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Protestants and Sola Scriptura
Catholic Net ^ | George Sim Johnston

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."


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Ecumenism; Theology
KEYWORDS: 345; bible; chart; fog; gseyfried; luther; onwardthroughthefog; onwardthruthefog; scripture; seyfried; solascriptura; thefog
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To: quadrant
Why would Jews remove sections from their Bible, unless they regarded those sections as “uninspired” or not canonical?

Asked and answered.

461 posted on 05/05/2008 8:23:20 AM PDT by Petronski (When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, voting for Hillary.)
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To: papertyger

READING so much magicsterical man’s dogma can readily cloud discernment when reading Scripture. I guess some things are hidden in plain sight more for some than for others.


462 posted on 05/05/2008 8:23:55 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: John Leland 1789

Don’t leave the Divine Author and Preserver out of the equation.

INDEED.

Thx.


463 posted on 05/05/2008 8:25:24 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: Petronski

And who got pointedly nastiest in personally assaultive ways . . . first and last.


464 posted on 05/05/2008 8:28:29 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: Quix

You.


465 posted on 05/05/2008 8:29:44 AM PDT by Petronski (When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, voting for Hillary.)
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To: Petronski

God’s final Word on that will be . . . startling . . . for some, I expect.


466 posted on 05/05/2008 8:30:21 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: hosepipe

WELL PUT.


467 posted on 05/05/2008 8:31:45 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: blue-duncan

VERY WELL PUT.


468 posted on 05/05/2008 8:32:39 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: FourtySeven

The [Roman] edifice “was never a political body”

. . . except for over it’s whole 1600 years existence. . . . some of the time even with a standing army.

The political magicsterical power mongers have ALWAYS been VERY political.

Sheesh.


469 posted on 05/05/2008 8:35:57 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: quadrant

Most RC’s hereon refuse to answer the better questions.

Probably because they have no reasonable answers to such meaty, historically accurate and Biblically accurate points.


470 posted on 05/05/2008 8:37:10 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: Petronski

Evidently we are talking about two different threads.

But I’m not surprised by the lack of perceptiveness on that issue.


471 posted on 05/05/2008 8:38:20 AM PDT by Quix (GOD ALONE IS GOD; WORTHY; PAID THE PRICE; IS COMING AGAIN; KNOWS ALL; IS LOVING; IS ALTOGETHER GOOD)
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To: Marysecretary; Iscool
Nah, they kicked out old St. Christopher. He ain’t a saint now.

A common mistake, even among many Catholics. Read the Q&A that begins, "My name is Christopher...."

472 posted on 05/05/2008 8:44:06 AM PDT by FourtySeven (47)
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To: Quix
Evidently we are talking about two different threads.

I'm talking about the one on Free Republic, the experimental "respectful dialogue" thread. The one ruined by the self-identified opponents of "respectful dialogue."

473 posted on 05/05/2008 8:45:16 AM PDT by Petronski (When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, voting for Hillary.)
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To: Petronski

I know. I was just pullin’ your leg...


474 posted on 05/05/2008 8:47:02 AM PDT by Marysecretary (.GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL)
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To: FourtySeven
You mean someone posted false information about a teaching of the Catholic Church?



I'm shocked...

475 posted on 05/05/2008 8:47:55 AM PDT by Petronski (When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, voting for Hillary.)
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To: papertyger

I have Jesus. It’s all I need.


476 posted on 05/05/2008 8:48:55 AM PDT by Marysecretary (.GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL)
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To: Iscool

anything to make a buck, I guess...smile.


477 posted on 05/05/2008 8:49:27 AM PDT by Marysecretary (.GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL)
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To: Titanites

It seems mostly to be women my age.


478 posted on 05/05/2008 8:50:17 AM PDT by Marysecretary (.GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL)
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To: papertyger

You guys have things so combobulated. It’s beyond belief.


479 posted on 05/05/2008 8:51:07 AM PDT by Marysecretary (.GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL)
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To: Petronski

You’ve made an unsupported statement, which is not an answer but an assertion.


480 posted on 05/05/2008 8:51:11 AM PDT by quadrant
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