Posted on 07/08/2008 8:16:05 AM PDT by Gamecock
Sola Fide
Latin “faith alone”
The historic Protestant doctrine that the only instrumental cause of justification, from the human perspective, is faith. While God is the ultimate cause of justification, Protestants believe that faith in Christ through the message of the Gospel is necessary. There are no works, no matter how meritorious they may seem, that can add to justification (Eph. 2:8-9). This doctrine, according to Protestants, finds its roots in the teachings of Paul but was obscured in the middle ages and restored during the Reformation. Many Protestants would be quick to point out that it is not the doctrine itself that saves, but the reality that the doctrine represents. In other words, one is saved by faith alone, not by belief in the doctrine of faith alone. As well, most Protestants would say that “it is faith alone that saves, but the faith that saves will not be alone.” This doctrine represents a major point of distinction between Protestants and Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, often, Eastern Orthodox.
True....but before you can teach the Gospel, you first have to HAVE the Gospel. Before the NT was revealed, the churches had the OT, from which they derived the truths of Christ well enough to certainly be able to propagate themselves. As the NT was progressively revealed, spiritual people in the churches recognised it as Scripture, and it was added to the repository of teaching. But until they had that added repository, the churches were incomplete, because Scripture was incomplete.
So, essentially having failed by argumentation to show the equality of tradition with Scripture, you fall back on tradition. That's called circular reasoning.
And it's not even factually correct, since what is now "the Catholic Church" evolved over a period of several centuries, only arriving at a more or less recognisable form after the time of Augustine.
The one group that DOES know from their traditions is the Catholic Church, because the fathers of the Catholic Church were THERE. Pope Peter I, Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, etc.
Essentially? I did not claim to be showing by argumentation the equality of Tradition and Scripture.
And it's not even factually correct, since what is now "the Catholic Church" evolved over a period of several centuries, only arriving at a more or less recognisable form after the time of Augustine.
Absurd. The acorn and the oak tree are the same plant.
“What is important is that, without the Scripture, you would have no idea what the events which happened even were. Without Scripture, why would there be any reason to believe one group who claims that they ‘know’ from their traditions how it all happened, versus any myriad of other groups making the same claim? ‘Traditions,’ such as they are, are defined by Scripture, and any tradition, of “the church” or otherwise, which deviates from Scripture, is a false tradition.”
The Gospel is not confined to Scripture. Scripture is a useful compilation of the Gospel, but the Gospel pre-existed the New Testament.
“As the NT was progressively revealed, spiritual people in the churches recognised it as Scripture, and it was added to the repository of teaching. But until they had that added repository, the churches were incomplete, because Scripture was incomplete.”
How could they recognise it if it contained novelties? The writings which were canonised by the Church were so canonised because they were completely congruent with what had already been taught. So the writings of the New Testament were in fact written reinforcements of prior teachings, not a presentation of new ones, or they would not have been accepted. The ante-Nicene period is littered with para-scriptural writings which were not canonised for precisely that reason.
Nowhere in NT scripture is there a complete catcheism, nor is there a handbook or a rule book.
Catholic tradition and scripture frequently contradict, and the church decision always favors tradition.
So much for “honored with equal sentiments.”
You might reply that Protestants do the same thing, except we favor scripture instead of tradition. That’s true, but we don’t have (or even pretend to have) the “equal sentiments” nonsense.
Just a question out of curiosity - in Catholic doctrine, is the magisterium a third, co-equal source of truth, or does it fit in some other way?
Not at all.
“Catholic tradition and scripture frequently contradict...”
The same text ALWAYS permits of multiple interpretations; no text exists independently of the reader’s interpretation. This being so, any interpretation can be read as incoherent from the point of view of another interpretation.
The irreducible question remains: who will instruct the reader to understand? The text is worthless without an interpretive tradition—a Spirit of understanding, if you will.
A different analogy:
Mr. Paul: I vote because I am 18.
Mr. James: You vote because you are an American citizen, and not merely because you are 18.
Mr. Paul here has not said anything inconsistent with what Mr. James has said. Mr. James has just clarified the statement of Mr. Paul.
And as someone else said, you notice Paul is talking about the law - the OT codes. The new Covenant supersedes the old law, and gives us a different route to God's grace. Catholics completely agree with that.
The Magisterium is the official teaching capacity of the Church, and can infallibly interpret Scripture and Tradition. It is not an independant source of Truth - all Public Revelation is complete, and contained in Scripture and Tradition. Rather, it is the authoritative capacity entrusted to the Church, protected by the Holy Spirit, to say what Scripture and Tradition MEAN.
1st, point out where Catholic tradition condradicts the Bible. please use many examples. I have seen most of them and most are easily shot down.
2nd, The Magisterium is part of the Catholic Tradition. It helps interpret scripture and tradition in order to form a coherent whole theology.
3rd. The Bible makes much more sense after looking at it through the tradition and interpretations of the Catholic Church-—you see the wholeness of how it all comes together from Genesis to Revelation. The theologians are able to construct a theology based on the whole of scripture rather than do what Protestants usually do-—which is to take a couple verses out of one of Paul’s letters, out of context, and completely ignore the Gospels.
you have it completely backwards. Much of scripture was writing down what the Christians of the early Church already knew and repeated orally or in part (to save it for future generation)-—or in the case of some of the letters, to combat problems that arose in the implementation of Gospel teaching.
But Christianity existed long before the NT was written, and much longer before it was officially canonized
interesting way of looking at it.
I tend to think that the Book of James and the various Pauline letters are in fact complementary rather than contradictory-—they balance each other.
They show two ways of looking at the Christian life-—Paul is saying you are made right through real faith, and James is saying that real faith makes you live right.
Perhaps, but the commendments of the new testament is to love God and love your neighbor. Seems Saint Peter was grossly negligent in telling us what the 'does' we are suppose to do. I find it impossible to believe that all these critical do's that Catholics believe in, weren't important enough for Paul and the other apisltes to write about.
“Agreed - which is why I see faith and works as two sides of the same coin. Faith is the internal, intellectual side of things, whereby works are the external, actualization side of it. Much like Scripture and Tradition - both the Word, one written, one oral.”
It’s been said that Protestants tend to be “either-or” thinkers (faith OR works, scripture OR tradition), while Catholics and the Orthodox are “both-and” thinkers. I think that observation explains much of the difficulty of ecumenical dialogue.
Jesus is the Word in flesh. The Bible is God’s Word. The Bible represents Jesus. The Bible is all about Jesus. The Church came about because of the Word.
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