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.
Sorry, but you're not going to get away with stealing God's word and warping it into something it doesn't say...
Mar 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
Mar 16:16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
He that believes and is baptized is saved...He that is baptized but doesn't believe is damned...
There are numerous scriptures where folks are saved before baptism...Water baptism then, doesn't save...It the repentance that saves...
That's like 'pre-school' for a bible student...
Mar 16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
Jesus is not talking dead so-called Saints here; those who you have no idea of where their present location may be...
And Jesus is not talking about your mythological successors either...
Can you read what it says in 4th grade English??? It says those signs will follow those who believe...Those that the Apostles led to the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ...
Mar 16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
There ought to be then thousands of Catholics who can do these things, WITH PROOF...You claim to be a bible teacher...Can you do any of these things???
Hint: what does the requirement for a Catholic Saint include?
You have no evidence whatsoever whether your so-called Saints are in heaven, or hell...How in the world are you going to attribute miracles to them???
It says nothing about worship being just what we do when we go to *church*. Nor does it mean only what some Protestant denominations call the singing and praying done before the message.
And 1 Corinthians 10:31 ties into that nicely....
1 Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Worship ought to be a lifestyle, not something we do separately from our secular lives.
Yes it most certainly is...And they then trip all over each other trying to pat each other on the back for their great find...HaHaHa...
You don't know that because you don't know us.
Again, lest any lurker mistakenly think you really do know what you're talking about, this is not fact but rather an opinion based on God alone knows what.
At some point you are going to stop laughing...
The words of the Apostles are the words of Jesus Christ...After Jesus went up, He drug Paul with him and instructed Paul for 3 years on what to teach us...
You think it was meaningless when Peter told you that what Paul wrote was scripture??? You people obviously take scripture very, very lightly...
Jesus taught the Gospel of the Kingdom to the Jews, His chosen people...Jesus picked Paul to reveal the new Gospel of Grace to the mostly Gentile church...
It says nothing about worship being just what we do when we go to *church*. Nor does it mean only what some Protestant denominations call the singing and praying done before the message.
And 1 Corinthians 10:31 ties into that nicely.... 1 Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Worship ought to be a lifestyle, not something we do separately from our secular lives.
Ought to be, should be and Christian to be. My point is that you guys don't, do you? If you did, there'd be overwhelming evidence to that fact.
The only fact here is the outrage, which usually indicates that a sensitive point has been poked for which there is no defense other than outrage.
You don't know that because you don't know us.
I think that I know you guys very well both here and in real life.
Again, lest any lurker mistakenly think you really do know what you're talking about, this is not fact but rather an opinion based on God alone knows what.
Your actions and lack thereof.
Like the scripture says, man judges the outside appearance...God judges the heart...
You don't know the heart of any of these denominational Christians...There are Christians in every group you cited, and more...Might even be some Catholic Christians somewhere...
The word “Catholic” was first used to mean everyone does share the same faith, the same worship of the same God.
Naw, it wasn't...The word (c)atholic was used to mean universal...The church is everywhere...Your religion isn't the catholic church...Your bunch invented the (C)atholic (C)hurch...It's a proper name...It's a denomination...
Your Catholic Church worships the same God that the Izlamaniacs worship...The people I run with don't worship the same God as the muzlims (and apparently you) do...We clearly don't worship the same way either...
If you care about this, you wish to become Catholic.
Why that's absurd...You don't know my heart or any one else's...I care about this stuff and I wouldn't become a Catholic if it was the last cult standing...
Mar 16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
You can deny the red letters all you want...You can call Jesus a liar all day long...
Mark 16: 19So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.k 20But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.]l [And they reported all the instructions briefly to Peter’s companions. Afterwards Jesus himself, through them, sent forth from east to west the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Amen.]
Apparently you picked up someone's perverse commentary on the scriptures...You need to dump that but quick and start reading what God has to say about it...
You have been shown many times that the church Jesus instituted consists of all who are baptized in His name not some man made organization centered in Rome.
Nope...They trace their lineage all the way back to Jesus Christ...They worship the same God the rest of us worship...
In my view, they are a little off in their understanding of scripture but hey, nothing like your religion...
You ought to stop in sometime and worship with them...
You are incapable of knowing that because you don't KNOW us. You know a screen name on an internet forum.
The only fact here is the outrage, which usually indicates that a sensitive point has been poked for which there is no defense other than outrage.
Don't flatter yourself. There is no outrage. That can only be wishful thinking on your part.
Besides, posting Scripture is not *outrage*. That is our defense, the Word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit.
A person who never heard the Gospel before and picks up a Bible and puts their faith in Jesus for salvation by grace through faith, can only trace his *lineage* back by years, and yet is as surely a member of the body of Christ as someone who is a true believer in an old denomination.
This business of appealing to lineage and old established denominations sounds way to much like appealing to pedigree as if people are dogs and someone is trying to establish credibility or something.
Since it’s not the church that saves, denominational affiliation is MEANINGLESS. A person would be unwise to risk trying to worship in an organization which doesn’t preach the Gospel found in the NT, but that still would not mean he is unsaved.
Audio Divina
Thx
And here is one of my favorites, youtube...
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Cor. 5:17. And:
"Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do." 1 Tim. 1:4.
The Westminster Poodles of Faith Pedigree does them no good.
Are those verses actually part of the Bible or an addition to it?
There’s some controversy about that.
If you search on the web, it appears that those verses are not part of the oldest manuscripts but were added some hundred or more years later.
I always thought that Jesus upbraiding the disciples just never fit with the way He treated them the rest of the time. That’s certainly not the way He treated Peter or Thomas after His resurrection.
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