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.
Exactly...We were saved by the same Jesus who saved Paul and the lesser Apostles...
Acts 28:1-5; Acts 5:16; 10:38; 19:11 would give a clear indication that what Mark 16:17-18 states was happening. The signs to follow believers of v 17-18 are also promised in Mt. 10:1-8; 17:20; Mk. 9:23; 11:22-24; Luke 10:19; John 14:12.
If you are referring to the ones I posted, they came out of my Bible...
They’re in almost everyone’s Bible.
I was just commenting about the controversy based on the question asked in post 1,639 by c-y-c.
The earliest and original manuscripts were written on papyrus...Papyrus didn't last long and for years and years, those manuscripts were captured by the Catholic church and destroyed...
The oldest Catholic manuscripts extant are written on vellum; animal skins, which would last far longer than parchment manuscripts, which by the way was far, far more costly to produce than papyrus...
The majority texts which are the texts of the Reformation and number into the thousands have this verse...
Pretty much every bible out there has this verse including the Catholic Douay-Rheims version...
So I’ve heard.
I appreciate that and will remember it.
I know that they did but then that wasn’t my question. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear.
I’ll rephrase, Should they be accepted as part of the original writing of Mark?
Matthew 25:31-46
King James Version (KJV)
31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
I don’t agree that there are separate gospels or that parts are only for others.
I don’t understand all of the dispensational beliefs, but I know that there is One Lord and God of all, One faith and one baptism.
There is before Jesus and after Jesus, nothing else.
The gates of heaven was closed to us, after Jesus it is opened.
My sin, all of it, has been forgiven and because of that, there is nothing to condemn me for. The only thing that's going to remain would be any good works I do anyway.
Romans 4 1What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." 4Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
7 "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin."
9Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
13For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
16That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations"—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 18In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, "So shall your offspring be." 19He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead ( since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness." 23But the words "it was counted to him" were not written for his sake alone, 24but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
They are in deed but usually with some commentary and with an alternate “short” ending. Hence the question when Mark, chapter 16 beyond verse 8 is quoted.
It’s not a personal challenge but I think a legitimate question when these verses are quoted, particularly since there is the real possibility that these verses are not original to Mark.
Luke 1:32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. He will rule over the house of Jacob forever and his reign will be without end.
Jesus is King of Kings and to compare His mother to the abominations of pagan “queens of heaven” is itself an abomination.
There is no honor, no lofty titles, no flowery verse or prayer, no veneration that we give Mary that is greater than the honor and title which God gave her, Mother of His Son.
Those verses really don’t say much that you can’t find elsewhere in Scripture anyway.
If it came down to a need for Scriptural support for something, I’d probably pick those other verses which address the topic and are less likely to be challenged on their authenticity.
That said, I still find it hypocritical and disingenuous for people to cherry pick a verse as to what to believe within a verse. Like, someone will use it to support the need or requirement for water baptism but laugh at the speaking in tongues, healing the sick, drinking poison, and handling snakes.
People ought to at least be consistent. If Jesus said one part of the verse, He said it all. If you’re going to believe the necessity of water baptism on that verse, then believe the rest.
If you’re going to mock and discount the tongues, healing, snake handling, and drinking deadly things part, then don’t use it as a proof text to support a requirement of water baptism for salvation.
That’s what gives me the most trouble when people use that passage; the cherry picking.
One more thing on your post.
****It’s interesting that you immediately focus on Jesus the one part of that pair who all true Christians agree with.****
I have said, and so have many others here, Mary is who she is because Jesus is who and what He is, so of course, I would focus on Jesus. All Marian doctrines have their origin and focus on Jesus.
Yes, I see your point and agree.
There, in a nutshell, is the chasm between Christians and some of the fringe Paulian cults who all but openly profess that Paul, not Jesus, is their savior. Substitute the name Mary for Paul and you have what they repeatedly accuse Catholics of.
I wasn’t comparing Mary to the abominations. I was comparing the Catholic practice of putting her in a position that was not sanctioned nor approved by Jesus.
NO they don’t. Catholics have replaced Jesus with Mary in much of their worship.
So say the Oneness Pentecostals with different basics of the Christian faith.
You can't put the Holy Scriptures on the stand and ask: "Ok, which do you say have the basics correct?"
No, the authority for what are the basics as in Holy Scripture must come from outside Scripture. In your case, that authority is you and the basics are as you say they are.
Unless you convert and claim different basics according to Holy Scripture.
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