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 said: looming UFO/ET realities
What are they?
Oh my.
Naw.
Not my priority today. Nor most days. I take my beefs with Prottys mostly in-house.
But all groups end up
addicted to
a form of Godliness
but
denying the Power thereof . . .
as Scripture indicates.
Even the Assemblies of God have congregations that haven’s seen a miracle in years.
Thankfully, I know in Whom I have believed and am persuaded that HE IS ABLE [AND WILLING, DETERMINED] TO KEEP THAT [MYSELF] WHICH I HAVE COMMITTED UNTO HIM AGAINST THAT DAY.
The Blood of my Lord, Jesus THE CHRIST is MORE THAN SUFFICIENT
against all destructiveness within and without.
However, thanks for your touching concern. Much appreciated.
Not my style.
I prefer the Blood of Jesus.
I'm safe since I don't watch CNN.
Check out any number of the UFO threads hereon. I’ve often talked about such.
I see. To summarize, Truth is not so important as attacking the Church founded and protected by Jesus Christ.
That is alien to discipleship.
Oops...I did not mean little space men alien.
Goodness, Petronski,
that’s pretty BASIC.
Even neophyte students of the field know that much. Sheesh!
Certainly my relative who worked around such was quite certain of such . . . along with Otto Kraus, his boss, IIRC.
It’s not basic, it’s crazy.
Oh, it’ll be on all the news shows . . . and all over the net.
. . . and . . . coming to a town hall or neighborhood near you and everyone else.
I don’t at all remotely accept the farce
the rubber history
the rubber ‘Bible’
the rubber dictionary contentions that the RC edifice was begun by Christ nor even by pebble Peter.
UFOTheology...that would make for an interesting thread on the religion forum. You could even make it a Protestant Caucus thread since that is the only place it would fit. I’d sell tickets just to watch that display of protestant bloodletting.
And WHEN
you are
PROVEN
wrong in broad daylight . . .
What will your excuse be?
Your entire theology rests on Apocalypse.
Mine rests in Christ every moment. I don’t fear the end. I’ve been close to my own death. Catholics know of the four last things, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
I know of no Catholic who dwells on the end times. Living every day in Christ is enough for me. He will come.
Our liturgy states: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
I know Scripture and I know the Apocalypse.
Knowing means keeping it in mind, but living in Christ means the justice of the day.
What will happen to you, Quix, when the Apocalypse does not happen this year, next in two or twenty decades?
Do you as I do look to Christ coming but live for His Reign by doing what I must to live Christ? Will you Doubt? Set the date another year or ten or twenty?
He told us to watch but not to dwell. You have created an entire theology based on dwelling.
I trust in Jesus. My Jesus I trust in You. ~ St. Faustina.
What happens will happen in Christ.
Since you seem to be a self proclaimed prophet, which day? I sure don't want to miss it. I might even tune to CNN to watch it.
It's the spiritual enlightenment which comes from my friends' and family's scrupulous and devout observance of triple crown season:
"Honey? He's differnt. Hit 'im with a whiskey bottle."
"I'm too tired and too full to get up. YOU hit 'im."
"Nah,. I'm too tired too. Besides, I think there may be something left in that bottle. Let's just let 'im be, but fetch me that bottle over here, 'kay?"
lol.
Dern tootin!
I think I posted one some time ago on the REL forum. I forget the specific topic.
Most folks don’t like to bother with the ignorant derisiveness from the vast uninformed clueless crowd so they don’t get too energized with such threads.
You said: Most folks don’t like to bother with the ignorant derisiveness from the vast uninformed clueless crowd so they don’t get too energized with such threads.
Again, more proof that protestants are not so much concerned with Truth as they are with hatred of the Catholic Church.
Your assumptions about me, as usual,
are more than a little flawed, if not off the wall.
Yeah, Biblical prophecy and thereby the end times has been a hobby fascination since Jr High.
Not a bad choice . . . given the era we live in post Israel becoming a Nation again in a day as Biblically predicted.
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