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 mockery is your invention.
All we do is follow Christ’s commands.
It's appropriate! - You need only talk to someone that has wandered in there out of curiousity, and gotten caught up in it themselves. The Holy Spirit is in charge there.
No it doesn't. (Shaking my head here). There is absolutely nothing in Scripture that teaches anything about "Holy Traditions" or the "Roman Catholic Church". Scripture also says nothing about Peter being its head or popes or bishops or cardinals or any of other positions of ecclesiology within the Catholic Church. What it teaches is pastors, elders, and Deacons. (II Timothy Chapter 3) Where you find Catholic ecclesiology is outside of Scripture in the Roman political system of Government, INCLUDING the Title of Pontus Maximus or 'Pope'. Hence the title: "Roman" Catholic. You should take a Roman History course sometime.
The answer is no.
Next.
Protestants haven't "jettisoned" the Church. They've jettisoned heresy. They are indeed members of the true Church of Christ, whose home is heaven, not Rome.
As a matter of simple grammer, the word "inseparable" refers to the word "role" NOT "union."
Perhaps you might answer some of these questions:
If the Church's teachings about the Blessed Virgin Mary are wrong, then why did Reformers such as Luther, Calvin, Zwengli and Wesley not disavow them? Better yet, why did these same Reformers CONTINUE to teach them?
Does the phrase, "blessed art thou among women" leave open the possibility that ANY woman was more blessed? And if so whom?
Why is the instruction in Luke 1:48 EXCLUDED by you and others?
How does your concept of sola scriptura reconcile with 2 Peter 3:16
I thought it was Geneva, or Princeton.
...or a cargo terminal at Toronto Pearson International.
Yep, and adding anything to that as a 'requirement for salvation' tells Him his sacrifice wasn't good enough, sorry. Question. If salvation is based on you keeping the sacraments, or your good deeds, or your observances of anything, why did Christ need to die to begin with???? Why couldn't you have just done it yourself with all of these observances?
Paul asked this same question btw and here is his answer:
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" Galatians 2:21
It can't be a verse of straw, since Luther didn't jettison it.
So when was it jettisoned . . . obliterated . . . nuked . . . whited-out . . .
Therefore we set aside the requirements of Mosaic law, and it is good that we did.
I suppose I should have used the term IGNORED rather than excluded. The verse is in their incomplete Bibles, they just choose to ignore it.
Metaphorically, to ignore it or delete it is indistinguishable.
You are expressing a common fallacy in that you fail to recognize that the intellectual exercise of accepting Christ as your Savior is still a deed.
Oftentimes it is not just ignored, it is openly mocked.
You confuse the "how" with the "what." Sacraments are how we are saved by Jesus. They would not exist and would have no salvific power were it not for Jesus' Sacifice.
Can you understand that?
See, that wasn’t so difficult for you to post your opinion, and that’s why the thread shouldn’t have been pulled.
Perhaps there’s a giant wheel somewhere that is spun each day to choose which manner of deprecation they will deal to Luke 1:28.
He also taught us to call God Our Father. How sad it is that you will not contemplate the Incarnation, nor accept that God reached out to our humanity precisely to draw us into His Embrace.
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