We do not know, but we can be reasonably assured. See below.
To me, this is the ultimate destruction of sola scriptura. If we claim the Church is incapable of teaching authoritatively [...]
Teaching authoritatively is different than the preservation of the Word. It is to our great convenience, and to the RCC's credit, that they did preserve the Holy Text, confining their 'changes' or elaborations to their traditions and extra-canonical documents.
We certainly can’t claim it “verifies itself”, as a general distortion of all Scripture could still “verify itself”; it would be “verifying” error though.
I would be happy to stand upon that claim. There are two witnesses bound within the Book. The Prophecy and the Word. They are inextricably bound together with such an intricacy that the only way to explain them otherwise is to assume a conspiracy spanning thousands of years, and working in the world, even unto this very day. With such a ludicrous suggestion set aside, the Prophecy proves the Word, and revelation in the Word proves the Prophecy.
One might also suggest that Protestant forces, no friend to the RCC in such matters, have largely served as an external sourceof confirmation- Taking what extant ancient sources as do exist and subjecting them to translation and interpretation outside of the control of the RCC. In doing so, the result was largely the same as that of the RC determination.
We all do agree wrt the Scripture, albeit not perfectly, though sufficiently.
My contention lies in the Traditions of the RCC, their supposed infallibility, and certainly, and most rigorously, in their elevation to the authority of Scripture by the RCC.
Sola scriptura, in the Protestant sense, does not suggest '*only* Scripture', as is often tossed about, but instead demands that nothing can rise to the authority of Scripture. No tradition, Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise, may trump that authority.
Oddly enough, the contention among the Protestant branches lies mainly in how much of the RCC tradition to adhere to- Those things which the various denominations cling to that are extra-Biblical (Sunday Sabbath, baptism by sprinkling, infant baptism, ad etcetera), as well as extra-Biblical Protestant ideas (Calvinism, etc) are the cause of disunity among the Protestants as well as the disunity between the Protestants and the Catholics.
Thank you both for your responses, again, interesting points! I must admit at this point I’m hoping to garner more responses to my post # 145 before I post any replies to the replies I’ve received so far. I am generally pleased with what has been posted so far though, thanks again!
Point granted. What I should have said was "If we reject the Tradition of the Church today..." I don't think it changes the crux of my reasoning though. See below.
It is to our great convenience, and to the RCC's credit, that they did preserve the Holy Text, confining their 'changes' or elaborations to their traditions and extra-canonical documents.
This is the exact point I found myself when I first was investigating the Church with a critical eye. I had to conclude from history that the Church did indeed at least "preserve" Scripture. However, what I still had to reconcile with the concept of "corruption" (and at the time, I too believed that the Traditions of the Church were "extra Biblical", "un-Biblical", "contrary to Scripture" and all those other buzzwords) was the fact that from the 1st (and early 2nd centuries) up until the time of the 4th century when the canon was finally closed, that it was tradition itself that kept alive which was Scripture and which wasn't (at least for the majority of the books). So, IOW, if "tradition" wasn't corrupted between the 1st and 4th centuries, why should we believe it would be corrupted after that? This is the main question that really I had to ask myself, after realizing the Church did preserve Scripture.
I would be happy to stand upon that claim. There are two witnesses bound within the Book. The Prophecy and the Word. They are inextricably bound together with such an intricacy that the only way to explain them otherwise is to assume a conspiracy spanning thousands of years, and working in the world, even unto this very day. With such a ludicrous suggestion set aside, the Prophecy proves the Word, and revelation in the Word proves the Prophecy.
To be sure, again, we can be reasonably sure (independently) that the OT wasn't corrupted from the 1st century onward because of the witness of the DSS. As an aside however, this only pushes the question of "living witness" (tradition) back a few centuries as we don't have any copies (at least none as full as the DSS) of the OT any older than the DSS, thus, as NYer pointed out in her reply to me, how do we know that, say, the 10 Commandments are accurately represented? We know because of the tradition the Jews kept, the practice of oral transmission (and not just the 10 Commandments and entire Torah, but the entire Tanakh) centuries before the LXX, the Tanakh was preserved accurately. Now, of course God wrote the 10 Commandments on stone, but those are lost as the Ark of the Covenant is lost. Also, of course, the Torah was written down prior to the LXX, but we don't have those (complete) copies, much less the supposed "original" that Moses traditionally wrote with the inspiration of God.
Generally speaking, all these facts point to the *equal* importance of tradition with regards to Scripture. Without Tradition (Jewish) we wouldn't have assurance that what was listed in the 1st century (the DSS) was the OT, and without Tradition (Christian), we wouldn't have assurance that what was listed in the 4th (the Council of Carthage in 397) was truly an accurate representation of NT Scripture. At least IMO.
So again, the "Prophets and the Word" could be both corrupted, if we reject the role of Tradition in preserving their true message, thus, any "self authentication" that one attempts invariably relies on the traditional preservation of the Scripture in question.
One might also suggest that Protestant forces, no friend to the RCC in such matters, have largely served as an external sourceof confirmation- Taking what extant ancient sources as do exist and subjecting them to translation and interpretation outside of the control of the RCC. In doing so, the result was largely the same as that of the RC determination.
An interesting assertion, to which I don't particularly find too much objection. I suppose it's entirely possible (if not probable) that the Holy Spirit did help the Protestants from questioning the very Canon they claim as inspired, since if to reject Church Tradition in one area (Indulgences, the Pope) would seem to reject (or at least question it) in all. As a side note, this is perhaps an example of Mormon error, in that they even reject the idea that the Canon is even closed. However, this still points back to the fact that it was originally Catholic Tradition that gave witness to the authenticity of the Scriptures. Again, I see no reason to reject one Tradition while adhering to another.
