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.
It would appear you disagree with the RCC at least.
Sacraments Are Necessary For Salvation
(1129) The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation. “Sacramental grace” is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament. The Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. The fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers in the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the only Son, the Saviour. (Page 319)
All that God wanted us to know is contained in scripture...
It was convened to address the issue of the Nestorian heresy.
And the Nestorian heresy is that they would not bow down to your religion or your pope, and that they refused to call the mother of Jesus the mother of God...
Now those are some real heretics that I wouldn't mind being associated with...
Sounds like Jesus was probably a Nestorian...
The Church offers grace which helps to continue to “abide in Christ”.
Salvation is God’s alone to give and He has offered it to us through belief in His Son Jesus.
Jesus has given us His Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit so that we may remain in Him and He in us.
A very big disparity...
You never see any Catholics speaking about these gifts that are given to members of the body...
Another one for your Wall of Shame.
There was only one Church until 1054ad, and every Protestant sect was a product of the reformation. Historical fact. Check any history book
I didn’t see priests, popes, or nuns mentioned in that list of leadership the Holy Spirit gave to the church.
I never heard any Catholic exercising the gifts of prophesy, tongues, interpretation, healing, miracles, etc.
The Holy Spirit apportioned them to the church as HE will for the building up of the body.
Doesn’t even come close to matching the RCC as it stands today.
The “church” does not offer grace, it is a gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Rom. 5:15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
There’s still only one church today and it isn’t any one denomination.
No denomination holds a corner on the truth market. All the truth God knew we needed to know to be mature believers is contained in Scripture.
Anyone who says they have truth that is not contained in Scripture but is held outside or in addition to Scripture, is lying.
The very first thing Satan went for in his temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden was *Did God REALLY say....????*
His first tactic is to cast doubt on the word of God. And he’s still getting mileage out of that today.
So being a member of the Catholic religion puts you 'in' Jesus Christ, and He in you???
Oh really? Didn’t seem to be one church or even the same authority over all the churches.
Revelation 2:1 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write
Revelation 2:8 And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write
Revelation 2:12 And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write
Revelation 2:18 And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write
Revelation 3:1 And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write
Revelation 3:7 And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write
Revelation 3:14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write
Where’s Rome I wonder?
That was quite an oversight on the part of Jesus, no?
Matthew 7:13 Enter through the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many go that way. 14 How narrow is the gate that leads to life and how rough the road; few there are who find it.
The Sacraments of the New Covenant in Jesus are indeed necessary for our salvation for they work in us and help us to stay upon the narrow path.
Read the part you chose not to highlight.
The Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. The fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers in the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the only Son, the Saviour.
That there is a “path” implies a journey, a walk that we choose to take. We believe and therefore we desire to walk with Jesus. The sacraments aid us on that journey. Straying from the path can be fatal.
Matthew 7:24 “So, then, anyone who hears these words of mine and acts accordingly is like a wise man, who built his house on rock. 25 The rain poured, the rivers flooded, and the wind blew and struck that house, but it did not collapse because it was built on rock. 26 But anyone who hears these words of mine and does not act accordingly, is like a fool who built his house on sand. 27 The rain poured, the rivers flooded, and the wind blew and struck that house; it collapsed, and what a terrible fall that was!”
The foundation of our faith is Jesus, we build upon it through our works, “acting accordingly” as Jesus tells us and the sacraments are the graces, “tools” by which we build.
We see quite clearly in the story of the gospels that the Apostles and the disciples waxed and waned in their faith, asking Jesus to “increase our faith” and “help our unbelief”.
Jesus knows us, knows our weaknesses and knows that we must be constantly encouraged and strengthened as our own faith waxes and wanes under difficult circumstances, or moments of uncertainty.
We are obliged to receive the sacraments only in that sense that we desire to remain in Christ and to walk with Him.
Our obligation is to ourselves.
LOL Not a word of commendation or even a word of mention. Surely no commendation as the “One Holy Catholic Church”.
There is more than one understanding of the word grace.
8. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) Christianity
a. the free and unmerited favour of God shown towards man
b. the divine assistance and power given to man in spiritual rebirth and sanctification
c. the condition of being favoured or sanctified by God
d. an unmerited gift, favour, etc., granted by God
So that the Grace of God is mercy. And the grace one receives through communion with the church and the sacraments is divine assistance and sanctification.
Two different things.
And on what basis do u base this opinion? Countless men of God who were here centuries before you such as Ignatius, Cyprian, Basil, Polycarp, all men who lost their lives for the faith of Christ, have all stated that without the Holy Catholic Church as ur guide, there is NO correct interpretation of the scripture, nor is salvation possible. One cannot reject the Church instituted by Christ, without rejecting Christ himself. One can call a mule a horse, but that doesn’t make it one.
Over and over and over again we are told what the requirement for salvation is. No mention of sacraments.
Rom. 3:28-30, "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one."
Rom. 4:5, "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness,"
Rom. 5:1, "therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,"
Romans 9:30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. 31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. 32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone;
Gal. 2:16, "nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."
Phil. 3:9, "and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith."
Yes. Each of these churches were part of the Holy Catholic Church. For example, a Holy Ecumenical Council was held in Ephesus.
Show me one reference from scripture that grace comes through the organized church rather than from God.
I didn’t say the RCC didn’t try to usurp the authority of the church. I showed that all of those churches were independent having a different governing authority. The church of Rome isn’t even mentioned ie not to be considered relevant.
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