Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism

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.

>>Required for salvation, according to the Gospels, and to Paul, by the way.<<

Acts 16:31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

No works there.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life." (John 5:24)

Hmm, still no works.

Hebrews 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Still no works. Seems in that one the “priest” doesn’t help much either.

1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

Hebrews 10:14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

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,"

Wow! Still no works.

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;

Well, finally! We found those who rely on works. I wonder how that verse affects those who think they have replaced Israel. Hmmmm.

Let me post the relevant article from the Vatican.

Priests in the New Testament

The II Vatican Council (cf. LG 28 and PO 2) based its doctrinal explanations about the priesthood of the New Testament on the concept of “consecration and mission” which the Lord Jesus claims for himself according to John 10:36:

«Yet to someone whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world you say, “You are blaspheming” because I said “I am son of God!” ».

Consecration, sanctification (”agiazo”): “Christ” comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew expression “Messiah” which means “anointed”. It does not become the proper name of Jesus, if not because he fulfills perfectly the divine mission for which he stands. In fact, in Israel those were anointed in the name of God who were consecrated to him for a mission, which he had entrusted them. This was the case with the kings (cf 1 Sam 9:16; 10:1; 16:1.12-13; 1 Kings 1:39), priests (Ez 29:7; Lv 8:12) and in rare cases with prophets (1 Kings 19:16). Therefore, the Messiah had to be the event “par excellence” as the Lord would have sent him to definitely establish his kingdom (cf Sal 2:2; At 4:26-27). The Messiah had to be anointed through the Spirit of the Lord (cf. Is 11:2) simultaneously as king and as priest (cf. Zc 4:14; 6:13), but also as prophet (cf Is 61:1; Lc 4:16-21). Jesus has fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel in his threefold function of priest, prophet and king (CCC 436); cf. The angel who proclaimed the birth of Jesus to shepherds at the birth of the Messiah promised to Israel (cf. Lc 2:11), his conception as “holy” (Lc 1:35) in the virginal womb of Mary. Joseph was called by God to “take Mary as his wife”; she was pregnant, “having conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:21), so that Jesus, “called Christ” would be born of the wife of Joseph in the messianic line of David (Mt Mt 1:16; cf Rm 1:3; 2 Tim 2:8; Ap 22:16).

Mission (”apostello”) is an “apostolate”. “The messianic consecration of Jesus shows his divine mission. On the other hand, it is what his own name indicates, because Christ’s name means the one who has anointed and he who himself has been anointed. The one who has anointed is the Father, the anointed one was the Son and He anointed in the Holy Spirit who is the anointing ( Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses 3, 18, 3). His eternal messianic consecration was revealed during the time of his life on earth in the moment of baptism by John, when God “consecrated him in the Holy Spirit and in power” (At 10:38), “so that he should become known to Israel” (John 1:31) as its Messiah. His deeds and his words will reveal him as “the holy one of God” (Mc 1:24; John 6:69; At 3:14). (CCC 438)

Such consecration-mission assures that in the New Testament there remains a unique “high priest according the order of Melchisedek” (Heb 5:10; 6:20), “holy, innocent, immaculate” (Heb 10:14), who “by a unique offer has made perfect forever those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:14), by the unique sacrifice of his cross (cf CCC 1545).

“Made perfect” (teleioo) is a word with profound significance: it means at the same time to perfect, fulfill and consecrate-sanctify, translating a Hebrew word which used to mean the anointing of priests of the old covenant and the consecration of the temple; it’s the last word of Jesus on the cross: “It is fulfilled” (John 19:30).

(Among the Fathers, already Theophill underlined the priestly dimension of “consecration” in John 10:36: sanctificavit eum, hoc est sanxit sacrificari pro mundo. In quo ostendit se non esse deum sicut ceteri; nam salvum facere mundum, divinum opus est, non autem hominis deificati per gratiam).

