individual interpretations (and sometimes manipulations) of Scripture.
I don't deny that result, but that was not the intent. the protest was for just cause.
If you admit to a need for reform, what steps have the RCC taken to address the cause of the rebellion, and the ongoing disparity?
Explain that, please...
I have been...And what happens at the 'altar' is only part of the service...Prior to, and after the Mass...Entering the church...And anytime you look forward...Visiting the church...Weddings...Funerals...
There she is...
If you admit to a need for reform, what steps have the RCC taken to address the cause of the rebellion, and the ongoing disparity?
I don't know nothin' about no disparity and would be grateful for more details and all. But as for Reform. Oh my goodness!
Following in the steps of St. Peter, the oaf, we frequently get a hold of the wrong end of the stick, but Pope St. Pius V kind of kicked some ecclesiastical butt (and allegedly tried to clean up Rome a little, too). While there are always setbacks and there is always corruption, my impression is that the level of scholarship and piety among Popes has, in the main, been on the rise since Pius V.
When you have what is more of a HUGE extended family, than the dictatorship we are depicted as being, there is always some weird guy somewhere - or even a bunch of weird guys doing stuff that the rest of us question. It blows my mind that the expectation (whether justified or not I do not know) among the migrant workers I have encountered is that the church is gong to charge fees for things like Baptism and Marriage. That suggests to me that there may be some bad stuff going on in Central America.
I hear the Philippine dioceses can be kind of rugged. But the Filipinos I met and work with in Church are fun and good folks.
In the 14+ years that I;ve been worsipping in the RCC the vast predominance of the preacing is what I'd call "Evangelical" in the sense that it is more and more often a proclamation of the Love of God in Jesus than a moral exhortation or an urging for folks to "Pay, Pray and Obey."
If my answer is totally irrelevant, please excuse me.
But you need the holy water, the monstrance, the incense and the thing it is contained in...The prescious jewels and metals...The towels...All that STUFF...
Amazing isn’t it Iscool, the gyrations the rcc’s are going through trying to explain away the obvious focus of Mary over and above Christ? Everything from altar to light to personal attacks against me because I had the audacity to point this out based on a personal experience.
Well, FWIW, in the four RC Churches in Charlottesville, if there’s an image of our Lady, it’s off to one side somewhere. At my Church the Altar area is sort of like a clock hand from the center of the clock to noon. The Mary statue is in a niche at 3 o’clock.
Shot glasses and one of them grape juice dispensers are any less “Stuff”? And WHAT precious jewels? (and where can I get some?)
Isn’t it amazing that when someone comes up with an actual argument the other side just repeats its contention and says it’s obvious?
Not when the argument looks like excuses and doesn’t stick.
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