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.
Ah, ad hominem opinion of a fallible man forced to live by his own rules.
****What do you mean by that post? That Christ Incarnate and His Mother are another pagan pair?****
It sounds to me that the post is saying that Catholics worship a false Jesus because we venerate His mother and believe that He has taken her to heaven where she is celebrated by the angels and saints.
It fits with all the other references to “paganism” in Catholic Christianity and the charges that Catholicism is a cult ala Mormanism and Islam.
I truly hope that is not what is being said, for it reveals a huge gulf between us.
I have always thought that Protestants understand that Catholics believe in the very same Jesus as they do. That He is the second Person of the Trinity, God made man, born of a Virgin, incarnated through the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Spirit, who suffered and died on the cross and was raised again, to ascend back to God to sit at His right hand.
The same Jesus, the Word of God, through whom all things were made and through whom all men, by believing in Him, are redeemed from sin and have their hope for eternal life in heaven.
I have always believed our differences stemmed from what protestants believe are heretical doctrines regarding the pope and Mary. I guess I was wrong. If what I am thinking is true, it is much worse than that.
I agree with you. It almost sounds as if Catholics are being accused of witchcraft. Our own little Salem witch trials, here. Sometimes our separated brethren, God bless them, are a little spooky.
I know for certain that my Baptist son in law, my Methodist daughter in law, my Jewish relatives, my non-denominational brothers, none consider Catholics to be pagan. All of us believe of Jesus that He, aa you said, “ is the second Person of the Trinity, God made man, born of a Virgin, incarnated through the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Spirit, who suffered and died on the cross and was raised again, to ascend back to God to sit at His right hand.
“
It's just a feature of the Greek and doesn't mean the same as in English.
Sorry, I should not have included my Jewish relatives as believers in Christ. They await the first coming, presently.
What sets Christianity apart is the message that God created us for Himself, loves us and wants us to be with Him. Other religions speak of forgiveness and eternal life, but other religions do not teach that our souls are eternal from the moment we are created. We cannot/do not “earn” an eternal soul through our “works”.
****THEN changes us, by His grace through faith,****
****The only thing we have to do is acknowledge our need of Him (and by implication our inability to do anything to help ourselves) and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.****
If we have to acknowledge our need of Him (i.e. have faith) then there is indeed something we must DO to have everlasting life.
The question then becomes what does faith look like? How is is lived and manifested in us?
The NT epistles are all about the life of the believer....things a believer does and does not do.
Acceptance of the gift of grace is the first step in our journey to everlasting life with God. That grace is freely given. We cannot demand it through our actions or bribe God into giving it.
But, to say that once it is accepted there is nothing else required of the saved is to disregard nearly all of Jesus’ own words.
Yes, we are saved by grace through our faith, but faith is a verb(active, living), not a noun(passive).
James 2:14-26
New King James Version (NKJV)
Faith Without Works Is Dead
14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?
17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your[a] works, and I will show you my faith by my[b] works.
19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?[c]
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?
22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect?
23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”[d]And he was called the friend of God.
24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.
25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?
26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
It has been an eye opener for me.
It explains a lot and saddens me greatly.
Yes, it is an extremely small and vitriolic subset of Protestants. It would be a mistake to attribute their views to Protestants in general.
But it's not *do* as in works, with the good outweighing the bad or counting on them to earn God's favor when Judgment Day comes around.
Nobody ever said you don't have to do anything. Of course you have to respond.
But anyone depending on doing good works, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, visiting the sick or those in prison, baptism, communion, whatever to get them through the Judgment will fail. Those things are a result of salvation, not the cause of it.
And anyone counting on the good works that are supposed to be the result of our salvation in any way, is going to be sadly disappointed. The thief on the cross had no time for anything. The tax collector who just prayed *Be merciful to me, a sinner* went away justified according to Jesus. Those who were sick and came to Jesus for physical healing were sometimes told that their sins were forgiven them, without conditions being put on the either to receive the forgiveness or to keep eternal life.
The only admonition I recall Jesus saying was *Go and sin no more*. But He never qualified that with *or you'll lose your salvation if you do*.
The difference is who is given credit for those.
That's because faith without works is merely intellectual assent, and no that kind of faith does not save.
The kind of faith that produces works does. That's all it's saying. Not that works complete the faith but works are merely the indicator of whether the faith claimed is saving faith or intellectual assent.
>>>>The kind of faith that produces works does. That’s all it’s saying. Not that works complete the faith but works are merely the indicator of whether the faith claimed is saving faith or intellectual assent.
Surely you do not think you are the judge of what kind of faith other people have?
God tells us. Pointing out what He says is not me judging it.
It’s interesting that you immediately focus on Jesus the one part of that pair who all true Christians agree with. The difference is not the Jesus part of that but the mother part of that which compares it to paganism. No where in scripture is the “queen of heaven” spoken of with honor. In every instance it is an abomination.
They most certainly do, but we are not dealing with actual Protestants, we are dealing with anonymous online avatars who represent only themselves and fringe doctrines contrived by purveyors of hatred in isolated kirks and internet sites decent Christians would not visit.
Every Catholic has some doctrinal difficulties with the Church, but these do not raise to the level of doubt or contempt because we recognize these difficulties as flaws in ourselves not the Church. Protestants differ only in degree. As Christians we have an obligation be be truthful and civil to our Protestant Brothers and Sisters, but we have no obligation to treat these anonymous online avatars with any more respect or courtesy than we do the hate and filth they spew.
Nope. Just an ordinary diocesan N.O. Mass. It normally occurs during the Pater Noster, in case you weren't paying attention.
Same here. We also have no parishioners speaking in tongues or rolling around in epileptic fits on a regular basis.
It's just a feature of the Greek and doesn't mean the same as in English.
I thought that the early Greek Scriptures (both OT and NT) were written entirely in upper case.
I don't know where or when the gift of tongues was bastardized into a meaningless public display of an indewlling presence, but it trivializes the true gift. The gift of tongues, the gift to be able to speak and understand languages you were never exposed to, was essential to complete the mission Jesus gave to go forth and teach the world at a time then there were literally tens of thousands of regional languages and dialects with no written languages, dictionaries or Christian translators available.
“The Greek DOESN'T always capitalize “God” (or gods) as for example in 1 Cor. 8:5,6. Since from the context the translator can tell who is being referred to he can use “gods” and “God”.
I should have reread what I wrote more closely.
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