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."
Happy to provide you with immune system boosting
merriment.
merriment.
It helped my immune system too, thanks, Quix, I am ROFL!!!
It is a hoot - he attacks the Universal Church acting as if he has the truth and then spins off into tinfoil land. ROTFLMAO!
Nor are the lies he tells about the True Church. But yet he tells them.
There is no need for a priest whatsoever.So you say. What authority do you base this claim on and why is that more valid than 2,000 years of Apostolic teaching?
Thank you for the assaultive personal attack.
It helps many see the merits of the RC edifice.
If only it were merely a joke.
Thank you for the assaultive personal attack.
Quite clever.
What attack? Your words are yours. You choose to attack the True Church with lies, I defend Her with your own words. How is that an attack?
...the purpose of the tradition is to magnify the Scripture, not to magnify itself.
AMEN.
From the beginning, God chose to reveal Himself to men through and by and for His holy word. God places so much emphasis on the word that this is the very name He gives His Son -- "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14)
For those He has blessed with ears to hear and eyes to see, Scripture is the authority of God given to light the steps of His family as they are called to Him.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." -- Psalm 119:104-105"Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.
Yes, and yet some choose to reject the instructions to us He gives in Scripture, and worse, to slice and dice Scripture to contort it to fit the Traditions of Men like Cauvin, Luther, Zwingli, Machen, et al.
Imagine the arrogance of distorting His Holy Scripture to redesign a god in man's image, to add words, to invent doctrines like sola fide and sola scriptura, all so as to lead millions away from His Church and His Holy Sacraments.
Engaging in personal attacks against forum rules may be a
dogma of the RC edifice.
That does not mean it’s attractive to the rest of us.
No, the truth is that you essentially insulted another Christian with your UFO comment. Did you look at the Scripture reference? It says that if you call someone a fool it's a sin and worthy of damnation, that's all.
So, to sum up: I believe that based on what Jesus said you owe Quix an apology. Since it was done in a public forum (as it is), the apology should be public as well.
That, narses, would be "authentic Christianity".
I suppose sometimes persistence is to be commended.
Persistence in engaging in personal attacks and following individuals from thread to thread to engage in personal attacks against forum rules is not to be commended.
Rationalizations supporting such horrific nonsense are not very attractive, either.
Is it so impossible for RCs to abide by the rules and not write personally insulting remarks about individual FReepers?
Sometimes I think this display of some people's inability to abide by the rules is all a ruse in order to get the rules changed.
There's not much else that can explain why some people can learn to post without personal rancor while others always choose to "make it personal."
Men are not "liars" because they disagree with other men.
Thanks for your kind and authentic Biblical perspective.
Of course, the authentic Biblical perspective is not always revered in all quarters on all issues all of the time.
AMEN! Consider yourself pinged to 1,956.
Thank you for your rational and accurate perspective on reality hereon.
May God have mercy on us all.
Ah, but Team Geneva absolutely applauds following Catholics from thread to thread bearing false witness against them, dabbling in the tyranny of telling a fellow Christian what they believe. Rationalizations supporting such horrific nonsense are not very attractive indeed.
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