Therefore, Jesus has a special anointing by the Holy Spirit (cf Mt 3:16; Lc 4:18; At 4:27; 10:38) in which he allows his whole mystical body to participate: in him all christians become a “holy and royal priesthood to offer offerings to God through Jesus Christ and to proclaim the miracles of who has called them from darkness into his wonderful light (cf 1 Pt 2:5.9). As highpriest and mediator he has made of the Church “a kingdom of priests for God his Father” (Ap 1:6; cf Ap 5:9-10). These texts are the bases for the doctrine of the “common priesthood”.

But with the intention of forming the christians into one body, in which “all members do not have the same function” (Rm 12:4), on the evening of his Resurrection, he sent especially the Apostles, in the same way he was sent by the Father (cf John 20:21); from here originates the doctrine of the “special mandate” of the hierarchy in the Church.

“Then, through the Apostles themselves, he made their successors, the bishops, sharers in his consecration and mission, duly entrusted in varying subordinate degree the office of ministry (according the formula of the II Vatican Council, LG 28 and PO 2); the doctrine of the apostolic succession is a historical fact that is found only in the Catholic Church and in the Orthodox Church; it enables to recognize in each ordained minister someone who is inserted in a chain of transmission - uninterrupted since the days of the Apostles - through the gesture of the imposition of hands, by a spiritual gift which enables him to act in the name of Christ the head. No one could pretend to take the place of Christ who had abolished all the sacrifices and who has become the only High Priest. This is the reason why this gift is considered as initiated by Christ himself and why it has become part of the sacraments of the New Covenant.

- The Apostles handed on in their writings and by their spoken word (cf 2 Thess 2:15) everything what they had received from the Word of God made flesh.

“Give the things you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses to trustworthy persons who are capable of teaching also others” (2 Tim 2:2).

- Such mission of “maintaining the deposit” (1Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:14) must be exercised by the successors of the Apostles who have been charged through the imposition of hands ( 1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6; 1 Tim 5:22). Those who are responsible bear the title of “vigilants” (in Greek “episcopi”, from which the word “bishop” comes) or “elder” (in Greek “presbiteri”). Also the letters of Saint James (5:14) and of Saint Peter (1 Pet 5:1-14) testify to the existence of “presbyters” as heads of the communities.

As a matter of fact, all this shows us a time very near to Christ: summer of the year 56 for the letter of James and approximately the year 58 for 1 Tim. The Acts of the Apostles speak twice about the rite of the imposition of hands (Acts 6:6 and 13:3; cf also 14:23), testifying to the presence of “presbyters” at Ephesus in the year 58 (At 20:17). They were also called “episcopi” (Acts 20:28). The letter of 1 Peter used the letters to Titus and to Timothy; the letter itself made reference to the letter to the Hebrews which was written before the destruction of the temple in the year 70. Therefore it seems that the writings which speak about “presbyters” were redacted exactly when James, Paul and Peter were still alive.

Such scriptural approach to consecration and mission which was put into new light by the II Vatican Council clarifies simultaneously the exercise of the ministry: the apostolic minister, if we consider well the doctrine of the New Testament and especially the letters of Paul, puts together in harmony two concepts of the priesthood, of “presbyters” which sometimes were opposed to one another: in effect, the true apostolate and the true adoration of the Father are strictly combined and permanently connected in such a way that these two aspects of the life of priests cannot exist one without the other. Saint Paul himself declares that when he proclaims the gospel he directs to God an act of adoration: when he praises him “among the gentiles” he sings “to the glory of his name” (cf Rom 15:9) (cf Introduction to the Decree Presbyterorum Ordinis).

Such an approach clarifies simultaneously one of the fundamental duties of those who participate according to this special modality of the priesthood and of the mandate of Christ: if the imposition of hands offers to those who receive it a “spiritual gift” which enables them to exercise their mission, it is their duty “to keep alive the gift the Lord has placed in you” (1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6) through ongoing formation (cf Exhort. Pastores dabo vobis 70).

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