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."
Tch, tch, Petronski. You are not being respectful.
yes, full of electrolytes...
Yes, they are.
They already implant them in animals (for safety’s sake), and they have one ready to implant in chronically ill people, with all their medical history in them. Thanks, but no thanks.
Christian love is telling the truth to people who may go to hell because of the errors of their one true church. It IS love.
This is sooooo fascinating today.
Slightly exciting even . . . . I can’t remember ever before hereon . . . when so many RC folks so convinced of their perspective have set themselves up so wholesale to have incredible egg and worse on their faces.
Soooooooo fascinating.
Kindof has a ‘happening’ flavor to it. Should be interesting to see how it all plays out.
I sure hope FR is still running by then.
Sometimes your prose is not as eloquent and precise as it often is. I think this is one of those times.
No, you don't.
He said "do THIS in rememberance of Me."
"You" do the rememberance, but not what He told you to do.
That's great!
How about, Forsaking All I Trust Him! F-A-I-T-H
And because I do have FAITH I'm give the gift of God's Riches At Christ's Expense! G-R-A-C-E
Great post. ;-)
I know. But with all the newspaper articles about these churches, I know you’ve at least HEARD about them.
Yes, after I die and am raised again. Do we know for sure that we will live again until the judgement?
There are those who do, Petronski, sad to say.
Anyone who has been baptized in Christ and worships Him and keeps His Commandments is a CHRISTIAN!
We had a dinner after church on Sunday and oh, my, all those CARBS! I was full and then had to go to a 100th birthday party after that and a graduation party after that. My blood sugar was through the roof.
I’m not talking about YOU personally, but many Catholics do put her before Christ. I’ve seen it personally myself. Calm down.
He doesn't need angels either, but He uses them, doesn't He?
Honestly, how do you people take the Lord's name in vain so gratuitously?
Boy is that right. Amen!
I am a Catholic, have practiced my faith in a number of different countries, and I can testify that I have never seen it.
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