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.
Or anywhere else in scripture. I only find Jesus stating that we are as blessed as Mary is.
I think you had better check with the CC teachings on that one. The whole deal is that she was without sin her whole life. It’s made up of wishful thinking or fantasy but that’s what they believe.
Galatians 4:21-26 21Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
“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
Not just this. Christ gave us more than 50 commandments, which your brethren either ignore or make fun of.
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.
No, it is the difference between understanding the obligatory and ignoring the obvious. We do what we do because the Lord God Almighty told us to. Protestants do not do as such because they think that they have a pass on such matters ie. that Jesus was just for the Jews and that Paul told them that they do not have do anything at all other than stand still long enough to have salvation pour down upon them.
What a scurrilous accusation. They don’t make fun of them nor do they “ignore” them. If you can’t tell the difference between following those from an outward legal perspective and an inward desire your problem isn’t something I can help you with.
That ridiculous response doesn’t even deserve more thought then to let you know that I don’t believe that you have any idea of what the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is.
Prove it. Show us where any one made fun of Jesus' commandments or ignored them.
We do what we do in living a clean life because it's the natural outworking of the Spirit of God living in and through us.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Philippians 2:12-13 12Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
"To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;" Isaiah 61:1,2.
************************************************************ "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath annoited me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised;"
"To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
"And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." Luke 4:18-21.
************************************************************ Why did Christ NOT finish the words of Isaiah? Why did He close the book halfway through the verse? What about "and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;? That's why all eyes were fastened upon him. He did NOT finish the verse Isaiah had written. Did He just forget to read the rest of Is. 61:2? Or did He have a reason to stop mid-verse?
I believe that Catholics need to project a preconceived notion to make the deceit they have been under from the RCC palatable.
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.
The laughable thing is the understanding of queen.
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?
I am denying that the Church teaches that Mary was assumed in living form into Heaven.
>>Define speaking, before I can answer that.<<
Do you not speak to Mary when you pray the rosary?
I pray to Mary and the saints, sure.
>>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.
Such as the fish symbol? Pagan. The Cross originated in Chaldea. Pagan. Shall we continue?
You mean that Mary is not the wife of the Holy Spirit? I thought I read somewhere that He is her husband.
So when you pray your rosary how many more prayers go to Mary than to your Creator ?
What does one have to do with the other? You guys consider yourselves as pre saved no matter what. My prayers to Mary and the Saints enter into the discussion how?
Even more laughable is the understanding of the king who has been effectively reduced to being merely the prophet who preceded St. Paul. (another parallel with Islam).
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Correct. We thank you for your example.
Oh goody. I thought that I AM was God. Perhaps in your universe, you are God, which is my opinion of the legacy of the Reformation. Thank you for the confirmation.
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.
Evidently you have not read the first chapter of John in depth. I believe that I have recommended it to you numerous times. Perhaps you might leave snippets of Paul and actually read the Gospels.
Fantastic. I'm surprised that you need God at all, given your omniscience.
Catholicism is backward in it's teachings - the result of not believing God's Word is The Final Authority. 'Man' before God leads to destruction.
If you read your post, you rely totally on man.
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