Posted on 10/28/2011 6:59:29 AM PDT by markomalley
October 31 is only three days away. For Protestants, it is Reformation Day, the date in 1517 on which Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to that famous door in Wittenberg, Germany. Since I returned to the Catholic Church in April 2007, each year the commemoration has become a time of reflection about my own journey and the puzzles that led me back to the Church of my youth.
One of those puzzles was the relationship between the Church, Tradition, and the canon of Scripture. As a Protestant, I claimed to reject the normative role that Tradition plays in the development of Christian doctrine. But at times I seemed to rely on it. For example, on the content of the biblical canon – whether the Old Testament includes the deuterocanonical books (or “Apocrypha”), as the Catholic Church holds and Protestantism rejects. I would appeal to the exclusion of these books as canonical by the Jewish Council of Jamnia (A.D. 90-100) as well as doubts about those books raised by St. Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, and a few other Church Fathers.
My reasoning, however, was extra-biblical. For it appealed to an authoritative leadership that has the power to recognize and certify books as canonical that were subsequently recognized as such by certain Fathers embedded in a tradition that, as a Protestant, I thought more authoritative than the tradition that certified what has come to be known as the Catholic canon. This latter tradition, rejected by Protestants, includes St. Augustine as well as the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), the Third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), the Fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 419), and the Council of Florence (A.D. 1441).
But if, according to my Protestant self, a Jewish council and a few Church Fathers are the grounds on which I am justified in saying what is the proper scope of the Old Testament canon, then what of New Testament canonicity? So, ironically, given my Protestant understanding of ecclesiology, then the sort of authority and tradition that apparently provided me warrant to exclude the deuterocanonical books from Scripture – binding magisterial authority with historical continuity – is missing from the Church during the development of New Testament canonicity.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, maintains that this magisterial authority was in fact present in the early Church and thus gave its leadership the power to recognize and fix the New Testament canon. So, ironically, the Protestant case for a deuterocanonical-absent Old Testament canon depends on Catholic intuitions about a tradition of magisterial authority.
This led to two other tensions. First, in defense of the Protestant Old Testament canon, I argued, as noted above, that although some of the Church’s leading theologians and several regional councils accepted what is known today as the Catholic canon, others disagreed and embraced what is known today as the Protestant canon. It soon became clear to me that this did not help my case, since by employing this argumentative strategy, I conceded the central point of Catholicism: the Church is logically prior to the Scriptures. That is, if the Church, until the Council of Florence’s ecumenical declaration in 1441, can live with a certain degree of ambiguity about the content of the Old Testament canon, that means that sola scriptura was never a fundamental principle of authentic Christianity.
After all, if Scripture alone applies to the Bible as a whole, then we cannot know to which particular collection of books this principle applies until the Bible’s content is settled. Thus, to concede an officially unsettled canon for Christianity’s first fifteen centuries seems to make the Catholic argument that sola scriptura was a sixteenth-century invention and, therefore, not an essential Christian doctrine.
Second, because the list of canonical books is itself not found in Scripture – as one can find the Ten Commandments or the names of Christ’s apostles – any such list, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be an item of extra-biblical theological knowledge. Take, for example, a portion of the revised and expanded Evangelical Theological Society statement of faith suggested (and eventually rejected by the membership) by two ETS members following my return to the Catholic Church. It states that, “this written word of God consists of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments and is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior.”
But the belief that the Bible consists only of sixty-six books is not a claim of Scripture, since one cannot find the list in it, but a claim about Scripture as a whole. That is, the whole has a property – i.e., “consisting of sixty-six books,” – that is not found in any of the parts. In other words, if the sixty-six books are the supreme authority on matters of belief, and the number of books is a belief, and one cannot find that belief in any of the books, then the belief that Scripture consists of sixty-six particular books is an extra-biblical belief, an item of theological knowledge that is prima facie non-biblical.
For the Catholic, this is not a problem, since the Bible is the book of the Church, and thus there is an organic unity between the fixing of the canon and the development of doctrine and Christian practice.
Although I am forever indebted to my Evangelical brethren for instilling and nurturing in me a deep love of Scripture, it was that love that eventually led me to the Church that had the authority to distinguish Scripture from other things.
By its very definition all sin is willful and no one, except Jesus and His mother, is without sin. I am a little disgusted that you would suggest otherwise.
