Hey! We heard that!
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."
You are gagging on your own grotesque caricature of Catholicism.
It amazes me that you have concocted so long a post in which there is NO truth at all.
Exactly....it’s the Lord’s supper....when do you take the BODY and BLOOD of Christ??
JESUS SAID to THE
It amazes me that anyone would fantasize that the Apostles were the only ones in the room; the only ones Jesus was addressing . . .
MARK 16:17-20 and I COR 12-14
And NOT to some elitist POWER-MONGERING POLITICAL CLIQUE at the top.
You breakaways sure are all bothered by Mary....why??
How old is the earth?
“But plenty of Protestants these days are what they are and they don’t care one way or another about Rome. They don’t see any reason to think about it much.”
That’s about the size of it, thanks for that.
“Consequently our evangelism has to adjust.”
Some Catholics come off as arrogant and pushy. Present company excepted of course.
“IF the average Protestant in the pew were indeed repudiating us, when we laid the charge, we’d get a “Dern tootin’ I’m repudiating you!” But what we get about as often (along with astonishing mischaracterizations of what we in fact believe and do) is a kind of surprised and indignant,”No I’m not! You do your stuff and well do ours, and let’s try to get along.”
I don’t know if you are told this very often but you may be a genius, lol.
AT ALL
Anti the authentic Mary.
. . .
FIERCELY ANTI
the blasphemous, idolatrous Magnificent Magical Earth-Mother Mary caricature
the elitist pontificating political power-mongering Roman magicsterical clique has turned Mary's name and image into.
Your quote proves the point. Even in this well-worn quote, Augustine admits that his faith was “in the Gospel” not the Catholic Church — which was merely an “influence”. In matters of importance, he deferred to the writings of the apostles —
= = =
THANKFULLY,
some of them
occasionally got it right
IN SPITE of themselves.
What I don’t get is since the Holy Spirit is suppose to “pick” the next in line, do those in the conclave who pick the “looser” not have the Holy Spirit in them? I guess those who picked the looser needs to go to the confessional more often.
= = = =
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
what a nice little out for those of the magicsterical ruling political power-mongering elitist clique when they
picked
outrageously reprobate Popes.
. . . .
Your contention would have SLIGHTLY more umph IF
the line of popes was squeaky clean on a long list of dimensions.
‘Tain’t so.
And y’all probably know it . . . somewhere in the deep closest where you hide truth from yourselves.
You said: My only desire is that the Old Testament should mirror the text used by Jews.
I agree. Even more so I desire that the Old Testament be that which Jesus Christ used, since there were differences between the books used by Greek speaking Jews and those used by Aramaic speaking Jews. It is a fact that Jesus quoted extensively from books of the Old Testament that have been rejected by protestants but that have always been part of the “Catholic” Bible. I’ll stick with Jesus.
and we ask the Saints to ask the Trinity for favors.
= = =
Why bother with middle men who, Heaven bound are probably focused on Heavenly things more or less exclusively anyway?
No where in Scripture is there an exhortation TO pray as you do . . .
There’s LOTS of Scriptural evidence that doing so is idolatrous and blasphemous.
In other words, the inferences for the latter are a LOT more solid and plentiful than the faint wisps of ephemeral foggy slight hints of inferences for your constructions on RELIGION.
Thank you for comprehensively clarifying your point of view.
THANKFULLY, GOD IS CLEARLY on a different assessment team than you appear to be on.
True, and that goes for any religion/denomination.
= = =
Absolutely.
And a long string of Pastors would likely assert that I’ve been much harsher toward Pentecostals, my own primary reference group, than I have toward the RC edifice.
Regardless of the color or font or size of the text, the fact remains that you and you alone have your own personal interpretation of Scripture.
Protestant exceptionalism. It led to the development of individualistic interpretations of the Word with each person setting up his own little god in his head.
Your interpretations are your interpretations.
What you refuse is the Holy Spirit guiding other people.
I won’t hazard what spirit guides you. That isn’t my province or right. That’s God’s to judge.
You can post font the size of watermelons in fuschia, but it won’t change the fact that you have your own interpretation. Hence the UFOtheology that makes a mockery of St. John and hash of Scripture.
You have your own personal theology. It is your interpretation.
Screaming colors don’t make it anything else.
What? You want Jesus to appear and hand choose Apostles each time one dies? I think a little divine inspiration from the Holy Ghost makes more sense. The scriptures don't spell out how Apostles are chosen other than the original 12 and Matthias. Considering that Matthias was chosen by divine inspiration of the remaining Apostles, it would seem that would be how things proceeded after the Ascension.
The screaming colors are actually helpful. They’re a visual cue to skip ahead to the next post.
I think it’s sheer RELIGIOUS arrogance equal to or beyond the RELIGIOUS arrogance of the JEWISH RELIGIOUS magicsterical 2000 years ago
to
assume
pretend
fantasize
that Holy Spirit’s construction on spiritual reality is even POSSIBLY contained within the boundaries of
ANY
MANMADE
RELIGIOUS
LITTLE
EXCLUSIVE
POWER-MONGERING
SELF-RIGHTEOUS
CLUB.
In any case, I’ll take the errors of Protestantism against the brazenly overtly idolatrous blasphemous deliberate errors of Romanism
any day, week, month, year, decade.
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