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."
That is correct.
Nevertheless "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him." (Romans 14:3)
Are you not attributing your own judgement to God?
Do you find something laudable about that?
Why???
Do try to follow the arugment. Reading the posts of others is a good way to start.
If Mary is blessed among all women, as the Bible states, then she must be of a greater station than Eve. Right? Otherwise Eve would be most blessed.
Eve was created without sin. Do you doubt that?
Wouldn't being created without sin be a greater thing than being created with the stain of sin? (Original sin, we speak of here.)
That means Eve would be more blessed than Mary, unless Mary was also preserved from Original Sin.
Your analogy of gasoline is self defeating, because you clearly would not say "fully" equipped for the journey, since that is patently untrue.
But it is true. Is gasoline not profitable? Is it not useful? Do you not need it to be fully equipped?
What is "patently untrue"?
Just because you want so badly for tis passage to make the sola scriptura argument, want it with all of your heart and soul for it to be true does not make the English language changes its rules.
But Paul does indeed use a phrase that means "completely accomplished", "nothing left to do," and he attributes that possibility to scripture that existed before his death.
No one doubts what you say here. The question is one of sufficiency. The text does not say "only" Scripture. I'm sorry for you, but it does not. Scripture is necessary, but not sufficient.
Do you know what that means?
I'm just looking for the nucleus of the gospel that is sufficient to make us complete. So far, I find that anything beyond simple statements of the Bible seems superfluous
Why are you looking for a bare minimum? What is the point of that?
Say what Peter said: Those that are unlearned in the scriptures, and unstable, wrest with the word of God. This is exactly what troubles most catholics; hearing nothing but the flawed traditions of men, they cannot reconcile their cult with the word of God. It's like he was writing directly to catholics. Yes, some of what Paul wrote is difficult for the double-minded man to grasp, and can be understood only by prayerfully studying the word. More human gobledygook never leads one toward God.
So any human attempt to explain God's Revelation of Himself to another human is useless? Then why are you here confusing the issue with your words? Or is it only "gobledygook" if you disagree with it?
The date of John's writings have NEVER been in dispute.
I never said you didn't need them...Maybe you need to slow down and focus a little bit more...
I said those things are for people that don't know something...When confronted with a problem, you either solve the problem with knowledge and/or experience...If you have neither the knowledge or experience, then you resort to common sense and logic...
And the point was, when it comes to scripture, common sense and logic don't hold a candle to knowledge and wisdom...
As I understood it, for you and your church, common sense and logic were the best thing since sliced bread, and you highly intellectual Catholics were right on top of it...
Fact is, common sense isn't all that common...What makes sense to you, likely doesn't make any sense to someone else...
You capitalized truth. That has a different meaning than you claim now.
No, It need not have anything to do with sin at all.
Eve was created without sin. Do you doubt that?
No I do not doubt that.
Wouldn't being created without sin be a greater thing than being created with the stain of sin? (Original sin, we speak of here.)
Perhaps, though beside the point.
That means Eve would be more blessed than Mary, unless Mary was also preserved from Original Sin.
Not at all. Being chosen to be the vessel which brings the Living God among men is a higher honor than any, and that is the point of "blessed among women", not her condition of sin, one way or the other, but in spite of it.
The ONLY thing I've quoted was Scripture.
LOL. OK, thanks for playing.
So far today I've learned that unity with God in Heaven is not something to aspire to and that one can be full of sin and still be more blessed than any other woman, even one created without sin.
Oh, and that the admonition about the "unlearned" getting confused on hard parts of Scripture is nothing to worry about.
And I also learned women don’t carry Original Sin.
I learned that John may have written his gospel, epistles and Apocalypse BEFORE Paul’s martyrdom.
Education...You learn how to read...And compare what someone says with what you are reading...
It's gobledygook if it differs from God's perfect word.
The testimony of Polycarp is that the Apocalypse was written around AD 91. Who would better know that?
You bear false witness. Contender Ministries is not a “hate site.”
+++++++++++++++++++++
It calls Catholicism a cult.
‘Nuff said.
It’s a hate site.
How do I "compare" without using logic? If it were as blisteringly obvious as you imply it was, then the Bereans would not be singled out for their astuteness. Clearly there is some matter of interpretation and logical argumentation going on.
If what Paul presented was not a radical new interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures, then the Jews themselves would have all recognized and followed Jesus.
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