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.
Yep. :)
I stand corrected. It was the Council of Hippo, and Council of Carthage.
As I stated earlier, These books were included for teaching and instruction. They are not held at the same level. hence “deutero-canonical”
“Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” John 6:28-29
and by the way, it doesn’t matter WHICH council, the statement is the same. The Holy Spirit guided those putting it together. A little different from Puritans fearing Popery, that decided to toss out whatever.....
It’s not. It’s the reasons and impetus for living a clean life. Catholics do them under obligation and non Catholics do them by the nature of the Spirit within them. It’s the difference of walking in the flesh and walking in the Spirit.
Paul first had hands laid upon him by Ananias in Damascus when Paul was baptized. (Acts 9:10-19)
After Paul returned from Tarsus he went to Antioch and after spending a year there it was the disciples there that sent Paul and Barnabas with relief supplies to the older men in Judea. (Acts 11:25-30)
Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch and it was here that the holy spirit said that Paul and Barnabas had a special assignment and the disciples laid hands on the two, sending them off. (Acts 13:1-3)
As Paul defended his apostleship to the Galatians, he said he did not go up to Jerusalem for approval of the apostles and older men but to inform them of his revelation and appointment by God. And they gave Paul “their right hand of partnership”. (Gal. 2:1-10)
So when did the Council in Jerusalem lay hands on Paul?
Where did that come from? A deflection perhaps? I never said wife. And denying that Catholics teach that she is the queen of heaven is laughable at best.
>>No. It is thought possible but not taught as truth. Strike two.<<
You’re denying that the CC teaches that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven? Are you getting a little shaky in your support for what they teach or what? They have dedicated the entire month of May to her just like the pagans did. Isn’t the assumption of Mary a dogma that the CC says “must be believed”? Note: By promulgating the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared infallibly that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a dogma of the Catholic Faith. Likewise, the Second Vatican Council taught in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium that "the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm]
Today, the belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is universal in the East and in the West; according to Benedict XIV (De Festis B.V.M., I, viii, 18) it is a probable opinion, which to deny were impious and blasphemous. [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm]
>>Define speaking, before I can answer that.<<
Do you not speak to Mary when you pray the rosary?
>>We only carry the symbols of Christianity.<<
LOL Better go look at the symbols used in Baal worship. All symbols used in the CC originated in paganism.
>>I don't want you out. I want you in.<<
All cults do. I can assure you that there is no way I will ever be affiliated with the RCC in any way.
Thank you so much for your glorious testimony!
Ooops......
The Catholic Church belief is that Mary was born without the taint of original sin, not that she remained sinless in her life. That’s what Immaculate Conception means.
I AM the church and so submit to Christ.
I submit to Christ, not the *Church* by which you apparently mean Catholicism. If my choice is to submit to Catholicism or Christ, I choose Christ
Do not conflate the two because they are NOT the same thing.
The Roman Catholic church ≠ Christ.
Which claim is really ironic coming from Catholics who object to how they claim non-Catholics make Scripture equal to Christ because they are both called the word of God.
Apparently the men who decided the canon didn’t think so. I will trust THEIR judgement.....
I disagree. “One cannot have God as his father, who does not have The Holy Catholic Church as his mother!”
St. Cyprian of Carthage. 357 AD
Without the guidance of the Holy Church, your interpretation is flawed.
Without the guidance of the Holy Church, your interpretation is flawed.
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