Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism

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.

Disgust away. All sin by definition is willing.

God doesn't think so. Seems that you're at odds with Him. Would that make it an intentional or unintentional sin?

Leviticus 4:1-3 1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2"Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If anyone sins unintentionally in any of the LORD’s commandments about things not to be done, and does any one of them, 3if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, then he shall offer for the sin that he has committed a bull from the herd without blemish to the LORD for a sin offering.

Leviticus 5:1-6 1"If anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity; 2or if anyone touches an unclean thing, whether a carcass of an unclean wild animal or a carcass of unclean livestock or a carcass of unclean swarming things, and it is hidden from him and he has become unclean, and he realizes his guilt; 3or if he touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort the uncleanness may be with which one becomes unclean, and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it, and realizes his guilt; 4or if anyone utters with his lips a rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that people swear, and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it, and he realizes his guilt in any of these; 5when he realizes his guilt in any of these and confesses the sin he has committed, 6he shall bring to the LORD as his compensation for the sin that he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin.

Even more evidence that a search engine is no substitute for a real education. That site claims the primary diety of Babylon was the sun god. Someone should tell the hillbillies who put that site together and the ones who give it credence that the primary god of Babylon and Summaria was the Father of gods "El".

SOP for those who are unable to defend their point of view is to "kill the messenger". Those "hillbillies" you disparage are NOT wrong when they say "Shamash" is the Babylonian sun god. I think it SHOULD be discussed why the Roman Catholic religion employs symbols and signs that originated with pagan religions. A quick look at Wikipedia shows this about Shamash:

Shamash (Akkadian Šamaš "Sun") was a native Mesopotamian deity and the sun god in the Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons. Shamash was the god of justice in Babylonia and Assyria, corresponding to Sumerian Utu. Akkadian šamaš is cognate to Hebrew שמש šemeš and Arabic شمس šams.

Together with Nannar-Sin and Ishtar, Shamash completes another triad by the side of Anu, Enlil and Ea. The three powers Sin, Shamash and Ishtar symbolized three great forces of nature: the moon, the sun, and the life-giving force of the earth, respectively. At times instead of Ishtar we find Adad, the storm-god, associated with Sin and Shamash, and it may be that these two sets of triads represent the doctrines of two different schools of theological thought in Babylonia which were subsequently harmonized by the recognition of a group consisting of all four deities. The consort of Shamash was known as Aya. She is, however, rarely mentioned in the inscriptions except in combination with Shamash.

Another reference to Shamash is the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to slay Humbaba, each morning they pray and make libation to shamash in the direction of the rising sun for safe travels. Gilgamesh receives dreams from Shamash, which Enkidu then interprets, and at their battle with Humbaba, it is Shamash's favor for Gilgamesh that enables them to defeat the monster.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamash)

If you are thinking of mocking the use of Wikipedia, here's the Encyclopedia Britannica's info:

Shamash, (Akkadian), Sumerian Utu, in Mesopotamian religion, the god of the sun, who, with the moon god, Sin (Sumerian: Nanna), and Ishtar (Sumerian: Inanna), the goddess of Venus, was part of an astral triad of divinities. Shamash was the son of Sin.

Shamash, as the solar deity, exercised the power of light over darkness and evil. In this capacity he became known as the god of justice and equity and was the judge of both gods and men. (According to legend, the Babylonian king Hammurabi received his code of laws from Shamash.) At night, Shamash became judge of the underworld.

Shamash was not only the god of justice but also governor of the whole universe; in this aspect he was pictured seated on a throne, holding in his hand the symbols of justice and righteousness, a staff and a ring. Also associated with Shamash is the notched dagger. The god is often pictured with a disk that symbolized the Sun.

As the god of the sun, Shamash was the heroic conqueror of night and death who swept across the heavens on horseback or, in some representations, in a boat or chariot. He bestowed light and life. Because he was of a heroic and wholly ethical character, he only rarely figured in mythology, where the gods behaved all too often like mortals. The chief centres of his cult were at Larsa in Sumer and at Sippar in Akkad. Shamash’s consort was Aya, who was later absorbed by Ishtar.(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538274/Shamash

As far as your take on "El", the Britannica says:

El, the general term for “deity” in Semitic languages as well as the name of the chief deity of the West Semites. In the ancient texts from Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) in Syria, El was described as the titular head of the pantheon, husband of Asherah, and father of all the other gods (except for Baal). His most common epithet was “the Bull,” but he was also sometimes called “Creator/Possessor of Heaven and Earth.” Although a venerable deity, he was not active in the myths, which primarily concerned his daughters and sons.

He was usually portrayed as an old man with a long beard and, often, two wings. He was the equivalent of the Hurrian god Kumarbi and the Greek god Cronus. In the Old Testament, El is commonly used as a synonym for Yahweh and less commonly as the general term for “deity.” (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/181687/El

Some more interesting info, now that you brought it up:

The evidence available is primarily the product of the small, wealthy, ruling elites of these societies. It bears witness primarily to their religion, giving only indirect testimony to the beliefs or practices of the vast majority of the population. This official religion is polytheistic, the anthropomorphic gods as a whole being referred to as an extended family, or an assembly, or by other collective terms. Most earlier sources come from more cosmopolitan contexts and reflect that fact in their attention to a variety of gods. The sources from the 1st millennium suggest a greater concentration on a few gods or indeed on one supreme god.

Some divine names appear through most of the period from 3000 to 300 bc. In other cases, different names appear in different periods and in different regions or languages, and often titles are used instead of names. Consequently, it is sometimes not possible to determine to what extent new names have been assigned to gods whose cult is continuous across these boundaries and to what extent different gods may lie behind the same title. In general, it appears that a few types prevailed and persisted over the centuries.

The most pervasive type was the storm god (Hadad, Baal, Teshub), who was associated with rain, thunder, and lightning—and thus with fertility and war. Another type was a more patriarchal creator god, bearing the simple name El (“God”). The major female deities appear to have been of either the belligerent type (Anath, Astarte) or the matriarchal type (Asherah). These often, but not always, served as the respective consorts of the two male types. Also prominent throughout the period were a solar and a lunar deity.

Consistent with the sources of documentation, the monarch emerges as a significant medium between god and people, acting on the people’s behalf in the cult of the god and on the god’s behalf in the care of the people. The cult was generally practiced in a “house” of the god, where a professional priesthood attended to the daily needs of the god, represented in effigy.

The most recurrent concerns in the written sources are (1) the good relations between monarch and god and the well-being of the monarch and his family (alive and deceased), on which the order of society depended, and (2) the natural conditions—rainfall, sunshine, fertility of soil, flocks, and herds—on which most people depended directly for survival and on which the agrarian economy as a whole depended.(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/578986/Syrian-and-Palestinian-religion/68294/Nature-and-significance?anchor=ref559451

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