Not my call, and not an accusation.
Well then, you’re fine. Why worry about it, or argue about it? Just go on and live your life of perfection, since Christ has perfected you.
BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wrong again. Your religion is wholly man made. You reject the faith founded by the blood of martyrs and saints, instituted by Christ, and cemented by the Apostles and Holy Fathers. You choose to pick and choose what YOU THINK is Holy or valid, and in your zeal you reject those very beliefs that hundreds and thousands of Christian martyrs gave their very lives for. Saints such as Ignatius, Perpetua, Cyprian, Peter, Paul...
In the end, you will know the truth, that to reject the True Church is to reject Christ. The Holy Church has the power to bind or loose.
1. Santa Claus
2. Catholicism
3. Purgatory
Two of these things are not real. If they are not real, they cannot be bashed in a literal sense. The remaining one CAN be bashed, but not by using things that are not real.
Where can proof of that be found?
I don’t. You could have it too.
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
Seriously? Are you seriously accusing her off “willfully” committing sin? Making spurious accusations like that should get you banned from this forum or ignored at best. I’m rather ashamed to have engaged you in what I thought was intelligent debate. I'm disgusted.
Disgust away. All sin by definition is willing.
You know for a fact that that's the case??????
I don't believe you. Nobody can know that for a fact. Unless you're omniscient, which I'm pretty sure you aren't, you cannot monitor anyone 24/7 nor discern their hearts.
I believe that you fit the description.
Founded by the blood of martyrs? Which martyrs started your faith?
God proclaims me saved.
I don't find that in the Bible. Can you point to the chapter and verse where metmom is proclaimed to be saved?
Can you bring forth the chapter and verse in which the Bible says that you specifically are saved?
And you know that how? Did you ask people? Observe them? Did they tell you? Do you have special knowledge of where people ended up for eternity based on their beliefs that the rest of us aren't privy to? Where did you get that information?
Please cite your sources to support your contention.
You guys provide enough really good examples.
Unfortunately, it won't fit on a bumper sticker, but I would advise you to read St. Thomas Aquinas' "Quaestiones disputatae de malo" (Disputed Questions on Evil). And yes, it includes more than enough Scriptural references and anchor texts to satisfy your preemptive "Show me in Scripture" objections.
So just accept that your Salvation was determined before the beginning of time, that it was fully paid for 2,000 years ago and party on; sex, drugs, rock and roll. Nothing you can do can screw it up.......or you can take what is behind door number 2; the hope of Salvation.
"So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;" - Philippians 2:12
Whee. Nothing of import that Paul said matters. Nothing that Jesus said matters. It is only what the image in the mirror tells you that matters. Neat. I understand the appeal of Protestantism.
"THAT IN THE AGES TO COME HE MIGHT SHEW THE EXCEEDING RICHES OF HIS GRACE IN HIS KINDNESS TOWARD US THROUGH CHRIST JESUS."Eph. 2:7.
In the ages to come, the Church the Body of Christ will be the example of God's grace to people who deserved no grace.
It's about HIM, Judith Anne. Not us. It's about HIS GLORY, HIS PLAN.
Mark, I understand the eye poking that happens on these threads but that has to one of the most egregiously silly statements I've seen in some time and anyone here knows I'm not given to hyperbole and puffery
Well, given the political nature and the straying from the straight and narrow truth of translation, I will say that the KJV has caused many to deviate from the truth of Scripture. But overall, I will acknowledge that you are correct.
Admitting the shortcomings of the AV, those same type of things appear in translations Catholics hold near and dear. If you haven't realized that they certainly have been pointed out on these threads more than once.
That I will not agree with. The translations were the best that could be done at the time.
Two of these things are not real. If they are not real, they cannot be bashed in a literal sense. The remaining one CAN be bashed, but not by using things that are not real.
Negative. Only one of these things are not real.
Why indeed would God give us the knowledge of right versus wrong, the gift of reason and freewill, and a sense of responsibility if we have no need of them? Why would He reveal His Word and make us subject to His law, known to us by the dictates of conscience, if it were pointless?
Peter, Paul, Cyprian, Ignatius, Polycarp, and the list goes on and on.
Then why did you say I posted falsehoods?
See post #1072 of yours to Cynicalbear.
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