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.
Nicea, 325 proscribed kneeling prayer on Sundays during Mass. The West did adopt the penitential attitude during much of the Mass, but the laity rises when they pray.
Not in any Catholic mass I've ever seen. Therefore we can conclude that Catholics don't do it at all.
You claim to have been Catholic, yet know so little about the Faith. How is this possible?
You go right ahead and think that Islam is an “offshoot” if you want to. And if you think the LDS has the same God have at it. I’ll tell you the God I serve is NOT the same god that Islam or the Mormons serve.
The contention of the CC that Islam and Catholics serve the same god is abominable as well as the contention by both CC and LDS that men become gods.
Again, their view is lousy. But we may say the same thing about the Arians, the Nestorians and even the Campbellites. Do you consider them Christian, pseudo Christian, or non Christian?
Again, their view is lousy. But we may say the same thing about the Arians, the Nestorians and even the Campbellites. Do you consider them Christian, pseudo Christian, or non Christian?
An even more important question is outward signs of piety vs. what God sees in your heart.
I suspect God is more pleases with a Protestant praying standing, laying down, standing on their head, etc with a sense of awe and reverence in their heart than a Roman Catholic on their knees out of habit, who can’t wait to get home for dinner.
Wrong. There was plenty of authority from the Bishops of the five patriarchates. Read the didache, read the writings of St. John Chrysostom, the earliest liturgy was the Liturgy of St. Justin Martyr. (100 AD) St. John lived around 300 AD. St. Ignatius lived in the 100’s, and was an early martyr.....this blows your 400 AD theory all to heck. There is plenty of documentation to back me up, you have NONE, which is why you won’t post it.
Errant Christians on the other hand are a different matter.
What were you thinking? Don't you know that the ground rules for this debate are that Catholics are the ones who have to prove the negative?
And I suppose you know that RC is doing so out of habit. Kinda like that SBC preacher I knew who would cut short his sermon to be in time for the super bowl.
There are also Protestant Caucus threads of more than one flavor.
I guess that is just one more thing you didn't pay attention to when you were a Catholic (if you ever really were).
"Therefore we can conclude that Catholics don't do it at all."
Is there a mouse in your pocket or were you using the royal "we"?
Yep. Like my great-uncle, Baptist Preacher who argued that the Baptists were the early church, founded by John the BAPTIST dontcha know?......LOL
I heard Islam described as Christian heretic in either its formation or theology. I can see some accuracy in that view.
Pews are a relatively modern development in the Latin Rite Church as well. The first seating wasn't introduced until the 13th century when stone benches were placed against the walls. It took the Reformation to introduce the idea of permanent seating since their services were not at all participatory.
Another interesting fact was the that the communion rail was put in place to keep the animals brought as offerings off the altar.
Now wait a minute....that definition doesn’t include you, since you are obviously a NESTORIAN. Since you favor the term “CHRISTOTOKOS” to refer to the Mother of God, you could NEVER believe in two natures! (SARCASM)
Only polytheists acknowledge the existence of more than one God and actual Christians are monotheists.
A big problem with “Christokos” is that Christ means “anointed” as was, for example, David. So you’d have David’s mother, Nitzevet, as Christokos also. No divine nature required for this title, thereby, again, heresy.
Errant Christians on the other hand are a different matter.
It could be considered a matter of degree. For instance, would you consider Oneness Pentecostals Christian? How about the Christadelphians? Any form of Unitarianism? The Swedenborgians? Branch Davidians? Where does one draw the line?
Then along comes a new FReeper who thinks he's bringing brand-new revelation to the site.
For the twentieth time...
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