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 must have skimmed post 252, you posted back so fast you could not have read it.
How do you do with Christ's exhortation to “Eat His Flesh” and “Drink His Blood” and when you don't do it because you think it to be a fable or parable or whatever how do you square that with him saying you “will not have life within you”.
Oh I know you are with the John 6:60-66 crowd because “His Words too hard” and “how can we do this” ESPECIALLY because you have no ordained priests to consecrate anything.
Lurking’
“How do Mary and the saints listen to perhaps millions of prayers at the same time? Now that they are in heaven do they now have the attribute of omniscience? Because God has this attribute we know that he can hear and respond to millions of simultaneous prayers. But do Mary and the saints have this same ability?”
Many enthusiastic thanks for this observation. Why didn’t I think of that?
To God alone be ALL the glory! Man is less than nothing apart from His grace.
you do continually ignore what a faithful Catholic tells you as you bear false witness against Catholics daily on these threads.
Anyone who is told directly and specifically that Catholics do not do what you say they do — and then repeat the lie is bearing false witness.
Lurking’
I’m still waiting for your thoughts on Quix’s UFOTheology... silence is concurrence I am assuming.
hmmm
You said: I’m getting the same “not on this server” message as you, Q.
Must be Quix’s bibically derived space aliens doing a voodoo dance on FR.
So, the fact that Paul thought he was on par with Peter means that he was?
Well, that settles it.
Why did no one think of that until Luther?
Damn, all those ignoramuses over the centuries!
I don't believe in conspiracy theories. And please don't link my religious belief with them.
I visit these threads when I want to experience Christian love and fellowship.
Welllll, I’ve studied globalism—in their own-in-house publications—since 1965 . . . in my job as acting Director of the Univ Library Special Collections Dept.
Enjoy your ignorance on the subject.
You will far too soon observe the connection satan makes between such things. I wish it were not so.
On the other hand, God is still in control and working all things together for HIS KINGDOM’S GOOD.
The choice is either acting like a Pope yourself, or doing what Saint Paul did—”I submitted ... “ Galatians 2:2
God is a god of order, hence, Christ chose a successor to shepherd the flock. Or we can simply run amuck in a million different interpretations. As interpretations keep proliferating (Black Theology!) with grave consequences (President Obama!) Protestantism looks less and less tenable.
BTW,
Shrillery, Obumma, George Soros . . . a McChurian funder . . . and Ted Turner . . . and the Rockefellers . . . and Scuba Teddy . . . and Nancy Puhlousey . . . et al
love it when folks avoid looking behind the curtain.
Check out the
GEORGIA GUIDESTONES
http://www.radioliberty.com/stones.htm
AND ASK YOURSELF—how much movement has our society undergone in the last 50 years toward those goals????
I’d love to see your answer to that one.
Would you please reference a few, say 5 or so, of these quotes? Thanks.
LOL. Blimps are huge.
More than one or two TV evangelists AVOIDS looking like they’ve been overdoing the fasting.
How sad that you oppose against one another logic (i.e. reason) and truth.
Reason leads us to truth. God didn't give us minds as some sort of temptation, some sort of trap to lead us to damnation.
Thanks for elucidating so succinctly the evangelical adversion to reason.
Ask about UFO’s. Go ahead!
So . . . were you continually getting your little brother in trouble all your growing up?
Sounds like something one would be taught on day one in a cult.
Y’all make it persistently very tempting to label the RC edifice a cult.
Has all the trappings . . . layers thick.
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