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."
Naw . . . likely chock full of disinformation.
But the best disinformation has shards of truth in it.
I really can’t think of a major motion pic or TV series of sci fi in the last 50 years which wasn’t somehow full of at least significant propaganda toward globalist goals and against Christianity.
Many of these anti-Catholics have so obviously never been to a Catholic Mass or an Orthodox Liturgy.
But a lot of us have or are married to former RC’s.
And the old canard “they weren’t taught properly” is utter hogwash.
“I know you’ve at least HEARD about them.”
Of course I have and that was addressed in a subsequent post.
What Protestants (this Protestant anyway) share in common with Catholic and Orthodox brethren is a veneration for the ecumenical creeds, formulated at a time of relative spiritual vigor in the church, a faith in the divine wisdom imbued to the men at the Council of Carthage as a means by which God would preserve His word, and in those ordinances explicitly commended in the NT and by Christ Himself. What we reject is any notion that our Lord's kingdom is of this world, or that He is to be worshipped on "this mountain or that." His kingdom is not of this world, not built with brick or stone but through His Word and Spirit.
As to the sufficiency of Scripture, the Bible as a whole, written over centuries by a phalanx of authors, testifies to its own sufficiency in its completeness and excellency through its wisdom, prophecy, and fulfillment, which could in no wise have come from the mind of man, but from God. It needs no external support nor the approval of man.
And you believe that by reading these books, your relationship with Jews will become more intimate?
Do you believe that the New Testament in general and the Gospels in particular lack an insight into the life, character, and person of Jesus that can be gained by a study of these books?
May I ask then about Christians who don’t rely on creeds but upon the Scriptures themselves. Are they only Christians who know the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed? What about those who believe in the Triune Godhead solely upon the authority of the Scriptures and not upon the creeds written by councils; those who believe in the fundamentals of New Testmanet Christianity as per the Scriptures. Those who don’t have any creeds published in their church literature; but the believers carry their Bibles to meet togather and worship — what about them? Are they on the outside?
“. . . some other party not mentioned in the Bible . . .”
This was written by someone using circular reasoning to infer that the Roman Catholic Church is mentioned in the Bible.
There are certain Baptists who believe that they are able to trace an unbroken line of succession all the way back to John the BAPTIST. They will say, “See, we can find ‘Baptist’ in the Bible.” And there are actually some of these churches which have constructed (concocted) elaborate histories of “Baptist” peoples and churches all the way back to Christ, they say. These are wrong, of course. They use that circular reasoning.
And Rome uses circular reasoning to find itself in the New Testament. The Church of Christ (Campbellite and the Disciples of Christ denomination) basically does the same thing. In fact, you can earmark many successionist groups, including Rome, by their insistence that Matthew 16:13-19 must always refer to themselves or to their system. The “church” which Jesus would build must always be their church. Circular reasoning.
People interpret the New Testament in this way: “We exist, and we do it this way, so us and our way must be what the New Testament is really talking about.” Circular reasoning.
As much as I disagree with the Baptists who declare that the Bride of Christ is exclusively a Baptist Bride, I do recognize a distinction thusly: No Baptist-Brider I have ever met or read would say that the salvation of the soul or fellowship with Christ is in and through a Baptist church. Even the strictest Baptist-Briders will declare that regeneration and salvation is through deliberate personal faith in the Person and Merits of Jesus Christ alone, and can not be through a church; no, not through any church on earth.
No true believer in Christ and His New Testament has “jettisoned the Church” as suggested by the author of the article. The Church of which all true believers are members has one and only one Head, and that Head, Christ, is far above all heavens. The Holy Spirit which made us members, did so by a baptism unfelt and unseen (1 Corinthians 12:13; Colossians 2:11, 12) — “the operation of God,” not of any earthly priest; not even of any earthly minister at all. No member of Christ can jettison Christ's Body, the Church (Ephesians 1:17-23; 4:4, 5).
The Roman Catholic Church, along with the Baptist-Briders and others, tend to over emphasize the earthy assembly and earthy ministers to a twisted extreme, denying the oneness of the Body of Christ by the spiritual work of God. And this is what the author is doing — only seeing the earthy visible church with visible leaders and visible structures and sacraments and ordinances performed by sinning men in clerical garb.
ON CHRIST THE SOLID ROCK I STAND, ALL OTHER GROUND IS SINKING SAND is the correct position. And IN CHRIST THE HEAD OF THE TRUE CHURCH I SIT IN HEAVENLY PLACES (Ephesians chapter 3), regardless of the insistences of Rome or the Kentucky Baptists.
That's just silly. The Bible nowhere testifies to its own sufficiency, nor completeness. It doesn't even list its own contents.
++++++++++++++
I gota reply.
As I see it (this is my view, formed before becoming a “Mormon”) a creed is where a group of men got together and compromised on what should be gospel and what shouldn't be part of the gospel.
I see the cannon of the Bible also as a compromise among men.
“I see the cannon of the Bible also as a compromise among men.”
The issue always comes down to this: FINAL AUTHORITY. Who has it? Or in what document is it invested.
Concerning the Scriptures and the canon of Scriptures, it is my observation that we always leave God out of it. God Himeslf promised to preserve His Words, and I believe that He is pro-active in doing so. No matter who might claim to have come up with the canon or order of the books, or what books were included or excluded, I believe ultimately it was God Himself Who superintented and brought to every generation His preserved Words.
God did NOT merely give His Words to the human Apostolic authors and then go off and leave them to the devices of men and to the human wisdom of church or other councils. He has Personally and deliberately superintended the preservation of His words, SOMETIMES PERHAPS TO SPITE THE LACK OF REAL WISDOM OF COUNCILS.
If God had given His words by inspiration (2 Timothy ch. 3), and then just sat back and (in affect) said, “Okay, now lets just see what men will do with them; will they handle them properly?” I would in that case agree with you that the canon on Scripture is no more valid than the opinions of mere mortals, or their creeds. But I believe in the case of the Bible, God ultimately pulled the strings, regardless of the intentions of men.
There are more references in the Scriptures to Divine PRESERVATION of the Words of God than there are to Divine INSPIRATION. Both doctrines are found in the Bible, and one is actually useless without the other.
If some human councils sat early in the history of the church, close to the days of the apostles, to decide which books should be in the Bible, I believe God had the power to direct and control the outcome, even if the men in those councils had motives inconsistent with the will of God, the Author, Inspirerer and Preserver. The outcome would astound the hearts of even those men, so that to every generation, God’s Words are preserved, just as He promised.
Don’t leave the Divine Author and Preserver out of the equation.
WHERE did you get THAT? (And what were you doing there?)
I figured it would be very meaningful to some on here.
However, it also wouldn’t surprise me if far too much of that turned out to be true—too true for comfort or laughter.
No doubt some will use this as proof.
Do a Google Images search for “conspiracy theory” and you will find all sorts of weird stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.