We all do agree wrt the Scripture, albeit not perfectly, though sufficiently.
At this point, I'm reminded of the formation of the Canon in the early centuries, specifically the fact that the book of Hebrews was, for a time, rejected by some of the early churches. Perhaps, at some point, Protestants will come to accept the deuterocanonicals as Scripture, the same way some early Churches came to accept Hebrews. ;)
My contention lies in the Traditions of the RCC, their supposed infallibility, and certainly, and most rigorously, in their elevation to the authority of Scripture by the RCC.
Here, there's a point that begs to me made, although I fear it may take us off track, I feel I should at least make it briefly. There are many traditions in the Church, however the only ones that are infallible are the ones that have been defined as such (the Canon, the Trinity, Theotokos, the Assumption of Mary, etc.). IOW, not all traditions are infallible. I would ask that we focus on the Tradition that preserved Scripture for any future discussions here. Suffice it to say though, that again, if one has no problem accepting the role of Tradition in preserving (and accurately transmitting) Scripture, I see no reason to reject any of the other dogmatically defined Traditions above.
Sola scriptura, in the Protestant sense, does not suggest '*only* Scripture', as is often tossed about, but instead demands that nothing can rise to the authority of Scripture. No tradition, Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise, may trump that authority.
Oddly enough, the contention among the Protestant branches lies mainly in how much of the RCC tradition to adhere to- Those things which the various denominations cling to that are extra-Biblical (Sunday Sabbath, baptism by sprinkling, infant baptism, ad etcetera), as well as extra-Biblical Protestant ideas (Calvinism, etc) are the cause of disunity among the Protestants as well as the disunity between the Protestants and the Catholics.
You stated the situation very well here, I commend you. This is indeed the situation that is faced today. You are correct that the historic definition of sola scriptura does not wholly reject a role for tradition, but rather, doesn't put it on the same plane as Scripture. At this point, you may object and say, "Well if you realize that, what's been the point of this entire exercise? Don't you see that (we) historic Protestants don't reject the role of tradition in preserving Scripture? We just don't think it should ever contradict it!".
I can see that, however, for the reasons following it doesn't seem to really respect the role of Tradition in the time period mentioned. We must realize that during the time period mentioned (from ~AD 90 to ~AD 300), it wasn't the practice to make multiple copies of Scripture to ensure their preservation in written form. (more on that in the next paragraphs) Indeed, as I pointed out in my original post (#145), most likely due to Roman persecution, any original documents were lost. We can also reasonably infer that it wasn't the practice to "replace" the originals with exact copies during this period of persecution, since the word of mouth was considered just as reliable. Now, as we all know, the word of mouth isn't as reliable as writing something down, *normally speaking*. However, as Christians, we are free to believe (and I think should believe) that the Holy Spirit can guide men and protect them from error, thus, I believe it's reasonable to conclude that during the time of persecution (and relative disorganization of the Church, a period of about AD 100 to AD 300), that after any original documents were lost due to persecution, that the men of the Church kept a "record" of the Gospels and Epistles through word of mouth, that is, through teaching it to new converts, then they taught it to new ones, and so on. Then later, as the Church became more organized and was able to preserve some written history (AD 300-AD 350) the Gospels and Epistles that were committed to memory during all that time were finally written down. I believe this is a reasonable conclusion since, IMO at least, it's unreasonable to believe that during the time of intense persecution and relative disorganization in the early Church, while people were literally running and hiding for their lives, that they would take the time to meticulously write something down that would probably end up being destroyed anyway once they were caught. At this time, it's more reasonable to believe that they were more interested in spreading the Good News than recording it. A time ripe for corruption of the Word of God, without the protection of the Holy Spirit. Without the protection of Tradition by the Holy Spirit during this time, the Word might very easily have been corrupted. But this was not the case, praise the Lord.
Now, one might argue that this "protection" came in the form of "protected documents", but we have no evidence of this, and indeed, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that if these "protected documents" survived the greatest assault on Christianity in toto, that they would have survived past the 4th century, when Christians were no longer persecuted? I think it is, thus, since we have very few documents from the period in question (~AD 100 to AD 300), we must conclude they were destroyed, and the only way during that time period to preserve their message was through word of mouth.
One may question, "Well if the word of mouth was good enough during times of persecution, why isn't it good enough today? Why did the Christians at the time (AD 300-350) write them down then?" I would say that was done to doubly preserve their message, not as a primary source of knowledge. That is, if my conclusions above are reasonable (and I believe they are), the Christians at the time already knew the Message, they just chose to write it down because during that period (AD 300-350), since persecutions were mostly gone, they had the time to actually look at the works they had, and, during that period, they began to argue which were actually Scripture and which weren't. Thus, to foster profitable dialog to that end, the Scriptures were written down, so they could be compared to one another with relative ease. It wasn't for the purposes of primary knowledge however, as again, they were all known already by word of mouth by that time.
In conclusion, to me, this points to the role of Tradition in those times as of equal importance (if not arguably greater importance, although, to be clear, I'm not making that assertion, I conclude it was of equal importance) to Scripture. One can argue that this "tradition" became corrupted in later centuries, but the only way one could make such a claim would be to use, IMO, circular logic, i.e. point to Scripture and say, "That Tradition violates Scripture", when it was "that Tradition" that preserved Scripture in the first place.
So, if Tradition played a role equal to Scripture in the early Church, why shouldn't it continue to do so today? This is the question I still am left with, whenever someone says, "Tradition X violates Scripture".