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.
Good grief. Do Catholics not read scripture at all?
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.
LOL There seems to be many opinions of what books the Apocrypha consists of. Nonetheless one could well understand that it does include those books not included in the Protestant Bible. Nice try at diversion though.
Well beloved of God, not God. The old dude got a little carried away, but I do not believe that he meant it as worship.
A better question is do anti-Catholics read all the Scripture. Hebrews 10:14 can only mean what they say it means IF one has declared themselves to be sanctified.
They are not the same thing. Penitential prayer is not worship, for instance. I can worship without praying as well.
When Protestants tell me that they are saved and know that they are saved no matter what else they do for the rest of their lives, that is self declaration.
Double Oy! with garnish. I meant Judges 20.
Do Catholics not understand what is written and sanctioned in scripture?
Of course we understand it. I had thought you to say that you renounce everything with pagan roots. That includes wedding rings...
It's not ALL about Jesus?
The Reformation was never about Jesus. It was about personal power, wealth and religious anarchy.
Jesus actually said considerably more on the subject of divorce than is contained in Matthew 5. Matthew 19 contains a complete prohibition against divorce:
"Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”" Matthew 19:3-6
How many of these who attack the Church actually left the Church to divorce? How many think that the forgiveness they believe they received for that divorce is vacant if they continue to live in a state of adultery with a second spouse?
I have often said that those who leave the Faith do so for personal reasons; those who join the Faith do so for theological ones.
You were Catholic and wonder what Catholic worship is? And why Catholics don't consider intercessory prayer worship?
I think one of the benefits of "I am the church" is you get to decide everything for the church.
An inscription written in three different languages.
Luke 23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew
John quoted the Latin inscription. IESUS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM (Jesus of Nazareth The King of The Jews.)
Luke quoted the Greek inscription. OUTOS ESTIN O BASILEUS TWN IOUDAIWN (This is The King of The Jews)
Matthew since he was writing to the Jews whose language was Hebrew quoted the Hebrew inscription. This is The King of The Jews.
Mark of course was rather brief even of his description of what Jesus said just quoted the short version as he was prone to do. The King of The Jews.
I’ve been asked that over and over by Catholics and other pagans trying to discredit scripture. It gets really old because it only points to their lack of study of scripture.
LOL Hate it when that happens.
No, Judges 20 is not about Mary.
Riiiiiggggghhhhhttttt. And which one of the Popes had emblems on his robe to Mary.
Find me the quote where a Protestant said that or forever admit you just declared a falsehood.
Maybe you're getting it after all.
Nobody is perfect but anyone who trusts in Christ, who is IN Christ, has been declared righteous. We have been clothed in His righteousness because our lives are hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
God does not count our sin against us, even though He does have the right to if He chooses. But he chose not to for those who by faith accept the work of Christ on the cross for their sins.
It's a legal pardon. Sure God knows we sin, but has chosen to not count our sins against us for Christ's sake.
Romans 4:1-10 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.
Of course you weren’t trying to trap me were you. And no I don’t wear a wedding ring.
Surprised?
NO, I was referring to the “Upon this rock” portion.
When did God give up that position?
Deut. 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
2 Sam. 22:2 And he said, The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; 3 The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence.
Psalm 18:31, "And who is a rock, except our God."
Isaiah 44:8, "Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none."
Rom. 9:33, "Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he who believes in Him will not be disappointed."
1 Cor. 3:11, "For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ,"
1 Cor. 10:4, "and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock (petras) which followed them; and the rock (petra) was Christ."
1 Pet. 2:8, speaking of Jesus says that he is "A stone of stumbling and a rock (petra) of offense"; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed."
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