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."
“The FACT of Peter founding the Church of Antioch is well-documented in the historical record, including records from the first century AD.”
Gee, I see opinion but no historical facts. I gave you accepted history by one who was a contemporary of the founders, “(Acts 11:19-26) “men of Cyprus and Cyrene”, and Barnabas and Saul, but I don’t see Peter mentioned”.
Once again, where do you find Peter founding the church at Antioch?
I used to think the Bible was written by King James, in English, but then I found out it was actually written in German by Martin Luther.
It has been argued that Eve’s creation free of original sin doesn’t matter because sin did not yet exist in the world.
The question is a basic inquiry into whether something bad has to exist first before something can be said to be good.
So can one be blessed to be created “witout sin” even if sin had not entered the world? You betcha. Just like God is good even without the need for evil to exists to define Him in contrast
Did you read the post you replied to?
I don’t think my words were that difficult.
It’s conceivable that one could try again . . . to understand.
Eusebius, History of the Church, III, 36
And why not??? The English is a translation of the Greek/Hebrew...
There are over two hundred bibles out there translated from the Greek/Hebrew...
What Greek translation could you possibly come up with that hasn't already been covered in one of these English translations???
Everybody studies Greek now days in hopes of coming up with some NEW nugget of information...There aren't any...
When the 'angel' said Mary was blessed 'among women', the translation is that Mary was 'highly favored'...
You can look for another translation of the word til the cows come home but you won't find one that improves on that translation, or elevates Mary to a higher position without distorting the Greek word used for the translation...
Good luck to ya...
Well that settles it then...The Apostle Paul was wrong...
Bottom line. If Jesus wanted to teach from a book, He would have written it. Jesus taught through people, good and bad. He sent the Holy Spirit to continually guide them after he Ascended. Jesus wanted all to be one community, just as He and the Father are One.
It appears that we would do well to come up with an UNRUBBERIZED DICTIONARY for our RC bretheren. They seem to have a terminally difficult time wrapping their synapses around normal linguistic conventions.
Here the repeated confabulation, confusion, . . . something is so glaringly evident . . .
Fascinating.
I suppose in the next encyclical from the RC magicsterical we'll discover that UP = DOWN; LEFT = RIGHT; WRONG = RIGHT; BLACK = WHITE; IN = OUT; CLUELESSNESS = BRILLIANCE; . . .
Fascinating.
“Eusebius, History of the Church, III, 36”
Constantine’s historian, 300 years after the fact? Don’t you have something a little closer to the founding of the church, like Acts 11?
“Traduttore tradittore” they say in Italian.
Because you guys have been pushing your goofy "explanation" of Matt 16:18 for so long, predicated on laughable "greek scholarship."
Intellectual integrity? I think not.
INDEED.
Eusibius wrote that before their church realized there was a Trinity...
Where did the Apostle Paul claim different?
What do you find dispositive of Peter's founding of the Church at Antioch in Acts 11?
Don't most Italians speak English???
I think I'd rather NOT try and wrap my very vivid visual imagry synapses around Petronski in that state . . .
INDEED.
another is . . .
THY WORD IS A LAMP UNTO MY FEET . . .
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